Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

Antinous caught a movement on the other side of the fire, and threw a quick glance in that direction. The two angels over there had turned and were walking into the forest. When he looked back again, only seconds later, the four had begun to close in on the fifth again, who rose and lashed out with its great wings.

Horrified, Antinous looked on as two of them closed in on each other, while the two others crouched over the animal carcass and began to rip and tear at it with their teeth.

As cautiously as he could he took a step back, then another, in the hope they were too preoccupied with their prey and one another to hear him.

Only when he reached the burning wheel did he dare to take to his heels. Up the slope he ran, in his own tracks, through the broad-leaved forest and down toward the plain on the other side, where he was forced to halt and catch his breath.

No one would ever believe him if he spoke of what he’d just seen, he thought. He barely believed it himself.

An hour later he reached the point where his tracks turned down to the spot where he’d stood motionless all that time by the angel in the tree. Instead of spending time searching for his own footsteps from the mountain, he cut straight across the level and into the forest on the other side, from where it was just a short distance to the mountain. But the mist hung just as thick amid the trees, the snow continued to fall, and, after finding his own tracks several times, circling in an unsuccessful attempt to find the place where the angel had stood in the tree, working out a new course and keeping to it without seeing a mountainside anywhere, he had to admit that he was back where he’d been on that night more than forty years before: he was lost. He was now bereft of all sense of direction. He was tired, wet, and hungry. And the valley was full of angels. The most sensible thing to do would be to sit down and rest somewhere. Perhaps remain there for the night, in the hope that the mist would lift the next day.

He sought shelter under a large spruce tree. He lay down and thought about what he’d seen. After a while he must have dozed off, because the next thing he knew was that there were footsteps in the snow close by. They halted. He lay perfectly still. When nothing happened, he carefully moved the densely covered branch aside and peered out.

Only a few yards away stood two angels. They were embracing. One rested its brow on the shoulder of the other. Its hands trembled constantly. Its head quivered too. And its legs shook.

He recognized them. They were the same angels he’d seen that night in the river. The same black and green wings, the same skull-like faces, the same bloodless lips. The same clawlike fingers, the same thin necks, the same china blue eyes.

Their bodies hadn’t aged since then, Antinous thought. He began to weep. The angel that had laid its forehead on the other’s shoulder straightened up its body slowly and looked around.

They know that I’m here , thought Antinous. But he remained prostrate. If they come, they come . If they wanted to kill him, let them kill him. He would do anything for them. Anything at all.

But they didn’t come. One looked around tremulously, then the other put an arm round its waist, and they began to walk slowly across the meadow.

Antinous had wondered who they were ever since he’d seen them for the first time. In all the innumerable manuscripts and books he’d read about angels, he’d looked for them.

He’d been fairly sure of one for a long time. The one that didn’t tremble, the one who had thrown the spear and impaled the fish, must be the Archangel Raphael. Not so much because of the pattern on his wings, but because of the role he’d played in the river. In scripture he only figures in one place, in the Book of Tobit, but to make up for it his appearance there was the longest by far. In the Book of Tobit there is a description of how Raphael helped Tobias to catch a huge fish and how the gallbladder of the fish later cured Tobias’s father’s blindness. In direct translation, Raphael means “God heals” or “divine healer.” From what he’d seen, he realized that the angel he thought of as Raphael helped the other one to cope. Presumably they were of the same rank. The archangels resembled each other, they knew each other, perhaps as brothers know each other. When one of them was in difficulty, Raphael would be there.

For a long time he’d thought that the other must be one of the four the Catholic Church didn’t mention, and about which least of all was known — Uriel, Raguel, Sariel, and Jeremiel — but now when he looked at them again, he knew at once that it had to be Michael.

The name Michael came from the Hebrew Mikha’el , “Who is like God?” Once he’d been a warrior, God’s general. God was omnipotent, Michael was like God. When God died, Michael went from being the almighty to being the dead.

That was what he was now. His hands shook, his head shook, his legs shook. His skin looked as if it had been stretched over a framework of bones. Without Raphael’s help he would die. But he didn’t die, he was like the dead.

It couldn’t be anyone but him.

Antinous waited until they’d almost disappeared into the mist on the other side of the meadow before following them. He walked among the trees on the edge of the clearing, still alert and wary, with his attention fixed just as much on what was around him as on the two angels far ahead.

When he entered the forest on the other side, he saw that they’d stopped again. They were standing next to a large spruce tree. Michael rested his head on Raphael’s shoulder, Raphael held him. On the far side of them the mountainside rose up in a steep, dark wall.

They’d found the mountain for him.

Antinous ducked behind an uprooted tree a short distance from them. Michael was no longer trembling, he noticed. Both were standing quite still. But then a great convulsion went through Michael, it began at his feet and seemed to twist its way upward, until his head was thrust to one side and the thing vanished in the air somewhere above him.

When the fit was over he put his arms around Michael, who leaned against him with all his weight.

Antinous thought that all those small tremblings must have united inside him. That he was having them all together now.

The next one was bigger. It looked as if his whole body was being torn apart. And this time he screamed.

When it was over, his body went completely limp, and the weight made Raphael take a step back to prevent himself from losing balance.

The two angels stood motionless by the spruce tree. There was nothing martial about them now, as there’d been the last time, then both had been clad in black chain mail and red capes, and each had had his sword hanging at his side. Now they were dressed in white robes, ankle length, and with cords at their waists.

The green and black of their wings shimmered against the snow.

Slowly Michael raised his head. He looked straight at Antinous. At first his eyes were quite vacant. Then they seemed to return to the world. For a brief moment they stared at Antinous. They filled with a fear so pervasive that Antinous couldn’t bear it, but pressed his head into the snow, while a new cry, the last one, pealed through the forest.

When he peered up again, it was over. Raphael’s arms were still around Michael, but his body was lifeless. His head lay loose-jawed over the shoulder, his arms hung limply by his side.

Antinous put his head down again, pressed his burning cheek against the cold snow, closed his eyes. There was a truth about him. He’d seen it in the angel’s look. Now he understood that truth. But he didn’t know if he could live with it.

He opened his eyes, looked across the snow’s white surface, the minute holes that pockmarked it, the water that made it glisten. The black trunk that rose a few yards away, shining too.