Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

Then he got up and went out of the room. They heard him moving about in the hallway, then just afterward the front door closing.

How would he ever be able to overcome him?

Abel had outshone his father, and for that reason never needed to conquer him, there was no contest between them.

Would his expression have hollowed with despair or his eyes filled with tears if Cain were the one lying up there screaming?

Not a chance. He would have trussed him up in the cellar, he was sure of that. Or somewhere else where no one would hear him.

“He’ll be all right, don’t you think?” said his mother, looking at him. Cain, who wasn’t sure if she meant Abel or his father, nodded.

“Of course he’ll be all right, Mother.”

It felt barbaric to go on eating after that, and he wiped his mouth with his napkin, pushed his chair back.

“Well,” he said. “I’d better go up to him.”

“Yes, do that,” said his mother.

“Sure you’re all right on your own?” he asked.

She nodded and he rose, went out into the hall and up the stairs. Although he knew what awaited him, he was shaken when he entered the bedroom. It seemed that it was only now he understood that it was Abel who was tied to the bed. While he’d been downstairs eating, the thought that his brother might possibly remain in this state had filled him with a certain kind of nervous glee. That he might go on being tied to his bed and crying out, not just one night, but every night.

What sort of person was he, who, rather than wish his brother well, wished him ill?

For a long time he stood with his back to the door watching him. In the dim light Abel’s skin was yellowish, and glistened dully with sweat. Apart from his slow breathing, he lay there completely still.

Down there, Cain knew, his parents were sitting listening. They wanted him to talk to Abel; in the depths of their confusion perhaps they imagined that his voice was something their younger son might recognize and latch on to, and somehow haul himself back to the world with.

And now it was silent up here.

If he didn’t say something soon, thought Cain, they’d probably come up and ask what he was up to.

He went over to the bed and bent over him.

“Can you hear me, Abel?” he said.

No reaction.

“I’m going to sleep up here tonight,” he said. “Mother and Father think that you’ll wake up again when you hear my voice. But I don’t believe it.”

He’s so thin , he thought. Earlier in the evening he’d been so shocked by the ropes and the white eyes that he hadn’t noticed it. But now he saw. His cheeks that seemed to have sunk into his skull. The protruding collarbones. The emaciated arms.

His shirt was pulled out a bit on one side and exposed a little of his hip bone, which also protruded, and Cain was just about to tuck it in when he saw a clearly defined scar on his skin and instead pulled his shirt farther up. The scar looked as if it led around to his back. He turned the body gently over onto its side and discovered to his horror that the scar covered the whole of his spine.

It resembled a burn, but it couldn’t be that, he thought, for how could Abel have burned his spine and no other part of his body?

He put his hand on his brow. It was hot with fever.

“What have you done, Abel?” he said. “What have you done? ”

He straightened his head and saw the faint, almost submarinely soft reflection of the room in the window above the bed, his own ugly face, his eyes’ gentle light.

Without thinking what he was doing, he began to stroke Abel’s hair. It was damp and matted, he needed washing the next day, he thought. And feeding too.

He looked down at his face again.

Just then Abel shut his eyes. Cain started and pulled back his hand. First one foot began to move back and forth over the bed, slowly, as if it were feeling its way. Then the other.

“Are you there?” Cain asked.

Only when Abel craned his neck back the next moment, opened his mouth, and began to cast his head from side to side did Cain realize that one of the fits had started. His eyeballs moved beneath the eyelids, even as his feet kicked and his hands tugged with all their strength at the ropes that held them fast. The bed’s legs thumped against the floor. Then a cramplike movement went through him. His body arched back, and Cain, who had taken a step back in dismay, attempted to lay a calming hand on his shoulder, but drew it back when his brother again began to thrash from side to side, more wildly this time.

“Oh no, no,” he said. But it was as if his words vanished into the violent movements. To get through them he’d have to shout, he thought, shout and lash out, only then could he penetrate them.

Abel was clutching and tearing at the ropes, but Cain could see it wasn’t toward them his strength was directed; nothing around him mattered at all, everything came from within, he realized, that was where his eyes were turned, that was why they moved so quickly this way and that: they were trying to escape the images that welled up toward them.

“Abel!” Cain shouted.

For one mad second he thought he was being answered, that his brother heard him, because just then he arched his head back again and opened his mouth as if he were going to say something. But he’d heard nothing, was going to say nothing. His mouth opened in a scream.

When it was over, Cain went over to his own bed. He lay down on his back, clasped his hands on his chest, and closed his eyes, but he quickly realized that he wouldn’t be able to sleep. His brother was too large a presence in the room. His thoughts were constantly being led toward his breathing, and his eyes couldn’t resist the longing to look over at him; they opened of their own accord, he forced them shut again, they opened again, he shut them again.

Nevertheless he must have dozed off, because the next time he opened his eyes, he saw the light had burned out. He got up and went over to the window by Abel’s bed. The field below glowed feebly in the light from the living room windows, a few snowflakes were swirling through the air. He turned toward the motionless body in the bed, which wasn’t his brother, but wasn’t anyone else either.

After all the years by Abel’s side, he’d seen more of him than anyone, and the thought occurred to him that Abel was now more alive inside him, Cain, than in his own body.

Even so, the distance between them was just as great. The thing that had prevented him from touching his brother, embracing him and saying how much he loved him, was still there, the notion just as alien.

But now Abel was lying as if dead before him. He wasn’t preventing him from doing anything. The ban was his own. So it had always been, he thought.

He knelt by the side of the bed, put his hand on Abel’s cheek, moved it gently up and down a few times, drew his index finger across his lips, which were moist and settled back just slightly after the touch, then ran his hand through his hair. He’d never been so close to his brother before, and filled with an almost frantic tenderness, pulled up his shirt and put his hand on his chest, felt the curve of the ribs meeting his palm as he let it slide down toward his stomach, the soft hollow beneath the chest, all slippery with sweat.

Could he lay his cheek on his chest?

He could do that, too. He could feel the heart beating under the ribs, the lungs filling and emptying with the slow respirations, the almost glowing skin.

“What have you been up to?” he said. “Haven’t you been eating? You’ve got to eat, you know, dear brother.”

This last he whispered.

You’ve got to eat, you know, dear brother .

He stayed like that a long while, kneeling on the floor with his head on his brother’s breast. When he felt another fit coming, he stood up and put his hand on Abel’s brow, partly to calm him, partly to keep his head down, but the forces that streamed through his brother’s body were too great. He could do nothing but watch.