The Half Brother: A Novel (42 page)

Mom’s laughter
—
albatross; Dad’s laughter
—
cuckoo; Boletta’s laughter
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pigeon; Freds laughter
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cormorant; Barnum’s laughter
—
auk.
“But what is it we’re laughing about?” Boletta suddenly asked. And when she spoke those words, things fell so strangely silent.

I had a cold for two weeks. Fred had frostbite on both ear lobes. Boletta had a hangover for seven days. But early the following morning she came right into our room all the same, banged the door and threw a slipper at each of us. “Where’s the letter?” she hissed. Fred brushed away the slipper and sat up in bed. “In my bag,” he mumbled. And his battered schoolbag with its torn zipper was sitting under his chair. Boletta whipped it up and spilled the contents over the floor. There was a good deal there: four stones, a knife, three packets of sandwiches, a broken pencil, a screwdriver, a Mercedes hood ornament, an empty bottle of Coke, some matches, a packet of Hobby cigarettes, rolling paper, a bicycle chain, a condom, an essay notebook — and last but not least the envelope appeared, and Boletta pulled out the letter to make sure it was there. It was. She turned toward Fred, who was sitting there in bed with his head bent and his ears crimson. “Why did you take this to school?” “To write an essay,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry, Granny.” Fred said sorry, and I even think he blushed. Fred blushed and said
sorry, Granny.
Boletta came closer. “Well, Fred. Get to the point! I have a headache!” Fred searched for the right words. They were difficult to find. They were higgledy-piggledy in his throat, they tumbled down his gullet, they got stuck at his larynx. “I wrote about the letter,” he murmured at last, Boletta waited. It looked as if he was going over it in his mind. “What did you have to do?” she asked him. “To write about a hero.” Fred spoke still more quietly. Now Boletta was smiling, and she patted his cheek. Fred turned away. His ears were burning. “But what did you get for the essay?” she inquired. “An A,” Fred said quickly. “An A? Well, and it deserved nothing less!” Boletta went toward the door. She stopped there. “Never take this letter out of the house, Fred! Nor you, Barnum! Is that understood? Never!” “Yes,” I said. “Yes,” Fred whispered. Boletta kept standing there, and then she said something we didn’t understand but never forgot either. “Because everything we come from is contained here,” she said, and waved the envelope in the air. Afterward we lay in silence a good long while. I was sweating. Fred was burning. “Did you really get an A?” I asked him. “F,” said Fred. “Is that what you got?” F was less than nothing. F was the other side of failure. F wasn’t a letter, it was a death sentence. Fred stared up at the ceiling. It looked as if the pillow might catch fire. “I didn’t even manage to copy it all,” he whispered. He turned and faced the wall instead. I’d never gotten an F. F was about the only thing I hadn’t ever had. I think I had a temperature. “I could write your essays for you,” I said. “Shut it,” Fred said. All at once he sat up again and began pulling on his shirt. “I can write your essays if you look after me,” I whispered. Fred peered out of the collar. “I can’t look after you when I’m at that goddamn school for the retarded!” I sat up now too. “Why are you actually there?” Fred loomed against me as he pulled his shirt into place. “Don’t you know, or are you just pretending?” “Yes,” I whispered. He grabbed my shoulder and pushed me backward. “Then say it, you blockhead!” “You say it,” I whispered. “Because I was born in a goddamn taxi!” And Fred blushed once more, pulled on the rest of his clothes and went to the door. “I’m not going to waste my fucking time talking to you any more,” he said. Fred just left. I think it was a Sunday. The stillness was almost complete, and I had a stuffed-up nose. Outside, our tracks had long since been covered over. A bird caused the snow to scatter from a wire. I tidied Fred’s things. I put everything back as it had been in his bag. But I had a quick glance at his essay notebook. There was nothing in it. The pages were empty. I shut my eyes. Then I tiptoed in to Boletta. She lay on the divan with a chunk of ice on her brow, and as the ice melted the water ran like brooks through the furrows that spread down over her face. The letter, in which everything we came from is contained, lay under her hands. I pried it loose. I read.
We were to walk across a peninsula to map a fjord that lay on the far side that was covered with ice; for that reason we could not travel there with the ship. We had five to six Danish miles to walk, and the same distance back, but Greenland is not a country that is particularly suitable for walking in.
Boletta opened her eyes. It looked as if she were crying. The furrows were too small all the same, and the water flooded over her cheeks. “Why is it called Greenland when there’s only ice there?” I asked. “Because the first people who reached it found a beautiful flower called convallaria, Barnum.” I put the letter back in her hand. “But why is it called the North Pole?” Boletta smiled. “Because the beer’s so cold there.”

Dancing School

It was actually Boletta who enrolled me in dancing school. She came into our room in early September, a Wednesday it was, just the vestiges of summer remaining hanging from the Church Road trees, and diminishing all the time. Soon there wouldn’t be anything left to warm except bare branches. I was doing my homework — nutrition — and taking great pains to do it well. I wrote so slowly in my workbook that Fred himself could have read it if he tried.
Where does digestion begin? In the mouth.
Fred was out; he was out wandering, as Mom used to say with a sigh.
Fred’s wandering again this evening,
she’d say, and then I’d see Fred’s shadow, restless and thin and moving sideways through streets and parks, past doorways and over bridges. Boletta sat down on the edge of the bed and put her fingers on my knees. “Tomorrow you’re beginning at Svae’s in Drammen Road.” I dropped everything I was holding — my pencil, pen, eraser, thumbtacks, marbles and blotting paper — and turned toward her. “Svae’s?” I whispered. “The dancing school?” Boletta laughed and leaned closer. “There’s nothing to be so frightened of,” she said. “You’re not joining the army.” But I’d heard stories of Drammen Road, of the top floor of the Merchant Building, about Svae, who was over six feet tall and thin as a fiddle. Svae who forced the boys to dance with her, and not only that, to straighten their backs once and for all by putting an LP of Eddie Calvert between herself and the unfortunate boy, and heaven help the one who was all slack and slumped over, and let the record fall to the floor. That wasn’t what I dreaded. I was well enough used to old women. It was the girls who frightened me, the pretty girls and the other boys. “Do I have to, Granny?” Boletta shook her head as if she couldn’t believe her own ears. “You haven’t really thought of going through life unable to dance? Huh? The rumba. The cha-cha-cha. The tango! Think of the tango, Barnum! Think what you might miss out on!” I thought about things for a long time, but not about the tango, the cha-cha-cha or the rumba. I thought about everything I’d like to miss out on, and that one misses out on most things in life, and it was poor comfort but a comfort nonetheless. “Why hasn’t Fred gone to dancing school?” I asked. Boletta looked up at the ceiling and sighed. The skin on her throat had slackened and hung like a small, wrinkled pancake between her chin and her breast, lying quite flat beneath the flowery summer dress she was still wearing. But soon enough autumn would take this from her too and pack summer up once and for all. “It’s different with Fred,” she said. “How?” “Fred wasn’t born to dance. Tomorrow at six o’clock, Bar-num.” Boletta was about to go, but I held her back and her arm was hard and difficult to grasp. “What is it, Barnum?” Sun filled the whole window with almost crimson light, and this was perhaps the finest moment in our room, my room and Fred’s, when the last flicker of light edged over the hill, down between the blocks and right in our window. It didn’t last long, barely a few seconds, but it was worth stopping to observe. Then the shadows slid around us. “Isn’t it difficult to learn the steps?” I asked. “The steps?” Boletta laughed again, and I got her breath full in my face. Was that how it smelled to be old, like opening a door to a room you haven’t been in for ages? There was probably a lot of dust in Boletta’s corners now. I took a step backward, as if I’d already started dancing, and don’t think she noticed. “It’s not the steps that count,” she said. “It’s the
leading.”
“Leading?” “Yes,
leading,
Barnum! Quite simply to take hold of the woman, in a friendly and firm way, and lead her. Women love a man who can lead properly. But now and then you have to slacken your hold a bit so the women think it’s really them who’re leading. You’ll get the hang of it after a while without a doubt.” “Will I?” “Yes, Barnum. When you’ve got it into you. And your hands have to be dry and firm. You can borrow some talcum powder from me. Can you imagine a slack, sweaty hand over your back and hips and somewhere else besides?” I shuddered violently and looked down. “Do you think anyone’ll dance with me, Granny?” She laid one finger under my chin and very slowly lifted my head. “And why shouldn’t they, Barnum? Why shouldn’t women be lining up to dance with you?” My face grew all heavy, but Boletta held it up. There was a thin, sweet scent from her eyes or her hair; it must have been from her hair, which was tied in a gray knot at her neck, and it was the only smell of Boletta I liked — it was like pudding. “Because I’m smaller than them,” I whispered. She let me go, and I looked out of the window. The streetlights cast small shadows. I could feel her fingers yet, like dents in my skin. “What sort of talk is this? You think women really worry about that? A few inches of height? Just you hold them firmly Barnum, and
lead
them exactly where you want to go. And there was one more thing I wanted to say.” It had begun to get windy — I couldn’t see it, I could just hear it — the rustling of the trees and the wood that released its darkness too over the city. “What?” I whispered. Boletta lifted my face once more. “Never look down. Look them in the eyes, Barnum. Otherwise you’ll never get anywhere.” And I looked her in the eyes; she smiled and gave my brow a quick kiss. “Six o’clock tomorrow at Svae’s! Don’t forget! And clean your nails before you go!”

Boletta took a few lopsided steps over the floor, gave a twirl, and disappeared in a gale of laughter, as if the laughter itself had asked her for a dance. Perhaps that was the way one went out the doors of the North Pole, but certainly not those of Svae’s dancing school. If anyone asked me for a dance it would be Grief; Grief would twist my face and cover me with its rough hair. I put away my nutrition books for good that day.
How often is one to chew ones food? 26 times. One is to chew one’s food 26 times, or else one risks contracting stomach catarrh, constipation, infection of the gullet, swollen gums, had teeth, hernia, or becoming a hunchback.
I skipped supper and went to bed before ten, even though I wasn’t especially tired and I actually loathed that slow moment before you fell asleep, when you just lie there and time stretches like an elastic band, like parentheses, like a blue balloon. Right until it bursts — a dull noise behind the brow, a crackling in the eyes, like a light bulb fizzling out and being broken by the dark. My thoughts went on working, long after the light had gone. I had too much energy in my head.
Look them in the eyes,
Boletta had said. In that case I either had to use stilts or else lean so far backward that I’d break my neck. Who would dance with a midget like me? I felt my hand. It was clammy, almost wet; who would want a sponge like that around them? I would have to hang it up to dry; chop it off and pin up the whole hand on a clothesline among underpants, shoelaces and black stockings. And as I lay there in the narrow bed thinking the worst, and wishing I was out wandering instead like Fred (because someone wandering wouldn’t have time to think too much, they’d have enough just concentrating on wandering), I heard the sewing machine whirring in the living room — Mom’s old Singer machine — and that was always something. I liked the sound of it, it almost made me feel calm; it sewed together the tears in the darkness, and stitched my eyelids silently and gently to my cheeks and night was made secure. And so I slept and dreamed that I was going through the world carrying a sewing machine — it was one of the good dreams — and I was the one who repaired the world. I slept stitch by stitch on a long, blue table and woke abruptly when Fred came home, or did he wake me on purpose? Whichever it was, I was brought out of sleep. Fred was sitting on the bed pulling off his shoes without untying the laces as he usually did, and the main light was on. “Mom’s taking up my pants,” he said. I pulled the quilt tighter around me. “Is she?” “Yes, Barnum. Last year’s gray pants. She’s taking them up half a yard at the very least.” I didn’t move. I just heard the shining scissors in my head, the pair that cuts the hems in pieces, that tears the world. Fred laughed and lay down in bed with his clothes on. “The biggest taking-up operation I’ve ever seen, Barnum. Guess it has to be more or less a world record. The world record for legs.”