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  I am the world.

  But the world is not me.

  —Daniil Kharms

  I

  MORNINGS

  II

  MIDDAYS

  III

  DINNERTIMES / EVENINGS / MORNINGS / MIDDAYS / AFTERNOONS

  FINAL COMMENTS

  Everything said here about George W. Bush is taken from the article “43+41=84” from Vanity Fair, September 2006.

  Everything said here about George W. Bush’s dream about the center of the earth is entirely made up.

  Everything said here about the earth’s crust is taken from forskning.no/evolusjon-paleontologi/2008/02/tidlig-liv-kan-ha-formet-jorda.

  Everything said here about earthquakes is taken from www.jordskjelv.no/jordskjelv/om-jordskjelv/hva-er-et-jordskjelv/.

  Everything said here about the Greenland shark’s eating habits is taken from www.shark.ch/Database/Search/species.html?sh_id=1134.

  Here you can find Golf Can’t Be This Simple: www.amazon.com/Golf-Cant-this-Simple-Swing/dp/097192080X.

  Most of what’s said here about Paul de Man is fictional.

  The parts that aren’t fictional are based on a lecture by Arild Linneberg about Paul de Man’s life, which we snuck into. So our thanks to him!

  Sigrid’s photograph of Paul de Man can be found in the book Responses: On Paul de Man’s Wartime Journalism, ed. Werner Hamacher, Neil Hertz, and Thomas Keenan (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989). The photograph is by Ken Laffal Photography.

  Most of what’s said here about Sofia Coppola is based on interviews and documentaries.

  In addition, it should be said that there is some doubt about the word “the” that Linnea devotes so much energy to interpreting in Richard Brautigan’s poem, which Göran left in her pocket before he went home to Lotta. Göran had just found those poems on the Internet ( www.brautigan.net), and Göran copied the poem faithfully from there, and the website has several such words in brackets, and Göran didn’t know whether the brackets were Brautigan’s own or the website’s, or what their function was. But he had to copy them.

  It should also be added that Linnea interpreted the poem slightly differently than Göran intended; for Gö ran, the most important bit was the fact that the winds (in other words, he and Linnea) blew past. And that they were like dreams. And dreams are not real, as we know. Dreams, big and small, are passing, like the wind. Nor did Göran know that “ te” is the Japanese word for hands. So it was not a holding movement he had intended when he gave her the poem, quite the contrary, it was a slipping away, passing movement. In short: you and I, Linnea, are not made for each other. We are dreams that pop up and then vanish. We are winds that blow past.

  It happens!

  Likewise, the words written on Karen Kilimnik’s picture of the pale blue glitter horse, which we reported as stating that said horse was taking someone to the glitter palace, aren’t entirely correct. What it actually says, in fact, is “My Pony Arriving to Pick Me Up at the Glitter Theater, St. Petersburg 2000.”

  Any similarities between the fictional characters herein are completely accidental.

  Likewise the fact that they quote the same literary works.

  The poem that Sigrid quotes here is from Olav H. Hauge’s collection Dropar i austavind (Samlaget, 1966).

  * * *

  The poem that Sigrid should have quoted, perhaps, is this one by Ivar Aasen:

  I know so well there is a heart

  That feels the same as mine,

  That yearns the same and hurts the same,

  And shares my hope, my time.

  And if I found it, all would be well

  And life would flow untroubled.

  But this is painful to recall:

  We never found each other.

  But things do eventually go well for Sigrid; we can disclose that here in these final comments. In fact, things are already much better by June, her eternal suffering has eased little by little after all, and so she finally dares go up to the railing again. She walks up and feels—partly because it’s warmer and she’s wearing a T-shirt, of course—as though the yoke of winter is falling from her shoulders, and when, at the signal of a gust of wind, small, flat seeds start to shower down from the trees on the long avenue that leads up to the railing, she’s overwhelmed by the sight and has to stop: as though great snowflakes of transparent bronze are sparkling around her. She has to stretch out her arms (that is to say, she of course doesn’t stretch them out, someone might see her, after all, standing there like an idiot with her arms outstretched, but she feels that she has to stretch out her arms) in the shower of glittering bronze seeds because she feels everything is quivering: something is about to happen, something is on its way, that’s how she would prefer to put it, and even though she doesn’t know what it is, and even though it might very probably be something very small, it’s something that is, at least, possible.

  * * *

  Phew, and let that be our final comment.

  * * *

  With love from Beatrice and Dulcinea

  (who have, of course, * been your narrators and guides)

  ALSO BY GUNNHILD ØYEHAUG

  Knots

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Gunnhild Øyehaug is an award-winning Norwegian poet, essayist, and fiction writer. Her story collection Knots was published by FSG in 2017, and Wait, Blink has been adapted into the acclaimed Norwegian film Women in Oversized Men’s Shirts. She has also worked as a coeditor of the literary journals Vagant and Kraftsentrum. Ø yehaug lives in Bergen, where she teaches creative writing. You can sign up for email updates here.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  Kari Dickson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. She has a BA in Scandinavian studies and an MA in translation. Before becoming a translator, she worked in theater in London and Oslo. Previously a teaching fellow in the Scandinavian Studies section at the University of Edinburgh, she is now an occasional tutor in Norwegian and translation. You can sign up for email updates here.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Epigraph

  I. Mornings

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  II. Middays

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23


  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  III. Dinnertimes / Evenings / Mornings / Middays / Afternoons

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Final Comments

  Also by Gunnhild Øyehaug

  A Note About the Author and Translator

  Copyright

  Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  175 Varick Street, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2008 by Kolon forlag

  Translation copyright © 2018 by Kari Dickson

  All rights reserved

  Originally published in Norwegian in 2008 by Kolon forlag, Norway, as Vente, blinke: eit perfekt bilete av eit personleg indre

  English translation published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  First American edition, 2018

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Øyehaug, Gunnhild, 1975– author. | Dickson, Kari, translator.

  Title: Wait, blink: a perfect picture of inner life / Gunnhild Øyehaug; translated from the Norwegian by Kari Dickson.

  Other titles: Vente, blinke. English

  Description: First American edition. | New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux [2018] | “Originally published in Norwegian in 2008 by Kolon forlag, Norway, as Vente, blinke”—T.p. Verso

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017047944 | ISBN 9780374285890 (hardcover)

  Classification: LCC PT8952.25. Y44 V4613 2018 | DDC 839.823/8—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017047944

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  eISBN 9780374715007

  1

  Here we see Sigrid. It’s nine o’clock in the morning, it’s January, and the 2008 January light fills the room sharply, yet reliably, with a color temperature of 5600 kelvins, which is the normal color temperature for daylight, and consequently is the color temperature of the bulbs in the large spotlights you have to set up outside the window if you’re going to simulate daylight in a room in a movie, and then turn on so they’ll shine through the glass with a light that to those of us passing by outside, and who only see the spotlights and not the effect in the room, seems far too bright to simulate daylight. Well: Sigrid is sitting in this natural daylight, at a desk by the wall. The expression on her face is thoughtful, and her face is framed by hair, hair that she sometimes pulls, without realizing she’s doing it, possibly, as Sigrid’s face reveals that she is utterly absorbed by what she’s holding up in front of her, what she’s looking at: a miniature portrait of a man, in black and white, on a book jacket. When she’s engrossed like this, her face goes slack. It’s as if her eyes are what are holding up her face, wide-open and alert. And in the center of Sigrid’s eyes are her pupils; we are drawn in toward Sigrid’s pupils, which are black as ink and closed to us—like two periods! —even though we would have liked to imagine that we could stare our way in through her pupils, as if through a narrow black funnel, stare our way into her head and become absorbed, and become the thoughts in her head, like the water in the water, the air in the air, the flesh on the hand holding this piece of paper, or the wood in the tree outside her window that’s standing there shivering in the January air, and doesn’t know that she knows it exists!

  * * *

  Sigrid is twenty-three and studying literature at the University of Bergen. She’s the kind of literature student who has photographs of literary theorists on her wall, photocopied from textbooks and stuck up with Blu Tack, which shows through at the top of the sheet of copy paper. She’s also the kind of literature student who has a print of Van Gogh’s sunflowers on the wall because they mean something to her (there’s something about the yellowness, the grotesqueness, the newly opened and the withered, “life” and “death,” the hopelessness with which the sunflowers twist out of the vase and stand there hanging their absurd one-eyed faces). (There’s something about the way they’re so alone, and yet so grotesquely open.) And she has so much she’d like to tell to someone who’s willing to listen, naturally. She normally talks to Magnus about things like this, things she’s seen, things she’s read, things she’s thought, things she’s analyzed, pondered, and thought about and thought about as she brushed her teeth, went to bed, showered, and had breakfast the next morning, things that have expanded to be more than things, things that have grown inside her like a huge sunflower that now fills her entire being and stares at her from inside her head with its big one-eyed face, until she’s ready to burst and phones Magnus to tell him about it. But Magnus has moved to Oslo and gotten himself a girlfriend, and even though she’s sure that at one point or another they will split up, because after all, it’s obvious that she and Magnus are the perfect couple, she has a strong feeling that she’s lost again. Once again the world has put up its hand and said: you! you can get straight back into your own head.

  * * *

  When Sigrid was a child, she often became attached to things in nature for want of any feeling of contact with people. She became attached to the mountains behind the house and the stars, in particular, the stars over the mountains at night. She would sit on her bed, which was right by the window, with her chin on the windowsill, and look up at the mountains, which were often completely white, as it was usually winter when she sat like this and looked at the mountains that were almost bright white, and the Big Dipper that hung shining above the mountains, and moved slowly along the ridge. And she looked at all the other stars, how they sparkled and shone, as though they were alive. And Sigrid looked up at them and thought: you understand me. If no one else understands me, you’re always there! Sometimes it brought tears to her eyes because she felt the connection between herself and the stars so intensely. They were her, and the white mountains were her, and the black sky.

  * * *

  Luckily, every now and then, Jon English would lift her chin with his finger, and her head, which had been bent deep in thought, and her long dark hair (she imagined) were lifted slowly and full of promise by Jon English’s finger under her chin and she looked straight into a pair of eyes that were so clear and blue and full of love and understanding. His eyes shone in just the same way they did in Against the Wind. And Sigrid shone back. And one day, she thought, as she sat there with her chin on the windowsill, looking at the stars, this would actually happen in real life as well, she would be sitting with her head bent deep in thought like now, and someone would lift her chin with his finger.

  * * *

  In other words: Sigrid also shines brightly, her inner life is luminous, only not many people have seen it, her secret, sparkling light. Definitely not Magnus, that’s for sure. And she’s completely forgotten Jon English. But right now, as she sits here holding the book with the photograph of the author, she gets the strange feeling that perhaps it doesn’t matter, the whole thing with Magnus. The other day she went into a bookshop, as she normally does when she’s got nowhere to go and doesn’t dare go to a caf é on her own because she can’t face giving herself a pep talk before she goes in and then having to encourage herself every second that she sits there, because it’s quite obvious that she’s not there with anyone; she went into a bookshop instead. It was one of those days
when she felt like the white mountains and the stars and the dark, dark night. Which no one, no one saw. She wandered between the shelves, took down one book after another, and then randomly she pulled out a book that had the fantastic and hope ful life-affirming title An Empty Chair. The very thing she was looking for. Somewhere to sit, in life. Someone who wanted her to sit there with them. When she turned the book over to read the back, she met the eyes of the author, K åre Tryvle. Yes, that was exactly what happened, she felt that he met her eyes, K åre Tryvle. She stood there looking at his face. She thought he was very handsome, of course, he was dark and there was something Jon English–ish about his square features, a more distinguished Jon English, but it was the eyes that kept her transfixed. It was as if they saw deep inside her, as though all the time she had been wandering around feeling so infinitely lonely, these eyes, which saw it, which saw her infinite loneliness, had been there in the bookshelf. Eyes that seemed to say: hello, you. It could well be that she felt like this because of the illusion that’s created when the subject of a picture looks straight at the observer (painter or photographer): no matter where you place yourself in relation to the picture, you seem to have eye contact. And it might well be the tiniest bit nuts to feel like that, that he saw her, but Sigrid didn’t reflect on it at all, she just felt a sublime and stomach-lurching oh, and took a step back as a result, which meant that she reversed into a stroller that was coming toward her and she had to say: sorry! to the mother pushing it, and the mother said: no worries, there’s not much room here. And then, because Sigrid had fallen into a kind of trance, which meant that she’d forgotten that she was still part of the world’s everyday movements, like stepping aside if someone wants to get by with a stroller, the mother with the stroller had to say: do you mind moving a bit, so I can get to the end of the alphabet, which made Sigrid blush, and look at the book she was holding, and say: yes, of course, I’m only at T, so sorry, and then she had to move out of the way so the stroller-pushing mother could get past to the end of the alphabet, and she turned away to hide her redness, a blush that wasn’t only caused by this end-of-alphabet situation, because wasn’t that just incredible? Symbolic, in a way, that she had been standing here with the book in her hand, with the eyes that had somehow been there waiting? Surely it was destiny? That on a mountain and star day like today, a stroller came and bumped into her at just that moment?