by Jon Fosse
SUCH VISITORS
There’s ice cream and soft drinks on the table, his sister is standing next to the table eating ice cream, and he is sitting on the sofa eating ice cream. The big man brought them some ice cream and soft drinks and now he’s sitting in a chair on the other side of the table. He says Isn’t it nice to have visitors. And his wife says Yes, it certainly is, it’s very nice. And of course such special visitors need some ice cream and soft drinks the big man says. Yes, of course, his wife says and then she asks the big man if their mother, named Anna, is coming, Is Anna coming? the woman asks and the big man says Yes, she’s coming right now, she was just making dinner and didn’t even realize they’d gone for a walk and were gone, he says. His sister pinches his arm and looks up at him and says she wants her Mamma. The big man says Mamma’s coming now, she’s coming to fetch you, the big man says and his sister nods several times, frantically, and then she looks up at him, at her brother, and says Mamma’s coming now.
HAND ON HIS BELLY
He is lying in bed and he feels so sad because when he and his sister tried to go down to the water today they met the big man who took them into his house and there they were given ice cream and soft drinks and their mother came and got them and their mother was sweet and nice as long as she was in their living room but when they were back home she said that they weren’t allowed to ever just wander off like that again, it’s dangerous, there are cars on the street, bad cars, they must never ever do that again and the whole time their mother was mad at them she didn’t once look at him or his sister and then she said they had to go to bed right now, he and his sister did, as punishment, Mother said, then she asked Father didn’t he think so too and he said Oh yes, he thought so too, and now they are lying here, he and his sister, she with the doll in her arms and he all alone; and his sister’s asleep and he’s looking up into the half-dark room and he thinks about the boat and the sea and the big man with the black sunglasses and straw hat, thinks about his big belly, it was so fat that he and his sister could have both fit inside it, and probably his sister’s doll too, he thinks, and he thinks about the grass cutter, what a racket it made, and the fine blades of grass just lying on the ground behind the grass cutter, and the smell of the grass cutter, a yucky stink, the grass cutter smells yucky. Yucky smell, he says, and his sister puts a hand on his arm. He turns onto his side with his back to his sister. It smells yucky, he says, and his sister snuggles against his back and she puts a hand on his belly and he lies there and thinks, now he’s four years old, and his sister is three years old. He’s her big brother. She’s his little sister. You’re my little sister, he says. You’re my big brother, she says in her sleep.
YUCKY SMELL AGAIN
He’s standing outside the house and he sees all the long blades of grass, yesterday they were much taller than him and now they’ve been mowed down, he lay between them and looked up at the white wisps of cloud and now there’s only some stiff grass stubble and dirt and it smells yucky. And yesterday when he and his sister tried to go down to the water this big man came and they got some ice cream and soft drinks and then their mother came and they had to go straight to bed. But now it’s a new morning and his sister is standing there again, holding her doll tight. I want to go down to the water, he tells his sister. You’re not allowed to, she says. But I want to, he says.
IN THE BOAT
He got the boat’s rope off of the dock but when he tried to climb onboard it was so hard, because he had to hold the boat close to the dock and at the same time get one foot into the boat, and the waves, they weren’t big, they were only little waves, but the boat danced on the waves and then he had to put a foot into the boat and then he was standing with one foot up on the dock and the other foot down in the boat and then he leaned forwards and then he slipped and fell into the boat and that hurt and he sees that he’s cut his leg and then he is lying in the bottom of the boat and blood’s running down his leg there’s a long scratch on his leg and it hurts and he’s suddenly so scared because how is he going to get back on land again, he’s in the boat now but how will he get back out of the boat? And then this sloshing of the waves, this splashing or whatever it is, it never stops, waves hitting the boat, waves moving away from the boat, the whole time. The waves. And the blood coming out of him, running down his leg. And he sees the sun glinting on the planks of the boat. And he looks up and the sunlight is so strong that he has to squint his eyes shut. And it’s hot, because the sun is shining right on him. Then he hears an outboard motor, the sound is like a fuzzy line gouged into the glittering and through the waves, the sound is like the streaks of blood down his leg. The sound of the outboard motor hurts, the way his leg hurts. Everything hurts.
He looks at the side of the boat and there are oars there. Maybe he should row a little, he thinks, and he takes one oar and tries to lift it and the oar is heavy and he pulls as hard as he can and lifts the oar and he can put it in the oarlock and then he shoves the oar further out into the water and it lies there, bobs up and down with the boat, part of the oar is in the boat and the rest is in the water where it’s supposed to be. Now the other oar, he thinks. He lifts it up too, just like the first. He manages to push the oar into the water, where it belongs, and he pushes it further, pretty far, and now he tries to sit on the rowing seat, take both oars, and row. But the boat is still moored at the back, he has to untie it, he thinks, he goes back, finds the rope, and fiddles around with the knot, it’s just a simple knot, he’ll definitely be able to get it untied, he thinks, and he sits there working on the knot, trying to push the short end of the rope through the knot, and it’s hard, he pushes and nothing moves, he pulls at the rope as hard as he can and then pushes again and then he hears a splash and then sees that one of the oars is floating in the water and it’s bobbing up and down with the waves.
GROUNDED
His parents have locked the front door, they took his sister and now they’re all standing on the front porch outside the locked door. He has to stay inside, his mother said, because he always does bad things, goes out into the street, goes down to the boat, he could have been run over on the street, and when he climbed into the boat he could have fallen into the water and drowned, she says. He’s totally impossible, she says. He has to stay inside. Alone inside. He’s not allowed out. He has to stay inside for several days, Mother says. That’s right. You have to, she says. Don’t you think so too? she asks Father, and he nods. So now we’re going to go out and sit in the sun and you have to stay inside, Mother says, and she and Father and his sister go out and then they shut the door and lock the door and he runs to the door and grabs the handle and tugs at the door and the door is locked and it’s all messed up, he’s locked in, he’s alone, he can’t do it, he thinks, and he raises his hand, makes a fist, hammers on the door, and then raises his hand and hits the glass pane in the door as hard as he can, and it shatters and blood spurts out of his hand and he pulls his hand back inside and the blood spurts further and further, it shoots out, now he’s done something bad again, now he won’t be allowed anywhere ever again probably, he thinks, and he runs into his parents’ bedroom and the blood spurts and spurts and he crawls under his parents’ bed and lies there under the bed and the blood is still spurting and spurting out of his hand.
A NICE DOCTOR
The doctor was nice, he gave him a soft drink and talked to him calmly. The doctor was smoking cigarettes the whole time. Even while he stitched up his hand. He liked the doctor. The doctor was thin, his hair was pretty long, a little black, a little grey, and long. The doctor was an old man. He stitched his hand back together. His mother was with him. When they got back his mother wanted to give him a soft drink too and she asked if he wanted a sandwich or something else nice. He didn’t. He had no desire for anything, but since his mother had asked him and was trying to be nice to him he couldn’t say no. So OK, a soft drink. It wasn’t so easy to eat the sandwich, he only managed a little.
BATHTUB
He is s
itting in the bathtub and pushing a little boat back and forth and his sister is sitting there too and looking into the water and suddenly she slaps the water with both hands and sprays water in his face and hair and eyes. Stop, he says. But it’s fun, his sister says and she’s sad and he hears his mother say Time to wash your hair and he thinks about whether she means she’ll wash his hair or his sister’s hair; he hates getting his hair washed, the shampoo burns in his eyes. And he has to be careful his bandage doesn’t get wet, his mother says. Her first, he says, and his sister doesn’t say anything, she sits there and looks into the water and then she kicks with both legs and the water sprays everywhere and she says Heee heee.
HER BREATH
He and his sister are lying in bed and his sister’s already asleep, her hand is in his hair. He has a thick bandage on one hand, his hand hurts a little. He thinks that there’s now a piece of cardboard where there used to be a pane of glass in the front door, but his father has already said that he’ll be putting new glass in tomorrow. He looks at his sister lying there sleeping, she is breathing regularly, her breaths are her waves, he thinks. She’s three years old. He’s four. His sister’s doll is lying next to her. She’s his little sister.
ALL ALONE
His parents have guests over and his mother told him about how when he was two years old and a friend of hers, a childhood friend, was visiting she’d picked him up and held him near her chest and he’d seen the crack between her breasts and asked if she had a butt up there. Everyone laughed, they laughed and laughed. This evening when his mother told the story they laughed too, this evening the guests are the man with the fat belly and his wife, the woman who always has to support herself on the fat man’s arm. Two years old, they say. Why are they laughing? Why are the fat-bellied man and his wife laughing? It looked like a butt, it did, a blue dress and then a butt on her chest. That’s how it was. So why are they laughing. Why is his mother laughing so loud. Why are they all laughing? Why is he so alone? Why does his hand hurt so much? Now he’s four but when he said the thing about the butt that they’re all laughing at he was two. He feels his eyes get wet. He feels so alone. He puts his unhurt hand on his sister’s cheek and he feels completely, completely alone. He will never have to be totally alone, he thinks, and then he puts his head on his sister’s shoulder and she puts her arm around his belly. He is always alone, he thinks, and he listens to his sister’s breaths, in and out, like the waves, like the blades of grass out there in the wind, in and out, always in and out like the waves, all alone, like the waves.
NOTE ON THE TEXTS
In chronological order by original publication:
‘How It Started’: ‘Det var slik det byrja’ (1987); first published in English in Fiction 59 (2013).
‘And Then My Dog Will Come Back To Me’: ‘Og så kan hunden komme’ (1991), one of the two novellas published as To forteljingar [Two Stories], (1993).
‘Scenes from a Childhood’: Prosa frå ein oppvekst (1994). Fosse has provided the following note (2017): ‘In writing Scenes from a Childhood, my goal was to write about my own childhood, the way things really happened. That turned out to be impossible for me. What I wrote was similar to my own experience in some ways, but not a single one of these pieces ended up being entirely accurate. I cannot help writing fiction.
‘That said, I do, for instance, have a younger sister close to my age, and I did once have to play guitar at a local dance with only five strings on my guitar. Nothing in these stories is made up.
‘I also decided that if the book were published, the texts should appear as written, without revising or reordering the pieces or removing any of them. And that is how it was published.’
All of the above stories are collected in Fosse’s Kortare Prosa [Short Stories], (2011).
‘Little Sister’: Søster (2000), published as a children’s book.
‘Dreamt in Stone’: ‘Steindrøymt’ (2013). I translated this unpublished story for Granta, issue 131 (2015). The magazine’s editor made substantial changes, which Fosse incorporated into the Norwegian original, also changing the title to ‘Drøymt i stein’ after my translation of his earlier title (which is more literally ‘Stone-dreamed’). The Norwegian was first published in Levande Stein: Kortare prosa og ei hymne [Living Stone: Short Stories and a Hymn], (2015).
At Fosse’s request, the translation published here is of the original version of the story: it is thus different from both the translation in Granta and the story available in Norwegian.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jon Fosse was born in 1959 on the west coast of Norway and is the recipient of countless prestigious prizes, both in his native Norway and abroad. Since his 1983 fiction debut, Raudt, svart [Red, Black], Fosse has written prose, poetry, essays, short stories, children’s books, and over forty plays, with more than a thousand productions performed and translations into fifty languages. Septology, his latest prose work, will be published in three volumes by Fitzcarraldo Editions, starting in 2019.
Damion Searls is a translator from German, Norwegian, French and Dutch, and a writer in English. He has translated many classic modern writers, including Marcel Proust, Rainer Maria Rilke, Friedrich Nietzsche, Robert Walser, Ingeborg Bachmann, Alfred Döblin, Jon Fosse, Elfriede Jelinek and Nescio.
COPYRIGHT
Fitzcarraldo Editions
243 Knightsbridge
London, SW7 1DN
United Kingdom
Copyright © Jon Fosse
Published in agreement with Winje Agency
Translation copyright © Damion Searls, 2018
Originally published in Great Britain
by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2018
The right of Jon Fosse to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
ISBN 978–1–910695–54–8
Design by Ray O’Meara
Typeset in Fitzcarraldo
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