Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

She tilted her head to the side and put her hand to her hair. It was horrible and gray like an old woman’s.

But she had fine eyes. And cheeks. And a fine neck! Her neck was long and slender.

The thought made her happy, and she gave up the game while she was ahead, climbed up to the loft, got into bed, pressed her feet against the ceiling like she’d done when she was a little girl, half laughed, half giggled at herself, tucked an arm behind her head, and closed her eyes in an attempt to sleep, but it was impossible, down she went again, out onto the step, where darkness had fallen, and the bowed half-moon lay taut in the sky above the mountains at the back of the hut. For the first time she felt an autumnal nip in the air. She rubbed her bare arms as she stared down at the edge of the forest far below.

When he came, she was asleep in the chair. She awoke to find him standing in front of her.

“Hello,” he said.

She got up, still befuddled by sleep.

“Hello,” she said.

She looked at him. He was the same. But everything was different. He stirred nothing inside her. At first she thought it was because she wasn’t properly awake yet.

“I’ll just put a jacket on,” she said.

He nodded and went out. She rinsed her face in the basin, dried it without looking at the image of herself in the mirror, laid the jacket across her shoulders, and went out to him.

He smiled at her.

“What I want to show you is up there,” she said, pointing up toward the mountain northeast of the summer farm. “It’s a little way off.”

“That doesn’t matter,” he said.

“We’ll go then,” she said.

Had he noticed anything?

He must have.

She was quite cold inside as they walked across the mountainside. She felt nothing for him. She looked at him furtively as they went, just as she’d done the night before, without anything happening. His face kindled nothing within her.

He took her hand as he’d done the last time, she let him, but at the first small obstacle they came to, she let it go to make a detour, and ensured that she stayed out of reach when they continued on the other side.

They followed the path through the forest, passed the upper side of the long, narrow meadow, and came out at the head of the gorge, where they stood watching the water vapor that drifted between the almost perpendicular rock walls, surrounded by the roar of the falling weight of water, until Anna tapped Javan on the shoulder, their eyes met, and she pointed up through the forest that bordered the rapids.

She walked behind him, he turned out to be nimble-footed, and she was breathless when they got up to the lake half an hour later. Its wide surface reflected the gleam of the sky and made the landscape shimmer dully on either side.

“It’s lovely here,” he said.

“It isn’t far now,” she said. “But we must cross to the other side.”

At the end of the lake was a lip that the water ran over before the falls began. Here it was possible to wade across. It wasn’t more than eighteen inches at its deepest, but the current was strong and the bottom slippery, so it was necessary to tread carefully.

They took off their shoes, Javan rolled up his trousers, Anna lifted her skirt with one hand, and they began to cross, she first, he following. When she’d got half-way, she suddenly lost her balance, not much, but enough for her to stop for a moment to regain it. Javan grabbed her waist with both hands. She turned quickly toward him. She’d expected to find him smiling, but he was looking earnestly at her, and suddenly she felt the same falling sensation in her stomach as when he’d looked at her the first time.

Her relief was so great that she laughed with delight. All that coldness and unexpected loneliness that had troubled her on the way up, all those thoughts about how different he was, evaporated from one moment to the next.

When they got over to the other side, and she bent down to put her shoes on, he stood looking out across the water.

“We’re going up there,” she said, standing up, smoothing the hair away from her face. “There’s a path that leads up through the forest, and then we’ll be there.”

She looked at him.

“Where are your shoes? Have you lost them?”

He smiled.

“I must have,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter. Shall we go, then?”

He must have let them fall into the stream when he clutched her, she thought.

Why had he come to her ?

What was there about her ?

She laid her hand on his arm.

“Yesterday was lovely,” she said. “I’ve thought about it the whole day.”

“Me too,” he said. “But not about the fox cubs so much, to tell the truth. Mainly about you.”

She turned.

“We can go a bit slower this last bit. It’s not far now, I promise.”

The path led steeply up through the spruce trees, by the side of a streambed, and ended by a small lake. That was what she’d wanted to show him. The mountains rose sheer on two sides, and a waterfall came leaping down one of them. On the opposite side was a small grassy slope, behind which the forest pressed in.

On the hottest days of summer she and the other girls would sometimes come up here. She’d never been here alone, and never imagined that she’d be bringing anyone, either, not until yesterday. She’d wanted to show him something, and this was the first thing that had come into her mind.

“Here,” she said. “This is what I wanted to show you.”

“A place,” he said.

“Did you know about it?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“It’s lovely,” he said.

“I’ve never been here at nighttime before,” she said.

They both took in the mountainside. High up it they could see how the water ran like a veil across the naked rock, several yards wide. The water ran like this, across bare rock, for several hundred yards before it came together and began to resemble a waterfall. But not entirely, for even here the stone was visible under the water. The bottom of the groove it followed was as smooth and straight as a street. It almost looked as if someone had cleared its path, for trees grew close in along the whole of the lower part. The descent was sheer for the last bit, and the water fell more than sixty feet before it struck the deep pool at the bottom.

“It’s lovely sitting over there,” she said, nodding toward the grassy slope. “The sun lingers on it in the afternoons.”

“Shall we sit down over there?” he said.

She nodded.

They went. He took off his jacket and spread it on the ground.

“Sit on this,” he said. “The grass is damp.”

She did as he said. He sat down beside her. This time there wasn’t any jug she could set between them.

She felt his thigh against her own, the warmth from it, heard his breath.

They didn’t speak.

He shifted his position slightly. The movement made her tingle inside.

“I could sit like this forever,” she said. “Here, with you.”

He turned his head to look at her.

“D’you really mean that?” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

In the forest behind them the wind rose, then fell. It sounded like a sigh. Ancient trees, ancient earth, ancient mountains.

She gazed up at the sky.

“The sun will be up soon,” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

There it was again between them, she thought.

She looked at him. He was staring straight ahead. Into the waterfall on the other side.

Should she put her hand on his arm?

The thought sent a shower of small shudders through her.

Flushed, she turned her head back.

Then he stood up.

She inhaled and looked up at him. He stood before her, laid his hands on her shoulders, and pressed her down. With the ground hard against her back she continued to look at him. He knelt over her.