PRAISE FOR JON FOSSE

  “Septology is the only novel I have read that has made me believe in the reality of the divine.”

  MERVE EMRE, THE NEW YORKER

  “An extraordinary seven-novel sequence about an old man’s recursive reckoning with the braided realities of God, art, identity, family life and human life itself … The books feel like the culminating project of an already major career.”

  RANDY BOYAGODA, THE NEW YORK TIMES

  “In The Other Name’s rhythmic accumulation of words, [there is] something incantatory and self-annihilating— something that feels almost holy.”

  SAM SACKS, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

  “With Septology, Fosse has found a new approach to writing fiction, different from what he has written before and—it is strange to say, as the novel enters its fifth century—different from what has been written before. Septology feels new.”

  WYATT MASON, HARPER’S MAGAZINE

  “I hesitate to compare the experience of reading these works to the act of meditation. But that is the closest I can come to describing how something in the critical self is shed in the process of reading Fosse, only to be replaced by something more primal. A mood. An atmosphere. The sound of words moving on a page.”

  RUTH MARGALIT, THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

  “It ties 2666 by Roberto Bolaño as my favorite book from the twenty-first century … What I read was nothing less than a desperate prayer made radiant by sudden spikes of ecstatic beauty.”

  LAUREN GROFF, LITERARY HUB

  “The Other Name trembles with the beauty, doubt, and gnostic weariness of great religious fiction. In Fosse’s hands, God is a difficult, pungent, overwhelmingly aesthetic force, ‘the invisible inside the visible.’”

  DUSTIN ILLINGWORTH, THE NATION

  “Fosse’s portrait of intersecting lives is that rare metaphysical novel that readers will find compulsively readable.”

  PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, STARRED REVIEW

  “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

  BY JON FOSSE PUBLISHED BY TRANSIT BOOKS:

  The Other Name

  I is Another

  A New Name

  Septology

  A Shining

  A Silent Language: The Nobel Lecture

  VAIM

  Jon Fosse

  Translated from the Norwegian by

  Damion Searls

  Published by Transit Books

  1250 Addison St #103, Berkeley, CA 94702

  www.transitbooks.org

  Originally published in New Norwegian as Vaim by Det Norske Samlaget in 2025

  Copyright © Jon Fosse, 2025

  Published by agreement with Regal Hoffmann & Associates LLC and Winje Agency A/S, Norway

  English translation copyright © Damion Searls, 2025

  ISBN: 979-8-893380-217 (hardcover)

  Cover design by Jared Bartman | Typesetting by Transit Books

  Printed in the United States of America

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

  Ten Norwegian kroner is roughly one US dollar; two hundred and fifty kroner is around twenty-five dollars.

  Eline is pronounced as Alina in English.

  Geir is a common Norwegian name; Jatgeir, now rare, is an older Norwegian name, a cognate with the English Edgar.

  I

  SO, I SAID, WELL HERE WE ARE, I said and I ran my fingers through my beard, my graying beard, I wasn’t young anymore, no, but I wasn’t an old man either, it would probably be fair to say aging, yes, an aging man, neither more nor less, and it was about time I stopped taking these little sprees to Bjørgvin, what was the point anymore, tying up at the quay of The Wharf in Bjørgvin and not using my time there to do anything but sit in a bar or restaurant or café, yes, usually The Fowl, that’s what they call the place, but sometimes I’d go to The Food Hall or The Last Boat, or The Coffeehouse—other than going somewhere like that or just staying in the cabin of my boat there wasn’t really anything to do, or, well, the first day, or first couple of days, there’d be something I needed to buy, yes, always, this or that, there’d be one thing or another that I’d thought might come in handy and I’d written it down on a sheet of paper on my living room table back home, something I couldn’t get at The Vaim General Store but that would come in handy, it was always different, it could be anything, yes, over the years I’d gradually bought everything I really needed but a needle and some black thread to sew a loose button back on, yes, that’s what I needed to buy this year, but actually it was a lot harder than you’d think to buy a single needle and a single spool of black thread in the city of Bjørgvin, Norway’s second biggest city, it was almost unbelievable how hard it was, you’d almost think that the shopkeepers didn’t want to bother selling something as small as a needle and spool of thread, because I’d walked from one clothing shop to the next and none of them had anything like that for sale, no, they said, no, we don’t carry that, and you’d have to say that there was something a little bit mocking in their answer, and in their face behind that answer, and when I asked where I might be able to buy it the answer was always the same, no, we don’t know, sometimes they would add that they don’t sell needle and thread in this shop, only clothes, ready-to-wear clothes as they put it, and now if I wanted to buy myself some new clothes, if I could afford it, and I have to admit that one of them, or maybe more than one of them, was hinting that I needed some new clothes, but I didn’t need new clothes, I was doing just fine with the clothes I already had, because I didn’t look like a beggar or anything, no, even if some people probably thought I did, but these clothing stores were packed with clothes and that was probably the reason for this hinting, and also the reason why they didn’t want to sell me a needle and thread, but eventually there was someone standing in front of me, bowing to me, in a suit, dammit if he wasn’t wearing a pink tie, who said that if I wanted to buy a needle and a spool of black thread I would need to go to a tailor’s, and when I ventured to ask him where I might find a tailor this shopkeeper’s assistant, or maybe it was the store owner for all I knew, just laughed, he laughed long and loud with his mouth wide open and said how should he know, and then he said that there always used to be a tailor on Skostredet back in the day, but that was a long time ago, because it’s been a long time since there were any tailors in Bjørgvin or probably out on the coast in Strileland either, he said and then a woman came in through a door behind the counter that the man in the suit and pink tie was leaning on and asked a bit impatiently if there was something she could help with and the man in the suit and pink tie said yes, so, um, well, and then I mumbled that I wanted to buy a needle and a spool of black thread and she asked if I needed it to sew a loose button back on and I said yes, that’s what I wanted, and she said she could get that for me, yes, and then she disappeared through the door she had just come in through and the man in the pink tie said yes, yes, you see, the things I don’t know, the things I can’t do, and I asked if he’d just started working in the shop and he said he’d been working there his whole life, since he was a little boy, because the woman who’d just gone to get a needle and thread was his mother, and after his blessed father had died much too young it was Mother, as he put it, yes, she owned the shop, and he had never got any further in life than to work as a shop assistant for his own mother, he said and she was someone who sold anything she could, he could say that for sure, yes, she’d sell her own grandmother if it came to it, yes, that’s what they liked to say about enterprising salespeople in Bjørgvin, he said, so now his mother had probably gone upstairs to their apartment to find a needle and some thread in her own sewing kit, it wasn’t the first time she’d done that, yes, go get something from the apartment to sell it, that’s how his father’s wardrobe had disappeared, not all at once of course, it took its time, but eventually everything got sold, so I’d get my needle and thread all right, the man who was also her son said, and then we stood there not saying anything and then the door behind the counter opened and she came in, and she held up a spool of black thread and there was a needle stuck into the thread, I could see it and yes well here you have your needle and thread, she said, the widow, mother, and owner of a clothing shop in Bjørgvin, yes, I have everything anyone might want for sale, she said, with maybe a little pride in her voice, and her son in the suit wearing a pink tie shrugged, and he wasn’t exactly young, more like a male old maid by the look of him, but how can I think such a thing, to tell the truth I’m no less of an old maid than he is, probably more of one actually, since it seems like I’m a lot older than the son with the pink tie, but then again I had nothing womanly about me, not at all, but that guy, the son, in the suit, with the pink tie, yes, he was as feminine as he was masculine, and that’s probably why I’d hit on that phrase, old maid, yes, and his mother both looked like a man and was acting like one too and she held out her hand with that spool of thread with a needle stuck into it and she said to me

  That’ll be two hundred and fifty kroner, she said

&nb sp; and I couldn’t believe it, two hundred and fifty kroner for a spool of black thread and a needle, yes, everyone knows that these Bjørgvin people sure gouge money out of people but this was above and beyond even for Bjørgvin, this was outrageous, exorbitant, yes that’s the word, exorbitant, there’s nothing else you can call it, I could buy myself a new shirt for that, several shirts, and avoid the trouble of sewing the button back on too, because it’s always a hassle, just getting the thread through the needle always takes me a long time, my eyesight isn’t the best, and even my glasses don’t help much when it comes to seeing the eye of the needle

  Well, the woman standing behind the counter said with a kind of swagger

  Well, what’ll it be, she said

  and I had to just buy that needle and thread from this awful woman, owner of a clothing shop in the city of Bjørgvin, mother of a son in a pink tie, there was probably nothing else I could do, I thought and I took my wallet out of my jacket pocket, but really, no, I couldn’t, I couldn’t pay that much for a little needle and a little thread on a spool where most of the thread had already been used, yes, as far as I could tell there was only a little thread left on the spool, maybe not even enough to sew a single button on with, no, really, but once you start something you have to finish it, once a person’s said A they have to say B, as the saying goes, and if I said no to buying it now it would be kind of humiliating, yes, I’d probably look like a pauper in the eyes of this lady behind the counter, and that’s exactly what I didn’t want, I didn’t want to give her that pleasure, I’d rather she have the somewhat dubious pleasure of having cheated a man, of having cheated a country bumpkin from Strileland even, I thought as I stood there with my wallet in my hand and I took out a two-hundred-kroner note and a fifty and I put them down on the counter, I laid the money down without saying a word and as soon as I put the notes down they were in that woman’s hands, and then I stood there like a fool looking at the spool with a needle stuck into what was left of the black thread and she, the owner of this clothing shop in Bjørgvin, didn’t say anything and I didn’t either, I was glad I wasn’t going to give her an answer and her son, in the black suit and the pink tie, where had he gone off to? I looked all around the shop and it was a big and nice shop, I had to admit that, and there, way in the back, in front of a mirror, was the son, grooming himself, running the palm of his hand over his hair, straightening his tie, standing up straight to his full height making himself look as thin as he could and I put the needle and thread in my pocket and thought now, yes, now I’ve got to get out of this hellish shop, the sooner the better, and I headed for the door without saying a word and behind me I heard the mother and son saying as if with one voice thanks for coming in, hope to see you again, if there’s anything else the gentleman needs or wants, thanks for coming in and hope to see you again, I heard behind me, and the words were still echoing in my ears even when I was back out on the streets of Bjørgvin and never again, never again would I set foot in that clothing shop, never, never, I thought, because I’d never been cheated that badly in my whole life probably, I thought, and now I had to get back home to Vaim, I thought, and why did I always take these boat trips to Bjørgvin anyway, they never really had any point, these excursions, when I had a few days off work then yes I’d just go to Bjørgvin, but it wasn’t so often nowadays either, I thought, not for the past few years anyway, yes, for many years now I’d only taken one trip a year on a summer’s day even though back when I was younger, yes, back then I would constantly be coming to Bjørgvin, one or two days off and I’d head out, and back then I was a regular customer at the bars, and the reason why was probably that I was hoping, even though I didn’t want to admit it, yes, I was hoping to meet someone, yes, someone to share my life with, as they say, but no, not this time, as they say, yes, and now I’ve got so old that the hope is gone, I’m alone and I’ll stay alone, yes, that’s how it is on that subject and that’s how it’ll stay too, yes, so now I took these trips to Bjørgvin just to buy something I couldn’t get at The Vaim General Store, but actually there was and is little or nothing I couldn’t get at The Vaim General Store, they sell most things, all kinds of things, yes, it was only things like this needle and thread that made me think I’d better go to Bjørgvin to get those, although, strictly speaking, one button more or less didn’t matter since really I just putter around and take care of myself in my house, my home, my childhood home as they say, where I was born and where I hope I’ll die, the same way both of my parents passed away there, I lived there while they were alive and then after they died too, yes, then I lived there alone, since I was an only child, yes, I’ve lived in my childhood home my whole life, and now since I live there alone there’s no one to see or notice if a button is missing, yes, and if it’s a button on my trousers I can always just keep my trousers up with a belt, and I have plenty of belts, or even with some rope if it came to that, which it hasn’t, but on the other hand yes you’d have to say it’s good to have a needle and thread around, and I’m sure that I have some too, it’s just that I forgot where I put it, or, yes, well, it’s pretty much certain that it’s in the desk drawer where I have my other sewing things that I inherited from my mother, I threw away most of what she left behind, although it took me a while, but the things I could use, like a needle and thread, yes, I kept those, I’m not that big a fool, but, yes, but then why in the world would I go to Bjørgvin to buy a needle and thread even though I most likely had what I needed at home, yes, well, I guess I just thought I should, so actually I was just looking for an excuse to take a little boat trip to Bjørgvin while I was off for the summer and didn’t need to go to work, even though maybe I was getting, yes, well, kind of sick of these boat trips, yes, and really it would be nicer if I wasn’t always in the boat by myself, there was only one time I had a traveling companion, that’s maybe what you call it, and that was when Elias came with me, but that was many years ago now, and also it took years before Elias agreed to come to Bjørgvin with me, I asked him over and over again if he wanted to come but he’d hem and haw and say he was no sailor, he never felt comfortable on the water, but finally, one beautiful summer’s day when he dropped by to visit and I mentioned I was taking a boat trip to Bjørgvin he said he’d love to come, sure, and the next day there he was standing outside my house with an old gray rucksack on, and then we walked down to the boat and set out, but he sure wasn’t much of a crew, the good man, he got pale after just a little time at sea and he didn’t have much talk in him, he just sat there, pale and kind of run-down, then we docked at The Wharf in Bjørgvin and he had a little talk in him, and then I mentioned that we could go drop by The Strileland Liquor Store and he was totally terrified and he said no, no, and that’s the only thing I can remember him saying on that whole trip, and so obviously Elias didn’t come on the boat with me again, but we drop by each other’s house for a visit a lot, yes, he’ll look in on me once a week or so or I’ll look in on him, in his little house, even though we’re so different we stick together, yes, it’s fair to say that he’s the only friend I have in Vaim, yes, Elias, yes, I don’t remember when he came to Vaim and moved into that house but it was many years ago now, and I also don’t remember when we met each other and started dropping by each other’s house but it was many years ago, and one other thing’s for sure, that after that failed trip to Bjørgvin I never asked him again if he wanted to come on the boat with me, we never brought up that whole Bjørgvin trip again, to tell the truth probably neither of us liked to think about it, but anyway it’s good that I have Elias to talk to, because there’s no one else I see in Vaim, and the part of that trip I remember best is probably the look on Elias’s face when I asked him if we should stop by The Strileland Liquor Store, back then I used to stop by there whenever I came to Bjørgvin and buy a bottle or two of whisky, but there was something in Elias’s face when I asked him if we should go there that, well, that maybe he wanted to forget, but we never talked about it, so there was no trip to The Strileland Liquor Store that time, and now it’s been many years since I’ve been in there, and it was probably called that because it was on Sea Lane and people from Strileland always used to come to Bjørgvin by boat and tie up at The Wharf, yes, even now that lots of people had their own car there were plenty of people who did that, came to Bjørgvin in their own boat, yes, and most of the people from Strileland bought what they wanted to drink at The Strileland Liquor Store, the ones with their own car too, yes, that’s how it was and is, I think and I barely noticed the street I was walking on I was so worked up about having bought that needle and thread, one needle and one barely half-full spool of black thread had cost me two hundred and fifty kroner, but what’s done is done, so now I just needed to get back to my boat, my nice little motorboat, and then I needed to get back to Vaim, because I didn’t have much to do in Bjørgvin to tell the truth, back in the day, when I was young, just a kid, yes, I would always look forward to these boat trips to Bjørgvin, being in my boat for the hours it took to get to Bjørgvin, and then finding a place to tie up somewhere along The Wharf, yes, and that was kind of exciting too, because especially on summer days there might not be much space along The Wharf, and as for tying up to another boat, tying up to its side facing away from The Wharf, the way some people did when The Wharf was full of boats, no, I’ve never done that and I never will either, it would feel too crowded, and too aggressive, no, I’d never be able to relax if my boat was tied to another boat, I wouldn’t be able to sleep even, I’ll be damned if I’d ever cook myself a meal on board, not to mention use the head, no, never, so if there was nowhere to dock along The Wharf I would turn right around and pull slowly out into The Bay and then set my course for the island of Sartor, because there were lots of good harbors out there, with shops on land and nice quays too where you could tie up and spend the night in peace and quiet, yes, my goodness I felt like the best thing to do now would be to just set out from Bjørgvin and head towards Sartor, yes, maybe go to Sund on Sartor, because there was a good quay there, that always had a spot to tie up your boat, and there was a shop there, The Grocery Store, that sold everything you can imagine, yes, maybe even more things than The Vaim General Store, yes, so if only I’d thought of it I could definitely have bought myself a needle and thread there, and probably for almost nothing, yes, I should think so, and next to The Grocery Store there was also a little house where they’d opened a place to eat, The Tearoom they called it, and they sold coffee and cake there, and you could also buy dinner, but they served only one dish a day, one dinner and one dessert, usually the dinner was meatballs with brown sauce and mashed peas, and the dessert tended to be rice pudding with a red sauce, and that food was nothing to shake a stick at, not at all, and when I was there I usually had meatballs and rice pudding, so maybe, yes, maybe I should leave and go to Sartor today, to Sund, yes, why not really, because actually, and to tell the truth, I had little or nothing left to do in Bjørgvin, the years when I did have things to do here were past, yes, maybe that was the reality, in any case now that I’d let that big-mouthed lady sell me a needle and thread for whatever price she came up with I was a fool, so I should just get out of Bjørgvin, the sooner the better, yes, I should definitely just go right to my boat, yes, with this lousy needle and this damn half spool of thread, and then I should untie the boat and set a course straight to Sartor, to Sund, and I’d buy myself some excellent meatballs and rice pudding at The Tearoom there, I was really and truly looking forward to it, yes, the mere thought of it made me happy, so then it was settled, simple enough, off to Sartor we go, off to Sund we go, that’s how it was and I walked a bit faster down the street, yes, not that I had any idea what the street was called, and it didn’t matter either, with my spool and my needle in my jacket pocket I walked straight to The Wharf, I wasn’t going to let any more Bjørgvin people trick me out of any more money, not on this trip anyway, no, I thought and I went on board and so, I said, so now let’s set out and I stopped myself and thought now what do I mean by that, by saying us, because it’s just me, I thought, no, no, well, it’s me and the boat that make up us, it’s me and Eline, and what on earth was it back then that led me to think that I should name my boat Eline, yes, well, I know why, I remember why, but I don’t really like to think about it, because Eline, she was the secret love of my youth and it’s been a long time now since I got this boat, and back then Eline was probably still my secret love, because I’d never told anybody about that crush, no I don’t like that word, but it’s probably the exact right word I need to use since there probably isn’t any other better word to call it by, to name it, yes, to describe the feelings I had for Eline back then, or maybe there’s some other word for it but I never learned it, but it’s such a childish word, well be that as it may that’s what I called my boat, my motorboat, Eline, and that was even while Eline was still living at home with her parents in Vaim, so what must she have thought, Eline, when she saw the boat tied at The Quay below The Vaim General Store with her name in big letters on both sides of the cabin, yes, Eline probably must have realized that the boat was named after her and it must have made her uncomfortable, yes, she must have been downright embarrassed and thought wasn’t that shameless of me to use her name and just go ahead and name my boat after her even though we had hardly ever spoken, so what did that mean, she must have thought, yes, it must mean I’d fallen in love with her, no, how embarrassing, and why would I of all the young men in Vaim do that, that’s what she must have thought, yes, something like that, and I can still remember being moored at The Quay below The Vaim General Store and being in the cabin and when I slipped out from behind the curtain I saw Eline standing there with some other young people and they were pointing, without saying a word, first at the nameplate on the boat and then at Eline and then they laughed and guffawed and made fun of both me and my boat, that was what they were doing, and Eline, yes, well, she was standing there laughing too, so of course I cringed in shame and it took a long time before I dared to come out of the cabin and back onto land, that’s for sure and certain, but not long after that Eline moved away from Vaim, I didn’t know why, but probably to start a job somewhere, and since then I hadn’t seen her, but even so many years later I still felt so close to her, yes, it almost felt like I was back in my younger years, but it couldn’t be true that I still felt the same for Eline as I did in those bygone days, back then, no, that would be impossible, my feelings for the boat can’t help but be mixed in now, because there I was standing in the Eline’s cabin, again, like I’ve done hundreds, yes, thousands of times before, and the motor was purring and running and the boat was gliding with proud dignity out into The Bay, the water was almost perfectly calm and the sky was light blue with some fair-weather clouds for the sun to hide behind and now I left Bjørgvin behind, just let it be, and I’ll be damned if I knew when the next time was I’d go back to Bjørgvin, on the boat Eline, most likely never, I thought and the thought did me good, because in that case maybe the humiliation I’d suffered today, when I’d had a needle and thread foisted off on me for a totally shameful price, would lead to something good, it would be best if it did, of course, I thought and the boat glided in stately fashion out into The Bay, out into Bjørgvin Fjord, now I feel good, I thought, this is a fine, sturdy boat, built by a boatbuilder in Strandebarm, the one with the best reputation, Aga was his name, and the boat was twenty-seven feet long, the cabin had a head up in the bow behind a door, and a hole in the ceiling for daylight, and, yes, to air it out, there was a skylight in the cabin too, and other than that there were two berths on each side, and a long narrow table in the middle, there were cupboards on the wall of the cabin between the cabin and the wheelhouse, and if you went through the cabin door you’d be in the wheelhouse, with a captain’s wheel and a good chair to sit in on the starboard side, and under that there was even a sink you could pump water up into from a tank all the way in the bow, behind the head, you just had to pull the captain’s chair out of the way and you could see the sink in all its glory, and on the port side there was the galley, two hotplates with a kerosene burner, and underneath was the cupboard with shelves for plates and bowls and knives and forks and food and whatever else needed to be stored there, another cupboard with shelves was under the sink on the starboard side, yes, and in the middle was the engine box, where the loyal engine did its trusty work, it always started, and ran steadily, and on summer days like this one it was nice to sit in the fresh air, because at the stern there was the rudder, and there was a space underneath that too where the fuel tank was, and benches to sit on there too, on both sides and at the stern, and there were nice cushions, yes, both on the berths in the cabin and on the captain’s chair and on the benches in back, and everything was always in good repair, an oil change and a new filter in the engine every spring, and a diesel filter of course, woodwork coated with boat tar, everything on board the ship was maintained just as well as could be, yes, it was an excellent boat, it was probably just the thing with the name that had gone wrong but there was nothing to be done about that since changing a boat’s name was bad luck, I wasn’t much of a sailor but I knew that much, and this boat made me so happy, yes, I’d had it for so many years now and spent so many happy hours, yes, days, and nights too, on that boat, I couldn’t even count them, no, but if the weather was good for a boat ride I went for one, that’s how it was, yes, me and the Eline, yes, you’d have to say we were as close as an old married couple, and I’d even heard people say that, it wasn’t the kind of opinion I should have to hear people say but a few guys were standing on The Quay below The Vaim General Store, the way they tended to do, they were in the habit of gathering there, especially when the Bjørgvin ship came in, yes, they were curious, about who was coming ashore and who was going on board, and maybe that was the only exciting thing the boat could bring, or bring to Vaim at least, or else it was probably just an old habit that made them stand there, they wanted to hear the news, the gossip, argue about politics, yes, really just talk and be with other people, and so one day when I was pulling in the group of guys was standing there, of course I knew where they tended to be and I tended to avoid tying up there but for whatever reason I tied up there on that day while they were standing there, I forget why, and then, as I was tying a mooring line, I heard someone say here comes Jatgeir with his old lady, and another guy said yeah, him and Eline, and then all the men had a good laugh, I’ve often thought about whether they meant for me to hear what they said, actually I don’t think they did, no, I don’t want to think any more about it, because one thing’s for sure and certain that there’s no woman I’m closer to than I am to this boat, to the motorboat Eline, and I laid my hand flat on a board of the boat and gently rubbed my hand back and forth along the board and then I sat there and I sort of half-dozed off and Eline glided slowly and carefully over the still water and my thoughts calmed down, and of course the motorboat was named after her, Eline, and she was just a girl when she left home, anyway she was gone from Vaim one day all of a sudden, and a few years later I heard, it must have been at The Vaim General Store, that she’d got married and moved to Sartor, I’d heard she’d found herself a fisherman, but that was many years ago already, I can’t remember how many years, and of course it was a stupid idea to name the boat after Eline, but I’d probably heard that a boat should have a female name, and since the name Eline was the one that was constantly spinning around in my head, yes, the boat got named Eline, Eline the person had already been on my mind for several years, often to the point where it was hard to stop thinking about her, yes, and so that’s how the boat got named Eline, and there was a lot of talk going around about that name, yes, that’s what Elias told me, yes, apparently it was so bad that some people called me Eline instead of Jatgeir, there’s Eline, they said when they saw me, and when Elias told me that yes well I didn’t ask any more questions, that was just the way it was going to be on that subject, there was nothing I could do about it anyway, that’s how it was, and well it was nice that Elias dropped by to see me every now and then, he was the only person who did, and he was the only person I ever dropped by and visited either and now I can already see the bay there at Sund, blue, sparkling, and there are no boats tied up at the quay, and that’s good, because then it’ll be easy to tie up there, and up on the shore stood The Grocery Store with the name written in big black letters on a white background on the side of the building so you could see it from a long way off, and The Tearoom was written in letters at least as big on the wall of the smaller building next door, so now I’d reached Sund, no doubt about it, and with no wind and no current it couldn’t be easier to pull in and tie up the boat and then I let the engine run and cool down for a while before I turned it off, and it sure was nice how it was so quiet everywhere, the water was dead calm, there was not a sound, and I opened the cabin door and went in, left the door open, and then I lay down at full length on the berth, the starboard one, because that was the berth I always used and always had used since I got Eline and then I stretched out my feet and it felt good, so good, to get away from Bjørgvin, so good to tie up the boat on Sartor, in Sund, and now I’d just rest a little and then I’d go ashore and take a walk, stop in at The Grocery Store, I could always buy some food, something small, and it was always good to fill up the fuel tank, and I’d tied up so that the hose from the pump on the quay could easily reach my boat, and in Sund, yes, actually everywhere on Sartor that I could stock up on fuel it was cheaper than in Bjørgvin, yes, cheaper than in Vaim for that matter, so I’d bunker the diesel fuel and then I’d make dinner, I’d fry up some bacon and eggs and potatoes for dinner like always, but maybe today, since I was moored at the Sund quay, I should go to The Tearoom and buy myself some meatballs, because of course they always had meatballs at The Tearoom, sometimes they’d have something else on the menu too but you could buy meatballs every day anyway, and they were good, so maybe I’d splurge a little today and enjoy some meatballs at The Tearoom, or maybe not today, since this was the day I’d been a country bumpkin and let a lady from Bjørgvin swindle me out of two hundred and fifty kroner, embarrassing is what it was, yes, it’s almost like the Bjørgvin people were totally justified in looking down on the Strileland people if something like this could happen, but of course I wasn’t a Strileland person in the strict sense of the word, even if I tended to call myself one, I was a Sygnefjord person, and Sygnefjord people weren’t considered Strileland people, the same way Hardanger people weren’t considered Strileland people, it was only the people who lived on islands and on the coast in the surrounding countryside closest to Bjørgvin who were considered and called Strileland people, but I thought of myself as a Strileland person because then at least that meant you weren’t a Bjørgvin person, you were the opposite of a Bjørgvin person, while Bjørgvin people could only exist so to speak in opposition to Strileland people, so I thought of myself as a Strileland person, and called myself one, but on Sartor, in Sund, they were all real Strileland people, and that was good, because here you could buy a needle and thread without anyone cheating the life out of you and by god I’d try it, because there, at The Grocery Store, they sold all sorts of things, groceries of course, and other daily items, but also clothes, ready-towear clothing they called it, and also yarn, paint, anything you could imagine, yes, so they most likely also had spools of black thread and needles you could use to sew buttons back on with, yes, anyway I could ask for that there at The Grocery Store, and now I’ve probably lain down and had a rest for long enough so it’s time to get up and get something done and the tide was as high as it gets so it was easy to climb up onto the old floating deck hanging off the side of the quay and get up onto the quay, and once I was up on land I looked around, and it was nice here in Sund, buildings and houses arranged prettily around the bay, and if you looked out at the water the approach from Bjørgvin was there to the northeast, and if you looked southeast, yes, then you’d see the inlet, the sund, that gave the place its name, and then the lovely row of boathouses down there on the shore, boathouse after boathouse, and dock after dock, yes, it was nice in Sund, but now I should probably go to The Grocery Store and ask them if they had a spool of black thread for sale, and a needle I could use to sew a loose button back on with, I thought and I slid open the front door of The Grocery Store, I’d been there so many times before, and it didn’t look like there were any other customers there, and there, over by one of the shelves with things for sale, there was The Shopkeeper, she wasn’t exactly young, and I’d probably seen her at The Grocery Store many times before, not that I could remember it, maybe she was the owner of the store and I just went straight over to her and asked her if she had black thread and a needle for sewing a button on with and she looked closely at me, examined me up and down for a long time, it seemed to me, and then she said yes, sure, a needle and thread to sew a button on with, they had that, imagine if everyone from Sund had to go all the way to Bjørgvin to get their loose buttons sewn back on, wouldn’t that be something, yes, she said and I nodded and said that I heartily agreed, so true, so true, and then The Shopkeeper said that I should follow her and she’d find a needle and thread for me, now come with me, she said and she walked through the store past several shelves where all kinds of things for sale were on display in tidy rows, and then she disappeared around the end of one of the shelves, and I hurried to catch up, I turned the corner around the shelf and bumped right into The Shopkeeper’s backside, because she’d stopped, and she was standing there looking for something with her arms reaching up high into the air, and then she brought one of her arms down, held out her hand, and in it was a spool of black thread

 

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