The Half Brother: A Novel

by Christensen, Lars Saabye

  We went home. Mom slept for two days. Boletta sat at the North Pole and cooled her wrath in beer. I lay in the bedroom and waited for Fred. And I thought of the amazing chain of events that led to where I was lying now and thinking as I did. First of all I’d begun at dancing classes, had met Peder and Vivian there, and had gotten thrown out in the first lesson, but didn’t dare tell Mom. Then Dad sold the letter with the stamp from Greenland in complete secrecy to Peder’s dad and died after getting a discus in the head. And the very same day he’d been buried, he’d been found out — it was he who’d pinched the letter, our letter, and sold it. One thing carries the other in its wake and it’s impossible to say where the first begins — it’s a case of one thing after another — a shadow that spreads, slowly but surely. A pool around my shoes that grows into an ocean in the crematorium; a mirror you can lean over when you’re tying your laces to see a caterpillar wriggling away. It was Dad’s fault. That was the way my mind was working when Boletta came in. She’d been at the North Pole thinking of us, and our thoughts had been running along the same lines; now she sat down by the bedside. She smelled of beer. “You two must forgive me,” she whispered. “For thinking you’d taken the letter.” “It doesn’t matter,” I whispered back. She put her hand on my brow as if she imagined I had a temperature. “How are you?” she asked all at once. I began laughing. It sounded so funny. Boletta laughed herself. “My condolences,” I said. Boletta kept on laughing but then suddenly stopped, as if the laughter had been cut off. “I mean it, Barnum,” she said. “How are you?” I actually didn’t know how I was; I tried all I could to find something genuine inside me. “I’m angry” I breathed. “And I’m just as angry as you are, Barnum.” “And I’m afraid, Boletta.” “We’re all of us afraid, Barnum.” “But I’m relieved too,” I said, my voice as quiet as it could be. “And you’re allowed to be relieved,” Boletta said. I was on the verge of crying. I hid my face in the pillow. “I’m everything at the same time,” I sobbed. Boletta sat down again. “Then you’re lucky Barnum. To have so many feelings to choose between.” She didn’t move, and she scratched my back. She knew there was nothing I loved more, even though I’d long since grown too old for it. “Do you want to be with me tonight?” she asked. “No, but thank you very much all the same,” I murmured. Boletta stole over to the door. And just as quietly she went out. Later Fred came in. He closed the door soundlessly behind him and lay down fully clothed, saying nothing. It had already begun to grow light. I wondered if I’d been asleep after all and had just dreamed all I’d thought and heard, but someone had at least scratched my back. “It wasn’t you who took the letter,” I whispered. Fred took a deep breath and turned a fraction. “Thanks for telling me, Barnum. Because for a while there I thought it was me.” He was quiet for a time. His fists were restless. “Have you become a complete blockhead just because your father died, huh?” “It was him,” I said. “It was Dad. Who sold the letter to Peder’s father.” Fred smiled. “Get the Bible,” he said. “The Bible?” “Come on, Barnum, you know what I mean.” I got up and went to get the Medical Dictionary for Norwegian Homes from our bookcase. It was there between the atlas and Who, What, Where. “Look up under burial,” Fred said. “Please,” I begged. “Just do as I say, Barnum.” I did as he said. I sat on the bed and looked up under B. Burial came after Burglary. I read to myself about Burglary, just to let the seconds tick by. Fred raised his hand. “I’m going to get annoyed soon, Barnum.” I moved my eyes down the page. Burial. “Found it,” I breathed. Fred gave a groan. “Great. Now read it loudly and clearly. Then we can both go to sleep. All right?” So I read it. “Burial. The lowering of a corpse into a tomb, where it decomposes and returns to earth once more. Decomposition takes place through a particular bacterial action in the corpse effected by the surrounding area of earth. If this ground is sandy and porous, the corpse will decompose in a few years; if it has a high clay content, it may take twenty years or longer. If the ground’s bacterial capability in this respect is too efficient, the corpse will not decompose whatsoever, but rather be transformed into a fatty mass called corpse wax. I didn’t read any further. The next word was Burlesque. I lay down once more. Fred kicked off his shoes. It would be getting light soon. “Who was that girl?” Fred asked suddenly. “Which girl?” “Which one? Were there many girls at Arnold Nilsen’s funeral, Barnum?” I closed my eyes. “Vivian,” I whispered.

  Two months later a letter arrived for Mom that considerably darkened her state of mind. It was from Coch’s Hostel. It was a bill. It was the longest bill we’d ever seen. It was fourteen years long. Mom read it slowly. She drew her finger down the page and her forehead went white. She gave the letter to Boletta. “Fourteen years!” she exclaimed. “Has Arnold Nilsen had a room at Coch’s Hostel for fourteen years?” “He kept it after we got married,” Mom whispered, only understanding it all now for the first time. “Good Lord.” “He even kept it after he was dead, the rascal!” Boletta said. She got up, enraged, and her voice shrill. “And we’re going there this very minute! Perhaps he’s hidden away the money for the letter there!” Boletta dragged Mom up from her chair, and the two of them turned abruptly and saw me. I had been standing by the door taking in every word. “Can I come?” I asked. “No!” Mom snarled. But Boletta smiled. “Oh, yes,” she said. “It won’t do you any harm to see what kind of man your father really was.”

  And that was perhaps what they imagined, that we’d discover who Arnold Nilsen really was — the man who’d driven up Church Road in a Buick Roadmaster, with his leather gloves and his hair combed like a black lid over his broad head. Is this where we search for one another, in abandoned rooms and unpaid bills? Is this how we shed light on our dark deeds in order to be able to see, perhaps, in the end, a genuine face there?

  At any rate, once Boletta had been to the Majorstuen bank to take out the rest of her pension from the Exchange, we went to Coch’s Hostel at the bottom of Bogstad Road. When we got there Mom lost her nerve and wanted to go back home to Fred instead. But Boletta had made up her mind. She opened the door right away and shoved Mom inside; we had to go up a steep staircase to a place that passed for the reception desk. A woman with big eyelids was standing behind the counter. She raised one of them when she saw us. “What can I help you with?” she asked. Boletta put her hands down on the counter. “Well, I’ll tell you, little lady. We’re here to see Arnold Nilsen’s room.” “He’s moved,” the woman replied. Boletta smiled. “Yes, that’s one way of putting it. But he didn’t take his room with him, did he?” “He’s moved,” the woman repeated. “He’s dead,” Boletta said. Mom leaned against the counter too. Her face was trembling. “Did he stay here often?” she whispered. The woman’s mouth grew weary, and she just shrugged her shoulders. Mom’s voice was quieter still now. “Did he stay here with anyone else?” Some guests came up the stairs — a couple — neither of them all that sober. Mom covered her eyes with her hand. I heard their laughter disappearing out into the city “Can we see the room now?” Boletta demanded. The woman found her voice again. “And why?” Then Boletta slammed down the fat letter in its envelope onto the counter so the woman jumped. “This is a demand for payment for 4,982 days. We are a family that happens to like to settle our accounts! Give me the key!” And the woman got down the key for Room 502 from the board and handed it over. We went up three floors. At the back of the corridor was Room 502. “Wait here,” Mom said. She went with Boletta past all the other rooms. But I sneaked after them. I wanted to see and hear every single thing. Boletta gave the key to Mom, but she could barely bring herself to hold it and threw it back to Boletta, who put it in the keyhole, drew in her breath, turned it, and slowly pushed open the door.

  What had she expected to see? An overflowing grave? Arnold Nilsen caught in the act, post mortem? The room was tidy and bare. The bed was made. The curtains were drawn. The silent darkness was still. The place smelled of mold and long holidays. Boletta went in first. Mom followed in her wake. I remained where I was, on
the threshold of Dad’s room. Mom didn’t quite know what to do. Boletta did. She pulled out the drawer of the bedside table. The only thing she found there was a worn Bible. She leafed through it as if she thought there might be something hidden behind the covers. “He even rips pages out of the Bible,” she sighed. Mom looked at me but said nothing. Instead she tore open a closet — it was empty, but for a row of hangers that jangled on a metal rail and dust that rose and fell. I stood on the threshold and thought of forests; when we go into forests, I thought, we have to push branches and cobwebs and nettles out of the way so as to be able to see. I closed my eyes. “See anything?” Boletta asked. I opened my eyes again. Mom shook her head. Boletta got down on all fours and crawled around on the floor looking. Then she lifted the mattress. She even got out a pair of nail scissors and poked the whole mattress with them, and put her hand inside to feel for something. Mom suddenly started laughing. She laughed loudly and uncontrollably and Boletta whirled around in anger. “This is no laughing matter!” “Do you really think Arnold hid money in the mattress?” Mom asked her. “You can never be too sure of anything,” Boletta replied, the corners of her mouth taut. “And for heaven’s sake stop that awful cackling!” But Mom just went on laughing. I don’t know what came over her. She had to sit down on the bed and Boletta managed to free her arm from the mattress; she sat down beside Mom, and soon enough they were both laughing. Yes, that’s what they did. I couldn’t understand it. What sort of laughter was this? They sat there laughing, quite helpless on that green bed; they had to support each other so as not to collapse with laughter. Perhaps they had no choice but to laugh, or they’d have started crying instead. “Screw mattress,” I said. I bit my tongue hard. It was so long since my mouth had last let slip like that. Mom and Boletta looked at me. But they just laughed. Everything was perhaps in my own head, deep inside me. Maybe I was just talking to myself, saying things that were the opposite to what I should say. “Screw mattress!” I shouted, and took a heavy step inside and pointed to a small closet behind the door. “You haven’t looked there,” I told them. Silence fell; the laughter sank to small smiles, lines of thought in their faces. I pointed again. And in the end it was Mom who got up from the bed, went over to the closet behind the door, and opened it. A gust of warm darkness flooded out. There was a suitcase in the closet, a black suitcase with thick string around it. It couldn’t have been particularly weighty, because Mom lifted it like a feather and laid it down on the bed. Immediately the string broke. Boletta fiddled with the knot, and it just fell to dust like a dry flower. The suitcase wasn’t locked either. Mom pushed the lid open. It was empty. That was it — a ruined Bible, the thick dust and an empty suitcase. “Well, well,” Boletta said. “Was there really nothing else?” Mom let the lid drop. “We’ll have to leave it here,” she sighed. Then I took another step closer. “I’d like to have it!” Mom turned to me and stood like that a long time, her hand on the lid and her fingers full of string and dust Then she nodded and gave yet another sigh. “All right. If you absolutely must.”

  We went out. I carried the suitcase. Boletta locked the door behind us. “Now we’ve shut this door forever,” she said. And Morn never mentioned Room 502 at Coch’s Hostel again. Not even when I asked her a long time later, in another time altogether, what she thought Dad used that room for, just a few blocks away, would she speak of it. She first put her fingers to her own lips and then to mine, and smiled. “It’s forgotten,” she breathed. “Don’t forget that, Barnum.” But I couldn’t forget. I’m not one to remove things. I’m rather the one who adds. That’s the way I am. I’d stay there one day myself. Many years in the future. I insist on getting Room 502. I lie there, on the point of unconsciousness, in that narrow bed, and try to imagine what Dad dreamed when he lay there staring at that same ceiling in Room 502 of Coch’s Hostel. But I have no dreams. I call out for Fred. My only thought is this: here everyone’s a liar.

  And Esther leans out of her kiosk, greets Mom and Boletta, and looks at the suitcase I’m carrying. “You haven’t thought of leaving us, have you, Barnum?” “I’m going home,” I reply. And once I was there, Fred asked exactly the same question as I shoved the suitcase under the bed. “You’ll certainly have enough room in there,” he said, “if you lie at an angle.” He started laughing. “Then I can carry you.” I turned toward him. I said, “Now Dad’s dead.”

  Dad had his nickname on his headstone too. Arnold “the Wheel” Nilsen were the words inscribed on it. I haven’t been to see it for a long time, and it’s ages since I last went there.

  Punishment

  Fred got beaten up. He was beaten up so badly we could barely recognize him afterward. He’d finally been down to Mill’s Stamps to ask about the Greenland letter. Peder’s dad said later that to begin with Fred wouldn’t believe it had been sold to a foreign customer; and that this individual, a German, had sold it to another collector, also abroad, whose name Peder’s father didn’t know. Fred refused to believe that point blank. For long enough he’d been saving up to buy the letter back (I’ve no idea where he got hold of the money, though I have my suspicions). Now it was too late, and he went wild. He shoved Peder’s father out of the way, threatened to lock him up in the back, and proceeded to pull out every drawer, open each and every closet, and leaf through all the files in the entire place. “I wasn’t really frightened,” Peder’s dad said. “I recognized him from the funeral, and Peder had told me a good bit about him. I was more worried he’d damage something. But that wasn’t what he was out to do.” Had that been his intention, Peder’s father could have closed Mill’s Stamps for good and opened a flea market instead. But Fred didn’t so much as crease a stamp or crumple an envelope. All he wanted was to find the Greenland letter. He didn’t, though. It wasn’t there. In the end he realized that. Fred sat down on a chair and hid his face in his hands — embarrassed and angry at one and the same time, I imagine. Peder’s dad offered him a free packet of stamps. Fred wasn’t interested. He just sat there like that for several minutes. Then all of a sudden he got up. “How much did you get for it?” he asked. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you,” Peder’s dad said. “Oh, well,” Fred said, and just stared at him. “But it was less than you usually get for a Swedish shilling stamp, and more than for a Danish first day cover.” Fred kept on staring at Peder’s father. “For a shilling stamp you can maybe get 10,000 kroner. And a Danish first-day cover may be worth 8,000.” Fred was silent for a bit. “I couldn’t give a damn about the money,” he said at last. “That’s good,” Peder’s dad told him. “Money’s not everything.” “I couldn’t give a damn about the money,” Fred repeated. “I’d just like to know how much he screwed us for.” Peder’s dad was taken aback. “Do you want a Coke?” he asked. Fred raised his hand. “And how much did you make on the letter?” Peder’s dad shook his head. “In all honesty it was not a good deal from my point of view. At the end of the day I made fifty kroner. And sixty had to go for tax. In other words, I lost ten kroner.” “Why did you buy the letter then?” “Because I don’t give a damn about money.” Fred smiled. Peder’s dad opened the door, and as Fred was going out he said, “Can I ask you something?” Fred stopped, having already turned away. “Why are you so interested in this letter?” Fred shrugged. “Because I liked it,” he replied. Peder’s dad began to warm to Fred. “Yes, I feel the same way. I’d love not to have to sell a single stamp. But there’d be no business then.” Fred was already out on the sidewalk. “Say hi to your mom from me. And Barnum.” “Doubt it,” Fred said. “Bye.”

  But Fred didn’t go up to Solli Square to take the tram there for Majorstuen — that would have been the quickest way home. Instead he went down toward the railway tracks and the bridges. He went inward. He went through the shadowy part of town whose boundaries are Munkedam Road to the south and Arbien Street to the east. I don’t know why he did it. Perhaps he wanted to take a shortcut to the harbor. Perhaps he was just confused and didn’t know what he was doing. He should never have gone there. Bec
ause by the first of the bridges, where the netting over the rusted railways casts shadows like dappled water and a foul stench from the garbage on the tracks comes up from below, was a gang of four, bored out of their skulls and with nothing more to do than get the last out of a cigarette end, reluctant to go home to a dinner of leftovers and a mouthful of abuse, and with the day too young for anything of importance to be happening. And then something happened after all. They see Fred coming, a thin Fred in his tight pants, coming toward them like a gift — a stranger, an interloper, sent right into their arms. Fred sees them too; he slows his pace, just a fraction, so they don’t notice. But he doesn’t turn tail; he could have run away, got the hell out, but he goes on. There’s four of them; they’re all wearing dark clothes, but their faces are pale — one of them, the smallest, has a black eye, a swelling. That’s the one standing at the front and smiling. Two others stand slowly combing their hair; Fred sees all of it — the quick glint of metal shining harshly in the sunlight, a key ring perhaps, brass knuckles. A nerve in a neck twitches; there’s a jerk at the corner of a mouth — and at the back the oldest of them waits. He seems uninterested, careless, aloof; but when Fred passes them, he’s the one who stretches out his arm, drops the cigarette butt to the ground and says, “Hell of a lot of trash on the road today.” Freds forced to stop. They stand around him. The smallest blinks his damaged eye, and a dark stain runs down his swollen cheek. “Ow.” The two others laugh. In actual fact they’re not threatening. And if anyone had seen them from a window close by, they might have imagined these were just five good friends standing there talking about the summer holidays, girls, jobs up for grabs at Akers Mek, training, games — five guys having a good time in the flickering, yellow afternoon shadows. But Fred knows it isn’t like that. He stands between them and feels their quick, warm breath. He knows what they’re going to do. He’s in the wrong place. He went down the wrong street. It doesn’t matter what he does. It doesn’t matter what he says. He’s on the other side. A train passes by beneath them. The bridge shudders. His shoes itch. Fred’s already made his calculations. The arithmetic’s simple. But working it out doesn’t make any difference. The one who spoke is the leader. But the smallest of them, the one with the damaged eye — he’s the most dangerous. The two others are just there. They comb their hair. “Hell of a lot of trash,” the smallest echoes; the most dangerous of the lot. “I can see that,” Fred says. They shuffle closer. “Talking to us?” Fred smiles and slowly turns around and counts. “One, two, three, four. Four pieces of trash.” There’s quiet. It lasts only a moment. This silence isn’t real. Fred feels a stab in the back, but he doesn’t turn around. The one who’s the leader puts his hand on Fred’s shoulder. “Shall we do some tidying up?” he asks. Fred doesn’t answer, and it isn’t a question anyway. And perhaps it’s exactly what he wants, for them to take the money he’s saved; perhaps he thinks it’ll make it easier to bear that he got to Miil’s Stamps too late and didn’t manage to buy back the letter. But none of them realizes Fred has anything more valuable on him than a comb and a lighter. They take him down to the slope beside the railway line, where a tall fence of planks hides them from the blocks of apartments closest by, and where the drunks sit with their glinting bottles. They get up and go when they see who’s coming. Fred waits. But no one does anything yet. All of them are waiting. Fred stands between them. Someone calls for their kids. A window bangs. Slowly they start to move around him. They’re counting too. They’re counting the seconds. They’re counting and waiting, waiting for the next train. It’s on time; a thunder approaching through the tunnel — freight cars passing. And then the fists come — the youngest first — he hits wildly and without thinking and only gets in a few punches. Fuck, he shouts, but no one can hear what he’s saying. He jumps instead and smashes his fist right in Fred’s face, his mouth — as if he’s banging in a nail — and at that moment the last freight car passes and the silence comes back in a chill shadow. And Fred stands there, hands against his side, the blood trickling from his lips. Blood and gravel — it feels like that — blood and gravel. His mouth has come loose, and in the very heart of this mire he smiles, Fred stands there smiling. The smallest, the wild man among them, wipes his hands in the grass and groans. He’s the one who groans. The leader weighs up Fred, for a moment taken aback, more taken aback than enraged — then he smiles too, and the sun suddenly blinds them. A train comes from the other side — a locomotive through the heart, a locomotive through the blood that deadens the pain. And it’s the two others who punch now; Fred sees the windows like a film rolling, and passengers looking out at them — they think they’re dreaming. He hears the train whistle as a thin and shining streak of sound in the air. Fred stands there. Hands by his sides. He can’t feel his own face, as if someone’s put a mask on him. Soon he won’t be able to see. He smiles with his broken mouth. It’s that smile that makes the smallest of the gang madder still. He tears a plank from the fence, storms toward Fred, and smashes it against the back of his head. Fred staggers forward but keeps his feet. “Ow,” he whispers and laughs. There’s a wave at the back of his forehead, a black wave pitching within him. There’s a nail in the plank — a bent, brown nail. The smallest one wants to hit him again. He can’t bear this any longer. But the leader holds him back. They move away. They’re the ones who get the hell out. They’re the ones who’re frightened. They see Fred stagger but to keep his feet — they don’t understand it, it’s all wrong, it’s unnatural. He should be on the ground, begging for mercy. And perhaps they’d have picked him up, made sure he was still alive — but Fred’s on his feet, he’s standing there laughing. The smallest guy sees there’s blood on the plank he’s holding and chucks it away He climbs over the fence after the others. Fred slowly raises his hands.