The Half Brother: A Novel

by Christensen, Lars Saabye

  I once asked Esther, after Mom and I had taken over the little kiosk in the entry near the church and she herself had been given a double room at the Prince August Memorial in Storgata, about what exactly happened that day Arnold Nilsen came up in his car from Majorstuen. “Happened?” Esther repeated. “Did anything happen?” “Yes, you might say it did. He met Mom.” Esther looked at me in a sudden moment of clarity. “Love is a chance thing, isn’t it,” she said. I smiled. “Is it?” She shrugged her shoulders, and I saw her sink back into her own darkness once more. “Your father was a no-good man,” she whispered. “Even if he did have dashed nylon stockings with him.”

  When Arnold Nilsen next appears in Church Road, on Liberation Day itself, he has a flat packet in his suit pocket, and this time he doesn’t leave it outside the door — instead he rings the bell confidently and hopes that his poor flowers have paved his way back to the door. It’s the Old One who opens it. “Well, well,” she says, and lets him in. Arnold Nilsen bows. “It’s perhaps going too far intruding at this juncture. But nevertheless I’ll be bold and ask if your granddaughter is at home?” “Everyone is at home,” the Old One replies. Arnold Nilsen turns, and the doors are open between the various rooms, and at the far end of the dining room he sees Boletta and Vera and Fred sitting at the set table, where the candlelight is barely visible against the sunlight falling through the tall windows, almost making the panes tremble. They look up at Arnold Nilsen, and a tremor passes through him at the sight of Vera and her son and her mother, and the white anemones that he himself picked. He has to cover his eyes, and he cries, or else the sun and the piercingly white cloth blinds his sight. And so the Old One follows him in, and Arnold Nilsen is given a seat at their table.

  There’s quiet for a time. Fred upsets his glass and is about to cry again. Boletta puts her napkin over the spill, and Vera goes to get a cloth from the kitchen. Then the Old One asks, “What is it that actually brings you here?” Arnold Nilsen is taken aback for a moment, stunned into embarrassed silence. “I’m here because you let me in,” he says in the end. The Old One furrows her brow, taken aback by his answer. Boletta looks at him. “Why don’t you take off your gloves?” Arnold Nilsen sighs. “Because I wouldn’t want you to lose your appetites. My right hand exploded like a shooting star thanks to a German mine in Finnmark.” “Let’s see,” Fred says. But at that moment Vera returns and wipes the floor where the juice has spilled, and the Old One loses her patience. “We won’t do the spring cleaning right now! We do have guests!” Vera finally sits down once more and breathes so heavily she all but blows out the candles. “Thank you for the flowers,” she says. “They were just standing there doing nothing and I picked them,” Arnold Nilsen tells her. The Old One turns to Boletta. “He talks like a novel we once threw in the stove,” she whispers, but loud enough for everyone to hear. Vera bows her head and is on the point of upsetting her glass too, but Arnold Nilsen gives a big laugh. “You’re absolutely right,” he admits. “As a matter of fact I speak three languages fluently Norwegian, American and R0stish.” “R0stish?” Arnold Nilsen takes his time. “If you were to translate the wind into human speech and put music to it and color to that, then you’d be as close as you could be to my mother tongue.” He falls into deep and melancholic reverie. “I was born on a full stop called R0st right out on the edge of the ocean,” he says in a low voice, with no music in the words. Then he remembers that he has brought things with him. He gets out the packet from his pocket and places it on the tablecloth, in front of Vera. “A present to the women in the family,” he says, and slowly looks at each one in turn. Carefully Vera takes off the paper and even the Old One leans closer, and they become silent and lowly when they see the contents. “What is it?” Fred asks. It’s three pairs of nylon stockings, from Denmark. Vera holds them up; they’re soft and lovely to the touch. “Thank you so much,” she whispers and can’t say any more. She looks at Arnold Nilsen, who’s sunning himself in this great, childish gratitude. Boletta wants to feel them too, while the Old One pours a glass of Malaga that she pushes over the table. “But what is it that you live off?” she inquires. “You can’t live on wood anemones and nylon stockings and nothing else?” “I live off of life,” Arnold Nilsen answers. The Old One isn’t any more satisfied with this response. “You live off life?” she echoes. “And does it yield much?” Arnold Nilsen looks down at the brimful glass in front of him. “Thank you, but I’m driving today too.” He leaves his glass where it is and turns toward Fred, who isn’t crying but rather meets his gaze with black stubbornness. “Have you asked your mother, by the way?” Fred nods. Arnold Nilsen places his damaged hand on his shoulder. “And did you get permission?”

  And they drove up toward Frognerseter. Arnold Nilsen sits on his pillow and carefully follows the various instruments on the dashboard, since it is not permitted to drive any more than fifteen miles from one’s home, and today his home is Church Road, and he intends to be an upright citizen. But fifteen miles is a long enough journey that day — it’s a fairy tale, a circumnavigation of the globe — and Vera and Fred sit in the backseat, the top down, and they are in wind, light, speed. Arnold Nilsen stops at the famous view and hurries around with ceremony to open the door for Vera, and they sit together on the bench there, while Fred remains in the backseat. A long time passes without a word being spoken. Instead they gaze down over the town beneath them, lying under a haze of sunlight. “Things are getting better now,” Arnold Nilsen asserts, and moves closer to Vera. At first she moves away, but he comes closer once more, and she lets him do so until eventually they’re huddled together. And he regrets that he didn’t sit on the other side because then he could have taken the glove from his healthy hand and perhaps stroked her hair. “Thank you,” Arnold Nilsen says. “Because soon it wouldn’t have been possible to move any further along the bench.” And Vera laughs, she lets herself go, and I like to think that this laughter was a kind of falling in love, or a release. That laughter bound her to this little man who came from a full stop on the ocean, and the laughter drowned out everything else, it canceled out the darkness inside her. She could laugh, and perhaps it was this very laughter that Arnold Nilsen had been searching for all those years — a compassionate laughter.

  Then Fred stands in front of them. “Let me see your hand,” he demands. Arnold Nilsen shifts away from Vera a little and looks at the thin, obstinate boy. And so, carefully and extremely slowly, he takes off the glove. He has filled out the fingers inside with little pieces of wood so that they still extend, as though he’s loosened the whole of his hand and laid it in his lap; and the end of his arm is nothing more than a knobbly clump of gray flesh, sewn together with rough stitches, and half a thumb without a nail, a useless lump. Vera has to hide her eyes. Fred leans closer still and wants to touch the mutilated hand, but before he goes that far Vera gets up, quickly and impatiently, and pulls him forcefully with her back to the car. Arnold Nilsen puts on his glove again as fast as he can and goes after them. “I apologize unreservedly for my thoughtlessness,” he whispers, and bows his head. “I don’t want him to have nightmares,” Vera says quickly. “It was my fault.” “Absolutely not,” Arnold Nilsen protests. “It was me and none other that let the sorrowful remains of my hand be seen. How may I make things better?” Vera makes no reply. She just looks at him instead and smiles. And this smile gives him the courage to ask her something, as Fred settles in the front seat. “I don’t see any man in the house,” he says. “And you saw correctly,” Vera tells him. “Doesn’t the boy have a father?” Vera turns away. Fred holds the steering wheel and makes noises more like an animal than an engine. “Forgive me once more,” Arnold Nilsen pleads.

  They drive down to the city again. It’s clouding over. The shadows race over them. Vera’s cold. Fred’s in the front seat staring at the speedometer. And then they meet another car, a black Chevrolet Fleetline Deluxe; they pass slowly and brake. Arnold Nilsen gets out, and the other driver, a tall young man with fair hair and a c
ravat, gets out too. They say hello, and the two of them circle their cars and praise the respective models. They trace the shiny chrome plating, they open the hoods and need say no more. They just nod, intuitively, and stand in that brotherhood of American horsepower, and Arnold Nilsen suddenly senses a great, deep feeling of belonging that he can’t remember having felt since that time he entered Mundus’ tent. He notices that there’s also a beautiful woman sitting in the Chevrolet; she gives him a tired but happy smile through the open side window — she’s pregnant and has barely enough room in the seat. Then they drive on, each in the other direction, and they’ll never meet again, though they’ll continue to live in the same city, living their lives there, their broken and ruined lives, for they will both meet with terrible accidents. The young strangers in the Chevrolet will encounter theirs just around the next corner, while Arnold Nilsen will have to wait many years before being met, as they say, by that which some call fate, but which might just as well be called mathematics. Or as I later tell Peder, when I present my reflection of what I experience in a complete dramatic work — it was nothing other than the symmetry of the triple jump.

  It starts raining the minute Arnold Nilsen sits down behind the wheel again. That suits him fine. Now he can perform a miracle with impunity. He makes a swinging gesture with the stiff glove in order to get their attention, and with the other hand he presses a button on the dashboard. Slowly the roof closes over them. Fred holds his breath. Vera claps her hands. Arnold Nilsen is pleased with his show and with his audience. “Now we can drive home dry,” he says, and changes gear. Vera quickly turns around and catches the red brake lights of the other car reflecting on the wet surface and disappearing into the rain behind them. “Drive carefully,” she whispers. “The roads slippery.”

  And Arnold Nilsen carefully drives home. The Old One and Bo-letta are at the window when he parks by the corner. They see Fred emerging from the front seat and banging the door behind him, while the two others remain sitting where they are. “Now he’s asking if they can meet tomorrow,” the Old One says. Boletta turns toward her. “Do you think its serious?” The Old One sighs. “She doesn’t have the choice she once did. And neither does he.” “Oh, be quiet!” Boletta says to her. Arnold Nilsen lights a cigarette with the electric lighter. “I hope I haven’t scared you off with my half hand,” he murmurs. Vera shakes her head. Arnold Nilsen waits until he’s finished his cigarette before saying any more. The tobacco’s dry and burns his throat. “Ill happily go for another drive tomorrow,” he tells her. “Me too,” Vera says at once. “I’m afraid I can’t ask you back to my place. I’m still staying at a rather wretched hostel.” Vera leans forward between the seats. “Hostel?” Arnold Nilsen looks out. Fred’s pressing his nose against the window. The rain’s pouring down. “Coch’s Hostel. Until I find a place for myself. But available properties aren’t exactly growing on trees just now.” Arnold Nilsen sighs. “I’ve searched the whole city and answered every single ad since I came back from America. Even the hotels don’t have room for me! But in New York I stayed at the Astoria! Have you heard of the Astoria?” “No,” Vera says. “There they take your suitcase right to the door, and the suites have four rooms each in them!” He thumps his healthy hand down on the steering wheel. “At Coch’s three of us share the same room! One of them drinks every night and keeps us two others awake.” He falls silent and looks down at his hand in shame. Vera sits in silence, pondering. “I’ll have a talk with Mother,” she says at last. Arnold Nilsen looks up and turns toward her. “What was that you said?” “I’ll talk to the Old One too,” she adds. He smiles. His face breaks into a wide smile; he forgets himself completely and lays his bad hand on her arm. “Just as well I’m so small,” he says. “I can lie on a pillow in the windowsill!”

  In June Arnold Nilsen moves into Church Road. It causes a stir — a Buick on the corner and a man in the women’s apartment. At first he sleeps on a narrow mattress in the entrance hall. He gets up at seven, has his coffee, goes down to his car and returns home at half past five. They don’t quite know what it is he does, and he doesn’t enlighten them himself. “Now he’s off to live off life,” the Old One echoes and shakes her head, but deep inside she can’t help liking him all the same. He’s never in the way. He’s clean and tidy. He isn’t a noisy sleeper. He puts his money in the housekeeping can each week. He takes the garbage out. And on Sundays he takes them on drives, out to Nesodden and the fjord, or in the other direction toward the woods and lakes. Fred sits in the front, and there’s plenty of room for the women in the back. They have coffee and Danish pastries with them, and wherever they go people stop and gaze at the slender Buick, and Arnold Nilsen waves to one and all. And in the evenings he makes Vera laugh. Boletta has carried out her secret research at the Exchange. He hasn’t lied about anything either. He does come from R0st in the Lofotens; his father was a fisherman, and the family has never had a telephone. He’s promoted to the dining room in July and gets to sleep on the divan there. The Old One and Boletta bicker in the maid’s room while Fred sleeps with his mother. One night Arnold Nilsen is awakened by the boy standing and staring at him. He could have been there long enough. The thin shadow in the darkness is straight and determined. He says nothing. That’s perhaps the worst thing. Arnold Nilsen sits up. “What is it you want?” he asks him. Fred doesn’t reply. Arnold Nilsen becomes nervous. “You don’t need to be afraid,” he whispers. And yet he realizes at once that Fred is anything but fearful. Had he been afraid he wouldn’t be standing like that in the darkness by the divan. On the contrary he’s angry, threatening. Arnold Nilsen searches for words; he who can talk most people around has now to search feverishly for the right sentence — to address a boy who’s barely five years old. His voice is even quieter. “I won’t take your mother from you, Fred.” He stretches out the arm without a hand. Fred doesn’t move. He just stands, staring silent and sullen, and then goes soundlessly back to his mother’s bedroom.

  Arnold Nilsen doesn’t sleep a wink the rest of the night. And when his alarm clock goes off, he doesn’t get up, he just lies there. Then he hears something beyond the door — an anxious noise — they’re talking quickly and quietly, as if they can’t quite make up their minds, and in the end Vera looks in on him. “Are you ill?” she inquires. Arnold Nilsen has to turn his face to the wall so she won’t see he’s on the verge of tears, because someone cares about him, someone wonders how he is, and he’s almost overcome by such concern. “I’ll stay home from work today,” he whispers.

  Vera quietly shuts the door and passes the message on. Arnold Nilsen is quite well. He’s just going to stay home from work that day. They don’t quite know what it is he’s going to stay home from. He just remains lying there on the divan and stays home from work. Boletta goes to the Exchange. Fred goes down into the yard. The Old One and Vera wash sheets. “If it’s life he lives off, it must be life he’s staying away from,” the Old One says. Vera hushes her. “Don’t tell me to be quiet! I’m only quoting his own words. Has he said anything to you?” The Old One pulls at the sheet so violently that Vera loses her balance and has to be supported by her grandmother. “Said anything?” “Yes, about what he does. What he has done. What he’s thought of doing. It can’t just be poems he whispers in that little ear of yours!” Vera sits down on the edge of the tub. “I don’t ask him. And he doesn’t ask me.” The Old One sighs and lays the cloth in her lap. “We just have to hope he isn’t another night man.”

  Arnold Nilsen’s breakfast is waiting for him when he comes into the kitchen. The apartment is silent. He’s alone. It’s the first time he’s been alone there. He takes his coffee cup with him over to the window and looks down into the yard. Vera and the Old One are hanging the wash out to dry — great white sheets that they stretch and throw over the clotheslines, and then attach with clothespins they have in bags around their waists. All this Arnold Nilsen ob- serves. Its an ordinary morning in the summer of 1950; soon the sun will fill the whole of the yard. Some b
oys are repairing their bicycles over by the gate; the lame caretaker is standing facing away filling a bucket with water, and behind everything is the sound of someone playing a simple tune on the piano, over and over again. Vera and the Old One laugh as a stray gust of wind blows in and billows up the sheet they’re holding and all but carries them off. Arnold Nilsen sees all this. He is a witness this morning. A witness to this humanity — a bucket that has to be filled, a bicycle repaired, sheets dried in the sun. His first anxiety has passed. Instead he is filled with wonderment, and that too is a sort of anxiety — he is filled with wonderment at all this that is becoming his. He is a man on the far edge of his youth — soon it will be gone — he’s almost thirty, and the world is growing smaller and smaller around him. This is his world, and he is a witness to it. He must forget everything that has been and begin remembering anew. Then he notices that Freds sitting in the only corner where shadow remains. He’s sitting there staring. He tears this morning to pieces. Vera calls him. Fred doesn’t move. She calls again. But Fred remains sitting there, in his dark corner, and when it gradually begins to fill with light he covers his eyes.

  Then the doorbell rings. Arnold Nilsen puts down his cup and hesitates. He doesn’t officially live here. His name still isn’t on the door. The bell rings again. He looks down into the yard where the Old One’s squatting down and hugging Fred. Arnold Nilsen goes out into the hall and opens the door. It’s Arnesen. He pretends to be surprised. “Are none of the ladies home?” he asks. “They’re down in the courtyard hanging out the wash. I can get them if you want.” But Arnesen just waves his hand and is past him in a flash. “I know the way” He puts down his briefcase on the floor in front of the clock, takes out the key to it and then turns toward Arnold Nilsen. “They say it’s you who’s the owner of the new car.” Arnold Nilsen nods. Arnesen smiles. “And what sort of horsepower does an engine like that have?” “A hundred fifty.” “A hundred fifty? My word. So it can drive faster than the law actually permits?” Arnold Nilsen laughs. “A fast car can go slow too,” he says. “True enough. As long as one doesn’t give in to temptation. And each and every one of us has the power to do that. When no one’s looking, I mean.” Arnold Nilsen says nothing to this. Now it’s Arnesen’s turn to laugh. “Well, here I am standing talking on the job without actually introducing myself. I’m Mr. Arnesen, the insurance agent,” He proffers his hand, clasps the stiff glove, and lets go of it immediately. A shudder passes through him. “An accident?” he inquires. “The war,” Arnold Nilsen replies. Arnesen smiles, turns away, pulls out the drawer under the clock and collects the money in a leather bag that he then places in his briefcase. Arnold Nilsen observes the speed and flexibility of the man’s fingers; he’s seen it before, but he knows that no one’s ever quick enough, that there’s always someone who’ll catch you, sooner or later. You make a mistake and drop everything on the floor; you tremble a tiny bit and blow off your arm. “Is it your wife who plays the piano?” he asks. Arnesen pushes the drawer into place and looks at him. He isn’t smiling any more. “Does it disturb you?” “Not in the least.” “But you think that she should practice something else?” “That hadn’t crossed my mind.” “If you live here long enough, it will cross your mind.” Arnold Nilsen produces a banknote from his jacket pocket and drops it into the briefcase. “Now I’m insured too,” he says. Arnesen snaps shut the lid. “Yes, you might need to be.”