The Half Brother: A Novel

by Christensen, Lars Saabye

  Mom quietly closed the door, and I opened my schoolbag and took out the broken ruler. I tried to glue it back together. But although the pieces fit, there was something missing all the same, where the edges of the fractures met — the dust of millimeters and the dust of fractions of inches. The ruler had become less than itself — it no longer reached to its own twenty centimeters and eight inches. And I thought of the meter that lay in Paris in a vault of lead — the meter of meters, the mother of all meters, neither any greater nor any less, but filling its own length with its maker’s precision. I stretched out in bed as far as I could and decided that from now on I’d have my own measurement — Barnum’s ruler. I liked the sweet smell of the glue.

  Someone came in. It wasn’t Boletta. I saw her in my mind’s eye. Boletta sitting among the brown tables at the North Pole drinking beer from big glasses with rough men telling stories that make her forget. While the beer brands somewhere inside her head and seals the memory that froze in her at the sight of Vera, her daughter and our mother, in the drying loft that day in May 1945. I’ve seen all this. I’ve seen it through the golden windows of the North Pole as one of the men slowly pulled off Boletta’s black gloves.

  It was Fred who came in. He was laughing. Mom shouted at him. Fred just laughed. Then she wept, and something fell to the floor and shattered. I didn’t wait to hear. I was asleep. I was asleep in my own ruler. Soon Fred went to bed himself. His breathing was quick. Mom was crying in another room. The sounds of the sweeping brush. How far into sleep is it possible to go before it’s too late to turn back? “Boletta’s dancing,” Fred whispered. “Boletta’s dancing now at the North Pole.” I woke up. “Do we have to go and get her?” Fred didn’t reply. And suddenly I couldn’t remember what I’d asked. Who can lift granny’s veil? Had I asked that? Who’s Fred’s dad? I heard Mom putting on outer garments and then the sound of her quick steps as she went downstairs. She was going to get Bo-letta. It was night now. I looked over at Fred. He hadn’t taken off his shoes, as he wanted to be ready to nip off at any given moment. “Now I know,” I whispered. “What?” “You’re one of us.” “Shut up!” I did shut up. The room smelled of Karlsen’s glue — so did my fingers. I grew dizzy. I had an urge to stand over by the windowsill. Fred’s shoes shone in the dark. If the house caught on fire, he could run straight out. “Shall we read the letter?” I asked him. Fred said nothing. I think he turned away. I didn’t need to light the lamp. I knew it by heart. I could recite it by rote. I breathed deeply. I send to all of you at home the warmest greetings, from here in the land of the midnight sun, together with a brief account of how our expedition has progressed thus far, since I imagine that it will be of interest to you to hear something of what we occupy ourselves with up here in the land of ice and snow. The land of ice and snow. I couldn’t help it. I got shivers down my spine every time; I got a lump in my throat and felt that gentle tug of crying — but they were good tears, it was a warm grief. “Can you hear, Fred?” I murmured. There wasn’t a sound from his bed. I shut my eyes and saw it all before me, the ship in the land of ice and snow. First the vessel herself She is of wood, built sturdily indeed, and encrusted with ice. “Shut up,” Fred said. She was constructed to be a whaler and her original name was North Cape. “Shut up, you boob!” “I’m reading slowly because it’s in Danish,” I whispered. Something banged against the wall right above my head. It was a shoe. Fred’s shadow moved around against the wall. A second shoe all but hit me. “You know why they said your face smelled of fanny?” “No, Fred.” “Do you want me to tell you?” “No, Fred.” “Because you only reach up to the girls’ fannies, that’s why. Are you completely stupid, or what?”

  Freds shadow stopped moving. I put his shoes on the floor. I didn’t sleep any more that night. I dreamed of Tom Thumb instead, the American midget who never grew to be more than 35 inches in height and weighed at most 53 pounds; he was exhibited all over America in the nineteenth century, and then came to Europe and met Queen Victoria and got lost in her skirts. When he ate dinner, there were never jugs of water on the table in case he drowned in them. It was said of Tom Thumb that God had put a veto on his future when he was just two, and that that was why he didn’t grow any more. That’s what I dreamed. Maybe God was angry or had got fed up after a while. At one time in the Middle Ages Jewish rabbis had tried to prove that the average height at the time of creation had been about 160 feet, and that subsequently it had just gone down and down. In 1718 the Frenchman Henrion picked up on this by creating a mathematical table showing how humankind had shrunk through time. According to his calculations Adam had been at least 131 feet tall while Eve had been about 125. But the decline had already started. Noah measured just 110 feet, Abraham was no taller than 29½, Moses a mere 14, Hercules just 10, and Alexander the Great only six feet. But God must have then begun to grow anxious, and at this point He sent Jesus into the world to put a stop to all this, and Jesus himself grew no taller than five-four, something that could be shown by the marks on the Cross.

  I dream that God has forgotten me.

  And I woke up, not having slept. Both of Freds shoes were gone. I got up and stood against the door frame. I wanted to see if I’d grown during the course of the night, but I’d stopped, stopped for good, and in the time that’s followed I’ve concentrated rather on maintaining what height I have and not folding up like Boletta when she comes home from the North Pole, her back curved like the moon over Majorstuen Church in October. I began to take extra good care of my curls; they lifted me — yes, my hair lifted me — and I was the first in Fagerborg to have an Afro, and a blond Afro at that. It seemed natural — I resembled a white poodle — but I didn’t have it long. In winter I wore an enormous bearskin hat, like one of the great Russian dissidents; I found it among the Old One’s effects. I’ve even tried to starve myself taller, and I haven’t turned a blind eye to cork heels and double soles. When affecting poverty became the latest fashion, I could employ thick-soled boots all year round, not to mention platform shoes. That was perhaps my greatest hour (not that I want to anticipate events, they’11 be revealed in good time, but simply so as to stitch my life together into one impossible but necessary picture) — fanny and platform shoes. And really it’s funny that I should have felt particularly taller in those lonely years — the time of my elephantiasis — when the rest of them were wearing platform shoes. I was still precisely the same number of inches smaller than them. But I’d somehow risen above the lowest height. I had my head above water and I was mostly alone, since those I knew and loved had gone abroad. I took detours and went by the backstreets on my wobbly, glittering shoes. All the greater the come-down when platform shoes were tossed on the dunghill of derision, thrown to the back of the closet and kept hidden for costume parties or Salvation Army collections. I was the last in Oslo to wear platform shoes, and if I think about it, this was my real high point, that glorious moment between two fashions when I took power and stood up on my platforms while the rest were in the process of climbing back down into their old sandals. But it couldn’t last. I abdicated. I fell. The king of platform shoes was deposed, and I dreamed instead that God would wake one morning and find twenty-four inches He’d forgotten to give humanity and pronounce, Twelve of these belong to Barnum’s ruler. Dad pounded me on the back once when he was in a good mood and said that it wasn’t height that counted when nature had equipped us as well as she had. That was what the doctor from the mainland had maintained after his meticulous examination of the Nilsen body. Just ask your mother, he said. I didn’t. But I did wonder for a while if it might be possible to amputate a bit of extra skeleton. I had read in an Allers journal that it was possible in America. They’d lengthened a Norwegian-American from Fargo by nearly two and a half inches by bolting a joint between his kneecaps and his hips. But he was never much of a walker afterward and had to sit down most of the time, so what was the point? As it happens he died of a heart attack — he bent down to tie his laces and died on the spot, according to the n
ext issue of Allers. How Fred laughed at me when the mood took him! Once he carried me on his shoulders down the whole length of Church Road and Majorstuen to the Colosseum Cinema. And I let him do it. But all of a sudden he put me down and said, “Do you want to change places, Barnum?” I was immediately frightened, because I didn’t know what he wanted to change, and before I was able to ask he’d left. If someone wanted to be really funny, they’d say that I barely reached up to my own head. Then they’d laugh themselves silly. Or they’d say that my face smelled of fanny. I seldom laughed. As a matter of fact I once met James Bond, but he couldn’t help me either. It was actually Sean Connery I saw, in the tobacconist’s on Frogner Road, the place where I went to buy Cocktail, which everyone knew lay under the counter together with Weekend Sex and Pin-up, But of course I couldn’t buy it anywhere near Fagerborg — I had to go as far away as possible. I waited for something like an hour out on the sidewalk before even daring to go in. I thought I was alone, but there was James Bond himself, and he looked a bit bedraggled too. He had thin, almost carrot-colored hair, which he probably hadn’t brushed for at least three months. He’d just bought a cigar that he was trying to light. I was about to go straight out again because I thought I was seeing things and my head felt odd. But it was him, Sean Connery himself, in that shop on Frogner Road, Oslo, Norway, Europe, the world, the universe. And the lady behind the counter, who probably hadn’t recognized him, leaned over the chocolate display and asked what I wanted. I couldn’t take my eyes off James Bond. At long last he’d gotten his cigar lit. He smiled at me. He had bad teeth in the bargain. The lady asked me again. I couldn’t get out a single word. I just remember feeling such disappointment that James Bond was so shabby. He made as if to put a hand on my curls. Then I ran — I ran the whole way home. After we’d gone to bed that evening, I told Fred. “I saw James Bond today,” I whispered. Fred turned around. “You been to the movies?” “No, I saw him on Frogner Road.” There was irritation in Fred’s voice. “You saw James Bond on Frogner Road?” I nodded. “He had thin hair and bad teeth,” I told him. Fred was silent a long time. “You did not see James Bond in Frogner Road,” he said in the end. “Yes, I did! In the tobacconist’s!” “What were you doing there?” I looked down. “Buying Cocktail” I murmured. Fred laughed and rolled over. “Good night, Barnum. Don’t make a noise while you’re doing it.” “It’s true,” I told him. “What’s true?” “That James Bond was there. Or Sean Connery.” Fred sat up again, and he was really mad. “Just shut up, will you, you dwarf!” “I did see him!” I shouted. “I saw James Bond!” Fred came a foot closer and smacked me full in the face. I fell back on the pillow and just lay there. As the blood pumped from my face in great gouts, it came to me that no one believed me when I told the truth, but everyone did when I lied. And once I’m in full flight I’ll trot out Humphrey Bo-gart, Toulouse-Lautrec, James Cagney — and Edvard Grieg, who was so small that he had to sit on Beethoven’s complete works to play the piano. And Mickey Rooney, last but not least Mickey Rooney, that unkempt little flea, who was still married five times to some of the worlds most beautiful women. We have the same blood, I explain, we’re the little guys and we’re nearest the gutter! Then Peder puts his hand on my shoulder to calm me down, as the women glance at one another speechless and the men make a getaway to the veranda. “Don’t bring Grieg into it next time,” Peder whispers. And sometimes, when from time to time I lean against a door frame as I’m waiting for someone, or am bored or nervous, without being conscious of it I lay my hand flat on my head and spin around to see if I’ve grown. But there’ll be no mark on that particular door frame, no notch with which to compare, and I close the door instead and go back where I was going. How long does a dream take? Who can say the alphabet backward in their sleep? I’m cutting my life, our lives, into pieces. I’ve broken into the editing suite with my silver scissors and afterward glue the pieces back together with my small hands, but in a different order. And forgive me if I have to lie, for a lie is just what one adds to make the broken edges that constitute the narrative’s ruler fit back together. And I state here that what I narrate always ends up being shorter than what’s actually been experienced. So I go back to that morning I was standing in the doorway, my face still tender, to see whether or not the night had borne any fruit. Fred’s shoes were gone. Everything was still. The first words of my great-grandfather’s letter lay soundless in my mouth. Loving greetings I send you. And this is not a flashback — just you standing in a room you vaguely recognize. You can just hear someone crying behind you, and when you turn you see a child and that child is you.

  I peered into the living room. Boletta was asleep on the divan, and the curtains were drawn. She emitted a small sound each time she inhaled. Her black gloves had fallen to the floor. I didn’t want to wake her. I tiptoed over, lifted her veil as carefully as I could, and kissed her brow. As I was about to go back to my room, I saw Mom standing there. “That was nice of you, Barnum,” she said. She was wearing a blue apron tied around her waist so I could see just how thin she really was. She was holding a gray cloth in her hand — it smelled sour and was full of the remains of the stew and other meat. I suddenly felt sick. I remember one particular Sunday when Dad grumbled about the beef — it was either overdone or underdone — and at that Mom slapped a similar cloth into the frying pan and dished it up to him with gravy and all. But worst of all was that Dad ate it — I don’t know how on earth he managed — but he cut it into small bits and no one ever saw a sign of that cloth again. Mom is like R0st, Dad used to say. No meteorologist in the world can predict what kind of weather shell have in the morning. “She’s asleep,” I said quietly. Mom’s smile was tired. “She probably won’t wake up until it’s passed.” That was the way it was. Whatever it was that came over Boletta had to go over her too. I’d like to have known what it was, the thing that came over her. “It’ll soon be time for you to begin dancing classes,” Mom said all of a sudden. “Oh, no.” “Oh, no? Of course you will. You won’t regret it either!” She dropped the smelly cloth on the floor, held me in my pyjamas and spun me around the living room — past the sofa, taking an abrupt turn at the stove, almost toppling one of the lamps and laughing out loud. She smelled of dishwater and perfume, and I could feel her sharp bones beneath her apron. I tried to tear myself loose, but then she peered more closely at my face and immediately became aware of something strange. “What have you done to yourself?” she demanded. “Done to myself? Nothing.” “But you’re all red and swollen.” “I have to go to school,” I whined. “With that face?” She put her finger on my cheek to feel. “You haven’t got mumps? No, you’ve had mumps. Thank the Lord. Let’s see if you’ve got a rash, Barnum.” I turned around. “I’m not ill, I just washed myself.” Mom laughed. “Yes, I’ll say. Well and truly. Did you use chlorine?” “No, soap, scouring powder and iodine. My face smelled of fanny.” Mom let go of my pyjamas, and her lip trembled as if she’d been shaken by an unexpected blow. “What did you say, Barnum?” And at that moment Dad came home. I saw him behind Mom — he came into the hall, pushed the door closed with his elbow — and in that instant, that second when he thought he was unobserved that Friday morning in October, as he put down his shiny briefcase, hung his hat on a hook between the bracket lamps, put his umbrella on the stand, got out of his raincoat, took off his shoes with a sigh, ripped off his stocking garter to scratch one white leg, and leaned against the wall — all in one fluid movement, without pause, I could see that his neck was bent and his back round, and his suit jacket was tight almost to the point of bursting. I could see the handkerchief in his breast pocket with his initials on it — A. N. — the drops of sweat on his brow and the hand that slowly drew the handkerchief (not all that clean any longer) to mop it over the wide brow of his forehead. But the sweat seems to cling like mold — he rubs and rubs at it, bewildered and enraged. He thumps his fist against his forehead as if that can make a difference, and now Mom turns around herself, but she hasn’t seen anything of what
I’ve witnessed of Dad’s homecoming. I cough, and Dad straightens up sharply, the handkerchief still in his hand, and he smiles. That selfsame second he smiles, flings wide his arms and like that comes toward us, as if the moment when he stood leaning against the wall thumping his fist against his forehead was nothing more than an illusion, a mirage. “I didn’t think you were coming home until tomorrow,” Mom said. “Neither did I. So I came now!” Dad folded away his handkerchief so I didn’t see where it disappeared to, laughed, and kissed Mom on both cheeks. Dad had grown even fatter. He got fatter every time he went away. The skin hung over his collar like whipped cream over a brimming cup. He’d stopped using a belt and just had suspenders now. Even his knees were fat. Soon he’d be as broad as he was tall. Finally he let go of Mom, turned toward me and winked. “What’s happened to your face, Barnum? Has Fred tried to spell it?” He laughed again, loudly this time. Mom flinched. “He’s just got a cold,” she said hurriedly. “That’s why he’s not at school.” But Dad had noticed Boletta now. She lay hunched on the divan, and it still hadn’t passed, whatever it was that had come over her. “I see,” Dad chuckled. “Lit de parade.” Mom took his arm. “Be quiet. Don’t talk like that.” “What did that mean?” I asked. Dad had to use his handkerchief for his forehead again. “Lit de parade. Quite simply, it’s French and means hangover. Shall we put a glass of brandy on her chest and see if she’s still alive?” Mom tugged hard at his jacket — it was all crumpled down the back, and the middle button had loosened and was about to come off. “Why are you home early?” Mom demanded again. Dad breathed deeply. He raised his damaged hand. He tried to smile. “Do you want me to go again?” he asked. Mom gave a sigh. “I just wondered, Arnold.” Suddenly Dad lost his head completely. He couldn’t take any more. “Shall I tell you why I’m home early?” he all but shouted. Mom nodded and tried to quiet him down. But it was too late. “Because the car broke down! It couldn’t cope with the drive to Italy!” Dad sat down. “Is it a write-off?” Mom asked carefully. “It’s at Kl0fta scrap-yard! I got two kroner and fifty 0re for it!” Dad got to his feet again. “You can at least say for a certainty that we made a loss on that damned journey” he murmured. “Because there wasn’t exactly much to get out of Fleming Brant.” Mom’s eyes narrowed. “So that was why you were so keen to go there. To see if he had money?” Dad realized he’d said too much, but it was impossible to stop now. “Yes, damn it! He could have been the king of Bellagio, for all we knew!” There was utter quiet. Dad held his handkerchief like a faded white flag in his hand. He had to say something more now. He mopped his neck, and somewhere away in among all the fat and sweat there was a smile. Some people used to say that I’d inherited Dad’s smile too and that I ought to be grateful for it. And although it was becoming harder and harder to detect Dad’s smile, I could see that it was one that served its purpose, because it made us expectant. It made Mom gentle and lenient, and it made him handsome and irresistible, as if that one smile raised him from the heaviness of his own body and elevated him above the banal distractions of everyday life. He became again the boy who wanted to sell the wind. “Guess what I was thinking about when I sat alone on the train in that wretched compartment,” he said. It was impossible to say, because Dad’s ideas ranged so far and wide that they rarely reached fruition but rather got blown away in bad company He folded his arms. He only just managed to do so. Now he was waiting for a drum roll and fanfares. He was waiting for himself. “Tell us, Dad! Tell us what you were thinking!” “Easy, Barnum. Take it easy. All in good time.” He kept standing as he was a bit longer. Mom took my hand. Then at last he went out into the hall and fetched his little briefcase. This he carefully placed on the living room table, and we took up position beside him, one on each side, to see what he had. Dad rubbed his gloves together. “Apart from thinking of you, something I do all the time, I have to tell you that I was thinking too of the Olympics! I felt Olympian and thought of the games in Tokyo — and figured its time to get into shape! And I decided there and then to start a new life. For that reason I stopped at Bislet Stadium and did a little deal with the steward there. He got a signed Jens Book-Jensen gramophone record. And I, ladies and gentlemen, got nothing less than this.”