The Other Name

by Jon Fosse

  That’s where we live, she says

  Yes, says Asle

  What about the houses? he says

  That’s where we live, Sister says

  We live in one of those houses, and Grandmother and Grandfather live in the other, she says

  I know, Asle says

  Yes yes but I just realized something, Sister says

  That we live there, in the taller house, she says

  The house we live in is called The New House, and the house Grandmother and Grandfather live in is called The Old House, Asle says

  It looks like the houses are holding hands, Sister says

  Sort of, he says

  The same way you and me are holding hands, the houses are holding hands like that, Sister says

  You’re right it does look like that, Asle says

  and then they look at the houses and there are no grown-ups in sight, neither Mother nor Father, and not Grandma or Grandpa, just the houses, both white, one old and long and the other newer and taller, and both stand out so clearly against the green, the green fields with all the fruit trees, and the green leaves on the trees, and against the black hill rising steeply up that looks so massive like a black wall behind the meadows that slope up the hillside, and then the red barn behind the white houses

  And that black hill, Sister says

  Yes, Asle says

  I think the houses are holding hands because they’re scared of that big black hill, she says

  and Asle says he’s never thought that before, but that’s exactly how it is, now he can see it too, the two houses are holding hands because they’re scared of the black hill, yes, that’s really how it is, Asle says and Sister says that the black hill is really scary, because it’s so steep, and because it’s always wet, water comes out from springs in the hillside, she says and she asks if Asle has heard of the princesses in the mountain blue, and he says yes he has

  The mountain blue, Asle says

  and Sister says that this one really ought to be called the mountain black because it’s so black and Asle says that it is more of a black mountain yes and then they turn around again and stand looking at the road and I drive north and I think why are those children there alone? why aren’t there any grown-ups with them? why isn’t anyone watching them? I think and I see the children standing by the side of the road, along a small country road, and on the other, downhill side of the road directly above The Beach, a little ways off from the children, there’s a little blue house, and a little farther down the road, a little ways past the blue house, there’s a bend in the road, around Old Mound, and cars come driving fast around that bend in the road, I think, and those two kids aren’t walking out onto the road are they? I think and I see that there’s a mud puddle in the middle of the road and then Sister lets go of Asle’s hand and runs out onto the road, into the mud puddle, and then she starts stomping her feet and the muddy water splashes up her legs, and onto her dress, and it’s a good thing they have boots on, Asle thinks, and he says she can’t do that and Sister says it’s so fun, he should come splash around too, she says and Asle says she’s getting all dirty, she mustn’t do that, what is Mother going to say? she’ll be so mad, she’ll start yelling, Asle says but Sister acts like she doesn’t hear him and just splashes away and now her dress is almost entirely muddy, almost covered in grey splotches, Asle sees and he just stands there watching and then he says she needs to stop now, it’s not just that Sister’s getting all dirty but it’s dangerous to be in the middle of the road, a car might come, cars come driving by all the time, and the person driving the car might not see Sister and as soon as he thinks that he runs out onto the road and grabs Sister’s arm and she shrieks and he drags her over to the other side of the road and she’s screaming and saying she wants to splash some more and Asle says she can’t, just look at that dress, how filthy it is, he says and Sister looks at her dress

  Yeah, she says

  and it’s like she’s about to start crying

  It was so nice, so nice and blue, she says

  And look at it now, Asle says

  and he sees Sister start crying and he says she mustn’t cry, a dress getting dirty isn’t so bad, it can be washed, and Mother won’t be that mad, and he’ll say it was his fault, he’ll say he asked her to go out into the mud puddle and then she’ll yell at him not her, he says, because Mother always yells at him anyway, whatever he says and whatever he does, he says and Sister wipes her tears away and Asle says no, he doesn’t care if he gets yelled at, not him, and he thinks that he’s showing off a bit now isn’t he, he thinks

  But my dress is all dirty, Sister says

  and she starts crying again

  Well if you’re going to be so stupid about it, Asle says

  and when he says that Sister really starts crying hard

  I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that, Asle says

  I didn’t mean it, he says

  You’re not stupid, really you’re not, you’re nice and sweet and bright and clever, he says

  and then Sister’s just sniffling a little and Asle says it’ll all work out, it’ll be fine, he says, but, he says, now she knows she shouldn’t do things like that, not with a nice dress on, he says and Sister doesn’t say anything and they just stand there and then he takes Sister’s hand and they stand there not sure what to do and Asle thinks that they are going to get yelled at, he’s going to get yelled at, Mother’s going to get really angry when she sees how Sister got her dress all dirty, and on purpose too, Asle thinks, and he’s promised Sister that he’ll say it was him who told her to do it, told her to stand in the mud and stomp and jump, he’s promised her that, yes, so now he has to keep his promise, Asle thinks, and even though he doesn’t care that much if he gets yelled at he still doesn’t exactly like it, he thinks, but anyway they shouldn’t go straight home, he thinks, maybe they can come up with some other idea

  Maybe we should go over to Old Mound, maybe the blueberries are ripe there? he says

  and Sister just stands there, still not sure, saying nothing

  Don’t you want to? Asle says

  and Sister is still just standing there and she doesn’t say anything and Asle realizes he’s getting impatient, getting bored almost, he thinks, they can’t just stay here on the side of the road like this, it’d be better to keep going to Old Mound, but if they want to do that they’ll have to cross the road again, and if they do that they’ll need to look carefully first, to make sure no cars are coming around the bend there before Old Mound, he thinks

  You don’t want to keep going to Old Mound? Asle says

  and Sister just shakes her head and Asle asks what do you want to do then and she doesn’t answer, and then he asks her if they should go to the smaller blue house, on the downhill side of the road, they’ve never done that before, and he’s often thought about how he wanted to go see that house, Asle says and Sister shakes her head again and then he asks if they should go down to The Beach, down to The Boathouse, out onto The Dock, down to look at The Rowboat, as Father so often says, well I better go down and take a look at The Rowboat, Father says, either he says I better go down and bail out The Rowboat, and Mother tells him he needs to be careful and Father says he always is, he’s always careful, he says, or else he says he’ll go out on the water for a bit and try to catch a few fish and then Mother says the same thing, that he needs to be careful, Asle thinks, and both Mother and Father have said that they, he and Sister, must never ever go down to the water alone, it’s dangerous, if they fell in the water they might drown, she said, and then she would tell them about the boy she went to school with, in the same class as her, who fell in the water, he was alone in a fishing boat and he tried to climb up out of the water and the water was cold and it’s hard to get back on board a boat out of the water, it’s almost impossible, Mother says, and he couldn’t do it, and they found the boat empty in the water, it was just floating there, and the boy, the one she’d gone to school with, they couldn’t find him any
where, until a week later, maybe even longer, some men were out in a boat and saw something floating down in the water that looked like a person and they hooked the body and pulled it on board and it was him, yes, the boy she used to go to school with, and he didn’t look too good, the men said, no, she can’t think about it, it’s too horrible, Mother says, and then they brought him back to land and then there was a funeral and she and all the other kids who went to the school were at the funeral and she remembers how sad it was, how the boy’s parents and siblings cried and cried, it was like the tears would never stop running down their faces, and the pastor had said something about God’s inscrutable ways, incomprehensible, yes, but there is meaning in everything that happens, the pastor said, and he said that God writes straight on crooked lines, or maybe it was the other way around, or maybe it was slanted lines, she can’t remember exactly but she remembers it, Mother says, and she couldn’t understand what meaning it could possibly have for a boy to get drowned, and the pastor said that too, that it was impossible to understand, it lay beyond human comprehension, he said, but even if he couldn’t understand what the meaning was and no one else could either it still had meaning, that was certain, the pastor said, Mother said, because ever since Jesus Christ, who was God, part of the Trinity of God, had died and risen up again, yes, ever since God had become human and lived as people are fated to live, birth and then life and then death, ever since then death has been turned into life for us, the pastor had said, for all humankind, yes, for those who lived before Christ and those who lived at the same time as him and those who lived after him, death, yes, death had been turned into life, into eternity, the pastor had said, Mother said, and now the boy was with God, yes, he had come home, come home to where he had set out from, the pastor had said, and God had been with him when he drowned, and had taken as good care of him as he could, he was certain of that, the pastor had said, and Mother said she couldn’t understand how that was any consolation because the boy was gone, he would never come back home, he was gone forever now, the sea had taken him, taken his life, and his body had been laid in the ground, Mother said, so they never, Mother said, they must never ever ever go down to the water, The Beach, The Fjord, alone, Mother said, only when she or Father or another grown-up was with them, only then could they go down to The Beach, to The Fjord, and they must absolutely never go out onto The Dock, because out past The Dock the water was very deep, she said, so they must never, never go out onto The Dock, she said and Asle stands there holding Sister’s hand and he thinks that now they’ll go down onto The Beach, yes, then they’ll be able to wash all the dirt off Sister’s dress, so it’ll be clean and nice again, and then, once they’d washed her dress, yes, Mother couldn’t be mad at them, she’d have to be happy, yes, because she wouldn’t have to wash the dress herself if they’d already done it, Asle thinks, and plus there’s probably nowhere he likes being more than down by the water, there’s so much to see there, little crabs scuttling around between the stones on the beach, and there’s seaweed, with bubbles you can squeeze or step on and then they crack, and tiny little fish swimming back and forth near the land, and then there are all the seashells, blue and white, some almost yellow, and it’s so nice to sit on the rocks and just look at the water, at The Dock, at The Rowboat floating there nice and brown, moored with a buoy and floating on the water, and then there are all sorts of things that can wash up on The Beach, branches, broken oars, buoys, yes, maybe there’ll even be a message, a scrap of paper in a bottle with something written on it, but he’s never found a message in a bottle, not yet, even when he walked slowly along The Beach, he’s walked all the way in to The Dairy and back again and seen so many things lying on The Beach but never a message in a bottle, although he’s seen lots of bottles washed ashore, that’s normal, so now if they walk slowly along The Beach in towards The Dairy they’ll definitely find a bottle somewhere or other, and anyway down below The Bakery there’s a huge pile of bottles, there must be hundreds, but that, he knows, is because they drink, both The Baker and his wife, The Baker’s Wife, they live there and after they’ve drunk a whole bottle they take it down to The Beach and put it in a pile, not quite on The Beach, but the hill down from The Bakery goes down to The Beach, yes, it’s really unbelievable how many bottles there are there, Asle thinks, and he’s often found bottles on The Beach, and he always finds driftwood, and twice he’s found balls on The Beach and he still has them both, there was hardly any air in either one but then Father inflated them so they were good to use, and they’ve played with those balls a lot, him and Sister, Asle thinks, and he’s gone down to The Beach so many times, even though Mother said he’s not allowed to, but Father never said that, and of course that’s because he went to The Beach so much when he was little, when he was a boy like Asle is now, yes, because Father has always lived on the farm where they live now, he was born in the long white old house where Grandmother and Grandfather live, and Grandmother is Father’s mother, and Grandfather is his father, yes, Father was born in that house and he’s lived there ever since, and maybe he will too, Asle thinks, or maybe he won’t, there are so many other places a person can live, he knows that because Mother was born in a town called Haugaland and grew up on the island there, Hisøy, and he’s visited there lots of times, and he was born in the hospital in Haugaland, so that, yes, that’s somewhere he could live too, he thinks, there or lots of other places, they don’t need to live on the farm where they live now, the way Father always has

  What should we do now? Sister says

  It’s so boring just standing here, she says

  We need to think of something to do, she says

  Maybe we can finally go to the blue house? Asle says

  I’ve always wanted to go there but I’ve never done it, he says

  But what if the people who live there come outside, I’m so dirty, my dress is all dirty, Sister says

  and Asle says that her dress isn’t totally clean but it’s not that bad, they should just go over to the house, and no one will see them, or see that her dress is dirty, he says, and since she was stupid enough to go splash around in a mud puddle then of course her dress’ll be dirty, even she must understand that, he says, but maybe they can go to the blue house anyway, Asle says and then Sister says well all right and they go down the side of the road and when they get to the blue house they stop and stand there looking down at the house

  It’s a nice old house, Asle says

  Yes, Sister says

  It’s a really pretty blue, he says

  and Sister nods

  I’m sure it wasn’t that pretty when it was new, but now it’s prettier, the rain and the wind and the snow made it pretty, Asle says

  and he says that the paint is flaking off in some places and that just makes the blue even prettier and Sister says she can’t see it, that the colour is prettier, but she does see that the house is blue anyway, she says

  You know the names of the colours? Asle says

  Yes, Sister says

  Because there aren’t so many, he says

  There are lots more colours than there are names for, or at least that I know any names for, he says

  Yes, you’re right, Sister says

  Yellow, blue, white, Asle says

  Red, brown, black, she says

  And purple, he says

  Yeah and a lot more, Sister says

  and Asle says that’s right, the colour of the blue house is totally different from the blue of the sky or the blue of the water or the blue of her dress, he says, she can just look

  Yes, look how different the house blue is from your dress’s blue, he says

  and he says that colours are never exactly the same as one another and plus they’re always changing, it has to do with the light, he says, so it’s impossible to have names for all the colours there are, there’d be so many names that no one could ever learn them all, he says and Sister says still, blue is blue, she says, and yellow is yellow, she says

  Yes, yes, you
’re right, Asle says

  Of course that’s right, he says

  and then they stand there, holding hands, and Sister says that they’ve done something they’re not allowed to do, hasn’t Mother said over and over that they mustn’t walk down the country road, she says, and Asle says yes well and he says if they listened to everything Mother says then they’d never be able to do anything at all practically, he says and then they just stand there and then they see the front door of the blue house open and someone comes out and it’s a man and he has a big belly and a hat on and he turns around and shuts the door and then he walks on the gravel path to the road and there’s a crunching sound when he walks and Sister whispers they need to leave, her dress is so dirty, she says and the man looks at them and stops and bends down

  Well now, look who we have here, he says

  What a long journey you two have been on, he says

  You’ve walked all the way to The Knoll, he says

  I didn’t think your mother let you go such a long way by yourselves, he says

  and both Sister and Asle look down

  But it’s nice to see you, the man says

  And now what are your names? he says

  My name’s Asle, Asle says

  And my name’s Alida, Sister says

  Asle and Alida, the man says

  My name is Gudleiv, he says

  And I knew your names already, but still I had to ask you, he says

  and then Gudleiv holds his hand out to Asle, and then Gudleiv and Asle say Asle, and then Gudleiv holds his hand out to Sister and Gudleiv and Alida say Alida, and Gudleiv says well now they’ve finally been properly introduced, the way good neighbours should be, and it’s about time, such close neighbours as they are, and now wouldn’t they like to come inside their house? because his wife, her name’s Gunvor, yes, she’d certainly like to be introduced too, actually he needs to go to The Co-op Store to buy a few things but there’s no rush, now that he and his wife have received such fine visitors the shopping can always wait, neither The Co-op Store nor the things for sale there are going anywhere, he says, so why don’t they just come inside for a bit? Gudleiv says and Sister looks at Asle and whispers in his ear that they really need to go home, Mother doesn’t know where they are, and she’s told them so many times that they’re not allowed to go down the country road, she says and Asle looks at the man, at Gudleiv