And with that she vanished into the thick fog in the direction of the toilets. Peder began to tug at my jacket. “Did she say Cliff in the sauna? Cliff and Barnum in the sauna?” “Saunas are mixed here in Germany, Peder. Do you think it has something to do with the war?” “What are you talking about? Were you in the sauna with Cliff?” “The Elk was there first. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen her naked.” “I’d prefer to avoid hearing this, Barnum.” “She was like an overripe pear.” “What was it she muttered to you?” “Just my old saying. To hell with you.” Peder rolled his eyes and slumped over once more. “Don’t tempt her to write more crap about you, Barnum. That’s the last thing you need.”
When on rare occasions Peder got drunk, all of him started sloping downward — his hair, his wrinkles, his mouth, his fingers and his shoulders. The alcohol hung like a lead weight in his body. All of him slipped toward his own shoes. I could have said to him that we were getting old now, two curious companions who had shared everything in life, and who were now left with only half of the best of it. And with a smile, I could have stroked a finger carefully along the deepest furrow in his face.
“The last thing I need,” I told him, “is for you to tell me what the last thing I need is.”
“The last thing we need is a drink,” said Peder.
He stretched one arm into the air but it collapsed amid ashtrays, used napkins and bottles. Somebody sang in Norwegian at a table where mercifully there wasn’t room for more. The credits would soon be rolling. The last drinks appeared. Peder hoisted his glass with both hands. “Here’s to you, Barnum. Basically we don’t really have much more to do here in Berlin, eh? Except for buying a gift for Thomas. Or maybe you’ve forgotten that by now, too?” I looked down and suddenly remembered what I had in my suitcase at the hotel. “I have a script with me,” I said. Peder quietly put down his drink. “And you tell me that now? That you have a goddamn script with you?” “Aren’t you pleased, Peder?” “Pleased? Hell, give me something, Barnum. A hint of some kind. A title.” “The Night Man,” I told him. “The Night Man” Peder said and smiled. “Do you have to say everything twice?” “What’s it about? Pitch me, Barnum!” I had to smile. That was the way we were talking now. Pitch me. Fill me in. Give me something. “My family,” I told him. “What else?” Peder gripped his head with both hands and shook it. “Why didn’t you say something at the meeting? Why the hell didn’t you take the script with you to the meeting!” “Because you woke me up, Peder.” He let go of his head and it slipped onto his shoulders. “I woke you?” “Yes, Peder. You wake me and hang up and there are messages for me everywhere. I barely get any peace in the sauna, Peder. I hate it. And you know that.” “I know, Barnum.” “I hate being nagged. I’ve been bossed around and nagged all my life. Everyone’s bossed me. I’m basically fed up with it, Peder.” His eyes had become empty and expressionless. “Are you finished now, Barnum?” “Don’t nag,” I said. Peder came closer and tried to straighten up. He almost held my hand. “It’s not me who’s been calling. And I haven’t left any messages for you.”
And in the moment he said that I became clear-headed and was frozen to ice; everything around me trembled, horrible and close. Everything I had put off was happening now. I left. Peder tried to make me stay He failed. I went out into the Berlin night. It was snowing; a glimmer between the lights and the dark. I heard the animals screeching from the zoo. I walked through the ruins and past the restaurants that had already closed, back to the Kempinski Hotel, where the same limousines stood filed like extended hearses in a hopeless line. And the white-haired old porter opened the heavy door and doffed his hat and smiled indulgently; I took the elevator up to my room, opened the door and saw that the maid had been in to make up the room — and I saw too the telephone’s red light; I tore off the receiver but heard only a foreign dial tone. And then I noticed the envelope, the one I’d folded and put in the pocket of my robe — it lay on the desk beside a bowl of fruit and a bottle of red wine there courtesy of the festival. I dropped the receiver and went over to it. I opened the envelope and pulled out a sheet of paper. I sat down on the bed. It was a fax, and at the top I could read where it had come from: Gaustad Hospital, Department of Psychiatry — that morning at 7:41. The writing was my mother’s; just two sloping lines of trembling letters. Dear Barnum. You won’t believe it. Fred has come hack. Come home as fast as you can. Mother.
I read the two lines one more time and then slowly got up, almost calmly; my hands as they lifted the paper were quite still, yes, my hands were still, and I glanced over my shoulder, quickly, just as I always do, as if I imagined someone was standing there, in the shadow by the door, watching me.
THE WOMEN
The Drying Loft
It is Thursday, May 8, 1945, and Vera, our mother, is standing deep inside the drying loft in Church Road, unpegging the clothes that have become dry and soft up there in the course of the night. There are three pairs of woolen socks that can be put away for good now, two green bathing suits with buttons and neck straps that haven’t been used yet, three bras, a white handkerchief, and last but not least the three thin dresses and pale rayon tops that have lain so long in the bedroom closet that they have almost faded in the dark. Vera hasn’t dared hang the clothes out in the yard; so much has happened in the course of those days and years, why shouldn’t someone steal their clothes too, even now at the last moment? And she hurries, she’s impatient and can hardly be finished quickly enough, because she’s going out to celebrate the peace, the victory; every bit of it she’ll celebrate, of life and of spring, together with Boletta and the Old One, and perhaps Rakel will be back home too, now that it’s all over. And she laughs quickly as she stretches up to the slack clotheslines, which feel rough against her fingers and which can easily sting if she isn’t careful. It’s Vera, our mother, who stands thus, alone in the drying loft; she laughs and drops the wooden clothspins down into the wide pocket of her apron, and carefully places item after item in the woven basket beside her. She is warm and she is thinking of nothing; she’s just full to the brim with a great and curious joy, like nothing she has ever known before. Because she feels new now. There has been war for five years and in the summer she’ll be twenty, and it’s now, right now, that her life is beginning, if only she could get these clothes down. And she wonders if she should leave the woolen socks up, but decides not to, for it isn’t right to be hanging clothes to dry on such a day, not even high up in the drying loft. Vera has to rest a moment, straighten her bent back, and lift her head to breathe in the thrilling scent of the clean clothes, the three dresses. She laughs again. She blows the hair from her forehead. In the corner under the coal shaft there sits a gray dove cooing. She can just hear shouting and music from the streets. Vera stretches up to the clothesline to take down the final piece, her own blue dress, which she hasn’t yet had the chance to wear, and at that moment, as she unfastens one of the wooden pegs and holds up the garment with her other hand so that it won’t fall onto the dusty floor, she hears footsteps behind her. Slowly they come closer, and for a moment Vera imagines it’s Rakel who’s come back and that she’s run through all the corridors to meet her, but she knows it’s probably just Boletta who has lost patience and who has come to help her finish, for there’s no time to lose — it’s peace at last and the war is over. And Vera is about to say something to her mother — Oh yes, there’s only this one dress to go, don’t you see how fine it is? — or perhaps she’ll just laugh, laugh with sheer delight, and afterward they can carry the clothes basket down all the steps together. But then she realizes it’s not her mother, nor is it Rakel, for these steps have another rhythm, another weight, the floorboards give in the wake of their passing, and the dove in the corner suddenly stops cooing. These are the steps of war that keep going, and before Vera can turn around someone has gripped her and held her tightly, and a dry hand has been pressed over her face and she cannot even scream. She senses the harsh stench of unwashed skin, the raw stink of a stra
nge man’s mouth, a tongue that rasps her neck. She tries to bite, her teeth sink into the rough skin, but he doesn’t let go of his hold. She can’t breathe. He lifts her and she kicks for all she’s worth; one of her shoes falls off and he forces her down onto her knees and pushes her forward. She notices that the dress is hanging at an angle on the line by the one clothespin and she tears it down with her in her fall. He takes his hand away from her mouth and she can breathe, yet now that she’s able to scream she doesn’t all the same. She sees his hands tearing up her skirt, and it’s only this that she sees of him — his hands — one of them missing a finger, and she plunges her nails into this hand, but even then he doesn’t make a sound. Nine fingers, that’s all he is. He forces her face to the floor and her cheek is chafed by the rough planks. The light is distorted now and the clothes basket has toppled over; the dove is preening itself. She feels the man’s hands around her hips, nine fingers that scrape against her skin, and he tears her open, he pulls her apart. She doesn’t hear him; she shoves the dress into her mouth, chews the thin material over and over, and the sun in the loft window shifts with a shudder. He presses himself through her and in the same moment the church bells begin ringing, all the church bells in town ring out at the same time. And the dove suddenly takes off from the corner under the coal shaft and flaps wildly about them; she can feel the wings brushing against her, and now it’s all too late. She still isn’t twenty, and in the end it’s he who screams.
Afterward everything is quiet. He lets her go. She could get up, but remains lying nonetheless. He puts his hand on her neck. It smells of urine and vomit. Then he runs. She can feel it, a soundless drumming against her face, her cheek. He crept up on her, and now he’s running away through the long attic corridors in Church Road, on May 8, 1945. The dove sits on the window frame. And Vera, our mother, just lies there like that, her cheek against the floor, her dress in her mouth and her hand full of blood, as a beam of sunlight slowly passes over her.
The Apartment
Boletta, Vera’s mother, was anything but religious — rather quite the opposite — she’d had enough of miracles. But now she opened the door onto the narrow balcony over Gørbitz Street, stood there and drank in that moment to the last drop; the church bells ringing together across town from Majorstuen, Aker and Fagerborg, even the bells of Sagene and Uranienborg audible. The wild, sweet clamor seemed drawn and carried by the light and the wind, and rose in one tremendous sound to deafen once and for all the sharp, white echo of the air-raid sirens. “Can you close the door! There’s a draft!” Boletta turned toward the living room, almost blinded. The dark inside had grown bleaker still. The brown furniture resembled immovable, heavy shadows, bolted fast by the hard ticking of the clock in the entrance hall. She had to shield her eyes for a few seconds. “Do you really think we want to get colds today? When we’ve been fine and healthy the whole of the war!” “There’s no need to shout, Mother.”
Boletta closed the door to the balcony and now she could see the Old One over by the bookcases. She was standing there in her ankle-length petticoat and red velvet slippers tearing out books that she proceeded to throw into the fireplace, talking all the while and evidently just to herself. The cacophony of church bells diminished to one single song. Carefully Boletta went closer. “What are you doing, Mother?”
But the Old One didn’t answer, or rather didn’t hear her, and for that reason didn’t reply. For the Old One was deaf in one ear and the other one didn’t function as it should. The damage had happened when Filipstad exploded in December 1943. She had been sitting in the dining room twisting the dials on the radio back and forth, the radio she had refused to give up on the grounds that she was a Danish citizen and considered it inconceivable not to listen to programs from Copenhagen. She maintained that the explosions came out of the loudspeaker in varying degrees of intensity, accompanied by an unauthorized jazz band from America, and this was how the anvil in her left ear was put out of action, and the stapes in the other pushed forward. Deep down, Boletta was sure that her mother’s ears were in perfect working order, but that she had decided it was her prerogative to hear just what she wanted to hear. Now she realized that it was the novels of Knut Hamsun that the Old One was tearing from the shelves and stuffing into the green stove. “What are you doing?” Boletta shrieked a second time, and grabbed her mother’s arm. “I’m finished with Hamsun!” “Hamsun? But you love Hamsun!” “I haven’t read him in five years. And he should have been out of this house a long time ago!” The Old One turned to her daughter. She waved The Crops of the Field in front of her nose. “Particularly after what he wrote in the paper!” “What did he write?”
The Old One laid The Crops of the Field in the stove too and fetched the afternoon edition of Aftenposten from the previous day. She banged her finger at the front page so hard it almost made a hole in the paper. “Now I’ll tell you word for word what that wretched creature wrote! We, his close followers, now bow our heads at his death.” The Old One looked up. “Could you imagine a worse time to write Hitler’s obituary? There shouldn’t have been an obituary for him in the first place. Better that we danced on his grave!”
She dropped the paper in the stove and attacked the shelves again with venomous rage. Her long gray hair waved about her; she swore mightily as she threw out each of Hamsun’s collected works. And I’d have given anything to see this sight — the Old One, our great granny, removing all trace of the deaf Nobel Prize-winner in our living room in Church Road on May 8, 1945. But suddenly she stopped, just as she was about to throw away the last part of the August trilogy, Yet Life Survives, and she remained standing with the first edition in her hand as she silently bent toward the bookcase and maneuvered out something else that had been hidden behind the traitor’s novels — an untouched bottle of Malaga from 1936. The Old One lifted the bottle carefully and for a second forgot Hamsun and all his works. Boletta came beside her to see what it was. “The thing I’ve been looking for everywhere,” the Old One sighed. “In the dirty laundry basket. In the fuse box. In the resevoir. And it’s here, for heaven’s sake, right behind the stiff covers of the August books!” She gave the bottle a quick kiss and turned back toward the bookshelves. “Thank you for your company Knut. Now we’re going our separate ways!”
For safety’s sake she took a peek behind Herman Bang and Johannes V. Jensen, just to see if there might be some bottles there too, but there weren’t, neither there nor behind the collected works of Ibsen. The Old One was already on her way toward the kitchen. Boletta stopped her. “Did you hide that in the bookcase?” “Me? If so I’d have found it an eternity ago and drunk it before Hitler invaded Poland! It must have been you who put it there.” Boletta leaned in against her mother’s working ear. “There aren’t other things you’ve hidden in there, are there?”
But the Old One heard nothing of this and instead began twisting the cork with her crooked and wrinkled fingers, and Boletta had to hold the bottle for her while the Old One twisted and pulled, and they stood there long enough laboring and panting. But all of a sudden the Old One let go of her hold and looked down at herself in horror, as though it was only now she realized she certainly wasn’t dressed properly She took the bottle from Boletta and was almost offended on her account. “One doesn’t drink Malaga from 1936 in one’s underclothes! But where on earth is Vera? I wanted my dress right away!”
Boletta spun around toward the oval clock that stood on the cabinet out in the entrance hall, the magic clock from the life insurance firm Bien where we always put our premium on the first Saturday each month. For that reason, for long enough, I believed that it was money that made time go. Boletta looked closer. It couldn’t be so late. It wasn’t possible. Vera should have been down with the clothes ages ago. The clock must be fast; perhaps, improbable though it seemed, it was because of the stresses of the last twenty-four hours that it had gained time; when the prisoners in Grini were released and General Rediess shut the door on himself on the second floor at Skaug
um, put his gun as far into his mouth as he could, and fired. Boletta could just hear the beat of the second hand’s jagged wheel and the coins that still clinked in the drawer under the clock face.
She looked quietly at her own watch. The clock was showing the right time. “I’ll go and see what she’s doing.” Boletta turned and gave her mother a hard look. “Don’t you dare touch that bottle before we come back down.” The Old One just smiled. “I can’t wait to see King Haakon again. When do you suppose he’ll come?” Boletta bent toward the other ear. “Don’t even think about opening it! Not before Vera and I have come down!” The Old One kissed her daughter on the cheek and shivered. “I honestly think I’ll put the fire on for a bit. The war has made the walls cold.”
The Half Brother: A Novel Page 4
