Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

“Are we going to leave him here?” said Omak. “Then he’ll die.”

“He is dead,” said Anna. “He won’t feel anything.”

Javan stood rigid at her side. But he didn’t speak. He knew that she was right.

They got themselves ready in silence.

“Don’t look back,” said Anna as they were on their way out. “Don’t look at him. He’s perfectly all right.”

They did as she said, walked out of the hut one by one. But when it came to her, she turned.

Lamech lay on his back in the bed, staring at the ceiling.

“Good-bye,” she whispered.

Then she went out, shut the door behind her, and began to walk up the mountainside.

They didn’t stop until they’d gained the summit of the mountain ridge above the waterfall. It was the highest part of the country. By the time they’d got up it was dark. Several others from the valley had followed, and they now spread out. There were no trees or bushes up there, and no rock ledges or caves nearby that could offer shelter. They sat down in a small grass-covered dip. The baby lay well swaddled on a blanket, with an extra raincoat over him, and slept. Anna’s heart beat faster every time she thought of him. And Rachel. She’d never have believed she could be so calm and confident.

After they’d had something to eat, they went to sleep. Anna lay close to Javan, Rachel close to Jerak, Ophir close to Omak.

Faintly they heard the voices of the others on the mountain. The sound of the raindrops on the packs, on the coats, on the mountain, on the grass.

Anna was awoken several times by the booming of the sea beneath them. Every time, she thought of her father. Of how the water had first come seeping in across the floor, before gradually filling the room, until it reached him. Perhaps he’d drowned then, she thought, or perhaps the bed had floated right up to the ceiling before he drowned.

Whichever way, he was dead.

He couldn’t have understood what was happening, he must just have tried to breathe normally, maybe given a start when the water poured down his windpipe and into his lungs, without knowing why he struggled, or against what.

It was a good way for him to die.

But not for the baby. The notion that his death throes would be exactly the same was terrible. He wouldn’t understand what was happening either, nor know what he was struggling against.

Ohhh , she wailed then, quietly so that no one would hear her.

They’d have to make sure his final hours were as happy as possible.

When they awoke the next morning, it was to find the sea on every side. It lay perhaps sixty feet below them. But they could make out little more than the waves that swished against the green mountainside. Beyond them, the mist was as impenetrable as a wall.

There wasn’t much point in looking for shelter for the next night, Anna thought. There would be no next night.

She took out a little food from her bag. The mist seemed to muffle all sounds from farther away, while at the same time intensifying those nearby. It was as if the whole mountain echoed with voices.

She broke the loaf in two and handed the pieces to the twins, who began to chew silently. With tousled hair and narrowed eyes, they sat staring ahead of them as their jaws worked slowly up and down.

They made Anna smile.

A ship in the forest. Who’d ever heard of that?

They’d seen something, she knew that. Possibly a tangled mass of intertwined trees blown down in the storm, floating on the water through the forest. Perhaps a house washed away by the sea. It had happened before, she had been told of it, how entire houses had been lifted off the ground in the great flood all those years ago.

Not that she had heard of any houses down there, but still.

She broke a second loaf in two, offered one piece to Javan, and took the other herself.

There was a thundering sound far off, down in the depths. She pushed her hair away from her forehead, but it was wet and fell back, and she leaned forward and took a clip from the outer pocket of her bag.

Rachel was still asleep. The baby lay on his stomach under the raincoat. I hope he isn’t cold , she thought, and moved over a little so that she could see him better.

He was sleeping, too.

She put her head up close, and could just feel the breath from his nostrils tickle her cheek.

Only then was she aware that Rachel had opened her eyes and was looking at her.

“He’s sleeping,” said Anna.

Rachel nodded and yawned.

Javan got up.

“I’m off for a little walk,” he said. “Are you coming?”

Anna shook her head.

They hadn’t much time left, and she wanted to spend as much of it as possible close to Rachel and the baby.

“But you go.”

He walked inland, the twins a couple of steps behind him. The voices across the mountain seemed to be grouped. Even though it was tricky to judge distance and direction, it wasn’t hard to tell which group they belonged to, and now they heard Javan’s voice join one of them.

When, a moment later, they began laughing, Anna could picture him in her mind, standing there with his hands in his pockets, leaning back a little, watching the people he was talking to. The way he would occasionally turn his head and spit. And look up again with smiling eyes.

Again there was laughter. Something like envy ran through her. She didn’t know what they were laughing at, but suspected it had to do with the events of the past few days. How, bent double under their loads, they had dragged themselves up the mountainside like goats, no, like insects, they had crawled upward like ants, higher and higher, with the sea always at their heels. Lamech lying back there in the mountain hut. The rain that just fell and fell. The valley that disappeared. Mountains that turned into islands. A sea that would eventually rule over the earth alone, cold and shining under the stars.

That was what they were laughing at. That there was nothing they could do. That this was just something that was happening .

A light wind had begun to blow off the water. Beneath them the waves splashed against the mountain. She rose and saw that the mist had just begun to drift away. Here and there the sea opened out. Rachel had put the baby to her breast. Jerak sat beside her, looking over his shoulder at the sea behind him.

He had been sitting like that for a long while, she realized.

“What are you looking at?” she asked, sitting down beside him.

“There’s something out there,” he said. “I’ve seen it several times. I’m not certain, but it looks like some sort of ship.”

“It’s probably just clouds,” said Anna. She could see that the twins’ story had made an impression on him. Now he was looking out with that in his thoughts, and his thoughts were influencing what he saw.

“Maybe,” he said.

Rachel lifted the baby gently from her breast, covered him with the coat again and held him out in front of her with her arms under his back.

“Come and look, Mom,” she said. “Isn’t that a smile? Isn’t he lying there smiling?”

Anna bent over them. If this was just a chance grimace, she wouldn’t be the one to say so.

But it was a smile. The child’s eyes shone under his mother’s gaze.

Anna laughed, stroked his cheek with her forefinger.

“That’s rare,” she said. “ You didn’t smile until you were almost a month old. What a dear little rascal you’ve got.”

“There it is again,” said Jerak.

Anna turned. This time she saw it too.

An enormous ship, so dark it was almost black, was gliding through the mist out there. It disappeared, came into view, and disappeared again.

“It looks as if it’s just drifting with the current,” said Jerak.