by Jon Fosse
No, unbelievable, Beyer says
You have to come to the opening, of course you do, all painters do that, Beyer says
I’ve never heard of anyone who doesn’t, he says
and Beyer says no never before has that happened to him, of course Asle has to be at the opening, he says, all painters have to, that’s just how it is, he says, because openings are when painters meet their audience, the people who might be spending all that money to buy a painting, and is it any surprise that they’d like to say hello to, or at any rate set eyes on, the artist who made the painting they’re buying? Beyer says and Asle asks him to say hello to the people who come to the opening for him and say that he’s afraid of crowds like that
It can’t just be me, you have to be there to meet them yourself, Beyer says
But I can’t do it, Asle says
and Beyer says Asle’s done it before, both at The Academic High School, even if he didn’t graduate, and at The Art School, even if he’s dropped out of there too now, he says, so it’s not like this’ll be the first time he’s been in a crowd like that, Beyer says and Asle says that he can manage to be in a crowd if he doesn’t have to say anything, because he’s scared to death of speaking in public, yes, even in a classroom, someday Asle’ll tell Beyer about how it was at The Academic High School before he quit, he says and he hears Beyer say yes, well yes, artists are their own special kind of people, but in that case it was extra important that there be a debut-artist interview with Asle in The Bjørgvin Times, newspapers don’t always want to print interviews with debut artists but it does happen, and since the pictures are so good, yes, anyone can see that, he thinks that they’ll agree to set up an interview, Beyer says and Asle says well then he’ll give an interview, he says and Beyer says at last, a good answer, he’ll try to set up an appointment and it’ll probably be at The Grand Café restaurant, he says, and Asle says that he’s never been there before and doesn’t know where it is, and Beyer says that if he gets an interview set up then Asle can just come to The Beyer Gallery beforehand, in time to get to the interview, and he’ll take Asle to The Grand Café personally, he says and Asle thanks him and I lie here on the bench and I think that I can’t just stay lying here like this, I think, but the room’s nice and warm now and I close my eyes and I see Asle standing in the brown house looking out the window and he thinks that he was recently interviewed in The Bjørgvin Times and it was a real takedown under the title ‘Fear of Crowds’, Fear of, Fear of, Asle thought when he saw it, that’s what he thought, Asle thinks and he sees a car drive by on the road down below, and the car, a small van, is one he’s seen many times, Asle thinks and he thinks that the article in The Bjørgvin Times appeared with a large and bad photograph of him standing in his black velvet jacket with a scarf around his neck and with his brown leather shoulder bag in place and he was looking down so that his medium-length hair almost entirely covered his face and in the interview the journalist, he was from Bjørgvin, wrote that there was serious disagreement among the critics whether these were good paintings, and the question, he wrote, was being asked whether The Beyer Gallery, usually so dependable, had made a mistake this time, but that remained to be seen, and whether anyone would want to buy the paintings in the exhibition remained to be seen too, the critic wrote in The Bjørgvin Times, Asle thinks and he thinks that the interview was all obvious questions that Asle gave obvious answers to and he thinks that Beyer did say yes well about that interview, Asle thinks, there’s not a single honest critic, they only became journalists because they couldn’t do anything else, that’s true, Beyer said, Asle thinks, and he thinks that the opening went fine without him being there and the review of the exhibition in The Bjørgvin Times could hardly have been worse, every picture shows a total and complete lack of talent, something like that is what the review said, Asle thinks and Beyer said that the critic would be ashamed of his words someday, the newspapers’ art critics were getting worse and worse over the years, it wasn’t like it used to be back when Anne Sofie Grieg was the art critic for The Bjørgvin Times, she had never studied art history but she’d been to all the greatest art museums in Europe and she was a skilled pianist and she had a real eye for what was good art and bad art, but whether she’d gotten too old and didn’t want to write anymore or for some other reason she didn’t write about art in The Bjørgvin Times anymore anyway, now they had some whippersnapper as an art critic who’d gone to The University and who could only see concepts and theories instead of pictures, instead of art, Beyer said, but luckily, yes, luckily ordinary people could see better than him, because all of Asle’s paintings had sold, and within two days, and that’s even though Asle wasn’t at the opening, and despite that terrible interview and photograph in The Bjørgvin Times, and despite the terrible review, if you can even call it a review, Beyer said, Asle thinks, and Beyer said to tell to the truth he’d said beforehand to everyone who usually bought pictures or who even sometimes bought pictures that now they really had to step up and buy one because the pictures he was showing now were by the greatest talent he had ever come across in all his long years alive, he’d personally said that to anyone and everyone, Beyer said and, as he said, all the paintings sold in two days, he said, Asle thinks standing there looking out the window and I’m lying on the bench and now the room is nice and warm and then I say Bragi and he looks up at me with his dog’s eyes and then I pet him on the back and I tuck the blanket a little tighter around him and I close my eyes and I see Asle standing in front of the door to the little house where Sigve lives, right between The Co-op Store and The Hospital, and he thinks that he was just in The Co-op Store buying two bottles of beer, and he has under his arm both the photograph he’d taken with him of the old house where Sigve used to live and the picture he’s painted of the house, but it took him much too long to finish painting it, now he’s finally finished it but he didn’t paint it the way Sigve wanted him to paint it, Asle thinks, and he thinks that, today, like most school days, the first thing he did after his day at The Academic High School was over was to go to The Hospital, to the room when Grandmother was, but she was asleep, and he sat down on a chair in her room and he looked at Grandmother’s face, especially her lips that had turned a little bluish, and her breathing was rapid and irregular and then Asle thought that he didn’t want to wake Grandmother up, he would just come back later, Asle thinks and he knocks on Sigve’s door and nothing happens and then he knocks again and a little harder this time and then he hears hurrying footsteps and Sigve opens the door and his eyes are half-closed and he says no, it’s you, and he doesn’t seem so happy to see Asle and then Sigve says that he just lay down for bit, and then he must have fallen asleep, but it’s good that Asle dropped by and woke him up because if he’d slept any longer his sleep tonight would be ruined, that’s happened more than a few times before, Sigve says and he says that Asle should come in and he goes in and Sigve shuts the front door behind him and locks the door and then they go into the living room
