Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

She put first one hand and then the other into the sleeves of her jacket, smoothed her hair, which the bending down had disordered, over her ears, glanced in the mirror on the wall, and looked at him.

Unprepared as he was, it suffused him entirely. All her hopes, happiness, confusion, anger, and tenderness took over his inner being for an instant. He dropped his eyes as quickly as he could, but it was no good, the emotions her glance had provoked couldn’t be recalled. They tore him open. Perhaps because they came too suddenly. Perhaps because they were too many. Perhaps because the channel they forced their way up was too narrow. But hold them back, he couldn’t.

His heart trembled.

“Well, I’m off,” she said.

He nodded without looking at her. She put her hand on his arm. Then she turned to the door of the living room.

“See you, Barak!” she called.

“Where are you going?” came his voice from inside.

Anna looked at Noah and smiled. When his look met hers there were tears in his eyes.

“Out for a while,” she called. And then more quietly to Noah: “See you.”

Noah was still out of sorts when he got back to his room. He put the bucket on the floor, and, lying on his bed, he heard how the drops hit the bottom of it with a metallic pink. . pink. . pinkpink. . while his emotions played havoc within him. At the same time there was something inside him that was reviewing events, something cold and callous, and it was there he attempted to steer his thoughts now. Something within him that felt distaste for everything he did, said, thought, felt. Its ice-cold gaze was what he sought, and found. So you’re lying there crying , it said to him. For what? Because your sister is happy? Because she loves you too, because you’re a family, because things are all right? Because you feel sorry for yourself? That you’re a monstrosity? Fine, weep about it. Poor little monstrosity. Blub just as you’ve always blubbed. You were pathetic as a child, you’re pathetic now, and you’ll always be pathetic.

A sob escaped him. What a poor creature I am , he thought. What a poor, miserable creature I am . But the contempt helped. He wasn’t crying anymore, his thoughts were no longer so confusing and blurred, and after another few minutes of lying on his bed with his eyes closed, he got up, lifted the upholstered board that covered the window off its hinges, and put it on the floor. When he looked out across the fields, he caught sight of what he took to be his sister over by the bridge. Between the trees she was only a white outline against the green of the forest floor, but when she stepped out onto the planks of the bridge, the shining gray of the water intensified the lines of her figure, and he recognized her dress, her hair, the way she swung her arms as she walked.

She was on her way to the ancient ruin of a house, half a mile farther up. Well, ruin was one name for it: all that remained of the house was a hollow where the cellar had once been, some stones in the foundations, and some stones that, to judge by the black marks on their surface, must have formed part of the hearth. The whole thing was overgrown with grass and thistles.

Anna had always retreated to it when she wanted to be alone. It was her place. She would go there when the world frowned on her, she would go there when it smiled on her. Even though she’d gone there all through her formative years, she still thought, oddly enough, that nobody knew about it. Noah had no desire to destroy her illusion.

After waiting to see if there were any other people about on this early summer evening, but seeing nothing but the swallows that swept back and forth across the sky above the field, he sat down at the table and began to leaf through the drawings he’d made earlier in the day. He could just make out Barak’s voice from down in the kitchen, and then his mother’s. A little while later they ceased, there was the sound of steps on the stairs. He hoped they would pass his room; if there was one thing he could do without now, it was having Barak in there, but with a sigh he registered that they’d stopped outside his door.

Barak knocked and popped his head in.

“Do you want some raspberries and cream?” he asked. “There’s a bowl for you downstairs as well.”

Noah shook his head and looked down at the sheet on the table in front of him. If his brother got the hint, he didn’t take it. He stood motionless on the threshold.

“Can I come in for a bit?” he asked after a while.

“Yes, all right,” said Noah.

Barak pushed open the door with his foot. He came into the room holding a bowl of raspberries and cream.

“Are you going to eat in here?” said Noah.

“Well, yes,” said Barak. “Do you mind?”

“Sit over there, then,” said Noah, nodding toward the bed. “So you won’t make a mess on anything important.”

“I don’t make messes,” said Barak. “But I can sit there anyway.”

Noah went across to the table on the other side of the room and fetched the stones, the eight he’d found the night before and the one he’d been given by his father all that time ago, partly to compare them, partly to make Barak inquisitive enough to ask what he was doing.

He placed the stones one after the other on the table.

“Is Father coming home tonight, d’you think?” Barak asked.

“No,” he said without turning. “They always spend the night at the summer farm, and come home early the next morning.”

“Why?”

Noah shrugged his shoulders, picked up one of the stones, turned it so that the light fell on the half-eroded insect picture.

“I presume they sit up there drinking. It’s their last evening after all.”

“Do they?” said Barak.

Noah put the stone back on the table and turned to his brother.

“Of course they do. There are lots of things that go on that you don’t know about. Do you think Father goes to the market because he has to?”

Barak nodded.

“Well, you’re sillier than I thought, then,” said Noah.

They looked at each other for a moment. Then Barak smiled.

“Go on,” he said. “What else do they do that I don’t know about?”

“I’ve said too much already,” said Noah. “To become an adult you have to sign a solemn declaration that you’ll never give away what adults do in secret to children.”

“Ha, ha.”

“It’s true. Hang on a moment, I’ll show you. I’ve got the agreement here somewhere,” said Noah, and bent down and began to shuffle through the pile of paper under his writing table.

“No, I can’t find it at the moment,” he said, straightening up again.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Barak. “I can ask Father if it’s true tomorrow.”

“If what’s true?”

“That he goes to the market to drink.”

“ No! ” said Noah. “Are you mad?! You most definitely mustn’t ask about that!”

“If you’re afraid I will, you’re sillier than I thought,” said Barak.

Noah stared at his brother in surprise.

“You had me there,” he said.

Barak lowered his eyes and squirmed a little from Noah’s praise, but was still unable to prevent himself from smiling.

Noah smiled too.

“Come here and I’ll show you something,” he said.

Barak sat on his lap, picked up one of the stones.

“Can you see what it is?” Noah asked.

“It looks like a beetle,” said Barak.

Noah reached around him and lifted up the next one.

“And this?”

“A kind of leaf?”

“It looks like one,” said Noah. “But it isn’t. It only resembles a leaf. Rather like the stones over there,” he said, pointing toward the table by the wall. “They resemble the eggs next to them, d’you see? They’re almost identical, but they’re not eggs, they’re stones that look like eggs. That beetle isn’t a beetle, but a stone that looks like a beetle. And once you start looking, there are things like that everywhere. Do you remember that butterfly we saw, the one that looked like a leaf?”