Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

They continued like this for half an hour. They walked, Rachel weathered the contractions, they walked on.

She cried out as hard as she could now.

Then, after supporting herself against a tree with her head lowered and her hands clasped firmly around the trunk, crying out all her pain and all her rage, she straightened up, looked at her mother.

“We’ll go in there,” she said, and pointed to a boggy clearing in front of a thick belt of spruce.

“It’s not far now,” said Anna. “If you can manage it, we’ll get there.”

“I can MANAGE it!” yelled Rachel. “But I don’t WANT to!”

“Why not?” said her mother as mildly as she could.

“There are too many PEOPLE there!” Rachel yelled.

“That’s fine, then,” said her mother, taking a step back. “We’ll stay here.”

The next few hours were a torment. The contractions returned with the same regularity, and Rachel fought them with all her strength. She lay down in the marshy grass and rolled to and fro, she beat the tree trunk in front of her with her hand, she tore at her hair as she shouted and railed.

In the intervals she stood looking gloomily at the ground in front of her, and if her mother so much as cleared her throat, she looked at her with eyes full of hate.

The rain poured down on them incessantly. Their hair was sodden and tangled, their clothes heavy with moisture, and when, after a couple of hours, Rachel suddenly became aware of them, she tore them off. Just then it began again, and naked she bent forward, sunk her head, pressed her fingers into the trunk of the tree, and yelled as she rocked the lower half of her body to and fro.

Her mother had put her arms around her several times, each time she’d been pushed away. But she couldn’t just stand there watching.

She stood close up to her.

“It’s good that it hurts. Each time it hurts, the child gets closer.”

Rachel turned on her with a snarl.

“Shut UP!” she shouted. “SHUT UP!”

Anna took a step back and waited for it to abate. When the pain had left her body, she went close again, put her arm around her waist, stroked her hair.

“It’s good that it hurts,” she said again. “It’s not just something I’m saying. It’s good. The more it hurts the better it is.”

Rachel stood with her head bent, breathing rapidly in and out. She looked up at her just as suddenly as the previous time.

“I’m going to DIE!” she shouted.

“No,” said her mother. “It hurts, but it isn’t dangerous. It’s good. Good. D’you hear?”

Rachel pushed her away and leaned forward again, began rocking the lower half of her body backward and forward.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH AAAAAAH!”

When it passed, she remained in the same position. Her mother stroked her hair, put her hand on her brow, kept it there. And gradually Rachel fell into a rhythm. A pattern emerged. Contractions, screams, pause. Contractions, screams, pause. Contractions, screams, pause. It began to seem more and more like a piece of work. Rachel was caught up in something. She no longer noticed what was happening around her, what her mother said or did. Or if she did, she no longer reacted to it. And the deeper she got into the rhythm, the more natural it seemed to her, the less resistance there was in her screams. They grew deeper, leveler, hollower. They became something in which she sought refuge. A place other than her thoughts for her to employ her strength.

With her hands pressed against the trunk, her head bowed, and her abdomen swaying from side to side, she stood roaring into the forest. Wave after wave went through her, she rode them, rested, rode them, rested.

It was impossible to talk to her. She was too far inside herself. And the few times she struggled to get out, perhaps just to know that there was someone there, she was confused and helpless.

Once she turned around suddenly and shouted:

“IS THERE ANYONE ELSE HERE?”

Presumably it was intended as an ordinary question, but with that strength and intonation behind it, there was something almost frightening about it.

Anna looked around.

“Only us two,” she said.

And Rachel was content with that. It almost seemed as if it were a relief for her to get back to the pain again. The pain, the cry, the pause. The movement of the belly. The drooping head, the hair that hung down. The palms pressed against the trunk. The pain and the cry, the pause.

Perhaps an hour passed in this manner, perhaps two.

When without warning she slipped down onto her side in the grass, Anna noticed for the first time that it had begun to grow light above them. A faint, pale glimmer showed in the sky between the inky treetops.

She crouched down beside Rachel. Her white skin was glistening with rain and sweat. She’d shut her eyes, lay as if asleep on the ground.

Anna was about to get up when she clutched her hand.

“Am I doing alright?” she whispered.

Anna nodded and averted her face. Only when she was sure her voice wouldn’t break did she answer.

“You’re managing fine,” she said.

Rachel gave an almost imperceptible smile. And then it was as if her eyes emptied. She looked straight at Anna, but was no longer present in her own gaze.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH,” she yelled.

Anna knew it was getting close. Now there was only a short interval between each of the contractions. Rachel got up and stood as before, but the rhythm had gone, she’d moved on to something else and changed her posture several times in confusion.

A fresh anger came upon her then. She’d lost the only thing that was good, and now she couldn’t find it again.

She put both her arms around the tree trunk, sank slowly down. Rested there. Turned her head toward her mother.

“Is there much more?” she asked.

“No,” said her mother. “I don’t think so.”

“Feel. I’ve got to know. I can’t take any more.”

She got up again, spread her legs. She screamed with pain as her mother put her fingers into her vagina as gently as she could.

There was its head.

Rachel looked at her over her shoulder.

“Did you feel anything?” she whispered.

Anna got up and put her arm round her.

“I felt the head,” she said. “Squat down, Rachel.”

She did as she was told. Crouched down, then looked up at her with big eyes.

“Feel for yourself,” said Anna.

She did.

“I can feel it,” she said.

She kept her hand there during the next contractions. On her haunches, supporting herself with her other hand on the neighboring tree. The colors of the vegetation around them had begun to be visible. The pale yellow grass, the dark green spruce trees, the black of the earth between the trunks, the reddishness of the bare projecting rock close by. The light gray sky.

First the head appeared between her legs, dark with red blood, shiny with membrane, and then the rest of the body, long and bluish, as it gently slipped to the ground beneath her.

Not a sound escaped her then. Nor did Anna speak. Apart from the light, the almost inaudible rush of the falling rain, everything was quite still.

Rachel picked up the baby.

It gave a little cough. Then it drew breath for the first time.

Rachel held it close. Anna stood stock-still, watching. Only when Rachel looked up at her did she go across.

“Look,” said Rachel.

She looked.

The baby lay staring up at Rachel. Its eyes were dark, its gaze calm.

“Is it a boy or a girl?” asked Anna after a while.

Rachel held it slightly away from her body.

“Boy,” she said.

“A boy. .” said Anna.

She laughed for joy.

“You’ve got a son, Rachel.”

“Get Jerak, can you?” said Rachel.