Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

He halted at the point where more than forty years before he’d decided to clamber up the mountainside in front of him. It had been summer then, the ground firm and dry, and he, eleven years old, had climbed it like a goat. It would be harder now.

He noticed some trees by the river below him. They must be warmer than the ground, because the snow didn’t settle on them. Wet and bare they stood gleaming in the mist.

If he hadn’t made any other life, he thought, he had made his own. It was quite different to anything that could have been anticipated, and that was valuable in itself. Get caught up by life and follow it wherever it might lead you. Nostalgia was dangerous, it was in league with the past against you. And against life. For you can’t live in the past. There is no way back there.

It must have been his parents’ insane appearance the day before that was making him so sentimental. Dead he certainly wasn’t! No matter what his mother might think.

He smiled. And as he smiled, he saw himself from the outside. The lean, birdlike face, the dark hair, the shining eyes.

And as he saw himself from the outside, a frisson passed through him.

They were here.

Heaven’s angels were here.

Once they had been God’s equals. They knew the secret of life, and they knew the secret of man’s life. Everything about mankind that mankind didn’t know itself. It was in their image man had been created.

Now they were here.

Antinous Bellori turned and began to walk up the mountainside. The going was slow, the snow deep, the path hard to follow, the mountain steep. But after an hour or two he stood at the summit. Now he couldn’t see the town on the other side of the valley. Even the bottom of the valley was out of sight. Only mist and snow wherever he turned. But as he’d been careful to pinpoint the fire carefully from below, he found it after searching for less than half an hour.

It was quenched and deserted, as he’d anticipated. It had melted its way down to the rock beneath. And in the snow around it there were footprints.

He’d never seen the tracks of an angel before, and he became so excited that his hands shook as he opened his sack and took out his notebook.

The tracks looked like paw prints, only bigger. Their toes must have grown together somehow, he thought as he traced them, for they were only just visible at the end of the foot. Then he realized that they were claws, not toes.

He stood up and took a deep breath. So, he really would be able to see them once more. Even without scouring the continent. They were here, right outside his own hometown, and the ground was covered with snow: it was only a matter of following the tracks.

The footprints around the fire were so confused that it was impossible to say how many there’d been, but after only a few yards he realized that there were two of them. They seemed to be heading down into the craterlike valley beneath him, but after a short distance they turned up again and followed the spine of the mountain. Then they crossed it and disappeared into the valley on the other side, where he’d come from, just a little way farther along. It almost looked as if they’d changed their minds. He got the impression that it was his presence that had made them alter direction. That they had noticed him down there in the valley, and now wished to lead him away from something. .?

The mist was such that he couldn’t see more than a few yards in front of him. It was still snowing, and if anything the snow had become even wetter. His feet sank deep into it at every step, his clothes squeaked, and he began to pant.

Then the tracks vanished. He had followed them out onto an overhang where the snow was deeper, and had just begun to wonder if he should go any farther. The slope was steep, and there was a chance that the snow didn’t follow the contours of the rock, but had created its own, when they ceased.

He whipped round. Had they lured him out here?

But there was nothing but mist and snow to be seen.

The only possible explanation was that they must have jumped off here, he thought, and flown across the valley.

In that case they could be anywhere.

He retreated from the overhang and continued down the mountainside. Something told him they were by the river. Not out in the valley, where he’d just come from, but in the side valley from which it emerged. It was there he’d seen them last time, and it was there he would see them now, he thought, although this prospect of symmetrical perfection raised doubts in him as well. But he had no better plan to follow at the moment.

He got down to the level again, and followed the river upstream into the narrow valley. Little was recognizable from the last time he’d been there. The snow had imparted a rounded and pillowlike appearance to all the rocks and ledges. All edges were softened, apart from the steepest rock faces, which rose bare and black and seemed to snarl at all this softness. And the spruce trees that grew on the valley floor and sides. The snow had found no purchase on them, either. Their green branches glinted with moisture and stood out with incredible sharpness against the white background.

In order to get the best view over the terrain, he walked as high up its walls as he could as he went up the valley. But he saw nothing of them. No tracks, no movements. Just a few crows that flapped over to a tree on the other side.

Only when he’d reached the place where he’d seen the angels the first time, where the river widened and became more shallow, behind the high hill, did he come down from the mountainside. The place was empty, but he stood there nevertheless, positioning himself roughly where he’d stood then, behind a jutting mountain ledge, which was now merely a gentle, almost imperceptible bump, and looked about him.

Its proportions were almost a shock. Over the years he’d returned to the spot in his thoughts again and again. There it was big and wild and shining. Here it was small and vacant. A few trees, a little hillock, a river so shallow that its surface was disturbed by the rocks underneath. The ground covered with snow, the air thick with mist.

Even so Antinous felt a shiver run down his spine as he stood there. He remembered how awful it had been. The suffering cry of one of the angels. The hands shaking. The eyes swiveling upward as the teeth sank into the fish’s flesh.

He became aware of a movement above him, and glanced up.

Perhaps fifty feet above him, almost obscured by the mist, one of them was flying.

Antinous quickly stepped over to the nearest tree and stood close into its trunk. The angel flew upward in ever-increasing circles, and had soon disappeared completely. He continued to stand motionless for a while longer. Then he began to clamber up the mountainside, reached the cave from where he’d seen them for the very first time, walked along the ridge, inspecting the terrain on both sides, as well as the sky above him, until he began to descend into the upper end of the valley.

When he’d got down, he saw the angel again. It was closer this time, soaring over the mountain ridge and down the steep valley side with outspread wings, perhaps thirty feet above the treetops. As before, Antinous darted under a tree. Just above him he heard a kind of cry.

Aooo! Aooo! Aooo!

His heart pounded rapidly. He shut his eyes, pressed himself against the tree, and remained like that until the soft beating of the wings had ceased and he was sure it had gone.

Then he continued up the valley. He was frightened now. But his fear was of a different kind to the one he’d felt the first time he’d seen them. Then he’d sensed that they meant him no harm. Their terror had had nothing to do with him. Now it was different. They had noticed his proximity. And they wanted that proximity to cease.