Jon Fosse

she thinks, no matter what she can still be safe and solid in herself, the way she was before he disappeared, but then it comes back to her, how he disappeared, that Tuesday, in late November, in 1979, and all at once she is back in the emptiness, she thinks, and she looks at the hall door and then it opens and then she sees herself come in and shut the door behind her and then she sees herself walk into the room, stop and stand there and look at the window and then she sees herself see him standing in front of the window and she sees, standing there in the room, that he is standing and looking out into the darkness, with his long black hair, and in his black sweater, the sweater she knit herself and that he almost always wears when it’s cold, he is standing there, she thinks, and he is almost at one with the darkness outside, she thinks, yes he is so at one with the darkness that when she opened the door and looked in she didn’t notice at first that he was standing there, even though she knew, without thinking it, without saying it to herself, she knew in a way that he’d be standing there like that, she thinks, and that his black sweater and the darkness outside the window would be almost one, he is the darkness, the darkness is him, but still that’s how it is, she thinks, it’s almost as though when she came in and saw him standing there she saw something unexpected, and that’s what’s really strange, because he stands there like that all the time, there in front of the window, it’s just that she usually doesn’t see it, she thinks, or that she sees it but doesn’t notice it somehow, because it’s also that his standing there has become a kind of habit, like most anything else, it has become something that just is, around her, but now, this time, when she came into the room she saw him standing there, she saw his black hair, and then the black sweater, and now he just stands there and looks out into the darkness and why is he doing that?

A lot of times when someone says something they don’t really mean anything by it, probably, he says
Probably almost never, he says
They just say something, just to say something, that’s true, Signe says
That’s what it’s like, yes, Asle says
They have to say something, Signe says
They have to, Asle says
That’s how it is, he says
and she sees him stand there and sort of not entirely know what to do with himself and then he raises one hand and lowers it again

he can be so unsure of himself, not knowing what he should say or do, but there’s not any resentment of her in him, she’s certainly never noticed any, she thinks, but then why would he want to be out on the fjord all the time? in that little boat he got himself, a little wooden boat, a rowboat, she thinks and she sees, lying there on the bench, herself standing there in the middle of the floor in the room and then she sees herself go over to the window and stand there and look out and now there is a little light outside, she thinks, standing there in front of the window, now it has got as light as it can probably get at this time of year, it’s brightened up so much that you can see the sky in its grey and black

I nod and my grandmother says that since it’s Saturday she can make what they used to make on Saturday evenings when she was little, then she goes to the kitchen. I listen to the slow black guitar music. I hear the fat start to sizzle in the frying pan. I lean against the kitchen door and see my grandmother standing in front of the kitchen sink chopping onions.

Bacon and eggs, potatoes and onions, my grandmother says.

I go back into the living room. I sit down in the chair in front of the window and look out at the fjord. I hear the sizzling from the frying pan and the slow guitars.

MY GRANDMOTHER IS LYING IN BED
I.
My grandmother is lying in bed, she can’t talk any more. There’s another bed along the other long wall and someone’s lying there talking nonsense all the time. I’m sitting in a chair next to my grandmother’s bed. My hair is so long, down over my shoulders, that it reaches her bed when I bend forward. My grandmother smiles at me. I smile back at her. I ask her how it’s going and she shakes her head from side to side.

Do you want to come back home? I say.

I see her mouth trying to move.

Yes? I say.

My grandmother looks at me. I say yes again, slowly, clearly moving my lips. My grandmother looks at my lips. She shapes her own lips copying mine.

Yes, she says.

II.
My grandmother smiles when I walk into her room. I see that the woman who was lying in the other bed isn’t there any more. I see that someone has combed my grandmother’s thin grey hair straight back from her forehead. I’ve brought my grandmother some bananas. I hand her the bananas and she puts them down on her duvet. My grandmother takes me by the hand, I sit next to her and she sits holding my hand. I came to this town to go to school, my grandmother came because she got sick. We are both living far from home now.

Everything all right? I say.

My grandmother doesn’t answer.

No, I say.

My grandmother looks at my lips. I say no again, slowly, moving my mouth clearly.

I think she’s scared because she’s about to die and because she’s Christian. I see my grandmother writhe from side to side in her white nightgown. I’m not Christian. I put the bag of oranges I’ve brought down on the bedside table.

I didn’t dare say anything, didn’t dare look at her, but we sat together at the concert. Afterwards we wrote lots of letters. I got letters with lipstick kisses.

III.
She and a friend took the bus the two miles to where I lived. It was Easter and we went up into the mountains. We didn’t have skis, we went on foot, it was warm and unpleasant, the snow was slushy, we sank into it. We held hands a little.

is like music somehow in the novel, so he really likes it, but it’s not exactly the same as music, because he knows what music is but this is a kind of music where everything that goes back and forth stays quiet and nice to think about.

my mother is going to be so scared when she sees how I’m bleeding, what should I do? I’m bleeding so much and I have to run upstairs up to my mother and do I really still have a bone in my mouth and I run upstairs and the blood is spurting and I need to keep calm.

II.
A man I don’t know is holding my arm in his lap. We are sitting in a car. My mother is there. My father is there. I can see, but not very clearly. I see home, the house. I don’t know anyone who’s died but now I’m going to die, even though I’m just seven years old. I’m not scared. I turn around, I look back at the houses. I think that this is the last time I’m going to see the house where I live.

Svein and I stand looking at Geir Henning’s coffin being lowered down into the ground. I think about his heavy breathing, his hoarse voice, his peeling skin. And I think that Geir Henning and I will always be friends.