The Half Brother: A Novel

by Christensen, Lars Saabye

  Arnesen retreats with a bow but doesn’t offer his hand this time; he’s felt the artificial fingers once. Arnold Nilsen remains standing by the oval clock — it’s six minutes past nine. Then he hears the others in the kitchen. He goes to meet them. “Arnesen’s been here to collect the premium,” he tells them. The Old One looks around. “Yes, I felt it had grown cold here,” she murmurs.

  Fred runs out into the hall, climbs onto a chair and shakes the clock. There’s almost no sound, only Fred laughing, almost screaming, as he shakes and shakes the clock, until in the end the Old One has to tear him away and reposition the hands. Arnold Nilsen produces another note and gives it to Fred. “You can have that to put in the drawer.” Fred stares at the curled blue paper. “I want money,” he says. Arnold Nilsen laughs and instead fishes out a coin that he bites into hard before giving to Fred. “You’ll hear when this hits the bottom all right!” For a long time Fred rubs the coin against his thigh and then drops it in his pocket. “You have to put it in the clock,” Vera tells him. “So nothing will happen to us.” Fred shakes his head and wants to get away. Vera holds him back. “At least you can say thank you. Say thank you very much, Fred!” “It doesn’t matter,” Arnold Nilsen assures her. But Vera has made up her mind that Fred will do as he’s told. “Say many thanks!” she shouts. “Or else give the money back!” Fred’s mouth is clamped shut, and his hand’s knotted deep in his pocket; he twists away. “Say many thanks!” Vera shouts and refuses to let him go. At that point the Old One comes between them. “Let him be,” she says, and puts some money into the clock for all of them.

  That evening Boletta and Vera bring in the dry laundry. The sun is shining low from the other end and has lifted the light from the yard. They carry the basket down to the mangle in the basement, put the first sheet between the rollers and have to join forces to turn the handle. When the next one has been put through and smoothed out, Boletta asks, “Has something happened to Fred?” Vera rests against the handle. “I can’t talk to him. He won’t listen to me any more.” Boletta folds the sheet and places it in the basket. “Hes just a bit confused,” she says. “And then it’s easy to become angry.” Vera’s close to tears. She covers her mouth. “Perhaps it’s best if Arnold leaves,” she murmurs. Boletta smiles. “Oh, it wasn’t exactly that I was thinking of.” She puts her arm around her daughter. “Fred isn’t used to hearing you laugh.”

  At that moment they hear someone coming along the passage and they know at once who it is. One shoe drags continually, delayed and out of step, scraping along the stone floor. He stops in the doorway. It’s the caretaker, Bang. He lets his gaze rest on the pile of sheets. “You can never have enough sheets,” he says, and that’s all he ventures for a time. Boletta turns away and sprinkles some water on the final sheet to go through the mangle. The caretaker focuses his attention on Vera. “Would you like some help to crank the handle?” Vera shakes her head. “No, thanks.” He smiles and goes closer. “There are obviously more to lay the table for these days.” Vera turns the handle with all her might and the sheet disappears between the rollers. “It must be a comfort indeed to have a man in the house at last,” Bang continues slowly. Suddenly Boletta whirls around once more, and the two of them stand almost eyeball to eyeball. “Now you just take your foot with you and get lost!” she tells him. The caretaker limps backward, speechless and hurt, and hurries away through the basement. Boletta and Vera look at one another, hold their breath as long as they can, and finally burst out laughing. “That was just like listening to the Old One!” Vera said, laughing still. Boletta has to be supported by her and can hardly speak. “Oh, dear,” she gasps. “Have I really begun to be like my mother!”

  When they go back again with the sheets, the Old Ones already gone to bed. She says she feels washed out and dizzy; she wants to see Dr. Sand, Dr. Schultz’s successor and his complete opposite — a confirmed teetotaler who uses mouth swabs and cortisone. She has pain behind her forehead. She feels strange right down her arms. “You’ve infected me with your headache and your bruised elbows!” she accuses Boletta, and wants to be left in peace. They leave the patient be and next morning the Old One’s up before the others, orders a taxi, and won’t be dissuaded by Boletta and Vera, who hear her telephoning and come to her aid. She doesn’t want anyone’s company and most certainly doesn’t want to be driven in Arnold Nilsen’s car. No, she’ll manage the last part alone, just as elephants step aside to die with dignity without troubling the rest of the herd. “You’re making a fuss,” Boletta giggles at her. “There’s nothing wrong with you!” But the Old One gives her an angry look, goes down to the taxi and seats herself in the back. She asks the driver to take her around the corner of Jacob Aall Street and stop there. “That’s a hundred yards,” he says. “And I’m paying,” the Old One replies. And I would love to say that it was the same taxi driver as on the night when Fred was born, but it wasn’t. Things don’t happen like that, but had it been the case the narrative might perhaps have turned and taken another direction, or the reader would believe it was a lie, an invention, and therefore doubt the rest of our story too, and probably give up on it for good to seek out more reliable accounts. All the same, I wish it had been the same driver, because I’d love to have heard the conversation between the Old One and him. Perhaps she’d have invited him back later that day for a cup of tea or coffee; they could have told each other about the intervening time since they stopped at the junction of Church Road and Ullevål Road and a very bloody child came into the world in his backseat. Afterward, he could have greeted Fred, the boy he himself had christened, for hadn’t they kept the first name that had been spoken in that holy taxi? Yes, this indeed is Fred. But the driver’s someone else, an older man who continually draws his fingers over his untidy and not entirely clean mustache. “Are we waiting for someone?” he inquires. “That is something you needn’t concern yourself with yet,” the Old One replies. She’s keeping an eye on the Buick parked on the other corner. There still hasn’t been any sign of Arnold Nilsen. For a moment she’s worried. Perhaps he’s taken the day off again? The meter in the taxi keeps clicking. Then at last he appears, gets behind the wheel, and swings out into Church Road. “Now you will please follow that car,” the Old One tells the driver, while she herself sinks as low as possible in the seat so there isn’t the faintest risk of being spotted.

  Arnold Nilsen drives through Majorstuen and down Bogstad Road. It’s spitting rain and he’s driving with the top up. A few souls are waiting outside the “pole” with their hands in their pant pockets and with their heads bowed. The pigeons on the Valkyrie take off like a shoal of fish and alight on their chosen cornices. A baker brings out loaves to his delivery van and the fresh crusts steam with heat. The city is awake and sleepless in the mild rain. And Arnold Nilsen just drives on unsuspecting through yet another morning. He parks in a backyard in Gr0nne Street, and walks the last part of the way over to Coch’s Hostel. The Old One has stopped the taxi at Park Road, and from there she can observe him ringing the bell and gaining admittance. She waits. She has time enough. The meter reaches an unheard-of sum. She has sufficient to pay. The driver moves his finger back and forth beneath his nose. But it’s patience she doesn’t have enough of. She pays and hurries across the street to the lugubrious doorway. This is Arnold Nilsen’s emergency exit and his back door, she thinks to herself. His smokescreen. Or else he has someone else with whom he amuses himself, that little stain of a man. Whatever the reason, he’s going to suffer for it. The Old One rings the bell of Coch’s Hostel. Eventually the door opens a little, and a fat woman with heavy eyelids peers out. “I’m here to see Arnold Nilsen,” the Old One tells her. The woman looks embarrassed. “Don’t know him.” She’s about to shut the door again, but the Old One has no intention of leaving Coch’s Hostel with her mission unaccomplished. She puts her shoe in the door, grabs hold of the woman’s ear and twists it. “You shouldn’t lie to elderly ladies,” she hisses. “Take me to Nilsen’s room!” The Old One’s
admitted. They climb a steep staircase to something that resembles a reception desk, with a counter that has ashtrays and old newspapers on it, and a board from which hang two keys. The place smells of tobacco and moldering mattresses. Three men sit in a windowless room playing cards and drinking beer. They glance at the Old One, uncertainly, before hunching over their bottles once more. “You’ll find him in 502,” the fat woman says, massaging her ear. “But why didn’t you say that to begin with?” the Old One says brightly. “Because our guests demand complete privacy,” the woman replies, raising her eyebrows. The three men titter from their room. “Yes, I can believe that,” the Old One says. “But now it’s going to be anything but complete for Arnold Nilsen!” With that she proceeds up to the fifth floor and comes to a long, narrow corridor with tall windows on one side and doors on the other. Outside one door there’s a pair of shoes. Slowly the Old One goes down to the end of the corridor, where she finds Room 502. At first she listens and hears extraordinary gusts of wind coming from inside the room, gusts that rise and fall in strength. She peers through the keyhole and sees clouds scudding past. Then the Old One stands tall and hammers on the door. “I’m not to be disturbed!” Arnold Nilsen shouts. “How many times must I make that clear!” “One more time!” the Old One shouts back. There’s silence in Room 502, total silence. Then Arnold Nilsen opens the door and looks out at her, pale and disheveled. “Well, you’d better come in.” The Old One walks past him and stops. The bed is made. A whole assortment of tools are lying on the floor. Various designs are unfolded on a table by the window, the curtains of which are drawn. The shade has been removed from the standard lamp, and the bulb sends golden light in every direction. No one else is there. But in the center of the room there’s a tall stand with a propeller on it that almost resembles a crooked star, and a ladder leads up to the top of it. Arnold Nilsen shuts the door. “You’re looking at my windmill,” he whispers. The Old One turns toward him. “A windmill? Have you been keeping a windmill hidden in Coch’s Hostel?” He puts the shade back on the lamp and stands by the window. “It’s taking time to finish it,” he says, “with only one hand.” The Old One circles the windmill and doesn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved. As a result she feels bewildered and in the end sits down on the bed. “Are you making it yourself?” she asks. Immediately Arnold Nilsen shows her the drawings, but all this geometry is meaningless to her and she pushes them away. “You don’t understand wind down here in the south,” he tells her, “because you don’t really know what wind is! You think its windy when it blows a bit in Frogner Park. Oh, no!” He climbs up a few steps on the ladder, pushes the wheel into motion, and the same sounds can be heard, of gusts of wind, and the Old One has to lean backward so as not to be hit in the head. Arnold Nilsen laughs. “The wind is like a mine, a mine under the skies! There one can find the purest, most flowing gold that’s to be found.” Suddenly he grows serious and comes down the ladder again. “You aren’t sick,” he murmurs. “You followed me.” “Of course!” the Old One responds. “I wanted to know what sort of man you really were!” “You thought I had someone else apart from Vera, was that it?” The Old One says nothing. Arnold Nilsen sits down beside her. “And so you found me here with a windmill instead! What sort of man do you think I am now?” The Old One gets up and goes over to the window. “Have you heard of the elephants in the mountain country of Deccan?” she asks him. Arnold Nilsen shakes his head. “It’s at the very top of India. The train runs there between the various borders and has to cross a great plain where the elephant herds range. On one occasion a young elephant was run over by the train. Are you paying attention, Arnold Nilsen?” He nods, and the sweat glistens on his forehead. “Yes. I’m hearing everything you say and more.” “Good! Because when the train was on its return journey, the mother of that elephant was standing at exactly the same spot, waiting. She attacked a train engine and twenty-five passenger cars. Because she was determined to avenge the death of her young one. She was determined to derail a whole train.” The Old One sits with him once more. “Who do you think won, Arnold Nilsen?” she asks. He doesn’t answer her immediately. And when he does, it’s to answer another question. “Perhaps that’s why a hair from an elephant’s tail is lucky,” he whispers. For a long while the Old One sits in silence. “I don’t know what sort of man you are, Arnold Nilsen. I only know that you’re to be careful with Vera and Fred. They are very fragile, both of them. Is that understood?”

  Arnold Nilsen moves into Vera’s bedroom in August, and he hangs all his suits at the very back of the closet behind her dresses. He lies down silently beside her in the double bed. He stares up at the ceiling. He smiles. Perhaps he thinks that now, finally, the green sun has risen high enough and is shining on him. He breathes deeply, moved and wondering, and senses a sweet and heavy taste in his mouth. “I think I can taste Malaga in here,” he murmurs. And Arnold Nilsen turns to Vera, and she lets him come.

  They got married in September, in the Majorstuen Church. Vera said she would prefer the ceremony to be somewhere else, since the same vicar as before was employed there. Arnold Nilsen peacefully replied, “If the wretch wouldn’t baptize Fred, he can hardly refuse to let us go to the altar! If he did, I’d haul him and his congregation up before the King, the cabinet and I don’t know who!” It rained that Saturday. The Old One, Boletta, Fred, Bang the caretaker, Arnesen and three bleary-eyed men from Coch’s Hostel were there. The vicar read the liturgy quickly and sulkily, and stared with revulsion at Vera’s white dress. And Vera resolutely met his gaze, smiling, but when Arnold Nilsen slipped the ring she had promised to look after for Rakel onto her finger, she bowed her head (to the vicar’s great satisfaction) and wept. And she knew then there’s no such thing as pure joy, and it’s perhaps for that very reason that we laugh.

  I was born in March. I came into the world with my feet first, and I caused my mother great pain.

  BARNUM

  Baptism

  “Barnum?” The vicar put down his pen and looked at Mom, who was sitting on the other side of the desk with me on her lap. “Barnum?” he repeated. Mom didn’t answer. She glanced instead at my father, who was slowly turning his hat with his fingers. “That’s right,” he said. “You heard correctly. We are decided on that. The boy’s going to be called Barnum.” Perhaps I screamed at that point. Mom had to comfort me. Mom sang there in the vestry. He took up his pen once more, impatient, and wrote something on a sheet of paper. “Is Barnum really a name?” Dad sighed gently at his ignorance. “Barnum is as good a name as any,” he responded. The vicar smiled. “You’re from northern Norway, Arnold Nilsen?” Dad nodded. “From R0st, Mr. Sunde. Where Norway puts the full stop.” I stopped crying, and Mom stopped singing. The vicar got up. “You’re perhaps rather more liberal when it comes to the giving of names up there. But down here we have our limits.” Dad gave a laugh. “Barnum is no northern Norwegian invention, my dear reverend.” The vicar pulled out a book from the shelves behind him. He leafed through it hunting for something. Mom gave Dad a kick and nodded in the direction of the door. Dad shook his head. The vicar sat down and laid the book on the table. “Is that the Bible you’re consulting?” The vicar didn’t reply. He read aloud. “It is expressly forbidden to confer a name that might become a burden to the one who is to bear it.” I started to cry. Mom rocked me and began humming. The vicar closed the book and looked up, his jowls taut. “The law pertaining to the giving of names from February 9, 1923.” The hat stopped turning in Dad’s hands. “But is it not the case that the name is shaming no one?” he inquired. The vicar had no answer to this. Instead he said, “I would ask you to find another name for the poor child.” Mom had already gotten up and was going toward the door. “He is no poor child!” she said. “And now we’re going!” Dad remained a moment longer. “This is not the first time the vicar has spited my children,” he whispered. The vicar smiled. “Your children? Are you the father of both?” Dad put on his hat. His breath choked him, and he could have cursed hi
s crooked nose. “There are other vicars,” he hissed. “But only one God and one law,” the vicar retorted. Dad banged the door after him as they left, but out in the hallway Mom began to lose her nerve. “Couldn’t we call him something else?” she wept. Dad wouldn’t hear of it. “He’s going to be called Barnum, damn it!” Now I started crying again. And Dad tore open the door of the vestry and leaned his head and hat in. “We had a neighbor at home by the name of Elendius,” he shouted. “It would have suited you better!”