The Half Brother

by Lars Saabye Christensen

  Then the sound was turned up — the whine of the tram at the sharp bend behind the school, the trees rustling in the rain, the tires on the wet pavement like long sighs through the city, and the gob landing with a crack in Holte Street. “Where’re you going, huh?” “Home,” I whispered. “Home? Sure of that, huh?” I nodded. “Real sure, huh?” I nodded again. “Maybe well come with you, how about that?”

  All at once the church bells began ringing — for some reason or other they suddenly started ringing. Maybe somebody had forgotten their own funeral in all the rain. The birds scattered from the rooftops. I froze like a tulip. Aslak, Preben and Hamster came closer and bent down toward me; they sniffed at my face like mad dogs. I had to close my eyes again and just wait for them to bite, bite like bitches, or for the end of the world and for everything to disappear. That would be best. “Just what I told you. His face smells like fanny.” Slowly, I opened my eyes. The bells had stopped. They held their noses and backed away. “Old fanny. That’s what he stinks of. Jesus.” Aslak quickly bent toward me again — all but banged my forehead — then backed off once more. “Sure it’s not cock he smells of? You know, I think it’s both fanny and cock too.” “Yeah, it must be both. His face smells of fanny and cock.”

  They stood there staring at me. The railing was hurting my back. After a while they looked at each other instead and whispered together. That was worse. Now they weren’t going to leave it at that. Aslak laughed. “What have you got in your schoolbag, eh, Fanny? Maybe underwear for your face, huh?” There wasn’t a lot of point in answering them. They pulled my bag off me, opened it and emptied everything over the railing — my pencil case, my geography notebook, my eraser, half a packet of sandwiches with sausage, my home economics books and my ruler. Everything floated through the rain and landed on the cobblestones in Holte Street between the shining tramlines. Then they put my bag on my back again and took turns patting me on the head. “Weren’t you on your way home, little Peg?” I started walking. Peg was a new name. They followed me. They didn’t say a word. That was almost the worst of it. They just followed me, and I could do nothing but keep walking, over Bogstad Road, past Rosenborg Cinema, where the old movie was being removed from the advertising boards — Days of Wine and Roses — and the new movie hadn’t yet been displayed. It was right between the two screenings; the guy from the ticket booth was carrying a pile of dog-eared photos of Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick with him into his booth. It was the interval, and I walked on in my own darkness — Aslak, Preben and Hamster hard on my heels — and a raindrop ran inside my shirt and clung there like a stamp at the bottom of my back. Do I not remember that? Do I not remember how many paces there are from Uranienborg Church to Sten Park on an afternoon in October, when it’s raining and you’re being followed and your brother has started at another school on the wrong side of town? It’s 634 steps. I missed Fred. None of this would have happened if he hadn’t made such a mess of his letters and written his name wrong. And then he did come. Fred came out of the toilets down at the bottom of the hill. He had a cigarette in one hand and with the other he was pulling up the zipper of his pants. Wet and thin, he stood there in his suede jacket, which had turned dark in the rain. I heard the steps at my back come to a standstill. Fred put the cigarette in his mouth and inhaled deeply; the glowing end came close to his lips before he spat it out, and it burned on in the wet. He didn’t say a word. He just looked at me. No one said a thing. I was standing in the middle. Then he looked up, just a little, and stared over my shoulder, past me, for perhaps just a second. Not more than a second, but time somehow stretched in that moment, like a heavy drop beneath a leaking tap. Anything could happen now, and I just stood there, between Fred and the gang from the seventh grade. Then I heard them turning and leaving, for few could bear Fred’s gaze for any length of time — there was a dark calm in his eyes that was unendurable. And Aslak, Preben and Hamster slunk along the wall on the other side of the road — dogs that they were — and Aslak turned when they were a little ways away and clenched his fist and said something, but that was all. “Dogs!” I shouted after them. But its strange to think that when I reached the age of reading obituaries — since that was where I could find out about old acquaintances — I felt a great sadness the morning when I found Preben’s full name there. He was just 41, and I felt a real sinking inside me, a profound sadness, even though he’d been a pest and a bully. Aslak had written his obituary. He praised Preben’s sense of justice, his loyalty, and above all, his disarming capacity for humor. He’d made a name for himself in the travel industry with so-called adventure expeditions, and died needlessly after diving from a rock face at the end of the Oslo Fjord. Condolences were offered to his wife, Pernille, and to their daughter. Aslak himself was a legal consultant in the same company (which went bust in the wake of Preben’s death), while Hamster had gone off on an adventure expedition inside his own head and got lost on it. He never quite came back after that last shock. I saw him occasionally in town. He begged for money for food. I tended to cross the road to the other side. “Dogs!” I shouted one more time. “If you only knew!”

  Fred stood on the cigarette butt in the wet grass and came closer. “Everything all right, Barnum?” “Oh, yes. Did you know they were following me, Fred?” “I was just going for a piss. Lucky for you, Tiny.” I swallowed. There was such a tightness in my throat. “They emptied my bag,” I whispered. “Could have been worse,” Fred replied and was obviously beginning to get bored. I held his arm. “They said my face smelled like fanny.” “Your face smelled like fanny? Nothing to cry about either. All right?” I nodded. “You’re not crying, Barnum?” I shook my head. “Because if you are, I won’t bother standing here with you.” “I’m not crying, Fred.” “Good, Barnum.” He pulled back his arm. “What would you have done if they’d beaten me up?” I asked him. “I’m not telling you, Barnum. ‘Cause then you wouldn’t sleep at night.” I laughed loudly, and Fred turned and lit another cigarette. I thought he was pissed off at me because I’d laughed, and I wanted to make things all right again by saying something he might like. “Then they’d certainly smell like fanny in the face,” I said, “after what you’d do to them. If you did it, I mean.” Fred shrugged his shoulders. He wasn’t actually pissed off at all — he’d just turned around to get his cigarette lit because of the breeze. “Where did they empty your bag?” “By the church,” I replied. Fred looked at me again. “And wipe that grin off your face before I do it for you. You look damn stupid.” I drew the back of my hand quickly over my face. Fred blew smoke in my face and groaned. Now he was on the verge of snapping — I could see it in his eyes — the dark calm was beginning to run, like oil on water, and I had to say something I knew would please him. “Shall we read the letter tonight?” I asked carefully. Fred looked away “I’d read it aloud,” I said, my voice even quieter. Then he laid his hand on my shoulder, and it was such a surprise that I almost jumped for joy. But I don’t think he heard what I said; he just came back with me to Holte Street and helped me pick up the sorrowful remains of the contents of my bag. My geography notebook had fallen apart — page after page was floating away in the rain. — Turkey, Egypt, America and the polar regions. Parts of the world were drifting in different directions; I found the pages of my test on Greenland, which I’d gotten an A on. The handwriting had been all but washed away, but I could remember what I’d written. Icebergs can be as high as three hundred feet. But those parts of them underwater are nine times as big. The gulls had begun fighting over my half packet of sandwiches. My pencil case had been driven over by trams at least three times. My ruler was broken, and I might as well write my home economics exercise all over again. “I guess I’ll empty my bag one of these days,” Fred said, and began walking home while I ran. Fred was always a bit ahead of me, and I had to run on my flat feet to have any hope of keeping up with him at all. “How’s the new school?” I asked. “Damn good. All the idiots in one place.” “But you’re not one of them.” He stopped right ou
tside Rosenborg Cinema by the glass cases where new pictures of stars would soon be displayed. He stared at me but said nothing. I got scared again. “What movie do you thinks coming, Fred?” “One you wouldn’t get in to see,” Fred replied. The guy from the ticket booth was standing in the foyer looking out the doors. Maybe he wanted to see if it was still raining, because all at once he put up an umbrella and the pile of pictures he had under his arm tumbled to the floor. “Who am I one of?” Fred asked. “What did you say?” Fred bent close. “Who am I one of?” I didn’t know what to say. It was in his eyes again, that utter darkness. “I can help you with your letters,” I whispered. Fred shoved me against the glass cases so they jangled. Now he shouted. “I’m not one of anybody’s! Understand? Huh?” He ran one finger the length of my brow and down my cheek. “Your face does fucking stink of fanny.” Then he crossed the sidewalk at an angle, as if to trick the rain, and just then the theater attendant came out. “For God’s sake,” he said. “Are you trying to ruin my theater?” “No,” I whispered. I wanted to go but he wouldn’t let me. “Are you all right?” he inquired. “Yes, thank you.” He bent down. “Do you want a sandwich?” “No, thanks.” But he was kind enough to push me into the foyer, where the linoleum was so smooth and slippery that I all but fell down the steps. He took my arm and went on, with me in tow, until we came to a cramped room behind the theater itself, and there stood an enormous machine protruding from a hole in the wall, while on the floor were stacks of round boxes with English titles on them. Days of Wine and Roses. It was warm there and didn’t smell very nice. Then it became apparent that the man wasn’t just responsible for selling tickets, he was the projectionist as well. It was he who showed the film — without him the screen would just have hung in blackness like a broad and heavy curtain over a window in the dark of night. “This is where I live,” he said. He opened his packet of sandwiches. “What do you want? Cheese or salami?” I wasn’t hungry. Old ladies wanted more than anything to feel my curls, while old men wanted to feed me. It was all very tiresome. “Salami,” I replied. I got a sandwich. I had to eat it. We ate together. “Did he beat you up?” the projectionist inquired. I shook my head. We kept eating. All at once I saw the movie theater as a ship, a ship bound for America, crossing the ocean. And the projectionist stood down in the projection room, and it was he who made the propeller revolve and the stars light up. And as that thought struck me, something else came to me — I could scarcely believe it was my own thought — it was as if someone else had had it first and I’d just adopted it. I thought that silent movies were sailing ships on the same ocean, and that the wind was the unmanned projection room. “Are there many who bother you?” he asked. I wasn’t quite following. “What?” He asked me again. “Are there many who bother you because you’re so small?” I didn’t say anything. He meant it well. I realized that. That’s what I always say. Most people mean well and they’re the worst. I could have answered, Yes, you bother me particularly. I said nothing. I just looked down. He put his hand on my knee. “In the old days cinema projectionists couldn’t be more than five feet tall,” he said. “Otherwise they wouldn’t have had enough space in the projection room. That would have been a job for you!” “Yes,” I murmured. “Yes.” He followed me out again. I ran after Fred, but he’d been gone for ages. At Norabakk I tried to reach five feet, but if my feet were going to be used, it wasn’t much to boast about. So I wondered if one foot was measured with or without a shoe on, and then all those who had size 13 shoes would come to a completely different result. I stopped at Church Road. The trees were still and black. Esther was fastening all her weeklies with clips to a line in the little kiosk window, as if she were hanging them there to dry. She waved to me and held out something that looked like a piece sugar candy, something I’d maybe get if I first let her put her wrinkled hand in my curls. But my curls had been washed out, like the different parts of the world in my geography notebook, and I just stood there pretending I hadn’t seen her. She tilted her head to one side and looked sad; she used to do that after I stopped saying thank you very much, at the same time putting the whole piece of sugar candy into her mouth. And the sound of her teeth crunching the dark brown crystallized sugar make me quake. I put my hands over my ears. Where was Fred? A hearse drove slowly down the other side of the street, and only one car with a gray cross on its roof followed, equally slowly, and I was filled with a strange yet vivid sensation that I’d seen this before, that something was being reenacted. Not just as I remembered it, but a version of it — the hearse, the driver, the white coffin in back, and the small pale curtains over the car windows. It gripped me so powerfully that I had to lean against the black tree where I’d stopped, because at the same time I thought that perhaps I hadn’t seen it before but that it reminded me instead of something I’d see again soon. Inside the car was a man laughing. He leaned against the steering wheel and laughed. Perhaps I was mistaken. Perhaps he was crying. Perhaps laughter resembled crying when one couldn’t hear it. Then they had passed by. I clasped my hand to my face and sniffed my fingers. Fanny in my face?

  Mom had made stew, but I wasn’t particularly hungry and nor was she. Boletta had been away since she disappeared the evening before, complete with black gloves and veil. Then everyone knew where Boletta was off to. She had gone to the North Pole to cool her heart in beer. She just had to, whenever it came over her like that. It was Mom who used to put it that way. Now its come over her again. Fred hadn’t returned either, and Dad was away on his travels. He seldom said anything himself. We just knew that he sold things and sometimes put in an appearance with what profit he’d made. Those occasions tended to be short in duration. I picked at my food. Mom picked at hers. We sat there in the kitchen, each with our plate, silent, picking at our dinner. It had already gotten dark outside. The Virginia creeper rustled against the window. The clock in the hall ticked. Silence was Mom’s gift. She could have won the women’s world championship in silence if such a discipline had existed, while Fred would have won the men’s. I suppose it was those silences, which could often last for several weeks at a stretch, that made Dad even more restless. He’d made Mom laugh, but that was all. Suddenly she took a handful of stew and flung it against the wall. It sounded similar to the noise of a truck driving over a hedgehog. Afterward she sat staring into thin air — neither at me, nor at the bits of meat trickling toward the floor and making a pattern that reminded me of a photograph I’d seen of a Russian officer shot to pieces at a street corner in Budapest, except that this was in color. I had actually been thinking of asking Mom something, something I’d been turning over in my mind for ages, but I decided to let it be. Mom had had enough, and I just let her sit there staring, her expression blacker than a gentleman’s umbrella. I went to the bathroom and washed my face. I used soap and scouring powder and then rinsed my face with iodine, and when I looked at myself in the mirror I resembled an orange someone had tried to peel wearing gloves. I slunk into the bedroom and crept under the quilt. Fanny in my face. The ticking clock. The wet pavement down Church Road. Mom trotting back and forth through the apartment, stopping by the phone, going on into the living room, returning to the phone, lifting the receiver and slamming it back down again. I listened. I was the little listener with fanny in his face. No one phoned. Who was she waiting for most of all — Fred, Dad or Boletta? Or was it someone else entirely? Did she still hope Rakel would come back? I didn’t know. I listened to Mom’s steps growing heavier and heavier. To her silence, which would soon be intolerable even to herself. She opened the door sharply and looked in. “Have you gone to bed already?” Now I could ask my question, but having got the chance at last I asked about something entirely different instead. “What sort of car was it Fred was born in, Mom?” She sighed and leaned against the door frame. “A taxi, Barnum.” “Yes, but what sort of taxi?” There was the hint of a smile on her lips. “Oh, I don’t remember that. I had other things to think about.” She fell silent once more, as if she’d secretly kissed the Sing
er sewing machine. Her shoulder reached to where the last measurement had been recorded. It had been there a long time. Fred’s mark was many notches higher. “Why don’t I get any taller?” I asked. Mom removed the stitches from her lips. “You don’t think you’ve stopped growing yet, do you, Barnum?” I looked down. “Yes, I think so.”