The Half Brother: A Novel

by Christensen, Lars Saabye

  The Divine Comedy

  And we slip in to Mom. Dad leads the way; he’s holding a candle but the flame is barely visible in the sunlight filling our rooms. Boletta has made buns (at least she claims she has, though I imagine she bought them the day before in Majorstuen and has just reheated them and put an extra raisin on top for decoration). Fred and I each have a present for Mom. We stop by the door and sing Happy Birthday Dad drowns out the rest of us. His bathrobe cord has loosened. We sing a second verse. But Mom just remains in bed with her back to us and doesn’t even turn around. We fall silent ourselves. Dad grows impatient. “Vera?” he whispers. “Happy Birthday!” That doesn’t do any good either. It’s as if Mom’s asleep, or else she simply doesn’t want to hear us. Boletta becomes restive. “I think we should leave her alone,” she says. Fred’s pale, and he’s holding his flat gift in both hands. Dad protests. “Alone? It’s her birthday for heaven’s sake!” He blows out the candle flame with his voice, and in that moment Mom finally turns around. She’s thin and her face is gray and I can barely recognize her at all. Her hair’s all tangled, as if she’d never seen the inside of a hairdresser’s in her whole life. She takes us in with huge, dry eyes. Perhaps she doesn’t know who we are? Perhaps she thinks we’re strangers who’ve just broken in? I’ve never felt so afraid. I want to cry but don’t dare; I just let out one gulp and Fred whacks me on the leg. Dad moves closer still to the bed. Boletta catches his arm but he shakes her off. He can’t understand this. He’s worried and hurt. “Are you ill, Vera?” And Mom sits up in bed. “How old am I today?” she asks. Dad stops. He attempts a laugh. “Well, have you forgotten that too?” he says. “How old am I?” she repeats. I’m about to answer myself, but Fred whacks me even harder on the leg. Instead Dad tells her. “Today, my dear, you’re no less than, and not a single hour more than, thirty-five years of age.” Mom lies back down and is just a shadow on the bed. “And what have I got out of my life?” she asks. She answers her own question. “Nothing!” she says, and pounds her fist into the mattress. “Nothing!” I don’t want her to talk like this. How will we ever go on if Mom is unhappy and just gives up? Is she angry with us? What have we done? I clench my teeth until I feel it in my jaws. Boletta puts down the plate of buns and coffee. “Well, well,” she whispers. Dad stands paralyzed by the bed and attempts a smile. “Nothing? You’re exaggerating just a mite there.” Mom looks at him, and there’s a rage in her expression I’ve never seen before. “Well, tell me then, Arnold Nilsen! Tell me what I’ve got out of my life?” Dad thinks a bit. “First and foremost you’ve got two wonderful sons,” he replies. Mom starts crying. Then Fred goes forward and puts his present on the quilt. “Happy Birthday, Mom,” he says in a loud voice. Mom hesitates, and opens it with slow hands. It’s a breadboard. Fred’s made it himself in woodworking. At the top he’s burned in: to mom from fred; the letters are crooked and brown and still smell scorched, but not one of them’s out of place. Mom barely looks at it. “Thanks,” she says, her voice low. Disappointment’s writ large in Fred’s face — it’s branded on him — he swallows and tries to disguise it but doesn’t succeed. Dad pats his shoulder. Fred seethes and twists away. Then it’s my turn. I give my present to Mom. She opens it, equally slowly, as if everything’s a labor to her. It’s a napkin ring. “Thanks,” she mumbles, without so much as looking at me. And she puts both the breadboard and the napkin ring straight into the drawer of her bedside table and hides under the quilt once more. Dad’s worried. “Now you just need some bread and a napkin,” he says. There’s silence from the bed. “Now that you have a board and a ring, I mean.” He laughs loudly. He’s the only one who does. Mom looks at him, with the narrowest eyes in Fagerborg. “If all you have to offer me is your fake laughter, then you can get out!” Dad just stands there. He feels wounded. Deeply wounded. But he remains where he is. He tightens the cord of his bathrobe. Boletta’s gone for the Malaga and pours a generous measure, but Mom doesn’t feel like that either. Boletta drinks it herself, and I breathe in the hot, sweet scent that in a moment of giddiness makes me forget that it’s Mom’s birthday at all, and that she’s unhappy and doesn’t care for the presents we’ve made. “It’s not my laughter I’m giving you,” Dad says, his voice trembling. “Then what is it?” Mom asks, and doesn’t even look at him. Boletta pours more Malaga into the glass. But Mom still won’t have any. I turn to Fred. His fists are clenched. Dad goes even closer to the bed. “It’s not my laughter I’m giving you,” he repeats. “It’s your own. Because I make you laugh.” “Not any more,” Mom whispers. Dad shakes his head a long while over those words. “Shouldn’t I, who’s carried a suitcase full of applause through Europe, manage to make Vera Nilsen of Church Road laugh?” Mom sighs and waves him away with a small hand, all the fingers hanging down. I know now. She’s tired of us. She wants to be rid of us. It hurts right down to my tummy. It burns somewhere under my heart. And then Dad does what he always does best. Perhaps he’s waited for just this moment to risk everything on his last card. He goes toward the door, stooped and silent. Then all at once he stops and spins around again. He stands tall and snaps his fingers, as if all of a sudden he’s remembered something he forgot to mention. He turns the situation around. He turns all the wrongness of the moment inside out and wins the public over to his side. He makes it unbearable to endure. He magics laughter from melancholy. Oh, I wish Dad had said it in the first place! “If I can’t get you to laugh any more, perhaps you might care to join me on a trip to Italy instead?” There’s complete silence in the bedroom. We stare at him. He bobs up and down in his worn-out slippers and finds half a cigar in his bathrobe, which he sticks in his mouth. Even Mom’s restless and soon won’t be able to stop herself from turning around in bed. “What are you talking about?” Boletta demands. “I’m talking about magnificent Italy,” Dad replies. Boletta gives a loud snort and has some more Malaga. But slowly Mom gets up. “Italy?” she whispers. And this is Dad’s triumph. He’s put color in Mom’s cheeks. He’s breathed into her hair. He’s won her over again. He glances over his shoulder and looks at me, as if we’ve achieved this conquest together on the morning of her thirty-fifth birthday in August 1960 — with a breadboard, a napkin ring and an Italian dream. Dad puts the cigar back in his pocket and sits down on the bed. He’s filled with peace now. He has us in the palm of his hand. We are all tied to the same string, and he stretches it; he tightens and stretches it till it’s on the point of snapping, till Mom raises her hand to tear the rest from him physically. But he gets in just before her. “Once upon a time you came north with me to the island farthest out in the ocean to have Barnum baptized. And now I want to take you even farther south.” Mom’s silent once more. She has question marks in both eyes. Its Dads turn to sigh, not heavily but good-naturedly and indulgently. “Might it not be a good idea to visit Fleming Brant, the Old One’s necrophilic friend in Bellagio?” he suggests. Boletta stamps her foot. “He wrote her obituary, Arnold Nilsen! That was all!” Dad just laughs. “Ah, what’s the difference! What do you say, Mom? Are you coming?” “We can’t afford it,” she whispers. Dad just shrugs his shoulders, enjoying every minute of this now. “Maybe we can,” he replies. And he produces a packet from his bathrobe, as if he’s performing a magic trick, and when he folds the brown paper on top to one side, we see that it’s money — stacks of banknotes — and we huddle up, holding our breath. I grab Fred’s hand, and he doesn’t let go. “Italian lira,” Dad whispers. Boletta snorts all the louder. “It’s not worth more than an 0re piece!” she exclaims. Dad doesn’t pay the least attention to her. His attention is focused on Mom, who lifts one of the thin notes and lets it fall equally fast — worried, mistrusting, and back to her former state. “Where have these come from?” she demands. Dad realizes that he’s in danger of losing ground, that he has to keep up the momentum. He has to dispel this anxiety, remove the doubt. He has his answer ready. “This is the final settlement for the Buick, at long last, my love.” He says this and kisses her cheek. She lets hi
m do it. Boletta all but comes between them. “And how are you planning on getting to Italy? Are we going on foot?” Dad glances up at her, and his face is etched with patience. And now he manages to top it all. He surpasses himself. He’s on first-name terms with God Himself that day. “I thought we might drive there instead,” he replies. And he points to the window. We run over and tear back the curtains. And down in the street there’s just one solitary car. It’s not exactly a Buick Roadmaster Cabriolet. It’s a black box with wheels. It’s a Volvo Duett. And Dad has bought himself new gloves for driving, made of black leather. He puts his arms around Mom. “Happy birthday, darling,” he says.

  That same evening, she asks in a low voice, “How did you get hold of that car?” I lie in bed listening. I hear Dad clearing his throat and beginning to pace the floor. “I’ll make a long story short,” he begins. “Yes, you do that!” Now it’s Boletta’s turn to be loud. “Be quiet,” Mom says to her. “A friend owed me a favor,” Dad murmurs. “Which friend?” Mom demands. Dad lets out a peal of laughter. “I have many friends,” he replies.

  I can’t sleep that night. Joy renders me sleepless. We’re going on a summer holiday. We’re going abroad. I’ve been given an Italian coin by Dad to practice with. I say the word into myself — lira, lira. It’s so light in my hand and worth less than an 0re. And this weightless coin reminds me of Mom’s dark depression that morning; it’s the shadow over my joy that night. What can I buy with a coin like this? What’ll I do with it then? I drop the coin onto the floor and don’t even hear it landing. “Why was Mom so sad?” I ask carefully. But Fred isn’t there, and there’s no one to answer me.

  We left two days later. Dad drove, Mom was the navigator, and Fred and I sat in the back with Boletta between us. She was awkward and demanded so much room that we had to press our cheeks against the windows. It wasn’t much after four when we drove down Jacob Aall Street and out of the silent and abandoned city, where not even the paperboys were up. Our black box was stuffed with suitcases, bags, flasks, gasoline cans, sleeping bags and suntan lotion; we drove past the fjord that resembled polished linoleum, because Mom did at least manage to find the road to Moss. But just before Moss she got carsick; Dad had to park at the side of the road while she knelt in the ditch and vomited for quite a while. Perhaps it was because the Volvo Duett had worse suspension than a toboggan. In the meantime Dad felt that it was becoming a strain having to look at the map while driving at thirty-five miles an hour. “What’s the point of this!” Boletta exclaimed, and was equally reluctant. “The point?” Dad repeated. We were waiting outside the car. Everything was beautiful that morning, except for Mom. She was still down on her knees. Boletta pointed at her. “Don’t you see that you get ill traveling like this?” Dad lit a cigarette. “Yes, traveling’s strange when you’re used to a sedentary existence,” he admitted. Boletta went up to him. “Shut up!” she shouted. Dad just laughed. “I remember very well she got seasick on land too.” But Boletta wasn’t about to give in. “It’s a sacrilege to disturb the dead,” she hissed. Dad gave a start. “Dead? Is Fleming Brant dead?” Boletta was uncharacteristically aggressive. “I know nothing about that, Arnold Nilsen. But the Old One is dead, and we are not going to disturb her.” Mom got up from the ditch and took a deep breath. “Let’s go on,” she said. Dad clapped his hands, hesitated a second, then finally pointed at me. “From now on you’re my navigator, Barnum.”

  I changed places with Mom. I was the navigator. I sat beside Dad. He had to have three cushions to see over the steering wheel. I got to borrow Fred’s sleeping bag to sit on. I had a wonderful view. I laid the map of Europe in my lap and followed the red lines with my finger. We were off again. There had been a time when I’d thought we could just trundle our way to Italy (it was downhill all the way after all); that it was simply a question of crossing Ma-jorstuen when the lights changed to green, and that was it. Now I knew better. It’s both up and down, and there’s no shortcut. A navigator needs to know that. “How far is it to Helsingborg?” Dad asked. “It’s three hundred fourteen miles from Oslo to Helsingborg,” I told him. “But we’ve already driven forty-two miles.” “In that case we’ll make the ferry before dinner time,” Dad said with satisfaction. “And the ferry to Helsing0r takes twenty-five minutes,” I informed him. “Good, Barnum!” Dad slapped my thigh. “And how far is it to the moon, you jerk?” Fred demanded. Even Boletta laughed. We rolled down our windows and ate dry buns. We were the only ones on the road. A train passed over the empty fields. People waved from the last car. We waved back. The sun rose and emptied its light over everything, and the air was clear and mild. If God had seen us then, he might have thought the car we sat in was just a matchbox blown over the world He’d sent out into space.

  We got gas at Svinesund and bought Villa mineral water and Kit Kat bars in the little kiosk. Mom and Boletta joined the line for the ladies’ room, and Dad had to produce a whole bundle of papers for those on duty at the border. Then we were let through. We were abroad. I didn’t notice any difference, except that we had to drive on the left. There wasn’t so much as a bump where Norway became Sweden, and the sky looked exactly the same. “How far is it to Helsingborg, my pojke?” Dad asked me. Perhaps that was what happened when you went abroad. You immediately started speaking Swedish. And when we crossed into Italy, would we be able to speak Italian too? I did every calculation I could on the map. “Two hundred thirty-six miles, Dad.” I was still speaking Norwegian, as far as I could tell at any rate. “But how far is it to Göteborg?” he wanted to know now. I did my adding and subtracting of the miniscule figures written alongside the various roads on the maps. Soon I wouldn’t be able to see any more. My eyes were carsick, and I shouldn’t have eaten that bar of chocolate. “Eleven miles,” I murmured. “In that case we can eat in Göteborg, right?” My stomach was a spinning drum. I kept swallowing and swallowing. Borders and roads and towns and lakes floated together into one nameless zone. Perhaps I couldn’t cope with driving on the left? Dad glanced at me. “How are you doing, Barnum?” he inquired. “I’m sorry,” I told him. Now I was talking Swedish too. And then I was sick. I vomited all over the map, the dashboard, the steering wheel and the windshield. I broke in two. Dad screeched to a halt, Mom shrieked, Fred laughed, Boletta went on sleeping and a bus roared past blaring its horn. I fell down into the ditch at the side of the road and got rid of what remained in my stomach. My mouth, my nose and my eyes were all running. Every orifice was in action. And ever since, I’ve gotten carsick even thinking of figures or glancing at a map. I failed geography miserably and have never managed to pass my driving test. My time as a navigator was over — two miles into Sweden. Mom hung up the map to dry. Boletta got out some clean clothes for me. Dad washed the car and Fred shinned up a tree and wouldn’t come down again. But when I came to once more, he was sitting in the front with Dad and I was lying in a bundle between Mom and Boletta. I could smell the sea. I got up. We could look across to Denmark. We were an hour in the line. After that we drove on board the ferry. We climbed to the upper deck because you don’t get seasick if you can see the horizon. In the middle of øresund Dad began talking Danish. “Do you want some ale, Boletta?” he asked. But Boletta didn’t bother replying. She just turned away and went off into the saloon. She was becoming more and more difficult the farther south we went. She didn’t want to go to K0ge and see the house where the Old One had been born, nor did she want to go to the zoo and see the musk oxen that were direct descendants of the beasts that had been finally brought back to the King’s city by the SS Antarctic in December 1900. “It’s wrong to disturb the dead,” she said again.

  It was already late evening by the time we trundled onto land once more in Helsing0r. Dark was falling over Denmark. Fred had to use a pocket flashlight to see the map. We ate fried fish at a roadside inn. Finally Dad was able to drink his ale. Mom asked if there were any rooms available — there weren’t, but if we had a tent we were welcome to put it up in the garden. We didn’t and slept in
stead in the car. Once we’d stowed our luggage on the roof rack and put down all the seats, there was just about sufficient room for all of us. Fred preferred to sleep outside. Boletta talked in her sleep. I didn’t understand what she was saying. Perhaps it was her night language, a tongue only she could comprehend? Mom gently told her to be quiet. Dad breathed heavily through his nose; it was a wind instrument. I edged open the door and crept out to join Fred. He was awake too. I sat down beside him. The sky was bigger here than in Norway probably because Denmark was so flat. A Danish insect hummed by and left the stillness even more pronounced. “Why’s Boletta so strange?” I whispered. “Boletta isn’t strange,” Fred replied. “What is it then?” “She’s old, Barnum.” I loved it when Fred talked to me like this. I leaned my head against his shoulder. “Are you looking forward to it?” I asked. “To what?” “Italy, of course.” Fred was silent for a bit. “Wish we’d gone to Greenland instead,” he said. At that moment we heard a strange sound, a whirring in the dark, a wave that beat against us without getting us wet. Fred got up and started walking, in the opposite direction from the car. I went after him. We got closer. We went into the wave and stopped. A great wheel was rolling through the night and yet stood still too; or perhaps it was a bird that couldn’t get off the ground. It was a windmill. And a memory was reawakened within me, there where we waited in the depths of the Danish night — a memory that was invisible and heavy, outside my consciousness and inexplicable to me, and therefore not fixed in my mind. It was more like a scar, an imprint — put there in dreams — and something first interpreted only when I returned to Røst, years later, like a refugee, and found the sorrowful remains of Dad’s invention on the heights of Vedd0ya.