by Jon Fosse
Congratulations on getting into The Art School, Asle says
And you’ll be next, The Namesake says
I hope I get in, Asle says
You will, I’m sure of it, The Namesake says
and then Asle says that he doesn’t have much time, he just got off the bus from Aga and he’s in the middle of a painting and he ran out of white paint again so he was planning to take the same bus back, he says and The Namesake says he won’t hold him up and keep him from catching the bus and he says he’s never spoken to Liv’s parents, who live in Sartor, and she hasn’t asked them either if it’s okay that she, or they, come there, or if she, well, they, can live there for a while, she hasn’t even told her parents that she’s pregnant, she doesn’t talk to her parents much, but she did tell her mother over the phone that she’d be taking a trip home soon, she went down to the phone booth in the centre of Stranda and called her mother, and her mother had said of course she was welcome to come, she was so happy she’d be seeing Liv again, it had been so long since the last time, and she was sure that her father felt the same way, of her three sisters who used to live in the house the youngest sister had moved out too in the autumn, she too had gone away, the same way the three other sisters had done before her, so now there was plenty of room in the house, and it would be so nice to see her again, her mother had said and then she’d chattered on about this and that, about the difficult neighbour lady, about Liv’s uncle, her father’s brother who’d ended up homeless in Bjørgvin and so on and so forth and Liv didn’t say a word about being pregnant and that he as the father was going to be with her, he says and Asle has already gone over to the cash register and The Namesake has walked next to him and the man at the register says so you’re still painting are you, it’s a good thing we have customers like you, he says and Asle says that he doesn’t have much time since he needs to catch the bus to Aga and then Asle pays and he leaves and The Namesake leaves with him and The Namesake says that the one thing he’s dreading is going home to Liv’s parents in Sartor, because what if they don’t want him there? maybe Liv’s father won’t want him to paint because he might get the floor dirty or something? he thinks, he says, and also he was about to be a father, and he was so young, and he didn’t own anything, an easel and a few brushes and some pictures and that was it, and he who had thought he would never get married or have children because he’d never be able to, he, yes, he was about to be a father soon, he says and the bus is luckily still there, Asle thinks, so now he can finally get rid of The Namesake, he thinks
The bus is there already, The Namesake says
It’s lucky I made it, Asle says
And you were also lucky because they don’t always have tubes of white oil paint at The Paint Shop, at least not big ones, The Namesake says
and he says that there’ve been a few times he’s had to wait almost two weeks to get white oil paint, yes, it was unbelievable, it was almost like The Paint Shop was intentionally trying to not carry white oil paint, he says and Asle says that the bus door is open so he better get on right away and The Namesake says yes he should, and so he hopes they meet again at The Art School, he says and Asle says he hopes so too and The Namesake holds out his hand and they shake hands and then The Namesake says that they’ll see each other at The Art School in Bjørgvin then, sooner or later, and Asle says that the only question now is whether they’ll take him and The Namesake says he’s sure they will and Asle thinks now how can The Namesake be so sure that he’ll get into The Art School too, he has never even seen one of his paintings, so it’s just something he’s saying, Asle thinks and he gets on the bus and he tells The Bus Driver that he’s going to Aga and The Bus Driver says so he wants to go back home right away and Asle doesn’t answer and he pays the fare and he goes to the back of the bus and he sits down in the back seat and then he looks out the window and he sees The Namesake standing there and the bus starts up and pulls away and The Namesake raises his hand and waves at him and Asle waves back and he thinks well now The Namesake has already gotten a spot at The Art School while he’s still slogging away at The Academic High School and is afraid to go to school, he’s constantly thinking that he might have to read out loud, because The Teacher in English and French who clearly owns only a grey pair of trousers and a white pullover with blue stripes, or else he has several of the same kind of trousers and pullovers, now rarely asks students down a row one after the other to read out loud but he does constantly ask this or that individual person to read aloud and Asle has noticed that he looks at him and that he kind of threatens to ask him to read, so now he’ll just have to start skipping school on the days he has English, because French classes are just words and Asle thinks that the pronunciation is impossible, he will never be able to make those sounds, and there’s not one of the other students in the class who can do it either and The Teacher in the grey trousers and white pullover with blue stripes moans and groans and beats his breast and says that this is hopeless, it’s patently clear that the situation is hopeless, and he uses those two words all the time, hopeless and patently, and it’ll be a long time before they can read any text out loud in French so he doesn’t have much to worry about there, but two days a week, Tuesday and Thursday, he has two hours of English each day and now he’ll just have to cut school on those days, he’s thought many times that he should but he’s gone to school anyway, but now he’ll miss two days of school every single week, and whatever happens will happen, Asle thinks sitting there on the bus and he thinks that every Monday and every Wednesday he’s scared all afternoon and all evening, frightened of the next day, that he might have to read out loud, and so that’s when he usually goes to see Sigve and Sigve answers whenever he knocks on the door, even if he’s not always so glad to see him, but he always invites him in, and usually Asle has a couple of beers with him or else they go to The Hotel and buy a glass or two there, and that helps, but first he goes to see Grandmother at The Hospital, but she’s just getting worse and worse, it’s like she’s disappearing into her own world more and more and her face is getting kind of greyer and greyer and she’s asleep more and more often when he comes by and when she is he leaves right away and just lets her keep sleeping since if he does wake her up he’s often not sure if she knows he’s there, only sometimes does she look at him clearly and recognize him, and she’s entirely stopped talking, now she just nods or shakes her head, Asle thinks, but he always holds Grandmother’s hand, and her hand is always cold, he thinks sitting there on the bus and then he thinks that The Namesake got into The Art School without going to The Academic High School, without an examen artium, he could do that too, so one of these days he’ll take some of his paintings and get on a bus to Bjørgvin and show the people there the pictures and try to get a spot at The Art School, because exceptions are made for people like them, people who haven’t gone to The Academic High School but who get in by reason of talent alone, and if he gets a spot at The Art School he’ll stop going to The Academic High School that same day, Asle thinks and he sees that the bus is getting close to The Shoemaker’s Workshop where he lives and he pulls the cord and the bus stops and Asle gets out and he goes straight home and he knows exactly where the painting needs a little white paint, there are three places, one place that needs a light thin stroke with movement in it and two others that need a thin overpainting, he thinks and he thinks that tomorrow he has English again so he won’t go to school, he’s decided that, and before long he’ll take the bus to Bjørgvin and then he’ll bring the two books that Sigve lent him a long time ago, that he still hasn’t read, and he’ll read them on the bus, because he hasn’t even opened the books, Asle thinks, and then he’ll go to The Art School and show them some paintings and try to get a spot even though he doesn’t have an examen artium and if he gets a spot he’ll stop going to The Academic High School, and this is already a huge relief, he thinks and I sit there and I look at my fixed spot in the water, my bearings, the tops of the pine trees in front of the house need to be in th
e middle of the middle pane on the right, because the window is divided in two and can be opened from either side and each half of the window is divided into three panes and it’s the middle of the right-hand pane that the treetops have to be in, I think and then I look at my landmark and at the waves and I see Asle get out the old suitcase he brought with him from the attic in The Old House when he moved to his rented room and he chooses several pictures and wraps them as well as he can in the grey blanket he got from Grandmother and puts them in the suitcase and he thinks that he should have gone and seen Grandmother at The Hospital but he’d rather go see Sigve and maybe they’ll have a beer or two at The Hotel, he thinks and then he puts on his black velvet jacket and brown leather shoulder bag and a scarf and then he’ll goes straight to Sigve’s, Asle thinks, because now he’s finally taken the big decision that he’s been thinking about for such a long time, he put it off for too long, he thinks, but now he wants to try to get into The Art School without finishing at The Academic High School, and The Namesake could do it so he should be able to do it too, Asle thinks as he’s walking from the old house to Sigve’s and he knocks on the door and no one answers so he waits a little bit and he hears someone walking around inside so he knocks again and he hears footsteps coming towards the door and it opens and there’s Sigve and he is definitely not so happy to see Asle
No, it’s you, Sigve says
and Asle says that he has to tell Sigve something and Sigve invites him in and then Asle says that he’s going to try to get into The Art School in Bjørgvin without having graduated from The Academic High School, because if The Namesake could get into The Art School in Bjørgvin without having gone to The Academic High School, just on the strength of his pictures, he should be able to as well, so tomorrow he’s going to cut school and take some paintings and go to Bjørgvin and go to The Art School and ask if he can go to The Art School without having finished The Academic High School and taken an examen artium, Asle says and it seems like Sigve isn’t entirely following him and Asle sees that the picture he painted of Sigve’s house, which had been standing on the floor in front of the bookcase for such a long time now, isn’t there anymore, so Sigve must have moved it somewhere else even though it really isn’t such a bad painting, Asle thinks and he thinks that it looks like Sigve has been lying down, asleep, and that Asle woke him up, and Sigve says that’s very nice and then Sigve says that he was asleep, he was drinking really late last night but he did make it to work, and he got those damn armrests and chair legs attached but it wasn’t exactly a great day, no, he says and then Asle says that maybe they could go get a glass or two at The Hotel and Sigve says that after yesterday he really shouldn’t, but it sure feels like he could use a glass or two, he says and Asle says that they can go to The Hotel and Sigve says yes, okay, they’ll do that and then Sigve says that it was like something snapped in him yesterday a little, no, he doesn’t know exactly what came over him but anyway he got angry, and it was mostly himself that he was angry at, because he’s never been the type to blame other people, no, he says and then Asle says, saying he doesn’t really want to say it, that he wants to apologize for giving Sigve a painting of his house that wasn’t the way Sigve wanted it, but actually he’d stopped painting pictures like that, he had painted enough pictures like that, because they weren’t real pictures, they were just pointless, really, anyway they weren’t art, Asle says and he says that he said he wanted to paint a picture of Sigve’s house to be nice, since Sigve had asked him to, and Sigve says that he’d only asked Asle to paint a picture to be nice to him, and then they both laugh a little, and then Sigve says that Asle can just go to The Hotel and have a drink and he’ll come a little later, he needs a little time to get ready
In that case I’ll go see Grandmother at The Hospital first, Asle says
Yes you go see her every day, Sigve says
She’ll miss you if you move to Bjørgvin, he says
I hadn’t thought of that, Asle says
and then Asle goes to The Hospital to see Grandmother and he sees her lying in bed and she’s asleep and her face is almost totally grey, with a little blue on her whole face, and he sits down on the edge of the bed and he takes her hand and it’s so cold and stiff and then he says something but Grandmother doesn’t answer and he hears her breathing but there’s a long time between each time she breathes in and breathes out and Asle thinks that since he and Mother never got along too well it was Grandmother he was closest to when he was growing up, always, if it wasn’t for her he doesn’t know what would have happened to him, Asle thinks and he thinks that he’s seen her anyway even if she didn’t know it, and he thinks that now it’s decided and there’s no doubt about it, tomorrow he’s going to skip school and take the bus to Bjørgvin, he thinks and now it’ll be good to have a couple of glasses of beer, Asle thinks and he goes to The Hotel and he sits down and he orders a glass of beer and then he thinks that Grandmother is going to die tonight, and that’s another reason to quit at The Academic High School, so tomorrow he’ll skip school and go to Bjørgvin and The Art School and then whatever’s going to happen will happen, he thinks and I sit on my chair and look out at the fixed point out on the Sygne Sea, like I’m in the habit of doing, and I notice that Ales is sitting here next to me and she’s holding my hand and I think that yes, really, it was the night before I went to Bjørgvin with my pictures to try to get into The Art School that my Grandmother died, I think and then I hear Ales say your Grandmother’s in a good place now and I feel that Ales is so close so close, she’s sitting in the chair next to me and I can feel her hand in mine so clearly and I look at the chair and of course I don’t see anything and I let go of Ales’s hand and then I put my arm around her shoulders and I look at the waves and I see Asle and Liv, and she has a big belly, they’re sitting on the bus to Bjørgvin and they look so strange sitting there, she with her jacket open because she can’t close it since her belly is so big and he with the brown leather shoulder bag on his lap and he thinks that now he’s given up the room he was renting in the basement and Liv has given up her job at The Stranda Hotel, so now there’s nothing keeping them in Stranda anymore and all their earthly goods, as they say, are packed up and sitting in the bus’s baggage compartment now, and The Bus Driver wasn’t a problem, he was helpful and put their vanload of stuff into the baggage compartment in the best way, Asle had his things in two empty boxes he’d gotten from The Co-op Store in Stranda and his pictures put away in an old suitcase, and he’d packed his clothes and the other things he had, painting supplies, some books, not much more than that, in two boxes and Liv had her big suitcase and now they’re sitting there in the bus and Asle thinks that he’s worried about going home to Liv’s parents, because what will they say? she hasn’t told them she was pregnant, and hasn’t told them anything about him, and hasn’t told her parents that they’d be arriving today, and what will Liv’s father and mother say? Asle thinks and it seems like Liv is thinking the same thing because she says she wishes she’d called her mother and said they were coming and that she’s expecting a baby, and that Asle is coming with her, but she was so worried about doing it, she says, and now, now that it is the way it is, her parents can’t very well do anything but let them stay in the house, in her childhood home out on Sartor, there’s nothing there but some rocky hills and heather and they can see the ocean if they walk just ten or twenty feet up the hill sheltering the house where she grew up, she says and Asle says that he’s thinking about the same thing and he says that when they get to Bjørgvin they’ll have to get everything they have out of the bus and then hope that the bus to Sartor leaves from the terminal not too long after their bus arrives, and so he’ll carry all their stuff over to the terminal, he says and Liv says that she can carry her suitcase herself and Asle says that in that case he’ll only need to make two trips, there’s the two boxes with the clothes and painting supplies and then the easel and the paintings in the suitcase, and he can’t carry all of that in one trip, but he can do it in two,
he says and Liv says that if she remembers correctly it’s not very far from the gate where the bus from Stranda stops to the gate that the bus to Sartor leaves from, so that’ll be fine, but it’ll be harder when they get to Sartor, because it’s a good long way from the bus stop there up to the house where she grew up, she says, so maybe she should go up first? and she can take her suitcase with her, and then Asle can stay and wait and she’ll come back down for him, because then her parents will see the condition she’s in, and at the same time she’ll tell them that he, Asle, is with her and is standing and waiting down at the bus stop with their things and then maybe her father, since he’ll already be home from work, he works at a fishery, will come with her and help carry their things up to the house? she says and Asle says that that sounds good and he says that she needs to tell them at the same time that they’re going to be staying there just a short time, until they’ve found a place to live in Bjørgvin, and that he’s about to start at The Art School there, and that they’ll probably be able to rent an apartment at The Student Home, he says and Liv says she will tell them that, she says and I sit in the chair here next to the round table and I look and look at the same spot in the water, in the Sygne Sea, and I have my arm around Ales’s shoulders and I think that I should have said a prayer for Asle, and then I collect myself and then I pray for God to let Asle get better, and if he can’t get better then for God to take him into himself and give him peace, take him into his kingdom, God’s kingdom, God’s peace, God’s light, I pray and I look at the waves and I see Asle sitting there at the table in The Hotel and he’s finished his beer and now he’s sitting and looking at the woman who’s standing behind the reception desk and she’s not that much older than him, and it must be the daughter of the owners of the hotel, that’s what Sigve has said, so he can order another glass and Sigve’ll be here soon too, Asle thinks and I take my arm off Ales’s shoulders and I say to Ales now I’m going to drop by Åsleik’s and then Ales says that she is always with me, she is always near me, wherever I am, she says and I think now I should probably drive to Åsleik’s, shouldn’t I, and even if I’m not that hungry it’ll be nice to have some good tasty lamb ribs, it’s been a long time since I’ve eaten that, and Åsleik is a good cook, I think and I get up from the chair and Bragi falls down onto the floor and I never seem to remember that he always comes and sits in my lap when I sit in that chair, I think and I put on my black velvet jacket and my shoulder bag and a scarf and I go outside and it’s mild, it’s stopped snowing, and it’s only snowed a little, and I wipe the snow off the windshield with my hand and anyway it’s not cold, I think and I get into my car and then I drive slowly over to Åsleik’s, it’s not very far, but it is a certain distance away and the road is winding and covered in snow and I think it’ll still be good to have some of his lamb ribs, even if I don’t really feel like eating I can still tell I’m hungry now and that it’ll be good to eat something, I think and I drive carefully over to Åsleik’s house and I look at the white road and I see Asle standing at The Art School stammering and stuttering and he’s taken the paintings wrapped in the grey blanket he got from Grandmother out of the old suitcase and he shows them to the painting teacher he met who’s said his name is Eilev Pedersen and he says that in his opinion Asle can get in without having graduated from The Academic High School and taken the examen artium, but it’s The Principal who decides, he says, but he can follow him and they’ll see The Principal, he says and they go to The Principal and he says to Asle hasn’t he just recently come and showed him his pictures already? and Asle says no he hasn’t and Eiliv Pedersen says he’d been wondering exactly the same thing too, yes, Asle and someone else who had recently come and asked for a spot looked so much like each other, and their pictures were similar too, Eiliv Pedersen says and The Principal asks Asle if he can see his ID card and he says that if he’s old enough and paints that well then yes he can come, that’s clear, The Principal says and he congratulates Asle and says that he can now say he is, or is about to be, a student at The Art School in Bjørgvin, but he’s so sure that Asle has already come and been given a spot, he says, but it must just be someone who looks like Asle, he says, or maybe he’s gotten so old now that his memory is going? yes, well, be that as it may he’s certain that Asle paints well enough that it would be a big mistake not to give him a spot at The Art School even without an examen artium, it’s precisely to let in people like him that this rule exists, The Principal says and Eiliv Pedersen says that he’s in complete agreement and Asle feels so relieved that he could almost faint, because now, now he can stop going to The Academic High School right away, he thinks and he thinks that now that he’s about to get an artist’s stipend to go to The Art School Father can stop giving him money every month, because Father works and toils and is not paid well for his fruit and even if he does sell the boats he builds, Barmen boats they’re called, he used to mostly build traditional pointed rowboats but in recent years he’s built them mostly with glass sterns so that it’s easy to attach an outboard motor to the boat, because that’s the kind of boat people want now, Father says, and he doesn’t make all that much money for his boats since most people want to buy plastic boats now, they’re easier to maintain, so there’s less and less demand for the boats Father builds, on the other hand there are fewer and fewer people who build wooden boats so Father can still sell his boats, and from the money Father makes he then has to give him, Asle, money every month, Asle thinks, but now, now that he’s about to start getting an artist’s stipend Father can stop needing to part with the little money he makes even though Father works day and night, and Asle will get by with the money Father’s already given him until he gets his first artist’s stipend, because he has a little money set aside, since he’s always been careful with his money, Asle thinks and he thinks that it’s hard to believe he can now get away from the grey trousers and the white pullover with blue stripes, now he’ll just leave The Academic High School that terrified him so much that he was never entirely free from the anxiety, or whatever you call it, he thinks, now he’ll put an ad in The Bjørgvin Times looking for an apartment and then as soon as he’s found an apartment he’ll move from Aga to Bjørgvin, Asle thinks and I drive slowly and I look at the white road and then, all of a sudden, I see a deer leaping across the road and I stop the car, there are constantly deer here, because there are a lot of deer in Dylgja, and especially when it’s dark they like to leap out into the road, and right across the road, and right in front of cars too, I think, and it’s pure dumb luck that I’ve never hit a deer, I think and I’ve stopped the car but the engine’s still running and the lights are still on and I look at the white road and I see Asle walking towards the room he’s rented at The Shoemaker’s Workshop and he’s thinking that everything went great, he put an ad in The Bjørgvin Times and got a letter and few days later, it was an older woman who wrote to him, she lived alone, she wrote, and she was a teacher, or rather a retired teacher, but she still taught classes every now and then if a teacher was sick or something, she wrote and she had always had renters and a student from Hardanger had lived with her for several years, lived there the whole time he’d been a student, and now she was hoping to get a new renter to live there like the one from Hardanger, someone who was going to study in Bjørgvin, so if he wanted he could come and look at the room she had to rent out, it was on the sixth floor in a townhouse, and she’s sure they can work out the rent, the only requirement she had was that he take out the rubbish for her once a week and lend a hand if there was something that needed lifting and she couldn’t lift it alone, and change the lightbulbs when one of them went out, she wrote and she gave him her phone number and that same day Asle takes the letter and walks to the phone booth next to The Co-op Store and calls her and they agree that he’ll come by the next day, and Asle says that he’ll take the bus from Aga to Bjørgvin early in the morning and then go back that afternoon or evening, and the woman, who is from Bjørgvin and speaks like a Bjørgvinner, says that it’s bes
t if he comes by around three o’clock, and Asle says that’s fine, and then she says that she lives at 7 University Street and it says Herdis Åsen on the door, she says and University Street runs from the city centre up to The University and the apartment is on the sixth floor, with no lift, so there’re a lot of stairs to walk up, she says, so it’s settled, she says and if Asle can’t come then he has her phone number and he can just call her and they’ll figure out something else, she says, and then she says that if Asle does live there then he can use her phone as long as he doesn’t make too many calls, and as long as other people don’t call him too often, she says and I think that I can’t just stay sitting like this in my car and I look at the white road and I see Asle sitting on the bus to Bjørgvin, he is sitting in his black velvet jacket and he’s put his brown leather shoulder bag down on the seat next to him and he’s thinking that he doesn’t know his way around Bjørgvin at all, yes, he’s probably been there only a few times, he thinks and he remembers nothing or hardly anything about it, he thinks and I sit in my car and I look at the white road and I see Asle standing there and he asks The Bus Driver if he knows where University Street is and he says he doesn’t but that it must not be far from The University, as the name says, so he’ll just have to go out the door of The Bus Station and turn right and go straight until he gets to a big square, and from there, from The Fishmarket as it’s called, take a left and go straight for a while towards a church and The University is behind the church and University Street must be around there somewhere, he says and Asle thanks him and then he walks just the way The Bus Driver told him he should and he gets to the big square and he sees a church up on a hill and then he walks towards the church and then he sees a sign that says University Street and then he walks to a door that says 7 on it and he looks at his watch and it’s only twelve, and he wasn’t supposed to come look at the room until three, so he has plenty of time, and what should he do now? he thinks, because he can’t just stay standing outside the door for three hours, he thinks, and so he goes back the same way he came, because he’d seen that there was a café at The Bus Station itself, he’d seen a sign saying Bus Café over a door, Asle thinks, and then there was a kiosk next to the café selling newspapers so he might as well go to the kiosk and buy a newspaper and then go to The Bus Café and buy a cup of coffee, or maybe a glass of beer, Asle thinks and he walks back the same way, and that goes fine, and at The Kiosk he buys The Bjørgvin Times and then he walks through the door with Bus Café over it and he goes over to the counter and he says he’d like a glass of beer and the woman standing behind the counter says there’s no way he’s old enough to buy beer, if he wants a beer he needs to show an ID, she says and Asle takes out his wallet and takes out the ID card and the woman standing behind the counter looks at it and then she hands it back to him and then she pours a pint from the tap and puts it down in front of Asle and he pays and goes and sits down at a window table, and there’s nobody else in The Bus Café, but someone will come in soon, Asle thinks and he looks out the window and people are constantly walking by outside The Bus Station, young and old, and there’s a street right in front of The Bus Station and it has two lanes and cars are driving by the whole time, life was going by at breakneck speed out there, Asle feels, and then he opens The Bjørgvin Times and starts flipping through the paper and he turns to the pages called Arts and there are a lot of book reviews in there, and a review of an exhibition that the painter Eiliv Pedersen is having now in The Beyer Gallery, and that must be the man Asle talked to when he went to The Art School to show them his pictures, the one who’d recommended that he be given a spot at The Art School, the one who’d taken him and his paintings with him to talk to The Principal, Asle thinks and the woman who wrote the review was named Anne Sofie Grieg and she wrote that this may be the best show Eiliv Pedersen has ever had, it says, and it’s been too long since Eiliv Pedersen has shown his work and that must have something to do with the fact that he works as a teacher at The Art School, where he is almost solely responsible for all the courses in the Painting track, which is taking up too much of his time, and really it’s too bad that such an eminent painter, with such clear and obvious gifts, because no one with eyes can be in any possible doubt about that, has to spend so much of his time teaching instead of painting, and since it’s so rare that Eiliv Pedersen has a show everyone needs to take advantage of this chance to go see the show at The Beyer Gallery, the critic apparently named Anne Sofie Grieg writes and Asle looks up and he sees that a few tables away from where he’s sitting there’s a girl alone at a table, and she wasn’t sitting there when he came in, when he sat down, but now she’s sitting there facing him, and their eyes meet, and it’s like right away their eyes rested in each other’s and neither her eyes nor his eyes looked away, she has dark eyes and they’re so clear and then she has long dark hair, and he didn’t really know why they were sitting there and looking into each other’s eyes, it kind of felt right that they do that, but eventually Asle decides that they’ve sat looking into each other’s eyes long enough and he drinks a little beer and sees her drink a little of her coffee and he looks down at the newspaper, and he takes another sip of beer, and it’s still cold and good, and he rereads the review Anne Sofie Grieg wrote about the exhibition of Eiliv Pedersen’s paintings and it says there that The Beyer Gallery is open every day between ten and seven, on weekends too, and people now need to take the opportunity to see these paintings by Eiliv Pedersen, one of Norway’s foremost artists, even though he’s never been given anything like the recognition he deserves, yes, even The Bjørgvin Museum of Art owns just one painting by Eiliv Pedersen, and what a shame that is, and what about The National Museum of Art? isn’t it time that they buy one, or better yet, several of his paintings? she writes, and anyone who has wanted to buy a single painting ever in their lives has to take the chance they have now, she writes and the whole time Asle feels the eyes of the girl sitting across from him looking at him and it’s good, it feels good that she’s looking at him, Asle thinks, but he’d still rather not look up, even if it was good when their eyes met, good to look her in the eye, he thinks and the exhibition, in The Beyer Gallery it’s called, he would like to go see it, he thinks, but does he even know where The Beyer Gallery is? it says that it’s at 1 High Street, but of course he doesn’t know where that is, Asle thinks, so he’ll probably never get to see an exhibition of paintings by Eiliv Pedersen, who paints so much in grey and white, and who likes to paint a woman sitting by a window, as it says in the review by Anne Sofie Grieg, and who paints pictures that have such great stillness in them, as Anne Sofie Grieg also writes, Asle thinks and he drinks his beer and he thinks that it’s always so good to have a glass of beer, yes, several glasses, it makes him calm, and life begins to feel livable, he thinks and he looks up and again he looks into the dark eyes of the girl sitting a few tables away from him, facing him, the girl with the long dark hair, and he looks down at the newspaper again and then he looks at the watch that he got from Grandmother as a confirmation present and he sees that’s it’s now one o’clock, so it won’t be long now before he can go to 7 University Street to look at the room he might rent, and he doesn’t remember the landlady’s name, but her apartment was on the sixth floor, and he has the letter from her with him, and her name is in the letter if he can’t remember it, but he thinks it was Herdis Åsen, Asle thinks and he takes the letter out of the pocket of his black velvet jacket and yes, yes, it says Herdis Åsen at the bottom of the letter and he seesthat it says 7 University Street and he puts the letter back in his pocket and he drinks a little beer and he sees that the glass is about half empty, there’s a little more than half the glass left and he sees the girl a few tables away from him get up and Asle looks down at his newspaper and then she stops next to his table
