A Time for Everything by Karl Ove Knausgård

Author:Karl Ove Knausgård [Knausgård, Karl Ove]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature
ISBN: 9780980033083
Publisher: Archipelago Books
Published: 2004-01-01T16:00:00+00:00

The darkness was too deep for her to see anything but the outlines of the landscape as they walked up. There was what looked like a wooded hill, there a peak, there a field . . . and there a house!

When they halted by the front door, she could see that it wasn’t much more than a shack. But he’d told her that. She had known that. So she wasn’t disappointed.

“Well, here we are,” he said. “Shall we go in?”

The door was stubborn, and he had to put his foot against the bottom and his shoulder to the top before it opened.

It smelled like a cellar inside. Dark, damp, almost decaying.

They took off their packs in the hallway. Javan went into the living room to light a lamp, she followed and stood dumbfounded looking round as the light spread through the room.

“It’s a pauper’s home!” she said.

Still holding the lamp he looked at her.

“It’s been empty for six months,” he said. “Some of the windows are broken. That’s why it looks a bit unkempt.”

“Unkempt?” said Anna. “Is that what you people call it?”

“You people?” queried Javan.

They stood there staring at one another for a long while. Then Javan put the lamp down on the windowsill and went over to her.

“It’s been a long day,” he said. “Things will be better in the morning.”

“You think so?” she said.

“There’s nothing here that can’t be fixed with a little soap and water,” he said. “Come on, I’ll show you the rest of the house.”

This was quickly done. A living room, a kitchen, a hallway, and on the second floor a couple of bedrooms. That was all.

They found two dead mice, light as feathers, on the bedroom floor as they were about to go to bed. She picked them up by their tails, took them downstairs, and threw them out the door. When she got back up, he’d spread two woolen blankets on the floor.

“We’ll have to sleep like this tonight,” he said. “Then I’ll organize something better.” He stroked her cheek, said good night, blew out the light, turned over on his side, and fell asleep. She lay awake. The sounds were new – the wind blew through a different landscape than the one she was used to, and struck different notes; the hiss of the waves lapping at the shore of the fjord was more wheezing, its rhythm more juddering, than the even, quiet swish of the river she’d grown up next to. And she’d never before lain next to a sleeping man.

He lay with his face turned away from her. She raised herself on one arm and leaned forward to look at it.

It told her nothing. It was just a face.

She lay back and looked up at the ceiling. This is awful, she thought. This is awful.

The only thing that would allow her to endure it was the knowledge that she could leave it at any time. Tomorrow, next week, in a year, in ten years or twenty.

It was the only way she could live there.

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