The Half Brother

by Lars Saabye Christensen

  But first Arnesen had to count the money yet again. He had to open the briefcase and check the total, coin by coin and note by note. When the Old One came out of the bedroom and Vera now lay in bed, Boletta weeping and ages late for work, Arnesen was still standing in the hallway, his coat over his arm, twisting his hat like a rat between his hands. “Is the poor little girl any better?” he murmured. “Does she often suffer attacks like that?” “Vera’s had pneumonia for several weeks now. I said goodbye.” Arnesen’s smile was all but imperceptible. “Pneumonia? It’s possible the firm might want to see a medical certificate before deciding the premium.” The Old One opened the door wide. “We have already called the doctor. For the third time goodbye and farewell.”

  Arnesen bowed, picked up his briefcase and slowly went out toward the stairs, where he stood buttoning up his coat. The Old One was about to shut the door but suddenly changed her mind and caught hold of his arm. “How can you really be so sure the Steiners aren’t coming back?” “Because they’re dead! I told you that. Don’t you read the papers? And there’s no point letting the apartment lie empty.” The Old One let go her hold of him, and he immediately began rummaging for something in his pockets. It was a clipping, a photograph. “Look at that,” he told her. “It’s from the journal Vecko. That’s Mrs. Steiner and her daughter Rakel, isn’t it?”

  The Old One took the picture from him and raised it closer to her eyes. It was them. A huge sorrow and an equally huge anger suffused her. It was Rakel and her mother. Her mother is dying or perhaps already dead — skin and bones, clad in rags, the skin stretched taut over her skull, her eyes far too large and staring toward the camera or God or their executioner. And Rakel is holding her mother’s hand — she is all but naked, her shoulders sharp as wishbones. She is clinging to herself, crying, screaming — her mouth an open sore in her young girls face which is already old, ageless, gone beyond time. Death is closing on her too, a crippled child, and this is what the picture shows — the dying clinging to the dead. Underneath the photograph are written these words: The dreaded Ravensbrilck camp. Eventually the concentration camp became too crowded and some no longer had any prison garb. That’s all. The Old One has to support herself against the wall. “And you go around with this in your pocket,” she said in a low voice. “You should be ashamed of yourself.” “I only saw that it was them,” he mumbled. “So I cut it out. May I have it back now?” “No,” the Old One said. “I’m keeping this picture. For as long as you live in their apartment.” Arnesen put on his hat and slunk off. The Old One let him pass. “I hope one day well all sleep soundly again,” she said.

  At that moment they heard Dr. Schultz down below on the stairs, his footsteps heavy, his hand on the banister. Arnesen glanced at the Old One. “Thanks, but I myself sleep perfectly. Except when my wife lies awake.” Then he quickly went downstairs, and as he passed Dr. Schultz, who was thinner than ever but sober that day, he gave him his card. Dr. Schultz stood there a moment, read it and shook his head. Arnesen had stopped on the landing below; he stood holding his hat and was smiling again. “Call whenever it’s convenient, Doctor!” “But it isn’t convenient. Unfortunately there’s nothing I want to insure.” Dr. Schultz put the card in his pocket and climbed the last of the stairs to the Old One, who was waiting impatiently. She pulled him inside and banged the door shut behind them. “She’s in the bedroom. Hurry! There’s no need to take off your shoes!”

  Once again Dr. Schultz chose to be alone with Vera while he conducted his examination of her. The Old One and Boletta waited in the living room. They said nothing. They listened. It was so still, almost as if Vera’s muteness had filtered into the furnishings themselves — the walls, the lampshades, the carpets, the pictures — to give everything a darker shade and a deeper smell. There was a draft from the door onto the balcony, a cold shudder about their feet. The wind thrashed the leaves from the trees in Church Road. The first summer after the end of the war had well and truly disappeared beneath its own foliage. Denmark beat the Norwegian national squad 2-1 in Copenhagen. The bombs had fallen on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and man’s shadow had been imprinted on the earth forever. And still Dr. Schultz remained with Vera.

  The Old One got up, impatient. “I’m freezing! Whatever you say, I’m freezing!” Boletta sat with folded hands. “I haven’t said a thing,” she replied. “I’m still freezing,” the Old One told her. “Has the doctor gone to sleep in there? I’m going in to see!” Boletta held her back. “Let him be.” “Well, I’ll light the stove instead. Tonight I’m having warm Malaga, and Vera’ll have some too! With quinine!” Boletta let her go. “You do that, Mother. Light the stove.”

  The Old One lit a match, dropped it through the hatch and opened the damper. Soon they could feel the growing warmth, and the Old One laid her hands on the insecure surface of the hob and sighed. “I don’t want to be insured with Arnesen any longer,” she said. “And that’s final.” “Don’t be silly,” Boletta replied. “Then he’ll take the clock too.” “That can’t be helped. I just cannot abide him!” Now it was Boletta’s turn to sigh. “You’ve become nothing but a moan. That’s a fact. A moan!” The Old One stamped her foot. “I have not. I’m only saying that I can’t abide Arnesen!” “And you can’t abide Dr. Schultz either. You’re insolent to the bunch of them!” The Old One whispered over her shoulder, “But what is that idiot doing? He was sober when he went in, wasn’t he?” Boletta had got herself worked up now and wouldn’t let it go. “Nor can you bear the caretaker!” The Old One chuckled by the stove. “And what sort of sport was it that fool did when he was young? The triple jump! That ridiculous creature! And now you’ve gone and got your headache again, and you should just give your tongue a break.” “You don’t like anyone any more!” Boletta shouted. “That’s not true.” “Then tell me someone you like. If you can still remember the right name!” “With pleasure. I like Johannes V. Jensen!”

  The Old One interrupted herself with a little squeak and brought her warm hands against her breast, almost as if she’d burnt her fingers on the stove. Boletta got up quickly. “What is it, Mother?” The Old One pointed at the small, sooty stove window where the flames rose tall and golden. “We’ve burnt Hamsun,” she whispered. “There is Hamsun burning.”

  At the same moment Dr. Schultz came out of the bedroom, and he came quietly. He closed the door behind him, went in to the two women in the living room and carefully put down his bag. He remains standing like that for a time, looking down at his galoshes. One of them hasn’t been cleaned, or perhaps it’s because he stood in a puddle on the way over.

  At last Dr. Schultz looked up. He spoke at length, his voice low. “Vera has again lost a good deal of blood.” The Old One took a step closer, her breathing heavy. “We know that. But this time she bled from her mouth!” Dr. Schultz nodded. “Yes, she’s given herself a nasty bite in the tongue.” Boletta sank down in the sofa and smiled. “She’s bitten herself on the tongue? So it’s not a stomach ulcer she has?” “Oh no. It’s anything but a stomach ulcer. Pardon me, but is it particularly warm in here?” Dr. Schultz’s forehead was shining, and he drew one finger inside his crumpled collar to let some air in. The Old One went closer still. “Yes,” she said. “It is warm in here. As a matter of fact we’re burning the collected works of Hamsun.” “What did you say?” “But would you now tell us Vera’s condition!”

  Dr. Schultz turned instead to Boletta. “There is nothing wrong with Vera,” he told her. “Except for ... I mean ...” He was suddenly quiet and looked down again at his ridiculous galoshes. The Old One was up on her toes. “Except for what, young man? Speak up, for God’s sake!”

  Dr. Schultz, that young man of close on sixty, drew himself up as best he could. “How can I put it?” he began slowly and hesitatingly. The Old One was almost on top of him. “Well, I’ll tell you! Quite simply you’ll spit it out and not stand there stammering like a knock-kneed cadet!” Dr. Schultz drew his hand under his nose where the drop still hung and refused to be wi
ped away. “So you both know nothing?”

  But now the Old One did something that was talked about for long enough in Church Road and that is talked about perhaps to this day by those who also remember Boletta’s screech that caused plaster, slates and loose change to rattle from Fagerborg to Adamstuen. It wouldn’t surprise me. But what does surprise me is that anyone at all got to hear of it, because I can’t imagine that Dr. Schultz himself told a soul — quite the opposite, he would rather have kept it quiet or even lied about it. And it certainly wasn’t one of us. Besides, Dr. Schultz died not long after. When the first snow came in November, he decided to embark on the great journey from Mylla once more, and he never returned. Some walkers found him the following spring, way out beyond the ski runs, between Sandungen and Kikut. He was still holding on to his poles, but the single drop under his nose had finally broken off and it lay like a pale pearl in his decayed mouth. In his pockets there wasn’t so much as a wallet or a scraper for his skis, just a card from a man who sold life insurance — and as a result the police first thought this was Gotfred Arnesen, the agent from the Bien insurance company, lying there having taken his last stride. There was a good deal of a rumpus over this when the two officers called on his wife to tell her that tragically her husband had been found dead on Nordmarka. It was she who almost died as a result, even though the misunderstanding was cleared up when Gotfred Arnesen arrived home from work at the usual time, impatient to see his little boy, who was three months old. After that she was never quite herself again; the groundless message left a scar in her, and she grew afraid of opening the door when the bell rang and always dressed in black. In the end she forbade her husband, Gotfred Arnesen, to leave the apartment.

  But that’s not what I want to relate now — I’m jumping ahead, caught up by my own flashforward. For this is what happened now — the Old One quite simply slapped Dr. Schultz, with the flat of her hand she hit him hard across the face. “Would you tell us what you’re hiding!” Dr. Schultz bent down and rubbed his finger over his dirty galosh. Then he drew himself up, the drop a pendulum under his nose, his cheek burning. “Perhaps I too saved a life,” he murmured. “Today Hippocrates would be proud of me.” “What on earth are you babbling about?” the Old One roared.

  Dr. Schultz swallowed and had to clear his throat.

  “Vera is pregnant,” he said.

  Boletta was already on her way to the bedroom but the Old One stopped her and addressed Dr. Schultz again in the gentlest of tones. “My dear Dr. Schultz. Tell us something we don’t know. We know that Vera is pregnant. What we want to find out is if everything is all right with the child and herself.” The doctor exhaled. “Everything seems to be perfectly fine.” Boletta could barely speak. “Has she said anything?” Dr. Schultz shook his head. “Not yet. But give her time. May I ask, by the way, about one thing?” The Old One nodded and had to support Boletta. “Who is the lucky father-to-be?” “He died in the events of last May” the Old One answered quickly. “They were to be married then.”

  Dr. Schultz looked away and stroked his finger over his cheek. “Please forgive my indiscretion. I’m a doctor, not a vicar. Hippocrates is displeased with me. You ought to hit me again.”

  The Old One carefully laid her hand on his and gently squeezed it. He took his black bag and left them. They never saw him again. They heard only the youngest of the boys ringing their bicycle bells and laughing as he came out onto the street.

  Boletta stared at the Old One, who was still holding her arm, and she hardly knew whether to weep or yell. “Did you know?” she hissed. The Old One shook herself free. “Were we supposed to let Dr. Schultz think we didn’t? A lie is quicker told than the truth.”

  And then they went in to see Vera. She lay in the bed staring up at the roof, at the angular crystal chandeliers, her eyes shut. Boletta fell on her knees beside her daughter. “Tell us,” she begged, “what happened in the drying loft.”

  But Vera would say nothing. She maintained her silence. The Old One went to get the bottle of Malaga and had to use both hands to pour the last of it into her glass. “We have to take good care of this child,” she said softly.

  That afternoon the Old One went down to the police station in Majorstuen. She had to wait three quarters of an hour before being admitted to see a young policeman positioned behind his typewriter. “I want to report a rape,” she tells him. The policeman looks up and can’t hide the smile beneath his fair, thin beard. “A rape? Have you been raped?” The Old One looms over the raw recruit. “My granddaughter has been raped, young man! Are you trying to make a monkey out of me?”

  The policeman blushes and prepares the sheet of paper in his typewriter. “Not at all, madam. And when did this happen? The rape, I mean.” “The 8th of May,” the Old Ones replies. The policeman raises both hands from the keys and looks at her again. “The 8th of May? That’s almost four months ago.” “You don’t need to tell me that,” the Old One retorts. “Can you now get going with the investigation!”

  And the policeman slowly writes down on the sheet of paper the name, address and date, together with the nature of the crime, and he then puts it at the bottom of a whole pile of accumulated reported incidents. The Old One purchases a bottle of Malaga at the “pole” and makes inquiries about Chinese bark at the pharmacy, for when a concoction of this is prepared it soothes sorrow, hangovers and waiting. Never before has Church Road been so steep beneath her feet. She stands for a while down in the yard. She watches the young boys tossing coins by the stairs. Their faces are soft and incomplete, they squat around the money pot — with laughter and quick fists and clinking five 0re pieces. Then they become aware of her, almost as if the Old One’s gaze is too heavy for their narrow shoulders, and they get up, silent and serious, and turn in her direction. No, she thinks, they’re innocent, they haven’t grown up enough to commit such a deed; they’re still just children in search of their own faces. The Old One smiles and finds a coin to throw them, and their earnestness breaks into rejoicing and merriment as they stretch their arms into the air and playfully push each other out of the way.

  But then Bang the caretaker comes out onto the stairs with a toolbox under his arm. He picks up the coin that has landed on the step right in front of him. The boys fall silent once more. “What’s going on here? Playing here in the yard is strictly forbidden!” No, the Old One muses, no, neither was it him, all-powerful as he is in his own simplicity and with a limp that would have given him away as the perpetrator in the blink of an eye. “Give them back their money!” she commands him.

  And the Old One can’t get to sleep that night. She goes in and disturbs Boletta, who’s also lying awake watching over Vera. She’s the only one who’s sleeping. “There were all kinds of folk here in those days,” the Old One murmurs. “What do you mean?” “Up in the lofts. All kinds of folk were hiding there through the month of May.” Boletta hid her face in her hands. “Let’s hope it was a soldier,” the Old One goes on, her voice still quieter. “A Norwegian soldier who couldn’t come to terms with the war inside.” “Oh, Lord,” Boletta moans. “That we let her go there alone! Oh, Lord.” The Old One sits down on the bed. “God hasn’t been a great help to us yet,” she admits.

  Blåsen

  One afternoon in January in the new year of 1946, the Old One’s sitting up on Blåsen, the highest part of Sten Park, looking out over the silent city. It makes her feel at peace to sit there. This is her place. She can see the fjord lying gray and heavy beneath the cold fog piling over Ekeberg. The Christmas trees are on the balconies with the remains of decorations hanging from their dry, brown branches. The Old One is sorrowful and afraid. Vera has still not said a word, and she’s carrying a child she can no longer conceal. Its an insanity that is driving them all quietly mad. Boletta lies awake at night and is losing weight, unable to forgive herself for letting Vera go alone to the drying loft. And every day Vera stands in front of the mirror, her head bowed, unable to look at herself. Soon she will have to have two mirro
rs. Who was it who broke in on her on that day of rejoicing? The Old One doesn’t know. She only knows this — he who did this, he who is the father of this child — he had his way, he ripped up and he destroyed, he brought the darkness down over Vera and deserves nothing more than even greater pain and an even greater darkness. But she says it again in her inmost being: We have to take good care of this child. Because the Old One knows all about grief. Sorrow is the Old One’s strength. That’s what sustains her — it’s her storm, her fulcrum. She will teach Vera to carry sorrow like triumph, and pain like a bouquet that will burst into flower each night. But at that moment she hears footsteps in the snow, and she doesn’t need to turn around because she already knows who it will be. And she thinks to herself, I’m neither sorrowful nor afraid. I’m old and wise, and who else was there to be that — old and wise and brave — if not her? The Old One smiles as Vera sits down beside her and waits a long while before saying anything; they’re both equally quiet and accept one another’s silence. “I’m sure you haven’t come here to talk,” the Old One says at last. “But you can come here to me just the same.” Vera lays her head against her shoulder. The Old One trembles for a moment. She remembers a time they’d been filming for three whole days and eighteen scenes had been done — the film’s title was The Chambermaid and the New Guest. They had even built a studio on a piece of ground outside Copenhagen, and her eyes were burning after all those hours in the strong light. But she felt good, for this was going to be a success, a sensation — they were sure of it, and each one of them felt good, from the person in charge of the clapper board to the director, from the pianist to the hero. Then they heard a shout from the photographer and all at once he began crying. He had forgotten to put film in his camera. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be. And yet it had happened. All was in vain. Each and every glance and movement forgotten, disappeared, as if it had never been, as if everything that wasn’t imprinted on a roll of film was untrue, unreal, nothing. The director got up, just stood where he was, then sat down again and buried his head in his hands. No one dared say a word. And the Old One, who was young then, beautiful and sought after, she was the only one who dared speak. “We’ll just do it again,” she said. But it didn’t work. It couldn’t be done again. They had to find something else, a new title, a new story. And regardless of what they did, they always compared it with that which hadn’t been filmed, and they were always dissatisfied. They could never improve on that which wasn’t there. That was the end, the Old One thinks now, and she shivers again. The best film wasn’t just silent, it was invisible too. She’d like to tell Vera about it, but she says something else instead, because maybe she’s told the same story before and essentially it’s a sad one. “I know what you’re thinking, even if you don’t say anything, Vera. That’s what it means to be deaf. I only hear thoughts and dreams and the beating of hearts.”