Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

Some weeks had passed, and the event at Obal’s funeral was, if not forgotten, at least not present in their thoughts, when it suddenly happened again.

The day’s work was over, it was early evening and Anna was in the orchard picking cherries with her father. Not in any organized way, they were just going to fill a couple of bowls to take indoors, tasting the fruit as they worked. It was one of Anna’s favorite occupations. The black, juicy fruits, the dizzying feeling of being whisked back to her childhood as the flavor spread in her mouth. The droning of the bees, the warm evening sun in her face, the old house resting on its grassy bank above them.

Her father’s lips were bluish black with cherry juice as he turned toward her.

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

Anna shot him a quick glance.

His face betrayed no signs of anything being wrong. He was looking at her in the way one does when expecting an answer to a question that has just been asked. A certain absentminded anticipation in his eyes, his lips slightly parted.

She’d planned what to do if the thing recurred. It would be best not to resist, she’d decided, just go along with him. See where it led.

So she shrugged her shoulders and turned to the tree again.

“I’ve no idea,” she said.

“I’d better go up and take a look myself, then,” he said.

He fetched the ladder as before, climbed up onto the roof, looked around a bit, and finally leaned against the chimney looking out.

It cut her to the heart to see him standing there.

Suddenly it was as if he’d caught sight of something. He looked steadfastly down toward the grove of trees by the river.

She knew there was no one there but thought that perhaps someone was going down to bathe. Rachel or the twins or people from one of the neighboring farms.

From his movements, which all at once had become less inquisitive and more resolute, she realized that he’d made a decision about something. He climbed down, hung the ladder on the outhouse wall, came walking toward the house, stopped at the corner of it, and stared toward the old tree in the farmyard.

She followed his gaze. The place was empty.

When she looked up again, he’d set off for the gate to the horse pasture. She put down her bowl and followed him. She ran some of the way so that she was only a few yards behind him when he reached the river.

There he stopped and looked around.

He brought one hand up to his mouth.

“Come along, girls!” he sang. “Come along, girls!”

Even though she knew that the cows were grazing at the other end of the farm, she still looked around.

After a while Lamech turned and began to walk up toward the house again.

Anna, who’d taken a few paces to the side, and stood out of sight of the path, followed him. He’d got lost in his own memories, but no matter how sad it made her to see him like this, there was nothing she could say or do to help him. It was all happening inside him.

As she came out of the grove and saw her father go through the open gate ahead of her, her thoughts turned again to what he’d said. I saw a man on the roof when I arrived this morning .

Arrived from where?

She hurried up toward the house. She caught up with him in the farmyard. He stood peering up into the tree.

“There you are,” he said as she came up to him.

“You said that you saw a man on the roof when you arrived this morning,” she said. “Where have you been?”

He looked at her as if she were stupid.

“You know perfectly well,” he said. “I even gave you a present this morning.”

Anna turned cold inside.

“At the market?” she said.

“Of course,” he said. “Where else?”

The gaze he met her with was perplexed. Then he looked round.

“Have you seen Barak?” he asked.

With tears in her eyes she shook her head.

Her father turned and went into the house, went through room after room, as if searching for something, before he lay down on the bench and fell asleep.

Anna and Javan were sitting on the veranda as before when they heard him wake up a few hours later.

“It’s so late,” he said when he came out. “I must have fallen asleep.”

He glanced at Anna.

“Did you finish picking down there?” he asked.

She nodded.

“They’re good this year. I think I’ll have a couple more.”

They sat and watched him as he stood by the tree eating cherries.

“What shall we do?” said Anna.

“There’s nothing we can do,” said Javan. “We’ll just have to hope it doesn’t get worse.”

But it did. The next day he started all over again. Up onto the roof, down to the river, over to the tree in the farmyard. When he asked Anna where Barak was, she couldn’t bear to keep it up.

“Barak is dead,” she said.

Her father tensed.

“What did you say?”

“He’s dead.”

“What did you say?”

He grabbed her shoulders and shook her.

“Where is he? Where is he?” he demanded.

“I don’t know,” she said sobbing. “I don’t know where Barak is.”

He ran through all the rooms. Living room, kitchen, hallway, bedrooms. To and fro he ran. Anna was frightened, and when he came outside and began to search for Barak there, she withdrew to a place where he wouldn’t see her.

When he got to the corner of the house and looked toward the gate, it was as if something different took control of him. All fear and terror left his body from one moment to the next. He began to walk down to the river with measured, everyday steps. She heard him call faintly down there.

“Come along, girls! Come along, girls!”

A few minutes later he came walking back up again. He stopped in front of the farmyard tree and looked up into its branches.

Anna wanted an end to the nightmare, and went across to him.

“Where’s Barak?” he said

“He’s asleep,” she said. “And we should be too. It’s been a long day. Come on.”

She put her hand on his shoulder and went into the house with him. That he didn’t ask any questions, but complied with her suggestion, indicated that a part of him was here, with her now in the present, she thought, and presumably suspected that something about that other day wasn’t quite right. But it lay so deeply embedded in his consciousness that it had no effect, apart from making him a little more tractable than he otherwise might have been.

This terrible charade repeated itself several times that autumn. It was terrible because the day of Barak’s death wasn’t merely a memory for him, something he thought about and that for a time overshadowed reality in his age-enfeebled mind, but a reality he lived in. It was terrible too because Barak was still alive in that day. Somewhere on the farm he could be found, Lamech believed, at the same time as his death could also be found there, and it was these two quantities that Lamech struggled with in such a confused way. Something in him knew that Barak was dead, something else in him didn’t, and as both these certainties inhabited the same landscape, they would weave in and out of each other in an incomprehensible way as soon as he, in his incapacity, suspended the time between them.

This same impairment also made him more amenable. Even if he was right in the middle of that momentous day, he could be led anywhere they wanted without protestation, quite the opposite, it seemed that he found the mild but firm authority they used soothing, as if he knew that really he had to be taken in hand. Even when, toward the end of that winter, he wandered off totally into his own world, his docility remained. If they shut the door of his room, he would rarely leave it, but would sit there until they opened it again and suggested that he come out. If he was in bed, he would lie there until they suggested that he get up.