Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

So that Noah wouldn’t feel she was following him, she waited a while, then went through the horse pasture, opened the gate, and walked on to the forest. She usually went to a spot half a mile farther up on the other side of the river when she wanted to be alone, but she didn’t feel like going there now as she had so many memories of the place, and Barak inhabited them all.

Wasn’t there a path somewhere here?

She lifted a branch out of her way and stepped in among the trees. It was dark, but the moon was up and giving just enough light for her to be able to glimpse the contours of the terrain about her. A bit farther on she saw that the trees opened out, and once there she found the path directly. It was tortuous, running this way and that, as if it had been blazed by a puppy. After a few hundred yards, it began to climb the spine of the wooded hill, and when she got to the top of it and all at once had a clear view of the cherubim’s flames, she sat down on a fallen tree, put her hands against the dry, rotten trunk, and swung her legs. The wind that came flowing up the hillside was warm, almost summery. Borne on it was the faint scent of river water.

She breathed in deeply a few times. She wasn’t angry anymore. Her father didn’t know Javan, he’d said what he’d said because he knew no better. And because Barak was dead.

And it was true, he wasn’t exactly a farmer.

How just thinking about him could make her so happy!

Even when her grief was at its height, and all she could do was cry, the joy was still there. Not as a feeling, or as a thought, it was more of a perception, something in the depths of her consciousness, that the whole time she just knew .

Down there she neither could nor would think about him.

But here she could.

The first time she’d noticed him had been at the harvest festival barely a year before. Four men had been standing side by side watching the dancers, and she had passed behind them thinking that perhaps they were brothers, they were all about the same height, had roughly the same build, necks and heads, were dressed in similar black suits.

Then one of them had turned his head and looked at her.

His eyes had been dark, his skin pale. He’d looked at her as if he wanted something. It wasn’t the look of someone who sees someone else for the first time, she realized, as she lowered her eyes and hurried on. It was the look of someone who knew who she was and had some business with her.

None of the others had turned. It was the single head, the single look, emphasized somehow by the anonymity of the three others.

As inconspicuously as possible she’d tried to find out who he was. “Who are those people?” she’d asked, nodding in their direction. “I can’t remember seeing them before.”

“D’you mean Javan?” said one girlfriend. “The one who’s been looking at you all evening?”

Anna began to blush.

“I hadn’t noticed,” she said.

“He’s not for you,” said her other friend.

“Yes, I know,” said Anna. “I know who Javan is. It’s just I didn’t recognize him.”

But when she awoke the next day, he was on her mind. And the day after that. But she hadn’t a lot to go on, a glance, some rumors, and just as suddenly as he’d entered her thoughts, he vanished from them again.

Autumn passed, winter passed, spring came. Anna left to go up to the summer farm. Sometimes her mother and aunts stayed with her, sometimes she was alone. None of the other girls up there dared to do that. Most of the holdings had summer farms in the mountains, and in the summer boys would always be roaming. Anna knew that they sometimes went in to the girls at night, but it had never happened to her, she was Lamech’s daughter, she was left in peace, until one night her door opened too.

She lay up in the half-loft, and was woken by the sound of the stiff door scraping against the doorstep. With thumping heart she sat up in bed. Someone was moving across the floor below. She leaned carefully forward and peered down. A grayish, hunched figure stepped slowly through the room, looking from side to side. She thought it was a ghost and pulled the eiderdown close about her.

When the figure stopped by the ladder, she retreated with a start and cowered against the wall.

Still moving slowly, the thing came climbing up the ladder. She was holding her breath and heard every step.

Then its head appeared over the edge.

“Who is it?” she whispered.

“So you’re up here,” said the figure. She didn’t recognize the voice.

“Don’t come any closer,” she said.

“Can’t I step onto the loft?” said the voice. “After I’ve come all this way?”

She made no reply, and the figure climbed the last bit and squatted down just on the edge of the floor.

It was then she saw who it was. But that didn’t lessen her fear.

“It’s you ,” she said.

“There’s something I want to show you,” he said. “Outside. Will you come?”

“In the middle of the night?” she said.

He nodded.

“All right,” she said. “You’ll have to wait downstairs.”

He smiled.

She waited until she could hear him standing on the floor below. Then she drew the eiderdown aside, got her dress from the chair at the end of the bed, pulled it over her head, rapidly arranged her hair in a bun at her neck, her heart pounding heavily in her breast. She moistened her index finger slightly on her tongue and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. Then she sat perfectly still for a moment and tried to collect herself. She heard him walking up and down below her.

She didn’t even know him.

Could she go out into the night with a stranger like this?

She clasped her sandals in one hand and clung to the ladder with the other as she climbed down.

She noticed he was looking at her as she bent forward to put on her sandals. She reddened. The blood surging into her face, her heart beating so hard, made her feel hot and heavy, while the constant tinglings of anticipation and suspense running through her filled her with lightness.

She straightened up, snatched her knitted jacket from the peg, and wrapped it around her shoulders.

“What were you going to show me?” she said.

“Come on,” he said.

The sky outside was bright and clear. A mist hung over the woods beneath them. The silence was total. They walked side by side down the hill. Neither of them spoke. Sometimes she glanced at him surreptitiously. He was shorter than she remembered, about the same height as her, perhaps a bit shorter. His eyes that had made such an impression on her, with their dark, almost somber attractiveness, were also different. Milder, kindlier, with an innocence about them that surprised her, but which she quickly found she liked.

“Where are we going?” she asked when they reached the forest.

“In here a little way,” he said.

Then he laughed and looked at her.

“You’re not frightened of me, are you?”

She shook her head.

“Let’s go, then,” he said.

The country was difficult, and he took her hand among the trees. It was warm and dry. They jumped a stream, they pushed through a belt of densely packed spruce trees, they crossed small hummocks and ridges, rounded a small tarn, and went into the forest on the other side, where at last he stopped, laid one hand on her shoulder, and brought the forefinger of the other to his lips.

He crouched down and motioned her to do the same.

“Can you see it?” he whispered.

She shook her head.

But then she did. Three fox cubs pushed their heads out of their earth and stared at them. They were quite motionless. Even their eyes were still.