Trilogy

Jon Fosse, May-Brit Akerholt

• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781628971392
• eBook ISBN: 9781628972047
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

Trilogy is Jon Fosse's critically acclaimed, luminous love story about Asle and Alida, two lovers trying to find their place in this world. Homeless and sleepless, they wander around Bergen in the rain, trying to make a life for themselves and the child they expect. Through a rich web of historical, cultural, and theological allusions, Fosse constructs a modern parable of injustice, resistance, crime, and redemption. Consisting of three novellas ( Wakefulness, Olav's Dreams, and Weariness ), Trilogy is a haunting, mysterious, and poignant evocation of love, for which Fosse received The Nordic Council's Prize for Literature in 2015.

Weariness

IV

Ales pulls the wool blanket tighter around herself, for it’s a little cold, yes it is, she thinks, as she sits there in her chair and looks at the window almost completely covered by thin white curtains, the light comes in only through a tiny crack at the very bottom, she sees without seeing in a way, and then she sees someone walk past outside the window, and who it is she cannot see, but that someone walked past, that she could see, and this is where she lives, she thinks, in a small house as close to the road as you could possibly get, it turned out that she would live her life in such a house, she thinks, and if it weren’t for the curtains everyone could see her where she was sitting, they could still see her sitting there now, but not clearly, they can just see that someone is sitting there, she thinks, but does it matter if someone can see her sitting there? no not at all, she thinks, it doesn’t matter one little bit, she thinks, no it doesn’t, she thinks, and she tries to pull the wool blanket even closer around her body and then she thinks you are Ales, yes you are old Ales, yes, she thinks, for now you’ve grown old, Ales, she thinks, and now you sit there in your chair and try to keep warm, she thinks, and then she thinks that she must try to stand up and put some more wood in the stove and she gets on her feet and she walks towards the stove and she opens the door to the stove and puts some more wood in the stove before she walks back to her chair, sits down, spreads the wool blanket over herself, covers herself with it and then she sits there and looks straight ahead, she looks at the window in her living room but without seeing, and then she sees Alida, her mother, as she sits in her living room in Vika just like Ales now sits in her living room and now she sees Alida stand up, slowly and stiffly, and walk, with short steps, across the floor, but where is she going? Where is she headed? Is she going out? Over to the stove there in the corner? And Ales stands up and walks with short stiff steps across the floor and then Ales sees Alida open the door to her kitchen and Alida goes into her kitchen and Ales goes into hers

I’m getting old too, Ales says

The years have passed so quickly, she says

And I never saw Alida as an old woman, not alive, but now

I see her so often, she says

I don’t understand it, she says

I’ve grown old now, she says

Old, yes, she says

Mustn’t talk, she says

And usually I’m just pottering around here, but they look in, now and then, one of the kids, one of the grandkids perhaps, she says

But usually I potter around, taking short steps and talking to myself yes, she says

and Ales sees Alida sit down on the chair there by her kitchen table and Ales goes and sits down on the chair by her kitchen table, her good kitchen, Ales thinks, it’s coziest here in the kitchen, she thinks, she’s always thinking that, she thinks it too often, always, she’s always thinking that the kitchen is the coziest room in the house, Ales thinks, her kitchen is not very big, but it’s cozy, it’s always been cozy, she thinks, and she has table and chairs, cupboards and a stove, just like her mother did, in one corner of her kitchen was the black stove she would light the fire in, for heat, and for cooking, and she has a stove quite like the one her mother had, and then the table in the middle of the floor, the bench along the wall, a then there was the living room and the loft in the living room, the loft she remembers so well, there they slept, she and Little Sister, but that, that’s so long ago, something that doesn’t exist, something that has never really existed even if it has and Little Sister lying there so pale and gone and never will her pale face, her open mouth, her half-open eyes, disappear for her, she will always see it, because Little Sister became ill and died and everything went so fast, she was alive and happy and then she was ill and died, and then their big brother, Sigvald, half-brother, really, who went away when she was still only a little girl and never came back, and no one knew what had become of him, but he played the fiddle, yes, and no one had heard anyone play the fiddle as well as their half-brother Sigvald, yes he could play, and that’s just about the only thing she remembers about him, and his father played the fiddle too, the one they talked about, Asle was his name and they hanged him in Bjørgvin they said, imagine hanging people the way they did in those days, in the olden days, that they could do that, that they were like that, she thinks, and her mother who got married again to her father, Åsleik, yes, yes that’s how that was, that’s how the story went, and her father, whose name was Åsleik and who they called Viken, because it was he who owned the place there in Vika, the little house, the barn, the boathouse, the wharf, the boat, he owned everything, all that he’d managed to get hold of, he was an enterprising man, and then Alida came there as a house servant, and she had her son Sigvald with her, the son she had with Asle, the fiddler who had been hanged, that was how that was, she came there after Asle had been hanged, at least that’s what they said, but her mother had never said anything about it herself, she’d never wanted to say anything about Asle and what happened, Ales thinks, she dropped a hint now and then, she didn’t ask but just hinted and then her mother went silent and walked away from her, she can’t remember her mother mentioning the name Asle a single time, it was other people who told her about him, and they did so as often as they could, it was as if everyone really wanted to tell her what kind of man her mother had been with, and what was true and not true of what they told her was difficult to tell, of course, for they talked about Asle in Dylgja, that he was a fiddler, like his father before him, that he had taken her mother by brute force and got her pregnant, although she was only a child herself, and that he had taken her with him after first having taken the life of her mother, that is, her own grandmother, that’s what they said, but if that were true, no nobody knew, and no it couldn’t be like that, it was probably just the sort of thing people made up and talked about, Ales thought, and then, they said, the gossipers said, he strangled a person of his own age so he could steal his boat, that was supposed to have happened at the boathouse where his father had lived, in Dylgja, and then, in Bjørgvin, he’s supposed to have strangled several others before he was caught and hanged, that’s what they said, but it couldn’t be true, her mother, Alida, could never have been with a man like that, a brute like that, never in this world, that wasn’t possible, she knew her mother Alida that well, she could never live with a murderer like that, Ales thinks, and do people like that exist, murderers like that, it was only proper that there were gallows, people said, and there should still be gallows, at least one in each village, they said, and what was true and not true and what Asle had done and not done, no that she didn’t know, but he couldn’t have been a murderer, he was the father, wasn’t he, of her oldest brother, her half-brother, Sigvald, Ales thinks, he couldn’t have killed her grandmother, because they said that she was found dead in her bed in the morning and she might just as well have died the way people usually die, she could just as well have passed away, calmly and silently, and had a good and quite ordinary death, of course, that’s what it must have been like, Ales thinks, and she thinks that she can’t just sit here, there’s almost always something that needs doing, something or other, she thinks, and she looks at the window there in the kitchen and she sees Alida standing there, in the middle of the floor, in front of the window, she’s standing there so clearly, as if she could put a hand on her shoulder, and will she try to do that, Ales thinks, no, no she can’t do that, can she, she can’t put her hand on her own long-dead mother, Ales thinks, no she’s become an old fool, she thinks, no longer sound of mind, antisocial, but old Alida is standing there, curse her, confound her, Ales thinks, and should she dare to say something to her, she has so often thought about asking her mother if what they’re saying is true, that she went into the sea, she doesn’t believe it, but they do say it, that she did, and she was found on the foreshore, they say, but ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Wakefulness
• Olav’s Dreams
• Weariness