Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

Lamech nodded, leaned the pack up against the leg of the table, pulled out his chair, and sat down.

“What’ve you brought us this year, I wonder?” Anna said with a smile.

Her whole body brightened.

“We’ll have to see,” said Lamech.

Anna laid her hand on his arm as she passed him. She put down her glass and plate on the sideboard, lifted the bucket, poured water into the big pot, set it on the plate above the oven, and bent down, opened the door, and pushed in some logs, straightened up, and stood with her back to the work surface.

He was rather embarrassed about the present he’d found for her. As always, he’d bought presents for Barak and Noah on the first day of the market, but those for Milka and Anna were purchased only on the last, in a flurry of haste, with Obal and Tarsis standing impatiently at his side. To make good this discrepancy, he’d always spent more money on their presents.

Out in the hallway a door opened, it was Milka, they heard her take off her boots and jacket, and Lamech could see how Barak squirmed in his seat on the other side of the table.

“Ah, so you’re back,” she said as she came in.

“I’ve got a few small gifts for you all,” he said, and put the pack between his legs and loosened the flap.

“Who’s first?”

“Shouldn’t we wait for Noah?” said Barak.

Anna laughed.

“He’ll be asleep until the afternoon, little brother. And you won’t be able to wait that long!”

“I certainly could,” said Barak.

“Noah can have his present later,” said Lamech. “Here’s one for you.”

He handed a package to Milka, who squeezed it a bit before undoing the ribbon.

“It’s soft this year,” she said. “What can it be?”

She undid the paper and found something furry in her hands.

Lamech smiled as her hands turned and examined it.

“What is it?”

“A muff,” said Lamech.

“A what, did you say?”

“A muff. It’s for putting your hands into. Look.”

He snatched the muff away from her and pushed a hand into each end of it.

“But, my dear,” Milka said and laughed. “How can I work with that on my hands?”

“It’s for when you’re not working,” said Lamech.

She looked at him.

“Ah, yes,” she said. “Well, thank you anyway! It’s so lovely and soft.”

“Anna,” said her father, and handed her the next package. “It’s just a toy,” he added, so as not to raise her expectations.

But she was pleased with it, he could tell.

“What is it?” Barak asked.

“A bird,” Anna said, and held it out so they could see. A gold-colored metal bird on a little box was what he’d found for her.

“If you turn the handle there,” said Lamech, pointing to one side, “it’ll start singing.”

“Really!” said Anna.

She turned the small key until it would go no further. When she released it, the key began to turn round and the bird to dip its head, while a strange, almost inaudible sound emanated from it. A kind of monotonous squeak.

“It’s singing,” said Anna.

“It’s supposed to be a nightingale,” Lamech said. “But it doesn’t sound quite right.”

“It’s lovely,” said Anna. “Thank you so much.”

“And now you,” said Lamech, looking at Barak. “What have we here.”

A proper present at last, he could see them thinking as Barak unwrapped it. A hunting knife with a silver sheath.

“Can I try it out now?”

“Off you go, then,” said Milka.

Shortly afterward they saw him go through the garden and disappear into the forest on the other side.

It was some way into the afternoon before Lamech remembered the man he’d seen on the roof that morning. He went into the kitchen to ask Milka, but she wasn’t there, and he put his head round the living room door. When he saw Noah sitting in a chair with the mechanical bird on the table in front of him, so engrossed in its tiny movements and insipid song that he didn’t even notice him, he quickly stepped back so that he wouldn’t be discovered. He didn’t want to own the anger he felt rising inside him at the sight of Noah, because he also felt pity for him, and the notion that it wasn’t Noah’s fault was always present in his mind. But even so. It was his business if he lived in a world of his own, but that he actually seemed to like the artificial world he’d constructed and moved about in was harder to accept.

Lamech could feel disgust for Noah, and had been able to ever since he was small. For that body and for the sickliness that kept him indoors. Those violent emotional eruptions, which weren’t related to anything at all. How angry he could get when he saw them coming, how ineffectual he was while they were in progress, how guilty he felt when they were over. As Noah himself was blameless for them, he couldn’t turn his rage on him, a small boy, that would have been pure wickedness, but instead must forget the whole thing and try to help him as best he could.

But now he was twenty years old and could help himself.

Best leave him alone , Lamech thought, and turned toward a movement he sensed outside the window. It was Barak returning from the forest. He was just going out when an impulse made him look in on Noah again. What repulsed him also had something compelling about it. Perhaps because he stood quite outside it himself. He saw it, but didn’t understand it.

Noah bent his head right down to the nodding bird, studying every bit of it, and when it stopped, he was quick to wind it up again.

It’s just a toy! he wanted to shout.

Instead he retreated into the hall, just as Milka came through the door with two pails of water in her hands.

“Are you in here?” she asked.

“I saw a man on the roof when I arrived this morning,” he said. “Who was it?”

“Tiras,” she said as she went past him. “We discovered that the rain was coming in yesterday. So I sent him up to investigate. It should be fixed now.”

“I’ll go and take a look anyway,” said Lamech, pushed his feet into his shoes, put on his hat, and went out.

In front of him, his back against one of the huge roots of the farmyard tree, sat Barak whittling away.

“What are you making?” Lamech asked.

“A bow,” said Barak.

“It’s looking good,” said Lamech, and began to walk toward the outhouse.

“Put on your old hat,” said Barak.

Lamech stopped.

“What for?”

“I want you to wear it.”

Barak nodded at his hat. Lamech took it off, turned it in his hands a couple of times. “What’s wrong with it?” he said. “It’s a good hat, isn’t it?”

He looked at Barak.

Barak looked down at the bow he was shaping.

Lamech didn’t like this. This was the way Noah had behaved when he was young. Everything had had its meaning. He’d usually done what Noah asked him, but he couldn’t do that with Barak.

There was nothing wrong with Barak.

“What rubbish, Barak,” he said. “I’ll wear what hat I like and that’s that.”

He shook his head so that his son would be left in no doubt as to what he thought of such notions, went across to the outhouse and lifted the ladder down from the wall, carried it over to the back of the house and clambered up.

He lifted off the new roof tiles, and once he’d found that the work had been done satisfactorily, he replaced them and remained standing up there for a while looking out. He spied something moving in the copse down by the river, half-hidden behind the trees, and, fixing his attention on the nearest piece of open ground he calculated it would reach, he soon discovered that it was the cows that had strayed in that direction.

The gate must be open.