by Jon Fosse
Maybe I can come for Christmas with you and Sister this year, I say
and I look at Åsleik and there’s silence for a moment
You think you might come to Sister’s for Christmas? Åsleik says
and it’s like he can’t believe his ears
Yes, maybe, I say
That’s a surprise, Åsleik says
Well there are a lot of paintings Sister has that I’d like to see again, I say
Yes I suppose there are, Åsleik says
and we stand there silently
I’m having a new show at The Beyer Gallery soon, I say
Yes, Åsleik says
But I have enough pictures, more than enough, of the big ones too, so you should take whichever one you want to give Sister today, I say
Since I need to drive the paintings down to Bjørgvin soon, I say
Is that why you didn’t take them with you when you kept driving to Bjørgvin, because I still had to pick out a picture? Åsleik says
and I say maybe, yes, maybe that’s part of the reason, but it was probably mostly that I wasn’t paying attention to the date and I realized only recently that the show is coming up soon
So it’s fine if you pick out a picture today, I say
Thanks, Åsleik says
I just realized, I say
Realized what? Åsleik says
That I have a show soon, I say
So I need to drive the paintings down to Bjørgvin in the next few days, I say
and I think that then I can also check on Asle in The Hospital, because there’s no way I’ll be able to visit him today, but maybe I can tomorrow? or the day after? I think and I say yes I’ll probably drive down as soon as tomorrow, or the day after, down to Bjørgvin with the picture, even if that means a lot of driving, I don’t think I’ve ever driven to Bjørgvin so many times so close together before, I say
You could have taken the pictures with you yesterday, Åsleik says
Yes, I say
But you didn’t think of it? he says
No, to tell you the truth I didn’t, I say
and there’s silence
Because I could have chosen the painting I want yesterday, or a few days ago, Åsleik says
Yes, I say
You’ve probably never driven to Bjørgvin twice in the same day before, you’re right, he says
No, I say
and we stand there not saying anything
You usually never drive to Bjørgvin to go shopping more than once a month, do you? Åsleik says
and I say he’s probably right, anyway it’s no more than that, I say
And then you do go almost every Sunday, papist that you are, to mass at St Paul Church, he says
and I nod and I think will he never stop using that word? it’s like with St Andrew’s Cross, it’s like he’s proud that he can say this word too, can say papist, I think
It takes you all day, he says
Yes I often do, I say
No, I really don’t understand you, Åsleik says
Plus you’re practically a Communist, he says
No, I don’t get it, Åsleik says
A Catholic and a Communist at the same time, he says
and Åsleik shakes his head and then we just stand there and then I say that Christmas is coming up soon and I need to drive the pictures down to Bjørgvin this year same as every year, because every year I have an exhibition at The Beyer Gallery before Christmas, as he knows of course, I say
During Advent, yes, he says
But you should pick out a painting first, I say
and then I say that it’s good he wants to do it today
I’ll pick out a painting today and just take it with me, Åsleik says
and I realize that I’m kind of hungry, after all I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast at The Country Inn this morning, and I didn’t eat much then either, I think, but I don’t feel like cooking a big meal, I’m too tired, but I can always fry an egg with some bacon and onions, I have good fresh bread, yesterday I bought bacon and onions I can fry up, and I ask Åsleik if he’d like some fried eggs with bacon and onions and he says he wouldn’t say no to that, it sounds delicious, Åsleik says, and I see him looking at one of the big paintings and then Åsleik says he’ll just look at the pictures a little more so maybe he can choose one while I’m frying the bacon and eggs and onions and I say that’s fine and I see that there’s a good fire in the stove and then I put a log in the stove and I shut the hatch and then I go out to the kitchen and I see all the shopping bags on the kitchen table, yes, I didn’t even unpack what I bought before I drove back to Bjørgvin yesterday, I think, and now, yes, now I’ll unpack them and put all the food away because there’s eggs and bacon and onions and bread somewhere in one of the bags, I bought a lot of bacon, and lots of bread, and I need to wrap them in plastic bags and put them in the freezer out in the hall, because there are two main rooms in the house, and the one next to the kitchen is where I paint, and where I read, it’s where I spend my time, and then there’s a little room off the side of the main room with a double bed where I sleep, and that was where Ales and I slept too in the years we shared, the years we were together, and then there’s the hall, and off the hall there’s one more room, yes, The Parlour as old Alise used to call it, and that’s what Ales always called it too and so that’s what I still call it, The Parlour, because the room was thought to be especially nice somehow, it had the ugliest wallpaper I’ve ever seen, yes, red and white roses twined together from floor to ceiling, and old Alise was so proud of the room that she practically never used it, and the first thing Ales and I did when we moved into the house was paint over the wallpaper, we painted the room white, but other than that we didn’t change too much in the house, I think, we took it over just the way it was, plates and bowls, knives and forks, I think, but we did paint The Parlour white over that wallpaper with roses on it and after a while it was there, in The Parlour, that Ales painted her paintings, and it comes back to me that it was then, while we were painting The Parlour, that I stopped smoking, yes, Ales thought that when we were moving to Dylgja was a good opportunity to stop smoking, the same way I’d stopped drinking when we moved into the brown house, yes, she said, and that’s what I did, yes, I stopped smoking and started taking snuff and even though Ales didn’t exactly love that I took snuff she accepted it, I who had smoked almost constantly, rolling a cigarette and lighting it while I was still smoking the last one, I had stopped, but I did start taking snuff at the same time, and now why am I starting to think about that? I think, and I think that at first after Ales was gone, after she’d gone to her rest with God, I’d left everything how it was, but it was too sad to keep the room the way she’d left it so after a while I moved the tubes of oil paint and brushes and such out of The Parlour, yes, everything she’d used for her painting I took and used myself, except what she’d used to paint icons, because in the last few years she’d painted nothing but icons, and everything that had to do with icon painting was still where it was when she’d died, on the big bookshelf I made myself to cover the whole long wall there are her books, but also my books, and I’ve put the ones I’ve bought more recently on the bookshelf there in The Parlour too, it’s turned into a real library, not least because of the many books Ales bought about icons and icon painting, and when Ales was gone I hung all her icons up in The Parlour, including the ones that weren’t totally finished, and then I hung up the few paintings she’d left behind, because she’d painted over almost all her paintings with white and some of the best paintings I ever managed to paint were on canvases where Ales had painted over her own pictures in white, I think and I think I can’t just keep standing here like this not doing anything and so I go over to the kitchen table and I start to unpack a bag of groceries, I put the groceries on the table and I take the groceries out of all the other bags and then the table is covered with all kinds of things, meat, bacon, potatoes and vegetables, butter and margarine, flour, soap and shampoo a
nd I don’t know what else, and then the two bags I got from Åsleik are left, one with lamb ribs and one with lutefisk, and I think I’ll carry them out right now to the pantry under the stairs up to the attic, and I take the bags and leave the kitchen and I put them in the pantry and I think now I need to get everything that needs freezing into the freezer, I think, I have a large freezer in the hall, yes, so big that when I bought it and had it delivered it barely fit through the front door, because I wanted a big freezer since I can sometimes go quite a while between shopping trips, and since I really go shopping only when I go to Bjørgvin, because I don’t like spending money, I think, and I think another reason it’s good to have a big freezer is that I can get more fish from Åsleik now, I don’t only get lamb ribs and lutefisk from him, no, I get dried fish and smoked herring and dry-cured herring and fresh cod and I don’t know what else, I think, and now I need to fit all the food into the freezer, I think and then after that I need to make some fried eggs and bacon and onions, I think and I go into the kitchen and I put the bread and the packages of pork cutlets and the ground beef and frozen vegetables into two bags and the frozen things have thawed but I’m sure they’ll be all right to eat even if they’ve thawed once, I obviously should have put them in the freezer yesterday, and I can’t believe I was so forgetful that I didn’t, I think and I go out into the hall and I hear Åsleik call what are you doing? and I say I just need to get the groceries into the freezer and I hear him answer yes it’s certainly time you did that, if I was in such a hurry to get back to Bjørgvin that I didn’t even unpack the groceries and put them in the freezer, no, I’m really something, I hear Åsleik say, and I put the two bags in the freezer and I think I should have put the groceries in the freezer properly, item by item, because I keep the freezer neat and organized, everything in its proper place, in the freezer like everywhere else, and what Åsleik calls the mess on the table in the main room is actually very organized, I think, but I’ll have to organize the food in the freezer some other time, because now I’m really hungry, I think and I go back into the kitchen and there’s Åsleik
Yes you sure did some shopping, he says
Yes, I say
and I know Åsleik is thinking about whether I’ve bought anything for him, because I usually do since it’s cheaper to buy things in Bjørgvin than at The Country Store in Vik, everything’s expensive there, which makes sense, The Shopkeeper has to mark it up more to make enough to live on, and there isn’t much choice there, because there aren’t that many customers in Vik or Dylgja, so I always tend to buy something for Åsleik when I go shopping in Bjørgvin, I think and I don’t want to take any money from Åsleik for the things, because he has so little money, he’s just barely getting by, I think, and when I try to give him what I’ve bought he never wants to take it at first, because he gets by just fine on his own, he doesn’t need help from anyone, he doesn’t need anything from the city, no, he doesn’t need charity, no he always says something like that and I always say yes yes I know and then I say that it’s payment for everything he’s done for me and eventually he takes the bags of groceries kind of like he doesn’t realize it, but he absolutely refuses to take any money, even if I sometimes do slip him a few kroner when I notice that he’s in bad shape, and then we both pretend that neither of us notices what we’re doing, kind of
Did you decide on a picture? I say
Yes well, Åsleik says
and then he goes back into the main room and I start putting various things into one of the bags and I go out into the hall with the bag and I put it under the hook all my scarves are hanging on and Åsleik will get it from there, I think and then I go back into the kitchen and then I start putting the fresh vegetables and other things into the big refrigerator, because I have a big refrigerator too, and both the fridge and the freezer were bought when Ales was still alive, I think and I can’t start thinking about Ales again now, I think and then I start putting the dry goods away in the cupboard in the corner and I put the cans and soup and bags of flour and sugar and salt and various bags of pepper and whatever else away and then I take the one piece of bacon I have out, I’ve put the rest in the freezer except for two pieces in the bag for Åsleik, and the egg carton and an onion and a chunk of bread, and I put it on the kitchen counter and then Åsleik comes back into the kitchen
Yes you sure did buy a lot of groceries, he says
You know I don’t really like going shopping, so I buy a lot when I do go, I say
I know, Åsleik says
and I look at the frying pan sitting on the stove where it usually is, and it’s an old stove, it was there in the kitchen when we moved in, we inherited both the range and the frying pan from old Alise, but every burner on the stove works, and the oven too, so I imagine I’ll be able to keep this range as long as I live, I think and I turn on the burner with the frying pan on it all the way and I cut a thick slice of bacon, enough to fill the whole pan, and I lay it in the pan and it starts sizzling right away and I turn down the heat and then I cut some slices of bread, two for Åsleik, two for me
You’re such a good cook, really, Åsleik says
Well now, I don’t know about that, I say
and the good smell of bacon starts filling the kitchen and I go turn the meat, because one side is all cooked, and then I get two plates and knives and forks and Åsleik says those are old plates, he remembers them from when he was a boy, from old Alise’s time, he says
That smells great, Åsleik says
and I stand by the stove, and I look at the bacon sizzling in the old pan and the pan is so heavy that Ales said it was too heavy for her, she complained about the pan constantly, and she also thought it smoked too much, so that’s why we bought a new frying pan that Ales always used while I always used the old cast-iron pan, and the one Ales used was in the pots and pans cupboard next to the stove and it’s almost like I can feel the tears coming just from thinking about the other frying pan, I put that pan way back in the back of the cupboard so that it would be hard to see, because that pan always reminds me of Ales and it hurts so much every time I see that pan, yes, tears come to my eyes, to tell the truth, but I don’t want to think about that now, about when Ales and I bought a new frying pan, that’s another thing I can go around remembering, I can remember it like it was yesterday and go around in circles remembering it, I who have such a bad memory about other things, yes, except for the store of pictures in my head, all the pictures that fill my head, yes, those I remember all the time, but other things, like when Ales and I bought a frying pan, things like that, yes, well, I remember those things too, as clearly as anyone can remember anything
Don’t forget about the bacon, Åsleik says
and I give a little start and realize right away that it’s starting to smell burnt and in one movement I take the pan off the stove and turn off the burner and I turn over the bacon and it has burned a little but there’s such a smell of burnt bacon in the kitchen that most people would think the bacon was totally burnt black but it isn’t, it’s just cooked well on one side, you might say
I came here a lot to see old Alise, Åsleik says
And she cooked for me a lot, he says
and he says that he has a feeling she used to think that they were practically starving back at their house and then he says well it’s certainly true they were in a bad way when he was growing up, but it was just him and Sister, there wasn’t a big flock of kids with mouths to feed, the way it was in a lot of families in those days, for whatever reason there was just him and Sister, yes, but, well, after his father never came back from the sea, yes, well, Åsleik says and he breaks off and I put the bacon on the two plates, and I’ll put the bacon that’s less burnt on the plate for Åsleik, I think and then I put the four slices of bread in the pan and fry them in the bacon fat a little before putting them on the plates and then I take a big onion out of the cupboard and I peel it and slice it and chop the slices into smaller pieces and then put it in the pan and then stand there stirring t
he onions and I see that they quickly turn slightly yellow, and I like onions best when they’re only lightly fried, yes, just soft and barely cooked, and then I get four eggs from the cupboard and I crack one after another against the side of the frying pan and empty them over the onions and then I stand there looking at the pan and not thinking anything and Åsleik doesn’t say anything