I Is Another

by Jon Fosse

  And there’s Asle not saying anything, same as always, Terje says

  No, his hair’s too long for him to talk, Olve says

  And his name’s not Asle anymore, it’s Ales, he says

  Nope, quiet as usual, Geir says

  He doesn’t know how to talk, Olve says

  That must be why he never says anything, because he doesn’t know how, he says

  and Asle just stands there and he thinks it’s no good, he has tried as hard as he can to learn how to play the guitar but no matter how much he practises, no matter how much he tries, he’s never any good, and Olve had been nice to him, it was he who’d taught him the little he can play on the guitar, he drew little pictures of the chords and then Asle learned them, one by one, that was easy enough, but even just tuning the guitar was hard for him, and figuring out on his own which chord should come next in a song, no, he never managed to do that, so Olve always wrote it down for him, and when he tried to play a solo it was just a mess, he never managed to learn to play the guitar, Asle thinks, and actually Asle couldn’t stand Olve but to tell the truth Olve was the only reason they could do anything at all, without Olve they couldn’t play a single song, Asle thinks, and ever since he started playing guitar and joined this band he hadn’t painted a single painting, or drawn a single drawing, and the pictures in his head that he wanted to drive out with the loud noise hadn’t gone away, they just got stronger, so it’s not working, Asle thinks, because even if he’s just fourteen and, sure, has a lot of time ahead of him he’ll never be a good guitarist and it doesn’t make sense to keep trying something you can’t do, something you’ll never be able to do even sort of well, it’s not like with pictures, those he makes easily, like there’s nothing hard about it, but as for guitar playing, well, he’s just never going be able to do it, and if the pictures in his head are sort of stuck there and loud noise doesn’t make them go away then, yes, well, he’ll just have to try to paint them away, Asle thinks, because drawing and painting are things he can do, but he can’t play guitar, Asle thinks and then he takes off his guitar and puts it down leaning against the amp and Olve looks at him and asks him what he’s doing

  Why are you taking your guitar off in the middle of practice, Olve says

  I’ll never be able to play it, Asle says

  You’ve only just started, Olve says

  Yes, Asle says

  and then they just stand there and Terje and Geir don’t say anything

  You’ll get better, Olve says

  You’ve already gotten a lot better since we started our band, he says

  Maybe, Asle says

  Come on, try again, Olve says

  Pick up your guitar, he says

  and Asle just stands there and then Olve says that maybe they’ll take a break, if that’s all right with everybody, he says and both Terje and Geir say it’s fine with them and Olve says he has four bottles of beer with him, so now they can take a break and have a little beer, everyone always plays better after a little drink, he says and Geir asks where he got the beer from and Olve says his dad bought it for him

  You’ve got a nice dad, Terje says

  Yeah, Geir says

  Yes, he is nice, Olve says

  and then he says that his father is usually nice, after he’s been drinking too, but sometimes he gets so confused, yes, angry too in a way, he says and then he always talks about how he never should’ve started a family, that’s the kind of thing he says, you know, because he misses playing, travelling around and playing at dances, yeah, he really misses it, mostly the music, the playing itself, yes, but also the travelling, he says and then his mother always falls totally silent and she leaves the room, Olve says, and then he always tends to say that father can just start playing again, Olve says, and then his father says that he’s too old, he can’t bring himself to do it, there were several times he just couldn’t pick up his guitar even though he wanted to play, he says, and that’s why he gave Olve his guitar, and all the other equipment he has, and he taught Olve most of what Olve can do, and now Olve is already better than he ever was, both at singing and at playing guitar, his father says, Olve says, and then his father drinks more, first beer, and then he switches over to spirits and then his mother comes back in and says he mustn’t drink so much, and his father says he’ll have had enough soon and then he drinks even more and then he starts singing, and he sings beautifully, his father, and then his mother says he needs to come with her now, they need to go lie down, he has to go to work in the morning, she says and then his father usually goes with his mother, it’s only on Sundays and holidays that he keeps on drinking but then he can drink all day, yes, he starts in the morning and drinks till he goes to bed, and he drives to Stranda to buy beer even if he’s had a lot to drink, and if they’re out of spirits he drives to Bjørgvin to buy some, he buys as many bottles as he has money for, almost, Olve says, and today, yes, today he’d asked his father if he would buy a few bottles of beer for him to bring to practice and his father had said that both Olve and the other band members were too young, they were still going to middle school, so he couldn’t buy beer for them, no, it wasn’t allowed, Olve says his father said, but then, after a while, he said he was going to drive to Stranda and buy a few bottles for himself and he could buy four bottles that Olve could bring to practice, one for each of us, no more than that, because playing music without having had a drink was never the same, that’s what he said, so it was kind of good for them to learn that right away, but it was important not to drink too much, because then you played terribly, and that’s why it was dangerous, there’ve been a lot of musicians both in the past and today who drank themselves to death, so you had to be careful, his father said, Olve says and then before he had to leave for the bus to practice his father gave him a shopping bag with four bottles of beer, he says, and now, yes, now they’ll sit backstage and drink one bottle each and then everything’ll feel better, for you too, he says to Asle

  Maybe, Asle says

  and he sees Terje get up and stand next to his drum set and Geir has put the bass down against his amp and Olve is already walking to the back of the stage

  Come on, Geir says

  and Asle goes over to Geir and then they and Terje go sit down on some chairs backstage, and then Olve comes and hands them each a bottle and then he opens his own and passes the opener and they all open their bottles in turn and then Olve raises his bottle and says cheers and Terje and Geir and Asle raise theirs and say cheers and Olve says that now, yes, now they’re real musicians, now they should drink and then they’ll try to play through the songs they know, there are five songs they sort of know anyway, and three songs they know really well, Olve says, but up till today it’s all been a total mess, he says and they drink and Asle has had beer before but not too many times, and he doesn’t think it tastes bad but it’s not exactly good either, he thinks, and then they just sit there and don’t say anything, just sip their beer, sip by sip, and then Olve says that beer really doesn’t taste so good but it works, he says and then he takes out a tobacco pouch and he rolls himself a cigarette and he passes the tobacco pouch around to everyone else and they each roll a cigarette and Asle thinks that he’s already smoked lots of times, and he likes that, yes, from the very first time he smoked a cigarette in The Boathouse at home with Per Olav he liked smoking, and he smoked the whole pack of cigarettes Per Olav had given him and he’d hidden in The Boathouse, he’d gone down there to smoke, Asle thinks and he thinks that someday he’ll be old enough to go buy a packet of tobacco and cigarette papers and matches for himself at The Co-op Store, and then he’ll hide them on a beam in The Boathouse, and he thinks that he’s looking forward to being old enough to buy cigarettes, he thinks and he knows that some people get sick and throw up and stuff like that the first time they smoke but it wasn’t like that with him, it just tingled a little in his body, in a good way, and he felt calmer, so he’s going to be a smoker, as soon as he’s old enough to buy tobacco for himself that�
�s what he’s going to do, Asle thinks and Olve passes around a cigarette lighter and Asle lights his cigarette and he sucks the smoke into his mouth and then he takes a real pull and he feels a sense of wellbeing spread through his body and then he sits there and smokes and there’s a mug that they use as an ashtray sitting on the floor between them and Asle smokes and takes a sip of beer now and then and Olve says it’ll be fine, they can’t give up now, Asle is turning into a good rhythm guitarist, or good enough anyway, he just needs to practise more, Olve says and the others say they all think so too, and Terje says that he plays the drums even worse than Asle plays guitar and Geir says that his bass playing isn’t anything to write home about either, no, he says and Olve says that it’ll be fine, and actually he’s already talked to the guy in charge of the Barmen Youth Group and he’d said that they might be interested in having them play at the dance, so once they learn enough songs they should just tell him, the guy in charge said, Olve says, and then, once they get some gigs, they’ll start to make a little money too, but pretty much the first money they make they’ll have to use to pay his father for the mikes and speakers, because his father hadn’t given them the equipment for good, he’d only said they could borrow it and then pay for it after they’d brought in a few kroner playing, his father had said, Olve says, and Terje says of course, obviously they need to pay for the sound system as soon as they can, but then, after a while, they can split the money they make playing at dances among themselves, it’ll be a few kroner each, he says, and then they’ll be getting girls too, Olve says, because girls are always crazy about musicians, that’s how it’s always been, he says, they used to go crazy for Hardanger fiddle players and then it was accordion players and now it’s for guys in a band, Olve says and in fact that’s how his father and mother met, yes, his father was playing at a dance once, and they’re still in love with each other even after all these years, Olve says

  Everything’ll be fine, he says

  and Asle thinks that maybe it won’t be so bad, and maybe he isn’t such a terrible player, not much worse than the others anyway, and of course he can get better, even if he never gets really good, but he doesn’t really need to, he just needs to get good enough that his playing is passable, he thinks, and it is good when he smokes, he likes smoking, and it’s good with beer too, yes, he thinks, beer doesn’t taste great but it does good things to you, he thinks and Olve says it’ll be fine and they each smoke their rolled cigarette to the end and finish their bottle of beer and then Olve says that now they’ll try to get through the songs they know, more or less, he says, and it won’t be long before they’ll be playing their first dance, he says and then they get up and go over to their instruments and Asle drapes the guitar over his shoulder and then Olve says one two three and then they start and it doesn’t sound so bad and then they play through the other two songs they’ve more or less learned how to play, and those don’t sound so bad either, and Olve says that a little beer sure helped and then Terje starts pounding away like wild on the drums and cymbals and Geir thumps like wild on the bass and Asle thinks no, this isn’t right, he doesn’t want to play guitar anymore, it’s the wrong thing, the noise won’t get rid of the pictures he has in his head, it only makes them worse, he thinks, so he wants to stop, he can’t do it anymore, he should paint now, he should be where it’s quiet now, in the silence, where he’ll paint away the pictures he has lodged in his head and he’ll neither make noise playing the guitar nor paint from photographs of houses and barns, people’s homes, he’ll paint his own pictures, Asle thinks and then he takes his guitar off and puts it down leaning it against the amp and he turns off the amp and then he gets down off the stage in the Youth Centre in Barmen, and it was he who’d gone to the guy in charge of the Barmen Youth Group and asked if they could practise in the Youth Centre, and they’d been given permission to, Asle thinks and then he stops in the middle of the room and stands there and looks at the other three still standing on stage and behind them someone has painted a set, a scene of a farming village with a high cliff and a blue fjord and blossoming birch trees, it’s still there from a play that was put on in the Youth Centre in Barmen sometime or another, a long time ago, Asle thinks, and then he hears Olve yell into the microphone and ask where he’s going? and Asle just stands there in the middle of the room and looks at the stage set

  Are you leaving? Terje says

  and Asle doesn’t answer

  What are you doing? Geir says

  and Asle doesn’t answer

  Answer goddammit, Olve yells

  and he yells it into the microphone so that it booms throughout the whole auditorium and Asle turns around and starts walking towards the door to the hall and Terje shouts after him and says he can’t leave, they’ve just started practice, where’s he going? what’s wrong with him? Terje calls and then Asle turns around and he sees Terje walking up to him and Asle stops and he stands there waiting for Terje

  You’re not leaving, are you? Terje says

  I am, Asle says

  and then Geir takes his bass off and he too comes down off the stage and over to Asle

  You’re just leaving, Geir says

  Yes, I can’t play, Asle says

  I’m not going to play guitar anymore, he says

  and Olve yells into the mike you can’t fucking quit, I won’t fucking let you, he yells

  You’re at least as good as the rest of us, Geir says

  No I’m not, Asle says

  We need you, Terje says

  We need two guitars, he says

  and then Olve yells into the mike that it’s just fucking wrong to act like that, now that they’ve started a band, found bandmates, and they talked during every single breaktime at school about how they should start a band as soon as they got instruments and the other equipment they needed and found a place to practise, and now they have everything all set up and Asle is going to bail just like that, and it’s extra shitty since he was the one who started talking about starting a band in the first place, yes, extra shitty, Olve yells into the microphone and it booms and echoes through the auditorium and then Olve bangs the pick as hard as he can across the open strings of his guitar and screams no fuck no into the mike so that it booms and resounds through the auditorium, yes, it echoes through the whole Barmen Youth Centre, and then Olve takes his guitar off and then he gets down off the stage and comes walking over and he stops right in front of Asle

  You can’t fucking do this, he says

  You got us to start this band and now you’re just leaving? he says

  and he grabs Asle’s shoulder and shakes it hard

  It was you who wanted us to start a band, he says