The Half Brother: A Novel (16 page)

She notices that Vera has grown pale around her mouth; her lips are trembling and on the stairs she grows unsteady as if under a heavy weight — she gasps for breath, and in the entrance hall she sinks to the floor with a scream. Boletta’s there at once. “Good Lord,” she whispers. “Has the cold made her ill?” The Old One is kneeling by Vera. “No,” she answers. “Vera is giving birth.”

And how am I to begin to describe that pain, birth’s very fury and love — I, the infertile one, standing beyond all this? I settle for this — the sudden contractions in the powerful muscles of the womb have begun. The lowest part of the cervix stretches; a tunnel for the fetus that has lain in this warm cavity, this balloon of water, for thirty-eight weeks. In other words, this is an impatient and inconsiderate fetus who’s driving a course through the pelvis, and the pain increases, tearing at the edges of the abdominal wall and the diaphragm, for now is the moment — the child is digging its way out. And Boletta gets hold of a taxi, and together with the Old One they carry Vera down and put her in the backseat, and the driver, a young fellow in his uniform and newly cleaned cap, looks at them terrified as the Old One commands, “To Ullevål Hospital, young man. The maternity unit! Now!”

And he drives up Church Road faster than the law permits, Vera moaning and making noises in her throat, sheets of sweat streaming down her face. Then all at once every sound from her is stilled and she sinks down in the seat. Carefully Boletta raises her skirt and sees the head appearing — a wrinkled, slimy head already drawing breath for a first scream. Then the rest of the baby appears and it’s a boy; together with the placenta and a torrent of blood and mucous membrane.

The driver screeches to a halt, and the child lies howling on the seat between Vera’s thighs — alive and raging — and that’s how my brother came to this world, my half brother, born in a taxi at the junction of Church Road and Ullevål Road.

And this is the first thing Vera says; she sits there with fastened eyes and utters these strange words: “How many fingers does he have?” Boletta looks at the Old One, who bends down over the roaring child to count the fingers on each hand. “He’s got ten fine fingers,” she murmurs.

Vera opens her eyes and smiles. The driver leans against the steering wheel, and he doesn’t give a thought to his leather seats covered in blood and afterbirth and fluid; because there is no time for that when a new person has come to the world in his cab. No, instead he works out weeks and months and does all sorts of mental arithmetic to arrive at May, May 1945. “You can’t call that boy anything but Fred,” he says in the end.

Fred used to say that
. I was christened by a taxi driver in the middle of a fucking junction.
And I think he liked saying it, because he always smiled afterward, just a little; he’d give a quick laugh and brush his hand over his face as if he were blushing, even though it was only me there to hear him.

The Name

Vera’s awake. The Old One and Boletta are sitting with her. There’s a screen behind them. Vera can see shadows slowly moving on the other side. She can hear low voices and all at once the sound of a baby crying. “Where is he?” Vera asks. The Old One gently dries her damp forehead. “They’re looking after him,”’ she says. Vera sits up. “Is there something wrong? There is something wrong, isn’t there? Tell me!” The Old One pushes her softly back onto the pillows. “Nothing’s wrong, my little Vera. He’s happy and healthy and has the best lungs of them all. Don’t you remember what the taxi driver called him?” Vera glances at her and gives a quick smile. “Fred,” she breathes. “And it was Fred who got you talking again,” the Old One reminds her, and turns toward Boletta, who has been silent up to this point, but now stretches out to take her daughter’s hand. “There’s something they have to know, Vera.” “I want to see him, Mom.” “Yes, you’ll soon get to hold him. But they’ll ask you something first. Who the father is.” Vera shuts her eyes. Her face twitches. “I don’t know,” she answers. “Didn’t you see him?” The Old One puts a finger to her lips. “Talk more quietly. There are too many listening ears.” The shadows have stopped at the screen. Vera weeps. “He came behind me,” she murmurs. “I only saw his hands.” Boletta leans still closer. “There were all sorts hiding up in the loft in those days. Did he say anything to you?” Vera shakes her head. “He didn’t speak. He had a missing finger.” Quite suddenly she starts laughing. “He just had one finger missing,” she repeated. “Just one finger!” The shadows pause and tremble a moment before moving away from the screen. Boletta has to cover her mouth with her hand, and the Old One bends her head. “Forgive us, Vera. Forgive us.”

And Fred himself lies with the other newborn infants, the first babies of peacetime, in rows to the left and to the right. These are the golden ones, the beautiful, who will never know war, who will grow up with a prosperity that runs away with itself and eventually becomes too much for them to bear. For a time they will turn their backs on this opulence and seek out nature instead and adopt an affected poverty only to catch up later with all they left behind in an even greater orgy of eating at the groaning buffet of good living. Fred sleeps fitfully as if already at two days old he’s suffering nightmares, and when he wakes up he screams more piercingly than all the others. He clenches his little fists into red spheres, but still no one has carried him in to his mother’s breast — instead he gets warmed-up milk from a bottle. When he cries, for such a time that all the other babies begin to try to outdo him, they take him into another room and lay him down there. And suddenly Fred grows still, becomes soundless; he doesn’t shut his eyes but stares instead, as if in that moment he’s starting to explore the loneliness he can’t escape and that in the end he will choose for himself.

The next time the screen is moved, three men approach Vera’s bed. Two are doctors, but the third is wearing a dark suit and carries a folder under his arm. They position themselves around her. “I want to see my child,” she whispers. “Please.” One of the doctors pulls a chair to the bedside and sits down. “Your mother says you were raped.” Vera turns away, but she can’t avoid being seen all the same. “You don’t know who the child’s father is,” the other doctor says.
He could be Norwegian. Or German. But you don’t know. The child has no father.
They talk together warmly and unhurriedly. The man in the dark suit draws out a sheet of paper. “The case is shelved. On the grounds of the nature of the evidence. The relationship was not reported until four months following the alleged assault.” The two doctors are silent for a moment. The one who’s seated then takes Vera’s hand. “How do you feel now?” he asks. “I want Fred,” she breathes. “Can’t you bring him?” The doctor smiles. “You’ve already given the boy a name?” Vera nods. “I want to talk to Dr. Schultz,” she says. “Dr. Schultz is not available. He disappeared on a skiing trip.” The doctor lets go of her hand and looks up. “She’s suffered deep psychosis and hasn’t spoken for nine months.” A nurse pushes the screen to one side, and for a second Vera sees Mrs. Arnesen sitting up in bed under a window, her back supported by a large pillow, her little one cradled at her breast. And Mr. Arnesen suddenly stops; he has a bouquet in one hand and his hat in the other; they both stare at her, and the moment is devoid of sound and movement, until the screen is put back in place and shadows are dispelled by the light. “Why can’t I hold Fred?” Vera weeps. The man in the dark suit has sat down too now. “You must realize that everything we do is in your best interests. And that means in the best interests of your child too. Because the child must come first, mustn’t it?” Vera nods. He puts a sheet of paper beside her glass on the bedside table. “There are many good homes to be found, both here in the city and across the country That’s perhaps for the best.” “What do you mean?” Vera murmurs. “That the boy will be sent to another part of the country. That will be for the best.”

Then the screen is pushed to one side again, but so violently this time that it clatters to the floor. The Old One is standing there. She is aroused, but her voice is low. “The three women in our house have a combined age of 131, and together we will take good care of Vera’s boy! Is that understood?” She goes around the bed, snatches up the form on the bedside table and rips it in such small shreds that not a letter remains legible. “Can the child now meet his mother?”

They bring him that same evening. He lies peacefully at her breast. He waits. Can I put it that way? Can I say that Fred waits, that it’s warm and well where he lies, there in the circle of the heart, and that he waits? Yes, this is the way I choose to express it. Fred waits.
He doesn’t like me,
she suddenly thinks. And Vera hears the stillness that moves from bed to bed when she carries him out two days later, and she meets the gazes that follow her down the length of the corridor. The silent rumor spreads; doors that open quietly and whisper shut once more. It’s snowing, and all is still. She keeps to her bed for three weeks until she stops bleeding. Fred waits. The Old One and Boletta are amazed that he doesn’t cry any more. They lie awake at night because of his stillness. Each morning they can hear the piano playing that comes from the other side of the yard — it sounds like Mozart. And one morning as the snow melts and runs in streams through the streets and drips from the gutters, Vera’s out pushing Fred in his stroller. He gazes up at her with the dark stillness she’s already begun to get used to. When the sun shines on his face he turns away and closes his eyes, and doesn’t open them again until the shadows return. Then Vera notices Mrs. Arnesen rounding the corner with her stroller. The two of them are immediately cautious. They stop just the same. They are proud and don’t say a great deal. They look ahead. Vera tries to be friendly. “You play the piano so beautifully,” she tells her. Mrs. Arnesen smiles and spreads the quilt over her little boy. “He always falls asleep before I finish.” They both laugh. They are two mothers, without apprehension, united — before they are jerked out of this fragile friendship, this fleeting encounter. “Do I disturb you?” Mrs. Arnesen suddenly inquires. Vera turns around. The caretakers standing by the gate, staring at them. He’s holding a dead cat. He flings it away and goes into the yard. “What?” Vera asks. Mrs. Arnesen hesitates. “Does my playing disturb you?” Vera looks up. “No, I think Fred likes it too. He doesn’t cry any more.” Now Mrs. Arnesen smiles again. “You have already a name for him,” she says. “Yes, it would appear so. What’s your boy to be called?” “He’ll have my father-in-law’s name. We’re christening him next Saturday.”

The following day, Vera is seated in the vicar’s office in Ma-jorstuen Church. The vicar’s name is Sunde, and he is close to fifty. His forehead resembles a shield. He pushes his glasses into place and looks through some document or other, and takes all the time in the world to do so. The cross behind him is hanging askew. The huge Bible with its black covers seems to suck in all the light to itself and concentrate it in one single dark glowing point in the middle of the table. Finally he looks at her. “Is it not good to hear that?” he asks. Vera listens — she can’t hear a thing. “What?” she whispers. “Did you not hear them?” Vera listens again but isn’t able to understand what he means, and chooses not to say anything either. The vicar leans toward her. “The church bells,” he says. “Is it not wonderful to hear real church bells after five years of ungodliness?” “Yes,” Vera murmurs, but doesn’t hear them, it’s completely silent. The vicar waits a while. He just looks at her. “You must listen inside,” he tells her in the end. “Deep inside, Vera. Or is it silent there too?” Vera looks down and the vicar looks through his document once more. It’s good to think that one day I’ll get the chance to stick my tongue out at him and call him vicar vomit. Vera hears her heartbeat now, heavy echoes that make her fingers tick. “Who is the father?” the vicar asks suddenly “The forms explain what happened,” she replies. “There’s no need to tell me what’s written there. I can read that myself.” The vicar gets up and comes around the table. “Let me ask you something, Vera. Have you done something you regret?” She shakes her head. “You haven’t in any way had intercourse with the enemy?” Vera holds her breath. Then she gets up herself. “Yes, I have done something I regret.” The vicar waits. He’s waiting for more, for her confession, and he waits with a smile. “I regret that I came here,” says Vera and goes toward the door. The vicar follows her, pale and raging. “I hear the kid has already got a name,” he says. “But do you know what Fred really means?” Vera stops a moment. “It means the name of my son,” she answers. The vicar’s mouth twists to a smile once more. “It means
powerful,”
he hisses. “Don’t you think that’s a mite inappropriate?”

Vera stands outside on Church Road. She can’t remember how she got down there. Esther waves from her kiosk. Vera forgets to wave back. She goes homeward. She stops in the yard. Something smells, something rotten. It’s the dead cat. It’s still lying there in the garbage shed. Vera hurries past. She notices Mrs. Arnesen hanging things out to dry: clothes for the baptism, a skirt, a white shirt. The stroller stands in the shadow of the tall birch. Everything is green and still. Then two men come in the gate. One is dressed in uniform, the other’s wearing a long, dark coat despite the warmth of the day. They go over first to Vera, and for a second she thinks they’re from Majorstuen police station and that they’ve found the perpetrator, the man who attacked her. And it frightens Vera as much as it surprises her that she doesn’t know at this precise moment, a moment of truth in her eyes, whether she’s relieved or made even more afraid. Because now the shadow of evil that came over her from behind, the shadow with just nine fingers, will have a name, and she doesn’t know if she wants it like this, that she should hear the shadow’s name and see the shadow’s face. But it’s not Vera they want to talk to, it’s Mrs. Arnesen they’re looking for; there was no one in the apartment and so they’re seeing now if she’s down in the yard. The men are grave, almost dismissive, and Vera immediately imagines they’re there with bad news, with some dreaded message, and she turns toward Mrs. Arnesen, who’s standing under the clothesline and is still ignorant of what is about to happen. Vera points. “That’s her,” she says. The two men nod and go toward Mrs. Arnesen. Vera sees them shaking hands; Mrs. Arnesen looks astonished to begin with, perhaps even expectant. Then she gives a laugh, high-pitched and brittle, more like a shriek, and suddenly her face becomes utterly still, thin and taut like dry grass. And this puzzle, this inconceivable and impossible thing, that her husband, the insurance salesman Gotfred Arnesen, should be found dead far off the beaten track on Nordmarka, between Mylla and Kikut, with only a calling card in the breast pocket of his anorak, which has kept far better than the frail body the same anorak covers, now that the spring and the mild nights have melted the snow that for several months has preserved the human form of the body; this puzzle lowers such a great weight over Mrs. Arnesen that she seldom sees the light again. And even then only vague shadows, like fragments of memories from another time, and not even when Mr. Arnesen, her husband and the father of her child, comes home hale and hearty from work, as if nothing in the world has happened, and in this way with his sheer proximity clears up the whole phenomenal misunderstanding, almost more akin to comedy than tragedy, can she be herself again. The darkness never quite leaves her. The hours as a temporary widow burn that darkness forever into her consciousness. She can neither be cheered nor healed. It was the skeleton of Dr. Schultz that lay in the blue anorak and white plus fours; he had slid into death with another mans card in his pocket. And late that evening everyone in the block can hear Mrs. Arnesen sitting down at the piano, but her touch lacks mood and variation; she plays the same tune over and over again in one endless unvarying circle, and Fred begins to cry louder than ever. Later it was discovered that Dr. Schultz had left various bits and pieces to patients in his will. We got
The Medical Handbook for Norwegian Homes assembled by M. S. Greve, Director of the Royal Infirmary,
where under
cynicism
this definition was given:
carelessness; all in all, a danger in relation to personal hygiene. The result of this has the potential to inflict serious injury.