The Half Brother: A Novel

by Christensen, Lars Saabye

  I go back straightaway to the Mission, dazed and shaken. The dark girl’s there behind the counter, a hint of amusement on her lips, and the same men look at each other as their expressive faces break into crooked smiles and one of them says, loudly, before the laughter erupts, “Well, if it isn’t the cormorant himself!”

  I spread the dust of stories and let it flower in everyone’s mouths as bouquets of the most beautiful lies.

  One morning there’s a knock at the door again. It’s the dark girl. She glances quickly all around at the walls that’ll soon be covered in sheets of paper. “I’m not hungry,” I assure her. She smiles. “But there’s a letter for you.” I can’t fathom this. She hands me an envelope. I recognize Peder’s writing. And the letter’s traveled far — address after address has been crossed out. “Thank you,” I murmur. The girl doesn’t move. “Shall I put the name Barnum Nilsen in the visitors’ book instead?” I go nearer her. Her eyes are brown. “How did you know it was me?” “It wasn’t all that hard.” “Do I look like my name?” She laughs now. “My dad said there weren’t all that many who could recognize a Buick like that under a tarpaulin.”

  I put the letter on my bedside table and can’t face reading it. I dream for the first time in a long while. I dream about the suitcase. Someone’s carrying it, but I can’t make out who. In the dream I can see only the person’s shoes and legs, and the hand holding it — the suitcase is heavy.

  The sun wakes me up suddenly. It’s filling the entire room. I get up. The letters on the bedside table. I open it. Peder’s written: My friend, I don’t know where you are, but perhaps you’ll get this letter. Do you remember the card we found from the world’s tallest man that summer on Ildjernet? I have to tell you that nothing came of The Viking after all. A new boss started at the film company. I met him in LA. He’d been living at Venice Beach since 1969 and the only thing he could say was: What about Vikings in outer space? Something for you perhaps, Barnum? I had to sit down on the bed until my laughter had subsided. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed. Then I hear noise from outside — voices, shouts and music. I go over to the window, and it’s only now I see that someone’s washed it — everything’s clear and seems suddenly close. I’m blinded by the world. It’s the ferry that’s come in. Just about everyone from the islands must have congregated here today. And it’s as if I’ve seen it all before and yet am witnessing it for the first time too. It’s the Italians, as purchasers, who’re coming to harvest R0st’s dry gardens, its coastal grapevines. They’re accompanied down the gangway, and the yellow Buick materializes from the other direction, all sleek and shiny and with the top down — it bumps silently along like a polished, wheeled carriage. The driver’s wearing a uniform and has on a bright cap that covers his high, white brow. He stops the car at the gangway; the guests take their seats, and slowly he drives off between wind and people.

  Peder’s closed the letter thus: P.S. Greetings from Vivian. Thomas has spoken his first word. Guess what it was!

  Later that day I take a wander over to the lopsided shack. The Buick’s parked outside. The driver’s down on his knees polishing the hubcaps so they’ll shine once more like four mirrors. “Do you know where my dad set up the windmill?” I ask him. He wipes the sweat from his brow, for a moment embarrassed. “We shelled out for the party after the baptism, and we had to bring the gravestone all the way from Bod0,” he murmurs. I put my hand on the warm hood. “Then you deserved this beast.” He looks at me smiling. “Come with me,” he says.

  We row across the sound to the resolute pile of rock. We sit side by side on the thwart. The oar slides around in my hands. The driver laughs. “You’re sculling backward like Arnold did.” We get the boat on an even keel. “What do you know about my father?” I ask him. He just keeps rowing for a time and doesn’t say anything. I have to pull hard to match his rhythm, and soon enough have almost no strength left. “Arnold chopped off one of his fingers when he was a boy,” he says. We near land, a narrow bay with a rough shore. “Was he a good man?” I breathe. The driver, the ferryman, the only son of Elendius — leans sorrowfully on his oar. “When Arnold returned to christen you, his whole hand was gone,” he says softly. Finally we’re there. He helps me ashore. “Shall I come up with you to the top?” I shake my head. “I can manage myself.” But he won’t let me go yet, and he places two heavy rocks in my jacket pockets. “You don’t want to blow away again,” he says. And so I climb up the same path that Dad descended as a wheel. I’ve no idea how long it takes. The light hangs still in a shimmer of white birds. When I reach the last part of the climb and the grass levels out in an oval curve, I see Dad’s windmill. It resembles a crashed plane or a broken cross. I sit down. The sun is lying on the horizon, and I can see that that sun is green. I roll my stones back down the steep slope and the rank stench of guano hits me. The wind tears at the remains of the construction so they emit a beautiful keening sound — a rusty song. And I know now — this is my place.

  Next morning I head south. I take the ferry to Bod0, the plane to Oslo, and a taxi back to Boltel0kka. I have to air the place for three whole days. It’s like after an extended summer holiday New folk have moved into the neighbor’s apartment, a young couple. I don’t meet Vivian. I still haven’t seen Thomas. But Peder and I keep up our electric theater. I wait behind the scenes in the shadows counting white days, working on The Night Man and submitting synopses and treatments, right until the day I’m sent a button in the mail with two words — Dads button — the same day we leave for the film festival in Berlin.

  Tempelhof

  It’s Peder who’s breathing down my neck. He it is who follows me into Tempelhof, this architectural structure fashioned by the Nazis; it’s still early morning and I’m suffused with a heavy calm. I’m going home. I’m going home to Fred, because Fred’s come back. I haven’t seen him for twenty-eight years and sixty days. But he’s possibly seen me. Perhaps he’s seen us the whole time. Peder takes my hand. He’s changed bookings, canceled meetings, paid bills, taken phone calls and apologized to the vast majority of those I’ve been in the vicinity of. “Sure you don’t want me to come with you?” he asks. “You’re more needed here,” I tell him. He bustles around in front of me so I’m forced to stop. “You knew he’d come back one day, didn’t you?” “What do you mean?” Peder looks away. “You knew he wasn’t dead, Barnum.” We stand there in the empty hall. There’s a smell of soap. The walls are swaying and about to fall. I have to hold onto something, I sit down on my suitcase. “Perhaps. Perhaps not,” I breathe. An armed guard suddenly rushes out from the toilet area, his gun in its black holster, a baton in his tightly fastened belt. He pushes his cap into place as he momentarily scans the place, and his eye lingers a little longer on me. His hands are dripping. Then he proceeds over to the luggage carousel, where someone’s forgotten a blue umbrella bearing the festival logo. There’s a smell of soap here. “Do you think it’s possible to be forgiven for something you haven’t done yet?” I ask. Peder bends down closer, even more worried. “You aren’t planning something crazy, are you?” I start laughing. “It’s no laughing matter,” he says. “I’m not laughing.” “Do you need some pills?” he whispers. I shake my head. “I’ve been thinking about the fact that nothing’s ever come of it all, Peder.” He doesn’t follow what I’m talking about. “Nothing’s ever come of what?” “Of everything we’ve worked on. Not one film. Not a single image. Not a solitary frame.” Peder shrugs. “That’s not how I see it” is all he says. I get up from my suitcase. “Do you think everything would be different if we’d have made it with our films?” Peder smiles. “At least we’d have been met in a limo.” “I mean it, Peder. Would anything have been different?” Peder turns to look at the screen. The Oslo flight’s on time. “It would appear the world’s done fine without us,” he says. “But aren’t we the world too?” “Yes, we are, Barnum. And isn’t it great that no one knows how good we really are?” “I’m not sure,” I murmur. Peder’s silent for a mom
ent. The umbrella keeps going round and round on the carousel. “Would it be untimely to inquire about the script you mentioned last night?” he finally says. I have it in my suitcase. I open the script, cross out The Night Man and replace it with The Night Men. Peder slaps me on the back and can’t wait to look at it. “Good title, Barnum.” And Peder looks first at the final page. Peder’s best at reading numbers. He’s on the verge of being stunned into silence. “Four and a half hours?” he breathes. I shut my suitcase. “So?” Peder sighs. “That’s long, Barnum.” “And not so much as a comma’s to be moved,” I tell him. We go over to the check-in counter. My suitcase slides down a hole and disappears. I get my boarding pass. My flight’s called. And Peder, the tired optimist, smiles once more. “You’ll manage all right?” “I’ll manage.” “I’m going to buy something really special for Thomas,” he says. I close my eyes. “You do that, Peder.” We hug each other there in the Tempelhof hall, just as we’ve done so often before. We hug each other — Peder and Barnum, the fat one and the small one. And how could I know that that would be the last time we’d hold each other thus? I couldn’t, I don’t. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” Peder says. He gives me a quick kiss on the cheek. “And say hello from me to that damned brother of yours!” And Peder laughs, that laughter I know so well; he swipes the umbrella from the carousel and hurries out to where the taxis are, the script under his arm. But he didn’t come home the following day. There was an accident on the way to the Kempinski Hotel. I’m stopped in the security area. The armed guard takes me to one side into a cubicle. He draws a thin curtain. I have to empty all my pockets. I put my pen, my lighter, my comb, my keys and my mirror in a box. There’s still bleeping when he moves his electronic baton up and down. I take off my belt. That doesn’t help either. Finally he asks me to remove my shoes. I have to do as he says. He’s wearing rubber gloves now. He feels Inside my shoes. He turns them over and starts tapping the soles instead. Then he breaks off the high heels on both shoes. I turn away. Another guard comes and studies my mutilated footwear intently. It takes two armed men in uniform to declare my shoes safe — my trick shoes. I can get dressed again. They smile, tight-lipped. I’ve shrunk two inches. It doesn’t matter any more. Finally I’m allowed through, and I hear the laughter at my back. I go on board the bus that takes us out to the small plane. It’s raining. I run up the steep steps. From here the arrival hall looks like an oval temple with its pillars and arches — a dirty temple for travelers. It’s me they’re waiting for. Someone nods, and I act as if I don’t recognize them. I have the seat right at the back. I fasten my seatbelt and ask for a glass of water. The aircraft taxis out onto the runway. And as we take off from that airport in the heart of Berlin, as we rise between the houses, I can see the people inside, in the rooms of their apartments, starting their new day — pulling the curtains, putting the lights on, watering plants, sitting down to breakfast, drinking coffee, opening the paper, feeding their children. It’s just as in a movie, I think to myself — the stories of people from window to window — their movements and their beautiful, everyday routines. This is my movie, and in the last window I see an old couple sitting by the bedside kissing, before the plane breaks into the clouds and I get my glass of water.

  Epilogue

  It’s Boletta who’s waiting for me at Fornebu airport. We haven’t seen each other since that day I went off and left her on the top of Blåsen. She’s older now than the Old One was; it’s as if life is going backward in her. She’s growing downward and is smaller than I am — a hunched little wrinkle — and she smells like dried fruit. Her hand is still strong and steady when she takes my arm and guides me out to the taxis, where right away she jumps the line and incurs immediate wrath for doing so. There’s a light snow falling, flakes that melt before they’ve landed. We get into the backseat. Boletta lays her cheek against my shoulder. “You’re whole now, Bar-num,” she says. “What do you mean?” But she doesn’t answer me, and I think to myself as we drive up the gentle inclines around Gaustad that I don’t want to be whole — I don’t want that — and I clench Boletta’s hand so hard she rattles. The red-brick building appears between the bare, black trees — it resembles a castle, a fairytale castle with its towers and windows, not an asylum. “Why is he here?” I ask her. Boletta pays the driver. “It’s your mother who’s here,” she says softly. She turns abruptly, as if remembering now, too late. “Didn’t you have any luggage, Barnum?” I shake my head. “It was lost.” “Lost?” “It doesn’t matter,” I murmur. “It was just an old suitcase.” Then we go inside to find them. The first person I see in a kind of day room is a little boy in gray pants and a blue sweater. And it’s the first time he sees me. He’s sitting on a chair that’s too high for him. He doesn’t move. It’s Thomas. I stop in front of him. His eyes are fearful and curious at one and the same time, as if he’s watching everything and everyone. I don’t know him, but I recognize myself in him. I only know that I’d go through fire and flood for those dark and vulnerable eyes. Helplessly and clumsily I put my hand on his head, but the frightened boy just twists away, exactly as I’d have done. Vivian looks at us, and when I meet her gaze she suddenly blushes. She still has the ring on her finger. It’s as though we both have to take deep breaths, concentrate our thoughts, so as not to sink beneath the weight of this silence. Boletta lifts Thomas and holds him. “Freds with Vera,” Vivian murmurs. I go down a corridor. A nurse is waiting outside. He opens the door. Mom’s lying in bed. It looks as if she’s sleeping, but as soon as I come in she smiles. A thin man’s standing by the window, his back to us. Mom tries to say something, but her mouth is soundless and she starts crying instead. The thin, old man turns around. It’s my brother. His eyes are still. “Why have you come back?” I ask him. And I don’t know if it’s me or Mom Fred is looking at when he says, “To tell you all this.”