Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

But when she did catch sight of him, she couldn’t wait any longer.

“Javan!” she whispered. “I’m up here!”

He stopped and his gaze traveled up the slope.

Whatever she did she wouldn’t run, she thought. But even that was a promise she couldn’t keep. When she emerged from the darkness, and he spoke her name, she lifted her skirt above her ankles and ran down the slope to him.

They embraced.

“How I’ve missed you,” she whispered.

He placed his hand on the back of her neck and kissed her.

“I’ve got something for you,” he said.

He took out a small packet and held it out to her.

It was a ring.

She put it on and looked at him with a smile.

“How beautiful it is,” she said.

Javan laid his hand on her shoulder, a little awkwardly, and it was as if this robbed both of them of their spontaneity, for some time they stood on the road without really knowing what to say or do. Javan kept his hand on her shoulder, she lifted the ring to look at it again, and perhaps they became self-conscious, perhaps that was what happened, perhaps they realized they were standing there in the forest by the river, not knowing one another, alone, with nothing in common, apart from this.

She was the one who broke the uncomfortable pause.

It wasn’t that difficult.

“Come on!” she said. She brushed the hair away from her face, turned, and ran into the darkness.

She came home in the middle of the night. The house was dark and silent. She had a bite to eat in the kitchen, longed to talk to someone, and halted fleetingly outside Noah’s door, where light was coming from the crack under it, but realizing that this would do more harm than good, she went to her own room, where to her surprise she fell asleep the moment her head touched the pillow.

The next morning her father returned. She was sitting in the kitchen, she was pleased to see him and touched by his present. A nodding tin bird! Coarsely beaten out and carelessly painted, it was no great feast for the eye, but it was a bird, it reminded her of Javan’s little performance up by the rapids, and it was a present from the market, just as Javan’s ring was.

She pushed her hand into her pocket under the table and closed her fingers round the ring.

She was going to meet him during the day this time. As before, she arrived at their rendezvous by the river well ahead of him. The daylight made them more bashful, or put them in a different mood, for all they did during the afternoon and early evening was walk. They walked down toward the houses in the village, making sure to keep out of sight the whole time; the closest they got was the old burial mound, from where Javan pointed out the house in which he’d grown up and still lived. She’d known where it was of course, but now she saw it through his eyes. Not just any garden, but the garden where he had played. Not just any window, but the window he’d slept behind all his life. Rose behind, stared out of, expectant, angry, miserable, dreamy, yearning, happy, repentant.

She’d still never seen him asleep, she thought.

They walked upriver again, this time on the other bank. He explained that one of his aunts had died that winter, she’d lived alone all her life by the fjord over the mountain, and as his two elder brothers worked for his father, her farm was his, if he wanted it. He’d been mulling it over for some months now, it wasn’t much, a house, a few acres, an old barn, but it would be his. If he said no, his younger brother would take it on, so he’d have to make up his mind soon.

What did she think?

Well, what did she think?

She thought he ought to do it. She thought he ought to move out there and become a farmer.

His smile when he looked at her was meant more for him than it was for her.

“D’you find that funny?” she asked.

“No, not at all,” he said. “I just think you’re beautiful.”

They walked for a long time without saying anything. They stopped by the bridge.

“It’s late already,” she said. “I think I’d better be getting home. I can’t stay out all night every night.”

“Have you told anyone about me?”

She shook her head.

“Have you shown the ring to anyone?”

She shook her head again.

“You don’t wear it at home?”

“No,” she said. “Not yet.”

“I can understand that,” he said.

There was a pause. Mainly to fill it they began walking again, across the bridge, along the road.

“If I move out to the fjord,” he said, “would you come with me?”

She nodded.

“You know what you’d be doing, don’t you?” he said.

She raised her eyebrows and looked at him. She was about to give him a sarcastic reply, she thought he was making reference to the fact that she was so young, but the expression in his eyes was candid and just slightly inquiring as it met hers, and she realized he’d meant something else.

He’d been thinking of who he was. If she knew what she’d be doing going with him .

“No,” she said. “To be honest, I don’t.”

“But you will nevertheless?”

“I think I will. No, I know I will.”

They stopped.

“Well, we’re back here again,” he said, and smiled.

She had run over the fields on her way home. She felt guilty for being out so late, especially as her father had just returned, but it was happiness she felt most of all, mixed with a kind of solemn earnestness, because he’d asked if she’d go with him, to a farm out by the fjord, and she’d said yes.

She hadn’t even hesitated.

And she still didn’t hesitate. She had to follow her heart in this. And her heart said yes, yes, yes.

She walked the final hundred yards, so that she wouldn’t be breathless when she got in. The feeling of him was still in her body.

Could they see it, she wondered?

That she was radiant?

She smiled. Of course they could see it. But they didn’t know the cause. They didn’t know who he was, and they didn’t know what he was doing to her.

She saw the kitchen was in almost total darkness, but wasn’t alarmed by it; even though it was unusual, there was nothing to prevent them dousing the light there and seating themselves in the living room for once.

She took a deep breath, opened the door, and breathed out again. Her heart was still pounding with elation. She bent down and pulled off her shoes, placed them tidily by the wall, stood up and took off her coat, hung it on the peg. Something within her registered the complete stillness of the house, but even that didn’t cause her to react, she just turned the handle of the door and went into the kitchen.

Her mother, father, and Noah had been sitting around the kitchen table when she came in. They’d looked at her gravely, and the first thing that crossed her mind was that they knew everything.

Perhaps they’d even seen them together.

She smiled tentatively.

“What’s happened?” she asked.

“Barak is dead,” said Noah.

She hadn’t met Javan since it had happened. They had agreed to meet today, but he would understand why she hadn’t come. And he would understand that she’d hardly even thought about him.

Barak was dead. Noah had gone. And her father had said that Javan wasn’t to set foot on the farm. That meant that she would have to leave as well. She put her head in her hands. Then she raised it again and looked across the dusky river valley, at the lights that flickered above the wooded hills far away.

He’d been agitated when he’d said it, she thought. He didn’t know Javan, and if he had, he’d never have said what he had.

On the other hand she’d never yet known him take back anything he’d said. He didn’t want to set eyes on Javan. That would continue to be the case. So how could he get to know him?