Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

She’d tensed when he’d said “Barak.” Barak was one of the things they didn’t talk about. Noah another. Her father had burned everything connected with them, he never spoke their names, and if anyone else unwittingly did so, he would pretend not to hear, or get up and go. Nor had he done things that in some way were linked to their memory, like going to the market for example. He hadn’t done that since Barak’s death. Partly because he’d arrived back from it the day Barak died, and partly because Barak was to have gone there with him for the first time the following year.

And now Obal was dead.

Anna put her hands in her lap and looked at her father as he stood with his great hands wrapped around the railings of the veranda. He was still staring down into the orchard. The evening sun made the treetops glow. But the grass beneath, and the tables that they still hadn’t cleared away, lay in shadow.

Was it on account of Obal’s funeral that he’d behaved so oddly?

He’d always liked Obal, she knew that. And always played the child when he’d been with them. Even now, when Obal and Tarsis had been there the previous year, his character had assumed something childishly subservient. A seventy-year-old man!

She smiled and sensed that Javan was looking at her.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “Obal and Tarsis.”

Her father turned his head toward them.

“Tarsis is looking old, isn’t he?” he said.

“He’s tough,” said Anna.

“Obal was tough as well. But not as tough as Tarsis. D’you know what they say about him? That he’s so desiccated that blood doesn’t run through his veins.”

From the open window above they heard the twins’ voices. Something must have excited them suddenly, for after remaining silent up there for several minutes, they suddenly began talking at the same time.

She saw her father smile to himself.

Then he leaned his head forward, rubbed his hand up and down his neck several times, and sighed deeply.

“It’s been a long day,” he said. “But at least we buried old Obal.”

He straightened up, stretched, and put one hand to the small of his back.

“Well,” he said. “I think I’ll go to bed.”

They heard the faint sound of his steps going up the stairs inside the house. Above them the twins had shut their window.

Anna leaned back and clasped her hands over her stomach.

“Why didn’t you tell him the truth?” said Javan. “That he thought Milka was still alive? Going up onto the roof?”

“I don’t know,” said Anna. “You think I should have?”

“I don’t know,” Javan said.

“There was something terribly sad about it,” she said. “If we’d told him, he’d have been ashamed. And then he’d have been unhappy. And perhaps even frightened. Who knows what’s in store for him?”

“But he wouldn’t want us to hide the truth from him, either.”

“If he finds out about it, no,” she said, rising. “Shall we get the tables in?”

They went down to the garden, carried the tables between them, one after the other, into the shed, stood for a while beneath the stairs, both looking out. Javan put his arm around her waist. The sunlight had left the trees now, the whole of the valley lay in shadow, but it still shone on the mountains on the other side and on the clouds in the sky above that looked as though they were on fire.

“Shall we turn in as well?” asked Javan.

“You go,” said Anna. “I’ll sit up a bit.”

“Are you worried about Rachel?” he asked. “She’ll manage.”

“I know,” she said. “Good night, then.”

She kissed his brow, he stroked her back a few times, and then he went in.

She waited until she heard he was upstairs, then went to fetch a shawl from the living room, wrapped it round her shoulders, and seated herself in the chair on the veranda.

For one brief moment she’d considered going up to the old ruin and sitting there, like she’d done when she was growing up and needed to be alone. Perhaps it was Rachel who’d given her the idea.

But it was more comfortable sitting here.

What strength must have filled her! To run half a mile just to be alone for a bit!

A movement in the forest on the other side of the horse pasture made her turn her head. She knew what it was and sat stock-still so as not to scare them. They only came if there was no one outside the house, or if those who were there had sat very still for a long time. Once she’d counted eight of them.

This time there were three.

Three roe deer that raised their heads and stared across the land for a while until, reassured, they lowered them and began to graze.

Then all three looked up suddenly, and then ran. Three bounds, and they were swallowed up by the forest.

It must be Rachel coming, she thought, and walked to the end of the veranda for a better view.

There. Her figure was unmistakable. Tall and slender-limbed, quite unlike any of the other women in the family. And as lovely as the day.

She still hadn’t seen her mother, who’d sat down the better to observe her undisturbed for a few more seconds.

She played with something in her hands as she went, glancing sometimes into the forest, sometimes out across the field. It looked as though she were talking to herself. Or singing.

Anna sat quite still and listened.

Yes, she was singing.

She must find them coarse, Anna had often thought, lovely as she was. It didn’t take more than a glance to unsettle her. But her sensitivity was more of a curse than a blessing. It drove her away from them, away from everyone.

At this period, anyway. Beauty was hers, she had that, susceptibility too, but not joy. She, who was the only one who had real cause to be joyful, lacked it.

She stopped singing when she spied her mother.

“Are you sitting there watching me?” she said, but didn’t wait for an answer, just walked right past and into the kitchen.

Anna’s first impulse was to go after her. Talk to her. Perhaps find out what she got up to on these evenings. No, perhaps not, that wasn’t important. What was important was to talk.

But she didn’t do it.

Rachel is someone I must learn to leave in peace , she thought.

Anna kept an extra eye on Lamech over the next few days. The incident at the funeral had made her uneasy, she was fearful that he had quietly begun to lose his reason, and that the delusion that had made him go up to the roof and round the house, while the guests sat and watched him, was just the first visible sign of a destructive power that had been at work inside him for a long time, rather like ants, she thought: when you discover them it’s already too late.

But she noticed nothing unusual. He came down a little after the others had got up, which was his habit now that he no longer worked, took plenty of time over his food, went out to the shed in the mornings and did some work on a cupboard he was making, came in for dinner, strolled up to the old mill by the river in the afternoons, and went early to bed. When she talked to him, she made sure she put in some references to her mother, but to judge from his reactions it was obvious that he was fully aware she was dead.

Everything was as it should be with him. He was thriving in his new, work-free existence, which had also begun to set its stamp on his physique: not that he was getting fat, he was still tall and slim, but he had developed a small potbelly, and his back, which had always been like a ramrod, had begun to stoop a bit in recent years. He’d released that viselike grip he’d had on himself all his life, and it was easy to see that letting himself go was doing him good.