By the second page of this story, the narrator has been informed by a neighbour that a man has just shot his dog. By the fourth, he has decided to kill the man in revenge. By the sixteenth page, the narrator is standing over the dog-killer while he sleeps and driving a pitchfork into his heart: “His mouth gapes open, he is breathing heavily. His jowls are shaking slightly. I look at the left side of his fat hairy chest, I hold the pitchfork handle as tight as I can, tense my body, breathe in a deep breath, tense the muscles in my arms. I am staring at the left side of his chest and I plunge it in.”

This being a Jon Fosse story, all of this takes place beside a fjord, by which the narrator approaches his victim’s house in a rowboat, and by which he escapes: “I row away from land, out into the fjord, I row on, straight ahead, straight out into the fjord, row on. And I say, now that devil is dead, as he should be, it’s what he deserves, that fat bastard, fucking demon, fucking bastard, now that devil’s where he belongs, that fucker.”

First published as ‘Og så kan hunden komme’ in To forteljingar, Samlaget, 1993, and in English in Scenes From A Childhood, Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2023