by Jon Fosse
Come back here, she says
and she looks at him
Don’t go, she says
Don’t just leave like that, so suddenly, she says
Come to me, she says
and she holds out her hand to him and he goes over to her and takes her hand and they stand still for a moment
Time to go? he says
Yes, she says
and then she opens her arms and puts them around him and holds him close and I turn around and I keep walking, up to the road, and she says sweetheart, my darling boy, you, I, she says and he says sweetheart, my darling girl, my darling darling girl, my darling darling girl, you, he says and then she says it’s pretty cold and he says yes it’s really cold, he says he’s freezing even though he has his coat on and I walk carefully and as quietly as I can and I look back at the playground and see her long dark hair, hanging straight down over her back, almost down to her hips, and he is just standing there, not doing anything, and his medium-length brown hair is tousled and sticking out in every direction like it’s confused while her hair hangs straight down, and then she brings her face to his, her mouth to his, and she kisses him on the mouth and then she says that there’s really a lot of sand on his coat
Yeah, he says
and he gives a little laugh
It’s all over us, he says
It’s ’cause you poured all those buckets of sand on me, she says
Yes, he says
You almost buried me, she says
Almost, not quite, he says
and they stand there and it’s like they don’t exactly know what to do or say
Now it’s really dark, she says
And cold, too, she says
Like you said, she says
Yes, he says
We should go home, he says
and she nods, and then they move a little bit apart from each other and she looks at him, he looks at her
Because you’re Asle, she says
And you’re Ales, he says
and they smile at each other, they shyly smile at each other and she says can you believe we took our clothes off in the dark, when it’s so cold out too, she says, we took our clothes off outside, so late in the autumn, when it’s so dark, and so cold, and then to lie down in a sandpit, naked, she says and she laughs, but anyway it’s somewhere to live, she says, yes even if the house is falling down, he says, practically a shack, she says, yes it’s going to be almost impossible to heat that house, he says, but it’s somewhere to live anyway, she says, and he says that when they get home he’ll have to thoroughly brush all the sand out of their clothes and then they just stand there holding hands
And then we’ll need to wash them, she says
Or at least brush and wipe all the sand off, she says
We’re pretty wild, she says
No, what we did wasn’t totally crazy, he says
Imagine what people would say, she says
Yeah, he says
I think there’s a car up there in the turnoff, he says
No, she says
Yup, he says
It’s cold and we need to get home, she says
To our new place, yes, he says
It’ll be at least a little warmer there, she says
A little, maybe, he says
But anyway, that’s the home we have, she says
And it’s good we have somewhere to live, he says
And that we have each other, she says
We do, he says
and she turns her face towards him and they give each other a short kiss
We have each other, she says
In deepest darkness we have each other, he says
And we stick together, she says
Through thick and thin, he says
There will always be us, she says
There will always be you and me, he says
Asle and Ales, she says
Ales and Asle, he says
The two of us forever, just us, you and me, she says
That’s right, he says
and now it’s completely dark and I’ve made it back to the car and I get in and sit down and stay sitting there looking straight ahead and I lean back in the seat and put my head on the headrest and look straight ahead and now I see nothing but darkness in front of me, just the black darkness, nothing but black, and I think that I’m parked in the turnoff by the brown house where Ales and I used to live, I stopped here to take a break because I was tired, I think, and because I wanted to pray, since I pray three times a day almost every day, I say a prayer that I’ve put together myself, in the morning and once in the middle of the day and then in the evening, yes, laudes or matins, as they call it, and then sextus, and then vespers, and I use a rosary with brown wooden beads to pray with, there’s a loop with five decades, as they call them, five groups of ten beads each, with a gap between each group and then there’s a string hanging off the loop with a gap and a bead and then a gap and then three beads and then a gap and then a bead and then a gap and then a cross at the end, and I always have my rosary with me, around my neck, it was Ales who gave it to me, it was she who taught me about rosaries, I had barely heard the word rosary before I met her, I think, yes, I remember that I heard the word once and wondered what it meant, I think, but now I always wear a rosary around my neck like a necklace and I always silently say to myself the Pater Noster or Our Father, two or three times, and I see every prayer before me, yes, like a picture, I’ve never learned any of the prayers by heart but I recall them by seeing them in front of me, since I can also easily see things written in front of me, but I try not to do that, so there are only a few things I see before my eyes in writing, and unlike with pictures I can decide whether or not I want to remember something written, I think and I think that I also like to pray three Ave Marias and one Gloria Patri each time, and I pray either in Latin or in my own translation into Norwegian, Nynorsk, and after that what I pray varies a little, it’s often the creed, the short Apostolic Creed, that they say the apostles spoke, or anyway something like that, and in any case I say the whole thing silently, before the Pater Noster, the long creed, the Nicene Creed, I see just pieces of that before my eyes, yes, light from light, Lumen de Lumine, visible and invisible things, visibilium omnium et invisibilium, and then I sometimes say something from Salve Regina right to the end and sometimes I try to stay silent, not think about anything while I’m praying and just let there be a silence inside me, and then I can pray for something, but I almost always pray for intercessions, I pray for other people, almost never for something I’m planning to do myself, and if it is then it has to be something I can do to help God’s kingdom to come, for example paint pictures so that they might have something to do with God’s kingdom, and I always make the sign of the cross, both before I start praying and after I’m done, and I say In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost Amen or else In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti Amen, and in the mornings it’s a short prayer, often just the sign of the cross, and in the middle of the day I pray the longest, and in the evening I usually pray myself to sleep with something from the Jesus prayer and saying to myself Lord Jesus Christ, and I say each syllable while either breathing deeply in or breathing slowly out, the same when I say Have mercy on me a sinner, again and again I say these words, or else I say to myself Domine Iesu Christe Fili Dei Miserere mei peccatoris again and again, breathing deeply in, breathing slowly out, but I almost always say this prayer in Norwegian, for whatever reason, and then I disappear into sleep, I think, I fall asleep either to that prayer or to the Ave Maria, I think, and what I’m looking for in all my prayers is silence and humility, I think, yes, God’s peace, I think, and I take the rosary in both hands and lift it from under my pullover and pull it up over my head and then sit with the rosary in my hands and I hold the cross between my thumb and forefinger and I think that I must have fallen asleep and dreamed, but I wasn’t asleep, and I wasn’t dreaming, I think and it was all unreal and
at the same time real, yes, all of that happened both in a dream and in reality and I sit there staring straight ahead into the darkness, now the darkness is blackness, it’s not just dark any more, and I just look into the blackness and I think that now I have to start making my way home, but I’ve thought that so many times already and now as if it’s the middle of a sunny day I see the two of them walking towards me, a young man with medium-length brown hair and a young woman with long dark hair, they stand out in the darkness, it’s as if a light coming from them stands out in the darkness, yes, they’re walking straight at me like they’re illuminated, and their faces are peaceful and still, and they’re holding hands, and they are like one, like one shape walking, and they might have noticed me or my car but they’re much too involved with each other, they are in each other, they are present to each other, in their own world, and they walk past the car and I turn to follow them with my eyes in the darkness and I see his medium-length brown hair so clearly and I see her long dark hair hanging straight down her back and I see them slowly disappear into the darkness and go away and I let go of the cross and put the rosary back around my neck and tuck it under my pullover and then I make the sign of the cross and I say to myself In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost Amen and then I start the car and I think no, that, that didn’t happen, I think, and now I really need to get home, I think, now I need to drive home to my wife and our child, I think and I drive out of the turnoff and onto the country road and I think I should have gone to see Asle, he was so worn down, half-dead, I should have asked him to come out with me, I should have driven him into town to The Alehouse, like I’ve done so many times, and he could’ve had his beer and his something stronger and I could’ve had a cup of coffee with milk, and food, yes we could’ve bought dinner there, food and beer for him and food and water for me, yes I’ve totally stopped drinking, because I used to drink much too much and Ales didn’t like it, she didn’t like me when I was drunk or at least she liked me more when I was sober and that’s why I totally stopped drinking, but I also stopped because by the end I was drinking way too much, yes, by the end I was never sober, to tell the truth, and I paint so badly when I’m drunk, and I’ve never missed it, not the beer, not the wine, not the stronger stuff, but that’s because of her too, because of Ales, without her I never would have been able to stop needing to drink, I think, and now Ales is waiting for me, she and our child, and I need to get home to them, to my wife, to our child, but what am I thinking? I live alone there, I’m going home to my old house in Dylgja where I used to live with Ales but she’s gone now, she’s with God now, in a way I can feel so clearly inside me, because she’s there inside me too, she isn’t walking around on earth any more but I can still talk to her whenever I want to, yes, it’s strange, there’s no big difference or distance between life and death, between the living and the dead, even though the difference can seem insurmountable it isn’t, because, it’s true, I talk with Ales every single day, yes, most of the time that’s what I’m doing, and we most often talk to each other without words, almost always, just wordlessly, and of course I miss her but since we’re still so close and since it won’t be long before the time comes when I myself will go over to where she is, yes, I manage just fine, but it’s painful, yes, being without her was like being without everything in life, it almost finished me off, and we never had children, there were just the two of us, so why am I thinking that I’m driving home to my wife and child? it’s probably just that I fall into a kind of stupor when I’m driving and when that happens thoughts can come to you, but I know perfectly well, I’m not crazy, that I’m going home to my old house, home to Dylgja, to my house in the little farming and fishing village of Dylgja, I think, the house where I’ve lived alone for all these years, yes, I wasn’t such an old man when we moved there, and Ales was even younger, that was where we lived, first the years when I lived there with Ales and then afterwards all those years when I lived alone in the good old house, and it is good, it’s good that I have my house, that I have a safe place to live, a house where I feel safe, because it’s a well-built old house and I’ve taken good care of it, whenever any of it started falling apart I replaced the wood, I replaced all the windows, but I made the new ones as much like the old ones as I could, I put the windows into the same frames just with an extra pane of glass so that there’d be less of a draught, now there are two panes of glass instead of one in every window, one pane that opens out, one that opens in, and it was so much easier to keep the house warm after the new windows were put in, I ordered the windows from a carpenter who made them to measure, by hand, the same way they used to make windows, so that the new windows were just like the old ones, and then I put the windows in myself, but not alone, Åsleik helped me, without his help I’d never have been able to put them in, that’s for sure, we had to work together, but together we could do it, even if the first window ended up being put in crooked and we had to redo it, take the window out and put it back in, but the other windows went in the way they were supposed to, the other windows were easy, I think, yes, Åsleik’s helped me a lot, and I’ve helped him too for that matter, I think and now it’ll be good to get home, light the stove, make some food, I’m really hungry, yes it’ll definitely be nice to get back home to my good old house in the little village of Dylgja, where just a few people still live, good people, none of them lock their doors when they leave the house, or go on a trip, not that they do that very often, and most of the people who live there have lived there their whole life, and then I moved there, or we did, my wife and I, yes, Ales and I moved there and it was because Ales got her aunt’s house when she died, her father’s sister, old Alise, because her aunt was childless and there were no other heirs and since we didn’t own a place to live anywhere and just lived in the rundown brown house that I just drove past we moved into the old house in Dylgja, yes, that was many years ago now, I think, and then we lived there, Ales and I, and then, no I don’t want to think about that, not now, I think and I drive north and I think that I like driving, as long as I don’t have to drive in cities, I don’t like that at all, I get anxious and confused and I avoid city driving as much as I can, in fact I never do it, but Beyer, my gallerist, he told me how to get to and from The Beyer Gallery which is in the middle of Bjørgvin, and outside the gallery there’s a big car park and that’s where I always park my car, so I can manage in the city of Bjørgvin, I think and I get to Instefjord and then I start driving out along Sygnefjord and I’m so tired but I’m almost home now, I think, it won’t be long before I see Åsleik at the door, yes, Åsleik, actually I’ve never liked him much but in a strange way that’s why I like him, I think, you can’t always understand things like that, I think, and now it’ll be good to get home, but I shouldn’t have just driven past Asle’s apartment in Bjørgvin, in Sailor’s Cove, he’s always shaking, before I drove home to Dylgja I should have driven him into town to The Alehouse like I’ve done so many times, of course he would’ve been fine there in The Alehouse alone, surely someone he knew would be there or would get there soon, I wouldn’t have had to stay there with him, actually what I really should have done was drive him to The Clinic, but he’d never have gone along with that so we’d have ended up at The Alehouse anyway, he with his long grey hair and grey stubble, me with my long grey hair and grey stubble, in our long black coats, each with our hair tied back in a pony tail, I think
You look like a little girl, Åsleik says
Actually more like an old woman, he says
and I don’t know what to say
I’m not an old woman, I say then
You almost are, Åsleik says
or maybe I am a little like an old woman, I don’t know, I think, maybe a little? it’s not entirely wrong to say that I am, I think, anyway Åsleik likes to say so, either that or he says I look like a Russian monk
You’re like a Russian monk, he says
Why’s that? I say
Because you are, you’re like a Russian monk,
he says
and how can he have come up with that? I think, and now I’m driving back to my house and the headlights light up the road and I can see the road in front of me and I see Asle sitting on the sofa with Bragi in his lap and he’s thinking he wants to get up and go outside and then go out into the sea and he’s thinking that all the paintings he’s putting into his next show at The Beyer Gallery are bad paintings anyway, Asle thinks, and he thinks that he can’t just stay sitting like this, he needs to go to the kitchen and get something to drink, to make this shaking stop, Asle thinks and he looks at Bragi lying on his lap and he thinks he needs to walk the dog, it’s been a long time since the dog has been out, he thinks and I think I need to concentrate on my driving now, because the road to Dylgja is so narrow and winding, even though I’ve driven it countless times I still need to pay attention, I think, and it’ll be good to get back to my house again, because it’s my home, that’s what it’s become, and Ales lived there too for many years, yes, but then, yes, she died, with no warning, and now she’s gone, that’s all there is to say about that, I think, and now I need to just drive, slowly, just keep my eyes on the patch of light that the headlights make reaching forward on the road, they light up a bit of the landscape alongside the road too, and I’m driving carefully out along Sygnefjord, and I think that there’s so many times one or more deer have been crossing the road or just suddenly standing in the middle of the road, or else bounding across the road, it’s like the deer can’t hear the noise of the engines or see the light from the headlights, like they just don’t notice it, they’ve become used to the engine sounds and headlights and no longer pay any attention to them but at the same time they’ve never realized how bad it would be if a car hit them, I think and I turn off the country road onto the driveway leading up to my house, good, good, I think, now I’m home, that’s good, and the driveway up to the house is one I had built myself, not so many years ago either, it was very expensive but it was certainly nice to have a driveway up to the house and no longer need to park the car a long way off down on the country road, I think, and even if the driveway is steep it’s easy enough to drive on it, I think and I don’t want to think about what it used to be like coming home when she was there, when Ales was there, when she was in the house with her long dark hair, it was so good to come home then, wasn’t it, I think, but I don’t want to think about that, and I can’t complain, I think and I steer the car around the little hill and there, there in front of the house, is that Åsleik standing there? yes it’s none other than Åsleik himself, my neighbour and friend, standing there in front of the house, as if waiting to welcome me home, and now that was a stroke of luck, that he should be looking in on me just when I got home, I think and I stop the car by the front door and I realize I’m happy to see Åsleik in front of the house but it wasn’t exactly luck, because this isn’t the first time he’s been standing in front of the house when I get home from Bjørgvin, Åsleik must have been standing and waiting for me in front of the house for a long time, that’s for sure, he sat down for a bit on the bench near the door, got up and stamped his feet a bit and then sat back down on the bench, because after all I bought a few things for him down in Bjørgvin the way I usually do and he’s waiting for me to get back, keeping a lookout, even though he always acts like he never wants to accept what I’ve bought him but then he does anyway, as if without seeing it, I think, and since I always ask him before I go into Bjørgvin whether I should buy him anything there, since it’s cheaper to buy things in Bjørgvin than at The Country Store in Vik, he says every time that it’s not necessary, that what little he needed, as he liked to say, he could buy at The Country Store in Vik, in the little shop, if you can call it that, that we have closest to Dylgja, but it’s certainly a good thing that we have the little shop at all or else we’d have to drive a long way just to buy the least little thing, and not everyone here has their own car either, or is able to drive it, some people are too old, some never got a driving licence, some don’t want to drive because they’re never sober enough to drive so they don’t do it, but not everyone who drinks avoids driving, some drive no matter how much they’ve drunk, they just drive slowly and carefully, I think, and I think that Åsleik is about to say well that was a long trip to Bjørgvin, I spent a while there but when I got there, yes, there was probably so much to do that you’d have to expect it to take some time before I got back home, since if I didn’t have anything special to do in Bjørgvin I could always just take the opportunity to hang around there, or go running around after the ladies for all he knew, that’s what he’s about to say, and then he’ll give a good laugh I think and I open the car door
