The Half Brother: A Novel

by Christensen, Lars Saabye

  We went down to the Exchange to tell Boletta what had happened. Mom was silent the whole way there. She needed time. And I didn’t dare ask anything else. Perhaps it was best not to know. I knew that the Old One was dead. That was enough. It was my fault. If I hadn’t had all those thoughts about Dad being dead, the Old One would still be alive. I couldn’t cry now either. It was just as if my tears had frozen inside me and couldn’t get out. I held Mom’s hand when we finally stood together in the enormous hall in Tolbu Street. Everyone spoke in low voices. “Hush,” Mom said. But I hadn’t said a thing. We had to climb a wide staircase. Inside another room sat a whole squad of women with apparatus in their ears, pressing buttons in tables full of wires. We couldn’t see Boletta there. A few of them glanced at us before turning away again just as quickly. I got a headache. My tears were flakes of ice whirling around in my head. Mom spoke with a woman who sat at a table leafing through some great tome. When she came back, she was surprised. “Boletta must be eating,” she whispered. We had to descend the same staircase again. In the end we found Boletta in the canteen in the basement. She was standing behind the counter serving coffee. She had a white apron on. When she first realized we were there, she looked away and acted all embarrassed, as if she’d been caught red-handed stealing money from the drawer under the clock. But soon she appeared angry instead, and I thought that she must already know the news that the Old One was dead, since here everything was heard, and I thought that maybe she was angry with the Old One for being dead. “What are you doing here?” Mom asked her in a low voice. Boletta started moving abruptly and roughly. “What am I doing here? What are you doing here?” Now Mom had to say what she’d come to say, but she didn’t give in all the same. “Why aren’t you up at the switchboard?” “Because I’m down here,” Boletta replied tersely, and spilled some coffee. Mom was bewildered and beside herself. “But you’re employed as an operator, not a waitress?” Boletta took hold of Mom’s arm. “I couldn’t operate the switchboard any longer! I began to lose my hearing in my right ear! Satisfied?” But Mom was anything but satisfied. She was irritated, and it was just as if she were talking in her sleep. “And so they sent you down here?” Boletta sighed. “Yes, I’m down here now. At the bottom of the building.” Mom just shook her head. “How long has this being going on?” “For twelve years.” “Twelve years!” Mom exclaimed. Boletta looked down. “Yes, I’ve been working here since the end of the war.” I couldn’t understand that they could talk like this on that day of all days — talk about everything other than what had happened. “And not a word have you spoken to us about this,” Mom hissed. Boletta laid out a series of cups. “I have kept my fall to myself,” she said. I took Mom’s hand. “Aren’t you going to tell her?” I asked. Boletta laid her hand on my head. “It’s the king who’s dead, Barnum.” Mom drew in her breath. “The Old One is dead too, Boletta.” Boletta didn’t start crying. She just dropped the coffee cups onto the floor. They broke, one after the other. Then she tore off her apron and threw it onto the counter. After that we took a taxi up to Ullevål Hospital. We passed through endless corridors that smelled horrible before we finally found Fred. He was sitting on a bed in a room without windows. He stared at us and his eyes were shining brightly, like two spoons. Mom rushed over to him. Fred turned away. Boletta held me back. We stood together in the doorway and watched Mom trying to hug Fred — but he didn’t want to be touched, he pushed her away. Not long after that a doctor arrived and whispered something to Mom, just as the head teacher had to Knuckles. And I had to wait with Fred while Mom and Boletta disappeared with the doctor. I remember Boletta saying something about the Old One having been sent to the basement too, and Mom snapped at her to be quiet. I sat down beside Fred. We sat like that for a long while. The bed was hard and too tall and most likely uncomfortable to lie on. There was a drop of blood on Fred’s jacket, at the bottom of one sleeve. Had Fred been injured too? “Are you bleeding?” I asked him. He didn’t answer. An ambulance approached outside. A nurse rushed past. There was a picture on the gray wall — of someone pulling a net up from the sea. “Why is the Old One dead?” I whispered. But Fred was as silent as before. Fred had begun his long silence. His eyes were the reverse sides of spoons and he stared straight ahead, at the door or at nothing. I wanted to hold his hand. He clenched his fist and buried it in his pocket. I didn’t want to sit there any longer. I jumped down to the floor. Fred didn’t try to stop me. I went out into the corridor again and tried to find Mom and Boletta. The corridors were like the ones at school, except that here there were no pegs to hang coats on. First I ran down some stairs. I heard sounds coming from a room. I peeped in and saw a man crying behind a bouquet. I crept on and came to more stairs, went down those too. It grew colder. I was freezing. I wished Fred had kept me from going. I had to be in the basement now, for there were no more stairs. I couldn’t go any farther down. I continued through the corridor. Long pipes shone in the ceiling. An old man in a white jacket was wheeling a bed in the opposite direction. He hesitated for a second, but let me go on. The bed was covered with a white sheet, and someone lay beneath it. One foot was sticking out. I came to a corner. There were some letters on a wall that I couldn’t understand. Perhaps it was another language. I could speak another language, but only the sounds. Dad had taught them to me: Mundus vult decipi. Now I was lost. Perhaps I would never find my way above ground again. I wanted to cry, properly now — the ice melted behind my forehead and flowed toward my eyes. Then I sensed it — another smell, a hint of sweetness — Mom’s perfume. I ran in that direction, the direction of Mom’s perfume, Mom’s smell; and it grew stronger and stronger, as if she were leading me the last part of the way, until at length I came to a standstill outside a wide door that wasn’t shut. I looked in. Mom and Boletta were standing there, one on each side of a table with shiny sides and wheels, and the doctor was leaning against a cabinet right under a light that cast a strong, black shadow over both my shoes. Mom looked up and saw me. I went in to them. The Old One was completely naked. I dared only look at her face. She had a pronounced dent in her forehead. I raised my arm and laid one finger on her lips, and her lips were cold and soft and my fingers sank down into her mouth.

  It had happened in Wergeland Road, at the corner of the park. The Old One had waited to go to the Palace to see the guardsmen hoist the mighty royal banner to half-mast from the balcony. She had wanted to say farewell to her Danish prince, her companion. The driver of the truck (who was on his way to the docks with pallets) said in his testimony that the Old One suddenly swerved out into the crossing and that he had no chance of braking in time. Witnesses of the accident (the man selling papers in his shop, and a whole host of customers who were in there to read the latest news) could confirm this, and they added that it was a miracle the driver had managed to avoid hitting the boy, who had run out into the street too. The Old One had been thrown against the hood and flung several yards through the air. But no one could say precisely what had happened in the moment the Old One let go of Fred’s hand and tumbled out into the street. And whether he tripped, got banged on the head, or basically just went off into his own heavy world of dreams that black morning. I’ve often thought of it subsequently, of what really transpired in those seconds prior to the accident, before the Old One lost her balance at the corner of Palace Park and landed in front of the truck. No charges were brought against the driver, since the police considered the pedestrian had acted “extremely irresponsibly.” When the ambulance arrived, the Old One was already dead, and Fred was sitting speechless on the edge of the sidewalk with his comb in his hand, and no one got another word out of him for the next twenty-two months.

  The church bells rang out between twelve and one each and every day before the Old One’s funeral. On the radio there was nothing but ponderous music; the flags hung at half-mast, and even the national team played with black armbands, and managed a score of 2-2 against the Swedes, having been blessed by the bishop. Mom and Boletta didn’t have time t
o cry any more. There was so much that had to be sorted out: notices, wreaths, hymns, sandwiches, cakes and papers. I realized that death was tiring, at least for those who were left behind. And they tried to get hold of Dad, who was off on his travels, but they found no sign of him, and neither did he get in touch. They paid no attention to the fact that Fred still hadn’t said a single word. I did. For each evening when we went to bed, he lay there dumb with the same frozen eyes open all night long.

  Dad arrived in the middle of the committal. When the Ma-jorstuen vicar had spoken in tongues and we who were there (those always present at our funerals, and they didn’t number so very many) had sung as well as we were able, the door at our backs was flung open loudly and there he stood, hat in one hand and white flowers in the other. “The queen is dead! Long live the queen!” Dad cried. Then he walked down the aisle, laid the bouquet on the coffin, gave a deep bow, sat down beside Mom who had flushed to her roots, kissed her, and pointed to the vicar. “Now you can go on,” Dad said. I turned toward Fred. Fred was staring at his shoes. Boletta was hiding behind a handkerchief. The vicar stepped down and took Dad’s gloved hand. “You are obviously a man who always comes too late, Nilsen,” he whispered. Dad stared at him hatefully and smiled at the same time. “And he who comes too late should not blame himself for it!” The vicar dropped his hand and hurried over to the coffin, on which he scattered some earth. I felt angry. I wished that Fred had stopped him. Fred did nothing. He didn’t move. His hands lay in a white knot on the Bible in his lap. I was on the verge of getting up; I wanted to kick the vicar and tear the spade away from him, but Dad laid his arm over my shoulders and afterward we drove down to Majorstuen in the Buick. Mom was beside herself. “Where have you been?” she shrieked. Dad shifted the pillow he always had on his seat and glanced over the steering wheel and got the low sun right in his eyes. “Where have I been? Haven’t I been working?” “For two weeks!” I managed to catch sight of the gray smoke rising from the tall chimney of the crematorium and thought that it was thus the Old One would go to heaven. Dad laughed. “It took a bit longer than I planned,” he said. “The speed limits are lowered in a time of national mourning.” “At least you could have telephoned!” “I came as quickly as I could,” Dad murmured. “As soon as I read the notice I drove here!” Now Mom laughed too, but her laughter was dark. “And crashed your way into the service like a clown!” Dad took a deep breath, and his hands slid around the steering wheel in their tight gloves. “Oh, I believe the Old One was well used to waiting. Or are you in the vicars camp today?” “Be quiet!” Boletta exclaimed and held her ears. “I have a headache!” Mom turned around toward us, for Boletta was sitting between Fred and myself in the backseat. “A headache? Really? You who’ve been serving coffee since the war?” Then Boletta started to cry, and Mom couldn’t take any more either; it was all too much for her, she was sobbing, and Dad swung into the curb and stopped. “There, there,” he said. “Today everyone can cry themselves out to make plenty of room for laughter. But would you be so kind as to tell me where we’re going?” We were going to the upper floor of Larsen’s. And I can remember that Fred and I each sat on a chair by the wall in a brown room; at the far end in the corner, there was a black piano with two candles on it, and the grown-ups sipped from tiny glasses and ate equally tiny sandwiches. Arnesen and his wife were there, Bang the caretaker didn’t miss the opportunity to be part of things either, and Esther had sweet things for everyone from her kiosk. That was everyone, and there were plenty of empty chairs. This was my first funeral, and for the first time I wondered if the Old One had been lonely during her life. “Why are they all talking so quietly?” I asked. Fred didn’t answer. Then Dad got up and silence fell around him. “I am glad I got to the Old Ones funeral,” he said. “She chose a grand time to die. The whole nation’s clad in black, the royal families across Europe are in mourning, and the Akershus cannons are thundering. And it has been earned. The Old One was loved. I dare say that she was also, now and again, feared. Already she is sorely missed!” Dad drank from his tiny glass and kept standing by his seat. Fred shifted his feet on the floor. Dad smiled, refilled his glass and stayed on his feet; he drew out this pause, further and further, until no one had a clue what was going to happen next. The silence became intolerable, and Boletta was on the verge of tearing the cloth from the table. Then Dad seized the initiative once more. “But what I will say is that I consider it disgraceful that the Old One let herself get knocked down by a lousy truck! She could at the very least have gone in front of a Chevrolet or a Mercedes! Cheers!” The silence lasted one more second and then we laughed — every one of us except Fred. Because that was the thing about Dad, that he could make people laugh; sorrow somehow didn’t affect him, it ran off of him like water off a duck’s back, and perhaps it was for that reason no one could quite help liking Arnold Nilsen, the man with the stuffed fingers in his glove. Mom put both arms around him and laughed, and they kissed; I felt a warmth and a goodness inside as I saw them, and from that time onward there was no more whispering. “Dad’ll sort things out,” I said aloud to Fred. But Fred just stared at his shoes and spent ages tying his laces. Mom let go of Dad, and he came over to us with two halves of bread with egg on them. I was hungry. Fred didn’t want one. Dad looked down at him. “How could this happen?” he asked. Fred sat there, silent; his bent neck trembled. “What?” I asked, my mouth stuffed full of egg. Dad sighed. “That the Old One was run over, Barnum.” He ate the other piece of bread himself. “Didn’t you take good care of her, Fred?” Fred looked up sharply, and I wondered if he was going to say something, since he opened his mouth; a thread of saliva hung between his lips. But at that moment Mrs. Amesen began playing the piano at the other end of the room; the only tune she knew and the one she had played every day all those years since the time when, because of a crazy misunderstanding, she’d been made a widow for two and a quarter hours. Gotfred Arnesen, the insurance broker, who came home that day to find his wife a widow, hid his head in discomfort and shame, and would have dissuaded her from playing there and then, but Dad turned around and held him back. “Oh, yes, now is the time of reckoning,” Dad said. Arnesen grew nervous. “What do you mean?” Dad smiled. “The money under the clock that we’ve saved, Mr. Arnesen. Our life insurance.” The broker shoved away Dads hand. “This is most certainly not the right time for such talk,” he hissed. Dads smile was even wider. “The right time? Well, we can certainly wait till your wife’s finished.” That took time, and the piano on the upper floor of Larsen’s wasn’t in particularly good tune. We sat there with bowed heads. And when she did finally hit the last chord on the keys, she did so with such violence that she managed to blow out the flames of the candles on each side of the table. And silence fell once more, because no one knew what to say or do, and Mrs. Arnesen herself just kept sitting as if she’d been glued to the piano seat, there between the smoke from the black wicks, until Dad finally raised his arms aloft. “Bravo!” he cried. “Bravo! I envy you for each and every one of your ten fine fingers!” Now we could all applaud, while Arnesen offered his thanks and followed his wife out. After that I fell asleep, and Dad carried me home. I think I dreamed that the Old One stood and waved from the Palace balcony; it was raining and she had almost no clothes on, and it was as if all color ran from her. When I woke up, the church bells had stopped ringing, Dad went to fetch the Buick from outside the upper floor of Larsen’s, and Fred was asleep with his eyes open. I stole over to his bed, across the white line, and woke him up. “What have you dreamed?” I whispered. But Fred made no answer, not yet — it would be a long time before he replied, and when he finally did, I would no longer remember what the question had been. I went in to join Boletta and Mom instead. I tried to sense whether the world had changed now that the Old One was dead, and I hoped it had because I couldn’t bear it if you died and everything just went on as before as if you hadn’t been noticed. I stopped by the bedroom. Mom and Boletta were tidying, they were tidying the Old One’s
things. I almost felt relieved. The world had changed after all, and things could never be the same again, at least not in our apartment in Church Road. “Now there’ll be more room,” I said. Mom turned sharply, tight-lipped, but Boletta dropped what she had in her hands — a long, thin dress with a flower in the middle — held me, and smiled between her wrinkles. “That’s quite right, Barnum. That’s why we humans die. To make more room.” “Is it?” Boletta sat down on the bed. “Yes, it is indeed,” she said. “Because otherwise there wouldn’t have been room for anyone in the end, and what would we have done then?” Boletta’s face was still and leaden for a time. I was disappointed — death had to mean more than this, more than cleaning and a game of musical chairs. Were things such that we got thrown out of the world when it began to get too cramped? Was death just a grumpy janitor who chased us out of the playground? Boletta got up again. “And now I’ve moved forward in the line,” she said. “Next time it’ll be my turn.” Mom stamped her foot. “I forbid you to talk like that!” she hissed. Boletta laughed. “Ill talk exactly as I please, just as long as I mean what I say!” She picked up the dress from the floor; the long, narrow dress with its flower — she held it up in front of her and danced across the floor humming a tune I didn’t know. Then Mom turned too, smiled, and joined in the humming of that slow song that sounded so strange and sad but familiar nonetheless. Soon I could whistle it too, and I became aware of the sweet scent of Malaga that was everywhere. I breathed deeply and whistled, dizzy and bewildered and happy. That day after the Old One’s funeral. All at once Mom stopped. Boletta fell silent too. I was the only one whistling. “Fred,” Mom whispered. I turned around. It was as if my mouth withered away. It was Fred. He was wearing the clothes he’d had on the previous day: the black suit that was far too broad for him and the white shirt. I thought that at last he was going to say something. Then he just turned away and left. Mom sprang after him. Boletta held me back. Shortly afterward we heard the door slamming. Mom came back and went on nonchalantly clearing drawers, cases, boxes — everywhere the Old One had kept her things. “Did he say anything?” Boletta asked. Mom just shook her head without looking at her. Boletta sighed and opened yet another closet. The sound of clothes hangers clashing together was something I couldn’t stand — I had to cover my ears. I don’t know why but I just couldn’t bear it; the clashing hangers as Boletta sorted through the thin dresses. Since that time, I’ve never been able to stand that sound either; whenever I’m staying in a hotel, I put my clothes over a chair instead, or else throw them on the floor or lay them on the bed. Because as soon as I hear the noise of clothes hangers in a cramped wardrobe, I feel again the touch of the Old One’s soft, cold lips against my fingers, as if I have disturbed a great silence. I ran over to the window. Fred disappeared between the buildings on the other side of the road without turning around a single time. It had rained during the night. The sidewalks were glistening. The leaves were thick in the gutters. The pale light hung trembling like a veil in the air. Where did I stand in the line? Certainly I was behind Fred in the long line, and in front of him were Mom, Dad and Boletta, and we never stood still; the whole time we got closer, and one of us would perhaps be wrenched out of the line before our time. And behind us the unenlightened pushed and shoved because they imagined it was all about getting there as quickly as possible. ... I couldn’t bear to think about it any longer. “Can I help?” I asked. Mom leaned against the bedpost and nodded. I got to clean the bedside table. I didn’t like the dentures in their glass of water, as if teeth were all that were left of the Old One — the inside of a mouth, a smile. The potty on the floor was empty, mercifully. But when I lifted the Bible she also had lying on her bedside table for safety’s sake, something fell out — a picture, probably a clipping from a magazine or a newspaper, since it was thin and curled at the edges. Slowly I read what was written underneath. The dreaded Ravensbrück camp. Eventually the concentration camp became too crowded, and some no longer even had any prison garb. An emaciated girl, almost transparent, a shadow — was sitting beside a woman who had to be dead. “What is it, Barnum?” Mom came over to me. And when I gave her the picture, she sank down onto the bed and her hands shook. Boletta had to see it too, and she quickly hid her face in her hands. “Why did she never show it to me?” Mom whispered. Boletta sat down beside her. “Because there are many different ways of caring,” she said, her voice equally low. Mom bowed her head and wept. “I always knew. But still I didn’t know for sure until now.” Boletta put her arm around her. Mom dropped the picture, and I picked it up again. I saw the dead in the arms of the dying — their visages and over-large eyes staring at me. The dark girl who wouldn’t take her gaze away — perhaps she was only seconds from her own death. Perhaps he who took her picture was her executioner too; perhaps he was holding a sword or a pistol in one hand and the camera in the other. I knew many nights would elapse before I got any sleep again. A fearful thought struck me, that I would never sleep properly again while these faces stared at me from every vantage point in the darkness. And if I shut my eyes, they would be there just the same — those faces — for I’d seen them. “Who is she?” I asked, and could barely hear the sound of my own voice. Boletta took my hand. “It’s Mom’s best friend,” she said quietly. It sounded so strange. “Did Mom have a best friend?” “Of course, Barnum. She was named Rakel. She was extremely pretty and she lived across the way” I looked at the clipping again. I didn’t want to, but couldn’t help it. I was somehow sucked into that chill picture — the dead in the arms of the dying, an ordinary girl from one of the neighboring apartments, a best friend staring at her own executioner. “Why did they do that to her?” I whispered. Boletta considered this a long while. Mom went on clearing the Old One’s things — her slippers, her perfume bottles, her jewelry, her glasses — and everything she did she did slowly, as if she were doing it all in her sleep and were tidying up in a dream where she would never quite be done. “Because people are wicked too,” Boletta said. I didn’t understand, but nor did I ask any more. It’s these steps I hear disappearing out of my life. It’s Mom’s song. Now she turned around abruptly, almost smiling, holding out something she’d found in the jewelry box. There was a rhythm to her thoughts. It was a button, a shiny button from which there still hung a black thread. She gave the button to Boletta, but she had no idea either. They sat there quite still, staring at the button that was bigger than the top of a lemonade bottle. “Can I have it?” I asked. Mom looked up. She was pale, her cheeks sunk deep into her face, and for just a moment I thought she resembled the girl in the picture — her best friend, Rakel. I turned away. I didn’t want to see any more. “Of course you can, sweetheart,” Boletta said. “Since you’ve done so well at tidying.” She gave me the button. It was heavy and cold between my fingers. “Thank you,” I whispered. I went into our bedroom. I put the button in my pencil case. I tried to do my homework. The drawing of the king was still not finished. But I couldn’t pull myself together. The only thing I did was to cross out what I’d written underneath the thin, crooked figure — King Barnum. These too were things the Old One had left behind — a picture of Mom’s best friend and a shiny button with a black thread. I started crying. It was all I could do. I cried until Dad came home and we had to eat dinner. Fred’s place was empty. Mom was silent and barely touched her food. We ate fishballs in white sauce. Dad mashed his potatoes with his fork and for a long time was as silent as Mom. Boletta drank beer, and apart from that it was a dismal mealtime. Eventually Dad said, “I’ve been speaking to Arnesen.” No one responded to this. Dad grew impatient and spilled some food on the cloth. “Do you perhaps want to know what I spoke to Amesen about?” Boletta stretched over the table. “What did you speak to Arnesen about?” she asked. Dad dried his mouth with his napkin. “The life insurance money. We will receive a payment of no more than a miserable two thousand kroner.” Boletta pushed away her plate of fishballs. “Have you begun working out what the Old Ones worth already, Arnold Nilsen?”
Dad got up and all but overturned his chair. “Have you become so high and mighty, Boletta? I just think the Old One was worth more than a measly few thousand kroner.” “Sit down,” Mom said suddenly. Dad did sit down. Silence fell once more. I could hear the sound of the fishballs as they slid around the slippery plates. “Our premium has been too small,” Dad whispered. “We’ve always paid what was expected of us,” Mom said. Dad shook his head and turned to me. “Perhaps someone’s been tempted by the money under the clock,” he said. I looked down. I’d spilled food on the cloth too. “Not me,” I whispered. “No, but have you perhaps noticed Fred being a little light-fingered with the money in the drawer?” Boletta banged the table. She thumped it so hard the glasses overturned. Mom shrieked, and Dad’s face became as white as his napkin. And I was actually relieved, because perhaps now I wouldn’t have to answer. “You’re not always to blame Fred,” Boletta said. Dad twisted around on his chair. “I’m not blaming anyone. I’m only trying to find out what’s happened.” Boletta smiled. “Perhaps it’s Arnesen who’s cheated us?” she said. For several minutes Dad was pensive. Then he laid his hand on Boletta’s small fingers. “At least we could have done with that money” he said. “Now that you’re not working at the Exchange.” “I have my pension,” Boletta said. “And you’re welcome to borrow money if you need it.” Dad got up slowly and left the table, without so much as uttering a single word. Mom groaned. “You didn’t have to say that,” she breathed. Boletta rested her head in her hands. “Arnold Nilsen is a shopkeeper from head to foot. I can’t abide all this money talk!” Now Mom left the table too. I remained where I was. The fishballs had gone cold. The white sauce was congealing around the fork. “Don’t listen to all we grown-ups say” Boletta said. “All right. I won’t.” Boletta chuckled: “But you have to listen to me when I tell you that you’re not always to listen to all we say.” Boletta had had two glasses of beer. Maybe that was the reason she was talking like this. “All right,” I said. Boletta brought her chair a bit closer. “Has Fred said anything to you?” “No. About what?” “I’d so like to know what they were talking about before the Old One died, Barnum.” “He hasn’t said anything,” I whispered. I helped to clear the table. Afterward I dried while Boletta washed, and then I waited for Fred. He came in after I’d gone to sleep. All of a sudden he was sitting there on his bed. I could just make him out in the dark. It was his eyes I could see most clearly I didn’t dare turn on the light. “What were you talking to the Old One about?” I asked him. The eyes disappeared. He didn’t reply. I got my pencil case from my school bag and carefully laid the heavy button in his hand. The eyes became visible once more. “It’s the Old One’s button,” I whispered. Fred turned on the light. He stared at the button and closed his hand. “You can have it if you want,” I told him. I thought he was going to say something, but then he just dropped the button on the floor. I had to crawl under the bed to find it, and Fred switched off the light. He continued his long silence. No one paid any attention to it at first apart from me, because Fred had never been particularly talkative to begin with, in fact quite the opposite. He spoke little, and reluctantly. He wasn’t someone with words on his side. Words were topsy-turvy inside him, and letters often came out in the wrong order. Fred wrote the world’s shortest compositions — that was if he handed them in to begin with. He got the lowest grades in Norwegian without fail, and once he got nothing at all. At recess, he stood facing the wall. No one ever went over to him, though I could see myself that the girls took secret peeks at him and went past arm in arm with hopeful smiles. I so much wanted to be proud of Fred. One day someone had written the word bastard on the shed wall. The janitor took about two hours to wash it off and there was a good deal of a rumpus, but nobody got caught. The following Monday, Aslak came to school with sunglasses on, although it was raining. One eye was dark blue and hung in a fat bulge beneath his forehead. Aslak said he’d bumped into a door and got the lock in his eye. There weren’t many who believed the tale (except for the teachers). Still Fred stood silent by the wall. I went over to him. He didn’t turn around. Aslak, Hamster and Preben sat on the railing behind the tram stop following everything. “Shall we go home?” I asked. We went home. I walked on one sidewalk. Fred walked on the other. Esther leaned out of her kiosk and stuck some sugar candy wrapped in crackling sandwich paper deep in my pocket. “Share it with your brother,” she told me, and drew her hand through my curls. But Fred had disappeared ages ago; Fred never waited, he was off around the corner or away behind the church — I don’t know, he could vanish in an inkling, before I’d so much as had a suck of sugar candy. I was left standing there all on my own. It was as though the only thing that remained of him was a slim shadow on the sidewalk, a shadow that Bang the caretaker would have to sweep up with his push broom and carry off to the trash cans. Fred usually didn’t come home until after I’d gone to bed. Sometimes Boletta came in later still. She took her time finding the way between bathroom and bedroom, and the following day she’d have a headache and Mom would be testy and on her guard. “Have you been at the North Pole again?” she’d whisper, her mouth straight as a ruler. She said it like that, Have you been at the North Pole again, and I became equally perturbed each time she did. For I had a vision of Boletta struggling through ice and wind and cold, and perhaps not making it; and I didn’t understand what she wanted with the North Pole anyway — was she searching for something there? “Why does Boletta go to the North Pole?” I asked Fred that same evening. But Fred didn’t say anything. It began to snow one Friday in the middle of November. I lay and listened to the growing silence. Then it was suddenly broken. Mrs. Arnesen was playing the piano — but it was a new tune, and not only that, she played a whole series of pieces. It was like a complete concert, and afterward everyone around the yard opened their windows and applauded; even Bang the caretaker straightened his back, leaned on his snow shovel and clapped. And the following Sunday we saw Gotfred Arnesen going for a walk down Church Road with his wife; they were off to church and she wore a great shiny fur, which made all the heads turn (particularly those of the Fagerborg ladies). They shook their heads — amazed, suspicious and envious — and there was talk and plenty of it in private about that fur in the days that followed. A goodly number of men had to work out just what a fur like that would cost if one were to pay for it in installments over a couple of years. “What do you want for Christmas?” Dad asked. “A fur coat,” Mom answered. Dad got up and went toward the door, trying to clench the fist of his damaged hand. “I think our dear Arnesen must be in sore need of forgiveness when he goes to church and it’s eighteen below!” Mom wasn’t going to let that pass. “That was why his wife was wearing the fur,” she said. “Because it was cold!” “But it’s warm enough in church!” Dad protested. Mom sighed. “You’re just envious.” Dad roared with laughter. “Do you really think I’d march around in a wild animal with buttons like that?” Now it was Mom’s turn to laugh. “You’re envious of Arnesen, who can afford to give his wife gifts!” Dad thumped his damaged fist against the door. “At the cost of our insurance money!” He was gone for two days. Mom turned to Fred. He was sitting by the stove with his hands on his lap. “What do you want?” she inquired. But Fred said nothing. Mom asked a second time. And Fred maintained his silence. “If you don’t want anything, you don’t need to get anything,” Mom told him. “Let the boy be,” Boletta murmured, and went to the North Pole. Mom hid her face in her hands and cried. My stomach hurt. My throat burned. I put my hand on her back. It was as warm as the stove. “Could we read the letter?” I asked warily Mom nodded. “Go, Barnum.” I fetched the letter from the cabinet and sat on the sofa under the lamp. I read, slowly and carefully, for the words were heavy, even though I almost knew them by heart. And while I read Fred stared at me; and there was something in his expression, in the way he looked — a darkness that grew and grew in his eyes, his smile. It was just as if he had changed in the course of those sentences, so that I all but lost the place in my g
reat-grandfather’s letter from Greenland. It was decided that we should take back with us a musk ox, and on the same day we anchored we found a flock grazing on arctic willow, all but the only vegetation to be found. The captain and myself and five men went ashore to attempt to capture a calf There was indeed a calf in their midst, but it was such that we could not come into close proximity. The creatures saw us — there were fifteen or sixteen in all — and they gathered themselves into a tight circle with their young in the center and began snorting and pawing the ground like wild bulls. We were forced to return on board, our mission unfulfilled, to the great amusement of the others on the ship. However, two bull calves were later taken (of which the one was dead), but it was at the expense of the lives of twenty-two adult beasts, since two flocks had to be shot to obtain them. All at once Fred laughed, and it was the first sound he’d emitted since the death of the Old One. Yet it was only when the class teacher phoned after Christmas that Mom realized Fred wasn’t just introverted and strange but that he’d actually stopped talking altogether. “I must insist that you attend a parents’ evening next Wednesday” the class teacher eventually said. Mom had to sit down. “Has he done something wrong?” she breathed. There was silence for a while at the other end. “Maybe you haven’t noticed then?” the teacher finally asked. “Noticed what?” “That your son hasn’t spoken a word for three months and fourteen days.” Mom hung up and went straight into the bedroom. “What is this nonsense!” she demanded. Fred was lying on his bed. He didn’t move. I was doing my homework. At least trying to do it. I’d gotten a ruler for Christmas with centimeters on one side and inches on the other. It wasn’t the same length when I turned it over. With this ruler I was drawing lines to resemble streets and crossroads, because the class was shortly to have a visit from a policeman who would give us instruction in traffic safety. “Now you’re to talk to me, Fred!” Mom shrieked. She shouted the words. Fred still didn’t answer. There was utter stillness. Mom sat down on the bed. Fred stared at the ceiling. “You can talk to me, Fred,” she whispered. That didn’t help either. Mom began crying; she shook him so violently that it actually forced him to get up. But then he did something strange. He put his arms around her and kissed her brow. Then he left. She just sat there, thunderstruck, feeling the spot in the middle of her forehead where Fred had kissed her. It almost looked as if she were trying to rub away a mark. Slowly she turned toward me. “Has he said anything to you, Barnum?” I shook my head. “You’re not telling fibs, Bar-num?” “No, Mom, I don’t tell lies.” She put her arms around me and felt heavy. “You couldn’t lie, could you, Barnum?” she said. “Now you said Barnum three times in a row,” I said. Mom gave a bit of a laugh, but not anything to write home about. Next day it was Dad’s turn. He sat in the living room waiting for Fred. “Come here,” he said. Fred went straight to our room. And I wondered if he hadn’t heard — perhaps that was what was wrong with him, that his ears had stopped working. A little later Dad stood at the door. “I hear you’ve lost your voice,” he said. Fred didn’t bother turning around. He just kept on staring at the ceiling. Dad went closer. “It’s best you find it before it’s gone for good,” he told him. And I saw in my mind’s eye Fred’s voice lying somewhere, in a gutter perhaps, or down a drain — calling out to him. But Dad refused to give up. “If you’re pretending to be skin-dead, you’re doing a bad job,” he told him. After he’d said that, there was silence for at least three minutes, until Dad cracked. “Speak to me!” he screamed, and stamped the floor so hard that the lines in my notebook wobbled and broke. “Let the boy be,” said Boletta. But no one would let Fred be. Everyone wanted to get him to talk. They didn’t manage to. Fred’s silence just grew outward — it infected us, as Mom’s silence had once driven Boletta and the Old One to distraction in the days when she was expecting Fred. Now he had inherited it. Now it was his. In the end it exceeded Mom’s. As Easter approached and Fred still hadn’t said a word, and not a sound had escaped his lips either at school, at home or in his sleep — he was sent to a specialist in muteness at the Royal Infirmary. There they attached wires to his head to measure the pressure in his brain. The muteness specialist speculated that Fred had probably received a blow to the head when the Old One was run over; perhaps he’d fallen or else been hit by the vehicle itself, something which could have resulted in bleeding that impacted on the part responsible for speech, thereby depriving him of the ability to speak. But in all the reports on the accident it had been concluded that Fred was not in the vicinity of the truck at the time the accident took place. And it was this that was so strange, that all of a sudden the Old One had been out in the middle of the street while Fred was still standing crying on the sidewalk. The specialist measured the pres- sure once more and affixed still more wires and electrodes. Fred lay on a wooden platform looking like a Martian. Boletta just sneered at all this science. “Fred was so frightened when the Old One died, he just lost his voice,” she declared. “It’s as simple as that. Hell talk again in the fullness of time.” But at least Freds muteness was given a name. The specialist described it as aphasia. And on the same day that Fred’s at the Royal Infirmary getting electricity in his head, a police officer comes to our class to instruct us in traffic safety. We had written take time to trust traffic in brightly colored letters on the board to please him. The officer has with him road signs that he explains to us, because without these we’re in trouble. We learn too how he directs the traffic at a crossroads and are taught that a bicycle has to have two brakes, a bell and a light. These are things we have to have, but gears, a bicycle kit and a baggage stand are useful too. The following period we all go up to Marienlyst, to the Little City with its streets, sidewalks, pedestrian crossings and traffic lights — just the same as in any real city — except that here everything’s much smaller, as if they’ve been out in the rain and shrunk. We eat our packed lunches and Esther waves to me from her kiosk, and for a time the rest of the class are envious because I know a lady in a kiosk full of sugar candy, ice cream and magazines. But that passes soon enough, and then it’s down to serious business. Now we have to put into practice what we learned the previous period. We’re made to stand in a long line, and the officer passes us one by one until finally he stops in front of me, smiles, and puts a hand on my shoulder. And I have to go over with him to the little crossroads. Maybe he’s heard about the accident involving the Old One, and it’s for that reason he chooses me. I know that you have to look right and left twice when you’re crossing the street. That was what the Old One forgot. A red light represents danger, yellow signals that the lights are changing, and green means that it’s safe. None of us is so busy that we can’t wait for green. That day the officer could have asked me any question he liked. “You almost could have lived here,” he says instead. He laughs and gives me a pat on the back. I look at him. I have no wish to live here. “Why?” I ask him. The officer bends down. “Why?” “Yes, why?” He straightens up once more. Knuckles stands impatiently on the pedestrian crossing. The rest of the class take a step forward. “Because here everything’s so small that it’s just big enough for you,” the officer replies. That’s how he says it, that here everything’s just big enough for me — and he laughs. Everyone laughs. I stand in the middle of the mirth, and the officer pats my curls. “But can you tell me what important things we have to remember when we’re crossing the street?” I don’t say anything. I notice how the others in the class are watching me. And I realize that in the wake of this nothing can be as it was. From now on I’m small. I’m the only inhabitant of the little city. My shortness, my lack of stature, has suddenly become visible. The police officer has pointed me out. I can feel the weight of all I don’t possess. “Answer the policeman, Barnum!” Knuckles shouts. But instead I walk away over the grass, away from the policeman, Knuckles and the class, away from the little city — and no one stops me. That’s perhaps the worst of it. I’m allowed to go. I don’t turn around. There’s no one at home when I get there. I measure my hei
ght against the door frame and draw a line with a pen where I reach to. I climb up on a stool and look at myself in the mirror. Not a lot of mirror’s required. And a pocket mirror goes a long way. And perhaps this is the first time I’ve really seen myself. I don’t want to see any more. I go back to my room, close the curtains, put out the light, creep under my quilt and shut my eyes. And isn’t it the case that everything falls together — all this that’s life itself — events that have nothing to do with each other but that are connected nonetheless in a strange order composed of coincidence, death and luck? As if the truck that knocked down the Old One caused a chain reaction through time, beginning with Fred’s muteness, the picture of Mom’s best friend in the concentration camp, the shiny button, the officer’s fearful words — and then continued with the Buick Dad lost, the course of special nutrition in the countryside, and Cliff Richard and the gramophone. Events I still know nothing about but that will soon take place and that I can’t alter, because I know nothing. And basically everything started with King Haakon the Seventh’s passing. This is my movie. And there are no living pictures. Just points, joined together, like a calendar you can flip through rapidly to see the rain turn to snow. It’s at this point I change reels — Fred comes home from the Royal Infirmary with aphasia, but despite the fact that his muteness has been given a name and address, he doesn’t start talking again because of that. He just turns around in the doorway and goes out again — no one knows where, but I figure it’s to Wester Gravlund, to the Old One’s grave. Later that evening Mom stands by my bedside. “Where’s the button?” she asks me. But I don’t answer. I don’t want to be any worse than Fred. I want my aphasia too. Mom bends down. “Barnum?” I clench my teeth. It hurts my mouth. “Are you asleep?” she whispers. I let her believe that I am. She steals out once more. I’m silent the rest of the night. Next morning I say nothing either. At school I’m equally quiet. During the first period Knuckles says I have to change desks. She points to the one nearest her table. “The smallest has to sit at the front, Barnum. So I can see you.” I pack my bag and set out on the long journey between the rows. I’m already what I’m to become — the smallest. I hear the new names for me whispered so softly yet just audible — gnat, pygmy dwarf — it’s not the last time it’ll happen, and there’ll be other names too, as if I didn’t have enough with my own name. I sit down at the new desk. Miss Knuckles smiles. She’s so close I can smell her. She doesn’t smell good. Here I’ll sit still for the rest of my life while everyone else behind me grows taller and taller, casting their shadows over me. “Now you’re sitting fine, Barnum.” I say nothing. I go home dumb. My teeth hurt. I eat dinner without saying a word. I’m on the verge of bursting into tears. And when I finally go to bed, more silent than ever, and the light’s switched off, I open my mouth with a deep groan and draw in my breath, as if I’ve been underwater since the day before. But a suspicion has crept into me. No one’s noticed that I’ve stopped talking. My silence is going by unnoticed. My aphasia is achieving nothing, neither good nor ill. I might just as well be dead. I manage to keep it up for two days. I’m sitting in the living room. Mom’s standing at the open door to the balcony, smoking a cigarette. “My pencil case,” I say. She turns toward me slowly and blows a ring of smoke that I break with my finger before it disappears into thin air. “What did you say, Barnum?” “The button’s in my pencil case,” I whisper, and stick my finger in my mouth. Mom goes out onto the balcony and waves. I follow her. Down in the street Dad’s standing polishing the Buick. Soon enough he’ll be able to see his own reflection in the hubcaps. The sky is shining on the hood. It’s spring, the month of May, a fine time — for the herbarium and for maps and plans. Mom stubs out her cigarette in the flowerpot and puts her arms around me. “Wouldn’t you like to go on a long drive in the summer?” she asks. “Where to?” “Where? You tell me, Barnum.” I didn’t want to decide on my own. “Fred and I can decide,” I tell her. Mom smiles. “That’s fine. You and Fred make up your minds.” I change mine at once. “Greenland.” Mom lets me go and lights another cigarette. “There isn’t a road to Greenland, Barnum. Think of somewhere else.” “Denmark perhaps?” Now it’s Mom’s turn to ponder. And Dad leans over the shiny car down below and shouts, “Are you coming, Barnum?” At that moment Fred crosses the road, and I look up at Mom. “Hurry,” she says. And I can see the happiness in her face; for the first time in a long while — since the death of the Old One. I hurry down, and Freds already sitting in the back. I get in the front, beside Dad, who twists his hands around the wheel and glances in the mirror. “Where do you want to drive to, Fred?” Fred doesn’t reply. He sits in the comer of the backseat, his arms folded. Dad waits, but it does no good. He turns in my direction instead and suddenly starts laughing. Then he goes out, fetches something from the trunk, and when he returns he has a large cushion with him, even bigger than the one he uses himself. “Here you are, Barnum. You want to see something yourself, don’t you?” He puts the cushion underneath me but it doesn’t make me any bigger. I get smaller; I’m not raised higher, instead I sink down into the red leather seat and Dad gives me a pat on the head. “Can you see fine now, Barnum?” I nod. All I do see is the edge of the dashboard and a sky that’s blue with fuzzy white stripes. Dad drives down to Majorstuen and turns right there, rolls back the top, keeps a hold of his hat, and continues up toward Holmonkollen and the woods. People on the sidewalks turn around after we pass and Dad delights in it each and every time. The breeze is warm and strong in my face. I have to close my eyes. I can see almost everything now. The sun fills every corner. An insect hits the windshield and gets stuck there. Dad wipes it away. But one wing remains. A car appears behind us. It’s a taxi. Dad changes gears and by the next bend it’s gone. “That was that,” he says, content. The road becomes steeper. We’re alone. Soon we can see the ski-jump tower and the blue lake below the jump. Dad brakes for a second and turns around. “You’ve driven here before, Fred. Do you remember?” Fred says nothing. Dad sighs, but it’s a good sigh. “That was a fine drive, even though it began raining.” He muses a bit. “That was when Mom fell for me, Barnum.” “Even though it began raining?” I ask. He laughs. “Then it was just a case of putting up the top and driving on indoors. Isn’t that right, Fred?” But Fred is still just silent. All sound has been turned off inside him. The taxi comes into view again, moving slowly “I think someone’s following us,” I murmur. “Now you’re fantasizing on a grand scale, Barnum,” Dad tells me. He glances quickly in the mirror and drives on; we don’t stop before we’ve reached the final bend. Once there, he rolls the car forward to the edge and it’s just as if we’ve parked on a cloud, and beneath us are the fjord, the city and the woods. Dad gets out and wipes away the sticky mark on the windshield. “Have a look in the glove compartment,” he says. I open the glove compartment. There’s a bottle of cola lying in there. Carefully I take it out. Dad has a bottle opener too, and takes off the top, has a long drink himself first before handing the bottle to Fred. But Fred doesn’t want any. He’s sitting in the corner of the backseat, his arms folded, and his hair has been blown back into a high wave. Dad gives the bottle to me instead; I take a gulp, and thereafter we’re quiet for a long while, and the blue, smooth skies slide away, driven by a mild breeze that makes the treetops tremble like torches. Dad lights a cigarette and leans back against the headrest. “Now we’re having a really fine time, right boys? Don’t you agree?” I’m the only one who answers, “Yes,” I tell him. Dad lays a hand on my shoulder. “It’s good when we men get little time alone, Barnum. Because we’ll never quite understand women.” “How much?” I ask. “How much what, Barnum?” “How much can we understand, Dad?” He drinks slowly from the bottle of cola and then gives it back to me. “Two percent,” he says. “And barely even that.” Fred clambers out and goes over to a tree to relieve himself. Dad goes on smoking. “Hasn’t he spoken to you either?” he whispers. “No, Dad.” I draw in the strong, blue smoke and feel a little dizzy. It’s good. Dad’s
silent himself for a time. He presses the cigarette down in the ashtray between us. When he looks over to Fred, who’s still peeing behind the tree, I swipe the cigarette end. “How’s it going at school?” Dad asks. “I’m the smallest in the class.” “That doesn’t matter, does it?” “I wish I could be a bit bigger.” Dad gives a laugh. “I was the smallest too, Barnum. And look what’s become of me!” I didn’t quite know how to respond to that, whether it was meant as a comfort or a threat. “I see,” I whisper. We sit on our respective cushions. Dad’s stomach has just enough room behind the wheel. His thigh is soft and pushes against my knee. “Once upon a time I knew the world’s tallest man,” he tells me. “And he was none the happier for his height, Barnum. Just the opposite.” “How tall was he?” Dad smiles. “There was much debate about that. But he was so tall that he couldn’t reach down to his own shoes, Barnum.” I laugh. That must have been something, not being able to reach down to your own shoes. Dads face is covered by shadow. He closes his eyes and puts on his sunglasses. And then he says something hell repeat time and again in the few years that lie between him and his own death. “It’s not what you see that matters most, Barnum,” he says, “but what you think that you see.” Fred finally finishes and sits once more in the corner of the backseat. It’s just as if a breath of cold air comes with him, as if his silence freezes our teeth. “We’re sitting here talking about life,” Dad tells him. “What would you like to say about that, Fred?” But he gets no answer. Nor is there any point in waiting for one. Fred is switched off. Dad sighs again, but it’s a heavy sigh this time. “Aphasia,” he says. “Does it hurt, or do you not really notice it?” Immediately afterward he laughs. Fred doesn’t. There’s still not a sound from him, and Dad gives up. “Once upon a time I rowed alone over the Moskenes whirlpool,” he says instead. “And the currents there are the most powerful of them all. It’s like rowing in the devil’s eye.” Now I’m silent myself. “But I got across all the same, boys. And that’s what counts. Getting there.” “Where?” I ask delicately. Dad lets go of the wheel. “Here, for example. You’re my harbor.”