I Is Another

by Jon Fosse

  You’re too old to be driving to Bjørgvin constantly, Åsleik says

  It tires you out too much, he says

  You’re wearing yourself out, he says

  Your hair’s gone greyer in just a few days, I can see it, he says

  and Åsleik says was there really any rush to drive those paintings down to Bjørgvin? and anyway why didn’t I take them with me on Monday when I drove down to Bjørgvin not once but twice? he says, why did I have to drive them down separately yesterday? what am I doing? Åsleik says and he says now I need to relax a bit, and get some food in me, because even if I am a bit on the heavy side, and you’d have to say I am, I have to admit, at least I’m not a liar, then I’ve gotten thinner in the last couple of days and the last time he stopped by he saw that there wasn’t much meat left on the leg of lamb hanging in the kitchen so he thought he’d bring over a new one, but it’s not, it’s not without an ulterior motive, as I’ve probably guessed, because it’s about the time I’ll be cutting up the rest of the cured lamb bones into parts and cooking them with potato dumplings and once they’ve been cooking long enough I’ll add a little smoked sausage and carrots and turnips to the water, Åsleik says and then I’ll fry up some bacon and that’ll be dinner, he says, the way I’ve always done it, I usually ask him to come over a couple of times a year for potato dumplings cooked in stock from what’s left of the leg of lamb, Åsleik says, and he can see that it won’t be long until the next time, because there’s not much meat left on the mutton leg, as city folks call it, that’s hanging in the kitchen, Åsleik says, but first they should probably have their Advent dinners at each other’s houses, and even though he felt like having the Christmas lamb ribs that he’s been soaking since yesterday and today he took The Boat to Vik to shop on both days, the water was calm and beautiful today, and he bought a lot of turnips, potatoes he has from his own garden of course, and he’s told me again and again that I could have some of his potatoes but I’ve always said no thank you and he can’t understand why, but I just don’t want potatoes, only Christmas lamb ribs and lutefisk and dry-cured mutton and a little salt cod, and it’s true that that’s the best he has to offer, but he doesn’t grow turnips himself so he had to buy them, but what with the price of turnips these days he should just grow the turnips himself next year, Åsleik says and he says that it’s cold in my room and I sit up on the bench and I see that the fire’s gone out in the stove and Åsleik goes over to the stove and now I can feel how cold it is in the room, but of course I didn’t feel it that much when I was lying there sleeping, and I must have been asleep since I didn’t hear Åsleik’s tractor, I think and Åsleik says he walked on over today because it’s important to keep active, and it’s not that far anyway, but it is a ways, he says and what was it Åsleik was saying, that we should eat Christmas lamb ribs today? yes well we usually have Christmas lamb and lutefisk at each other’s house during Advent, along with always doing that on New Year’s Eve we usually have some during Advent and every other year I go to Åsleik’s for lamb ribs and he comes over to my house for lutefisk, and in the other years it’s reversed, that’s how it’s been for years, and this year it’s Åsleik’s turn to make the lamb ribs, but anyway we usually invite each other to these Advent meals well in advance, so this is rather sudden, isn’t it, yes, Åsleik just decided that we should have lamb ribs today and so that’s that, today already, and it’s just because Åsleik felt like having lamb ribs, but I don’t feel like lamb ribs, not right when I’ve just woken up in any case, I think, and the truth is I don’t feel like having any food at all, I think, so I think I’ll say thank you but no to Åsleik’s invitation and he can just have his lamb ribs alone, I think, but that would probably be wrong? and lamb ribs certainly are good, because Åsleik’s lamb ribs always taste unbelievably delicious, and I’ve already eaten up, by myself, one of the two sides of lamb that I get from Åsleik every year, yes, sometimes I make a few potato dumplings to go with it, and two carrots, and then I melt some margarine to put on the dumplings, and that tastes at least as good as lamb ribs with mashed turnips, maybe even better, I think and I then think that Åsleik and I always talk about food, it seems like that anyway, I think, and now is that anything for two older guys to talk about, one of them, Åsleik, almost totally bald with just a little long thin white hair around his bald spot, and then he has a big grey beard, and he trims both of them himself, hair and beard, with scissors, and that’s why it’s always cut so unevenly, and he can’t be trimming his hair and beard too often either, I think, but it’s not like I look any better with this long grey hair of mine always tied back with a black hair tie, I think, but it doesn’t help much, because my hair is so thin up top that a bald spot shows through, so even if I tie my hair back with a black hair tie the bald spot is still visible through the strands of hair, and I have a grey beard too, at first I trimmed my beard with scissors too, that was when I had a really long beard, but then I got an electric trimmer and I started keeping my beard short, really short, so almost as soon as I wake up I trim my beard, but that doesn’t make me look all that much better, no, neither of us looks too good, Åsleik or me, I think and then Åsleik stands there by the stove and he looks at me and he says I need to come over to his house tonight and have dinner, Christmas is getting closer, in spite of everything, and we usually always have dinner at each other’s house during Advent, these Advent meals of ours, he says, so if the invitation’s a little sudden for me maybe I’ll want to come have dinner with him once I collect my thoughts a little, he says and I say yes I guess I will

  And it’s a good thing you woke me up, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to get to sleep tonight, I say

  It’s not good to sleep too much during the day, no, Åsleik says

  and I say no, I can’t just sleep the days away, and Åsleik says that the whole time he’s known me, and it’s getting on many years now, he has never seen me drive back and forth to Bjørgvin on the same day and then drive back to Bjørgvin again that same day and drive home the next day and then drive back to Bjørgvin yet again the day after that, no, he doesn’t understand what’s going on with me? he says, what’s come over me? and I don’t need to tell him, of course, yes well the last time was because I had to take in the paintings for the regular Christmas exhibition, which always opens right before Christmas, that makes sense, and a couple of days before that, yes, on Monday, I had shopping to do in Bjørgvin, both for myself and for him, he says, but why did I drive back a second time that same day? and why didn’t I bring the paintings with me on one of those two times I drove down? no, he doesn’t understand, and it doesn’t seem like I’m doing too well, yes, he can’t say I’m looking too healthy, Åsleik says, or actually I’m still healthy but it’s like something’s happened that’s worrying me, and to tell the truth that was really why he decided I could use a little hearty food, Åsleik says, yes, he thought a lamb-rib dinner would do me good, and a little juicy mutton, he says and again he holds the mutton leg out to me and I say thank you and I just sit there on the bench and Åsleik says so we’ll talk more tonight then? at seven o’clock? he says and I say yes, yes, thank you, it’s a little sudden for me but I’m sure it’ll be delicious, I say and I just sit there on the bench and Åsleik says that I’m clearly not in the mood to talk much right now and he probably should be getting home anyway, maybe he shouldn’t have bothered me, and even woken me up? he says and I say again that no, it was good, if I’d slept any longer I wouldn’t have been able to get to sleep tonight and I don’t like lying awake in bed, so many thoughts come into my head, I say and then I don’t say anything else and Åsleik says he’ll go home to check on the lamb ribs in the steam cooker, he’s never overcooked the lamb ribs before but still you need to pay attention, he remembers that his mother used to stand there the whole time and check to see that there was still water in the pan, yes, actually she was most likely really doing it to enjoy the good smell of the lamb ribs, that was the main reason, Åsleik says, but anyway he shouldn�
��t stand here chit-chatting, he’ll just leave me alone now

  We’ll talk tonight then, I say

  And I’m looking forward to the meal, Åsleik says

  Yes, we’ll talk later, I say

  Around seven o’clock, he says

  and then Åsleik says that he’ll leave the mutton leg on the kitchen table and I can hang it up myself and he stays standing there and I’m sitting on the bench and I look at the round table with the two chairs, there was one for Ales and one for me, and Ales’s chair is still there and I look at her empty chair, and now surely Ales will come soon? I think, yes, I always think that, and then with her chair standing there empty like always, and I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it either, it was like I would be desecrating Ales’s memory in a way if I did that, and that was something I didn’t want, yes, that’s what I would have been doing if I did that, but constantly thinking that Ales had to be back soon now, seeing the empty chair and thinking that Ales was still alive and about to come home, no, being like that was no good either, I think, but the chair is still there, and one day when Åsleik was over and I was sitting in my chair he sat down in the empty chair next to me and I was suddenly shocked and afraid, yes, it was like I was suddenly jealous and I told Åsleik he had to get up

  Get up, I said

  and he stood up right away and he looked at me taken aback

  I didn’t know, he said

  and I felt ashamed of myself

  Sorry, I said

  I didn’t know, he said again

  No of course, I say

  But that’s Ales’s chair, I say

  and then it was quiet for a long time and then Åsleik asked if maybe it was a bad idea to have the chair always there, the chair where Ales used to sit, he said and I said no, no, it’s not bad, but I didn’t want anyone else to sit there, because it was like desecrating Ales’s memory, I said and Åsleik said that when Ales was alive he used to sit in that chair all the time and I sat in the other chair and we’d sit there and look out at the water and I said that’s how it was but that was when Ales was alive and was either in the room with us or was somewhere else in the house, but now, now that she’s gone, yes, now it’s only her chair, even I never sit in it, I said and then Åsleik asked didn’t I want to get rid of the chair, maybe move it into The Parlour? he said and I said I wanted the empty chair to stay where it is now and Åsleik again said sorry

  I didn’t know that’s how it was, he said

  No, how could you, I said

  No, he said

  and I stand up from the bench and I go and sit down in my chair next to the round table and I look at Åsleik and I say that I often sit and look out at the water, yes, either I’m standing and painting or I’m lying on the bench or I’m sitting in my chair looking out at the water, the sea, out across the Sygne Sea, yes, I say, and I’ve probably told him that I have a fixed landmark, I say and Åsleik shakes his head and I say that I always look at the same spot in the water, at my landmark, I say and Åsleik says he needs to get home and then he says we’ll talk later and then he says that he’ll leave the mutton leg on the kitchen table and I see Åsleik go out to the kitchen and shut the kitchen door behind him and I think that the sea is always there to be seen, yes, I can see all the way out to the mouth of the fjord and the open sea, yes, I see the Sygne Sea and the islets and reefs out there, the holms and skerries, and the islands protecting the mouth of the fjord, and then I see the spaces between the islands where it opens out and you can see the ocean itself, yes, even if it’s dark or snowing hard or a heavy rain or there’s a fog I can see the water, the waves, the ocean, and it’s impossible to understand, actually, I think as I sit there in the chair at the round table and I take my bearings and I look at the spot I always look at in the water and I see Asle standing in the hall outside the classroom waiting for The Teacher who teaches English and French and he sees The Teacher come walking up to him and he’s wearing his grey trousers and white pullover with blue stripes again today and he’s carrying some books and when he gets to Asle he says why aren’t you going into class?

  But, Asle says

  Yes, The Teacher says

  I, you know, Asle says

  Yes, The Teacher says

  Yes I, Asle says

  Yes I, I, I’m too scared to read aloud, he says

  Scared to read aloud? The Teacher says

  and it’s like he can’t believe what he’s hearing

  Yes, Asle says

  and The Teacher looks at him and Asle can tell that he doesn’t believe what he’s saying and Asle says he wants to ask him if he could not read out loud in class and The Teacher looks at him and then he says that he often has some student or a row of students recite something, as he’s noticed already, so it would be a bit strange if he didn’t read too, he says and Asle can tell that The Teacher doesn’t believe him and then The Teacher says that he’ll try to take this into consideration so Asle won’t have to read so much, maybe just one or two sentences, but it is important that he practise his pronunciation, The Teacher says and then he asks if Asle would prefer that he ask him questions? to hear whether or not he’s done his homework, his reading? and Asle says that would be great and there’s something like mockery in The Teacher’s voice and then Asle says that that was all he wanted to say and The Teacher says they should go in then, today in any case he won’t have to read anything out loud, because he’d heard him stumbling and skipping words last time, but his pronunciation is good, yes, his English is good, so he’ll be able to learn to speak English well, and they’ll see how it goes with French but anyway they need to go into the classroom now, The Teacher says and Asle goes in and he has his brown leather shoulder bag on and he goes over to his desk in the very back of the classroom near the middle and I look at the water, there at my landmark, at the waves, and I get up from the chair and I go out to the kitchen and there on the kitchen table I see a big leg of mutton, yes, Åsleik is generous, I think, he likes to give people things, and plus he’s so proud of the food he’s prepared, the Christmas lamb ribs, the lutefisk, I think, but it is rather sudden being invited over for a lamb-rib dinner tonight, because strictly speaking I don’t feel like eating any food, I have absolutely no appetite for anything, but it’ll still taste good anyway, I think and then I take the new leg of lamb and it’s heavy in my hand and I put it back down on the kitchen table and then I take the lamb bone off the hook on the wall where it’s hanging, and it’s almost just bone now, and I put it on the kitchen table and then hang the new leg up and I look at the old leg of lamb on the table and I think that I am hungry, but I’m not in the mood for any food today and I think that later I’ll cut it up into pieces and then boil it with potato dumplings, but I won’t do that for a while, so I should just stick this leg of lamb in the freezer I have in the hall, I think, and then I’ll cut it up into pieces later, I think and I go out into the hall and I see the telephone sitting there and it doesn’t ring very often, it sometimes happens that Asle calls, and now I need to call The Hospital and ask how he’s doing, and whether I can see him, I think, but that can wait a little, I think, and it sometimes happens every now and then that Beyer calls me, and then there’s Åsleik sometimes, usually to ask me if I can buy him something he needs the next time I’m in Bjørgvin, and that’s why I keep a notepad and pencil next to the phone on its table there in the hall, that’s where I write down what Åsleik’s asking me to buy, or when the appointment is if Beyer and I are arranging to see each other, and sometimes every now and then I call Asle too, and then we usually set a time to meet at The Alehouse and then I always call The Country Inn to book my regular room, Room 407, and then Asle and I meet at The Alehouse and have a big dinner, and he has a lot of beer and stronger stuff with it, I used to drink with him before and quite a lot too but that was before Ales and I moved to the brown house, yes, you’d have to say that strictly speaking we moved out of Bjørgvin to the brown house to get away because I was drinking too much, to tell the truth, f
or a while it was almost nothing but drinking and no painting, and Ales thought I had to stop drinking, and she was completely right, and strangely enough I was able to totally stop drinking, I think, but I don’t want to think about that anymore, I think, and first I stopped smoking, because I smoked all the time, lighting each cigarette with the end of the other so to speak, and then one day it felt like I had smoked as much as I was meant to smoke, and I stopped, first smoking, then drinking, and after a while I hardly ever went to restaurants or bars, just to cafés, aside from meeting Asle at The Alehouse every now and then, at The Last Boat, that’s how it was, I think and when we met there Asle’s always had a little to drink beforehand, and when I see that I start getting a little anxious and I say that it’s night for me, I go to bed early, I always turn in at around nine o’clock, I would say and then Asle says he’ll stay for a while at The Alehouse, because someone needs to man The Last Boat, he says and he laughs and I say yes we’ve drunk a lot together over the years you and me and Asle says yes we sure have but that was before I moved out of Bjørgvin and before Ales got me to stop drinking, because it was she who got me to stop, wasn’t it? yes, he was sure it was, just as I’d said, because after Ales and I left Bjørgvin it wasn’t like we never drank together again, we still met at The Alehouse sometimes, but then I would only drink coffee or water, or else we’d sometimes meet at The Coffeehouse instead, that was usually in the mornings before I went to mass at St Paul’s Church, I think, and I think that I need to call The Hospital to hear how Asle is doing, and check if I can come and see him? or if I can bring him something from his apartment anyway, if I can maybe buy him something he might need? I think and no sooner did I think that than Bragi is standing there next to me looking up at me with his dog’s eyes and I ask if he wants to go outside and I go and open the front door and Bragi runs out as fast as he can and I leave the door open and I think I need to call The Hospital, because even if I can’t see Asle maybe I can bring him something from his apartment? books, maybe? because he was always reading some book or another, and I can give the books or whatever to the woman at the reception desk and then she or someone else can pass them along to Asle, I think, because while I don’t read much and am only now thinking seriously about starting to read, Asle has read constantly, yes, it’s almost impossible to truly believe how much he’s read, or how much he’s drunk, for that matter, yes I need to call The Hospital, I think, but not just now, I’m too tired, and anyway I can’t drive back to Bjørgvin today so I can call in the morning, because then I can maybe drive back to Bjørgvin to see Asle, that’s certainly possible, I think and I feel tired and I step into the cut-off boots I keep by the front door and I go outside and I see snowflakes coming gently down one after another, so now it’s already started snowing again, snow one day and rain the next, like always, I think and I see Bragi standing there and doing his business and then running around in circles while the snowflakes come gently down over him and stick to his fur and then I call for Bragi and he comes running over right away and he runs into the hall and I shut the door and I think that I should have painted a little, and right away something like a darkness falls down over and inside me and I think that I don’t have the strength to paint anymore, I’ve done my part, I’ve done all the painting I’m going to do, I’m done with painting, I don’t want to paint anymore, I think, enough is enough, I think and I go into the main room and over there on the easel I see the bad painting with the two lines that cross in the middle, no, I can’t look at it, I can’t even take the picture down from the easel and put it in the pile with the other paintings I’m not totally done with yet, that I’m not totally satisfied with, I just can’t, I think and I look at the easel and I think that when I look at the easel now, isn’t it like, the thought comes into my head, isn’t it like God is there too, in the easel? like, yes, like God is looking out at me from the easel? I think, and now I just have to not go crazy, I think, because it’s like God is looking at me from every single thing, I think and I look around and it’s like God is in everything around me, I think, and like he’s looking at me from every single thing, I think and I think isn’t the round table clearly saying with its silence that God is nearby? and the two chairs? and the one Ales always sat in, especially clearly, God is so clearly looking at me from that chair, I think, and I think that it’s when I’m most alone, in my darkness, my loneliness, because it really is lonely, to tell the truth, and when I’m as quiet as I can be, that God is closest, in his distance, and I really have, almost like a monk, I think, and then I start laughing because you can hardly imagine anyone less like a monk than me, I think, or maybe well maybe there is a similarity, because maybe I’ve withdrawn from life too, a little like a monk, I think, into this wordless painting, yes, into loneliness, I could probably put it that way except it sounds so wrong, I think, but I really have withdrawn into the wordless prayer of painting, maybe it’s all right to put it that way, and it does sound wrong, I think, and it’s also the peace painting gives, I’ve also withdrawn into that, I think, but this is the wrong word, it’s too big a word, the truth is just that I stood there and painted, day in and day out, all these years, with all the humility I have in me I stood there and painted, and I probably need to keep standing there painting because what else can I do, really? but I don’t want to paint anymore, I think, and if I don’t want to paint anymore I don’t have to, I think and then I think that God has been staying hidden this whole time, yes, it’s like he shows himself by concealing himself, in life, in things, in what is, yes, in paintings too of course, and maybe it’s like the more God conceals himself the more he shows himself, and vice versa, yes, the more he shows himself, or is shown, you can say it either way, the more he conceals himself, I think, yes, God reveals himself by hiding, and it is in the hiddenness of God, God’s hiddenness, that I can forget myself and hide myself, and only there, I think, and this is not something I can understand, there’s nothing comprehensible about it, but it’s when you understand that you can’t understand God that you understand him, and isn’t that so obvious that it doesn’t even need to be said? doesn’t need to be thought? yes, it’s just as obvious as the fact that God’s words are silent, I think, because they are, but that’s completely obvious too, because God’s language speaks silently from everything that exists, and this silence was first broken when The Word came into the world, when Christ came down to earth, only then could God’s word be heard, yes, and be thought, too, but do I really believe this? I think, does it mean anything? I think, no, maybe not, but maybe a person can be hidden in Christ, in his word, and that’s because there’s hope in God’s great silence? but do I believe that? no, maybe not, not literally, but God’s nearness isn’t something I need to believe in, because the darker I am the closer God is, I think, that’s a fact, I think and it’s something I’ll always think even if I don’t get any farther with my thoughts than that, it’s only with painting that I get any farther, but, farther? what do I mean by that? I think, I’ve just now thought that I don’t want to, that I can’t, paint anymore, I think and I look at the chair where Ales used to sit and I think that this silent language from the chair is real, it’s true, it’s ridiculous but that’s what I seriously think, yes, that God’s silent language comes from the chair, yes, that God is looking at me from Ales’s chair and silently speaking to me, I think, because there’s a silence hidden in everything that is, and it’s this stillness that is the innermost part of everything real, I think, and it’s this stillness that is God’s creative silence, as Ales used to say, because God is an uncreated light, she said and I’ve experienced myself that the black darkness is God’s light, this darkness that can be both in me and around me, yes, this darkness I now feel that I am, because in the darkness is a stillness where God’s voice sounds in silence, I think and I see the chair where I always sit next to the round table and I go over to the chair and I sit down and I find my bearings and then I look at my landmark, at the waves, and I think that often when I sit like
this and look at the water I pray a silent prayer and then Ales is near me too, and my parents, and my sister Alida, and Grandmother, and Sigve, and I get very still inside, and I think that everyone has a deep longing inside them, we always always long for something and we believe that what we long for is this or that, this person or that person, this thing or that thing, but actually we’re longing for God, because the human being is a continuous prayer, a person is a prayer through his or her longing, I think and then I look at the chair next to me and I see Ales sitting there and then she starts singing softly, almost inaudibly, she sings Amazing grace How sweet the song That saved a wretch like me I once was lost But now am found Was blind but now I see and then I see Ales stand up and disappear and as she disappears I hear her singing again in an almost inaudible voice Amazing grace How sweet the song That saved a wretch like me I once was lost But now am found Was blind but now I see and I grip the edge of the table tight and then I look at Bragi standing there and looking at me with his dog’s eyes and I think that dogs understand so much but they can’t say anything about it, or else they can say it with their dog’s eyes, and in that way they’re like good art, because art can’t say anything either, not really, it can only say something else while keeping silent about what it actually wants to say, that’s what art is like and faith and dogs’ silent understanding too, it’s like they’re all the same, no now I’m getting in over my head with these thoughts, I think, because I’ve never been a thinker, and the only language I’ve so to speak mastered is the language of pictures, I think, and all my thoughts are sort of jumbled together, it’s like they don’t exist in any order but sort of all at the same time, I think and I look at Bragi and I think maybe he’s hungry or thirsty, and it’s good to think about that, I think, because I’m trying to comprehend the incomprehensible but it doesn’t work, I think and I get up and go out to the kitchen and Bragi follows me and I see that there’s no water in his bowl and I fill the bowl with water and he laps and laps at his water and then I cut a slice of bread and break it apart into pieces and put the pieces into the other dish I’ve set out for Bragi, but he just sniffs at the bread and then he slinks back off into the main room and I think that I really need to find something else for Bragi to eat soon, I think and I think that now I’ll go sit in my chair again and then I’ll pray for Asle to get better, I think and I go into the main room and I see my black velvet jacket hanging over the back of the chair where I always sit and it’s always like that, I always hang my velvet jacket over the back of the chair, I think and I think that I never got rid of Ales’s clothes, I put them in boxes nice and neatly and put the boxes up in crates in the attic room, the room where I keep my paintings, so that if Ales one day decides to rise from the dead and come walking into her old house she won’t be missing a single article of clothing or anything else of hers, because I’ve taken care of everything, yes, it really is complete madness, I think, but I couldn’t manage to give Ales’s clothes or anything else she owned to The Second-Hand Shop, it was too much, and so everything just stayed how it was when she died, it stayed that way for a long time but eventually I gathered her clothes up and put them in boxes and stored them up in the attic and one of these days I need to get hold of myself and come to my senses and drive the boxes of clothes to Bjørgvin and give them to The Second-Hand Shop so someone else can use them, because now they’re no good to anyone, I think and I think that in one attic room there’s now the portrait I painted of Ales out, leaned against the back of a chair, because that’s one of the pictures I didn’t want to sell, and that I’ll never sell, that is the only picture I will never sell, all the other pictures I’d be happy to sell, as I’m now thinking I’m going to do, but I want to keep the portrait of Ales, and that’s so obvious it doesn’t even need to be said, I think and when I thought I’d sell all the pictures it was so unthinkable that I’d sell the portrait of Ales that I didn’t even think that I wouldn’t sell it, I think, and her portrait has been leaning against the back of a chair between the two small windows for such a long time now, I think, several years at least, I think and I stand in the main room and I look at the empty chair where Ales always sat and I think that either I need to get rid of the empty chair or else let Åsleik sit in it, or anyone else who comes over for a visit, but who would that be? I can’t remember having anyone else come visit except Åsleik in all these years, just him, no one else, I think, but I just don’t want Åsleik to sit in that chair, or anyone else for that matter, so that means the chair is going to just stay there empty, I think, so maybe I should ask Åsleik if he wants to carry the chair into The Parlour? where all of Ales’s paintings still are the way they were, where everything is still the way she left it the day she went to The Hospital never to return, I think, and so should I ask Åsleik to put the chair in front of the window there, I think, but no, how can I even think that, of course Ales’s chair has to stay where it’s always been, how can I even think otherwise, I think and I go and sit down in my chair and I look at the spot out there in the Sygne Sea that I always look at and I look at the waves and I see Asle sitting on the bus from Aga to Stranda and he’s thinking that actually it’s going pretty well at The Academic High School, because even if he put it off much longer than he should have he did eventually talk to The Teacher who taught Norwegian and History, the homeroom teacher, and to The Teacher who taught German, and they’d understood right away what reading out loud was like for him and they’d both said that they wouldn’t ask him to read out loud, but, they’d both said, if he did feel able to read something should raise his hand or give a sign in some other way that he felt able to do it and then they could ask him to read, but if he didn’t they wouldn’t, they’d said and Asle was so grateful to them for understanding him, and they’d both said that they’d had no problem understanding it, and then Asle thought that people sure were different, because these two teachers had understood how he felt while The Teacher he had in English and French hadn’t believed him, he’d thought Asle was trying to trick him, that Asle wanted to get out of doing work or something, that he didn’t want to do what he was supposed to, while these two other teachers had understood at once the fear that was torturing him, so there was a big difference between people, he’d learned that then and there, Asle thinks, and then he thinks that every day after he finished at The Academic High School he went to see Grandmother at The Hospital, and even if she couldn’t talk anymore, even if the only words she’d been able to say for a long time were gone now, they were still together in a way, he and Grandmother, and there was life in her eyes, and she could laugh if he said something funny, he thinks, but these last few days she’d changed, she’d turned kind of bluish over her whole face but especially on her lips, her lips had been a bit blue for a long time but now the blue was stronger, whiter and stronger, Grandmother had turned so white, and when he went to see her today her face was almost grey, Asle thinks, sitting there in the bus going to Stranda because he’s out of white oil paint and he needs some, because he can’t paint without white, he thinks, even if painting if you look at it in a certain way is the art of colour there’s no way he can paint without also using a lot of white, and that’s obvious enough, it’s pretty straightforward, but he also needs to use a lot of black since you often need black to get a picture into harmony, and everything needs to be right in a painting, everything needs to go together, there needs to be a very precise balance in the picture, and to get that balance black can be really useful, Asle thinks and I sit at the round table and now I can feel so clearly that Ales is sitting in the chair next to mine, and she puts her hand over my hand and then we hold each other’s hand and stay sitting like that, holding each other’s hand, and neither of us says anything and I see Asle sitting on the bus to Stranda and he’s thinking that when he gets there he’ll go straight to The Paint Shop and buy a big tube of white oil paint and then he’ll take the same bus back to Aga that he came on, because the bus goes back to Aga fifteen minutes after it arrives in Stranda, Asle
thinks and the bus stops in Stranda and Asle gets out of the bus and then he goes straight to The Paint Shop, because he has hardly any time, since the bus is heading back to Aga in fifteen minutes and he wanted to catch the bus, Asle thinks, because he’s in the middle of a picture, and if he wants to do more on it he needs to get hold of some white oil paint, Asle thinks and he goes into The Paint Shop and who should he see standing in front of the tubes of oil paint but The Namesake, his long brown hair, the black velvet jacket, the brown leather shoulder bag, the scarf around his neck, and Asle thinks that of course they’re dressed the same today too, and of course he should go up to The Namesake and of course now he’ll have to talk to him, and wasn’t once enough? Asle thinks, but he needs his white oil paint and he’s going to get it so he doesn’t leave The Paint Shop, he doesn’t have time to leave and come back to The Paint Shop after The Namesake has left, Asle thinks, he needs to just pick up a big tube of white oil paint right now and then go back home to his rented room so that he can keep working on the painting he’s in the middle of, Asle thinks and he walks straight to the shelf where the tubes of oil paint are and The Namesake looks at him