Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

He lay there feeling awful, in the grip of his inner forces: if he kept his eyes open, he saw things that reminded him of horrors; if he closed them, it was open house for horror’s abstractions. Formerly he’d always dealt with them by working, that possessed its own calmness and a peace that mitigated anxiety, at least for a time, but now he could hardly turn over in bed, he was so weak. He couldn’t eat, and it was not until the afternoon that thirst drove him down to the kitchen. To return suddenly seemed abhorrent to him, instead he lay down on the bench, driven half mad by all the new objects he was forced to look at there. When sleep eventually came, it was so light that he lay and argued with the dreams it filled him with. He wasn’t going to endure another day like that, so even though he was just as bad the next morning, he forced himself to get up, ate a few slices of bread, and went out to work. Just walking was an effort. When he got to the cornfield, where the ears from the lowest portion lay in bundles on the ground, he had to sit down and rest. Really he should be beginning to cut the rest of the corn now, but he realized this was beyond his strength, and decided to gather up the bundles instead, put them on the cart, and pull them to the old threshing mill by the stream that his father had given him, as it stood on his ground. That should be within his strength. But he’d hardly laid a couple of bundles on the cart before he had to rest again. He found the whole thing most extraordinary. He had no fever or rash or headache, he hadn’t been sick or had any wounds that could have turned septic. In spite of this, he hardly had the strength to stand up. But his plan to subdue this apathy with willpower slowly bore fruit. He refused to allow himself further rests, and as the day wore on the work became easier. By the next morning he was almost back to his old self. And a good thing, too, he thought. Over the next few weeks everything had to be harvested; a delay of just a couple of days could have drastic consequences. But the corn was cut, threshed, and ground, the vegetables taken up, and everything he didn’t need for his own use, bartered. The evenings got darker, the nights colder, the wooded hillsides flamed yellow, red, and orange. Huge flocks of birds passed overhead at dusk, some of them landed in the fields outside his house; the silence when they moved on a few hours later was always striking. This was his season and he savored every moment of it. The ice that lay as thin as gossamer on the river one morning. The mist that drifted across the yellow stubble. The stars that shone more brightly with each passing night. The leaves that fell from the trees, the new silence that reigned in the world, seeming somehow to give more space to the voices of the few that still called: the owls that hooted, the foxes that barked, the lynxes that, with so human a sound, called to one another from ridge to ridge in the twilight.

And then there was the light from the cherubim. Each evening Cain would mount the little hill behind his house and watch the flames that stood out so clearly against the black heavens. The thought of Abel would often come to him then, and he let it. They shared the same fascination for the cherubim, but whereas Abel wanted to go there, for Cain it was enough to watch them from here. He had no opinion about what they looked like, or who they were, he saw what was there: a fire that was always burning in the middle of the world.

He breathed in and out deeply a few times. The air was so cold that he could feel it filling his chest. He knew that the evening was unseasonably cold because the harvest festival would begin the following day. Something of summer often still hung in the air then; several times during his childhood the countryside had been hot and dusty, he remembered, and the first shriveled leaves had fluttered almost unnaturally down, as the wind was still so mild, and all the faces one saw glistened with sweat. But he could recall the opposite, too, the year snow fell while the leaves were still on the trees. How lovely that had been! The leaves’ yellows and greens against the white of the snow. And savage. For that was the first year he was allowed to help with the sacrifice that always started the festival, and the snow preserved every drop of blood that flowed out of the lambs. Dark red, almost black where it pooled, brighter and seemingly fresher where the blood had only fallen as spots.

How old had he been? Six? Seven?

A long time ago at any rate. And tomorrow he was going to make his own offerings for the first time. He’d already been down to the cellar and sorted out what he would take. His field hadn’t exactly provided him with an abundance of produce, but he could spare something. He had put aside the best of everything, as much of it as he could carry. Potatoes, carrots, onions, rutabagas, wheat, and barley.

A scream somewhere in the distance suddenly pierced the air. He’d never heard anything similar, and stood stock-still as he tried to place it. Some sort of predator, he thought. But he was by no means certain. Nor could he tell where it came from. The air was so clear that it could easily have come from the mountains on the other side of the valley.

Perhaps it was just the distance that had distorted it, he thought after the scream had ended.

He was rather cold, but didn’t want to go in just yet, the evening was too lovely for that, and he decided to take a walk down to the river. The grass crackled beneath his feet. He had the feeling that the first snow was not far off. Perhaps it would even fall tomorrow, he thought, and halted. In the darkness before him the river ran past. Although the autumn had been dry, its water level was high and its current strong.

Mightn’t he take a trip in his boat before it was too late?

It was in the shed, ready to be launched. He’d had it on the riverbed up by the sandbanks for a while, and had tarred it, but till now hadn’t found the time to test it.

He had always intended to try it out in the dark. He’d never been in a boat before, and if it turned out to be harder than he imagined, he wanted the failure to go unobserved. As time had passed, and no convenient moment had arrived, he’d consoled himself with the idea of waiting until the spring.

But could there be a better moment than now? The darkness was intense, the current strong, the grass so slippery with rime that it would be light work to haul it down to the river.

He went up to the shed, lugged the boat out, and pushed it across the meadow down to the scrub by the riverbank and out onto the water. Although he was rather nervous, he didn’t hesitate: after checking that the paddle was aboard, he placed one foot on the boat and pushed off. The current took hold of it immediately. The boat began to drift downstream as it spun slowly round. Its speed was greater than he’d anticipated. At first he didn’t dare move, but held himself rigid with a hand on each side. The boat spun faster and faster the closer it got to the rapids. They were weak; originally he’d considered that the speed at which the boat would be driven through them was nothing but an advantage, but now that he realized even a hasty intervention with a paddle would be ineffective, he began to be alarmed. The water was icy, the current treacherous. And he didn’t know if the swimming ability he’d displayed in diving for Abel was a once-only phenomenon.

At the same time there was something blissful about drifting down the river in the dark. The spinning gave him a hollow feeling in his stomach, and when he tilted his head back and looked into the vast dome of stars above him, he couldn’t restrain himself but had to cry out in ecstasy.

Then he entered the rapids. The boat rocked violently, he clung to the sides as hard as he could, but he didn’t feel safe and let himself slide forward from the thwart to the deck, and so, kneeling with his bottom in the air, head down on the keel planks and his arms out to each side, he was carried down them.