The Half Brother

by Lars Saabye Christensen

  Soon everyone’s gone. The detritus is left behind — the cigarette butts, the leftovers, the glasses, and particularly the crumpled, mucky napkins, which I suddenly see as damaged birds. I lift out one of them and smooth the wings that are soiled with lipstick and ash. No surprise they can’t fly. We sit around the table and polish off the last bottle between us. Vivian, Peder and myself. “We’re on the road,” Peder says. “We’re on the road,” I repeat. Vivian’s tired and happy. She raises her glass. “Here’s to Miil and Barnum,” she says. “Barnum and Miil,” I correct her. Peder laughs. “Here’s to Vivian!” We toast each other. The evening’s no longer young. It’s night now and the sign above the door, still lit, is coloring the snow red. A Christmas tree with a star is lying in the middle of the street. Perhaps someone’s thrown it out of a window or from a balcony. We’re pensive and silent as we finish off that last bottle. “A comedy,” Vivian says out of the blue. We both look at her. Vivian’s stopped smoking and lights up a cigarette. “About mothers. Inspired by ‘Paul’s Hens.’” Peder and I don’t quite follow. We sing “Paul’s Hens” and understand what she’s going on about when we get to the last line in the chorus. Now I don’t dare come home, mother dear. I kiss Vivian on the cheek. That night I’m in love. Peder thumps the table. “Lauren Bacall!” he exclaims. I turn toward him. “What about her?” “If we can get Lauren Bacall involved in one of our projects it’s in the bag, right?” “Lauren Bacall? Are you exceptionally smashed, Peder?” “Hell, are we supposed to make do with the old crew in Dr0bak, huh? Nothing’s impossible!” That’s how we talk and lift one another. Things are almost as they were before. But there’s something different about our voices. We’re talking too loudly We’re talking too quickly. “The garage burned down,” Peder says quickly. “It burned down?” I take his hand. He nods over and over again. “The whole fucking thing burned down. That’s only fair, right?” Vivian and I go home. Peder wants to stay behind and clean up. I can’t get that chorus out of my head. Now I don’t dare come home, mother dear. The cold makes me wide awake. I can’t get to sleep. Vivians back is naked. Carefully I put my hand on her hip. She pushes it away in her sleep. I get up. I sit down at the table. The Night Man is lying in a drawer. The drawers are full. I set a new piece of paper in the typewriter and hammer out Finally winter casts off her white cape and reveals her pale green dress.

  I look out. Vivian’s sitting under the parasol on the balcony On the little round table there’s a red drink. She leans her head back and smiles, but not to me. In 1911 Will Barker made Hamlet in the course of just one day and the film lasted fifteen minutes. That’s a record. Vivian’s gone to the salon. The phone rings. It’s Peder. Peder screams into the receiver as if he’s standing in a telephone booth away back in childhood and has a whole lot to say and only one coin. “Something we have to talk about, Barnum!” “No time,” I tell him. “Lunch at Valka’s then.”

  I put on my sunglasses and went out, and before I reached Marienlyst the summer was almost over. There was a crackling in the trees; that particular dry sound of leaves burning and falling — the great wheel. But it was the cranes I heard; they stood like mechanical predators in the street beyond our yard, and the entire roof was covered in green tarpaulin that billowed in the wind — it looked like some enormous balloon, and beneath it the yard hung by a thin thread. They had started building the attic apartments already. And I thought to myself, Now they’re pulling down Mom’s story. I went down to Valka’s. Peder was sitting by the window. I ordered a hair of the dog. Peder was drinking cola; he’d already eaten some cake. I looked around at the slow diners. “Is this how I’m going to end up too?” I hissed. A silent waiter came to the table with my order. First I had my drink. “Well, you’re certainly well on the way,” Peder said. “Was that what you wanted to talk about?” Peder shook his head. This was the corner for sullen men. Time stood still here, and on the rare occasions when it did pass (when someone needed a pee) it went backward. Right in at the corner the director got up. He wasn’t the director any more. The helicopters had taken over. It was just a case of looking out of the gray windows. The new men and women hurried past in their weightless capes, armed with credit cards and stiletto heels. American hamburger joints had opened up on each and every corner. Even the drunks on the Ma-jorstuen steps had ironed pants. It wasn’t just our block, it was the whole city — ready to take off like another of Andre’s flights, and who would come looking for us? The only thing that was immutable was the Salvation Army quartet. That was the one guy line that held a shred of real life secure. They stood beside the tram stop with their frail guitars and sang the same old songs. And I thought to myself that these were the ones who were searching for Fred. In every city in every land they stand there singing and watching, singing and watching and saving. “Have you heard of Arthur Burns?” I asked. Peder hadn’t. No one ever has. I related Arthur Burns’ story. He died the previous year. He was ninety-four years of age. One of the pioneers of film. He was a young and gifted dramatist who moved from New York to Hollywood and began writing filmscripts right back when Mary Pickford was at the height of her career. He kept on writing. He was writing scripts when Douglas Fairbanks was the great god; he wrote for James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson and John Wayne. He was writing when James Dean and Marlon Brando came with their melancholy to the screen; he wrote when Clint Eastwood got out his magnum, and didn’t stop even when Sylvester Stallone entered stage right, his torso bare. Arthur Burns was one of Hollywood’s most respected screenwriters. No one had been at it longer than him. He was a living legend. He survived all the great screen heroes, and Warner Brothers paid for his funeral. There was just one tiny flaw in Arthur Burns’ magnificent career. Nothing came of it. Not one single script was filmed — not a scene, not a scrap of dialogue, not so much as a voice-over was used. Arthur Burns wrote in water. I ordered another drink. Peder yawned. “And what is it you’re trying to say?” “I have a drawer full of scripts that no one wants either,” I told him. Peder leaned over the table. “Adaptations,” he said. I retracted my arm in a hurry. “Adaptations?” “You heard me correctly. We’re going to talk adaptations.” “Don’t insult me, Peder.” “Go to the library and find yourself some books with a good story to them. That’s all I’m asking you.” “I’d prefer to use my own ideas,” I told him. Peder folded his hands. “But if your own ideas are waiting in the wings right now, then you could always be inspired by other people’s in the mean- time, right?” “You know what Scott Fitzgerald says about adaptations?” “No, Barnum. But I’m sure you do.” I nodded. “Get a good friend to read the book, ask him to relate what he remembers of it, write that down and there you have your film.” “Marvelous,” Peder said. At that moment the former director returned from the bathroom. He stopped beside our table and looked down at me, as Peder paid. “Are you writing?” he inquired. “Yes,” I told him. “But are you writing about your brother, Barnum?” I don’t quite know why, but I got so mad I stood up and shoved him away. I’m convinced I didn’t push him all that hard, but push him I did. There must have been something wrong with his balance. He toppled backward and lay there between the chairs. I was thrown out of Valka’s for good. It wasn’t two o’clock yet, and Bente Synt was on her way in; I had time to catch her smile — she was my bad omen, since each and every time she appeared on the scene something awful happened. Peder got hold of my arm and dragged me over to one side of the street before I could do any more mischief. The Salvation Army was singing. “Are you writing about Fred?” he asked. I pushed Peder away too, but he didn’t fall over — Peder was too heavy. “No!” I shouted. We went into Deichman’s in Bogstad Road and borrowed twenty novels — among them Hamsun’s shortest, The Swarms, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Dracula, the sagas, and the last one by a young, long-haired writer by the name of Ingvar Ambjörnsen. We took a taxi down to the office. One of the letters over the door had burned out. We were Barum and Miil. We were like a hotel with the bathroom in the hall. Peder let us in, and th
ere sat Vivian. She got up immediately. “Haven’t you heard?” she said. I went all cold. I’m not sure what was in my head, but I expected the worst. “What haven’t we heard?” I breathed. “They’re pulling down Rosenborg Cinema,” she said. Peder dropped all the books on the floor, and we got a taxi and went there right away. It was true. They were demolishing Rosenborg Cinema to put a fitness center there. They were carrying out everything to a huge Dumpster blocking the entire road. Now yet another place had gone. But they couldn’t throw away the images. They couldn’t pack up the light in bags and dispose of that. Something remained that could never be lost. That was a comfort. Peder negotiated with the foreman for approximately an hour. Then he wrote out a rather hefty check, and we were allowed to clamber into the Dumpster. In the end we found our seats — row 14, seats 18, 19 and 20. We lugged them (the best seats in the theater) over to Boltel0kka and set them down on the balcony. “I want to sit on the outside,” Vivian said. I protested. “You have to be in the middle,” I told her. But she sits on the outside nonetheless — it doesn’t matter what we say — in seat 18 in the fourteenth row, and I have to sit in the middle. Of course Peder has a bar of milk chocolate, which he breaks into three equal pieces. The Sten Park trees still have their magnificent, trembling leaves. But the great wheel is creaking. The sun is going down. The Night Man is going over Blasen, and everything is coming closer. “Can you see all right?” I ask. “Quiet,” Peder and Vivian hiss.

  Suede

  Where the loft window once was there’s now a great wide window with a view to the darkness and the skies. I wonder to myself if the glass would hold if the snow were to fall really heavily over a long period. The wall housing the chimney and the coal shaft has been whitewashed. The floor has been sanded; it’s as if the planks are springy when I walk across them, and they’ve been given a beautiful, pale varnish that has the effect of making the place feel bigger than I remember it. But maybe that’s because it’s still empty for no one’s moved in yet — this still hasn’t become somewhere. There’s an open kitchen area, and the two storerooms to the side have been converted into a bedroom and a bathroom respectively. I know already I could never live here.

  Then I hear someone coming up the stairs. I turn around. Mom stops and stands there under the clotheslines. That’s how I see her. I mingle these pictures that time develops at one and the same time; Mom has stopped under the clotheslines that hang in slack loops in the light, attached to the walls by rusty hooks. And if she stretches just a bit she can reach the clothespins and bring down a garment that’s been forgotten there — a flowery dress — as a dove sits cooing up on one of the beams. I almost say something, but at the last moment don’t. There’s something about her, something else — a calm that chills me. “It’s over,” Mom says. “Over? What do you mean?” “Fred,” she murmurs. Rain patters on the angled window. I could never manage to sleep in these rooms. I go nearer her. It amazes me that I feel neither joy nor sorrow — I’m not even afraid. It’s as if Mom’s dark tranquillity has become my own. But when I speak, my voice suddenly breaks. “Have they found him?” I ask. Mom shakes her head. “They’ve found some of his clothes.” “His clothes?” “Do you remember his old suede jacket?” I nod. I once got to borrow it when he made me go with him to the graveyard, and it was far too big for me. “They found it in Copenhagen. In Nyhavn. It was hanging over the railings on one of the bridges.” Mom smiles. “Wasn’t it a good thing I sewed those nametags on your clothes.” she says. “Yes, Mom.” And I realize, after she’s uttered those words, that she’s given up. That’s the way of it. She can’t endure the waiting any longer. She can’t hope any more. She wants to rest. We won’t call him missing now, we’ll give him a new name — dead. It’s as though she’s actually relieved. “They’ve dragged the canals, but they haven’t found him,” she breathes. “The current’s probably taken him miles away.” She comes another step closer. The floor trembles. I try to meet her gaze but can’t. “It could have been someone else who was wearing his jacket,” I point out. Mom smiles again and hands me a sheet of paper on which something’s written. It’s the last paragraph from the Greenland letter, and for a moment there’s a flicker of victory — he found the letter in the end, his journey wasn’t in vain. But then I recognize Fred’s own handwriting and his twisted letters. He’d just learned the words by heart in the same way I had, in his own distorted way. But the very last sentence was missing. “It was in his pocket,” Mom says. We stand there silent for a moment, as if we’ve reached a kind of consensus. Up here, in the place that once was the drying loft and where everything began, Mom now says that it’s over. She takes back the sheet of paper from me. “I want you to give the eulogy, Barnum.” I have to meet her gaze now. Her eyes are clear and dark. I don’t like what I see there. “Eulogy? Where?” “At the memorial service for Fred,” she says.

  Later I go back to Boltel0kka. All the shelves, drawers and closets are empty. The wastepaper baskets are ranged along the sides of the walls. The photograph of the woman we thought was Lauren Bacall has left behind a pale, faded square on the wallpaper. I try to work on The Night Man, but the images are frozen. Where is Fred’s jacket now? That was something I forgot to ask Mom. Instead I drink until Vivian comes back home. I don’t know where she’s been. Nor do I ask her. She lies down beside me in the darkness. I can hear that she isn’t sleeping. It’s at that moment she says it. “I’m going to have a baby,” she whispers. And I can sense that we’re each in our own lie, the one bigger than the other and catching the other as with some soundless clockwork device. It’s infuriating and it’s shameful, and I have no idea what I will do with all this loneliness. I turn around slowly to Vivian and cautiously place my hand on her stom- ach, afraid to damage anything. A tremor passes through the thin and almost luminous skin, as if something is already alive inside. She sits over me. I can’t see her face. I cry. She bends down, almost to my mouth, and takes her hand through my hair, over and over again as she softly rocks from side to side. “Don’t cry,” she whispers. “Don’t cry now, Barnum.” And this consolation (the only honest thing that night) is in danger of upsetting the equilibrium of our clockwork lies and giving our game away. “Fred’s dead,” I tell her. Vivian slides off me, pushes me forcibly away and pulls me close in one single, trembling movement. Her voice barely makes any sound whatsoever. “Dead? Is Fred dead?” “They found his jacket in Copenhagen. They figured he drowned in one of the canals.” “But they haven’t found him?” “No,” I breathe. Vivian lets go of her hold of me. I put on the light. She hides her face in her hands. The room is white, it’s a room that’s in the process of being abandoned. It’s like us. I close my eyes. I don’t want to see this. “I want him,” Vivian suddenly says, and there’s something resolute, almost fierce, about her voice, as if I had contradicted her. At first I don’t know what she means. My one eyelid hangs there like a thin, sticky bandage. Then I get the message. “Him? You know it’s going to be a boy?” Vivian turns away. “I’m three months pregnant,” she whispers. I put on a shirt and sit outside on the balcony, in seat 18, at the end. I see nothing. Everything’s one. It amazes me that the city’s so still, as if we’re the only ones there that night, paralyzed. Is doubt a kind of lie too? I drink what’s left over. I always do. What was Fred doing in Copenhagen, if he was actually there at all? Was he on his way home? Was he going to K0ge, or did he just want to see the musk oxen in the zoo? And I try to imagine him in my mind, the way he now must look, so many years older — soon middle-aged. But I can’t; I can’t imagine him any other way than as I remember him on that last morning in the Church Road kitchen, when he left for good, barely twenty years of age. That’s the only way I can picture him — the thin, young Fred I once knew, tossing his old suede jacket on a Nyhavn bridge and going over to the darkness on the other side. “Do you think he’s dead?” Vivian stands by the door and the living room light frames her in silver. I believe I can see a slight curve over her stomach, or maybe it’s just something
I imagine now that I know she’s having the child I couldn’t give her. We protect each other with lies. She’s cold and puts her hands on her shoulders. Her arms form a cross. She asks the question a second time, and her lips tremble around the words. “Do you think Fred is dead, Barnum?” “Mom wants to hold a memorial service for him,” I tell her. Vivian looks at me; it’s as though she’s standing in a shining hole in the darkness, at the bottom of a well of light. “Get her to leave it be,” she whispers.

  But Mom’s mind wasn’t going to be changed. I tried for long enough to dissuade her, but nothing would do it. She’d made up her mind, once and for all. Waiting had drained her, and at last she had something she could focus on. And she did so with a zeal and a pride — almost an enthusiasm — I could barely remember having seen in her before, and it scared the life out of me. She told the Salvation Army’s missing persons bureau it was no longer necessary to go on looking for Fred. The search was over. She ordered flowers and wreaths. She put an announcement in Aftenposten. She had the hymns we’d sing printed. And she cleared away his things from our room. I stood leaning against the door frame, and it was a weird sight. My half of the room had been empty long enough — only the bed frame remained. Now Fred’s half went too, so that in a way the room became whole again — equally stripped, equally empty. Mom put away everything in the closet and turned to me, smiling, her face shining — almost young again, and beautiful. She’d rid herself of the suffocating mask that belongs to the one who waits, and she was free. It was like an intoxication, an even more powerful intoxication, and I was counting down to the moment of complete collapse. This couldn’t last. I went in to Boletta and roused her. “Can’t you make Mom stop all this?” I murmured. Boletta shook her head, almost imperceptibly. “Maybe she feels she owes him this,” she said. “Owes him? What do you mean?” Boletta got up from the divan. “Fred wasn’t planned, Barnum.” Mom was calling from the hall, impatiently and emphatically. “Are you coming?” Quickly I took hold of Boletta’s hand. “Do you think he’s dead?” Boletta looked up. “Fred’s roamed long enough now,” she said. Mom called again, and I had to join her. “Where are we going?” I asked. But she didn’t have time to reply, and when we got out onto the sidewalk we met Peder and Vivian. Mom put her arms around Vivian and kissed her on both cheeks. Vivian whispered something to her I couldn’t hear. I looked at Peder. I couldn’t see any difference. “Vivian’s going to show me the loft conversion,” he said. He turned quickly toward Mom. “What can I say?” he murmured. “My condolences.” Mom kissed him too. “Thank you, Peder. You know all about losing someone.” It was only then he became self-conscious and fumbled a good deal with the umbrella he mainly used as a stick. “Yes,” he said quietly. “I do know.” Mom sighed. “It’s good it’s over.” Then we stood there in silence for a bit, at the corner of Church Road and G0rbitz Street, in the frail cold rain that often falls in Oslo late in September. A number of fine, shining drops ran down Vivians brow, and she let them fall, down onto her eyebrows and eventually to her mouth — then she licked them away, and when I met her gaze it was as though she was standing on the other side of the rain, behind a trellis of water. I couldn’t reach her. Finally Peder opened his black umbrella, and it was sufficiently large to cover all four of us. “Are you coming too?” he asked. Mom didn’t have time to answer that either. Vivian and Peder went into the yard, and we continued on our way toward Majorstuen. I could only just manage to keep up with Mom. She turned around. “Is Vivian ill, Barnum?” “Ill, no. What do you mean?” But she didn’t answer. She’d already forgotten her own question. We passed the kiosk that was shut up now; several bits of wood had been pulled away and someone had scrawled on the little window in red letters: Occupied! Mom didn’t pay the slightest heed to it. She only walked the faster. We were going to Majorstuen police station.