Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

Everything was peaceful.

Everything was good.

After standing like this leaning on her spade and looking out, her body steaming in the cold, clear autumn air, she continued filling the buckets and carrying them out onto the land for a while, because it gave her purpose, things were moving forward; in a few months it would look the way she’d imagined it.

At first Javan smiled at her undertaking. But when he realized it wasn’t just a passing fad, but something she’d eventually achieve, an anger began to smolder in him. She didn’t know him well enough to understand just what was going on. She first realized it one evening when he followed her out into the hallway and stood there merely watching her as she put her boots on. She thought he was being friendly and smiled at him when she stood up.

“I’m going out,” she said, put on her jacket and opened the door. The air outside was cold, the darkness thick, the stars clear, just as it had been all that autumn.

“Can you imagine what people think about what you’re doing?” he asked.

She went out into the farmyard, picked up the spade and the two buckets, turned to him.

“Does anybody care what I do?” she retorted.

“You want to make us better than we are,” he said. “That’s what you want. And if there’s one thing people are suspicious of, it’s that. Can’t you understand that? ”

The last sentence was almost shouted, and she was frightened, it was the first time he’d ever raised his voice to her.

“The earth you’re spreading over the rocks, does nothing . It serves no purpose! Perhaps it looks good. But it isn’t good. Good things are useful . Nothing that isn’t useful is good. And you come along and start decorating the land! What could be more foolish than that! Decorating the land! ”

She didn’t answer. She had tears in her eyes, but he couldn’t see them there in the darkness where she stood.

“Haven’t you got better things to do? Isn’t there enough work here already?” he said.

“I wouldn’t harp on about that too much if I were you,” she said, turned on her heel and walked up toward the forest.

He slammed the door shut behind her.

She learned a lot about him that first autumn. She learned that he worked grudgingly, he’d rather sit and chat with people. But work was something he had to do. And when he’d at last reconciled himself to it, and begun to work, it always progressed slowly. He took plenty of time, no matter what he was doing. As if the measure of it was more the time it took than the work itself. Putting out a net in the evening shouldn’t take long, it was only a matter of rowing out, casting the net and rowing back, but for Javan it took hours. The same thing when he drew it in the next morning. He would saunter down to the boathouse, have a chat if there was anyone there, row out, even his strokes were slow, she could see that from where she stood on the rise looking out across the fjord, bring in the net, and row back again. Then the net had to be cleaned. That took time. Then it had to be dried, and perhaps mended. All this while another chat was in full swing. And the fish? They had to be cleaned, salted or dried — except what they ate for dinner, for that was their staple, fish and potatoes, potatoes and fish. They possessed one cow, although the land would support at least four — the four stalls in the cow-house bore testimony to that as well — a scattering of hens, a small kitchen garden, a plot of potatoes, a few fruit trees, a dozen fruit bushes. That was all they had to live on. Anna was accustomed to better, but it was all right, they didn’t starve, but what wasn’t all right was what, to her horror, suddenly dawned on her one day: Javan was content with things just the way they were. Everything she wanted foundered on their lack of means, and she understood that. But they couldn’t just accept it meekly!

The third discovery she made that autumn, about which she hadn’t had the slightest premonition, even though she’d heard it from others, was how weak he was. She’d looked into his eyes and seen someone who knew who he was and what he wanted, and it was on this basis that she’d interpreted what was said of him. If he was always good humored, talkative, and amusing, it was in the way her uncle Obal was. If he was sensitive, with a tendency to daydream, without the ability to get on, it was like her brother Noah. That was the way she’d thought, and maybe it wasn’t entirely wrong as far as it went, but before they’d moved out to the fjord she’d never seen him together with other people. It had always been just the two of them, all their meetings had taken place secretly, and with her he was everything she wanted him to be. It was the thought of the way he was with other people that she found difficult to live with.

On their very first day people had turned up at the house. Javan knew everyone out there, and when the visits continued over the next few days, she’d thought folk were coming because they wanted to welcome them, and because they were inquisitive and wanted to see what she was like, perhaps also how things stood with them, but when the procession showed no signs of stopping, it dawned on her after several weeks that this was just what things were like . Javan’s home was a place people simply dropped in to. All sorts of people. Relations, neighbors, friends from the old days, fishermen he’d once been in a boat with, ancient, bent old men who might have known one of Javan’s aunts way back when, youths who happened to feel bored one evening, all of them came to sit in their living room. Javan refused no one, and he did everything he could to make them like him. Sometimes Anna would feel thoroughly ashamed after she’d witnessed the way he could drop every vestige of dignity just to get some inconsequential character to laugh at him. She knew who he was, he knew who he was, so why did he fawn like a dog as soon as anyone else came near them?

If she spoke her mind, the only answer she got was that she was being “hoitytoity.” As if that had anything to do with it. He had no pride, and wanted to please everybody. That was the problem.

He behaved in a particularly servile manner toward one of their neighbors, David, without her ever being able to divine what it was in him that was deserving of such respect. Powerful, fair-haired, straightforward: that was David.

Around midwinter Javan wanted to go to a party a little way down the fjord. Anna didn’t really want to go, she was tired these days, and couldn’t take all the strange faces, all the strange desires that would accost her out there, but when the day came, and the rain poured drearily down outside, she changed her mind, as she thought that the loneliness would be worse if she stayed at home alone than if she accompanied Javan to the party. He wasn’t pleased, she could see that, but he wasn’t the man to deny her anything, so when early that evening David drew up outside with a trap, Javan helped her up, sat down beside her, and off they drove.

Anna and Javan sat with their backs to David and saw the road they’d just traveled disappearing into the darkness. They sensed the mountains above them and the fjord below, but they couldn’t see them. Sometimes a light from a house would appear, and then become smaller and smaller until a hillock or ridge suddenly caused it to vanish. The sounds of the hooves drumming on the road, the wheels rolling, mixed tonelessly with that of the rain that splattered down unceasingly on their hats.

They were driving fast. Now and again they heard David crack his whip in the air. When, after a while, the road got worse, with potholes and small protruding stones, he barely checked his speed at all. He continued to drive hard. The cart bounced violently up and down, sometimes making small lurches to the side, and Anna began to be frightened. Not for herself, but for the baby. She’d already had some bleeding, and she knew enough to know that sudden, rough movements could cause a miscarriage.