The Half Brother: A Novel

by Christensen, Lars Saabye

  Elendius looks the other way and rubs his forehead. “Just as well your fingers were made of sawdust or else you might have had a life on your conscience,” he mutters. But Arnold Nilsen laughs it off. “Go and get the strongest men you can find,” he demands. “I want the crate taken to Vedd0ya.” Elendius forgets he’s almost been finished off; he hurries away to find the right team, and soon all of them are standing down on the dockside watching the selfsame crate being taken on board the mailboat and transported over the sound to the steep, green rock whose wall juts up from the surf. And the islanders follow in their wake; there hasn’t been such activity in these waters since the winter fishing of 1915. But Arnold Nilsen grows anxious there where he’s standing at the bow. The wind is losing its strength. The wind is lessening. He’s able to light a cigarette without having to shield the flame. Finally they all go ashore and five men carry the crate to the highest plateau, and they don’t put it down before the sun is hanging in cobwebs of cloud and light above the horizon. The grass is wet and thick. The birds dive from their rock ledges, white and shrieking. The women remain standing down on the shore with the old vicar, watching their delicately balanced men with anxiety. But Mom carries me up to the top; she climbs with me in her arms and even Elendius looks on her with new eyes — this city girl used to her sidewalks and banister rails. And Arnold Nilsen is filled with a wonderful, passionate pride; he feels moved to tears, tears of joy, but he doesn’t cry — he laughs instead. The wind is on his side once more. The wind has just teased him a bit, played with the one who stood here once upon a time and swore he’d sell the wind that’s now blowing full in his face. And so they get there. The men have a drink. It’s time. Arnold Nilsen approaches the crate, reveling in every second, when he sees the women down on the shore waving to him (the same women, except for Aurora), as if all the dark years in between disappear in one benevolent, redeeming moment. Then he frees one side of the crate and drags out a creation none of them has seen the like of before. It resembles a scaffold with wings, a scarecrow with wheels on top. The men edge closer. They’re silent. They stare. Arnold Nilsen turns in their direction. Still no one says a word. Mom sits in the background, on the grass, and no longer worries about spoiling her dress. She’s silent too, and she rocks me in her arms. I’m awake and dizzy — everything there is too huge for my eyes — and I’ve often wondered if this sight of Dad out on the edge of the green plateau beside his fragile secret laid its imprint on the skin of my memory as an image I’d later develop. For that’s always the way I see him, my father, on top of Vedd0ya, there where he stands waiting for a rejoicing that never comes. Instead it’s Elendius who seizes the initiative. “What kind of creation is this you’ve dragged the whole way up here?” he demands. Dad looks at each of them, one by one. “It’s a windmill,” he says. But when he gazes out once more, toward the horizon and the sun that has fallen in a column all the way down, its neither an optical illusion nor a mirage he sees, nor is it the brandy that plays havoc with his reason. The sea lies still. Even the birds fall in disbelief. For the first time in as long as anyone can remember, it’s utterly windless on Røst. Arnold Nilsen waits. It has to change. But it doesn’t. The wheel on Arnold Nilsen’s lopsided windmill stands still. In the end the men climb down once more. Only Mom remains; Mom and myself. She sits with Dad, on the edge of Vedd0ya, in front of the windless windmill. They see the boats being pushed out and the men rowing their women home in the light and empty night. They sit there like that without saying another word. They wait for the wind. But it doesn’t come. Mom leans her head against Arnold’s shoulder, and I imagine she’s happy in that moment — she is in another world, and I am dreaming on her lap.

  The Name of Silence

  I’ll tell the story of a strange day. I was awakened by the Old One crying. I lay for a while listening. She cried softly and protractedly and what frightened me most was that I’d never heard her crying before. I got up. I packed my schoolbag. I had started school. Now Mom was crying too. I could hear them in the living room. They were crying together and trying to comfort each other. The school-bag was almost new and full of timetables I’d gotten at the booksellers in Bogstad Road. I actually only needed one timetable, but it felt good to have lots. Then I could make up my own timetable, and in the first period write dream so I could sleep longer. Perhaps Fred had done something bad, and that was why they were crying? I went out to the bathroom. He was standing there in front of the mirror combing his hair. He glanced at my bag. “Thinking of going to school, Barnum?” He stuck the shiny comb in his back pocket. “Don’t need to go to school when the king’s dead,” he said. “Is the king dead?” Fred sighed. “He died at four thirty-five during the night.” I smiled. I could have laughed out loud; I was so relieved — it was only the king who had died and that was the reason they were crying. I was about to run in to see them but Fred held me back. “Not so smart to go around laughing today, Barnum.” I thought about this as I walked the long way between bathroom and living room, that it was wicked of me to start laughing when the king was dead, and that I must be a bad person. And I went as slowly as I could so that the smile would be wiped from my face, except that somehow it had stuck on my mouth, my lips had locked, and I had to think of something else instead. I had to think that it was Dad who was dead, that he had crashed on a curve, or been hit by a train and crushed beneath eighteen wheels, and it was me who now had to tell Mom because she still didn’t know he was dead. But he had managed to whisper her name, and half of mine, before finally giving up the ghost. I was on the verge of tears by the time I came to a halt in the doorway The Old One sat on the sofa beside Mom, sobbing behind a handkerchief. Boletta was standing beside the balcony; she wore a black dress and was quite pale. She was holding her coffee with both hands. Aftenposten lay on the table with just one headline: The King is Dead. I couldn’t speak. My cheeks were streaming. Mom got up, smiling regardless, and enfolded me in her arms. “There, there, my boy. There, there.” I laid my head against her tummy and cried. “You don’t need to go to school today,” she said. “When the king dies everyone stays home.” “Not me,” I heard Boletta say. But then it was the Old One’s turn to speak. “Come here,” she whispered. Mom let me go, and I went over to the sofa. The Old One dried my face with her handkerchief, and it tasted sweet, as if it had been dipped in sugar. Perhaps that was how tears should really be, like juice, not bitter and hard like mine. On her lap was a picture of King Haakon that she’d shown me so many times I could memorize it perfectly. It was from when he returned home after the war and drove through the city in the open touring car, at precisely seventeen minutes past one, and passed the Lotus Perfumery in Torg Street beneath a billowing canopy of flags. The Old One’s visible on the left amid a rejoicing throng waving for their king, and drops have fallen onto the picture, black drops that have gradually rubbed out this moment of celebration. “Now you’re my little king,” the Old One said and kissed me on the forehead.

  I went to school nonetheless. I went with Boletta as far as Majorstuen. Autumn was just beginning. Bang the caretaker stood in a dark suit sweeping leaves from the sidewalk. It was raining on the Little City. The flags hung at half-mast. Esther had tied a black ribbon around the window of her kiosk, and she cried in there among the weeklies. The cars drove slowly and the trams waited for everybody. Boletta kept hold of my hand right up to the point where we had to go our separate ways. “Today there won’t be many people calling each other,” I said. Boletta wiped away a tear — a real tear, not like mine, which I’d just made myself. “The world isn’t always the way we would like it to be,” she whispered.

  At school the grown-ups cried too. All the teachers were crying. They tried not to, but they couldn’t manage, and in the end they just gave up. It was quite a sight. I thought that nothing could be the same after we’d seen them crying. Some of the girls stood in a huddle by the fountain supporting each other. I envied them be- cause they could cry. They were good. I wasn’t. I was bad. I ha
d never seen the playground so quiet before. Nobody laughed. No one threw chestnuts at me. No one called my name. It was a fine morning. It should have been like that every day. It was just the way I wanted the world to be — slow, quiet, and with no jagged edges. I would much rather have heard crying than laughter. The bell didn’t even ring. Instead we were led down into the gymnasium, which was set up with chairs; the wall bars decorated with branches and flowers. Just imagine it could look like this every time we had gym, I thought. Think if the king could die every night. First Class 7 sang “Between Buttress and Bluff,” and when finally we sat down I found I wasn’t with my own class but was sitting beside a girl I didn’t know at all. She had a mole on her cheek that shone. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. She moved to an empty seat right at the front and whispered something to a girl who turned around and stared. I thought I needed to go to the bathroom. Then the head teacher made a long speech of which I remember very little except the first sentence: During the occupation we wrote Haakon the Seventh’s name in the snow. For I’d discovered that Aslak, Preben and Hamster were sitting right behind me (they were in Fred’s class). They couldn’t do anything to me there. The king was dead. But when the head teacher asked everyone to stand for a moment of silence, Preben whispered, “Isn’t your half brother here?” I didn’t reply. Hamster leaned forward. “Didn’t he have the guts to come today?” Still I didn’t answer. The silence wasn’t up yet. Aslak breathed right in my ear. “The king isn’t everyone’s king,” he whispered. When the minute had passed, the head teacher summoned Aslak to the lectern. I thought he was going to be told off. In fact Aslak was supposed to read a poem. He had been the pupil of the year the previous term, had won the woodworking prize and had come in second in the athletics tournament, right behind Preben. The pupil of the year doesn’t get told off. The pupil of the year reads Nordahl Grieg in a commanding voice. Toils tired and heavy furrows, in his face are all his own. Yet the pain there is for others. Thus the face of peace must be. Aslak gave a deep bow, and after we had sung the national anthem we all went to our classrooms. Once there, Knuckles told us to take out our notebooks and draw the king. She herself sat behind her desk, and it looked as if her face was framed by the blackboard. But I couldn’t get out of my head what Aslak had whispered in my ear, even though it was the shiny mole of the girl who’d moved that I’d never forget. I raised my hand. Everyone looked at me. Knuckles gave a nod. “Was the king everyone’s king?” I asked. Knuckles’ smile was sad as she answered. “He was indeed, Barnum. King Haakon was king of the small, the great, the high and the low.” That wasn’t what I had wanted to hear. I wanted to know if he was king of the halves and the wholes as well. But now suddenly everyone had their hands up, and particularly Mouse in the back row, who had both arms in the air — the most eager in the whole class. Knuckles pointed to him. “There’ll still be the game against Sweden even though the king’s dead?” Mouse asked. Knuckles got up, walked between the desks, stopped at Mouse’s desk and twisted his ear around three times. “When the king has died, we do not think of soccer,” Knuckles said. “Our thoughts should be pure and honorable.” She let go of her hold, and Mouse’s ear unwound once more like a propeller, and he all but fell off his chair. After that no one had any more questions. Knuckles wrote in capitals on the blackboard: All for Norway. I bent over my notebook and drew a tall man with a crown and a red mantle. Underneath I wrote King Barnum. Then the door opened. It was the head teacher. We stood at our desks. The head teacher whispered something to Knuckles, and both of them turned in my direction. I thought Knuckles was a fine name. I wondered if men could be called Knuckles too. She came over to my desk, and I had to go with them. The head teacher went first. And down at the end of the corridor, between the coat pegs, Mom was waiting. She’s like a black paper cutout, seen from far away at the end of the corridor and in her somber attire. She was standing quite still. I started running. I was the only one running today. At last I stopped in front of her, and she crouched down, held my hands and looked straight at me. She had been crying. The skin of her cheeks was streaked. She smelled of perfume strongly and sharply — as if she had tried to sweeten her tears. “There’s been an accident,” Mom whispered. I closed my eyes. Mom laid her cheek against mine. “The Old One is dead, Barnum.” Knuckles put my schoolbag onto my back. I followed Mom out into the playground. It was empty. We were alone there. The drinking fountain was shut off. And right at that moment the cannons on Akershus boomed twenty-one times, and all the church bells in the land rang together. The Old One was dead.