Summary

This section starts like all the others, with Asle looking at the intersecting purple and brown lines on the Saint Andrew's Cross painting. As he looks at the painting, which he will give to Åsleik for Åsleik's sister on Christmas, Asle realizes he no longer wants to paint. He has simply lost the drive to do it. Although he feels it is incomplete, Asle believes that the Saint Andrew's Cross painting is the best he has ever painted.

Asle remembers when he had just moved to Aga to go to The Academic High School, as a young man. His friend from home, Sigve, had also just moved to the area. Sigve helps Asle change the birthdate on his ID so that he can buy beer. Sigve is a few years older than Asle, and had fallen in with the wrong crowd when he was...