The Half Brother: A Novel

by Christensen, Lars Saabye

  Mom vanished once more, and the threads of my stomach began entangling themselves into one giant knot. I had to concentrate on something else so as not to think of pancreatic juices, mucous membrane and intestinal fluids. Instead I concentrated hard on my head, on all the wires in my head that bound my thoughts together, just as at the Telegraph Exchange where Boletta used to work. I thought of the cerebrum, the cerebellum, the brain stem, the spinal cord, and finally of what I liked best of all, the extended marrow. Perhaps it could extend even further — yes, one night it could increase down my back and so push me upward. But then I got dizzy and had to sit for a minute on the bed, because it’s tiring thinking about your own thoughts. It would be like everyone at the Exchange calling their own numbers and in the end getting the worlds greatest busy signal, or just hearing their own voices calling around and around. And out of all this a picture came into my mind, suddenly developed on the membrane of spun thought, as if it was this I’d really been thinking the whole time — of the American Walther, who spun six times around the world and landed with a sigh, two minutes later, after traveling 142,000 miles, west of the Midway Islands. And perhaps he thought as he floated out there in his cramped capsule, and saw the earth growing smaller like a blue coin in a dark well, that now he was the only one in the world who wasn’t at home.

  But when Mom knocked on the door for the third time and was on her way in, I put my foot down and made up my mind. I would begin to practice now, practice doing the opposite. For that reason I didn’t put on clean socks, I wore dirty ones instead. I went to the bathroom and washed my face and armpits, but didn’t bother brushing my teeth. I was on my way. Fred should have seen me now. Now we were dancing to a different tune. Now we were dancing to a different tune all right, I said, and stood on tiptoe in front of the mirror and saw my curls springing up from my head like soft feathers, as if I were pulling myself up by the hair. Yes, indeed!

  Mom was waiting for me in the kitchen. She had an impatient expression, but her mouth was smiling — there was a kind of collision in her face so her skin was covered in skid marks. I sat down at the little table against the wall. Boletta was reading Aftenposten — she came into view every time she turned a page. I don’t know if they saw any difference. That didn’t matter, because I felt it, the difference, inside myself, even though everything on the outside was just about he same. I wasn’t the same person I’d been the day before. Freds words had made me a new man. I was converted! “No, thanks,” I said, as Mom pushed the dark, sweet blackcurrant jam in my direction, and she rolled her eyes, impatiently rolled her eyes and pushed it away again. But she rolled them all the more when I cut a piece of Danish cheese that had been going since about the time of the Old One’s death, and that smelled so foul it should have had a kitchen to itself. Fred said once when he was in a good mood (don’t quite know why he was in a good mood) that I could take the Old One’s cheese for a walk in Sten Park, but I’d have to take it on a leash so it wouldn’t run away. I laughed for half a week after he’d said that. Now I took a huge bite, my brain stem trembled and my guts were on the point of short-circuiting. Because after this I’d probably smell so awful that they wouldn’t let me into the Merchant Building on Drammen Road at all, perhaps I’d even be hounded out of the city and the country altogether. That would have been a joy to me. I chewed and chewed, and it was as if all the cheese in Denmark grew under the roof of my mouth, and my epiglottis hung down like a pendulum of blood sausage and pitched about in spit. It got harder and harder; everything became slow and heavy — Mom’s expression, Boletta’s fingers turning the pages of the newspaper, the rain running down the window. And I tried to remember my homework as I sat there and wondered when things would start to go backward. Why should we not drink with food in our mouths? Because then the food does not get sufficiently mixed with saliva. Why ought we not to talk or laugh with food in our mouths? Because then the food goes up our noses or down the wrong way. I had nothing to laugh about and nothing to say. I was reduced to silence by cheese. Boletta dropped her paper and looked at Mom. “Has Barnum finally begun to like Old Danish?” I nodded several times, even though it was Mom she was addressing, and in Mom’s face there was still the same collision — her expression didn’t trust me, but her mouth kept on smiling. Boletta turned toward me. “Girls like men to have strong smells. Strong smells and confident looks. But don’t overdo it, Barnum.” Mom laughed. “And if he doesn’t get a move on, I’ll have to write a note to Miss Haraldsen to say he was late because of Danish cheese!” “Her name’s Knuckles,” I said.

  But that was something Mom wouldn’t have to do. There was nothing in the nutrition book about not walking with food in your mouth, or even running. I got my bag and was out in Church Road before anyone could reach the window and toss my raincoat after me. Esther was opening her kiosk and had her hands full of week-lies, but she managed to wave all the same, and everyone waved to Esther. So I didn’t wave back, I just stuck a clenched fist in each pocket and walked on, my back hunched and my mouth stuffed full of cheese, toward Majorstuen. I was an inverted pelican with enough food in my beak to last the rest of the year, and I considered that if things continued like this I might be thrown out of the world too. Not just dancing school and the country, but the rest of the world in the bargain, and in that way most of my problems would be solved in one fell swoop. But before I’d properly thought this through, I was dazzled by the white wall of the church. I all but had to shield my eyes, blinded amid the raindrops, and I stopped by the church and unloaded all the cheese into the drain, and stuck my tongue out as far as I could into the rain to rinse it. Then I saw there was someone watching me, a man on the steps leading up to the wide door — he stood under his umbrella staring at me. His face was white behind the rain; his fingers too — he smiled with all his teeth, and around his neck he had a collar, a white collar. It almost blended with his soft chin, and all of a sudden it struck me that everything about this individual on the third step of Majorstuen Church was either black or white — his face, his umbrella, his hands, his collar, his teeth. It was the vicar who would baptize neither Fred nor myself. “What a witty little fellow,” he said, and took a step down as if to see better. “And what’s your name?” The clock above him, on the high chalk-white wall, where the Virginia creeper extended like thin, glowing wires, was already showing eight-thirty Soon I would be late. The vicar leaned over the railing. Now his voice was louder, though I’d heard him clearly enough before. “You dare to stand there and stick your tongue out at me?” The umbrella began to shake in his hand; it wouldn’t have taken much for it to be turned inside out and become a black bowl in which he could collect the rain. He smiled no longer. His teeth were hidden behind narrow lips. “You really dare stand there and stick your tongue out at me!” He folded up the umbrella and was already wet when he pointed at me with it. Now he was shouting in the rain. “Can you see your way to getting rid of that tongue of yours?” But I couldn’t get it back in my mouth. Only still more of it appeared. I hadn’t known my tongue was so long. I could even see my own tongue, and it was a weird sight that I’d happily have been spared. “My name’s Barnum,” I said, as clearly as possible with my tongue in the way “Barnum! Do you remember?” The vicar had to clutch the railing. “Yes, indeed, do you really think I could forget you? You and your wretched brother!” I smiled all I could and took a step closer. “To hell with you,” I said, and ran until I could run no farther in the direction of the Valkyrie, and didn’t get my tongue back in my mouth before I’d reached Vestkanttorg. Once there I had to rest on a bench. I’d stuck my tongue out at the vicar! I’d stuck my tongue out — every inch of it — at the vicar of Majorstuen Church himself! I’d sworn at him! To hell with you, vicar! Fred should have seen me now. He wouldn’t have believed his own eyes. But it was true, each and every word of it, and he’d hear it straight from the horse’s mouth. And there really was no point going in to school late after this. Soon it would be impossible to be any more conv
erted than I already was. God himself must be watching me now. So I ran the last part of the way too and just made the school grounds as the bell rang. And at the very same moment there was a flash of lightning; I didn’t manage to count to more than four when the answering thunder rolled over the playground and made the steeples tremble. I began to feel worried. Perhaps I’d stepped on God’s toes? Perhaps God was offended? The girls shrieked and the boys laughed, and suddenly my enemies were right behind me. I don’t feel like naming them now, but it was the same gang as before; I heard one of them say something when the next thunderclap came. “Beginning to get kind of dangerous here. Guess we need a lightning rod.” And then one of the others said something — it was just as if they’d rehearsed their sentences or written them down for the occasion. And I knew what they were going to say; I could have said it for them. But I counted in my head instead — the seconds before the thunder — and I got to just three this time. “Perhaps we could use Barnum? As a lightning rod, I mean.” And even though I was standing with my back to them, I could somehow picture them, as they nodded to each other and laughed, as if they’d hit on the best idea since they used me as a sled on Bondebakken. I let them do their nodding and laughing, and then they hoisted me up, bag and all, and like that we proceeded to entrance B, as it flickered and banged about me. God was angry, and I was electric. My curls extended like rigid corkscrews, and about then the Goat came and tried to drown God out with his whistle. But it didn’t work particularly well, and instead he upended us. The thunder was a bit farther away now (I could count to nine), and my hair slumped on my head and lay there as normal. It must have been similar to having a perm, and all of a sudden I had the urge to say something. Gods a rotten hair-dresser was what I wanted to shout out loud, but I said something else instead. “It was my idea,” I said. The Goat bent down, his eyebrows joined over the roof of his nose like a black hedge on his face, as he gripped Aslak, Preben and Hamster as best he could, and the whole school stood ringed around us smelling blood. “What was that you said, Barnum?” “That it was my idea. That they should carry me.” After a short but rather intense period of reflection, the Goat let them go, shook the rain from his eyebrows and looked at me more closely still. “Lightning isn’t a plaything, Barnum! We should have respect for the forces of nature! Now, into your classrooms immediately!” “Many thanks,” I said. I bowed deeply and hurried up the stairs, and for the remainder of that day sat as still as I could at my desk, in the front of the middle row. Except in gym, when I was allowed to do my own exercise routine. The Goat was good that way: he’d basically given up on me, and I even got out of changing. But I’d perhaps do the odd cartwheel, so slowly that I didn’t need to shower afterward, because I didn’t go into the showers any more. That’s all I’ll say. Not after the time they grabbed my legs, pulled them apart like a chicken’s, and did various things with the soap. But really there was no one who bothered me that much any more. And I could just as well be a lightning rod and get carried around on their shoulders if that was the way it was to be. But there were occasions when someone or other had a go — when I was going to have a drink from the fountain, for instance, and had to stand on tiptoe at the side to reach the jet of water. Then it was that the clever dogs saw their chance to do something tough at my expense: to flick water on my pants, hold me under the spray and give me a soaking or call me names they’d recently taught themselves — midget, mitten, monkey door handle. The blows glanced off me. I didn’t care. I rose above it all — yes, I rose above it. They could choke slowly and painfully on their own laughable laughter and then sink in their bottomless tears with millstones around their necks and their feet in concrete shoes. But the worst thing was when some of the girls took up my cause and said that it was horrible and couldn’t they perhaps be a little more grown-up and not so dreadfully childish as to tease Barnum because he was a bit on the small side. Because it was a shame for Barnum, wasn’t it, that when height was being distributed across the globe, he’d been shortchanged as far as inches went? Then I could hate for several weeks at a time — yes, whole months I could keep hating, and that hate was like an engine inside me, a great dynamo that grated on the deck of my dreams and made a black light shine inside me, a reversed sun that shone darkness instead. And I imagine that the Old One’s grief must have been akin to this, a wheel for her longing. Then I grew; I became bigger than myself in this hatred, and I almost understood what Fred meant when he said he was evil, evil at the very core. I never drank water from the fountain again either. And in the course of the day I was to start dancing classes, God calmed down and I was converted; the thunder rolled away over another town, the clouds parted and the skies showed their best side, became blue as they could be. God’s calm didn’t last long, however. God was impatient. The last lesson of the day was nutrition with Miss Knuckles — she’d actually earned her nickname long before our time, having had with her one time a genuine thigh bone that she proceeded to show her pupils. And rumor had it that it was her own father’s thigh bone that she’d hidden away as a last reminder of him — pretty gruesome really when you thought about it — and some even maintained that she’d done away with her father with poison just to get hold of that particular thigh bone. There weren’t very many who liked going too near Miss Knuckles; she smelled of various types of medicine and was absent from school at regular intervals. She’d apparently got too little sun and insufficient nourishment when she was growing up, and suffered from the English illness — perhaps that was why she’d killed her father and stolen his thigh bone. And when Knuckles was off for more than two days, we got a substitute teacher. This was the third day she’d been absent. I was already worried. The substitute teacher hurried into the classroom in full flight as if she were looking forward to getting started. She seemed full of vigor, said Sit down, and as we did so she smiled from ear to ear, and that made me really worried, because I knew that little good ever comes from smiles like that. At least you know where you are with the nasty ones. The nice ones can think up all manner of things. She told us what her name was and wrote it up on the board too, but I forgot what it was ages ago, and I’m not sure if I ever remembered it at all. I think I’d call her the Leech. The Leech was filling in for Knuckles. That was how it was. She went up and down the rows telling us about hygiene in past centuries (as if that had anything to do with us), and that one’s sight was improved by eating bilberries. And that wasn’t all; she talked about hot and cold water, tooth decay, school breakfasts, calcium, flat feet, being hunchbacked and having bad posture. And although I didn’t dare turn around, I could see that Hansen and Mouse had already loaded their rulers with ammunition in the form of scrunched-up paper and bits of goat cheese. But then the Leech swept back to the table, consulted the nutrition book, shaded her eyes and gazed out over the class. She pointed at Mouse. “What’s your name?” She was the type who had to ask what everyone’s name was before they got to say anything. My stomach grew heavy, heavy as a sack of wet sand. “Halvor,” Mouse replied. “Well, Halvor, can you tell me what the spleen is?” Mouse thought about this for a while. “An American skater,” he said. The Leech was a bit despondent at this response, but tried to laugh and pointed at Hansen instead. I realized something. If everyone gave the wrong answer, then I could answer correctly. I hadn’t forgotten what Fred had said. “And what is your name?” “Hans,” said Hansen. “But you’re welcome to call me Hansen.” “That’s fine. Can you tell me where the spleen is?” Hansen pretended to think about this for several minutes, but actually he didn’t. He was asleep. Hansen had never thought about anything, but he took his time all the same — no one could draw out time like Hansen — once he’d managed to make it last an entire period. The Leech began to get impatient and her smile trembled on her lips like waves. “What do you say then, Hans?” Hansen regained consciousness, and the Leech went forward as if she were in the presence of a genius at work. “The spleen is,” Hansen said slowly, “the spleen is a tune played by Finn Eriksen on
the all-request show.” The Leech, our substitute teacher, retreated behind the table, and then of course her gaze fell on me — who else? I knew what was coming now. “And what’s your name?” Her voice changed when she addressed me, it slanted somehow in her mouth. The class was completely quiet. They were enjoying themselves. This was the best we could get apart from the final period before summer vacation. “Barnum,” I said. “What did you say?” “Barnum,” I repeated. The blood began pumping through the Leech’s face. “When I’m here as your substitute teacher, you’re to use your proper names. Now tell me what your name is before I get angry.” “My name is Barnum,” I said. The Leech pulled out a drawer, got out the register, banged it down on the table and buried her face in its pages. Then suddenly her expression became gentle from the forehead down; she looked at me intently and spoke even more softly than before. That’s what I say — the nice ones are nasty, the nice ones never give up. “Barnum? Can you, Barnum, tell us where the spleen might be in our bodies, Barnum?” It was almost a record. A substitute teacher we had the year before in woodworking managed to use the word Barnum five times in the same sentence when he presented me with a plane. I didn’t react. “The spleen,” I said, “helps to clean the blood. And it’s also where we get a stitch.” The Leech clapped her hands. She could have restrained herself there. “That’s quite, quite right, Barnum. Can you come up here, Barnum?” I kept my seat. “Why?” I whispered. “Because you’re so clever, Barnum.” “I can’t,” I said. “I’ve got a stitch.” But the Leech just laughed and wrote the word spleen on the board. “Barnum! Now you come up here, Barnum.” I slid from my seat and went up to the table. The Leech looked at me, and I could see that she wanted to put her hand in my curls. But she didn’t. She put her hand on my back instead. I had a feeling that everything was going to go wrong. I was no longer converted. I was inside out. I ought to break a pointer now, throw a piece of chalk or overturn an inkstand. Fred would have said amen to that. But I just stood there. Everyone in the class leaned over their desks and stared, some of them open-mouthed, as if the worst possible thing had happened. I was getting dizzy. God had a plan, and I was part of it. “Where is the spleen?” the Leech asked. “On the left,” I whispered. “Just beside the diaphragm.” The Leech’s hand extended once more and this time it was for my head. She couldn’t resist the temptation. She couldn’t restrain herself after all. “Yes, that’s absolutely correct, Barnum! The spleen is right beside the diaphragm. Can you show us, Barnum?” I hunched over. “What?” “Show us where the spleen is, Barnum?” “Under the diaphragm,” I repeated. “Yes, Barnum, we heard that. But show us.” I pointed to the left. “There,” I breathed. But the Leech was determined to get her way. She took hold of my sweater and began pulling at it. “Show us properly now, Barnum.” And I gave in. I pulled up my sweater and my shirt. And as I did so, a gasp went up from the whole class, and even the Leech grew unsteady and had to clutch the table. I peered down at my spleen. There were Mom’s panties. Mom’s fine, light pink panties. They stretched over my hips, the lace like a crooked belt. I let my shirt and sweater fall. But it was too late. Everyone had seen that I was wearing Mom’s big panties under my pants, and no one would ever forget where the spleen was. Then the bell rang. Slowly I went back to my desk while the others streamed out. I took my time. If only sufficient time might elapse, then this would pass. Slowly and surely it would pass, be forgotten — laid to one side and rendered invisible. Time was the giant eraser that rubbed over my life. That was my only comfort. It was a poor one at that. I was the last to leave. The Leech was still wiping the blackboard. The sponge was dry and hard. She turned to look at me, sorrowful and bemused — it was her turn to be different now, converted. The letters fell in white dust over her fingers. She said nothing. “Goodbye,” I murmured.