Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

“Are we together, you and me?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yes.”

And he lifted up her dress, and she let him do it, and his eyes burned and his hands shook, and when she felt him against her, she closed her eyes and surrendered herself to him.

After that they couldn’t get enough of one another. Closely entwined they lay on the grassy slope. He lay with his head on her breast, she had hooked one leg over his, he pressed one hand against her back and the other on her bottom, she stroked his hair, they were warm and happy, and when the sun’s first rays flashed in that highland lake, they were lying on their backs side by side playing with each other’s hands as they watched the mountain above them.

The return trip must have taken four times as long as the one going up, she thought afterward. They kept stopping the whole time and embracing, kissing and caressing each other. For her this was new and strange: suddenly this man whom she’d hardly dared look at was hers. Suddenly she could put her arms around him and pull him close to her, suddenly she could kiss him on his mouth, on his neck, on his brow. Hand in hand they walked down, full of rapture and delight. He stopped and did his bird impressions for her, she laughed, for not only did he imitate their calls, but he managed in some wonderful way to resemble them. He puffed out his cheeks and turned his head warily from side to side, he was a duck sitting on her eggs. He stood on one leg with his chest stuck out, his eyes smoldering with supremacy and crowed like a cock, he waddled around with his hands on his back and his head nodding, halted and peered at her with suspicious black eyes, screaming like a crow, and finished off by rubbing himself against her like a purring dove.

They walked down beside the rapids, and when they passed above the meadow in the forest, he looked at her, and she blushed and took his hand and led him through the trees and out into the grass, where they lay down and enjoyed each other again.

Although it was bright day by the time they came out onto the mountainside by the summer farm, he went with her right to the door and kissed her there.

“How are your feet?” she asked, and squatted down, lifting one of his legs as if he were a horse.

“They’re torn to shreds!” she exclaimed.

“It’s nothing,” he said.

“But, dearest,” she said, looking at him.

She could say that! But, dearest . .

“There’s a pair of shoes here that you can borrow,” she said.

“No,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”

But she ran in, moistened a towel, dug out a pair of her father’s socks and the shoes from the bottom of the cupboard, came out again, washed the blood off his feet, pulled the socks onto them, placed the shoes by the side of his feet.

“There!” she said, and stood up.

“Thanks,” he said.

Was he a little embarrassed?

It looked as if he might be.

She inclined her head toward his chest.

“When will we see each other again?” she asked.

“I’ve got to go away for a couple of weeks,” he said. “So it’ll have to be when I get back.”

She straightened up.

“You’re going away?” she said.

“I don’t want to,” he said, and looked down at the hands that were holding hers. “But I must.”

“And you are coming back?”

He laughed.

“Yes, that’s definite,” he said.

“So where are you going?”

“There are one or two things I’ve got to see to. Including the market.”

“Father’s going there, too.”

“Yes, I thought he might be.”

A doubt raced through her, and she looked at him quickly. What did he mean by that?

They stood silent for a while.

She didn’t want that to sound the final note, especially as it would be a long time before they saw each other again, and so she said that she thought she loved him.

“I think I’m in love with you,” she said, and drew him to her.

When they had said their good-byes, she stood following him with her eyes until the forest swallowed him up. It would be two long weeks before she saw him again.

If he kept his word.

She spent one more week at the summer farm before returning to the valley. She was happy, she’d never been so happy; the thought of what had happened sent wave after wave of ecstasy through her. Its source seemed inexhaustible. And all the time her longing for him was like an ache in her body. She thought of him, and everything tightened up inside her.

Her father left for the market the day she arrived home. He was standing in the farmyard with Barak, Obal, and Tarsis when she walked up, and she was glad in a way, life on the farm was always easiest when he was absent.

But how slowly the next week passed!

By the last day there wasn’t an iota of calmness left in her. She couldn’t sit still, even though she tried to force herself to, but went restlessly about the house until she’d found yet another thing to do. She’d done the ordinary laundry long since, folded the clothes and put them away in cupboards and on shelves; she’d scrubbed the potatoes for dinner, she’d fetched the water, she’d washed the floors. After that she’d pounced on chores that were done less often, like washing carpets, tablecloths, working clothes, or wiping down walls and ceilings, or cleaning up the cellar and its cubbyholes.

Her mother realized that something was afoot. During dinner on that final day there was something sharp in her tone that wasn’t hard to penetrate, and the subsequent quarrel in the kitchen, while Barak was in the living room and Noah upstairs, was the same: her mother was angry with her, and used the old reproaches of sloppiness and inconsiderateness as a kind of pretense, because she didn’t quite know what she was cross about.

Noah felt it too. He’d come down just as she’d been going out, and emotion had filled her eyes with tears.

But she’d forgotten that the instant she closed the door behind her. She hurried up along the river, crossed the bridge, and followed the almost invisible cart track for the last bit to the place where the old house had once stood.

He wasn’t there, but she hadn’t expected him to be. She’d come early, she wanted to have some time to herself to collect her thoughts before they met.

Perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea as it had originally seemed. In the first place, time passed even more slowly up here, where she was so close to him, and secondly, the idea that he might not turn up at all grew more likely with each minute that went by.

He’d wanted her, and he’d had her.

What if that was all he’d wanted?

If that was the case, what line would he use when they parted?

Make the time pass. Make the memory vanish.

I’ve got to go away for a couple of weeks .

Wasn’t that it?

If you believed all you heard, that was how it had been with the other girls he’d had. Perhaps, somewhere, he was even now smiling at the thought that she, foolish girl, sat out in the forest waiting for him at this very moment.

She didn’t know him after all.

What had made her trust him? And surrender herself to him on only their second meeting?

When her thoughts ran in this vein, she pictured his face the way it had been when they’d been climbing up that last night. Alien, and nothing to do with her at all. A man ten or even fifteen years her senior who for some reason had begun to walk at her side.

But it took no more than the silent speaking of his name, or imagining his hand on her stomach, for her yearning to smash the strangeness to pieces.

Dusk was falling when he finally arrived. She heard his footsteps long before she saw him. He’d never been there before, and she crept a little back, she wanted to see him, just as he was.