Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

He remained like this for two winters, fully able to move about but without the necessary willpower to do it. Thereafter a new stage began, in which he lay as if paralyzed in his bed, and after that it had merely been a question of when he would die. Soon he was nothing more than a cipher of himself. His face had shrunk, his tongue had swollen, sometimes he made some babbling noises, or clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, an old trick of his to make babies laugh, otherwise he just lay there silent, staring up at the ceiling, or sleeping.

There were no longer any thoughts in him. Certain things might drift through his consciousness, an old, half-shattered memory, some vague notion of belonging, but the coherent, meaningful activity in whose continuum both he and the world he was part of existed had long since ceased to be. He didn’t know who he was, he didn’t know where he was, and least of all did he know who all these people who were constantly bending over him really were. But he could still feel. She knew that, she saw it every day. He liked warmth, he liked clean, dry clothes, he liked her caressing his cheek and packing the eiderdown more snugly about him. At such times his eyes would shine with pleasure and gratitude, just as they could darken with anger and irritation if anything wasn’t as it should be. And it wasn’t only intimate, physical conditions he reacted to. If someone laughed out loud in the vicinity, he would often laugh as well; if there was any disturbance in the house, such as the visit of a stranger whom no one quite knew how to respond to, or a row between Anna and Rachel, he would pick it up where he lay, and let himself be colored by it, whether by starting to rock his head discontentedly from side to side or by casting anxious glances about him.

But she’d never seen him really frightened until the night of the hurricane, when they had to carry him from his small bedroom down to the cellar. He suspected something was afoot as soon as they entered the bedroom, for he looked at her with disquieted eyes as she leaned over him. Perhaps he’d heard the excited voices from below, perhaps the feet running back and forth across the farmyard, she thought. Unless it was her face he was reacting to.

She laid her hand on his brow.

“Everything’s all right,” she said. “All’s well. Just you go to sleep.” But he continued to look up at her.

“We’re all here,” she said.

Suddenly he gripped her arm. The grip was hard, it hurt, and she had to use considerable strength to bend back the fingers to loosen his hold.

She stood up, looking by turns at him and out into the corridor through the open door.

Outside, the wind was tearing through the valley with frightening power. Now and then the windowpanes rattled. The small candle that she’d lit on his bedside table flickered in the draft.

“Everything will be all right,” she said, and took a few steps toward the door, craning forward. She heard the twins moving about in the hallway. The next moment they were coming up the stairs with the stretcher between them.

“Everything’s got to be done slowly and calmly,” she said. “Is that clear? No sudden movements, no loud shouts.”

“Got it,” said Omak.

She bent over Lamech again.

“We’re going to move you,” she said. “But not far. We’ll still be inside the house.”

Then she stood up again and nodded to Omak and Ophir. They put the stretcher on the floor and stood one each side of the bed, lifted him gently, and laid him down on it. Their mother covered him with the eiderdown, picked up the candle, and led the way out of the room.

When they reached the stairs, Lamech began to howl.

Ooooooooooh. Ooooooooooooh. Oooooooooooooh .

Anna turned to look at him. His eyes were bright with fear. Perhaps he was howling to control it. Doing something, beyond the fear, that comforted him, she thought, and hurried them along: the worst thing was the moving itself. As soon as they reached the cellar, he’d settle down.

Down the stairs they went, through the hall, out into the darkness. The wind was so strong that they had to brace themselves against it to avoid falling. The rush of it was so loud that they could barely hear each other’s voices. Although everyone knew where the cellar was, their mother pointed along the house wall, seeming to draw them with her impatient movements.

OoooooooOoooooooooOooooooooo.

Their mother held the cellar door open for them, and even after that short trip it was a relief to get under cover once more.

They laid him on the mattress that Anna had lugged down earlier, packed the eiderdown tightly around him, tried to speak softly, stroked his cheeks, but to no avail, all night long he lay there with wide-open eyes and twisted his head at every sudden noise that reached them from outside.

The following day was no better for him. While Anna, Javan, and the twins went up to assess the hurricane’s damage, which exceeded their worst fears, Rachel and Jerak looked after Lamech in the cellar. Those above held a short council, deciding that Javan should go down to the village and make contact. When he returned and said that people had begun to assemble at the two farms that had weathered the storm unscathed, they packed up all they could carry in the way of clothes and food, laid Lamech on his stretcher once again, and came here, where Anna only a moment since had crouched down beside him, and now was taking the two outstretched hands in hers.

“Everything’s going well,” she said quietly. “All’s well, don’t fret.”

His eyes filled with tears. Anna felt the same happening to hers, and looked away.

The rain beat against the panes. From the floor below there was the sound of voices, sometimes laughter. She thought that they must be drinking. If so, it was hardly surprising.

She looked at him again.

How much had he taken in?

Enough to make him cry, she thought. And more than that it was impossible to know. The farm had been destroyed. The sea was rising. Tomorrow they would leave the valley and head up into the mountains.

“Sleep well,” she said, laid his hands down on the eiderdown, brushed her finger across his cheek, and had got up to go the few paces back to Javan when she saw that Rachel was awake. Not only that. She lay smiling up at her.

“Mother. .” she said. “It’s kicking. Do you want to feel?”

Most of the time she’d turned away from her mother during her pregnancy, protected it as if she were some kind of threat, but on occasions she’d opened to her, as she did now.

Each time it made Anna just as happy.

She took a quick look at Jerak; he was asleep. Anna knelt down beside her, Rachel pulled up her nightclothes, got hold of her hand, and laid it on her stomach.

“There!” she said. “You felt it?”

“Felt it?” said Anna. “I could see it.”

A tiny hand, bulging under the skin, had been drawn across it.

She had a good feeling about this child.

“I hope nothing happens tomorrow,” whispered Rachel.

“It won’t,” said Anna. “I promise.”

When she’d lain down beside Javan, she noticed that Lamech had raised his head. He lay watching her.

It was an eerie look. His eyes were open wide, his face so emaciated that it resembled a skull, at the same time there was a presence in his gaze that she hadn’t seen for a long time. For one crazy moment she thought he’d returned to full consciousness again. That he knew who he was, what had happened, what lay in store for them.

The worst of it was the thought that followed. That she didn’t want him to come back, that it would be against the laws of nature, much as if he’d arisen from the dead.

She didn’t like closing her eyes, it felt as if she were deserting him, but it had been a long day, and tomorrow would be even longer.