And so Dad, the half son, has to go to the graveyard first, in order to come all the way home. He walks between Mom and the old vicar; pushing the stroller in which I’m lying in front of him along the narrow gravel path over the island, past the lighthouse. Behind us come all those who refuse to let Arnold Nilsen out of their sight, and Elendius is first among the last. The church warden comes running from the storehouse for the funeral biers and shows them to the right grave, which can barely be described as a proper tomb at all — just a crooked, white wooden cross stuck in dry soil in the weeds beside the dike. Two names are scratched into the plank — Evert and Aurora Nilsen. Dad sinks to his knees, pulls off his gloves and clasps his hands. The old vicar kneels too, and even he, who hasn’t missed much in his time, starts when he sees Arnold’s mutilated hand. “Death and baptism,” the vicar whispers. “You have come in sorrow and joy.” Dad doesn’t hear him. He just stares at the two names, written in the same writing. He gets up again. “Did they die at the same time?” he asks. At once Elendius is beside him. “Aurora departed in the winter of ‘46,” he tells him. “Evert followed her at Pentecost. Once the ground was soft enough to take them.” Arnold Nilsen nods. “Yes, we follow those we love,” he says, and begins to cry. Elendius looks down at all the missing fingers on my father’s hand. “No one could find you to tell you,” Elendius says. Dad turns instead to face the church warden, one of the boys he cut grass alongside and he, perhaps, who laughed loudest of the bunch when the scythe grew too heavy and the slope too steep. “I want a proper memorial to my parents,” Dad said loudly so all could hear, as he pulled on the glove with the false fingers. “I want a mausoleum built of nothing less than the biggest stones to be found here, and I want it to be filled with sand from the sea and their names to be inscribed in marble!” The church warden nods. Everyone nods. Because that’s the way it’s to be. At last the Wheel is to honor his father and mother. The wind gusts between the crosses. Flowers are torn loose and hang like restless bouquets over graves. “It won’t come cheap, a mausoleum like that,” the warden says. “Yes, and make it even more precious than that!” Dad cries. “And send the bill to Arnold Nilsen, Oslo!” People are beginning to drift from the graveyard in ones and twos, slowly and with heavy steps, for they’re curious to hear where Arnold Nilsen has planned to stay. Perhaps he’s thinking of moving into the Fisherman’s Mission with the vicar to make his confession, or perhaps it’s a camper with windows and a garden he has in his intriguing crate on the dock? Then Elendius, at long last and for the first time, wants to be the bearer of good news. “You are welcome to stay with me!” he shouts as loud as he can. And none of the others wants to be outdone. Arnold Nilsen and his family can stay with all of them. Arnold Nilsen takes Mom’s hand, moved, downhearted and yet uplifted. “No, dear friends. We will stay with ourselves!” Silence falls around Arnold Nilsen, and people look down, shake their heads and go their own ways.
It’s Saturday. It’ll soon be night, and night is without darkness and full of wind. The following day I’m to be baptized in the new church by the old vicar. My name’s to be Barnum. Dad points out the road back; he’s taken that same way so many times before, he could walk it in his sleep, even though telegraph poles have appeared now that might bamboozle him. It’s just a case of following the smell of the dry, skinny fish that will be collected from the drying racks and sent south before the Midsummer bonfires are lit — although the smell will stay just the same, like the pain of his lost fingers that never quite disappears. At the mill, they take the path along the length of the sound. Arnold Nilsen’s chest tightens. It’s a path that’s been seldom used in the past. They leave the stroller by the lopsided gate, and Mom carries me. She loses the heel of her right shoe but doesn’t say a word. There isn’t an ounce of shelter to be found from the wind. Dad toils on with the suitcase. “Should have made a suitcase with wheels,” he says. Mom doesn’t hear him. She hears only the wind and the sound of swift birds swooping on them and veering away so close she can hear the tips of their wings in front of her face. She steps in a hole and loses her other heel too. She feels the urge to cry to turn around — but she does neither. For where else is she to go on an island like this? She has to follow Arnold Nilsen home. And now he stops. Over on a low mound there stands a house. No, it’s the remains of a house, and perhaps even that’s overstating it — it’s the memory of a house. They go closer. The grass has grown tall and wild. The windowpanes are shattered. The door bangs in the wind. There’s a jawbone on the doorstep. Arnold Nilsen puts down the suitcase and hesitates a moment. The dog, he thinks. Tuss. They go in. Mom has to bend her head. She looks around her. The kettle’s on the stove. A clock has tumbled down from the wall. Arnold hangs it in place on the hook his father hammered into the driftwood they found on the beach. The hands of the clock slip and hang vertically down behind the dull glass; on the back of the figure 6 there’s a fly. He rights a chair. He picks up some fragments of glass he doesn’t know what to do with. There’s sheep dung in the corners. “We’re not going to sleep here?” Mom whispers. “It’ll be fine,” Dad says. “It’ll be fine.” With that he goes out, finds the scythe at the back of the house, sharpens it, and begins to cut the grass. Mom stands in the doorway with me in her arms, looking at this man, Arnold Nilsen, cutting the grass, cutting it for all he’s worth in his dark suit and leather gloves. He scythes like one possessed, and the tool is still huge and unwieldy in his grasp, but he refuses to acknowledge defeat. And Mom lets him go on, even though he’s ruining the clothes he’ll wear in church, and perhaps she thinks that she doesn’t really know him, that she knows nothing about him at all. Yet it’s not he who is a stranger that evening; she is. And Arnold Nilsen slices through the grass; he breathes heavily, he cries and laughs. And when that rugged bit of ground lies flat and new-mown, he fetches the dry remains of the fishing nets from the shed to bind up the dry grass — and the green sun has turned golden.
By the time he comes in, it’s already night. He has with him a bucket of water from the barrel, but it’s salty too. The rain here’s salty. The wind’s salty. I’m asleep on the hard bench. I have a strong heart. They lie down on his parents’ bed. There’s barely room for them both. Mom lies awake. She points in the direction of a door she’s been curious about, a tall door in the outer wall of the wind trap beside the doorstep. “What’s that used for?” she asks. Dad smiles. “That’s the coffin door, Vera. They could carry the coffins right out and not dishonor the dead by turning them on their sides.” They’re silent for a time. Perhaps it’s me they’re listening to. “I would like to have met Aurora and Evert,” Mom whispers. Dad takes her hand in his. “They would no doubt have wondered how I managed to get hold of you.” Mom smiles too. “And I’d have just said that you made me laugh,” she replies. All of a sudden Dad gasps for breath and crushes her hand with his artificial fingers, so strongly that it hurts. She cries out, but he pays no attention. He gasps. “There’s something I have to tell you, Vera.” He almost shouts and lets go of his grip at the same time. But he doesn’t say any more. “What is it, Arnold?” She waits. He’s silent. She thinks he’s just being dramatic. She turns toward him, amused, and sees him lying there paralyzed beside her, the sweat pouring from his face and running in black rivers from his hair. He has saliva about his mouth — froth, white foam — and his eyes are like brown glass, and broken at the bottom. Mom screams again. “What is it, Arnold?” And then it’s as if he wakes up, recovers his breath, and the darkness falls from him. He can see — he sees her, shocked. “Nothing,” he whispers. “It’s nothing.” He has no idea how long he’s been out, perhaps only a second. He gets up and has to go outside, alone, to get some air. He sits down on the doorstep and picks up the gray, smooth jawbone of the dog, smells it and throws it away. After a while Mom gets up herself. She stops behind him. He waits. Perhaps he’s talked in his sleep, said too much and revealed everything. He waits and in that moment knows that all could be lost. “What was it you wanted to te
ll me?” she asks him at last. He sighs. Only that — a sigh of relief. “You have to be rested for tomorrow,” he murmurs. She hides her face in her hands. It’s shining brightly from everywhere around, even the sea. “It’s impossible to sleep on nights like this,” she says. “It’s just a case of closing your eyes, Vera.” She doesn’t take her hands away. “The light’s too strong.” With that she goes in all the same, perhaps because she’s heard me waking. Arnold Nilsen remains sitting there. He looks at the wind. It’s never the same wind. The wind is a wide river that flows through his world. The boat lies down beside its shed, turned over on its side and decaying like some dead, rotting animal. He’s still trembling; there’s an echo yet in his body. It’ll soon be gone. There has to be a bottle somewhere in the house, a mouthful of brandy left over for Christmas. Arnold Nilsen gets up. He stands in front of the coffin door. Not that way, he thinks. No, not that way now. He goes around and quietly comes in by the kitchen. He pulls out a drawer and finds cutlery, plates, cups and tools heaped together — it must have been Evert who couldn’t keep everything in order after Aurora departed. And everything is covered in dust and salt that wears away all color, just as the island itself is being consumed until the day the sea rolls over it. But then Arnold Nilsen finds something he wasn’t looking for. Under the papers in the bottom drawer, together with the message he left for his mother on a page he’d torn out of his arithmetic book, there’s a card. He lifts it up. It’s the hand-colored picture of Paturson, the world’s tallest man. And on the reverse side he’s written a message to his good friend, Arnold, in May 1945. He writes that the Chocolate Girl is dead. A fresh tremor passes through Arnold. The card has been sent from Akureyri on Iceland, and has traveled to numerous addresses both in Norway and abroad before in the end coming to rest here, with his parents, on R0st. Arnold Nilsen secretes it in the old black suitcase, in a corner of the lining, and this card is the only thing he takes with him when we leave.
It’s morning. It doesn’t show. Day and night are seamless. Time has no edges. Mom has had some rest just the same — he’s let her sleep, with me at her side. He goes out. He observes that boats are approaching from the other islands in the vicinity; it’s like a whole armada — even the men employed on Skomvaer and their families are making the journey here this Sunday. Arnold Nilsen smiles. He’s on top of things once more. His hands aren’t shaking. No one’s going to sit at home when the Wheel and his fine wife from the city have come to have their child baptized in the new church. The boats toss in the wind. The waves are white around the lighthouse, and they break over the jetty. Arnold Nilsen laughs. The wind is appropriate and there’s more than enough of it. He washes his face in the salty water, shaves, and wakes Mom and myself with a kiss. “The pews in our church are hard,” he says. “Take a cushion with you.”
And not a seat remains. People are standing against the walls too, impatient in their shiny Sunday best. And there aren’t enough hymnbooks either this Sunday, and when they sing God is God though every land laid waste, they sing it faster than they’ve ever done before. The organist attempts to keep up with them for a while, but in the course of the second verse just gives up. They want to be over and done with it as quickly as possible so they can get to the matter at hand — namely what the Wheels little boy’s to be called. And that can’t be anything too insignificant when he’s made his way back after all these years in foreign parts, with the circus and then in silence, to let his boy be baptized by the retired vicar. But more than anything they want to be done with the sermon, the singing and the offering so they can find out what’s inside Arnold Nilsen’s crate, the mysterious crate that’s still standing on the jetty. Then at last Mom brings me forward, Dad hurries behind, and I’m the only one to be baptized that day. Some of the congregation get up on the benches at the back to get a better view. A hymnbook falls to the floor. The church warden pours some water into the font. Then a complete hush falls. And the old vicar is almost like a black sail once more in his robes and his collar, but he’s a sail without wind, lashed tight to the mast. For his voice is just as low when he dips his fingers in the water, the water that’s salty too, and lets it fall in drops over my head, and reads my right name so softly that not even Mom can hear him. There’s disquiet in the congregation. There’s muttering. Shoes scrape against the floor. And finally, as the old vicar’s drying my head with a rough towel, someone gives a shout and it turns out to be Elendius: What the devil is it he’s saying the boy’s to be called? Arnold Nilsen turns in their direction, and the faces are the same — the men with their hair combed back from their white brows, the women’s jutting chins and wary smiles, the children’s big eyes. These Sunday faces are the same faces he’s seen in every big top he’s been in, and he knows that if he can’t love these faces then he can’t love any others, and least of all himself. Arnold Nilsen stretches his arms aloft. “The boy’s name is Bar-num!” he shouts. “And now you’re all invited to the festivities!” I have been recorded. I have been accounted for. The church bells ring, and thus begins my life as Barnum; the party continues on the ground floor of the Fishermen’s Mission. Arnold Nilsen has ordered a mausoleum for his parents. Now he has no wish to be any less generous to the living, and tucks into every dish and every sandwich of the island population, who don’t ask for anything twice themselves. And in the medical report of 1950 from R0st penned by the local doctor Emil Moe, one may read that sobriety was encouragingly good on the island that year, basically because no one had the money to buy brandy. The exception was one Sunday in the month of June when wetting-the-head-of-the-baby festivities degenerated into a protracted bout of drinking, though mercifully the only damage was one sprained hand, some grazes and two broken dentures. Nonetheless the extent of the alcohol intake could be measured by the all too frequent visits to the district nurse to obtain the last rations of American orange juice. But the women swarm around Vera; the youngest girls want to hold me and are allowed to do so, while Dad stands with the menfolk who’re unbuttoning their stiff collars that itch in the heat and keeping an eye on the bottles being brought in. And Elendius has positioned himself between the two groups so that he’s able to hear what’s said in both places and doesn’t miss a single word. The glasses are filled and the men drink. “You’ve done well, Arnold Nilsen,” says the lighthouse keeper. Arnold Nilsen looks down modestly. “I certainly can’t complain,” he whispers, and pours out more drink, for the glasses look so terribly small in those huge hands. “But what have you done?” the church warden asks. Arnold Nilsen smiles. “I have done so much that there would barely be enough time to tell the half of it,” he answers. The men are very much satisfied with their brandy, but less so with the reply. “We’ve plenty of time,” the scrap merchant informs him. Arnold Nilsen remembers them even more vividly now, from the slopes when they scythed the grass and from the classroom — he remembers their names and their laughter. “Soon you’ll get to see something of what I’ve done,” he says placidly The men feel satisfied with this, because perhaps at last they’ll get to see what’s in the crate on the dockside. Another toast is proposed. Arnold Nilsen turns in Elendius’ direction and observes to his irritation that he’s creeping closer to the women. “Can’t you take your brandy any more?” he shouts. Elendius pads over, and Arnold Nilsen gives the inquisitive old chap an empty glass. “I’ll just give you a half since your hands shaking so much,” he tells him. Elendius smiles. “It’s you who’s the unsteady one. You’ve got even fewer fingers than you had before.” Elendius drains his glass and holds it out for more. Arnold Nilsen puts down the bottle. “Don’t remind me of the accidents that have befallen me on a day like this,” he replies in a low voice. Elendius is still waiting with his empty glass. “I remember all right that it was no accident when you lost your first finger.” “I lost the rest of my hand in the war,” Arnold murmurs and fills Elendius’ glass to the brim to make him shut up. But the brandy only makes him more talkative. “Yes, the war was certainly an accident for m
ost of us,” he sighs. “By the way why did you not bring your other son here with you?” Arnold Nilsen closes his eyes. Everyone knows just about everything here. He listens to the wind. He grows anxious. Should he lie? He listens to the wind in the flags — it’s there in abundance, and he’ll show them all right. Amicably he puts his arm around Elendius. “He is my wife’s first son,” Arnold tells him. “And he’s being looked after perfectly well by my dear mother-in-law.” “Was your wife married before?” Elendius quizzes him. Arnold Nilsen shakes his head. “But let me tell you this, Elendius. My mother-in-law isn’t just anybody at all. She is no less than the director of the Telegraph Exchange down in Oslo and the one who makes it possible for you folks to telephone and talk your heads off with each other.” He laughs at his own pronouncements, and now the men have gotten rid of their jackets and are starting to go over in the direction of the women. Vera gets up and puts me in the stroller. I’m tired of the girls who can’t resist fingering my curls that are already growing like a fine halo from ear to ear. “I didn’t realize that such distinguished women worked in the city,” Elendius says. Arnold Nilsen almost feels sorry for him. “So you see how little you know, Elendius.” But Elendius won’t give up yet. Brandy has breathed life into his curiosity — already his head is a dictionary of gossip. “Then perhaps your father-in-law has an even more exalted position?” he asks. Vera turns in their direction, and Arnold Nilsen doesn’t have time to reply. She beats him to it with her honesty “I don’t have a father,” she says, loud enough for everyone to hear her. For a few seconds there’s utter stillness. The glasses are empty again. Arnold Nilsen fills them and breaks the silence. “I am the only man in the family,” he laughs. Elendius hunches over his glass. “Well, well, you’ve just got it all, haven’t you, Arnold?” he says. At that moment Dad must have seen red. He lets fly with a clenched fist and the blow meets Elendius’ temple — but it isn’t Elendius’ wretched head that breaks, it’s Arnold Nilsen’s artificial fingers inside his glove. And before Elendius falls to the floor, Arnold Nilsen grabs hold of him, as if the blow had never been struck, as if his arm had taken it back — and the women don’t even have time to shriek. “Oh, and Vera’s grandmother is a famous Danish actress,” Arnold Nilsen says, and pulls his glove on more tightly still. “But perhaps you don’t know about her?” No one answers, and everyone’s stunned and silent. Arnold Nilsen gives a deep sigh. “Well, that doesn’t surprise me. She was an international star in the days of the silent movies, unsurpassed on the silver screen, her face speaking every tongue.” He fills Elendius’ glass to the brim, puts his arm around his shoulder and looks about him. “She was married to the renowned Danish explorer and saver of many a life, Wilhelm Jebsen. You do know of him?” The men glance at one another and nod, just to be on the safe side. After a time, the church warden clears his throat. “Yes, what was it now that he discovered?” Arnold Nilsen lets go of his hold on Elendius. “I won’t exactly say that it was he who discovered Greenland, but he was sent into the ice floes to find Andre. But he was lost himself and never returned from the silence of the glaciers.” Arnold Nilsen puts his arm around Mom and gives her a long kiss. After that he goes outside for a breather, and, standing beside the flagpole, puts his fingers back together. A little later, the old vicar needs some air and sits down beside him. “It isn’t easy for someone to come back,” he says quietly. “No,” Arnold agrees. “Either one comes back too early. Or else too late.” The old vicar nods. “But it’s better than not at all,” he whispers. They sit together in stillness for a time. The celebrations continue inside. Two women have gone to fetch their respective cakes. Young boys rush after them begging to be allowed to share a bit. Quite suddenly the flags hang still. Yet just as suddenly the wind lifts them once more. “You have been a good man, both to myself and to others,” Arnold Nilsen tells him. “I’ve neither been better nor worse than anyone else,” the old vicar mumbles. “But I know that you’ve been one of the better ones. You bought one of Paturson’s cards, and you didn’t hold me back when I wanted to leave here. And you’ve baptized my son.” The old vicar looks down. “It isn’t always the case that good things come from the good,” he mumbles. Arnold Nilsen doesn’t want to think about that. Instead he says, “Now, I want to ask you another favor.” The old vicar nods and waits. Arnold Nilsen closes his eyes. “I ask you to forgive me,” he whispers. “But what for?” Arnold Nilsen turns away and doesn’t answer him. The old vicar sighs. “Are you thinking of when you left your parents?” he inquires. Arnold Nilsen shakes his head. “I’m simply asking for forgiveness. For all my wrongdoing.” The old vicar moves closer to Arnold. “I have to know what deeds God is to forgive you for. He keeps a strict account.” Arnold Nilsen is annoyed, almost enraged, over this particularity. He cries out, “In that case I ask instead if God can forgive everything?” The old vicar takes Arnold’s hand in his own, feels the loose fingers inside his glove, and for a second shivers. “Yes,” he whispers. “God can forgive everything.” Arnold Nilsen retracts his hand. “Thank you. That was all I wanted to know.” At that moment Vera comes out onto the stairs with the stroller and looks up at them. Behind her stands a scowling Elendius. Arnold waves and starts down in their direction. But the old vicar holds him back. “But God would want us to ask forgiveness of our fellow men first,” he whispers. Then Arnold continues over to Mom, who’s waiting for him. He stops in front of her, drunk with the wind, the brandy, my name and all the words of the old vicar. “What is it?” Mom asks, and stretches out her hand. Dad hesitates; he feels her fingers stroking his shirt and he hesitates, breathes deeply and turns instead toward Elendius. “Forgive me for hitting you,” he says. “My hand didn’t know what it was doing.”
The Half Brother: A Novel Page 21
