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Jon Fosse

• Herausgeber: Fitzcarraldo Editions
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Asle is an ageing painter and widower who lives alone on the southwest coast of Norway. In nearby Bjørgvin another Asle, also a painter, is lying in the hospital, consumed by alcoholism. Asle and Asle are doppelgängers – two versions of the same person, two versions of the same life, both grappling with existential questions.   In this final instalment of Jon Fosse's Septology, the major prose work by 'the Beckett of the twenty-first century' (Le Monde), we follow the lives of the two Asles as younger adults in flashbacks: the narrator meets his lifelong love, Ales; joins the Catholic Church; and makes a living bytrying to paint away all the pictures stuck in his mind. A New Name: Septology VI-VII is a transcendent explorationof the human condition, and a radically other reading experience – incantatory, hypnotic, and utterly unique.

Leseprobe

‘Fosse’s portrait of memory remarkably refuses. It will not be other than: indellible as paint, trivial as nail clippings, wound like damp string. This book reaches out of its frame like a hand.’ — Jesse Ball, author of Census

‘Jon Fosse is a major European writer.’ — Karl Ove Knausgaard, author of My Struggle

Praise for I is Another: Septology III-V

‘The reader of I is Another is both on the riverbank and inthe water being carried forward, and around, by the great, shaping, and completely engrossing, flow of Fosse’s words. It’s a doubleness of view that is reflected in the characters, named Asle, who are both one and other, and through which we can see and feel the world, and ourselves, more clearly.’ — David Hayden, author of Darker with the Lights On

‘[P]alpable in this book is the way that the writing is meant to replicate the pulse and repetitive phrasing of liturgical prayer. Asle is a Catholic convert and, in Damion Searls’s liquid translation, his thoughts are rendered in long run-on sentences whose metronomic cadences conjure the intake and outtake of breath, or the reflexive motions of fingers telling a rosary. These unique books ask you to engage with the senses rather than the mind, and their aim is to bring about the momentary dissolution of the self.’ — Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

‘There is a sense of something gathering here, the culmination of a life. The stream of consciousness has matured into something slower, deeper and more winding.’ — Rónán Hession, Review 31

Praise for The Other Name: Septology I-II

‘Fosse has written a strange mystical moebius strip of a novel, in which an artist struggles with faith and loneliness, and watches himself, or versions of himself, fall away into the lower depths. The social world seems distant and foggy in this profound, existential narrative, which is only the first part of what promises to be a major work of Scandinavian fiction.’ — Hari Kunzru, author of White Tears

‘There is, in this book’s rhythmic accumulation of words, something incantatory and self-annihilating — something that feels almost holy.’ — Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

‘Over the past two decades, Jon Fosse, a playwright, poet, essayist and children’s author as well as a novelist, has won almost every award going in Norway, while his “slow prose” has gained him a cult following in English translation. He has been compared to Ibsen and Beckett, and his writing has elements of both the former’s severity and the latter’s use of insistent repetition. … The work simply loops and flows. The style is formal, yet with a sense of restlessness. As for plot, there is plenty. … Fosse’s fusing of the commonplace and the existential, together with his dramatic forays into the past, make for a relentlessly consuming work: already Septology feels momentous.’ — Catherine Taylor, Guardian

‘Fosse has been compared to Ibsen and to Beckett, and it is easy to see his work as Ibsen stripped down to its emotional essentials. But it is much more. For one thing, it has a fierce poetic simplicity.’ — New York Times

‘Fosse’s portrait of intersecting lives is that rare metaphysical novel that readers will find compulsively readable.’ — Publishers Weekly, starred review

‘Deeply enigmatic though never obscure, the novel presents questions […] But to understand how completely these things elude comprehension, and to clothe their fundamental mystery in such gorgeous raiment, is an achievement no less profound.’ — Dustin Illingworth, The Nation

‘Septology is on its way to becoming some of Fosse’s most meaningful art, his singular picture finally dislodged.’ — Music and Literature

A NEW NAME SEPTOLOGY VI-VII

JON FOSSE

Translated by DAMION SEARLS

‘Just a fool! Just a poet!’

— Friedrich Nietzsche   

Contents

Title PageEpigraphVIVIIAbout the AuthorCopyright

VI

And I see myself standing there looking at the two lines that cross in the middle, one brown and one purple, and I see that I’ve painted the lines slowly, with a lot of thick oil paint, and the paint has run, and where the brown and purple lines cross the colours have blended beautifully and I think that I can’t look at this picture anymore, it’s been sitting on the easel for a long time now, a couple of weeks maybe, so now I have to either paint over it in white or else put it up in the attic, in the crates where I keep the pictures I don’t want to sell, but I’ve already thought that thought day after day, I think and then I take hold of the stretcher and let go of it again and I realize that I, who have spent my whole life painting, oil paint on canvas, yes, ever since I was a boy, I don’t want to paint anymore, ever, all the pleasure I used to take in painting is gone, I think and for a couple of weeks now I haven’t painted anything, and I haven’t once taken my sketchpad out of the brown leather shoulderbag hanging above the stack of paintings I’ve set aside, over there between the hall door and the bedroom door, and I think that I want to get rid of this painting and get rid of the easel, the tubes of oil paint, yes, everything, yes, I want to get rid of everything on the table in the main room, everything that has to do with painting in this room that’s been both a living room and a painting studio, and that’s how it’s been since Ales and I moved in here so long ago, so long ago, because it’s all just disturbing me now and I need to get rid of it, get it out of here, and I don’t understand what’s happened to me but something has, something’s happened, and what it is doesn’t really matter, I think and I hear Åsleik say St Andreas Cross, emphasizing the words, saying it with that revolting stress on the words, he’s proving he knows something too so he says it like that, with pride, yes, he’s simple, Åsleik is, that’s the right word for it, simple, I think and I think that I told him I’d go to Øygna with him to celebrate Christmas with Sister, as he calls her, this woman whose name is Guro, at her house, and that’s really the best thing for me since if I stay home alone all I’ll do is lie in bed, I won’t even get up, yes well maybe get up to get myself some water if I’m thirsty and food if I’m hungry, other than that I’ll just lie in bed in the bedroom without even turning the light on and I’ll keep it as dark as I can, and then I’ll try to get some sleep, and I’ll try not to think about anything, because I want to let everything be empty, yes, empty and silent, yes silent, yes, silent and dark, because the only thing I long for is silence, yes, I want everything to stay perfectly silent, I want a silence to come down over me like snow and cover me, yes, I want a silence to come falling down over everything that exists, and also me, yes, over me, yes, let a silence snow down and cover me, make me invisible, make everything invisible, make everything go away, I think and all these thoughts will go away, all the pictures I have, all the pictures gathered up in my memory tormenting me will go away and I will be empty, just empty, I will become a silent nothing, a silent darkness, and maybe what I’m thinking about now is God’s peace, or maybe it isn’t? maybe it has nothing to do with what people call God? I think, if it’s even possible to talk about God, if that even means anything, because isn’t God just something that is, not something you can say anything about? I think and I think that still, praying is good for me, yes, praying with a rosary the way I do, and going to mass is too, but it’s a long drive to Bjørgvin, anyway driving there and back the same day is a lot of driving, I don’t like doing that, I think, and I’ve spent the night at The Country Inn so many times too, I think, but every year I’ve gone to mass on Christmas Day, and I would have done that this year too if I wasn’t going to go celebrate Christmas Eve at Sister’s house with Åsleik, so there’s not going to be any Christmas Mass for me this year, I think and I stand there in front of the easel and then I go and sit down by the window and I look out the window and even though it’s dark I see the driveway that I had built running down to the country road and I see snow, just snow and the islets and reefs, the holms and skerries, yes, the Sygne Sea, and I can see all the way out to the mouth of the fjord and the open sea, even when it’s dark I can see it all well and I think that I need to get rid of that picture, I need to put it away, I don’t want to look at it anymore, I don’t want it in the main room anymore, I need to get rid of it, I think and then I go over to the easel and I take the stretcher and I lift the picture off the easel and I put it in the stack of unfinished pictures under the peg where my brown leather shoulderbag is hanging, between the bedroom door and the hall door and above the stack of paintings I’m still not satisfied with, and I look at the wall next to the kitchen door and there aren’t any pictures there since I drove them down to Bjørgvin a couple of weeks ago, down to The Beyer Gallery, I think and I see Bragi standing there by the kitchen door looking at me, and it’s like he’s feeling sorry for me, I think, yes, it’s like Bragi wants to comfort me but he doesn’t know how to do it, and I see his dog eyes, and it’s like they understand everything, yes, like nothing is hidden from them, I think, and Bragi is always near me, when I’m lying on the bench he comes and lies down next to me and as soon as I lie down in bed in the bedroom at night he follows me and jumps up into bed, no, life was never so good without a dog, without Bragi, I think, but Asle will get better soon and I’ll have to give Bragi back, I think and then I’ll get myself a dog of my own, that’s for sure, I think, because I’ve never had a dog before, even though I’ve thought so many times that I wanted one, I kept thinking I should get a dog, and a boat too, a Barmen boat, but up until now all I did was think about it

Yes, good boy Bragi, I say

and right away he starts wagging his tail and I think he needs to go outside

You can go outside for a bit now, Bragi, yes, I say

and I go and open the front door and Bragi runs out into the snow, but it’s not snowing now, and it’s colder, yes, it’s really a cold clear night and I see the stars shining clearly up in space, and I see the moon, it’s big and round and yellow, I think and I think that it’s God shining from the moon, and from the stars, yes, in a way, even if he isn’t anything, and doesn’t have any how, and doesn’t have any why, yes, because God doesn’t have a why any more than, yes, than the moon does, or the stars, the moon is just there, the stars are just there, yes, a flower is just there, and a deer, because both the moon and the stars and flowers and deer just are what they are, but they have their how in opposition to God, I think and I’m cold, and it’s Friday today and it’s nighttime and tomorrow is Little Christmas Eve, the day before Christmas Eve, and this year on Christmas Eve day I’m going to go with Åsleik to Øygna to celebrate Christmas with his sister Guro, and every year, since The Fiddler left Sister, Åsleik has asked me if I’d come with him, because when Sister and The Fiddler lived together Åsleik didn’t spend Christmas at Sister’s, and for at least ten years I’ve said that I’d rather spend Christmas alone but this year I don’t want to be alone, I don’t want anything, to tell the truth, and in any case I really don’t want to paint anymore, and that’s very strange, I think and I call for Bragi and he comes padding over and we go inside and he shakes himself off, shakes the snow off, and I shut the front door and I go into what’s now the living room and the studio and what’ll soon be just the living room and then I realize I’m tired, I should have lain down, I think and then I go and sit down in my chair next to the round table and I look out into the darkness, look at my landmark, my spot out there in the Sygne Sea and I look at the waves and I see Asle leave the apartment at 7 University Street where there’s the room he’s renting from Herdis Åsen and walk to The Art School and he thinks that he draws from a model every day, for three hours, sketching it’s called, and then there’s art history class two hours a week, and that may be what he gets the most out of, yes, the professor who gives the lectures, Professor Christie, is an Art History professor at the University of Bjørgvin, and what sticks with him is less what Professor Christie says than the slides of artworks he shows, Asle thinks, and Professor Christie says that it’s obvious that the greatest artists do something different, they bring something new into the world with their own unique quality, their entirely unique art, yes, they create a new way of seeing that no one had ever known before, and after an artist like that has finished his work the world looks different, Professor Christie said, but it was the pictures he showed that made the biggest impression on Asle, and the books he referred to, which you could borrow from The Art School, because there was a big library there, but there was a long waiting list, for example he’d put himself on the list for a book of paintings by Lars Hertervig and it had taken three months before he could borrow the book, and then he could keep it for just a month, Asle thinks, but then he ran across a smaller book of paintings by Lars Hertervig in a bookshop in Bjørgvin and he bought the book and it was small enough to fit in the inside pocket of his black velvet jacket and then he started going around with it in his pocket all the time, he took it with him everywhere and looked at the pictures whenever he could, when he was sitting on a bench in a park, or when he was sitting alone in The Coffeehouse or The Alehouse, and then there was The Bjørgvin Museum of Art, yes, that may have been what Asle got the most of all out of, because the truth is he had never seen any real paintings before he moved to Bjørgvin, and students always learned that in their first few days at The Art School, yes, it was Eiliv Pedersen who said that, that they had to go to The Bjørgvin Museum of Art as much as they could, and they should really stay there for an hour, yes, or several hours, looking at one single picture, but if they’d never been there before they might as well get a general impression of the whole collection sooner rather than later, he said, and then they should pick one picture and really get to know it, and it was good to sketch it, or for that matter make a sketch in dialogue with the picture, Eiliv Pedersen had said, Asle thinks and if they were good enough painters maybe The Bjørgvin Museum of Art would end up buying one of their own paintings someday, or more than one, and that was a great honour, he’d said, yes, the greatest honour aside from being The Festival Artist in Bjørgvin and aside from The National Museum of Art in Oslo buying one or more of your paintings, he’d said, Asle thinks and he thinks that anyway he’ll be satisfied if he can just paint pictures and if he can make enough money to live on just by painting, he thinks and I sit there at the round table and I look out into the darkness and even though it’s dark I can see the water, see the waves out there at my spot in the middle of the Sygne Sea, yes, I can see the water, see the waves, as clearly as if it were daylight, and tonight the water is pretty calm, I think sitting there and taking my bearings from that same spot in the water, yes, there’s a spot near the middle of the Sygne Sea that’s my place, I think and I think that tonight Åsleik’s going to come over and have lutefisk at my house, and I’m not in much of a mood to have a visitor, because it’s like I can’t manage to do anything, no, not even sit here in my chair, I think, but I have to be somewhere, and I have to be doing something, and tomorrow it’ll be Little Christmas Eve and then it’ll be Christmas Eve itself, and I told Åsleik I’ll go with him to celebrate Christmas at Sister’s house, and on Christmas Eve morning or maybe early afternoon we’re going to go in his Boat to Øygna, that’s what we’ve arranged, I think and I look at my landmark, I look at the waves there, and then I see Ales and Asle walking there, hand in hand

I can’t believe we met, Ales says

Yes, Asle says

It’s incredible, she says

Yes, he says

and they keep walking, hand in hand

And that we became a couple the moment we saw each other, Ales says

Yes, right in The Bus Café, she says

Yes, Asle says

It just happened, she says

and Ales laughs and Asle feels how good it is to be holding Ales’s hand in his hand and he doesn’t entirely understand what’s happening and what happened, he thinks, because he was just sitting there in The Bus Café and then suddenly Ales was there, yes, she showed up as if out of nowhere and then sat down and then their eyes met, he thinks and Ales says that it’s very strange, she never goes to that café usually, The Bus Café, because it doesn’t have the best reputation, she says, so she was there for the very first time today, to tell the truth, she says, and why would she have gone to The Bus Café today of all days, and why was Asle sitting there today of all days, no, she can’t understand it, or rather she can understand it, because it was God’s will, she says and Asle hears what she’s saying but he is entirely in the good warmth from her hand and they walk out onto a wide street and Ales says this is High Street, and there, at 1 High Street, and she points, in the big white building there, that’s The Beyer Gallery, yes, there’s no question it’s the biggest and most important gallery in Bjørgvin, and she’s gone to all the exhibitions there since she was a little girl, because her mother Judit likes to go to exhibitions, she’s from Austria, she comes from a small town outside of Vienna, a town with the big name Hainburg an der Donau, while Ales’s father was Norwegian, from West Norway, he was like people from there are, he came from a place called Dylgja where almost no one lives, but his sister, old Alise, still lives there in a nice old white house, she says and Asle says that he’s heard the name Dylgja but he doesn’t know quite where it is and Ales says that it’s nice there, it’s in a good location on the Sygne Sea, yes, the sea that Sygnefjord opens out into, before it goes out to the ocean, she says and then she says that her father was a good man, and he, a country boy as he always liked to call himself, especially after he’d had a little something to drink, yes, he, the country boy, became a doctor, and it was while he was in Austria studying to become a doctor that he and her mother Judit met, and when he was done with medical school they moved to Norway and to Bjørgvin and then they both started working at The Hospital in Bjørgvin, and her mother Judit still works there, yes, she’s a nurse, Ales says, and, as her father liked to say, that wasn’t the worst thing in the world for a boy from Dylgja to be, a doctor, but, Ales says, last year he died suddenly, and he wasn’t that old, and it was definitely because he drank so much, he drank so much that he died of it, Ales says, but she doesn’t want to talk about that or think about that now, not today when she and Asle have just met, she says and Asle looks at his watch and he asks if they can go to 1 University Street right away, he’s worried about getting there too late, he says, the woman who wants to rent him the room and he have agreed to meet there at three o’clock, he says and Ales says of course they can, but they have plenty of time, she says and they walk down the street called High Street and then Ales practically drags him down into a little alleyway called The Lane and Asle sees The Lane written on a street sign and wow is it narrow

This is one of the narrowest alleyways in Bjørgvin, she says

and Asle doesn’t say anything and they walk hand in hand down The Lane and then Ales suddenly stops and then she puts her arms around Asle and presses her mouth to his and then they stand there and they have their tongues in each other’s mouths and then they suddenly let go of each other and they hold hands again and then they walk down The Lane and Ales says that if they take a right and go down that street they’ll be able to see The Country Inn, the hotel where people visiting Bjørgvin from the nearby countryside often stay, and on the ground floor there’s The Coffeehouse, one of the cosiest cafés in Bjørgvin, she often goes there herself, she sits there and sketches, she says, and what she actually likes to do there is sit at a table and secretly look up at this or that person and then she tries to do a drawing of him or her, Ales says, and then she says that Asle is really lucky to have a place at The Art School already, and then she says that today they won’t turn right and go to The Coffeehouse, they can do that another day, they’ll go left and when they get to the end of the street they’ll see The Fishmarket, and once they’ve reached the end of that street they can just take a right and go straight and then they’ll be at University Street, Ales says and she says that his name is Asle and her name is Ales but that’s all they know about each other, or almost all anyway, he says, so maybe they can sit down somewhere and just sort of be together, Ales says and they’ve reached The Fishmarket and she points to a bench near the water’s edge, with a view of The Bay, and they go sit down on the bench and Asle puts his shoulderbag in his lap and he opens it and he takes out his sketchpad and then he writes down his address in Aga, and then he writes 7 University Street, and he says that they need to go to 7 University Street soon and Ales says that if she remembers correctly he’d said 1 not 7 and Asle says that he has the letter from the woman who wants to rent him the room in his jacket pocket so he can always check, he says and then he takes out the letter and it says 7 University Street, he says and he says that the woman he’ll be renting a room from is named Herdis Åsen and Ales says that she feels a little jealous just hearing him say her name and Asle says that she’s an old woman and Ales asks how he knows that and Asle says that he knows because he’s talked to her on the phone and he could hear from her voice that she was an old woman from Bjørgvin and he says that this Herdis Åsen had said she’d rented a room to a student from Hardanger for years but now he was done with his studies, she’d said, and so she’d be glad to have someone else from Hardanger as her next renter, Asle says and then he tears the page he’s written the addresses on out of his sketchpad and hands the page to Ales and then he hands her the sketchpad and the pencil and she writes down her name and her address and a telephone number and she says that this is where she lives with her mother Judit, the two of them live alone in an apartment not far from The Coffeehouse, that’s why she goes there a lot to sit in peace and quiet and do her sketching, like she’d been planning to do today for instance, but then she decided to take a walk first and she walked by The Bus Station and she saw the sign saying The Bus Café and then she thought she’d never been there, it might be nice to go see how it is in there, she’d thought, because she’d heard different things about that café, she says and luckily she went in so that the two of them could meet and now they’ll have to write letters to each other, yes, until Asle moves to Bjørgvin, and he says that that won’t be long, as soon as he rents the room from that woman Herdis Åsen he’ll quit The Academic High School right away and give notice at his room in Aga and he’ll put everything he owns in the luggage area in the back of the bus, and then he’ll just take a taxi from The Bus Station over to his room on University Street, he says, and Ales says she can certainly help him move in, when the time comes, she says, and Asle takes back the sketchpad and pencil that Ales is holding out to him

Yes, that’s my mother’s phone number, but of course you can call me there, she says

and Asle says that he doesn’t have his own phone number, but the woman he’s probably renting the room from had said that she has a phone and Asle could use it, as long as he didn’t make too many calls, or receive too many calls, that’s what she’d said, and he thought he’d never use the phone at all but now that Ales has given him her phone number she can have his, he’ll give it to her, Asle says and Ales says that’s great, it’s good that they’ll be able to reach each other by phone, she says and then she hands the torn-out page to Asle and he copies the phone number from the letter Herdis Åsen sent him onto it and gives it to Ales and she says that now they probably should get going soon if he wants to keep his appointment with this Herdis Åsen, up on 7 University Street, she says and Asle puts the sketchpad and pencil back in the shoulderbag and then Ales and Asle walk hand in hand across The Fishmarket and then up a street Asle doesn’t recognize

It’s really unbelievable that we met each other today, Ales says

I feel so happy, so lucky, she says

It was an act of God, she says

and Asle doesn’t say anything but he feels how good it is to feel the warmth from Ales’s hand, and how well their hands fit together, in a way, everything feels right somehow, and everything is so simple, and nothing is embarrassing or wrong or difficult, everything is clear and obvious, Asle thinks walking along with Ales and not saying anything and then Ales points and says there it is, in that courtyard, that’s where this Herdis Åsen woman lives, and Asle says it’s on the sixth floor and Ales says she can go up with him and then Asle puts his hand on the handle of the front door and it’s unlocked and Ales says that Herdis Åsen must have left the door open because he was coming, she says and I sit in the chair by the window and I look at my spot out in the Sygne Sea, the spot I always look at, my landmark, I look at the waves there and I think that it’s like time has just stopped, something I’ve never experienced before, and I look at the empty chair where Ales used to sit, the one that was her chair, and it’s empty, and yet Ales is sitting there, I think, because now I can clearly feel that Ales is sitting there, the way I can so often see her, I think and I look out at the water again, at the Sygne Sea, at my spot there and I can feel so clearly that Ales is sitting there in the chair next to me and I think that it’s already been many years since Ales died, she died and I lost her much too soon, we didn’t get to spend that many years together, and children, no, we didn’t have children, so now I’m alone, and it’s already been many years since my parents died, first Mother, and not long after that Father died, and my sister Alida died all the way back when I was just a boy, I think, and she died so suddenly, she was just lying there dead in her bed, I think and I don’t want to think about that, and I think that I should have called The Hospital and asked how Asle is doing, but now it’s too late, now it’s night and I’ve called so many times, and I always get the same answer, that he needs his rest and can’t have visitors, I think, so I’ll just call tomorrow, on Little Christmas Eve, I think, because almost every single day in the past couple of weeks I’ve called and asked if I can come see Asle and the woman I talk to at reception at The Hospital always says that the best thing for him would be not to get visitors, she says and when I ask how he’s doing she always says that there’s no news, she says everything’s about the same, I think, but Asle has children, I think, there’s The Boy who’s grown up and lives in Oslo, yes, the son he had with Liv is all grown up, and then there’s The Son and The Daughter, the children from his second marriage, with Siv, but their mother took them with her when she moved to be with a man in Trøndelag, and those children aren’t grown up yet, I think and I think that Åsleik’s coming over tonight to have lutefisk at my house, since this year it’s my turn to host the lutefisk dinner, because we have lutefisk together once every Advent and lamb ribs together too, one year I serve lutefisk and Åsleik serves lamb ribs and the next year it’s the other way around, and every year we have lamb ribs together again on New Year’s Eve, one year at Åsleik’s house and the next year at mine, and this year it’s me who’s going to be hosting the lamb ribs dinner on New Year’s Eve, I think, and I usually look forward to these meals, but this year the lamb ribs I ate at Åsleik’s didn’t taste so special, and now it feels like a bit of a chore to have to prepare the meal, it’s like I don’t know how to peel potatoes and carrots anymore, how to dice bacon, but I just need to do it, I think and I look at my watch and when I do I think about Ales, because I got the watch as a Christmas present from her once, I think, yes, for years before that I used to wear a watch I got from Grandmother as a confirmation present, and then I got this watch from Ales and that’s the one I’ve had ever since, I think and I see that Åsleik will be here any minute so I need to set the table and put the potatoes on to boil, I think, and I get up and I go away from the window and I look at the empty easel and I’m sort of filled with happiness and then I go out to the kitchen and I get out plates and knives and forks and I set the kitchen table like I always do, and next to Åsleik’s plate I put a beer glass and a shot glass and next to my plate I put just an ordinary water glass and I think that I can probably put the potatoes on right away, I think and I peel the potatoes and carrots and I put the potatoes in a pot of water with salt and then I turn on the stove, and it’s a good quick stove so it won’t take long for the water to boil and then I turn the stove down to the lowest heat, and even then the water is boiling more than it really needs to, but that’s how it is now, yes, it probably doesn’t matter, I think, and I put the carrots in the pot and now I can fry up some bacon at once, I think and I dice the bacon and I put it in the frying pan and I turn on that burner and it doesn’t take long for it to start to crackle and sizzle in the pan, it’s a good old cast-iron pan that was there when Ales and I moved into the house, yes, it was here like so many other things, and like so many other things that were in the house it also stayed, I think and I’ve been feeling kind of rough today, I think, but the good smell of frying bacon kind of brings me back to life, and I suddenly realize I’m hungry, because I haven’t eaten anything all day, have I, I think, and despite everything lutefisk is one of the best foods I know of, maybe the very best, I think and I see the big pieces of fish lying there and I put a big pot on the stove, with lots of salt in the water, and I turn up the stove full strength, but I’ll put the pieces of fish in the boiling water only when Åsleik gets here, because you have to be really precise when you’re cooking lutefisk, you have to pay close attention the whole time so that the fish gets cooked just right, not too much, so that it falls apart, and not too little, so that it’s hard and inedible, I think, and obviously you have to make sure at all costs that the bacon doesn’t get burnt, so it’s important to keep an eye on that, I think and I turn off the burner that the frying pan is on and then I stir the bacon and I stand there and look at it and I stir it several times and then I move the frying pan onto a cold burner and then I hear the screeching and grinding of Åsleik’s tractor and I go out into the hall and I stand in the front doorway and Bragi comes and stands next to me and I see Åsleik’s tractor come around the corner and stop and then I see Åsleik get out of the driver’s cab and he comes walking towards me

Dinner’ll be ready soon, I say

It’ll be good to eat something, Åsleik says

I’m really hungry, he says