by Jon Fosse
Yes your pictures really have something, Beyer says
Something all their own, he says
But of course I need to ask what you want for the pictures, he says
and Asle says that he can buy them for the same price as before and Beyer says that in that case it’s a deal and he takes out his wallet and he pays for the paintings and he says that the price is perfectly reasonable and Beyer says that he was on his way to Stranda where some friends of his have a cabin and he stopped at The Co-op Store and saw the sign for The Art Exhibition in the window there, yes, the sign was actually a painting, and even if the motif on the sign wasn’t quite as interesting still The Barmen Youth Centre was painted well and that’s why he thought he should go back to the art exhibition, he says
Yes you have a real future ahead of you, he says
I can see that, he says
And I really know about paintings, he says
and then he says again that his name is Beyer and then he asks again what Asle’s name is and then he says that if he remembers correctly there were signs saying Sold under at least two of the pictures he just bought, he says and he looks at Asle who doesn’t say anything and then Beyer says goodbye and he takes two of the paintings with him and Asle says that he can help him carry the other two out and then Beyer walks to his car and he puts the paintings in the back and lays a blanket between each painting and then Asle stands there and Beyer gets into his car and drives off and Asle goes back inside and he looks at the empty walls and he feels sad that all the painting are gone now, because actually he would’ve liked to keep all the paintings himself, Asle thinks, and he’d felt so calm and peaceful when he was sitting in The Youth Centre surrounded by his paintings and sketching out pictures that he was going to paint some time in the future, some of the sketches would turn into paintings anyway, and now, now there are no pictures left, so now it’s become kind of empty and sad, Asle thinks and he thinks that the pictures he’s painted of people’s homes, yes, he’s always been glad to get rid of those, the sooner the better really, but he likes these paintings more, and he feels sad and in a way heavy when he thinks about how they’re gone now, he thinks and then Asle goes and rips all the signs saying Sold off the nails and throws them out in the litter basket outside The Youth Centre and he goes back in and pulls all the nails out of the walls and goes and throws them out in the litter basket too and then he takes down the sign saying Art Exhibition from the front door of The Barmen Youth Centre and throws it in the litter basket and Asle goes back in and puts the table and chair back behind the stage where he found them and then he takes down the sheets in front of the horrible set painting of Stranda in the blazing sun with a glittering blue fjord and a black cliff with white snow on top against the horizon and then he puts the sheets back in the shopping bag he’d brought them in, and he puts the hammer and the box of nails on top and then he puts his brown leather shoulder bag on and then Asle turns off the light and he leaves and he thinks he needs to put up a sign on the front door saying Sold Out and then he takes out the sketchpad and writes Sold Out on a page of it and then he takes out the thumbtacks that were holding up the earlier sign and uses them to put the sign saying Sold Out up on the front door of The Barmen Youth Centre and then he shuts the door and he goes to The Man in Charge of The Barmen Youth Group and gives him the keys
You’re giving up? he says
Yes, Asle says
It’s not so easy to sell paintings, is it, The Man in Charge says
No, Asle says
But thank you for letting me use The Youth Centre, he says
and then Asle walks home carrying the shopping bag and Mother asks why he’s home already and Asle says that he’s sold all the pictures, but actually he’s sorry he sold them, because now he misses them and now he’ll never get them back
No I don’t believe it, Mother says
and she says no she just doesn’t understand people, she can understand how he can sell his usual paintings, but that someone would pay good money for incomprehensible smears that don’t look like anything, no, she can’t understand that, Mother says and she says so the sign saying there’s going to be an art exhibition hanging in the window of The Co-op Store, that’ll have to be taken down
Yes, right, Asle says
and he takes the nails and the hammer out of the shopping bag and says that he’ll just go put these back in the basement of The Old House and then he hands the bag with the white sheets to Mother and says thanks for the loan
I’ll wash them now, she says
and then she says that Asle should go right now and take down the sign in the window of The Co-op Store
Yes I’ll do that now, he says
No I never thought you’d sell those paintings, Mother says
Whoever bought them must have something wrong in the head, she says
and Asle says that there’s one person who’s sick in the head, who has something wrong with her mind, and that’s her, Mother, and she says imagine saying something like that to your own mother and she says that he can’t have gotten much money for his paintings did he and Asle says he sold them for the amount it cost him to make them plus a little extra
No, it’s unbelievable, that you sold those pictures, I wouldn’t have thought you’d sell a single one, Mother says
and she asks who bought the pictures and Asle says that a man named Beyer who lives in Bjørgvin bought most of them
Yes of course it had to be a Bjørgvinner who’d buy pictures like that, Mother says
No, well, Asle says
and then he goes into town to The Co-op Store and he takes the sign, or rather the painting that says Art Exhibition, out of the window and then he goes home with it under his arm and I sit here in the car and I look at the snow covering the windshield and then I turn on the windshield wipers and they sweep the snow away and I can see to the white wall and now raindrops are falling on the windshield, so now it’s already started raining, I think, and I’ve been sitting in the car a long time now, and it’s really cold and I’m shivering a little, I think, so now Beyer really needs to come back to his gallery soon so that we can carry the paintings in and put them in the gallery’s side room, The Bank, as Beyer calls it, I think and actually I don’t want to do that, I don’t want to get rid of these paintings either, I think, it’s like saying goodbye forever every time, and it’s like I’m giving myself away bit by bit, I think, but I need something to live on too and I live on the sales of the pictures I paint, that’s what I’ve lived on my whole life, I think, so it just has to be done, I have to just bring the paintings to Beyer’s Bank, I think and I open the car door and I get out and the rain and cold hits me and I think anyway I can go check if the door to The Beyer Gallery is open, because maybe Beyer’s come back to the gallery without my noticing it, that might very well have happened, I think and no sooner am I out of the car than I see Beyer standing in the gallery door holding the door open and he shouts that it’s good my pictures are here, it’s like it’s not really Christmas without them, Beyer says and he says he has to admit he’s been waiting for the pictures, he says and I jog over to the open door and Beyer holds out his hand to me and we shake hands and I see that the sign that was hanging on the door is gone and I think Beyer must have been in the gallery the whole time, he just didn’t want to be disturbed, or else the sign on the door was a mistake, I think and Beyer says I should come in and Beyer is sort of beside himself with happiness at seeing me and he again says it’s good to see me, because to tell the truth it’s been almost a year since the last time we saw each other and I say it sure has
We’re both getting old, you and me, he says
and I look at Beyer and I see that he has a cane in his left hand and I’ve never seen him with one before, but he has been a little unsteady on his feet for a few years, his walk has been kind of halting, but this is the first time I’ve seen him with a cane and then Beyer raises his cane into the air
Yes just look, he says
and he holds up his cane a little higher
I can get by without it but it’s good to have it, he says
and I think that Beyer has aged a lot in just a year, I think and I see that you couldn’t call his hair grey anymore, it’s turned white, and Beyer has sort of gotten a little crooked and he lets go of my hand and then he says I look good
You haven’t aged much since the last time I saw you, he says
and I don’t know what I should say, and I just stand there
Yes you and I have been doing business together or whatever I should call it for many years now, Beyer says
Yes, I say
A generation at least, Beyer says
No much longer than that, he says
and he says that it must be getting on fifty years if you count the first time, when he bought six pictures from me when I was a boy putting on my first exhibition in The Barmen Youth Centre, Beyer says and then he stands there and doesn’t say anything and then he looks right at me and then he asks if I remember the first time we met and I say of course I do, yes, I remember it like it was yesterday, and I was thinking about it just recently, I say and I think that Beyer has brought this up so many times, yes, this too has turned into something we do just to do it, something we talk about to kind of show how connected we are to each other
Yes, there in the Barmen Youth Centre, Beyer says
Yes, I bought five paintings from you then, he says
Six actually, I say
and it doesn’t seem like Beyer hears what I’m saying
And I got my family and friends to buy the others you were selling, he says
and he says that he’s heard that none of them regretted it, he says
And clever you had put up signs saying Sold under a few of the paintings even though they weren’t sold, he says
and Beyer laughs and shakes his head
Yes I must admit I’ve used that trick lots of times myself, he says
And it works too, it works well, he says
and then there’s silence
So I knew that not only could you paint, and that you had a great future as an artist ahead of you, but also that you understood how to sell things, Beyer says
Yes, good business sense, he says
It was my father who thought of it though, I say
Yes well then he has good business sense, Beyer says
You’re descended from a real businessman, he says
and he says the word businessman in a way that clearly implies that this is really something I can be proud of
A businessman, yes, he says
My father built boats, traditional Barmen boats, and grew fruit, I say
Yes I know, Beyer says
and I don’t say anything else and it’s quiet for a moment and then I say that Father worked hard, both building his Barmen boats and then he kept working in his orchard, but no matter how much he worked he didn’t make much money, we weren’t rich in our house, so I wouldn’t say Father was a real businessman exactly, I say
No, maybe not, Beyer says
But you, you have a sense for making money, he says
and I say that I need something to live on too, and for me it was living on painting these pictures, something you’d hardly believe was possible, at least where I grew up, there people lived so far apart that even if every last one bought a picture every now and then I wouldn’t have sold many pictures, I say and Beyer chuckles and says very true, very true, yes, very true
I don’t entirely understand it myself, how I managed it, I say
and then I say that it’s thanks to him, thanks to Beyer, that I could do it, without his help it never would’ve worked, and that’s precisely because I’m not a businessman at all, no, but it’s also because I haven’t thrown a lot of money around, I’ve scrimped and saved actually, I spend as little money as I can, I only have two pairs of shoes, one for winter and one for summer, and then one pair of dress shoes, and then a pair of big rubber boots that I cut down to shoes, for example these, I say, but when I do buy shoes I always buy expensive shoes, the best brands, I say, and those shoes last a long time, and sometimes I need to take them to the cobbler and eventually they’re worn out and have to be thrown away but it’s years between each time, I say and Beyer says now that I mention it he’s noticed for a long time that I’m always wearing the same shoes, he says, just like I always wear black clothes, a black pullover of one kind or another and I’m always in black trousers and always in a black velvet jacket, and he’s barely ever seen me without a brown leather shoulder bag on my shoulder, and then in the winter I wear the long black overcoat that I have on today, he’s never seen me in a suit, but my shoes are always black, and then often, though not always, I have on some scarf or another
Yes I need my artist’s scarf, I say
and I use those words because I know that if I don’t Beyer will, if I don’t say artist’s scarf Beyer will, I think and I don’t entirely like it when he says that because it’s almost like he’s looking down on me a little when he says those words, artist’s scarf
Yes you allow yourself that much, Beyer says
and he says that even if I’m constantly wearing a new scarf, some of them are silk, he noticed that a long time ago, so I must have quite a big collection of scarves, he says and I think that I always asked Ales for a scarf as a present, and most of the time I got one too, either for my birthday or for Christmas, and that’s why I have a lot of scarves, some of them nice scarves, and when I go out and see other people I usually like to wear a scarf, it’s true, that’s how it is, I think and it’s quiet for a moment and then Beyer again says that it was very clever of me, sneaky even, to put up a sign saying Sold under pictures that weren’t sold, yes, that means that I have a real business sense, he says, and that too is one of those terms I don’t really like, but for Beyer like for most Bjørgvin people it’s a compliment
A real business sense, yes, Beyer says
That was a good idea, he says
I never remember if it was me who thought of it, I say
It might have been my father, I don’t exactly remember, I say
Yes, clever, I’d say sneaky even, whoever came up with it, Beyer says
and then I say, as I stand there, that I still think those nine pictures I sold back then are some of the best ones I ever painted and I say that I regret having sold them all, and that was a lesson for me, I say, because now I set aside pictures I don’t want to sell in the attic of my house in Dylgja, in one of the crawlspaces, in a crate up there, and Beyer says that’s interesting, hearing about the pictures up in the crate, and I say that I always have one of those paintings out on display, on a chair between two small windows in that same attic room, which painting it is changes but there’s always one out, and I switch them sometimes but it’s always a painting from the collection up there in the crates, I say and I say that it’s probably to sort of remind myself that not everything I’ve done in life has been totally meaningless, I say
No, you’ve hardly done things that are meaningless, Beyer says
On the contrary, he says
and he says that he discovered me, it’s surely fair to say that, and that his discovery of me is the most important thing he’s done for Norwegian art, because now my pictures still aren’t appreciated properly but that’ll change, it just takes some time, the best artists aren’t appreciated like they deserve until long after they’re dead, Beyer says, yes it’s almost always like that, he says
Quality, quality and truth always win out, he says
But it can take a while, he says
It takes a long time but in the end truth will out, as the Bard says, Beyer says
and he says that it might take a long time before my pictures are sold at the price they deserve, most likely neither he nor I will live to see it, in any case he won’t, but I have to believe what he says even if neither of us will live long enough to confirm the truth of his words, he says, but I, my pictures
, a day will come when they are recognized as the most important works of Norwegian painting, nothing less, he says
