The Half Brother: A Novel

by Christensen, Lars Saabye

  Then I spotted a guy who was slowly making his way between the couples toward one of the girls who was left over. He came across as pretty purposeful the way he was walking, but at the same time lazy, not bothering to lift his feet at all. His blazer was crumpled and his hair was parted in the middle. And the girl he was making for straightened up, and I observed that she was actually attractive, in a kind of fragile and confused way. Or maybe that’s just the way I see her now, now that the memories have been refined — pictures refined in distances fluid. I can still see the pretty, misunderstood wallflowers raising their eyes, and see the two of us stopping in front of her, and me going forward. But it wasn’t the girl I ran over to and asked to dance. Instead I asked the boy who was about to bow to her, and this slow, heavy boy turned toward me in disbelief and just blinked. “What?” he whispered. “Would you like to dance?” I repeated, and put my arm around him and led him out onto the dance floor. “Let me go,” he shouted. But I didn’t. I held on to him and took some steps. “Let me go, you horrible little dwarf!” he screamed. The girl by the wall had gotten up. And suddenly there was complete silence again, and everyone stared at us. Then I crowned all my converted acts — with my masterpiece of difference. I stretched up and kissed him on the cheek. He hit me in the eye. And at the same moment I felt Svae’s hook at my neck and her voice like a nail in my ear. “Get out! Get off my dance floor and never show your face here again!”

  That’s how I met Peder. That’s how I met Vivian. That’s how we met each other.

  The Tree

  I remember another night. Fred was sitting on the edge of the bed. I could just glimpse his face like a shadow above his knees. “I’ve been with the Old One,” he said. I lay completely still. Fred stared at me in the darkness. There was something different about his voice. He could have been someone else, someone who’d broken in, a stranger come to scare me. “I’ve been with the Old One,” he repeated. Fred leaned forward and rocked back and forth. “The Old One?” I breathed. “Have you been to the graveyard?” Fred shook his head. A lock of hair fell down over his brow, and he almost laughed — I caught a glimpse of his mouth — a dark rift — perhaps a car drove by right then and circled the walls with light. “I got to talk to her,” he said. Slowly I sat up in bed. “You talked to her?” Fred nodded and pushed back the stray lock of hair. “I told her I was alive. That I didn’t die too.” I couldn’t say anything. All of a sudden Fred put his hand on my foot. “That made her very happy, Bar-num. She’d thought I’d been knocked down too. She said that she forgave me.” Once I’d gotten used to the darkness, I saw that his face was completely pale and that he was thinner than ever. But he was smiling nonetheless, and I’d never seen him smile like this before — it was the same smile clowns paint on their faces before they go into the big top. I laughed. “Don’t kid around, Fred.” The smile melted from his face. He bent closer. I thought he was going to bite me. “I was to pass on greetings to you too, Barnum.” “From who, Fred?” “Aren’t you listening? From the Old One, of course. She said you shouldn’t be so sad because you’re so small.” Slowly I lay back in bed. Fred kept sitting like a hunched shadow over me. “When did you meet her?” I murmured. “Are you crazy, Barnum?” “I just wondered where you met her, Fred.” He smiled again, and his face became all soft. “In heaven. Where else?” Fred finally crept over to his bed and lay down. He didn’t say anything for a long while. But I couldn’t sleep all the same. “Just think if she’d never found out what happened,” he whispered. “Just think about that.” I didn’t know what to say. I saw the Old One before me as she’d lain on the table in the hospital basement, with her hands folded over her stomach and looking quite peaceful, except for her eyelids, which were big as shells. Did our thoughts keep on going after we were dead? Did the riddles live on after us? “Why did she say she forgave you?” I breathed. Fred sat up in bed. “Can you keep a secret, Barnum?” “Yes,” I said. “Yes, Fred.” He lay back down again. “Then this is our secret.”

  I’ve always kept it.

  But as I walked along Drammen Road that evening of conversion and heard the slow waltz from the top floor of the Merchant Building, I’d happily have shouted it out loud to anyone in the world: the tram conductor sitting smoking on the running board, the taxi driver leaning out of his window with eyes closed, the piano teacher coming around the corner with a bag crammed full of sheet music. I’d have told them in a loud voice that Fred, my half brother, had been in heaven and spoken to the Old One. If only everything could be undone, if only it were possible to go back in time in a single stroke and turn what was twisted the right way around once more — because all of a sudden I was in doubt, and my doubt was profound, like a tear in my thoughts. I couldn’t even so much as remember how I’d gotten back onto the street again, if I’d taken the elevator or taken the stairs. My triumph was cracked like ice. I’d managed to get thrown out of dancing school. But at what price? What would the consequences be? Because you couldn’t do anything without there being consequences. There was always something else, always something that came along afterward as in a tortured dream. I knew it. My eyes were stinging, both of them stung — it was like looking through misshapen glass in pouring rain. I had to lean against a lamppost. If anyone had seen me now, they might have taken me for a dog, a rare breed, but a dog nonetheless, that snarled for no reason and in the end gnawed at its own tail. Perhaps I’d be thrown out of school too, expelled for being the impossible human I was, and sent to Bast0y and locked in a basement closet, where I’d get a hammering four times a day. Or perhaps laughter would pursue me the rest of my days like a shadow; I’d never again be able to show my face anywhere without laughter breaking out, meeting me with scorn and derision. You’re a nutcase! they’d all shout wherever I went. I was doomed. It was Fred’s fault, because it was his idea to do everything differently. It was Boletta’s fault for signing me up for dancing classes. It was Mom’s fault for waiting for me outside school. It was Dad’s fault for buying me Oscar Mathisen’s shoes, and it was the assistants fault for selling them to him. It was the Leech’s fault for pulling up my shirt and revealing Mom’s panties. It was the vicar’s fault for having made me swear at him in the first place. It was Preben and Aslak and Hamster’s fault for not beating the hell out of me behind Wel-haven. They were all evil. I hated the whole lot of them. Words poured through me. There should have been a toilet there for words. I could have pissed them against the lamppost. I could have shat them into the gutter.

  Then I heard someone running along the sidewalk. I began to run too. Perhaps it was someone coming to get me. But the figure running behind me wasn’t running particularly quickly because I ran even faster and he didn’t manage to catch me, and if he didn’t catch me then he’d have to be running pretty slowly. “Stop!” he shouted. I took a chance on it and stopped, because I was running in the wrong direction anyway; if I continued the way I was going, I’d soon come out in enemy territory behind Munkedam Road, and those who held sway there made Preben, Hamster and Aslak look like bunny rabbits. I was standing under the mighty red beech tree in Hydro Park, in a rain of red leaves. I turned around. A chubby shadow kicked through the leaves, panting loudly it was the guy I’d asked to dance and then kissed on the cheek. He stopped in front of me. I wondered if he’d bash my other eye there and then, but for the time being getting his breath back was all that occupied his attention. Then he looked up. I think that he was smiling, but it was pretty dark where we were standing and perhaps I was completely mistaken. “I got thrown out too,” he said. “Really? Why?” “For calling you a horrible dwarf.” I was on the point of getting worried again. But all at once he started laughing. “Only kidding. I said that if I couldn’t dance with you, then I wasn’t going to dance with anyone.” He came closer. “Sorry for hitting your eye, by the way. Did it hurt?” “Not particularly,” I told him. “I didn’t realize just how ingenious you’d been.” “Ingenious?” I breathed. “Smartest way of getting kicked out of dancing cla
sses I’ve ever heard of.” His face clouded with anxiety for a moment, and his brow crumpled like paper. “That was the idea, right?” “Of course,” I said. “What else?” His face relaxed once more, and he stretched out his hand. “What’s your name? Apart from Nilsen?” “Barnum,” I said quietly “Barnum? Cool, I’m Peder.” And we shook hands, under the red beech, as the wind rustled through the red leaves in which we were standing. I don’t know how long we stood there like that, but I swear that I saw the moon rising obliquely over the city and positioning itself in the skies like an orange in a deep black dish. Finally Peder let go of my hand. I stuck mine quickly in my pocket. “Where do you live?” he asked me. “The top of Church Road,” I replied. “Fine. Then we can walk part of the way together.”

  We went along Bygd0y Alley. I picked up a chestnut but threw it away at once. I was hardly there to collect chestnuts. I felt so happy and bewildered, bewildered and happy, scared and happy. I was perhaps in the process of making a friend. We didn’t say anything for a while. Peder whistled a tune from the all-requests program: I knew it too. I began to whistle it with him. But when we were crossing Nils Juel Street, we broke down and all but laughed our heads off, and no one yet has managed to whistle while they laugh. I had to thump Peder eight times on the back with the flat of my hand before he recovered. “What do we do now?” he coughed. I swallowed my laughter. “What do you mean?” “What are you going to say to your parents? That you got sent home from dancing school because you kissed me?” He laughed loudly again till he almost collapsed on the sidewalk. My mouth went completely dry. I hadn’t thought of this. “Do you think Svae’ll telephone our parents?” Peder stood up and shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe. Maybe not.” He turned around and stared over at the other sidewalk. “Look,” he whispered, and pointed with his finger. It was a girl. It was the girl from dancing school, the prettiest of the wallflowers. “Hi!” Peder called. She stopped where she was between two trees and peered over at us. Peder looked at his watch, took my arm and led me across the road. She was standing still, leaning against the moonlight. She was wearing a red raincoat that almost shone. I think she was cold. She blew on her hands as if she were holding a giant fledgling in front of her face. “Were you thrown out too, or what?” Peder inquired. She let her arms drop. “No one wanted to dance with me,” she said. “I didn’t feel like staying.” Those were her exact words. No one wanted to dance with me. Peder glanced at me, as if we’d agreed on something, and smiled as he looked at her once more. “Really? Nobody? What do you think I was doing when this cuckoo came and ruined everything?” He pulled me closer. I bowed. She lifted her hands again and smiled a fraction behind them. “Do you really think I’d have danced with either of you two?” she asked. Peder was silent a moment. Then he shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe. Maybe not. What do you think, Barnum?” I shrugged my shoulders too. “Maybe. Maybe not,” I said, easy as that. She came a step nearer to me now. “What was it you were called?” she asked. I stretched out my hand, and she took it. “Barnum,” I said loudly. She held on to my hand a little longer, or else I kept holding hers. “And my name’s Peder,” said Peder, equally loudly, and we shook hands all around. In the end it was her turn. “I’m Vivian,” she said. “Perhaps I will dance with you after all.”

  And we continued up Bygd0y Alley — Peder, Vivian and me — and Vivian walked in the middle between us. I don’t know what it was, but it was just as if we’d always been walking there, the three of us, under the chestnut trees in the damp darkness. And we knew nothing about each other, nothing other than that our first evening at Svae’s dancing school had also been our last. “I know,” Peder said all of a sudden. “We count on Svae not calling and just pretend that we’re still going to classes. All right?” We stopped and Peder picked up a chestnut and put it in his pocket. “All right? Then we can meet up each Thursday evening anyway and just do something different!”

  And that was what happened. Each and every Thursday that autumn we met up under the red beech in Hydro Park in our dancing clothes. We stood hidden behind the trunk and watched the others going into the Merchant Building. We mocked them. They looked pretty laughable. The boys resembled penguins. The girls peahens. And afterward we did this or that — went to the movies if we could afford it (and generally it was Peder who had the money), stood in the tunnel at Sk0yen and huddled up close whenever the train went over, had one milkshake between the three of us at Studenten, or sat in Peder’s room and listened to the radio. But that evening we just walked home together. When we got to the top of Bygd0y Alley, Vivian went through the entrance adjacent to Frogner Church, she left us without saying a word but turned around there in the dark, raised her hand and put one finger to her lips, and then was gone. Peder looked at me. “Jesus. To live that close to a church. Is that sad or what?” “Perhaps her dads a vicar,” I suggested. We strolled on, toward Frogner Park. “To wake each Sunday with church bells right over your bed,” said Peder. “That’s really cool.” “Yes,” I said. “To wake with your head in the bells.” Peder laughed. “Her dad has to be a vicar. I guess we have to save her.” I didn’t quite get what Peder meant, but I agreed with him. “Go ahead and guess,” I said. “All right, what does your dad do?” Peder asked. I had to think. “A bit of this, a bit of that,” I breathed. “A bit of this and that? My dad’s a bit of everything.”

  Peder stopped outside a house with a fence all around it and yellow lights in every window. This was where he lived, in his own house with a garden and flagpole. There was a sign on the gate reading Beware of the Dog. “Do you have a dog?” I asked, and in doing so felt rather stupid. “It died a couple of years ago,” Peder said, “but we hung on to the sign.” Then a car swung up the street, the hubs of its wheels rattling and the exhaust all but falling off — a stream of sparks trailing after it. I think it was a Vauxhall, and it drove right into the garage beside Peder’s house and parked there with a crash. A man with a gigantic hat and a flat bag under his arm clambered out and wiped the exhaust from his face. “That was a close shave,” he groaned. “I think we need the garage.” “Hi, Dad,” Peder said. It was Peder’s father. He stopped and smiled down to us. “Well, and how was dancing school?” Peder shrugged his shoulders. “I guess it bored us to death.” His dad laughed and turned toward me. “I can understand that all right. What the hells the point of the foxtrot? You might as well learn to fence instead. And who’s this?” “This is Barnum,” said Peder. “Good evening, Barnum. You’ll join us for supper? If you’re not scared of the dog?” I bowed and thanked him, but declined. It had basically been too much for me. I had to go home and rest. I had to store this evening, save it and not use all of it up in one go. But before I went, I grasped Peder’s arm as if to keep him from going, even though he was standing there quite still. “You can come over for dinner tomorrow,” I said quickly. His father patted my shoulder. “Great idea, Barnum. Right, Peder? Because your mother and I are actually away.” Peder looked at me and smiled. “When’ll I come?” he asked. “Five,” I whispered and ran off; it was the first time anyone had invited me to supper and the first time I’d ever invited a friend to dinner. The triumph of it — the shining prize of friendship — to have a friend coming home to dinner. I rejoiced along the whole of Church Road — I was a world champion in a world champion’s shoes. I was a friend, I was someone’s friend, and I almost couldn’t wait to share the news. Because I couldn’t carry all of this myself — my shoulders were too narrow, my heart too small. But when I did get home, I found no one there; Mom had gone to the North Pole to fetch Boletta, and Dad had left again. He tended to be like that; there was forever something to be sorted out, and he couldn’t sit still. He came in, raged a bit, played either the prince or the pauper, dropped a dirty shirt or two and a few banknotes and was off again. And I figured that maybe it was for the best to be alone at that moment, because I was carrying a lie with me too, and that was as great as the truth. My tongue wasn’t smooth enough yet. I didn’t dare tell Mom and Bolett
a that I’d given up, been thrown out — because they’d most likely paid Svae up front and would never get the money back. I put my shoes on the shelf in the hall. I hung the blazer on its hook and took off my tie. I had a glass of milk in the kitchen and went into the bathroom to look in the mirror. My left eye was a bit rusty around the edges. It didn’t matter. I could have cried for joy Yes, this was a time for being alone; I’d suck at this joy as if it were a piece of sugar candy. But when I went into our room, I found I wasn’t alone after all. Fred was lying on my bed with his arms behind his neck, staring up at the ceiling. “Hi, Tiny,” he said. I sat down on his bed. I wasn’t afraid. I had something to tell him. “I managed it,” I whispered. “I know,” Fred said. “You do?” I asked, my voice quieter still. He turned a degree or two in my direction. “What’s the old bag at the dancing school called?” “Svae,” I told him. “That’s right. She called here.” I crumpled. “She called here?” Fred sighed and stared at the ceiling again. “Where else?” My tongue expanded in my mouth, dry as an eraser. “Did she talk to Mom?” “No. She talked to me. Lucky, huh? That I was the only one home.” Fred was silent a bit. I couldn’t bear it. “What did Svae say, Fred?” He shut his eyes. “This bed is far too big for you, Barnum. If we cut it in half we’d have more room, right?” “Fine,” I whispered. “What did you say to Svae?” Fred smiled. “She said you’d done immoral things, Barnum.” “Immoral things?” “You need to tell us more, Barnum.” I looked away. My nutrition book was lying on the desk. Perhaps Fred had been leafing though it. Perhaps he’d seen Barnum’s Formula. “I kissed a girl,” I said. “You kissed a girl?” “Yes, Fred.” “You managed to reach up?” “She was sitting down,” I told him. Now it was my turn to shut my eyes. I heard Fred getting up from the bed. “I said that I was your father,” Fred whispered. “And that I’d punish you.” He started laughing. I didn’t dare open my eyes yet. He sat down beside me. “I should have been your father,” he said. “Instead of that shit who says he is.” He put his arm around my shoulder. “At any rate I managed to get thrown out,” I breathed. Fred gave me a pat on the back and waited a long time to say any more. I wish he hadn’t said anything at all but had just patted my back instead. I could have sat the whole night like that. “How am I going to punish you, Barnum?” “Punish me? Don’t fool around, Fred.” He withdrew his hand and scraped his nails over my skin. “Fool around? I promised Svae I’d punish you.” He went over to the window and stood there. “Mom said they bought you Oscar Mathisen’s shoes.” “Yes,” I whispered. “Did they fit you?” “They fit pretty well actually.” Fred laughed. His whole back shook. “Do you know what happened to Oscar Mathisen?” “He became world champion in skating.” “I mean after he became world champion.” “No idea. Did something happen?” “First he shot his wife. And then he shot himself. The world champion.” Fred turned around abruptly to face me. “Now I know what punishment you’ll get.” “What?” “You won’t lie to me any longer, Barnum.” “I haven’t lied to you, Fred.” He smiled and shook his head. “See. You’re doing it again.”