Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

His heart pounded rapidly in his chest.

No , he thought. I’ll never be weak again .

Then he put on his shoes, grabbed his jacket, and ran after him.

“Abel!” he called.

Abel halted down the road and turned inquiringly back to him.

“I’ll go with you to the pass,” said Cain.

Around them the old trees bent in the wind. Each time they were pressed back, it seemed as if they girded themselves for an attack on this mysterious, invisible thing that so often forced them to throw themselves forward, be pressed back, throw themselves forward, be pressed back. The darkness was so impenetrable they didn’t notice the leaves whirling through the air until suddenly they were right in front of them, or had softly clamped themselves to their bodies. There was the smell of wet earth, wet moss, wet grass, wet bark, wet leaves. They walked along single file, Abel first, Cain behind. The trees they passed creaked slowly from side to side as if they were masts on a rolling ship’s deck, there were the sounds of the wind that rose and fell through the forest, the rush of the sea.

All the while Cain clasped his knife in his hand. At first he’d planned to do it by the river, and let the current carry the body away, but when they got there, he couldn’t bring himself to act. It would be better to do it in the forest, he thought. But not suddenly and impulsively, he had to know just where it was going to happen, and the forest, with its myriad of bushes and trees, meadows and watercourses, heaths and moors, seemed to him to be too vague and ill-defined: better, then, where the forest met the field, that had some definition about it, that was the place.

He increased his speed so that he’d be right behind Abel when they got there, but just as they stepped out of the forest and into the field, Abel turned to him.

He smiled.

“Do you want to come with me, Cain?” he said. “You can.”

“No,” said Cain. “I don’t think so.”

“No,” said Abel. “I thought as much.”

Cain would rather he hadn’t asked. And that he hadn’t smiled. But he had made his decision, and it was several hours since he’d risen above the realm of such considerations.

The next well-defined point would be the forest brow on the other side of the field, beneath the pass. There Abel would presumably turn once more, he thought, to say something before he started up the mountain, and as he didn’t want to look into his eyes while he did the deed, he’d have to act soon.

The wind blew more powerfully out here. The rain beat against them in squalls, and both walked with heads down. Their feet sank into the earth at each step. When they reached the middle of the field, they could see neither the mountains in the east, nor the forest in the west, everything around them was black.

It was like walking on the bed of the sea.

Cain raised his head and saw his brother’s white neck in front of him.

It must be done soon, he thought. Soon he’d have to step right up to him, take a firm grip of his upper body, and. . then?

It depended on how Abel reacted. If he resisted, he would immediately let go. How he would then explain this action, so like an assault, he hadn’t considered, he’d have to play it by ear.

Was that the mountain?

Yes, it must be.

Then he hadn’t much time left.

It would have to be now.

And he took a couple of rapid steps and came right up behind Abel, and he wrapped his arm round his chest and tightened his grip.

Abel stopped and stood quite motionless. In the tight grip his body seemed as soft and heedless as it had been when Cain would attack him during their childhood.

The memory stirred the same emotions of powerlessness and rage in Cain. He took Abel by the hair with his other hand, pulled his head back, let go of his chest, put the knife blade to his neck, and sliced across it in a single movement.

The blood poured out, he felt the heat of it on his hand, and heard the gurgling in the throat before he took a step to the side and let his dead brother fall to the ground.

When he bent over him, he saw that his head was pulled back. The open throat gaped like a mouth. The heart pumped blood out onto the field, and he counted each pulse. One, two, three, four, five, six. And then it stopped.

The details evaded him in the darkness, the face and throat were a vague white area against the black of the earth, and he was thankful for that. Even though he wasn’t thinking about what he’d done, something within him knew that it wasn’t bearable, and it never would be; he had done the worst thing any human being could do, he had killed his own brother, and if he’d now seen his face, the knowledge would have surfaced within him. Instead it remained dark and unformulated. He couldn’t see the face, and he didn’t think about the consequences of what he’d done, but kept to the practicalities: what should he do with the body? The river was too far away, to get there he’d be hauling half the night, he thought. Here in the field it would be found as soon as daylight broke. The strip of forest beneath the mountainside was better. But even there the body would have to be hidden. It would be best to bury it. But he had no spade, so that wouldn’t work. If he hid it in shrubbery or beneath one of the large stones, it would presumably be found during the search that, sooner or later, would be instituted. But as only he had been with Abel during the past twenty-four hours, he might leave the corpse there for now, tell his parents that Abel had returned to the mountains again, and then bury him properly tomorrow night. If he were really lucky, some predator would get to work on him before then.

Yes, that would do.

He took the corpse by the feet and began to drag it in toward the forest side. Its head bumped and knocked on the uneven ground, the wound over the throat opened and closed like two lips, and he let out a deep sigh of relief when at last he got in among the trees and could leave his load.

Now it was just a case of finding a suitable place nearby.

He looked around. Should he simply leave it in the scrub over there? Perhaps not. There was a cavelike hollow beneath the round boulder at the base of the scree, he seemed to remember, that would do perfectly.

Just as he bent down to take hold of the legs once more, it began to grow light around him. He looked up surprised. A strange glimmer of gray lit up the sky overhead. He saw the raindrops that fell through the air, the shards of mist that drifted through the trees, the dark trunks and the few yellow leaves that still clung to the branches. The light slowly got brighter, and what previously had been only a slightly lighter area in otherwise inky blackness was now a face with clear features.

For the first time he saw it was Abel who was lying there.

Abel’s eyes, Abel’s lips, Abel’s hair.

What had he done?

Oh, what had he done?

Suddenly he thought of the way Abel used to look at him from his bed on the opposite side of the room, those happy eyes. The sensation of the warm boyish body close to his when they fought in the summer. The laughter that bubbled over in his voice. How he’d looked forward to the following day that night when, seven and nine years old, they had watched from the window as the snow fell. How scared he’d been once when Cain had told him he wasn’t really Cain, but someone else, the way fear had vied with hope in his eyes.

All these memories welled up in Cain as he stood motionless looking at the corpse of his brother.

He knelt and laid his head against his breast, but the heart no longer beat, he was no more, he was dead, and he was the one who’d killed him.

He cried out his sorrow there in the forest. He knew that Abel could have returned and lived on, he knew that things could have worked out well, if only he hadn’t done what he’d done.