Granta 131 Read online

  I really cannot imagine what it would take to raise our Blokhin Centre to the level of Hadassah.

  I walk back down the path, past the accommodation for the medical staff, past the car park, and every rock is familiar, every tree. The wall of the Franciscan monastery is to my right. I go on past, down to the spring where the road divides, up to the Gorny Convent or down to the bus station, with the kindergarten on the left. Here is the turning to the Museum of Biblical History, invariably closed, and then I am back at my house. One wall is built of ancient stones, another of plasterboard, a third of brick. It has been thrown together like the house of Cobbler Pumpkin. The windows are different sizes and the door does not lock. It is getting hotter by the day. I still have not finished my novel. But there is only a little more to write.

  DREAMED IN STONE

  Jon Fosse

  TRANSLATED FROM THE NORWEGIAN BY DAMION SEARLS

  I

  No one saw the avalanche because it all fell apart so slowly. Not day by day, not even hour by hour, or minute by minute, but it fell apart. It was falling apart the whole time, and it was an avalanche. It had to be an avalanche, because what else could it be?

  But did it slide like mud?

  No, it didn’t slide like mud, it was more like a sudden imperceptible jolt.

  But someone must have seen it?

  No, no one. Or maybe someone did but they didn’t want to. Or maybe no one saw it. The jolts were too quick, jolt after jolt.

  But in that case you can’t really call it an avalanche?

  Yes, it was an avalanche, it was an avalanche.

  Was there a flaw in the middle somewhere?

  Why do you ask that?

  I think it happened because there was a flaw somewhere that finally made it come apart.

  Maybe, but I think there were lots of smaller cracks, not a big one, lots of almost invisible cracks.

  Yes, it could have been like that. But these small almost invisible cracks somehow combined into a big crack, a chasm almost.

  There is something almost like joy in your voice.

  A chasm.

  Yes, yes, like a chasm.

  II

  I can’t stop thinking about how it fell apart so slowly, so imperceptibly slowly.

  Yes, you’ve already said that.

  Yes.

  But the avalanche itself, it really came so suddenly.

  Yes.

  Yes. And you’re saying there were several avalanches and then it just lay there.

  I just lay there.

  You just lay there.

  Yes I just lay there, on the front steps of my house.

  And then?

  And then someone said something and I tried to get up, but I couldn’t, and someone helped me get up. I stood there. Then I opened a door. I went in and shut the door behind me.

  And then?

  I don’t remember anything. I remember that I woke up and I was lying on the floor inside. I got up. I was standing. I walked.

  And then?

  I thought I had to go and lie down.

  Yes.

  Yes. And then I woke up again. I was lying next to the kitchen table. And then I thought I had to go and lie down. I got up. I was standing. I found the sofa and lay down.

  III

  Three times it fell apart. Everything became black; a kind of fog in my sleep, but with a kind of quivering somewhere inside, like particles of stone in motion, or small stones in a slow avalanche, so slow that it can’t be called an avalanche.

  Yes, you said that.

  Yes.

  And then?

  No one saw the avalanche.

  You were alone.

  Yes, I was, yes.

  And that’s probably why it wasn’t an avalanche.

  No, maybe not.

  But something like that.

  Yes.

  And then we are quiet for a while.

  And now.

  Now.

  What do you think? About the avalanche. Where did the stones go?

  They just lay there, but then they fell apart again.

  Yes.

  IV

  Shards of stone, these stones too, small stones, shining in the grey fog. They shone weakly but they shone, and then the light gathered and I saw that I was lying on a sofa. I stood up. I went out a door. I shut a door behind me. I walked. I stood waiting for a bus. It was hard to stand. And then it fell apart again. I was lying on a sidewalk. I suddenly knew I was lying on a sidewalk. Somebody came running. He helped me up. I was standing. I tried to get on a bus but another man came running and said that I couldn’t go by bus, this was not a bus for someone like me, the man said. I asked if I couldn’t just sit down on the bus, but no, no, this wasn’t a bus for someone like me, he said. I asked the driver, it was a woman, and she smiled and shook her head. She said nothing, or maybe she said no. And then, I think it happened like this if I’m not misremembering, the man who had helped me to my feet came and took me to a car, a taxi. He put me in the taxi and I sat down and the driver and I drove off. The man driving said that he often thought about nothing, how nothingness is in everything. Nothingness is in everything, the taxi driver said.

  Yes.

  I didn’t say anything to him about the stones.

  No, of course not.

  Nothing about the avalanche.

  No, of course you didn’t.

  And then we were sitting there and neither of us said anything. We sat like that for a long time.

  I don’t like you talking about the stones and the avalanche. It’s fake, in a way, like you’re lying.

  Yes. It almost feels like that.

  But why are you doing it then?

  I don’t entirely know.

  No, it’s probably not so easy to know.

  V

  The stones sing and they don’t sing. Even when the fog is gone the stones lie there, leaning against each other, they lie there so nicely, as though they have been put together by a wonderfully dexterous stonemason, they lay there like that after the avalanche too. Falling apart.

  Yes, yes.

  And then we laugh, yes, we laugh. After the avalanche too.

  So then you were sitting in a car. And the man driving said that there was some nothingness in everything, and then what?

  It was in a taxi, and we were talking about nothing and about what is behind and in everything that is, it was where it came from, it’s there, the man driving said.

  The taxi driver.

  Yes, him, yes, he said that there is nothing that is God before the beginning, it begins with the Word, he said. Yes, him, the man driving the car, he said that.

  That was well said.

  It was as if nothing was falling apart. But everything was so grey, like in a fog.

  Like grey stone, you said.

  Yes. But it was a little lighter in the car.

  In the taxi.

  Yes.

  And then?

  Well, then I got out of the taxi and went into the airport. And then it fell apart again. I was lying on the floor and when I looked up there were lots of people around me and someone was taking my pulse and said, he’s weak, and then a man with a wheelchair came and put me in the chair and pushed me to a room and I sat there and he said that I might be able to board the plane, they would evaluate me, he said, and he gave me water and then he pushed me in the wheelchair to the plane, ahead of all the other passengers, and when we reached the aeroplane door someone came to meet me …

  Who?

  … a flight attendant met me and said, he’s allowed on, and then they pushed me into the plane and put me in the front row and someone else …

  Another flight attendant?

  … asked if I wanted anything and I said maybe I’d like a little water. And then I was given a little water. Stone and water. Stone, stone and water. And I was an avalanche, shards of stone, and all the stones were in a grey fog that seemed to shine a little from the crushed stones, and they were in perfect order, lying
against each other as though they had arranged themselves in a kind of wall. A fine wall.

  Yes, you said that already. I am thinking that this talk about the stone and the avalanche is nothing but a lie and concealment, but there might be something in it nonetheless, I think.

  A fine new wall.

  And then?

  And then I was pushed out of the plane in a wheelchair. I said I could walk but I wasn’t allowed to because I might fall again, that was why it was best if I was in a wheelchair and then I was taken, yes, you remember that, don’t you?

  No, it wasn’t me who took you.

  No, no it wasn’t you, it was someone else who took me, and he put me in his car and drove me to my flat. He took me inside, and I lay down, and I lay there and I was an avalanche, I was stone that had become many stones, an avalanche, an avalanche that kept going and I just lay there, and then the avalanche started to move and turn in on itself, I shook, I shook and shook and then shook a little less. I shook and everything was grey stones in the fog and everything was a slow avalanche, slow, and the grey had some white in it, it’s not visible as white but is it white is it?

  Is it white as snow?

  No, it isn’t like snow, and it isn’t white, but it’s like white, it is snow, it’s not snow … no, it’s not white, it’s not snow, it is grey, just grey, it is greyer … just a simple grey if it weren’t for the stones that were still there, the avalanche that had arranged itself so nicely, the stones that lay there so beautifully and quietly even though I shook and shook … and my son made dinner for me but I couldn’t eat, and he bought me a bottle of vodka and I shook less and was calm and then I slept well there on, or in, those grey shining stones. I slept, I don’t remember much more, I remember less and less and then they came with a stretcher and said that I have to get dressed and then you said, he can’t manage it, can’t you see, and I shook and shook and they agreed that I could put on a bathrobe, that was easy, and then I was lying on the stretcher. And I shook and shook. And I saw that the avalanche was gone. I was the avalanche.

  But the stones lay there, in a wall, even if they were falling apart.

  I think so. Because it felt like the stones in the avalanche were me.

  VI

  You were a chasm that cracked and turned into stones, and then the stones lay there, beautifully laid, in a wall.

  Yes. Yes that’s how it seems to be, it seems like that now.

  Yes. And the chasm is gone?

  The chasm does not exist any more.

  And the stones shine in their own new pattern.

  Yes. What used to be a chasm is now between the stones.

  The stones laid together make an open room?

  Yes.

  Is there something in the room?

  I think so. I can see something there.

  And then we sit in silence.

  The man who was saying that nothingness is in everything.

  Yes. What about him?

  No, nothing.

  VII

  These slow movements, falling apart, and then the sudden ones, incredibly quick, like sudden gusts of wind. Then the quiet. The big crack with its light, then the slow imperceptible avalanche, and then this sudden movement, this sudden falling apart. And then the stones, grey like fog, but still shining with a faint light instead of nothing, a little light, so weak, almost like ashes, almost like glowing ashes on stone. And then stone on stone. I am in the room behind the wall of stones, my stones, other people’s stones, and there is light in there, the strong invisible light from the sky, from the stones. The light of nothingness. The light of nothingness is in the stone. The light of love is in the stone.

  VIII

  I go in, in behind the stones, and I sit down. I sit and look at the stones. I see that it’s me. I am the stones: it’s not like me, but like what is I in me. I go out between the stones and take my place, I stand there with outstretched hands, like a cross. I see a cross. I look down. I look up. I sit down. I look at the stones, so beautifully laid, stone on stone, in a wall. I get up. I stand.

  IX

  And then you hold my hand. And the stones say that love exists, love is.

  Weren’t you scared?

  No, never.

  But you almost died.

  I wasn’t afraid to die.

  I am not afraid to die either.

  No.

  HER LOUSY SHOES

  Tracy O’Neill

  He thought about what he’d say to Miranda if he saw her now, which was nothing, and he thought of what she’d say to him now, which was nonsense. Toward the end of their marriage and toward the middle and even toward the beginning of the end of the beginning, she’d mostly talked a lot of gobbledegook. ‘If the King of England says he’ll love the Queen of England forever and then remarries, does he mean he’ll love the first wife forever or whoever his wife is at the time?’ she might ask. She fancied herself a Wittgenstein philosopher and often followed whatever she said with the phrase, ‘That was very Wittgensteinian if I do say so myself, and I is who says I.’ This had been during the Cuckold Period, as he now thought of it. In France, to be a cuckold was not to be pathetic. It was to be the star of a French film! And this was who he was in their marriage: a French movie star, never mind if they were living in Jersey, since you wouldn’t specify French movie star if you were actually in France. Before the Cuckold Period, there’d been the Manifest Destiny Period, in which he believed he was accomplishing something greater than himself by settling down with her. (The children, the blessed unborn children!) And before that, there’d been the Great Awakening, in which he’d taught her a lot of things that he thought she’d like to know and which, she later told him, gently bored her. But that was Miranda. You just never knew with her.

  For example, that she’d been with someone else.

  Often when he was delirious, which was often, he wondered how he hadn’t seen the signs. She’d said things like, ‘When his expression is genuine, he has two identical faces.’ He’d thought she was quoting – and she was – but also she was meaning, and what she’d meant was not that the philosopher had meant something incredible but that the philosopher had meant something pedestrian.

  On good days, he could believe that that was exactly what he appeared to be: pedestrian, a pedestrian, a walker, walking, going places, on the ups, possessing two healthy feet at least. There’d been the book, seven, eight years before. He knew someone who assigned it at Montclair State in an intro course. But the things he did to women were not as cute to them as they had been thirty years ago. Some of the things were flirtation, and some of them were getting older. He needed his secretary to tell him the times the laundromat closed and the birthdays of his two sisters. He asked for help with the ratio of coffee grounds to water, referring tirelessly to this ratio as her secret recipe. ‘And what if I wasn’t around?’ Clara would say.

  ‘I’d die of heartache and weep rose petals,’ he said.

  ‘You talk the talk,’ Clara said.

  ‘But I don’t walk the walk, I promise you.’

  And it was true, he really didn’t anymore. Once, he’d been attractive to his students. Now he was a man older than their fathers. They spoke to him kindly and loudly, and it depressed the hell out of him. Sometimes they brought him cookies cut in the shapes of candy canes or reindeer, as though he was so old he’d returned to a pre-prehensile state in which the id was driven by sugar rather than sex, and, oh God, didn’t they know they could kill a prediabetic – his doctor’s term – this way? Death by chocolate was more than an expression.

  ‘Thank you very, very much!’ one girl hissed through a smile on the last day of the semester. ‘I learned a lot about the Protesting Affirmation, Professor Douglas!’

  ‘I think you mean the Protestant Reformation,’ he said.

  ‘Yes!’ the girl shouted more loudly. ‘The Protesting Affirmation!’

  It didn’t even make sense, he thought bitterly; he hadn’t lost any hair yet. In fact – that is, in t
he mirror – there was a significant – abundant, even – sprawl of the stuff, which he wore neatly combed over. So he told the mirror all the ways it was a ludicrous, vapid object with no soul or eyes; a parrot; monkey see, monkey do; a sorry wannabe if ever he’d seen one. He told it it was a mere proxy, and he told it it was a dime a dozen, though still a homewrecking slut. No, never again would he cry a hot tear for this mirror. Then when he was done berating the instrument of his own reflection, he sat down in his office chair to berate his young charges.

  On his desk, typed stacks of pathetic blather towered. ‘When Martin Luther King Jr posted the Ninety-Five Theses,’ one paper began, ‘black and whites were still not equal in rights in America. It took busses and courage to change the coarse of history and reformation.’

  Douglas sighed. ‘You’re conflating centuries,’ he wrote in the paper’s margin. ‘Be careful to remember the difference between the sixteenth century and the twentieth century!’ He didn’t even bother with the two Luthers. For thirty years his career had been reminding young people to be vigilant in their delineation of centuries, and the worst part was that he could never be fired anymore. Wasn’t that the irony of it all? That you could be ousted from your real life, but not your public life?

  But Miranda could not, after all, claim custody of Manhattan, and he would make a trip to the city on Christmas. It was bad enough she’d gotten tenure at the New School while he was stuck at Saint Peter’s College in Jersey City, considering she hadn’t even had a PhD when they’d first been married. He had loved the city first, just as he’d loved academia first, and he wouldn’t be locked out this time. If he saw Miranda, he would think of something to say, and he would say it well. He would let her know what he thought of the New School (hippies, frauds) and tell her about all the holiday invitations he’d been forced to turn down what with the inconvenient finitude of time and all.