The Half Brother: A Novel

by Christensen, Lars Saabye

  Peder was equally silent on the way home, and I was too, be- cause I had my own thoughts going through my head — I was going to write — and the thought was of such immensity that there was barely room for anything else. But when we went our separate ways, Peder said something after all. “I think we really have to look after Vivian,” he said. “We always look after Vivian,” I retorted. All at once Peder gave me a hug. “Good night, Barnum. Tomorrow we’re damn well going to ditch school.” And I walked the last part of the way alone up Church Road. It was a strange evening. I stopped at Marienlyst and looked around me. All this was mine. This was my world. The streets I walked in, the wood behind the town, the skies above the roofs. This was what I’d write about. It was here my characters would live — Esther from the kiosk, the Old One, Fred, Mom, Peder and Vivian, Dad (even though he was dead) — every one of them would have their place here, both the living and the dead. Then Fred appeared. He came across the grass, walked right through the little city where once upon a time we learned the Green Cross Code — through the small streets, the small pedestrian zones no larger than the lines on the pavement, over the sidewalks and between the tiny houses that were supposed to resemble real ones. And when I saw him walking like this, an idea came to me, my very first idea. Fred stopped in front of me. “You look a bit sad, Barnum.” “I was just thinking,” I told him. “Thinking? About what? Something sad?” I had to tell him. “I was thinking about everything I’m going to write.” Fred bent closer. “Write?” “I’ve made up my mind, Fred. I’m going to write.” “Write what?” “Film scripts,” I told him. Fred looked in the opposite direction, as if he were afraid someone was following him. But we were the only ones at Marienlyst that evening. “I’m tired,” he said, and laid his hand on my shoulder, and we walked like that the rest of the way home. Mom came rampaging out of the living room when she saw that Fred had finally appeared, but he just went on into the bedroom without so much as saying good morning. “Where have you been?” she demanded. “Just went for a walk,” Fred said, and banged the door behind him. “For five days!” she shouted after him and then looked at me instead. “Just went for a walk,” I repeated. And Mom smiled nevertheless; she was glad Fred had come home, despite the fact it had taken five days. And that was what we’d go on saying, time after time, when he began disappearing and finally had vanished for so long that he was declared dead — Freds just gone for a walk. And it came to me that it was Vivian who’d first spoken the words earlier that evening, she’d said she’d just gone for a walk. “Shall I make you some supper?” Mom asked, and then I realized she really was in a good mood. “No, thanks,” I said, “but do you know if we have a book called Hunger?” Her smile became one of wonderment, and she turned toward Boletta, who’d already gotten up from the divan and was making her way slowly toward us. “Unfortunately, we burned that particular novel,” Boletta said. “Burned?” “The author was a troublemaker during the war, Bar-num. His books were no longer fit for our shelves. So we dumped his collected works right here in the stove.” Boletta had to support herself against my shoulder. Soon we’d be as small as each other. She gave a deep sigh. “But now I regret having done it. Even troublemakers can be good writers.”

  I thought about that when I went to bed, and it served to strengthen my resolve. Even troublemakers can be good writers. Then I could manage it too — I, Barnum, the height of my own pen. I got up again, sat down at the table, switched on the lamp, got out a pen and pad and wrote: A boy is walking slowly down a street. He’s bigger than the houses. He’s taller than the traffic lights. He stops at a corner. He’s all alone. That was as far as I got, because I’d forgotten that Fred was there. “What are you calling the thing you’re writing?” he asked me. “’The Little City,’” I told him. “Fine title, Barnum.” I was so happy I put out the lamp. “Aren’t you going to write any more?” “I’ll wait until tomorrow.” “But why?” “I don’t know how it’s going to continue.” “You’re the only one who can know that,” Fred said. I curled up under the quilt. It was a long time since we’d talked together like this. I’d keep this conversation safe.

  I closed my eyes. I’d smile myself slowly to sleep. Then I heard Fred coming and sitting down on my bed. He could ruin everything now. But he didn’t. What he said made our conversation all the more significant, and I knew I’d never forget it. I grew afraid all the same. “I’ve been doing some thinking myself,” he said, his voice low. “Thinking about what?” He was silent a good while. “That I’m going to find the letter the late Arnold Nilsen sold.” That was how he expressed it — the late Arnold Nilsen. I opened my eyes. Fred leaned right over me, very close to my face. “Don’t tell anyone, Barnum.” “No,” I said. “Don’t tell a soul.” I held up my hands so he could see my fingers. He gave a laugh, got up and stood there looking down at my pad, which was just visible in the golden glow of the streetlight that shone in through the curtains in a narrow, shimmering beam. And he began to read aloud; he read carefully and clearly “A hoy is walking slowly down a street. He’s bigger than the houses. He’s taller than the traffic lights. He stops at a corner. He’s all alone.” Fred read the first thing I’d written without making a single mistake — not one syllable did he get wrong. I didn’t dare say anything. I might begin to cry. That mustn’t happen. Whatever happened, it mustn’t be that. Fred closed my notebook and lay down once more. We lay there in the dark with a line of chalk on the floor between us. “He’s all alone,” he breathed.

  Fred was sleeping when I got up the following morning, or at least he appeared to be. Mom padded around the apartment, her voice low, hushing us at the slightest noise lest Fred be wakened. I didn’t go to school. I went to Sten Park and sat up at the top of Blåsen. I got out my notebook, pen and packed lunch and hid my schoolbag under a bush. It was a fine day. The air was clear and cool, but not cold. It was as if everything was brought closer — Ekeberg Hill on the far side, the gray buildings, the church towers. The city became smaller and smaller. I started writing. He is all alone. The light changes. But there are no cars there. He goes over the pedestrian crossing. The yellow lines are smaller than his shoes. He goes into a shop and has to stoop right down to get in. Its a flower shop. He’s all alone there, too. He calls out, “Is there anyone here?” But no one answers. He starts picking flowers from vases, and they stick up just over his fingers. He leaves some money on the counter and goes out. And in the same moment he leaves, all hunched up, he’s blinded by a dazzling light and has to shield his eyes. A voice shouts out, “You’re under arrest!” I felt hungry after all this and had a slice of bread with sausage and cheese, and as I sat up there like this on Blåsen, on a hilltop of dead horses, right in the middle of my story, I noticed something happening over on St. Hans Hill, the other point of elevation in the vicinity, and soon enough I saw what it was. It was the group making the movie. They were back in business. Here I was sitting writing and there they were making the movie, each of us atop our respective hills. I packed up my stuff, climbed down the steep path and ran over in their direction. By the time I got there they’d already stopped for a break. I recognized Pontus. He was sitting on a bench, resting against his shiny trouser knees, agitatedly smoking a cigarette. He looked just as beat as he had the day before. The director sat in his own chair eating sandwiches while he leafed through the script. The same policeman was in evidence too. Surely walking there wouldn’t be banned? I went along the path through the trees and lessened my pace when I got close to Pontus. He glanced up and drew a thin finger behind his glasses to scratch his eye. All at once he threw away his cigarette and said something. “Would you be so gracious as to tell me what time it is?” I halted, quite taken aback, and just managed to roll up the sleeve of my jacket. “It’s ten o’clock,” I said. Pontus shook his head. “No, it is not! It’s two!” I had to take a second look. My watch said ten. “It’s ten o’clock,” I repeated. Pontus got up and became really infuriated. “You are completely mistaken. It is two o’clock. Correct yo
ur watch accordingly, my good man!” I heard the sound of laughter from up by the camera. “Would you like a sausage sandwich, Pontus?” I asked him. Pontus was momentarily staggered, taken off guard — you could have knocked him over with a feather. He sat down once more. “And what’s your name?” he asked. “Barnum,” I replied. He nodded and didn’t take his eyes off me. “Pontus and Barnum. Sounds like an old pair from the silent films. Is your name really Barnum?” “Yes, I was christened Barnum by the vicar on R0st.” “But I’m afraid I’m not actually called Pontus. My name’s Per Oscarsson.” He stretched out his hand. I took it. It was more or less like shaking a bunch of bones. “Thank you, Barnum. I’d love to have a sausage sandwich. But I’m afraid it’s not possible. I’m playing a hungry madman in this film, so that means I have to be hungry.” “I see that,” I said. He let go of my hand and pointed down at his shoes. They were equally thin. “I’ve walked bare-legged from Stockholm to Oslo,” he said. “Do you know how many miles that is?” I shook my head. “Nor do I. But it’s a lot.” Pontus leaned back on the bench. “I’m hungry,” he sighed. “I barely know where I am.” “You’re on St. Hans Hill in Oslo,” I told him. Pontus nodded slowly. “Thank you, Barnum. That means we’re off to Palace Park later today.” He gave a deep sigh. “Next time I want to play a fat king.” A lady in expansive pants came down to where we were. She had with her a case containing various tubes and something that resembled a shaving brush. “The maestro’s waiting,” she hissed. Then she began bringing out Pontus’ features — she darkened his stubble, made his hair thinner and his eyes even wilder-looking than they already were. While she was doing this, the maestro got up and shouted, “Would all intruders leave the set at once!” The maestro was the director. Intruders meant me. “What’s the time?” I asked quickly. Pontus took out his pocket watch, smiled, and with great ceremony opened it. There was nothing inside at all — it was like a silver shell with the flesh scraped out. Pontus smiled. “The time is precisely five minutes to twelve.”

  I ran down to Solli Square, but at the last corner I slowed down and sauntered the final bit of the way. Peder and Vivian were under the tree already I was in good time. I snatched up a couple of leaves and studied their fine patterning; veins on a green sheet. Peder and Vivian came over. “Barnum’s in plenty of time today!” Peder exclaimed. I dropped the leaves carefully down onto the ground again. “They’re in Palace Park,” I announced. “And how do you know that?” I shrugged my shoulders. “I was talking to Pontus.” Vivian put her head to one side. She tended to do that when there was something she didn’t get, as if somehow that would help, having her head at an angle. The corner of her eyes were red; thin sores she’d tried to brush away Perhaps she hadn’t slept the night before? Perhaps she’d sat up reading the rest of the novel to her mother? “Pontus?” she asked quietly. “The main character in the movie. I met him on St. Hans Hill.” Peder took a step closer. “You mean it?” “Of course I do!” Peder began whirling his arms. “So what was he like?” I thought about it a long while. Peder was bursting with curiosity. “Pontus was hungry,” I said. Together we went down to Palace Park. Nothing was happening there. Only King Olav was at home. Perhaps he’d been told to keep away from the windows. I couldn’t get these thoughts out of my head. What does it take for us to believe in the things we see? Did Pontus speak Swedish because we were still part of Sweden? How much can we really see? And if a plane crossed the city, would everything have to be done from scratch? This was my thought — how much do you have to lie before someone believes it’s actually the truth? “I’m hungry, too,” Peder said. Slowly he started down toward the kiosk by the National Theater. He’d grown fatter again in the wake of the summer. We could hear his labored breathing all the way to where we were standing. There was a faint smile on Vivians lips and she was about to say something, but then didn’t in the end. We sat down in the leaves behind the largest of the trees so the guards wouldn’t see us. Vivian was silent. When I looked at her for any length of time she almost became transparent, as if her skin was water I could have leaned right into. I suddenly remembered what she’d said, that she’d been born in an accident. “What is it?” she asked. “Nothing,” I whispered. I wanted to move closer to her, but she leaned away and instead brought out a book from her shoulder bag. She then gave it to me. The book was Hunger by Knut Hamsun, the troublemaker. “You can have it,” Vivian said. “Have you finished it?” She nodded. “Many thanks,” I said. I leafed through it a bit. I didn’t find Pontus anywhere. “How does it end?” I asked her. “The main character leaves town,” Vivian told me. “Does he come back?” Vivian looked down. “That I can’t tell you. It’s not mentioned.” “It sounds like a pretty sad ending,” I said. Vivian looked at me again. “You think so?” But I couldn’t say any more, because at that moment Peder was coming back and had bought enough food for a fortnight — he had half the Freia chocolate factory with him and hadn’t forgotten to get himself real gingerbread and peppermint drops (Vivian’s absolute favorite, even though her slender figure was none the worse for them). “The probability of one of two events occurring is equal to the sum total of each of the events’ probability,” Peder said, and let three packets of chocolate twirls tumble into the leaves. “In other words, are we going to choose chocolate or hunger?” We started with chocolate. And someone must have taken a picture of us there without our noticing, because several years later I came across a photograph in Who What Where, and I gradually started to recognize the three blurred figures who sat there all hunched over scrabbling in the leaves. It was ourselves — Peder, Vivian and myself — and we had a kind of sly look as if something nefarious was going on, rather than just the eating of a few twirls in the autumn leaves. And under the picture was this caption: The first young people to seek out the drug scene in Palace Park, in protest against what they called the dance of death around the plastic god and the golden calf. And it was then I understood, once and for all, abashed and perhaps amused too, and yet with a degree of sorrow, that it’s the eye that decides what it wants to see. The eye twists the world, and everything you see now and will see in the future has revisionist power.

  They came just before dusk — Pontus, the maestro and the whole crew. They came in that half-light that rises shimmering and somehow won’t let the day depart, in the month before the fog from the fjord sweeps through the streets and rubs away distances and corners. The sun was a red shadow between the trees. There was a glimmer in the leaves that trembled along the banks. They rigged everything up behind the guards’ sheds. We went a bit closer. Everything seemed rather chaotic. Everyone was running around in circles. Perhaps they were short of time. The pale lady with her furs had her face made up and became paler still. Pontus sat down on a bench that had been brought there for him. It looked like the bench from St. Hans Hill. Lights came on. A machine blew leaves in Pontus’ direction. I hoped the whole script might blow away so that I could pick it up page by page and bring it back to the director in the correct order. I tried to wave to Pontus, but he didn’t see me. He wrote something on a scrap of paper and was in a world of his own. I knew there and then that I’d like to be him. Peder took hold of my arm. “Tell him your grandmother was a famous actress,” he hissed. “Who, Pontus?” “No, the director, of course! He’s the one who makes the decisions.” “Decisions about what?” “Everything, Barnum.” The director waved his arms about and looked like a conductor who couldn’t get his orchestra to play in tune. Finally he sat down in his chair and folded his arms. I thought about the Old One, who never came to be in any movies at the end of the day “My great-grandmother,” I whispered. “It was my great-grandmother who was the actress.” “Same thing. Just tell him.” Peder gave me a nudge in the back. I think Vivian nudged me too, more carefully. I took a deep breath and slowly made my way over to the director. He seemed pretty annoyed when I stood there in front of him. “Can’t we ever get rid of these kids?” he exclaimed. I gave a deep bow. “My great-grandmother was a famous actress,�
� I told him. The director looked at me with a single eye. “Really. Your great-grandmother was a famous actress in Denmark? And what was her name?” I told him. He shook his head. “Not familiar with the name, I’m afraid. It was way before my time.” The director looked down at the script again. I stayed standing where I was, mostly because I didn’t quite know what to do, and because the leaves were so heavy to walk through. I stood like this for a good while. The director looked up from his bundle of sheets and took off his glasses. “How many are there of you?” “Three,” I answered. The director flung wide his arms. “All right. Since I can’t get rid of you, I’ll use you instead.” He got up and went over to two women, one of whom was the makeup artist, and spoke to them. And what happened now I really have to relate as quietly as I can, because the following year when we sat in the Saga Cinema for the premiere, our disappointment was so great. Yes, we felt downright cheated, and that deep sense of disappointment was mingled with something still worse — namely shame. For that reason I’ll relate this sotto voce, I’ll just whisper — we were to be extras. We were dressed up in old-fashioned clothes, expansive pants that scratched our thighs, overlarge shoes and jackets with more buttons than we had fingers. “You have such fine curls,” the makeup lady whispered, and combed them a bit too much. Vivian was given a long rustling dress, high boots and a heavy mantle. We were quite a trio. The year was 1890. The city was called Kristiania. We were on our way home through Palace Park, having been to visit an aunt and uncle in Wergeland Road. “You’re siblings,” the director told us. “Isn’t that a bit odd?” Peder objected. “Odd? What do you mean?” Peder took up position beside me and pulled Vivian in closer. “Do we really look like siblings?” The director sighed heavily. “In past centuries siblings looked as you do. You can just walk completely naturally. And don’t turn around! Got that?” We nodded. “Should we think of anything in particular?” I inquired. The director gave me a hard stare. “Think?” “Yes, what should we be thinking about?” Pontus was there himself now. “Have we become colleagues then, Bar-num?” “Looks like it,” I said. Pontus laughed with yellow teeth and hollow cheeks. “I’ll tell you what you can think about. You can think about all the sandwiches you’ll eat when you get home. Turkey. Ham. Beef. Sausage. With rich mayonnaise. And chocolate with cream.” The director broke in. “That’s enough, Oscarsson. You’ve given them plenty to think about now.” Shortly afterward things were underway. We walked down toward the shadowed pond where a few ducks were swimming as the filming began at our backs. We didn’t turn around. We didn’t say a word. I don’t know what Peder and Vivian thought about, but I worked out in my mind how I’d write this. To start with we wouldn’t have been siblings. Rather three friends on our way home from a party or a ball — yes, a ball, and Peder and I are both in love with Vivian, and that’s the catalyst for a showdown between the two of us — it’s either him or me. But then Vivian falls in the pond at the point where the water’s deepest; she can’t swim, the water’s freezing at this time of year and she’s on the point of drowning. And Peder and I have to join forces to save her; we throw ourselves into the water and get her to the bank. But it’s too late. She doesn’t manage to survive the ordeal and dies in our helpless arms. “Think we’ve gone far enough now,” Peder murmured. We’d all but crossed Park Road. And when we did finally turn, the director was standing in a shadow in front of the floodlight, waving. We ran back. “Perfect,” he said. “Shall we do it again?” I asked. “No need. That was perfect.” We got changed once more and were given a fiver each. We got paid. We went the same way down toward the pond, and we’d been paid for being in a movie — five kroner each, fifteen kroner altogether. “We have to celebrate this!” Peder exclaimed. “We’ll get drunk!” The ducks rose up from the water with heavy, dripping wings. “Yes!” I shouted. And we did get pretty drunk, particularly Peder, and most likely me too. “Barnum gets drunk quickest because he’s small,” Peder used to say. And then I’d say that Peder took the longest to get drunk because he was so fat. Then we’d drink still more. We went to Mill’s Stamps — Bought and Sold, and we emptied the fridge in the back. There was a bottle of champagne there, in the event of a really exceptional deal being struck — and maybe Dad and Oscar Miil had drunk champagne the day great-grandfather’s letter was sold and bought. We drank it at any rate. We opened it with a pop and drank the foaming, tickling juice right from the bottle, because wasn’t this an exceptional occasion, too? We’d been in a movie, we’d acted in Hunger. And we sat there for the remainder of the evening, in that cramped back room, with the heavy smell of old letters, toasting each other with champagne and Campari and cola. Peder used to say that Vivian didn’t get drunk because she was so beautiful. But I felt it again, that giddiness I’d first experienced on Ildjernet, and that I’d first sensed in Mom’s bedroom when I drank in lungfuls of air and got the sweet, dark taste of Malaga on my tongue. Together we sat there and drank. I took off, slowly at first, and then it was just as though a switch was flicked, and the strange thing was that most of me was plunged into darkness, but at the same time a light came on in another room. It was a room I hadn’t known existed, and in this room I was king, for as long as the light lasted. There I could lay out Barnum’s ruler; the shadows I cast were long and lithe — the ideas came so easily, they lined up and I was king. I got out my notebook and wrote on a blank page: “Fattening.” That was the word I wrote. “Fattening.” That was my new idea, even though many years would pass before I finished writing the piece and won the new scripts competition at Norwegian Film for it. I’d started. “What do you have there?” Peder asked me. I flicked back through my notebook to “The Little City.” “Just something I’ve written,” I told him. “Written? Have you written something?” I got up. I wasn’t standing completely steadily; I floated over the floor in the same way my thoughts floated through me. “Yes,” I said loudly. “I’ve started writing!” Peder clapped his hands. “Read your work to us, Barnum!” And I did read, the start of the first things I’d written, apart from my school compositions, which didn’t count. When I was done, Vivian smiled while Peder fell silent and opened another bottle of beer. “Great,” Vivian said, and gave me a quick hug. I tried to hold on to her but couldn’t manage to. It isn’t true that she didn’t get drunk because she was so beautiful. She didn’t get drunk because she didn’t drink. That was maybe why she was so beautiful. “You’re so beautiful,” I said, and sank down on the sofa. “Don’t be silly,” she said. I looked at her and suddenly saw she’d kept her wig and that her face was covered in makeup. “Yes, you are! I’ll write about you one day!” Peder grew impatient. “But what happens after that? You can’t just finish it like that?” I thought about it. My mind was working. Things were rolling now. I was a wheel. “He’s put in prison!” I shouted. “And everything there’s much bigger, just as everything was tiny in the Little City. So he who’d been the world’s biggest person becomes its smallest The only thing he has to remind him of the Little City are the flowers he has hidden away.” I said no more and for a time there was quiet. “I liked that part with the flowers,” Vivian whispered. Peder got up. “But what does it mean?” Vivian laughed. “You can always count how many words there are,” she told him. I laughed too. “Yes! Count up the number of words I’ve written! Then you can see if you understand it!” Peder came closer. “But do you understand it yourself, Barnum?” I shook my head and really shouldn’t have. “Not a clue” I admitted. It was Peder who got me home. When I came to once more, I was sitting in front of the clock in the hall. It stood still. There were no coins in the drawer. Time was penniless. Mom was standing in front of me too. But she didn’t stand still. The whole of her was moving about; it was as if she was trying to keep her balance with just her fingers. Behind her, behind the dead clock, was Boletta — leaning against her stick, and I thought I could hear Fred laughing in our room. Someone was laughing. It was only me. Mom was crying. “The headmaster phoned.” “Did he? What did he say?” Mom stopped cryin
g and grabbed my schoolbag. “You have just one chance, Barnum! To tell the truth!” “The truth?” “Yes, what is it you’ve been doing today? Because you certainly haven’t been at school!” I turned it over in my mind. I wasn’t floating any more. I was sinking. I wasn’t a wheel. I was a lopsided, unusable wheel rolling down a hillside covered in hedgehogs. “I’ve been writing,” I whispered. “Writing?” “Yes, and afterward filming. Don’t you believe me, or what?” Now Mom got angry instead. She opened my bag and rummaged around inside it with feverish hands. “The headmaster’s fed up with you skipping school!” she shouted as she went on rummaging. “You won’t pass your exams if you go on like this!” I shrugged my shoulders. They were heavy to lift. “All the same to me,” I said. Mom leaned toward me, her mouth trembling. “Don’t try to imitate Fred, Barnum! Because you’d never manage to do it anyway!” But my mouth was trembling as much as hers. “It’s true!” I told her. She took a step backward. She stood with Hunger in one hand and my notebook in the other. She melted for a moment. But she froze again just as quickly and bent down once more. “Have you been drinking too, Barnum?” I nodded. I shouldn’t have. I slid down from the chair into the clock’s shadow. I didn’t have much to say for myself. And I can’t say all that much now either. I just slid down from the chair, and what I say now has been related about me by others. I am the story, the one that’s told — there I lie like dead time at Mom’s feet. But this much I know — Boletta’s cure was administered, something that she in her time had inherited from the Old One and given to Mom. It was Chinese wine minus the Malaga, and the next time I woke up I was mercifully lying in my own bed, and I’d heard right after all — Fred was laughing. Fred lay in his bed, and his laughter was deep and low. “What are you laughing at?” I murmured. “Guess,” he said. “Me?” “Wrong. I’m not laughing at my little brother.” “Thanks, Fred. Thank you.” “Have you written anything today?” “Yes, half a page of the notebook.” “Good, Barnum.” Fred held his laughter inside him for a time. There was a humming in my heart, as if the speed had been increased so that time went faster inside me; perhaps I’d aged by several years in the course of that one night, perhaps I’d died, or maybe I’d awoken old and wise. “Were you drunk?” Fred asked. “I guess so,” I whispered. “Did you like it?” he asked. I tried to remember. “For the time that it lasted.” And I felt frightened then, because I couldn’t remember how I got home, from the time we shut the door of Mill’s Stamps to when I sat there in front of the clock. It was as if a sheet of my life had been ripped from top to bottom; it was my first black hole, and it certainly wouldn’t be my last. Fred let out his laughter once more. “Now it’s Barnum who’s the naughty boy,” he said. “It is me you’re laughing at then,” I said. Fred stopped. “I’m laughing at Arnesen.” “Arnesen? Why him?” “Just wait,” Fred said. “Don’t you hear how quiet it is?” I listened. Yes. There was stillness. It was a long while since it had been so quiet in the yard. Mrs. Arnesen wasn’t playing the piano. “Good night, Barnum.” I dreamed nothing and the following morning Fred had already got up and left. Mom was sitting on the edge of the bed stroking her hand through my hair and smiling. “You really got to act in Hunger” she said when she was sure I was awake. I felt old all right, but not particularly wise. “Yes, as extras. Peder and Vivian and me.” “If only the Old One had known,” Mom sighed. “Just imagine.” “Yes, just imagine. We walked through Palace Park and were filmed.” Mom stayed her hand, let it rest in my curls. “But promise me never to get drunk again. You’re far too young.” “Yes, Mom.” “Drink turns the heart nasty, Barnum.” “Has Boletta’s heart become nasty?” I asked. She pulled my hair quite hard. “By rights I should be furious with you, Barnum. You should be grounded for at least a month!” “All right,” I breathed. “But first you can tell me how you got hold of the alcohol.” “We borrowed a bottle of champagne belonging to Peder’s dad. “Borrowed?” Mom’s face loomed nearer mine. “Do you have a sore head?” I wanted to be honest. “Yes,” I said. Mom smiled. “That’s the idea. That you should have a sore head.” “Yes, it’s what’s called postal surcharge,” I told her. Mom stared at me for a long while, and her eyes weren’t quite right. Then she went to fetch the Medical Dictionary for Norwegian Homes, for heavens sake, and she sat down once more on the edge of the bed. “Pay close attention now, Barnum.” And she read to me, slowly and clearly, so I wouldn’t miss a single word: Alcoholism. Under the slight influence of alcohol self-esteem is increased, while control over speech and thinking is impaired. If the effect is greater, then control both of sense and sensibility will be weakened or effectively lost altogether, mastery of muscle activity restricted, and ultimately only a mass of flesh, bone and blood will remain, under the authority of chance or other people. The most powerful intoxication will, through poisoning of the system, lead to full unconsciousness and paralysis. The result of intoxication is indisposition — a foul taste in the mouth, bad breath, ill temper, depression — as a consequence this will, for many, necessitate a renewal of the effect of intoxication. This often leads to a state of chronic alcoholism. The body is weakened and the hands shake. The face takes on a blue-red coloring and the nose in particular swells. Bit by bit all mental faculties will be lost; all that remains will be the unbroken torment of a desire for alcohol which in the end will not itself be tolerable, making death for the remaining shell of a body an inevitability. Mom shut Greve’s Medical Dictionary with a thump and turned toward Boletta, who was standing by the door. “Don’t terrify the life out of the boy,” Boletta said. Mom got up and put the book back in its place on the shelf. “Barnum needs to know what he’s doing when he gets himself drunk.” “Yes, yes, and Dr. Greve thinks my death should have been an inevitability years ago!” “Don’t talk like that, Mother!” “I’ll talk just as I please, and say here and now that Greve was a killjoy and has more lives on his conscience than champagne!” “Barnum’s still under age,” Mom breathed. “I don’t want him to ruin his life.” Boletta laughed. “Oh, it’ll take more than that to ruin his life. Wouldn’t you have had some champagne too if you’d just become a movie star?” That’s how they conversed, as if they thought I was already dead and couldn’t hear a thing. But I lay there; I looked at my hands and couldn’t detect any shaking; I tested the smell of my breath, and I felt my nose to see if it had grown any bigger. I wondered whether I was hungry, and decided I wasn’t — I was thirsty, though, and in my heart of hearts (and it both tempted me and scared the living daylights out of me), I’d have loved a bit more champagne. Just one gulp to pick me up, to take me somewhere else. I was already just the shell of a body. “Per Oscarsson walked bare-legged from Stockholm to Oslo,” I said in a loud voice. Mom and Boletta turned toward the bed. “I had to tell the headmaster you had the flu,” Mom murmured. “You’ll have to stay home for two more days. And that’s the very last time I’ll tell a lie on your behalf! Do you understand me?” “Yes, Mom.” She came closer once more and her eyes overflowed with a sudden, unexpected gentleness. “Fred has promised to pull himself together, Barnum. And you can manage that, too.” “Pull himself together? How?” “He’s going to get himself a job. And don’t you see a change in here?” I couldn’t see any noticeable difference, except that Fred had made his bed. Mom pointed to the floor and smiled. “The line has gone at last,” she said. Now I saw it. Fred’s line had been rubbed out. The room was no longer divided in two, and this, which should have made me happy, caused me anxiety instead, almost terror. Because I didn’t know what it meant, and Boletta must have felt the same because she looked away and closed her eyes. But for Mom it was a good sign that Fred had removed the white line between us. How wrong can you be? We read signs according to our likes; we make them what we want them to be, and slowly but surely those signs turn their wrath upon us. Mom smiled. “What you wrote was great, Barnum. About the Little City.” I sat up in bed. “Have you read it?” “We couldn’t stop once we began,” Mom breathed, almost shamefully. “But you must finish it.�
� Boletta thumped her stick against the door frame, as if it was her way of applauding, “And see it has a happy ending, Barnum. There are far too many sad stories in this world. And when we tell sad stories we begin to resemble them ourselves.” I still didn’t know how the story was going to end — my story. “I’ll try,” I promise. Mom put my notebook down on the quilt and flicked over to the last page. “But what does it say here?” she asked me. I could barely read my own letters. Perhaps that was how Fred experienced words, like small, black creatures crawling over the page, pulling the wool over his eyes all the time. “Fattening,” I said in the end. Mom was startled. “That’s certainly something you won’t write about.” I looked up at her and made up my mind that nobody would ever read anything I’d written before I myself had authorized it. “What’s the business with Arne- sen?” I inquired. Mom went over toward the door. “Arnesen? What do you mean?”