Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

Noah pushed his chair back and got up.

“I’m going upstairs,” he said.

“Do that,” said his father.

He stopped at the door.

“Good night,” he said.

“Good night, Noah,” said his mother.

When he got into the hall, he saw that his father’s hat was missing. His mother’s muff was also gone, as was Anna’s mechanical bird. His father hadn’t just cleared away every memento of Barak, he’d got rid of everything that was a reminder of the last day of his life.

It was this that made up his mind. From now on, every time his father looked at him he would think of what hadn’t been. Of what he’d lost, of what hadn’t happened. Grief over Barak and disappointment in Noah would sooner or later turn into two sides of the same coin. Noah couldn’t blame him for that. He understood it. And not merely that, he even sympathized with it. Instead of clinging to the farm, reminding his father each day of a future that was no longer there, he would go away. It was the best thing for them, it was the best thing for him. He would leave his old life behind him, and start a new one.

A life in solitude was what he decided on out there in the hall. A life unloved, and unloving, was what he would live.

He went upstairs to his room elated. Like that there would be no difference between the memory of Barak and the memory of Anna, Lamech, and Milka, he thought. All of them would be something he’d put behind him. Dead or not, to him it would be all the same.

Once in his room he lay down on the bed and began to wait for the others to turn in. It didn’t take long. He heard their feet on the stairs, the door to his parents’ room being shut, the floorboards creaking within, the muted voices as they wished each other good night. After Anna had closed the door to her room, he waited a while longer, and then got up and began to gather together all his papers in great piles. He carried them out of the house and over to the slope behind the barn, where they’d burned things for as long as he could remember. There was a mass of it, he had to make many trips, and when he’d finished that, he began to fetch out everything else. He carried out his entire collection of stones, branches, corals, shells, eggs, birds’ feathers, skeletons, skulls, butterflies, and beetles and tipped them down the slope.

Then he set fire to them.

It wasn’t just because he’d decided to start a new life, and didn’t want any part of the old one to remain, that he burned them. He burned them, too, because the things he’d thought, of which all these papers and objects were an expression, weren’t true. This boy shall bring us relief from our work, and from the hard labor that has come upon us because of the Lord’s curse upon the ground , his father had said when he was born. That hadn’t happened. What Noah had done brought relief to none but himself, and barely even that. When he’d been little his father had encouraged his collecting and drawing, there was something noble in the way he was able to take part in the world outside even though he was doomed to a life indoors, perhaps that was what he’d thought, but then when he grew up and neither the collecting nor the drawing abated, even though he’d begun to go out, the encouragements ceased. As his father was partly to blame for making him like this, he seldom put his feelings into words, but it was clear to anyone who had eyes that he disapproved of it. The world is out there, Noah , he would occasionally say. Not in here . By “in here” he meant in Noah’s room, and in his head, which he tapped with his index finger.

The flames consumed the heaps of paper before him. He kicked at the thickest reams, so that the fire could get a better hold, glanced at the big flakes of ash that seemed to be buoyed upward by the hot air, then sank down, got nudged up again, until they fell too obliquely and the heat thrust them out into the cold, through which they sank, spiraling to the ground.

He thought of the last time he’d been together with Barak. It had been two days ago. They’d sat in his room. He’d been alive then. Half child, half adult.

That was the most painful thing of all. That he’d get no further. That he’d stop there.

Noah kicked at yet another pile, watched the flying sparks, thought that the fire could look after itself, turned, and went in to sleep.

If he’d begun to have second thoughts about his plan the following day, when he saw the people he was going to leave at close quarters and realized how closely tied to them he was, his resolve stiffened in the evening when his father, without warning, began to talk about the future.

Milka, Anna, and Noah had been sitting in the kitchen, the atmosphere was lighter than it had been for a long time, once they even laughed, it was the memory of Barak, the time he’d found a nestling in the hay, that made them burst out — because he’d decided he was going to try to save it, and feed it with flies, the most promising source of which was the cows, so he’d gone down and begun to swat flies against their flanks, several times a day, for the chick was greedy, until the cows had had enough of it and chased him up a tree, and he had to shout for help — but after a while Milka went to bed and brother and sister sat on alone. Noah wondered if he ought to initiate her into his plan, but decided it was unwise. The best thing was to disappear without saying a word to anyone.

Just then their father had come in. Without a word he’d sat down with them. They knew him well, they could see there was something he wanted.

“I’m fifty,” he said after a while. “I haven’t got more than ten working years in front of me, maybe fifteen, if I’m lucky and my health holds up. I’d intended that Barak should take over then. But now it will be you, Anna. When you find yourself a husband, you must move in here and run the farm.”

He spoke all the time directly to Anna. The fact that he was so obviously ignored enraged Noah, but his fury was cold and easy to control. He’ll find out , he thought.

Anna blushed beneath his eyes and looked at the table.

“I’ve already found a husband,” she said.

“Not Javan,” said her father. “Out of the question.”

“What do you know about Javan?” said Anna.

“Enough to make sure he doesn’t set foot in here as long as I’ve got a say in the matter.”

Anna jumped up and ran out. They heard her in the hallway, shortly afterwards the door slamming.

“You managed that well,” said Noah.

His father turned slowly toward him, as if only now he was aware of his presence.

He said nothing, just looked at him. There was hate in that look.

Noah was almost in tears as he got up.

“Give Anna what she wants,” he said. “Or do you want to lose her too?” He went out into the hallway, put on his boots, an extra sweater, his fur-lined jacket, opened the door and went out, crossed to the black-currant bushes that grew next to the barn wall, where he’d left a pack with the most necessary items, put it on, climbed over the fence down by the horse pasture, and entered the forest, never to return again.

Anna was the last to see him. He’d taken it for granted that she’d run up to her special place on the other side of the river, but she hadn’t. When he came out the door, she was standing under the fruit trees only a few yards from the house. She saw him go over to the barn, but didn’t know what he was doing there until he came walking past on the other side of the trees with a pack on his back.

She felt straightaway that he wasn’t setting out on one of his usual trips. She was about to call out to him, but stopped herself. If he’d wanted to say good-bye to her, he’d have done so. She had no right to force herself on him.