The Half Brother

by Lars Saabye Christensen

  And now Fred’s standing at the far end of the training hall at the Central Boxing Club. Everyone’s attention is focused on him, and Fred’s attention is focused on himself. “Left foot forward!” Willy shouts. “Or are you some goddamn southpaw from the West End!” Fred retracts his right foot, punches at the mirror — his muscles frail, his face crooked. “Up on your toes!” Willy shouts. “Or are you some goddamn flat-footed bastard from the West End!” Fred stretches up on his toes, gets his balance, and then Willy comes from behind and pokes him in the back with one finger, and Fred falls toward the mirror. “A boxer whose feet are worn out is finished, Fred. Because a boxer who has tired feet has a tired heart.” Tommy hands a bottle to Tenner, and Tenner gives it to Willy, who hands it on to Fred. He drinks. It tastes sweet and heavy. He gives the bottle back to Willy, who tosses it over to Tommy “I’ve been running on stairs,” Fred says. Willy looks at him. “Hit me, Fred.” “What?” “Hit me, Fred.” Fred thinks a moment. He punches. But Willy’s somewhere else. “Hit me, Fred!” Fred punches. Willy’s suddenly on the other side. This fat old man is dancing circles around Fred. “Don’t run on stairs,” Willy tells him. Fred sits down on the bench along the wall. The hall’s still. Willy takes a seat beside him. “Feet, hands, head,” Willy says. “Head, hands, feet. Say them to me, Fred.” Fred just looks at him. “Feet, hands, head,” Willy says again. “Head, hands, feet. Can you say that much?” Fred looks down. “Feet, hands, head,” he whispers. “Head, hands, feet.” Willy leans against him. “You’ve got a lot to learn, Fred. Do you want to learn?” Fred nods. Willy turns to the other boys. They’re already standing in line. Kalle, Jørgen, Salva, Junior, Talent, Arve — all the boys who dream of punching up, punching out, punching through the sound barrier, the pain threshold, to carry a belt with a golden buckle and wings. Tommy’s jumping up and down; Tenner, the twins — they’re standing in line from here to Bj0lsen. “Talent,” Willy says. “Get ready.” Talent, a thick, silent guy from Torshov, nods and goes quietly to the locker room. Willy gets a pair of gloves and puts them on Fred. “Have you heard of the noble art of self-defense?” he asks. “English,” Fred says. “English crap,” Willy says. “It’s the kind of crap writers with mustaches put in their books. Boxing isn’t about self-defense. Boxing’s about attack. Punching when you mean it. Dancing when you have to.” Talent comes out of the locker room and climbs into the ring. “Look me in the eyes,” Willy says. Fred looks him in the eyes. They sit like that a good while. “How does it feel?” Willy asks him. Fred raises his gloves. “Good,” he says. “Good,” Willy tells him. “I want to see you.” “You are seeing me,” Fred says. “I want to see you in the ring,” Willy tells him. Someone pushes a clammy protective helmet onto his head. Now Fred clambers over the ropes. Talent’s waiting for him in the middle. He stands there with his gloves at his side — serious, silent. Don’t be afraid. I’m thinking of you now. I’m with you. I’m sitting in your comer. And Fred goes right over to Talent and starts punching. He punches wildly, but the blows hit nothing more than thin air. Talent dances, Talent is everywhere and nowhere, and Fred hits out at him but feels instead heavy shocks against his body — his chest and shoulders — as if his own blows are returned with double ferocity And Fred punches even harder and faster, but he misses, and that makes him lose his head, makes him mad. He punches and hits nothing; Talent is a shadow around him — yes, Talent shadows him, that’s how it is. And Fred gets hit in the chest again; his breath explodes from him, and there’s a groan. That groan, the stillness in the hall, and the impossible, quick steps in the ring make Fred lose his head completely. He hits out in all directions; he jumps on Talent, breaks through a storm of blows — he fights like a raging child. For this is worse than a beating, this is humiliation. He’s reduced to mockery, and he can suffer anything except that; Fred shoves Talent against the ropes, and he feels someone freeing his arms from behind. It’s Willy and Willy pulls him away, out of the ring and into the locker room. He sits him down on a bench, loosens his gloves and takes off the protective helmet. “Go and take a shower,” Willy tells him. “Cold.”

  And Peder points above us. “Mackerel sky,” he says. The clouds slide slowly by, like paper streamers, colored red by a light that comes from below, from the sun that is sinking now, down toward the crest of the hills on the other side of the fjord, where a sailing boat is becalmed in the windless dusk. Peder laughs. “It can’t be true that mackerel eat dead Germans. Because German soldiers don’t go to heaven.” We lie in the grass between the terrace and the beach. And the clouds break up and disappear, or perhaps it’s just the colors that change, because soon everything is blue — the whole landscape’s like a staircase of high, blue steps. “Are you there?” Peder asks. “Sure,” I tell him. I’m lying right beside him. We move even closer together. We’re bare-legged, our toes sprouting upward with pale skin between them — it’s never struck me before just how different toes could be. Peder counts to twenty, twenty toes. I can hear the grating sound of his mother’s wheelchair over by the flagpole — perhaps she’s searching for her soul. I’ll give her the film. But when she paints us, what happens to our souls then? Do we get to keep them because a painting takes such a long time to complete? “What are you best at, Barnum?” “What?” “What are you best at?” he asks again. I have to think. “Best at?” “Yes. Best at. There must be something you’re better at than anything else.” “I don’t know.” “Don’t know? Of course you must!” I have to think about the question again. “Dreaming,” I whisper. Peder brushes away a wasp. “Dreaming? Everyone dreams.” “I just dream during the day,” I tell him. “I’m pretty good at it.” “But what do you dream, Barnum? That you’ll get taller?” It’s just as if I could stretch up my arm and touch the skies, move to one side a chink of blue. Even the grass we’re lying in is blue. “I dream that things happen to me.” “Happen? What sort of things?” “Accidents. Catastrophes. Things like that.” I close my eyes. Peder waits for me to go on. “I dream that I get knocked down by a car and only just survive, but I’m left blind and dumb for the rest of my life. I dream that I’m lost from a plane that comes down over Africa and have to live with a tribe of natives, and that no one finds me for thirteen years.” I open my eyes. Peder’s silent. It feels strange to have said it. I’ve never said a word about this to anyone before. I almost feel tired. “Well,” Peder says, no more than that, and waits for me to go on. “I’ve dreamed too that I go to the graveyard and put flowers on a grave, and when someone asks me who it is that’s lying there I say that it’s my mother and that she died of cancer.” Peder pulls on his T-shirt. I don’t find it cold. “Why do you do it?” he asks me. “Dream like that?” “So that people’ll feel sorry for me.” “You’re as much of a nutcase as that crazy brother of yours,” Peder says. I roll around, sit on top of him and start hitting him. I hit him as hard as I can. I hit him everywhere. Peder screams. His arms are locked in his T-shirt. He tries to twist away, but I grip his body tight between my legs and keep hitting; I pound my fists into his chest and his face. Peder howls and rips his T-shirt to shreds; I just keep on hitting and hitting, and he punches me too, but I don’t feel a thing. “Don’t say that!” I shriek. “Don’t say that!” There’s blood pouring from Peder’s nose, and then someone lifts me up and throws me to one side — it’s Peder’s dad, and he stands there between the two of us. “What the hell are you doing?” he shouts. Peder gets up, shaking. “Don’t swear on my island,” he says. His father grabs him and pulls him to him. “Don’t try to be smart with me, young man! Are you trying to kill each other?” Peder wipes away blood with his ruined T-shirt. “No, Barnum’s trying to kill me first.” His dad turns to face me. “Perhaps you can give me an explanation, Barnum!” I look down. I can’t breathe. I can’t say a word. Peder stands beside me. “We just argued,” he said. “I told Barnum that he was small and Barnum said that I was fat.” Peder’s dad just looks at us for a long time. Then he betrays the vaguest curl of a smile. “That’s not ho
w friends talk to each other, boys. We can leave that sort of talk to our enemies.” We each look away. Peder’s dad gives him a handkerchief. “Well, then. Shall we shake hands?” The two of us hesitate. Then I stretch out my hand. Peder stretches out his. We clasp each other’s hands. It’s a strange moment. “So that’s that,” his dad says, and pats both of us on the back.

  And now Fred comes out of the showers. He goes over to his locker. He’s freezing. Quickly he gets dressed. There’s no one else but Willy there. They can hear the punches from the training hall — the breath, the steps, the thundering — like freight cars rolling past. “You’re too angry, boy,” Willy tells him. Fred doesn’t look at him. “A boxer shouldn’t be angry, Fred. Angry people do stupid things. A boxer should be cool and sensible and crafty.” Fred slams the locker door shut. But the door just opens again. “Why are you so angry with yourself?” Willy asks. Now Fred turns to face him, and Willy takes a step backward. Fred’s forgotten to turn off the shower. It’s dripping. Willy goes and turns it off, and Fred hasn’t moved a muscle by the time he comes back. Willy rummages in the pocket of his tracksuit and finds something, a small key, and gives it to Fred. “Aren’t you going to lock it?” Fred smiles for a second and shuts his locker, number 9. Willy lays a hand on his back. “And now go home and go to bed. And rest your anger, Fred.”

  I went to bed first that evening. I lay there waiting for Peder. I thought to myself that it was the first time I’d ever hit anyone, and that the first time I did it had been my best and only friend I’d hit, Peder Miil. I sank under the quilt. Now everyone was angry with me. Perhaps they’d chase me away over the rope bridge the following day That’s all I deserved. I deserved no better. I was so ashamed. Peder had even lied for me. Never had I felt it stronger, that feeling of shame, which is heavy and dry and tight. Because I’d let them down; I’d let all of them down — Mom and Boletta too. I’d let the whole world down, and that was the last thing I wanted, to disappoint anyone at all. I was filled to the brim with shame. Peder most likely hated me, even though he’d shaken hands with me afterward. At last he came in. He sat on the bed with his back to me. He was all hunched over. I pretended to be asleep. “Sorry,” he said. I lay completely still. “It’s me who should say sorry,” I whispered. “No, it’s me,” Peder said. “I was the one who hit you,” I said. “But it was me who started it, Barnum. I should never have said what I did about your brother.” “And I should never have hit you. Never. Does it hurt?” “No. Just a bit. And you?” “Not so bad,” I said. I felt at peace again, more than ever. Peder remained sitting where he was. I ran my hand over the curve of his back. He was wearing pyjamas. “Sh,” he whispered. I didn’t move. We could hear his mother and father going to bed; the whining of the wheels of her chair ceased, and he lifted her over into bed — there was laughter, whispering, then silence. The moon went behind a cloud. “Guess what I have?” Peder said. “I dunno, what?” He straightened up, swung around and held a red bottle in front of me. “A bottle,” I said. “Campari,” he whispered. “And how do you like your brandy, sir?” “In a glass,” I answered. Peder got out our tooth glasses and filled them to the brim. He sat beside me. “Cheers,” he said. “Cheers,” I said. It was like shaking hands all over again. It was more than that. We drank together. Peder’s face crumpled into one pinched, hard knot, as if his head had been put into cold water and rubbed with green soap and orange peel. “Soh lah fuck me doh!” he gasped. I laughed and wanted some more. I just drank. This was something for me. Peder got better after glass number two. I was fine after the third. Now I realized why Boletta went to the North Pole to drink beer. It was something about forgetting, taking a step to one side where no one could hurt you. The shame had gone. The disappointment had gone. Everything had gone that I wanted gone. I didn’t just have a light heart, my body became weightless too. I forgot my own body and blood, and when I closed my eyes I could just as well have been five feet ten, or six-three for that matter. I knew it already. The effect meant escape. The effect was an escape you could fill with whatever you chose. Perhaps this was what really happened that summer, that I drank Campari from a tooth glass with Peder, in that double bed in the middle of the night. The fjord stroked the edges of the rocks. In several million years those rocks would be worn down to dust and would blow away in the wind, if something else didn’t happen in the meantime. The birds were still. I wished so much that the rest of our lives could be like this moment, right now. Just that, other than the two of us in that great escape, and the stillness of the birds. “Guess what I’m best at?” Peder said. I drank. I thought. But my mind was elsewhere, and I was thinking my own thoughts. “Dancing,” I said. Peder’s Campari went down the wrong way and I had to massage his back for about a quarter of an hour. “One more try,” he whispered. “Counting,” I suggested. Peder sat up and nodded. “Dead right. Counting. How in the world did you know that, Barnum?” “Twenty guesses,” I told him. Peder smiled and closed his eyes. “I can count everything. I can count until there are no numbers left. Once I counted all the noses in Bygdøy Alley.” “All the noses? Did you really?” “Yes, I did, damn it. I’ll never do it again either.” He looked at me once more. I laughed, and he started counting my teeth as if I were a horse, and got to thirty-one. “You have a tooth missing,” he told me. “Cheers.” “It’s probably in the glass,” I said. “Cheers, Peder.” We drank. I thought I heard a wasp in the room, but a short time later I couldn’t hear it any longer; it had most likely found its way through the slightly open window, or perhaps it was just a fuse in my head that was about to blow. “But why do you count everything?” I asked him. Peder slid down in the bed. I did too. He whispered, ecstatic. “It gives me such a sense of calm. When I count, everything falls into place. Numbers are the best thing I know, Barnum. Numbers that go up.” “You’re as nuts as me,” I said. Peder upset his glass and sat over me and held my arms tight. “Math and dreams. That’s us, Barnum!” I could barely breathe. “Yes,” I whispered. “Think of all we can achieve!” He leaned even closer, still holding me just as tightly. “What? What, Peder?” “Think about it!” he exclaimed. “I can’t breathe!” I told him, my voice as loud as his. But he wouldn’t let me out of his grasp. “You dream,” he said. “And I can work out how much it’ll cost! There’s just one thing.” “One thing what?” “Are you drunk, Barnum?” Peder smelled my mouth. “That’s possible,” I whispered. Peder began gagging. The whole bed was swaying. The mattress was creaking. “You have to change the sign for your dreams, Barnum.” “Change the sign?” “Minus, Barnum. You dream in minus. You have to dream in plus. Otherwise it won’t work!” Peder sank down beside me, and we lay like that for a good while. A thin light came through the curtains; it oozed into the eyes and spread through the head like a burning fan. “Math and dreams,” Peder said slowly, and that was the last he said that night. “That’s us, Barnum.”

  Now Fred’s asleep. He sleeps for ten hours. Before breakfast he goes out to train. He doesn’t run. He walks quickly, swings his arms hard and high, forward and backward. People look at him and smile. Fred doesn’t care. Fred doesn’t give a damn. He does exactly as Willy says. For the first time ever he does as someone tells him. It’s raining. That suits him fine. He turns at Wester Gravlund, uses a tree to stretch against, then goes home as quickly as he got there. He’s warm, not sweating. He showers, eats some porridge and drinks boiled water. Mom and Boletta are silent. Nor does Fred throw away any energy on conversation. He conserves his strength. He stores it. He saves it for the long rounds. He takes the tram down to the Central Boxing Club. Willys waiting there already. Fred changes. They’re alone there. Willy gives him a jump rope. “Jump,” Willy tells him. And Fred does. “Up on your toes!” Willy shouts. Fred skips. Oh, wouldn’t I have given anything to see that, Fred with a jump rope in front of the mirror at the Central Boxing Club, going faster and faster until he collapses on the floor, his legs swollen and sore, and Willy standing over him smiling. “Feet, hands, head,” he says
again. “Head, hands, feet,” Fred says, and gets up again. Willy ties a pair of gloves onto his hands. “Bag,” is all he says. Fred goes over to the bag of sand hanging from a rope in the ceiling and starts punching. Willy stands behind him, guiding his arms, raising his elbows, turning his fists. Willy lets him go. Fred punches. The thundering in that empty hall. There’s a smell that remains there, of camphor, it might be camphor — a chill gust of it, and of heavy sweat and old cloth. “What are you punching?” Willy shouts. “I’m punching a fucking bag!” Fred tells him. He bends his neck, lifts his shoulders, keeps punching. “It’s no fucking bag!” Willy shouts. “You’re hitting a body now! You’re slaughtering it!” And Fred punches; heavy body blows that have their origins deep inside, right in your heels — no, in your very thoughts and your dreams. It’s a movement that quivers through your whole life — a muscle of time. “Who are you punching?” Willy demands. Fred laughs, he laughs and he punches. “I’m punching a fucking bag!” he shouts. Willy holds him. Fred lets his own arms fall. “Imagination, Fred, have you got that?” Fred sinks down on the bench, worn out by his own punches. “It’s not what you see that matters most but rather what you think you see,” he says. “Bullshit,” Willy exclaims. “Who told you that?” “Everyone who said it’s dead,” Fred replies. Willy dries the sweat from him and gives him something to drink — sweetened water. “Shadow boxing,” Willy says. And Fred boxes alone in the ring; he dances, he punches, he’s aware that it’s more tiring to hit nothing than to hit something — a punch in the air hits the one who’s punching. “Who’re you boxing?” Willy shouts. “My shadow,” Fred says. “Wrong, Fred. You have to imagine you’re boxing someone.” “Tommy,” Fred says, and punches. “Forget Tommy,” Willy tells him. “Tenner,” Fred says instead, and punches. “Forget Tenner.” “Talent,” Fred says, and gives a quick flurry of punches. “Forget Talent, too.” Fred stops and turns to the corner where Willy’s standing. “Who am I boxing then?” he asks. “No one,” Willy replies. “No one?” “Your opponent, Fred. He’s nobody. He’s no name. He’s no address. He’s no family. The only thing you know about him is that you’ll hit him as hard as you can and beat him. And that’s all you need to know. You understand?” Fred nods. Fred smiles. “Yes,” he says. “I got that right from the start.” And Fred punches, he punches his shadow, and his only desire is to hit his shadow and see it sink forever at his feet.