Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

The sun shone, the salmon leaped, the bears fished, the three men lay watching. It was late into the afternoon by the time the bears had had their fill or become bored — for there was no doubt that fishing gave them pleasure — and the three men decided they might as well set up camp there. A fire was lit on the rocks above the rapids, a tent erected in the forest behind, some salmon caught, fried, and eaten, while the sun sank into the forest and its last rays caught them in their ruddy glow.

A whole winter spent together had left the three of them thoroughly fed up with each other. But on this evening the atmosphere was good, perhaps because their attention had been focused on something outside themselves. It was as if all resentment and petty annoyance was washed away, they sat replete and content around the fire and talked. The day had been a good one, they could agree about that, and, sleepy as they were, the night would doubtless be as well.

One of them got up and went down to the river to drink and wash. The rocks were slippery, he went carefully, stooped by the current, pushed his head under, jerked it up with a gasp, drank a few mouthfuls, got up, and began to walk up the mountainside again.

He had long suspected that the other two were ganging up on him, or rather, he knew that they were, and instead of taking the direct route back to them, he veered off to one side so that he could watch and listen to them from a concealed position. He’d been doing this for several weeks, and although he hadn’t yet caught them doing anything blameworthy, except on one occasion, when they were laughing together, without him quite having caught what they were laughing at, he knew it was just a matter of time. Sooner or later they would give themselves away.

Had it not been for this, and the fact that he was standing on a ledge of rock just a few yards below his cronies, watching them minutely, he would never have seen what he did.

Only three yards or so behind the camp, half hidden by the trunk of a tree, stood a creature staring at them. It was almost human in appearance, but not quite, and this difference, which he never managed to define exactly but only vaguely sensed, was what made him shout.

“Behind you!” he cried. “There’s something behind you!”

Both of them rose and took a few steps back. The creature was already making off into the forest. The one who’d seen it ran forward to the fire, grabbed the loaded gun that they always kept by them, took aim from the edge of the forest, and shot.

He could see quite clearly that he’d hit it in the arm, for the limb seemed to be slung out from the body. It halted for a moment, looked down at the wound, and clapped its other hand over it before continuing.

“I got it!” he shouted, and turned. “Come on!”

Without waiting for the others, he began running into the forest. When he reached the spot where he’d last seen the thing, he stopped and stood listening with his eyes fixed on the ground.

It was making its way down to the river.

As the camp lay downstream, and the river was too wild to cross, it would have to follow the bank upstream. If his memory served him right, the watercourse trended to the east a little farther up. If he ran straight on, he should be able to cut the creature off.

Gun in hand, he ran on through the forest. After a while he came to the river, settled himself down behind the trunk of a fallen tree, and waited. It was a perfect spot to lie; the mountain rolled gently down to the bank until it was level with the water maybe a hundred yards further down. The mountain was bare, the ground open: if it came up here, it wouldn’t have a hope of getting away.

Soon afterward it came into view, still grasping its wounded arm. It moved slowly and heavily, turning its head every once in a while and looking back, then stopped altogether, removed its hand from the wound, and stared at it for a long time. All the arm below was red with blood.

There was something grotesque about it, and as he lay there following its movements with his gun, he was gripped by a hatred that he hadn’t felt since the time he’d found a vipers’ nest in the forest near the town, the plaited and contorted snakes’ bodies, the flat heads, the black eyes, the flickering tongues; it had all filled him with such disgust that he’d killed every one of them. He’d thrown rock after rock, until they were completely covered. Then he’d waited, and when, slowly, they’d begun to come slithering out between the stones, he’d pelted them again and again until they were all dead.

He felt the same revulsion at the sight of this humanoid creature walking by the river’s edge, and suddenly he couldn’t abide the thought of delaying a moment longer.

He shifted slightly to lie more comfortably, aimed for the middle of the chest, and fired. The creature, which had been alarmed by his small movement, had hardly managed to look up toward the fallen tree before the shot struck it in the breast. It fell backward, then half rose; he fired once more, but struck it in the thigh this time, and the creature looked up at the tree again, clearly confused, looked down at its chest, which was covered in blood.

It took a few steps toward the river.

The next shot hit it in the head, and it fell forward, rolled down the slope, and stopped at the water’s edge. But so strong was the current that in only a matter of seconds it had drawn the dead body around like a branch, and, turning slowly, it glided out into the river and disappeared.

But the hatred of the young man who’d fired hadn’t evaporated. Just as with the snakes, all he wanted to do was kill more of them as he rose and went down to the place where the bullets had found their mark.

The blood on the ground was strangely thin. He crouched down and dipped his finger in it, licked his finger. It tasted like human blood. But it hadn’t been a human being, of that he was certain.

He went up to the top again, stood there awhile looking down the river for signs of the corpse, but the surface was shiny and smooth, and he took himself back to the camp. When he got there, the other two were sitting in front of the fire as if nothing had happened.

They looked up at him inquiringly, but didn’t speak. All they knew was that he’d suddenly frightened them to their feet with a loud shout, rushed to the fire, snatched the gun, and fired wildly into the forest. Then he’d shouted something they didn’t catch, before vanishing in the trees. A while later they had heard a shot, followed by another, and then another.

And now he was back.

Both of them were a bit afraid of him, that was why they didn’t say anything, they tried to behave as if nothing had happened, and were fearful lest their voices betray them. Often during the latter half of the winter they’d caught him staring at them with an expression it was difficult not to interpret as hateful. The condition wasn’t unknown, it occasionally happened that people couldn’t take the pressure of an overwintering, there were those who’d killed their companions under conditions similar to those they’d been living under recently, or at least had been suspected of doing so when they returned to the town alone and didn’t have any very satisfactory explanation for what had happened to the others. You could see it in their eyes.

And wasn’t there a strange gleam in the eyes of this man whom they’d considered a friend until only a few months ago?

Indeed there was.

And so they nodded earnestly when he told them what he’d seen. A white giant, you say, you shot him in the arm, did you, and then you tricked him, ran straight on while he followed the river, and then you shot him three times?

It was rather too convenient that he was the only person who’d seen this behemoth, just as it was rather too convenient that the body had subsequently been taken by the river, but they said nothing, just nodded and went along with him, until two weeks later they arrived back in the town they’d left more than six months earlier, and then, finally freed from his company, they could laugh at the whole story.