Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

They undressed beneath the sparse tree canopy, seven pale men in their twenties, some a little pudgy, all glinting with the rain that fell on them.

One after another they went down to the water, their footsteps were tentative, the forest floor was covered with rotting leaves and pine needles, and when they reached the water, they stopped and looked at each other.

How were they to tackle this? Just run straight out into it?

A vestige of respect for the water still remained. When they started wading out, it was with dignified movements, considering the circumstances.

Then the water reached their waists, and when the first one sank down and began to swim, the others followed suit.

Soon all seven of them were moving around in the water under the trees. Some of them lay on their backs looking up at the treetops, to the rain-pregnant sky above them, as they bobbed in the waves. Others swam down and slid across the bottom with open eyes, looked at the tree trunks, the roots, the yellow leaves, the grass and mossy hummocks that could be seen there, broke the surface and gasped for breath, swam down again. Others still swam out. The vista below them was perhaps even more alluring: if they took a breath and dived there, they would see entire trees standing on the bottom. Branches that swayed to and fro in the currents.

Ophir, who’d been a good swimmer all his life, wasn’t interested in what was under the water, he just swam as far as he could, put yard after yard behind him, thinking of nothing, just turned his head to the side, breathed, turned it to the other side, breathed, as he tried to get his arms and feet working as smoothly as possible.

When he couldn’t manage any more, he stopped, turned, and treaded water as he looked back. The heads of the others were bobbing about like little white balls back there. He raised his arm and waved, but no one waved back.

They probably couldn’t see him, he thought.

Without thinking what he was doing, he began to swim across the forest. The water was disturbed, and he was lifted slowly up and down as he swam, and he’d begun to think that perhaps he ought to get a bit closer to land, when he caught sight of something.

What in the world was that ?

Something dark and shadowy was towering in among the trees only fifty yards away from where the others were bathing.

At first he thought it was a house. But no one had built up here surely?

He swam closer.

It was then he realized it was a vessel. An enormous ship lying there in the forest.

He stayed there treading water for a moment, his mouth open and his eyes goggling. Then he turned to swim back toward the others.

He waved and hallooed as he neared them. Those farthest away stood up and looked at him, those in deeper water swam for the shallows. They all knew something was up.

He was too breathless to say anything when he finally stood up in front of them. He stood pointing through the trees as he tried to catch his breath.

“A ship,” he managed to say at last. “A ship. In the forest. In there.”

They looked at him in amazement.

“There’s an enormous ship right over there,” he said. “I know it sounds unbelievable, but it’s true. It’s a hundred yards long at least. Probably longer. Fifty feet high.”

“What are you talking about?” said Omak. “Wouldn’t we have seen it if there were a hundred-yard-long ship over there?”

“It’s lying right across a meadow. Right by a rock wall. It’s almost impossible to see it before you’re right on top of it. It looks like part of the forest.”

If this was a joke, it was an idiotic one, so they realized that he really had seen something there, and they went up onshore to dress and take a closer look.

Suddenly they heard a dull thud behind them. It was as if it emanated from the depths of the ocean. They turned.

The sound came again, but louder this time. Booming, it echoed out across the sea.

“Look at the water,” one of them whispered.

They looked.

The water was lifting toward them.

Another boom arose from the depths.

“We must move upward. And quickly, too,” said Omak.

“The ship,” said Ophir. “We’ve got to go in that direction anyway. Come on.”

They all followed him. They took a diagonal route up through the forest. After a few minutes they halted. Only fifty yards distant, between the trees a little below them, there it lay. Ophir hadn’t been exaggerating. On the contrary, it was larger than he’d described. It must have been at least a hundred and fifty yards long. Perhaps even more.

“Who could have built something like this?” said Omak.

They approached slowly. It smelled of pitch, new-cut timber, wet forest.

Another boom sounded below them. As they turned they saw the water welling upward. It was rising many feet a minute now.

“Look,” said Ophir.

The water had reached the edge of the meadow and was creeping slowly on. For a while the ship remained lying just as firmly on the ground. But the water rose relentlessly up its sides, and when half the hull was submerged, it began to glide forward slowly. It glided between the trees, huge and dark. There wasn’t a sign of life aboard.

“A ship in the forest,” whispered Omak. “What sort of being could have made it?”

“It’s a death ship,” whispered Ophir.

Then it was out of the forest. The water was only a few feet below them now, and they began to run upward.

When finally they reached the mountainside, they saw that, with the exception of the two highest pieces of ground, the forest of the entire plateau was underwater. At the mountain farm above them, Javan and Anna stood looking out.

They had heard the booms, they’d seen the sea rise up, they had watched the forest below them vanish in the course of half an hour.

When they finally caught sight of the twins, running up the mountainside, they hurried indoors to load up the packs. Food was what they needed to take with them, as much food as they could carry.

First Anna went up to the loft to fetch Rachel and Jerak. She found them sitting on the bed with the baby between them. He lay on his back and looked up, waving his arms happily in the air. Rachel smiled down at him, tickled him gently on his naked stomach.

It was as if nothing that was happening outside was real, thought Anna. The quiet peacefulness here is how things really are.

“We’ve got to go,” she said.

Both of them looked up at her. For a few frightful moments she was sure that they’d say they wouldn’t. That they’d given up.

Below them, Omak and Ophir came charging in through the door. They were shouting excitedly at the same time. In short order Javan told them to be quiet, fill their packs with food, and get ready.

Then Jerak rose, and Rachel began to swaddle the baby. Perhaps she was a little rough, because just then he began to cry. Or perhaps he had sensed the mood that prevailed among them.

Anna packed two sacks, one to carry on her back and one on her front, filled two string bags to bursting with food, and saw that Javan was doing the same. The atmosphere was febrile, simultaneously distraught and dreamlike. The twins had each filled their packs and stood as if rooted to the spot, looking at them.

“You two can carry more than that!” Anna shouted to them.

Above her, Rachel came climbing down the ladder backward. The baby was no longer crying. There was a special calmness about them, Anna had time to think. Everything that happened just seemed to wash over them. Then she noticed that Omak and Ophir had got out the stretcher from the floor behind the ladder, and were moving toward Lamech.

She stopped them.

“We can’t take him with us. We’ve got to carry as much food as we can manage. We’ll need all the hands we’ve got.”