I Is Another

by Jon Fosse

  Nice to meet you, she says

  and she laughs and Asle stands up

  You too, he says

  and they hold out their hands to each other and then they stay standing and holding each other’s hand

  My name’s Asle, he says

  And my name’s Ales, she says

  No, are you joking? he says

  No, no, my name’s Ales, she says

  We have almost the same name, Asle says

  Yes, strange, she says

  Yes, Asle says

  and she says well isn’t that strange and then she asks what Asle is doing here in Bjørgvin and he says that he’s going to go look at a room, because he’s about to start at The Art School, he says and they’re still standing there holding each other’s hand and Ales says that she is too, if she gets in, because last year she went to The Academic High School, The Cathedral School, she says, but as Asle can understand she doesn’t go every day, sometimes she skips school, yes, she really and truly doesn’t want to go there, because she’s unhappy whenever she’s there, but her mother, yes, her mother Judit, that’s her name, thinks that she needs to graduate from The Academic High School, she says and Asle nods and he says that he stopped going, or is about to stop going, to The Academic High School so that he can start at The Art School and then he says that he took his paintings to The Art School and asked if he could start at The Art School even though he didn’t have an examen artium, just based on the pictures he’s painted, and that a teacher looked at them, he says, and then the teacher took the pictures to The Principal who said there was a spot for him, it’s been a long time since he’d seen such a clear talent, The Principal said, Asle says and he feels a little embarrassed and Ales says that the teacher must have been Eiliv Pedersen, because he’s the one who teaches oil painting, in the track called Painting, and then there’s another track called Drawing, and she thought she would like either track just as well so she’s going to apply for both, she says and Asle says that he’s moving to Bjørgvin soon, yes, as soon as he finds a room to rent, he says and Ales says she understands exactly how he doesn’t want to stay at The Academic High School any longer, she doesn’t either, but now she’ll be done in the spring, and even if she has bad marks in almost every subject she thinks that maybe her drawings and paintings aren’t the worst in the world, or anyway they might be good enough for her to get into The Art School as long as she’s finished at The Academic High School and taken her examen artium, she says, but it probably won’t be as easy as it was for him, she’ll still have to go through the usual admissions process, and maybe she’ll get accepted and maybe she won’t, she says and Asle asks how the process works and Ales says that first you have to spend two days drawing from a live model, and he probably knows the difference between a nude and a sketch? she asks, and Asle shakes his head and says he hasn’t heard of that and Ales says that when you draw a nude you draw a whole body and the model has to sit in the same position for a long time, taking breaks every once in a while, but when you make a sketch the model holds their pose for a very short time, maybe ten or twenty seconds, and you have to make a drawing in that amount of time, yes, that’s kind of the most important thing, finishing, Ales says, and you draw with pencil or charcoal, yes, that’s the admissions test, but she isn’t so good at drawing, she just thinks it’ll go better if she draws in charcoal, and erases with a kneaded eraser, because that doesn’t just erase the charcoal it kind of spreads it around a little too, and she thinks that that can make a more or less bad drawing at least a little better