Grandma! Hi Grandma! Asle shouts
Have you been shopping, Grandma! he shouts
and Grandma smiles at him under her yellow-white cap, the one that he himself is wearing now, and she says he should just wait until she gets home, then he can see what she has
Come home with me, then you can see, Grandma says
I’ve gone shopping for a few things, I have, she says
and he sees that Grandma’s bag is heavy
Should I help you carry it, Asle says
It’s better if I do it myself, Grandma says
It’s easier when I carry my own things, it’s steadier walking like that, she says
But you could always take one handle of the shopping bag too and help me a little, that would be nice of you, she says
A little help is always good, she says
and he takes one handle of the shopping bag and then Grandma takes two fingers and puts them on top of his cold fingers and then they carry the shopping bag together, slowly, step by step, up the little road and neither of them says anything
You’re a good boy, Asle, Grandma then says
and Grandma and he keep walking and he feels Grandma’s cold and slightly stiff fingers on his fingers and he wants to pull his hand back, but he doesn’t dare to, he thinks and he walks up the big road and now he has come to the flat place down below the house on the neighboring farm, and can’t he hear someone standing and talking in the yard there? does he hear that the two boys are talking there? or not? no it must have been nothing, he thinks and now he has to just go home, he thinks and he looks at the fire down there on the shore, and now the fire is big, and it’s still hard to see if the fire is burning down on the bay below the boathouse or somewhere closer to him, he thinks, but it’s big, the fire, and pretty, the yellow and red flames in the darkness, in this cold, and in the light from the fire he sees the waves of the fjord beat like always against the stones of the shore, or he doesn’t see the waves, he thinks, he just sees the water coming in over the stones and running back out from the stones, the water moves in and out, it wets the stones and pulls back, he thinks and he stands there and stays standing and looking at the wet stones there in the light from the fire and then he looks at the fire and there in the fire, isn’t that a body there in the fire? a person? he thinks, there in the middle of the fire he sees a bearded face and then the beard, it is gray and black both, starts to burn, and the long gray and black hair is also on fire and he sees staring eyes right in the middle of the fire and something in the eyes is as if sucked up by the flames and as if dispersed into the cold air as smoke and he sees eyes and he can’t see the faces, they aren’t faces, they’re just grimaces, and he can’t see the bodies, and then he sees the eyes sort of find a voice and what he hears is like a howl, first a howling from one eye and then a scattered howling from lots of eyes and then the huge howl becomes one with the flames rising up and it disappears into the darkness and the voices in the eyes rise up and are smoke that you can’t see and he keeps walking and now it’s so cold that he has to go home, he thinks, it’s too cold to stay out and even if their house is old it’s warm there in the room back home in the old house, he thinks, they have a good stove, and they have a fire in it, and the wood is wood he got himself, in the summer he chops wood and in the fall he saws up the wood to the proper length, splits it, stacks it so that it gets good and dry, he thinks, yes, they have wood, a good amount of wood, and it’s good and warm, and before he went out he put a log in the stove, he thinks, and now she’s probably put more wood in the stove, so that the fire wouldn’t burn out, of course she has, so that it’s warm enough and nice in the room at home in the old house, he thinks and he starts to walk up the little road back home to the old house and now he can’t stop and look back down at the shore, now he has to go home, and he can’t think again that he should go out onto the fjord for a while, it’s too cold, it’s dark, he can’t think that, he thinks and he stops and he turns around and looks back down at the shore and there’s still a fire, but it’s smaller now, it’s now just a little fire he sees burning down there on the shore, so is the fire already burned out, he thinks, or is that another fire? could that really be another fire? yes it must be another fire, he thinks, because the fire he saw before was so much bigger, it was really a huge fire, big and strong, but now he sees a little fire burning, he thinks and he looks back home, back at the old house, at the window, and there she is standing there, small, with her black hair, she is standing there looking out, she, his wife, she is standing there and looking out the window as though she was part of the window, she is standing there, he thinks, always, always, whenever he pictures her she is standing there in the window, maybe she didn’t used to at first but lately, she has stood there all year lately, he thinks, that is how he remembers her, small, black hair, big eyes, and then the darkness like a frame around her, he thinks and he looks back down at the shore again and a little fire is burning steadily down on the shore, just below the boathouse, and then he sees, and even though it’s dark he sees it as clearly as if it was bright daylight, a woman with a little boy she’s carrying in her arm go up to the fire and in her other hand she is holding a plank of wood with bark on it that she lays on the fire and the woman stands there and looks into the flames, then she goes and picks up a stick with a sheep head on it, the stick goes in through the neck opening and the point of the stick comes out through the mouth, and she takes the stick over to the fire and she puts the stick with the sheep head on it into the flames and while the boy dangles in her arm she moves the sheep head back and forth in the flames, and then its wool catches fire and blazes up and then a burnt smell goes up, burning, and then she dips the sheep head into the water of the fjord before she puts it back into the flames, and again that burnt smell, and then she moves the sheep head back and forth, back and forth in the flames. That’s Aliss, he thinks, and he sees it, he knows it. That’s Aliss at the fire. That is Aliss, he thinks, his great-great-grandmother, he is sure of it. It’s Aliss, he was named after her, or rather after her grandson Asle, the one who died when he was seven, the one who drowned, he drowned in the bay, his Grandpa Olaf’s brother, his namesake. But that is Aliss, in her early twenties, he thinks. And the boy, about two years old, that’s Kristoffer, his great-grandfather, the one who would later be Grandpa Olaf’s father and also the father of the Asle he was named after, his namesake, the one who drowned when he was just seven years old, he thinks and he sees Kristoffer start to cry dangling there in Aliss’s arm and she puts down the stick with the sheep head on it and then she sets Kristoffer down on the shore and he stands up and stands there unsteady on his little legs, and then Kristoffer takes one careful step, and he stands, and then he takes another step, and then he falls on his side and shrieks and Aliss says no, why do you have to try to stand up, can’t you sit quiet, Aliss says, and she puts down the stick and she picks up Kristoffer and holds him tight to her chest