by Jon Fosse
Can you shut the front door, Asle, Grandma says
and she looks at him going and shutting the front door
Yes, it’s cold these days, Asle, so we can’t let the warmth get out, Grandma says
And it’s slippery, it’s dangerous for an old woman like Grandma to walk out there, yes, even just stepping outside, she says
But for you, for you it’s not dangerous, you’re young, Asle, she says
No not for me, Asle says
Not for you, no, you’re young, Grandma says
and she sees that Grandma takes hold of her red
shopping bag and opens the door to the kitchen and goes in and then she sees that he goes in after her and shuts the door behind him and now she just has to go inside and lay more wood in the stove, she thinks, because it needs to be warm in the house when he comes home, now she has to just go inside and then she has to fill up the stove well, she thinks, because it can’t go out, it has to be nice and warm in the room when he comes home from the water, with the wind blowing like this, with it raining like this, it’s so dark out there, and so cold, so when he comes home it has to be warm and nice in the room here at home in the old house, she thinks and she takes off her raincoat and she hangs it up on the peg where Grandma just hung up her coat, she hangs her raincoat over Grandma’s coat, and then she goes over to the door to the room and she opens it and she goes in and she sees, lying there on the bench, herself come into the room and she sees herself turn around and go and shut the door and then she sees herself go over to the woodbox and take out a couple logs and she sees herself bend down and put the logs into the stove and then she sees herself stand up there on the floor in the room and stand there and look at the flames and she thinks, standing there, that it’s good that it didn’t go out, that it’s still burning, and here inside it isn’t so cold, so if he could just come home now, she thinks and then she sees the kitchen door open and then the smell of bacon glides into the room and then she sees him come in from the kitchen and right after him comes Grandma
Just sit down at the table, the food’s almost ready, Grandma says
You’re so nice Grandma, Asle says
You’re such a good boy, Asle, Grandma says
We are good friends, the two of us, aren’t we, Asle says
and she sees him go over to the table and he sits down at the end of the table and she sees him sit there and swing his legs back and forth and Grandma goes out to the kitchen again and he sits there and swings his legs back and forth and then Grandma comes in with a plate of bacon and eggs, and roasted potatoes and fried onions, and in her other hand Grandma has a big glass of milk
Yes now you’ll have some good hearty food, Grandma says
and Grandma puts the plate and the glass down in front of him and he starts to eat and Grandma sits down at the other end of the table and she, lying there on the bench, sees herself standing and looking at the flames in the stove and then she sees herself go over to the window and she sees herself stand there and look out the window and then she looks, standing there in front of the window, at the bedroom door and it opens and then she sees Brita stand and hold the door open and she sees her hair clinging tight around her face and then she sees Kristoffer standing in the bedroom door and in his arms he is holding a little white wooden coffin and he walks into the room
So, it has to be, Kristoffer says
Yes we have to say farewell, Brita says
It has to be, Kristoffer says
and she sees Brita shut the bedroom door and then Brita opens the hall door and stands there and holds it open and she sees that Old Aliss is standing out there in the hall and tears are running down over her unsteady face and then she sees Kristoffer walk out the door with the little white wooden coffin in his arms and then Brita walks out, shuts the door behind her and then she sees, lying there on the bench, herself go over to the bench and then she sees herself lie down on the bench and she puts her hands up under her sweater and up to her breasts and then she lies there and holds her breasts and then she pulls up her skirt with one hand and she pulls her hand up over her thigh and she puts her hand in between her legs, she lets her hand lay there, and she looks at the table and she sees him stand up
Thanks for the food Grandma, Asle says
Yes good, Grandma says
and Grandma stands up, takes his plate and he takes the empty glass
That was really good, Asle says
Thank you Asle, Grandma says
and then Grandma goes out to the kitchen and he goes after her and he shuts the door behind him and then they are gone, gone forever, she thinks lying there on the bench and she thinks that today, today it’s probably Thursday, and it’s March, and the year is 2002, she thinks and she looks at the bedroom door and it opens and then he’s standing there
Don’t you want to come to bed soon, he says
I’ve warmed up the bed, he says
and he pushes his long black hair back behind his ears, and he looks at her
You need to come to bed too, come soon, he says
and she looks at him and then she looks away from him into the emptiness and then she lays both her hands on her stomach and she folds her hands and I hear Signe say Dear Jesus, help me, you have to help me, you
JON FOSSE is the most produced living European play-wright and is one of contemporary Norwegian literature’s most important writers. In 2000, the Melsom Prize was awarded to his novel Melancholy, also available from Dalkey Archive Press. Fosse has been awarded a lifetime stipend from the Norwegian government for his future literary efforts.
DAMION SEARLS has translated many of Europe’s greatest writers: Rilke, Proust, Ingeborg Bachmann, Peter Handke, Nescio, Robert Walser, Kurt Schwitters, and others.
PETROS ABATZOGLOU, What Does Mrs. Freeman Want?
MICHAL AJVAZ, The Golden Age.
The Other City.
PIERRE ALBERT-BIROT, Grabinoulor.
YUZ ALESHKOVSKY, Kangaroo.
FELIPE ALFAU, Chromos.
Locos.
IVAN NGELO, The Celebration.
The Tower of Glass.
DAVID ANTIN, Talking.
ANTÓNIO LOBO ANTUNES, Knowledge of Hell.
ALAIN ARIAS-MISSON, Theatre of Incest.
IFTIKHAR ARIF AND WAQAS KHWAJA, EDS.,
Modern Poetry of Pakistan.
JOHN ASHBERY AND JAMES SCHUYLER,
A Nest of Ninnies.
HEIMRAD BÄCKER, transcript.
DJUNA BARNES, Ladies Almanack.
Ryder.
JOHN BARTH, LETTERS.
Sabbatical.
DONALD BARTHELME, The King.
Paradise.
SVETISLAV BASARA, Chinese Letter.
RENÉ BELLETTO, Dying.
MARK BINELLI, Sacco and Vanzetti Must Die!
ANDREI BITOV, Pushkin House.
ANDREJ BLATNIK, You Do Understand.
LOUIS PAUL BOON, Chapel Road.
My Little War.
Summer in Termuren.
ROGER BOYLAN, Killoyle.
IGNÁCIO DE LOYOLA BRANDÃO,
Anonymous Celebrity.
The Good-Bye Angel.
Teeth under the Sun.
Zero.
BONNIE BREMSER,
Troia: Mexican Memoirs.
CHRISTINE BROOKE-ROSE, Amalgamemnon.
BRIGID BROPHY, In Transit.
MEREDITH BROSNAN, Mr. Dynamite.
GERALD L. BRUNS, Modern Poetry and the Idea of Language.
EVGENY BUNIMOVICH AND J. KATES, EDS.,
Contemporary Russian Poetry: An Anthology.
GABRIELLE BURTON, Heartbreak Hotel.
MICHEL BUTOR, Degrees.
Mobile.
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Ape.
G. CABRERA INFANTE, Infante’s Inferno.
Three Trapped Tigers.
JULIETA CAMPOS,
The Fear of Losing Eurydice.
ANNE CARSON, Eros the Bittersweet.
ORLY CASTEL-BLOOM
, Dolly City.
CAMILO JOSÉ CELA, Christ versus Arizona.
The Family of Pascual Duarte.
The Hive.
LOUIS-FERDINAND CÉLINE, Castle to Castle.
Conversations with Professor Y.
London Bridge.
Normance.
North.
Rigadoon.
HUGO CHARTERIS, The Tide Is Right.
JEROME CHARYN, The Tar Baby.
MARC CHOLODENKO, Mordechai Schamz.
JOSHUA COHEN, Witz.
EMILY HOLMES COLEMAN, The Shutter of Snow.
ROBERT COOVER, A Night at the Movies.
STANLEY CRAWFORD, Log of the S.S. The Mrs Unguentine.
Some Instructions to My Wife.
ROBERT CREELEY, Collected Prose.
RENÉ CREVEL, Putting My Foot in It.
RALPH CUSACK, Cadenza.
SUSAN DAITCH, L.C.
Storytown.
NICHOLAS DELBANCO,
The Count of Concord.
NIGEL DENNIS, Cards of Identity.
PETER DIMOCK, A Short Rhetoric for Leaving the Family.
ARIEL DORFMAN, Konfidenz.
COLEMAN DOWELL,
The Houses of Children.
Island People.
Too Much Flesh and Jabez.
ARKADII DRAGOMOSHCHENKO, Dust.
RIKKI DUCORNET, The Complete Butcher’s Tales.
The Fountains of Neptune.
The Jade Cabinet.
The One Marvelous Thing.
Phosphor in Dreamland.
The Stain.
The Word “Desire.”
WILLIAM EASTLAKE, The Bamboo Bed.
Castle Keep.
Lyric of the Circle Heart.
JEAN ECHENOZ, Chopin’s Move.
STANLEY ELKIN, A Bad Man.
Boswell: A Modern Comedy.
Criers and Kibitzers, Kibitzers and Criers.
The Dick Gibson Show.
The Franchiser.
George Mills.
The Living End.
The MacGuffin.
The Magic Kingdom.
Mrs. Ted Bliss.
The Rabbi of Lud.
Van Gogh’s Room at Arles.
ANNIE ERNAUX, Cleaned Out.
LAUREN FAIRBANKS, Muzzle Thyself.
Sister Carrie.
LESLIE A. FIEDLER, Love and Death in the American Novel.
JUAN FILLOY, Op Oloop.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, Bouvard and Pécuchet.
KASS FLEISHER, Talking out of School.
FORD MADOX FORD,
The March of Literature.
JON FOSSE, Aliss at the Fire.
Melancholy.
MAX FRISCH, I’m Not Stiller.
Man in the Holocene.
CARLOS FUENTES, Christopher Unborn.
Distant Relations.
Terra Nostra.
Where the Air Is Clear.
JANICE GALLOWAY, Foreign Parts.
The Trick Is to Keep Breathing.
WILLIAM H. GASS, Cartesian Sonata and Other Novellas.
Finding a Form.
A Temple of Texts.
The Tunnel.
Willie Masters’ Lonesome Wife.
GÉRARD GAVARRY, Hoppla! 1 2 3.
ETIENNE GILSON,
The Arts of the Beautiful.
Forms and Substances in the Arts.
C. S. GISCOMBE, Giscome Road.
Here.
Prairie Style.
DOUGLAS GLOVER, Bad News of the Heart.
The Enamoured Knight.
WITOLD GOMBROWICZ,
A Kind of Testament.
KAREN ELIZABETH GORDON,
The Red Shoes.
GEORGI GOSPODINOV, Natural Novel.
JUAN GOYTISOLO, Count Julian.
Juan the Landless.
Makbara.
Marks of Identity.
PATRICK GRAINVILLE, The Cave of Heaven.
HENRY GREEN, Back.
Blindness.
Concluding.
Doting.
Nothing.
JIÍ GRUA, The Questionnaire.
GABRIEL GUDDING,
Rhode Island Notebook.
MELA HARTWIG, Am I a Redundant Human Being?
JOHN HAWKES, The Passion Artist.
Whistlejacket.
ALEKSANDAR HEMON, ED.,
Best European Fiction.
AIDAN HIGGINS, A Bestiary.
Balcony of Europe.
Bornholm Night-Ferry.
Darkling Plain: Texts for the Air.
Flotsam and Jetsam.
Langrishe, Go Down.
Scenes from a Receding Past.
Windy Arbours.
KEIZO HINO, Isle of Dreams.
ALDOUS HUXLEY, Antic Hay.
Crome Yellow.
Point Counter Point.
Those Barren Leaves.
Time Must Have a Stop.
MIKHAIL IOSSEL AND JEFF PARKER, EDS.,
Amerika: Russian Writers View the United States.
GERT JONKE, The Distant Sound.
Geometric Regional Novel.
Homage to Czerny.
The System of Vienna.
JACQUES JOUET, Mountain R.
Savage.
CHARLES JULIET, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde.
MIEKO KANAI, The Word Book.
YORAM KANIUK, Life on Sandpaper.
HUGH KENNER, The Counterfeiters.
Flaubert, Joyce and Beckett: The Stoic Comedians.
Joyce’s Voices.
DANILO KIŠ, Garden, Ashes.
A Tomb for Boris Davidovich.
ANITA KONKKA, A Fool’s Paradise.
GEORGE KONRÁD, The City Builder.
TADEUSZ KONWICKI, A Minor Apocalypse.
The Polish Complex.
MENIS KOUMANDAREAS, Koula.
ELAINE KRAF, The Princess of 72nd Street.
JIM KRUSOE, Iceland.
EWA KURYLUK, Century 21.
EMILIO LASCANO TEGUI, On Elegance While Sleeping.
ERIC LAURRENT, Do Not Touch.
VIOLETTE LEDUC, La Bâtarde.
SUZANNE JILL LEVINE, The Subversive Scribe: Translating Latin American Fiction.
DEBORAH LEVY, Billy and Girl.
Pillow Talk in Europe and Other Places.
JOSÉ LEZAMA LIMA, Paradiso.
ROSA LIKSOM, Dark Paradise.
OSMAN LINS, Avalovara.
The Queen of the Prisons of Greece.
ALF MAC LOCHLAINN,
The Corpus in the Library.
Out of Focus.
RON LOEWINSOHN, Magnetic Field(s).
BRIAN LYNCH, The Winner of Sorrow.
D. KEITH MANO, Take Five.
MICHELINE AHARONIAN MARCOM,
The Mirror in the Well.
BEN MARCUS,
The Age of Wire and String.
WALLACE MARKFIELD,
Teitlebaum’s Window.
To an Early Grave.
DAVID MARKSON, Reader’s Block.
Springer’s Progress.
Wittgenstein’s Mistress.
CAROLE MASO, AVA.
LADISLAV MATEJKA AND KRYSTYNA POMORSKA, EDS.,
Readings in Russian Poetics: Formalist and Structuralist Views.
HARRY MATHEWS,
The Case of the Persevering Maltese: Collected Essays.
Cigarettes.
The Conversions.
The Human Country: New and Collected Stories.
The Journalist.
My Life in CIA.
Singular Pleasures.
The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium.
Tlooth.
20 Lines a Day.
JOSEPH MCELROY,
Night Soul and Other Stories.
ROBERT L. MCLAUGHLIN, ED.,
Innovations: An Anthology of Modern & Contemporary Fiction.
HERMAN MELVILLE, The Confidence-Man.
AMANDA MICHALOPOULOU, I’d Like.
STEVEN MILLHAUSER,
The Bar
num Museum.
In the Penny Arcade.
RALPH J. MILLS, JR.,
Essays on Poetry.
MOMUS, The Book of Jokes.
CHRISTINE MONTALBETTI, Western.
OLIVE MOORE, Spleen.
NICHOLAS MOSLEY, Accident.
Assassins.
Catastrophe Practice.
Children of Darkness and Light.
Experience and Religion.
God’s Hazard.
The Hesperides Tree.
Hopeful Monsters.
Imago Bird.
Impossible Object.
Inventing God.
Judith.
Look at the Dark.
Natalie Natalia.
Paradoxes of Peace.
Serpent.
Time at War.
The Uses of Slime Mould: Essays of Four Decades.
WARREN MOTTE,
Fables of the Novel: French Fiction since 1990.
Fiction Now: The French Novel in the 21st Century.
Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature.
YVES NAVARRE, Our Share of Time.
Sweet Tooth.
DOROTHY NELSON, In Night’s City.
Tar and Feathers.
ESHKOL NEVO, Homesick.
WILFRIDO D. NOLLEDO,
But for the Lovers.
FLANN O’BRIEN,
At Swim-Two-Birds.
At War.
The Best of Myles.
The Dalkey Archive.
Further Cuttings.
The Hard Life.
The Poor Mouth.
The Third Policeman.
CLAUDE OLLIER, The Mise-en-Scène.
PATRIK OUEDNÍK, Europeana.
BORIS PAHOR, Necropolis.
FERNANDO DEL PASO,
News from the Empire.
Palinuro of Mexico.
ROBERT PINGET, The Inquisitory.
Mahu or The Material.
Trio.
MANUEL PUIG,
Betrayed by Rita Hayworth.
The Buenos Aires Affair.
Heartbreak Tango.
RAYMOND QUENEAU, The Last Days.
Odile.
Pierrot Mon Ami.
Saint Glinglin.
ANN QUIN, Berg.
Passages.
Three.
Tripticks.
ISHMAEL REED,
The Free-Lance Pallbearers.
The Last Days of Louisiana Red.
Ishmael Reed: The Plays.
Reckless Eyeballing.
The Terrible Threes.
The Terrible Twos.
Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down.
JEAN RICARDOU, Place Names.
RAINER MARIA RILKE, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge.
JULIÁN RÍOS, The House of Ulysses.
