by Jon Fosse
You do remember that my name is Guro? she says
and she gives a little laugh and I say yes and we walk downhill and the woman named Guro says it sure came down suddenly, and so much snow, now we’re slogging through it and no one’s shovelled and no one’s ploughed a path through the snow, and what about the dog, it must be really hard for him to walk? she says, and I pick Bragi up again at once and brush the snow off him and she says I didn’t have a dog with me at Food and Drink and she asks if I had him tied up outside Food and Drink, and now is that something to ask a person? I think, and I won’t answer, why would she ask something like that? I think and then she asks me why I’ve come to Bjørgvin and I say that a friend was sick so I wanted to check up on him, and it was a good thing I drove down because he was in really bad shape, so I took him to The Clinic and they admitted him, transferred him to The Hospital in fact, I say, and she says that in that case I definitely did a good deed, she says, and I have nothing to say to that and she says so I still live in Dylgja? and I nod and she says she actually knows that already, since she knows me, she says and then she says that she can hear in my voice that I’m originally from Hardanger, yes, even if she didn’t already know I’m from Hardanger she could hear it, she says and I say yes, she’s right about that, I grew up there, in Hardanger, I say, in Barmen, on a small farm there, an orchard, I say and she says yes she knows that, I’ve told her all that, don’t I remember anything? she says, but I was probably too drunk to remember anything, one time, long ago, I told her that I was from that region, that I grew up on an orchard in Hardanger, she says and I say yes that’s true that was where I grew up, but then I lived in Bjørgvin and now I’ve lived for many years in Dylgja, I say and she says if I lived in Bjørgvin so long I should know my way around the city, and I say she’s right, she’s totally right, but it’s been many years since I lived in Bjørgvin, and when I did live here I didn’t walk around the city much, I went to The Art School, in a course of study they called Painting, but I never graduated from The Art School, I say, and she says no then I wasn’t here all that long, she says and she says that she knows all that, I’ve told her that already, I’m an artist, yes, she says and I say yes I guess I am in a way and she says that even if she wouldn’t call herself an artist she’s good with her hands, she likes doing crafts, in fact that’s what she lives on, she’s sewn countless tablecloths, big and small, and table runners, short and long, in Hardanger embroidery, she says, and she learned how to make Hardanger embroidery from her Grandmother, so she works firmly in the tradition, she says, and she makes bodices for the national folk costume too, decorative bodices, and she learned that from her Grandmother too, yes, she’s lost count of how many bodices she’s sewn, but it’s a lot, because it seems like everyone wants national folk costumes nowadays, and there can’t be many people left who still do Hardanger embroidery and decorative bodices, she says, and so she supplies The Craft Centre and that’s how she makes a living, she says, and she ended up in Bjørgvin by chance more than anything, but once she finished school she worked in a shop called Hardanger Regional Products and she worked there until it went out of business and then she just stayed on in Bjørgvin, she’d lived in other places but she’s been here for years now, yes, she’s lost count of how many, she rents an apartment not far from The Country Inn, at 5, The Lane, on the ground floor, she says, as I know perfectly well, she adds, and today she went to Food and Drink to get a glass of wine before going to a girlfriend’s house, but if she’d known winter was coming so suddenly, that the snow would come so suddenly, she would have just stayed home, she says and I think that she likes to talk and talk and I can’t take in any more, I think and I think that she wasn’t at any friend’s house, she just sat at Food and Drink drinking more red wine, because she’s very drunk, I think, but maybe she drank red wine at her girlfriend’s house? I think, and she says again that she was going to a girlfriend’s house and she thought she should have a glass of red wine before she went to her friend’s place, she says, so she went into Food and Drink, and I was tempted to drop in there too, while she was there, she says and I think yes, yes, she could have stopped in Food and Drink first and then gone to her girlfriend’s house and kept drinking red wine there, I think, yes, and whether it’s true or not she does know how to get to The Country Inn, I think and then I say I hope there’s a room free at The Country Inn, and she asks didn’t I reserve a room already and I say no, I usually do but this trip came up kind of suddenly and I say I often stay at The Country Inn and some of the people who work at the reception have been there for ages and I know them and they know me, some of them, not all, because in the past few years there’ve been a lot of new people working at the reception, it seems like people have only just started when they’re gone again, I say and she says yes, I know, there are so many hotels and other places to spend the night in Bjørgvin, and new ones keep opening up, so whatever happens I’ll be able to find a roof over my head, she says, and if for some crazy reason it’s full everywhere then I can always spend the night at her place, she says, she’d never refuse to put up someone from the country who’s in Bjørgvin and needs a roof over his head for the night, and especially someone who’s even slept in her apartment several times before, yes, in her bed even, she says and I don’t understand what she’s talking about, she must just be chattering away, I’ve supposedly slept in her bed? I think and I say thank you, thank you, thanks very much, but I don’t like intruding on people, I’m shy that way, I say, and I’d rather just stay at The Country Inn as long as there’s room there, I say and she says I can do whatever I want, but if The Country Inn is full then, yes, I can always spend the night at her apartment, because she’s even slept with me in the same bed at The Country Inn, after all, she says, yes she remembers it well, even if it was a long time ago back when I had medium-length brown hair worn loose not like my grey hair now tied back with a black hairband, she says and I don’t understand what she’s talking about and she says in this weather it’ll be a real pain to go from hotel to hotel looking for a room, even if there are lots of hotels next door to one another on The Wharf, she says and I say again that there’s usually always room for me at The Country Inn and she says yes there are rooms free there most of the time but sometimes there are various events in Bjørgvin, classes, conferences, conventions, even gatherings of fiddlers, she doesn’t know, but she does know that it might be full at The Country Inn, she says and she starts going on about a confirmation or was it a wedding or maybe a funeral or whatever it was when she tried to reserve a room at The Country Inn for some people who were coming to Bjørgvin and there were no rooms to be had at The Country Inn and I don’t answer and then we start walking uphill and before long we’ve reached The Hill, where The University is in Bjørgvin, I think, and that place, even the name, has always, well, not intimidated me but filled me with a kind of respect, yes, even awe, and I don’t know why, but a university, a place where people read and think and write day and night, and have conversations, and know all about all kinds of different subjects, yes, I’d have to say I admire a place like that, and the people who work there, I think and my Ales studied there too, she studied art history and specialized in icons, I think and when I was going to The Art School it was someone from The University in Bjørgvin who gave art history lectures, Christie was his name, a professor from The University, and those lectures might have been what I got the most out of during the years I went to The Art School, yes, more than anything else, to be told about the history of painting from the earliest times to the present, because Professor Christie talked and explained and showed slides, he had slides of drawings and paintings and sculptures from every country and every period, and he talked and talked, and it was absolutely overwhelming all the things he showed us and told us, every work of art was a masterpiece, one after another, to tell the truth, and if I hadn’t understood it before I learned then how little I myself had to work with, but not nothing, I had something too, something all my own, because
there was something in my pictures that wasn’t in any other picture I was shown, I saw that, and even if it wasn’t all that much it was something, I could do something, I knew something, I saw something that you couldn’t see in anything Professor Christie showed us, something different, with its own light in it, but was that good enough? could someone be an artist and consider himself an artist just because he had something all his own in the pictures he painted? doesn’t a person need more than that? yes, that’s how I used to think and I started doubting I could paint pictures that were worth anything, maybe I should just give it up, I was just barely what you could call an artist, I knew that, and I had something that no one else had but it was probably too little, so maybe I should just, yes, well, what else should I do? was there anything else I was good at? was there anything else I had a talent for? anything else I had a gift for, as they say? no, what would happen? and was there anything I wanted to do besides paint pictures? I thought, walking along next to this woman apparently named Guro who I’ve apparently slept with, yes, even slept with at The Country Inn, no, there’s no end to what she’s making me listen to, I think and I pet the dog’s back over and over and he’s nice and warm against my chest and then the woman who I think is named Guro says it’s not far now, we’re getting close, even if it’s slow, since it’s hard to walk in all this snow, more like trudge really, she says and I think that I gradually came to understand more and more clearly that the pictures that meant the most to me, and the artists I felt closest to, were the ones who most clearly had their own pictures, or however you’d say it, the pictures they’d paint again and again, but their pictures were never similar, no, not that, never, they were always different, but every picture resembled one another too, and they were like a picture that’s never been painted, that no one could paint, that was always invisible behind or in the picture that had been painted, and that’s why the picture that had been painted was always like the invisible picture, and this picture was in every single one of the individual paintings, I think, and for me there was never any doubt about which paintings mattered, it was oil on canvas, no more no less, nothing else, because sculpture and drawing and prints of various kinds in various techniques can be as beautiful as they want, sure, but for me only oil on canvas matters, and I truly cannot stand acrylic paint, and of course I could draw, and I drew a lot in the years when I was at The Art School, they said it was important to be able to draw, but after I was set free from The Art School, yes, I have to admit that’s how I think about it sometimes, so after I was released I rarely or never drew, in the strict sense, but now and then I do scribble a sketch, scribble down a design for a picture, even if it most often looks nothing like the picture I paint later, it’s more like it points towards it, or just suggests it, gives you an idea of it, and maybe that’s why I always keep a sketch-pad and pencil with me in the shoulderbag I always have with me, I think and I hear the woman who I think is named Guro ask me, just like everyone else, if I can live off my art, off my pictures, my paintings, and I’ve been asked this question so many times by now that I don’t want to answer it any more and I don’t understand how she, of all people, someone who makes a living sewing tablecloths and table runners in Hardanger embroidery and decorative bodices, can ask that and I just say yes well