Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

“If we wait a bit, we’ll see them playing,” he said.

The sound made the cubs’ ears swivel. Anna had to laugh.

“Sshh!” said Javan, but he was laughing too.

They lay there a long time, with the pungent stench of the fox earth pricking at their nostrils, before the cubs felt confident enough to emerge. But then, as if to make up for it, their play was unconstrained. They chased each other back and forth, barked, rolled about completely entwined with one another, leaped up suddenly and stood motionless. Then they resumed. One of them began hopping around something they couldn’t see, time after time it jumped into the air, came down on the same spot, jumped again. While they were following it with their eyes, one of the others had approached them, and when they looked up, it stood by a tree only a couple of yards off, staring at them.

“Perhaps it thinks we’re beautiful,” said Javan.

If there was a decisive moment in Anna’s life, it was this. It was then that she decided that she’d have him , Javan.

There would be many times when she’d regret it. A single sentence was a poor foundation on which to base such a decision, she saw that herself, but she was only nineteen, and the thought opened up something else, which she hadn’t properly understood before. It was her life. She could make her own decisions.

These thoughts didn’t go through her mind, of course, as they lay there on the floor of the forest in the first glimmerings of dawn. She just turned to him and smiled, and the fox cub shot away like lightning. They got up, brushed away the odds and ends that clung to their clothes, retraced their footsteps, back up to the summer farm, which they reached just at the instant the sun topped the mountain behind them and dyed the forest on the other side of the valley red.

There was something indecisive about them when they stopped at the door. This was the start of something, they both realized that. Each time their eyes searched each other out, they looked down, each time a hand came near an arm, it stiffened. Anna felt almost sick as she stood there.

She’d removed her jacket and tied it around her waist. Javan put his hand on her bare shoulder. It was clammy, and when she met his gaze, she saw that his eyes were moist.

He swallowed. Spasms of nausea went through her stomach.

“Shall we see each other again?” he said.

“Won’t you sit here for a while?” she said. “The sun on the valley is so beautiful.”

He nodded.

“Would you like something to drink?” she asked. “A glass of water?”

“Please,” he said.

When she emerged with a jug and two glasses, he’d seated himself against the wall. She sat next to him, put the jug and the glasses between them, folded her hands around her knees.

They both stared out across the valley.

“Where have you been this past year?” she asked after a while. “The last time I saw you was at the harvest festival.”

“I’ve been fishing,” he said. “Around the offshore islands.”

“Mmm,” she said.

There was another pause.

He couldn’t stay long, she thought. Soon everyone would be up and about, and if they saw him there at that time, tongues would begin wagging.

Maybe they’d seen him already?

She stole a glance at him. He sat with his glass cupped in both hands. They were large and beautiful. His eyes, too, were beautiful. He was half bald, his hair was dark, his chin short and broad. His neck powerful. His mouth and eyes seemed to go together in a way, she thought, they were a pair: if his eyes looked helpless, and she’d already seen that they could, his mouth would do the same. If his eyes looked jolly, as they did for much of the time, his mouth did the same. It was thin and a bit crooked somehow. She wondered if he affected this, or if it was natural.

Only someone who’d seen him sleep would know, she thought.

He turned his head and returned her gaze.

“That was how you looked at me that evening,” she said.

“Not just that evening,” he said.

Oh, yes , she thought. If not, I’d have noticed .

But she said nothing. He’d come at night, it was true, he’d stolen up to her in her loft, that was true too, but he hadn’t done anything; he’d wanted to show her something, a fox earth with three frolicking cubs, and not even there, when he could have — and she’d wanted to as well, oh, how much she’d wanted to — had he done anything that could subsequently be called blameworthy.

She got up.

“I think you’ll have to go now,” she said.

He got up too.

“Will we see each other again?” he asked.

“You can come here tonight, if you want,” she said, lowering her eyes, her face flushed. “I’ll show you something this time.”

She thought about him all day long. When evening arrived, she sat up waiting. She couldn’t settle to anything, and ran constantly out to the doorstep to look down the mountainside, her gaze scanning the edge of the forest, she even sprinted to the top of the adjoining hillock, to look over to the summer farm on the mountainside a mile or two away, in case he knew someone there and was coming from that direction.

She knew almost nothing about him. Only what she’d heard, and what she’d seen the night before.

What had she heard?

His family had originally come from the fjord on the other side of the mountain. They had moved to the valley a few years before she’d been born, and lived in a house down in the village. His father worked as a carpenter. He made everything from cupboards and beds to houses and barns. There were four boys and a girl. The two eldest sons worked with their father. Javan, who was the third, had done so too sometimes, more at his own request than his father’s. Javan wasn’t known for passing up the chance of a party, he’d had several girlfriends, according to the grapevine, but hadn’t become involved with any of them, from which gossip took it that he wasn’t dependable. However, few people disliked him. There was always something going on around him, he liked talking and telling stories, and he did it well. He’d been away from the community during the past few years, but people weren’t quite certain where he’d been or how he’d earned his living, apart from the winters he’d been out fishing near the islands, and the summer he’d traveled the valleys with a packful of goods that he sold for a merchant in Nod. The money he’d made at this bought him a new suit, whereas much of the money he got fishing vanished as soon as it was earned, for when the weather was bad and the boats were tied up in the islands, they played poker, and Javan wasn’t known for his luck at cards.

What had she seen?

His expression at the festival had revealed determination and earnestness. That same determination had brought him up to her at the summer farm, where no one had ventured before. There his look had been different. She had seen helplessness, innocence, sorrow, and joy in it. She was drawn especially by the joy, there wasn’t all that much of it in her own family, but also by his innocence. He was more than ten years older than her, perhaps as much as fifteen, and if he’d seen and experienced a lot, he hadn’t been tainted by it, as far as she could tell. She had also seen that he was thoughtful — who else would have taken her deep into the forest to look at a fox earth ?

The thought made her laugh. Then she rose and positioned herself in front of the tiny mirror that hung over the washstand in the far corner of the room. She wanted to see what he saw.

She smiled, first with her lips together, and then parted.

She’d never really liked her teeth, they stuck out a trifle, but at the same time there was something a bit reserved about her smile when she pressed her lips together.