I Is Another

by Jon Fosse

  Yes so the school day’s over too, he says

  Yeah, Asle says

  It went well today? Sigve says

  Yes I’d say so, Asle says

  That’s good, Sigve says

  and then it’s silent and Asle thinks Sigve must not have noticed that he has both the photograph and the painting with him and he hands Sigve the painting and Sigve looks at it and it doesn’t seem like he thinks there’s anything special about it, anyway he doesn’t say anything and then he goes and puts the painting down on the floor in front of the bookcase and Asle hands him the photograph and Sigve hangs it back up in its place over the sofa

  It’s nice to get that photograph back in its place, he says

  I didn’t like not having it, it was like something was missing when the photograph wasn’t there, he says

  I really missed it, he says

  and then it’s silent and then Sigve says that he’ll treat Asle to a meal and some beer in exchange for the painting, and Asle, who was sure he’d get paid, that they’d agreed on that or had an unspoken agreement at least, feels a little disappointed but he doesn’t say anything and then Sigve asks if Asle’s eaten and he says that he ate a little something back at his room and Sigve says that he doesn’t eat dinner every day, not at all, to tell the truth he comes home pretty rarely, maybe once or twice a week, yes sometimes he makes himself a meal, he can cook pretty well, getting better at least, he says and laughs, but today he wasn’t that hungry, Sigve says and Asle says that he isn’t either, but he has brought over two bottles of beer, so if Sigve’s thirsty he could always have a glass, Asle says and Sigve says a glass of beer’s always good, and Asle opens his shoulder bag

  That’s a nice bag you have there, Sigve says

  and he says he’s thought about that bag a lot, oddly enough, he says

  Real leather, it looks like? he says

  Yeah, Asle says

  That can’t have been cheap, Sigve says

  I bought it when I sold my guitar, Asle says

  Yes, that was something wasn’t it, didn’t one of you punch out another guy’s tooth? Sigve says

  Yeah, Asle says

  You’ll have to tell me about that sometime, Sigve says

  and then he says that first they need a beer and Asle takes the two bottles out and puts them on the living room table, next to the chessboard

  Yes, one bottle each, he says

  Sounds good, Sigve says

  and he goes and gets an opener and two glasses and then Asle sits down and Sigve puts a glass down in front of him and another on the other side of the table, by his place, and then Sigve sits down, and then they each pour themselves some and then they sit there and they each roll a cigarette and light it and Sigve says it’s good that the old photograph of the house is finally back where it belongs, he’d missed it, he’d been so used to seeing it there, Sigve says and Asle says that he’s sorry it took so long to paint the picture and he thinks that Sigve’s still not really happy with the picture he painted and it’s quiet for a moment

  I kind of thought the painting would be different, Sigve says

  Yes, with colours, not just in black and white, he says

  Yes it’s almost all black and white, isn’t it, he says

  and Asle says that he’s stopped painting houses and homes in beautiful spring weather with fruit trees in blossom and a smooth glassy fjord, and white snowcaps on the mountaintops, he doesn’t want to paint any more sunny pictures like that, he says, but when Sigve asked him to paint a picture of the house he lived in he didn’t want to say no, Asle says, and he thinks that now he’s painted the house where Sigve lives but he truly did not want to paint it in colour, he thinks and Asle says that he painted the house in black and white just like the photograph

  I’d been picturing more of a painting with colours, Sigve says

  I thought all paintings had colours, actually, he says

  But the house is white, and the roof is grey, there are big slate tiles on the roof that are grey, Asle says

  But the hills are green, and the trees, you probably noticed the big tree next to the house? Sigve says

  And the sky is blue, he says

  and Asle says that, as he said, he’s painted so many pictures of houses in colour and with a blue sky that he didn’t want to paint any more of them and Sigve says he was thinking he’d hang the painting on the wall, it would kind of brighten things up a bit with a little colour, things are already kind of grey and black, he didn’t need more of that, most of the year it’s black and dark almost around the clock but the sun, the yellow sun, and the sky, the blue sky, he could use some more of that, he says and Asle says he knows all that but he’s stopped painting pictures like that, he says

  Yes well you need to paint the way you want, Sigve says

  But let me take you out to a meal and a beer, you did paint it after all, he says

  and Asle says that he’d rather be paid in money, and he says what he usually gets for painting a picture like that and Sigve says that that’s not unreasonable so that’s fine, he says and he raises his glass to Asle and says they should drink to their deal, their agreement, he says and they toast and drink and then Sigve says a little beer sure is good, that’s for sure, yes, he says and he says he’s glad he’s finally living in his own place with a regular job, because that’s what keeps a person from going crazy, yes, Asle knows what he’s talking about now because he remembers the night Sigve arrived in Stranda on the bus from Bjørgvin to go home to his parents, because what else was he supposed to do? and then he ran into Asle, Sigve says and he was insanely worried about seeing his parents again, and that’s why he’d been drinking himself blind drunk, to put it mildly, and then he’d gotten off the bus a long way before the closest stop and then he and Asle had run into each other and started talking and he’d probably told Asle more than he should have that night, but he probably knew it all already anyway, that his father had been a German soldier in Norway, that he was a so-called German baby, and how shameful that was, it was the worst shame possible, but to be honest no one in Barmen had ever teased him or bothered him about it, he had never heard anyone say a single insulting word about it, but still it was always there, in everything anyone said to him, it was there, in the ways people talked to him and looked at him, everything was kind of said in the way they talked to him and looked at him, or maybe he was just imagining it? that was possible, but a German baby was what he was and that was the truth and his father had most likely been taken out by some Barmen people and shot and tossed into The Fjord with a stone in a potato sack tied to his feet, yes, that’s what people said at any rate, and his mother didn’t want to talk about it, she wanted it all to be forgotten, but sometimes, and every time he was drunk, he’d question her and when she didn’t want to say anything, the same as always, he’d sometimes grab her shoulders and shake her and then she’d say crying that his father had been shot and dumped in The Fjord and that the other Germans didn’t know where he’d gone and they thought he’d just deserted, just snuck off like a traitor, that’s what she said they’d said, something like that

  But now we don’t talk about it anymore, Sigve says

  No, Asle says

  and they drink and smoke and it doesn’t take long before they’ve drunk all the beer since they’ve been smoking the whole time, as soon as one cigarette was done they rolled themselves a new one and Sigve says that they should either go to The Co-op Store and buy some more beer or go to The Hotel and get some beer there, Sigve says, no, actually, he says, they can take the bus to Stranda and go to The Stranda Hotel, they’ve talked about doing that so many times but they’ve never got around to it, and they’d definitely run into the other Asle there, his Namesake, the one who looks so much like Asle, even if he is a little older, or, damned if he knows, for all he knows they’re the same age, yes, Asle must have almost met him before, Sigve says and if The Namesake isn’t in The Stranda Hotel, because he usually goes there, and he never ha
s money for beer so he drinks coffee, yes, if he’s not already there at The Stranda Hotel then Sigve knows where he lives, he can tell him, it’s in the basement of a house right up from The Stranda Hotel, yes, the other Asle, The Namesake yes, that’s his name, he’s found a house where he can live in the basement, Sigve says and he looks at the clock and he says that if they hurry they’ll just catch the bus to Stranda in five minutes and Asle thinks why not, but he doesn’t understand why Sigve isn’t embarrassed to go to The Stranda Hotel since he’d robbed that exact place once, the first time Sigve had to go to prison, that’s what he’d heard anyway, but he can’t very well ask Sigve if it’s true, and The Namesake, no, he probably doesn’t look as much like him as Sigve likes to say, but if he’s a painter too then it would be nice to meet him, Asle thinks and he gets up and Sigve picks up the glassess and empty bottles and carries them out to the kitchen and puts them down on the kitchen counter and says Ordnung muss sein in German and Asle drapes his shoulder bag over his shoulder and follows Sigve and then Sigve puts on some jacket or another, a kind of puffy jacket, and it has a zipper, it looks very strange, it’s a weird blue colour that Asle could never have imagined painting, and Sigve pulls the zipper up and Asle goes out and Sigve follows him and he locks the front door and they walk over to the bus stop together and Sigve says that Asle won’t believe it when he meets The Namesake, he says and a bus drives up and Sigve sticks out his hand and they get in the bus and Sigve pays and Asle pays and then they go to the back of the bus and sit down in the last row

  I always like sitting in the back, Sigve says

  Me too, Asle says

  As far back as possible, he says

  Yes, always, in the last row if it’s free, Sigve says

  and then they sit there next to each other in the last row and there are just one or two other passengers on the bus, an older married couple and an old woman, and they are sitting far away in the front of the bus and neither Asle nor Sigve says anything, they just sit there and Asle thinks that he still feels nervous and then Sigve says that Asle looks anxious, everything about him seems so anxious, he says, yes, like something really bad has just happened, he says and Asle doesn’t answer and then Sigve says that Asle will feel a little more relaxed after he has a beer, yes, that’ll do him good, Sigve says, after a few glasses he’ll feel totally calm again, Sigve says and Asle asks how Sigve’s day had been and he says that his day had been like every other day, his only bad days were the early days when he’d just started at The Furniture Factory, he says, because then he needed to say hello to The Boss and to this and that person working there and he really doesn’t like having to talk to people he doesn’t know, no, so that was really bad, Sigve says, and he didn’t understand how to do the jobs he was told to do, they were actually super simple, just screwing the arms and legs onto a kind of chair they made there, but even that was something you had to learn, there’s a knack to doing even that, and the guy who’d had that job before him and was leaving for a new and more challenging job taught Sigve what to do and he laughed and chuckled and showed Sigve where to place the chair leg before he attached it and where to place the armrests before screwing them on and where to put the finished chair down, and where to carry the chairs to, one in each hand, after he’d finished two chairs, and he had to avoid bumping into the doorframe of course, or whatever, yes, every job has things you have to do, Sigve says and in the early days he’d managed to make pretty much every mistake he could possibly make but after that everything went fine and the guy who’d told him what to do, and who was now off to do a bigger and more important task in the company, said that now he was up to speed, now he could do the job well on his own, but if he ever needed to ask about anything he should just ask, he said and then he left and then Sigve was there screwing legs and armrests onto chairs, and now he’d been there doing that for a couple of years, and it may not sound that nice but the truth is he likes that job, Sigve says, by this point what needs to get done happens by itself so to speak and while he’s doing the job he can think about whatever he wants to think about, or can stop thinking and just space out, half go to sleep almost, yes, to tell the truth the lunch breaks had been the worst thing about the whole job, because obviously all the other people who worked at The Furniture Factory knew that he was a German baby, no one had said anything to him but he was sure they knew it, and he gradually stopped going to the cafeteria where the others ate, he just sat down on one of the finished chairs and ate the two sandwiches he brought with him every day, always brown cheese on bread, always, and drank the thermos of coffee he had with him, and that way he could avoid talking to anyone, except the guy who delivered the chair seats with the backs, and the guy who delivered the armrests, and the guy who delivered the chair legs, he exchanged a word or two with them, the first time anyway, but after a while the first guy would just come with the chair seats and backs and the second guy would just come with the arms and the third guy would just come with the legs and none of them would say anything, and that’s how it was today, and he likes it like that, he’s left alone, and every month he gets his pay, and the pay is pretty good, nothing you’ll get exactly rich from but it’s more than enough for him, Sigve says and Asle asks if it doesn’t get boring and Sigve says it doesn’t seem that way to him, and if it does get a little boring then he can always just think about the next chess move he’s going to make

  Chess move? Asle says

  Yeah, I saw that you have a chessboard on your table, he says

  Yeah, Sigve says

  I taught myself chess when I was in prison, he says

  and he says that when he got out the first thing he did was buy himself a black bag, black plastic, yes, the one he uses every day, and a chessboard with pieces, and since he didn’t have anyone to play chess with he started playing something called postal chess, that means that every Friday he mails a letter with a chess move and every Wednesday he gets a letter from the guy he’s playing against where the guy’s written his move, and the correspondence continues until one of them wins or it’s a draw, Sigve says and he has no idea who he’s playing against, he just knows his name and address, yes well he doesn’t even remember the guy’s name, and definitely not his address, but as soon as he gets the letter with the other guy’s chess move he starts thinking a lot about what his own next move should be, and before he gets the letter he thinks a lot about what move the guy he’s playing against is going to make, Sigve says and then he’s always reading a book, he says, and sometimes he thinks about what’s written in the book, but then thoughts come to him about the times when he had the shakes, yes, as he’d said, and the times when he was in prison, but he was only in prison twice, people can say whatever they want, Sigve says, and then he says that the first time was when he and someone he used to drink with, yes, that was at The Stranda Hotel, where they’re going now, they wanted something more to drink so badly when the bar was closed that they just broke down the door and went into The Stranda Hotel to find more to drink, yes, maybe even a bottle of spirits, and then The Policeman came of course and they were arrested and put in jail at The Police Station, but it was just a room with a bed and an ordinary door and by moving the bed so that they could press their backs against the end of the bed and their feet against the door they could put so much pressure on the door, because the guy he used to go drinking with was really strong, that they were able to push it out of the doorframe, yes, they broke down this door too and then they got as far as they could from The Police Station and they decided that the best thing to do would be go to Bjørgvin and then they started walking down the road that led to Bjørgvin, because sooner or later a bus would drive past, they thought, and then they tried to hitch a ride from every car that went by, but not many went by, since it was the middle of the night, and all the cars drove right past them and they walked and walked and they felt so tired, and then they sat down on a milk bench and they sat there and of course they nodded off every now and then too but every time a car d
rove by one of them stood up and walked out to the edge of the road and stuck out his hand with the thumb up and every single car kept driving and then they just had to wait until the next car, and a little eternity passed before the next car came by and none of the cars stopped so there was nothing to do but keep walking to the next bus stop, they’d get to it eventually, so they started walking down the road again and they were sobering up and they felt terrible all over and then, yes, finally a car stopped, and two men got out, and damn if it wasn’t The Policeman and The Policeman’s Partner and that was all right, he thought, that was fine too