Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

“There,” said Cain when he’d finished. “Can you stand up?”

Abel nodded.

“Put these clothes on,” said Cain, pointing to the pile on the table.

Abel rose and with some difficulty got into Cain’s clothes. His sweater swamped him, and the trousers were so loose at the waist that he had to hold them up with one hand.

Cain handed him a cord, and he threaded it through the loops and tied it.

“Do you want something to eat?” asked Cain. “You must be starving! How long is it since you’ve had anything? It must be at least four days?”

“I’m not hungry. I’m just tired. Terribly tired. Could you leave me alone for a while, do you think?”

He went over to the bench and sat down. Cain took a couple of steps after him.

“Not even a little? You’ll sleep all the better. .”

The face Abel turned on him was full of contempt. Before his eyes it altered into an image of his own. He jutted out his jaw, opened his mouth, and lowered his head to produce the vacuous look in the eyes, then said in Cain’s slow way:

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

The shame that flooded through Cain was so great that he had to raise an arm to his head to protect himself. His cheeks burned. In his mind’s eye he saw what he’d done when Abel had lain there bound, and the only thing he wanted was to get away from there, as if the feeling of shame were part of the room, and would cease as soon as he’d left it.

He felt that Abel was observing him. Still hot in the face, he lowered his arm. Yes, he actually lowered it. He was sitting there looking at him with interest.

“You heard that? ” said Cain.

“I heard everything,” said Abel, and looked at the end of the bench. “But now I must sleep. Have you got a pillow? And a blanket, maybe?”

More than happy to have an excuse to be alone, Cain nodded and went up to the bedroom to fetch them.

When he returned Abel had fallen asleep where he sat. Cain laid him carefully down on the bench, put the pillow under his head, and spread the blanket over him. He seated himself in the chair by the window. From there he could keep an eye on his brother and see if anyone was approaching along the road.

The knowledge that Abel had been conscious when he’d caressed him was still agonizing, it was as if his dignity had been stolen, and he tried to push away all thoughts that had anything to do with Abel. He managed this for as much as several minutes at a time, on one occasion even when he was looking right at him. He saw the light that flickered on the rough floorboards, he saw the black pan and the wet towels, he saw the bench’s legs, and the blue-painted seat on them, and the blanket that partly obscured it, and the pillow, and the paneling on the wall behind. For a short interval he saw everything as it was without Abel, until he moaned in his sleep and was suddenly there again, together with his shame, which had only grown stronger during his absence.

Abel knew everything about him now. Everything about what he thought, everything about what he felt. Yet this had altered nothing in the way he behaved toward him.

It was, thought Cain, as if Abel didn’t understand it. Or, rather, he probably did understand it. It was more that it hadn’t lodged anywhere. There were no places inside him where it could take root; it just washed right off.

Perhaps he’d always been like that.

Behind him, Abel raised his head. Cain turned toward him. His eyes were closed, but his head moved up and down several times, as if he could nevertheless see something in front of him.

Then he tipped it back, opened his mouth, and screamed. Cain couldn’t endure it. He wanted to help him, but he couldn’t, and suddenly it filled him with rage: in one bound he was on his feet, he had to get out, he put on his shoes, snatched his jacket, and ran down the field to the river.

It had been six months before, when he’d held the rock above his head on the mountain, ready to smash Jared’s head, that the thought of killing Abel had come to Cain for the first time. The thought was a terrible one, and he justified it by saying to himself that he’d been blind with rage, and that the thought belonged to his wrath and not to him. But it wasn’t true. Once the thought had been thought, it suddenly lay there as a possibility. He could distance himself from it, he could laugh at it, he could ignore it, but he couldn’t eliminate it: after that occurrence on the mountain, fratricide would always be something he’d have to reckon with.

And so it was no sudden, liberating thought that came to him this evening, as he crouched in the darkness by the riverside rinsing his hands and face in the ice-cold water, but an old prospect that slowly activated itself within him, and now seemed the only right one.

Nothing bound Abel to them anymore, for him there was no more joy or meaning to life in the valley. He yearned for his own kind, as far as Cain could understand it, for the pure and eternal ones, but he was not pure and eternal himself, he didn’t belong among them, either. He had discovered a way out, he had discovered the way to the tree of life, but what was the price he’d had to pay for that?

Cain dried his hands on his sweater and stared up at the inky sky above him. He was sure that Abel’s attempt to drown himself hadn’t been genuine, in the sense that he must have calculated that Cain would get him out in time. If the idea hadn’t been to die, what had it been?

I owe you my life , he’d said. Don’t forget that .

He’d put his life in Cain’s hands that time. And because he knew Cain better than anyone else, he knew that his brother would never ask for the debt to be repaid on his own account. But the reason he must have put it that way was his wish that Cain, at some point, might do so on his, Abel’s, account.

There was no reason whatever to doubt it, thought Cain.

He turned around and walked slowly up toward the house again. The only thing that remained was to get a final assurance that he was really carrying out Abel’s will. The least sign of resistance, and he’d relinquish his intention.

That was the way.

He entered the farmyard, kicked the mud from his shoes against the doorstep to give Abel a chance to wake, slammed the front door hard, and when he opened the door to the living room, he saw that his object had been realized: with one hand held to his back, Abel sat hunched forward on the bench looking up at him.

“I’m going now,” he said. “Thanks for your help.”

“It wasn’t much,” said Cain.

Abel stood up and gave a barely audible groan from the movement in his wound, walked slowly out into the hall, got into his wet jacket, put on his soggy hat, bent down and tied his laces. He straightened up again, put his hand on the door handle, and nodded to his brother, who stood in the doorway with his arms folded, looking at him. When their eyes met, Cain said:

“You know that I’ve never asked you for anything.”

“Yes, I know,” said Abel.

“Well, now there is something I want to ask you,” said Cain.

“And that is?” Abel’s tone was ironic, but the way he stood there awaiting the request showed Cain that he took it seriously enough.

“I want to ask you not to go. Please, Abel. Stay here in the valley. Stay here with us.”

“You can’t ask that of me. Surely you understand that?”

He looked up and smiled, but there was no pleasure in his eyes.

“I understand,” said Cain. “But I’m asking all the same.”

Abel shook his head and opened the door, went out into the gloom. The rain blew into the hallway, and Cain stood for a moment watching the drops spattering the floor. He thought that he could simply close the door and go to bed, and let Abel go on his way. That would be the simplest thing. But it wasn’t for his own sake he was going to do it. It was for Abel’s. Letting him go would be weak, it would be cowardly, and it would be failing him.