The Half Brother

by Lars Saabye Christensen

  The ring was wrapped in cotton wool and silver paper; I put the five kroner piece on the counter and was given three kroner sixty 0re in change. If all went according to plan, I would ask Tale out with that money; we could go to the student cafe and order raspberry milkshakes, or else to Esther’s and buy sugar candy and licorice that we could take with us up to Sten Park, where we could eat in peace and quiet. No, we could go directly to Gaustad Brook and sit there by the edge on a blanket, because no one would find us there. I didn’t say many thanks this time. I just thought it — Many thanks, I thought — and carefully bore my present home. Mom and Boletta had already had dinner, and Mom asked where I’d been. “Nowhere,” I told her. “And I’m not hungry.” I went into my room and put the present at the very bottom of my pencil case — under the eraser, the pencil sharpener and the ruler. Suddenly Fred was behind me. “What are you doing?” he asked. I hunched over the pencil case. “Nothing,” I whispered. “Nothing?” Fred laughed. I wished he wouldn’t. “It’s the truth,” I told him. Fred put his hands on my shoulders. “There’s no such thing as nothing. You’re fibbing.” “Please,” I begged him. “I’m not.” But Fred wasn’t about to be lenient. He stretched out, ripped the pencil case from me and unzipped it — as if he’d known the ring was there all along. He held out the shiny little parcel in his fingers. “What’s this then, Barnum? Nothing?” I looked down. “A ring,” I whispered. Fred smiled. He sat down on the bed and unwrapped it. I was close to tears. But I didn’t cry. If only he’d known what I’d been dreaming, that it was he who gave the eulogy by an empty grave in the wake of my disappearance. “T,” Fred said. “Who’s that?” “A girl in the other class.” “And you’re going to give the ring to her?” I nodded. Fred was quiet a while. I didn’t say a word myself. I just wondered what he’d do now, whether he’d throw the ring down the toilet, or perhaps even break off the letter. But he did none of those things. Instead he wrapped up the ring once more, so it was just as it had been, and gave it back to me. “Good, Barnum,” he said. I still didn’t dare say a thing. I pushed the little parcel carefully down into my pencil case. Fred went to the window and stood there, facing away. It was already dark outside. The bus made a slow slushing noise as it passed and the streetlights shuddered in the wind. “Do you like her a lot?” Fred asked, his voice low. I froze. “Yes,” I whispered. “What is it you like best about her?” “She’s got a mole on her face,” I replied. Fred turned back toward me. “Can I give you a bit of advice, Barnum?” “Yes,” I said. He came closer. “Don’t tell her it’s the mole you like best.” He put his hand through my curls — I think it was the first time he’d ever done so. Then he went, without so much as saying another word.

  That night I dreamed something new, even though I was sleeping. I’d traveled far. I’d gone deep into the cold and the dark to find Wilhelm, my great-grandfather, and I’d traveled alone. I went on for several days, or maybe it was months — time there couldn’t be measured in hours and minutes — without finding a thing. Then it was that I stumbled over a box; it was lying beside a stone, and I had to chip it free. I remember that box perfectly. It was black and had two shiny, rusted locks on each side of the dented lid. I got it opened, and inside there lay a dusty bottle of Malaga, three cans of sardines and ten pounds of shoe polish. I sat down by the stone — had a gulp of the sherry, ate the sardines, drank the king’s health, and polished my shoes. Then I fell asleep, and when I woke up again I was surrounded by polar bears. I shot two of them with a rifle I suddenly found I had in my hands, and thereafter the others made themselves scarce. I continued on my way but saw no other sign of life. My shoes were heavy and kept getting stuck in the snow. Soon enough I died. It was strange. I died and yet the dream carried on nonetheless. I sank down into the ice and lay there, in the jaws of the cold, in a coffin of soundless ice. After the same number of years had elapsed since Wilhelm himself vanished in Greenland’s ice and snow (or perhaps it was just a week, since time couldn’t be relied upon in the same way), someone found me. They cut out the block of ice in which I was encased and took me back to Norway. Once there I was exhibited in the music pavilion on Karl Johan — Barnum in a chunk of ice — well-preserved in my cold, transparent coffin. But then the sun comes out and the ice begins to melt — to drip and run — the onlookers cheer and as soon as I wake up I decay, and am left clutching the pencil case with the ring.

  Each recess it rained, and Tale stood on her own by the sheds. I waited by the drinking fountain. She didn’t see me. The mole resembled a dark drop of rain that had come to a standstill on her cheek. The last period was gym. I sat in the locker room listening to the others running around in circles in the gym hall. Then there was quiet, and the Goat appeared in the doorway. I had to think of my dream, because it was just as if the Goat had melted too and was in the process of rotting. His massive muscles ran down his body like shining waves of fat. When he showered with us he needed the water from three different units, and even then his feet didn’t get wet. “Aren’t you changing?” he demanded. “I’m not all that well,” I murmured. “So what’s wrong with you today?” “I’ve got a cold,” I replied, my voice even fainter. “I forgot to close the window last night and my bed got soaked with rain.” The Goat gave a deep sigh. “All right. But don’t leave till the bell rings.” He went back to the other boys and blew his whistle. I heard apparatus being pushed over the floor and some of them swinging from wall bar to wall bar. I sat on the bench between the raincoats. Locker rooms are lonely places. They’re all alike. They have the same smell. The same story. Locker rooms are places where pain and sorrow remain like lost property that no one comes back to collect. You take conquests out with you into the playground and the streets. The defeats you leave behind. One of the showers was dripping. If I counted up to five hundred drops, the bell would ring. I counted to four hundred and thirty. Then I couldn’t wait any longer. I’d had an idea and I didn’t have much time. I ran all the way down to Plesner’s at Grensen, where Mom tended to buy me extra insoles and cork heels. It was the only shop in town that had skeletons in the windows. I went in, and the woman behind the counter, who was more like a nurse in her white coat and clogs, recognized me right away. But this time I didn’t want anything to raise my diminutive stature. I asked her for a sling. “A sling?” she repeated. “Yes,” I told her. “My brother’s sprained his arm.” “Really. And how did he manage that?” “He was doing cartwheels in the living room and it was too small.” She looked at me for some time. Then she disappeared into the back and came out with a clothes hanger with a selection of slings. There should really have been a sling with letters too — a huge B, B for Broken and B for Barnum. But that was probably asking too much. I was in such a good mood. Now I’d elevate my dream from the dark; imagining would become fact, and I’d become real. I chose a green sling. Then the injury would appear all the more serious. But I changed my mind, because the green sling was almost the same color as the sweater I was wearing underneath. So I took the white one instead — white was the color of illness, white was suffering like snow and ice, white was a color everyone could see. I paid three kroner and ten 0re, which left me with fifty 0re. That wasn’t much to write home about — it was barely enough for two ice drink packets. But we could sit in her room instead, and I could put my arm around her, the one that wasn’t injured. The lady in Plesner’s wanted to wrap the sling, but I just picked it up and hurried out. I went into the nearest doorway and tried to knot the sling correctly. But first I had to be sure which arm it was that was broken. I hadn’t thought of that. I had to laugh at myself. I’d planned everything in minute detail but forgotten the question of the arm. I chose the right one. That looked worse. After a struggle I managed to make a knot; I hung the sling around my neck and straightened my left arm. Now my arm had been broken, and in the most dramatic of ways. I groaned. I went down to Karl Johan. I walked slowly and often had to rest, the pain was so bad. People were going back and forth, hunched from the rain under black umbr
ellas. They didn’t see me. That annoyed me. They could surely have noticed me and felt sorry for me, and perhaps asked if I wanted help crossing the road or carried my schoolbag for a while. I would have said no, but it would have been nice to be asked all the same. The benches at the Studenterlund were being hoisted onto a truck and driven away. It was nothing less than autumn. The trees shook loose their leaves. I went a roundabout way since I had to practice wearing the sling. I stopped in the City Chambers Square. A train came from the Western Station pulling freight cars in its wake — twenty-three of them at least — and after the last one had passed I could look right over to Akers Mek. At that very moment an enormous ship slid from the dock; a tall, black hull floated soundlessly through the rain and down into the dark water. And it was so beautiful because that was how my dreams were now too; I would send them to sea, I would sail.

  I went straight to Nobel Street. The curtains on the third floor were drawn. It was twenty past three. She had to be home from school. I took the ring from my bag, put it in my pocket, hid my bag under the stairs, went up two floors and rang the bell. For a while nothing happened. Then her mother opened the door. She looked down at me. “Hello,” she said. “Is Tale at home?” I asked. “Yes, she is,” her mother replied and just stood there. I didn’t know what else to say. Instead I leaned against the door frame, closed my eyes and gave a little whimper. “What’s your name?” Tales mother asked. “Barnum,” I whispered. “Barnum?” “Yes, would you say to Tale that Barnum’s asking for her?” She leaned a little closer. “What have you done to your arm, Barnum?” I opened my eyes. “Broken it,” I groaned. She let me into the hall and asked me to wait there. She had a worried expression. The furrows gathered her face into one knot in the middle. She disappeared into the apartment. I waited. It smelled of soap and boric acid, like the waiting room of the school doctor. I noticed a piano in the living room, its lid down. There were no flowers there. A pair of glasses lay on a chest of drawers, staring at the wall. I thought Tale’s mother would come back to get me. But instead Tale herself appeared in the hall. She stared at me in amazement. The mole was shining beneath her eye. I had to find a chair against which to support myself. I whimpered. I was on the verge of falling. “Barnum,” she said, nothing more. I hadn’t heard her speak before. Her voice was dry and low. I straightened up. Her mother was standing at the far end of the living room. Then she disappeared. “Yes,” I whispered. And I realized that perhaps Tale wouldn’t know who I was because she’d never seen me — it was just me who’d seen her. And if she did know who I was, then it was because she’d heard the rumor of that hopeless retard of a gnat in the other class. Rumor of the school’s smallest pupil, the smallest boy in the city — the one who only reached up as far as the girls’ fannies, and who was greeted by laughter everywhere he went. I began losing my nerve. “I’m in the other class,” I told her. “I know that. But what are you doing here?” She appeared more impatient now than surprised. There was a ring of mud around my shoes. My arm hurt. “I broke my arm,” I said. It didn’t make much of an impression on her. She didn’t put her hand gently on the sling and ask where it hurt. She didn’t kiss my cheek to comfort me and ease the pain. “How did you know where I lived?” she asked instead. “Did you follow me home?” “Yes,” I admitted. There was quiet a moment. And very slowly a smile appeared on her lips, the tiniest smile — it was as if her lips were too small for a full smile. But it was enough for me, that little smile was more than enough. “How did you break your arm?” she asked. I had to close my eyes again. “In gym,” I told her, and regretted the answer as soon as I’d given it. This lie could fray at the edges and unravel completely, but it was too late to change my mind now. “I jumped over the horse and landed wrong,” I went on. “The bones came right out of my elbow.” Someone on the landing was fiddling with the lock, and Tale turned toward the door, which was then opened, and her father came in. “I can’t see,” he said. “I’ve forgotten my specs. Where are they?” At once Tale’s mother was there to give him his glasses, which had been lying on the chest of drawers, staring at the wall. He gave a sigh of relief, drew Tale close and kissed her brow. “How are you, my sweet?” he murmured, and she slipped from his hold. “This is Barnum,” Tale’s mother said quickly, and he turned in my direction and blinked. “Barnum? Well, hello, Barnum. Have you hurt your arm?” But I didn’t have time to reply. “He broke it jumping over the gym horse,” Tale said. “Oh, dear, let me have a feel.” “No!” I exclaimed. Tale’s father laughed. “Calm down, son. I’m a doctor.” He started rolling up the sling. “But why isn’t it in a cast?” he asked. I turned toward Tale. “I like your mole,” I said loudly. Tale’s father dropped my arm. Tale tried to keep smiling, but her lips couldn’t manage and her mouth puckered like mud. Suddenly I thought she looked ugly, she and her mole. “I think you should go now,” her mother said. I only remember standing in the street once more. I had my bag on my back and the ring in my pocket. It had all been in vain. I didn’t even dare look up at the window on the third floor. I was finished. Barnum’s story was over. I might as well go and lie down. It was still raining. I went through Frogner Park. I tore off the sling and gave it to a drunk sitting shivering under a bush. People could feel sorry for him instead. When I got home, I just went to my room and lay down. Shortly afterward Mom appeared at the door. “I’m ill,” I whispered. “Leave me.” “I11? What is it, Barnum?” “I’m just ill. It’s infectious. I can’t go to school tomorrow.” Mom sighed. “Nor do you need to. It’s the first day of vacation.” She sighed again as she closed the door, and I realized that Boletta was at the North Pole again drinking beer.