The Half Brother: A Novel (48 page)

He greeted Dad first, and Dad didn’t let go of his hand so easily. “Peder Miil,” Peder said, and bowed. “Miil? Is that with one i or two, Peder?” “Two,” Peder told him. Then he went around the table and shook hands with everyone — yes, even Fred — and finally we all sat down. “Thanks for inviting me,” Peder said. Mom and Boletta exchanged glances. They hadn’t seen the like of this. “But you came too late,” Fred said. “That doesn’t matter,” Mom laughed, and Boletta passed the serving dishes to Peder, and Dad poured his glass to the brim with orange soda. “Guests always come in time,” Dad said. “That’s what we used to say in America. So why can’t we say it here too!” Peder nodded and helped himself. “Bet Barnum forgot to say where he lived,” Fred said. Peder pushed the serving dish in his direction. “Unfortunately, the tram was late,” he said. Fred looked him up and down. “Barnum’s never actually had friends over,” he said. “You’re the first.” Peder turned to me. “So I’ve come late but in good time.” Everyone laughed, except Fred, and perhaps myself. There was quiet for a time. We ate. Everything was just as it should have been. We should have just sat there eating our boiled pork, smiling to one another and taking small sips of our drinks, giving each other kindly glances and perhaps making remarks about the weather, if indeed anything had to be said at all. This could go all right. “What does your Dad do?” Dad asked. “Stamps,” Peder answered. There was quiet once more. Dad took out a toothpick and fiddled about with it in his mouth. “Stamps,” he finally said. “Yes, he sells stamps. Once he’s bought them.” “Can you live off that?” Fred asked him. “Last year he sold a stamp from Mauritius for 21,734 kroner,” Peder replied. Dad waved his toothpick about in front of Fred like a shriveled pointer. “It’s called philately. If you didn’t know before. Philately!” Dad put the toothpick in his shirt pocket and helped himself to seconds. “I notice you’re looking at my missing hand, Peder,” he said all at once. And only now did I observe that he wasn’t wearing his glove; we’d got used to the gray color of the flesh wound. “I didn’t mean to,” Peder whispered. Dad raised his hand. “That doesn’t matter. But it’s a long story, Peder. These precious fingers were lost when I was clearing mines in Finnmark after the war.” Fred yawned. “The German, you know,” Dad went on, “is a precise fighter. But a cunning one too. This particular mine was suddenly lying awkwardly. And I got in its way. Now you know just about everything about my right hand, Peder.” “Have you been to America too?” Peder inquired. Dad was in his element. He’d happily have gotten up now and made a speech. He made do with laying down his knife and fork on the cloth. “Have I been to America? America’s my second home, Peder. And I dare say I’m more known over there than I am here.” I wished we could leave the table soon. I passed the serving dish to Boletta. “But how did you get on at Svae’s yesterday, boys?” she asked. Peder gave me a quick glance. “Yes, fine,” I said. “She mostly just talked,” Peder said. Boletta put down her knife and fork. “Talked? You don’t talk at dancing school. You dance!” “She said we should change our underwear if we were sweaty after dancing,” Peder said. How we laughed! Even Fred laughed. Dad had to get up and go around the table. He laughed and laughed. This could go all right. Dad finally sat down again. “In America we danced for several nights at a stretch,” he said. “Ill tell you we were sweaty then!” “Yes, Arnold,” Mom said hurriedly but Dad wasn’t about to stop there. “And those who kept going longest were the winners. There was hardly time to think about sweaty underwear!” Fred was staring at me the whole while. “What’s the old bag at the dancing school called?” he demanded. “Watch your mouth,” Dad told him. “Watch yourself,” Fred retorted. “Svae,” I breathed. Fred turned to me. “She phoned here yesterday” Peder looked down. I looked nowhere at all. I closed my eyes. It was dark in there. “Called here?” Mom said. “But why?” Fred mashed a potato with his fork and took his time. “She just wanted to say that they’re beginning at five-thirty next Thursday. Not at six.”

I opened my eyes again. Fred smiled, and right then the bell rang. Worry spread over his face that only I could see. He looked at me. “Have you made even more friends, Barnum?” I shook my head. The bell rang again, long and hard. Mom hurried out and opened the door. It was Bang the caretaker. He went right past her holding a parcel in his hands, as far away from himself as humanly possible. “Now I’ve had enough!” he shouted, and threw the parcel on the table in our midst “I got that in the mail today!” Mom came running after him. Dad got up abruptly and his chair overturned. “What on earth is this?” “Open it and see!” Bang all but shrieked, completely beside himself. I recognized the parcel. Dad folded back the wrapping and retreated. There lay my pyjamas. They stank something rotten. Mom hid her face in her hands. “Oh, God,” she groaned. Boletta went with her glass into the kitchen. Peder sat there frozen. I looked at Fred. What had he done? “What kind of disgusting behavior is this? What kind of behavior?” Bang stamped on the floor with his lame foot. “Whose pyjamas are these?” Dad asked, his voice strangely gentle. “Mine,” I breathed. He boxed my ears. Mom screamed. I nearly fell off my chair. Then he rushed around the table, stopped behind Fred and put his mutilated hand on his shoulder. “And what have you to say to all this, Fred?” “Nothing.” “Nothing? You had nothing to do with this revolting business?” “Nothing,” Fred said again. “Barnum shat in his pyjamas, and I threw them in the garbage.” Dad bored his stubby thumb into the flesh of his neck. “And then the pyjamas went up to the caretaker’s all by themselves?” “How should I know?” Fred said. “Can somebody move that shit, by the way? I’m still eating.” Bang turned the parcel around, and there was his name and address, written in large and clumsy letters. “You can’t get out of it, you little guttersnipe! You couldn’t even manage to write my name properly!” Bang hammered so hard on the parcel with his finger that his nail all but went through the paper.
Bnag
was what was written there. Fred had written
Bnag; Bnag
the caretaker. It was more or less the same as signing the entire parcel with his own name and address, and leaving his fingerprints there in the bargain. And I saw him bowing his head, his cheeks flaming, raging. Dad hit him with his good hand — once, twice, three times — until Mom threw herself on him and made him stop. But Dad just shoved her away. “Apologize!” he hissed. “Apologize this instant, you idiot!” Fred just sat there. Something was running from his face. I don’t know what it was — tears, blood, saliva. Then he got up; he got up slowly, and he smiled. It’s the most horrible smile I’ve ever seen. He stood right in front of Bang the caretaker. “Sorry. Thought it was you who washed the pyjamas around here, Bnag.” Dad made to hit him again, but Fred caught his hand, held it a few seconds and looked all around, that same smile on his lips, and his eyes running over with oil. Things began to get dangerous. Then he let go and went off into our room. None of us said a thing, nor were we particularly hungry. My pyjamas lay like some stinking dessert in the center of the table. Mom was shaking so badly she had to sit down. Dad put his arm around the caretaker and led him over to a corner, where he produced his cigars and let him take his pick. I suddenly wondered what Fred would say when he saw that I’d interfered with his things and tidied up. But not a sound was to be heard from our room.

Then Mom got up abruptly, rolled up the parcel, stuffed it into the stove and lit it. I walked part of the way home with Peder. He didn’t say a syllable the length of Church Road. Everything was ruined now. Everything was worse than ever. I turned red with shame at the mere thought of it — my own pyjamas the subject of derision on the dining table. The following day I’d murder all those who knew about it. I’d have to kill Peder too. I walked three steps behind him. This was the end. I could have howled. When we reached Ma-jorstuen he stopped, turned to me and smiled. “Perhaps you can have dinner with us next time,” Peder said.

Nude

There was a naked man standing in Peder’s living room. He was standing completely still, his arms folded, and it looked as if he were thinking intently about something, or else about nothing at all. His skin was smooth and golden, his muscles well defined and taut over his tall, thin body — and I didn’t dare take in any more than that. He was naked and standing in Peder’s living room. My first thought was that it must be his brother, but Peder didn’t have a brother, and besides, this fellow was at least thirty years old, so that idea was ruled out. “Quiet,” Peder whispered, and took hold of my arm before I’d so much as said a word. We stood in the hall behind a stand stuffed with scarves, coats and hats. “Mom’s working,” he said, his voice even lower than before. And now I could see her too. She sat in a deep chair by the window, over which the curtain was closed, drawing on a sheet of paper. Now and again she looked up, squinted and held the pencil in front of her, as if she were measuring the height under the ceiling. Then she bent over the paper once more. Now I observed that it was no ordinary chair she was sitting in either. There were wheels on it. It was a wheelchair. The naked man still hadn’t moved a muscle. I held my breath too. He might as well have been dead, dead and magnificent and standing tall. Peder all but leaned inside my ear. “I think Mom’s got a crush on him,” he breathed. “She’s been working for three months on just his face.” He gave a small laugh, and now it was her turn to look at us. “Hi, boys!” she exclaimed, stuck the pencil in her mouth, and came over the floor in her chair. She extended her hand, and I took it. She had a big blanket around her that almost buried her completely. But I remember her great, beautiful head of hair — it was auburn, it glowed and shone, as if she always wore a soft crown. “You must be Barnum,” she said. I nodded. “And you had forgotten that Barnum was to be having dinner with us today,” Peder said, and took the pencil from her mouth. “That I hadn’t,” she laughed. “We’ll have food on the table all right. Look here, Barnum.” She showed me her drawing. “It isn’t finished, but what’s your opinion?” I liked the fine, quick strokes. If you closed one eye and just looked at it with the other, it suddenly became quite different, as if the lines went the opposite way and represented something else entirely But I could see what she’d drawn all the same. The face wasn’t quite right, but the rest was unmistakable. Peder sighed. “Don’t plague Barnum,” he said. His mother sighed too. “I’m not plaguing Barnum. I just want to know what he thinks of it, Peder.” “I think it’s finished,” I told her. She looked up at me in surprise (the wheelchair was pretty low to the ground). “Finished! But I’ve barely begun!” “I think it’s finished all the same,” I breathed. Peder’s mom stared at her own drawing and just kept shaking her head, and I was afraid I’d made a fool of myself or offended in some way. “I’m sorry,” I said. She looked at me again. “I think in actual fact you’re right, Barnum. Perhaps it is done after all.” She turned in the direction of the naked man who was standing there as still as before. “That’s us finished, Alain. But say hello to Barnum before you go.” The man called Alain broke as it were from the floor, as if he’d frozen solid there and was suddenly brought to life again by her command. Slowly he came over to me and clasped my hand lightly, no more than the slightest touch. I gave a deep bow but straightened up quickly. It was the first time I’d shaken hands with a naked man. Peder looked away and whistled and pulled me through the living room and up the stairs to the second floor. That took its time, since we had to find our way between unfinished canvases and piles of books, cases, newspapers and clotheslines. But Peder’s room was different. I kept standing by the door. I considered that you haven’t become a real friend until you’ve seen the other person’s room, but Peder hadn’t seen my room yet, and besides, it wasn’t just mine either since it was every bit as much Fred’s; our room was divided by a line you couldn’t get rid of. Peder fell on the bed, groaning. “Good God! Way to go, saying that drawing was finished! Otherwise it never would have been.” There was a huge map on the wall above his desk, and beside the map four clocks showing different times. The first was at quarter to five. But the time on the second was already quarter to eight. “Which one’s wrong?” I asked. Peder laughed. “Neither of them, you boob! Sit down, damn it!” I lay down beside him on the bed. It was wide enough. Peder pointed to the clocks. “The first ones the time at Frogner. The seconds the time in Rio de Janeiro. The third is New York, and the fourth Tokyo.” “Pretty smart,” I told him. “Yes,” Peder agreed. “Because if anyone calls from New York I know exactly what time it is.” “And do they call from New York?” I asked him. “Never,” Peder admitted, and laughed again. “Good to know all the same,” I said. We lay there a while not saying anything. It was strange to think about. It was strange to think that time was different, that someone’s already going home from school — in Rio de Janeiro, for instance — while others are behind and have barely begun their first class, in Tokyo, perhaps. Some of us are late while others have time to play with. It was really unfair. But what happened if you traveled from Frogner to New York? Did you suddenly become eight hours older or younger? It was unfathomable. And if you went around the earth and came back home once more, could you begin all over again, had time gone far enough backward that most things hadn’t been done yet so you could do them again but in a different way? Or else just decide not to do them at all if you regretted what you’d originally done? “Sleeping?” Peder inquired. “Just thinking,” I murmured. “About what?” “Time.” “Time’s only something we’ve invented,” Peder said. “Just like money.” We heard steps down in the garden and hurried over to the window. It was the naked man, Alain, leaving. Mercifully he wasn’t naked now. He was wearing a long coat and a huge scarf wrapped at least eight times around his neck. He turned once he was out in the street and waved; he raised his arm a little and brought his fingers together. But it wasn’t us he was waving to. “What’s wrong with your mother?” I asked. Peder didn’t say anything before the man called Alain had disappeared, and I regretted having asked because I didn’t want to say anything wrong. I didn’t want to spoil anything — that was the last thing I wanted — because I’d gained admittance to Peder’s room. “Is there anything wrong with her?” I swallowed. “She’s in a wheelchair,” I breathed. Peder shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe she just likes sitting.” “Yes, of course,” I said. Peder’s shoulders relaxed again. I was on the point of asking something else but let it pass. Instead we stood there in silence by the window. Time passed in Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro and New York. At Frogner it didn’t. It was just as if we too had become models, while motionless someone drew us. But we didn’t know who was drawing us, nor did we know when the drawing would be finished. Finally Peder said something. “You know how many wieners Gustav Vigeland carved?” he asked me. “Wieners?” “Yes, wieners.” “No,” I said. “One hundred and twenty-one.” “How do you know that?” “Because I’ve counted them. And there’s a hundred twenty-two if you count the statue of the Monolith.” “And a hundred twenty-three if you count the guy in the living room.” “Yeah, Jesus. There’s just one thing worse than living beside Frogner Park.” “What’s that?” “Living beside a church. Like Vivian does. Think of the noise on Sundays, huh?” “Or Christmas Day,” I said. “Must be terrible.” Peder looked at me. “Some people say her Mom has a secret door from her bedroom into the church.” “Who says that?” Peder shrugged again. “Just people. It’s probably crap.” Then his dad arrived home. We heard him long before we saw him. The rusty Vauxhall made more noise than an exploding train, and the last undisturbed birds flew up from the hedge at the bottom of the garden when he was still just at the rotary in Solli Square. About half an hour later he backed into the garage (though backing’s a bit of an exaggeration). It was more a case of the car jumping into the garage, as if the driver didn’t quite know how to use the pedals and used them like a bicycle’s instead, or maybe it was because there was a problem with the engine, but most likely it was a bit of both. “It took Dad three years and five months to get his license,” Peder said. “Two hundred and eight hours of driving lessons. It cost just over what the car cost.” There was a nasty bang from the garage. Immediately afterward Peder’s dad emerged with his briefcase under his arm and his hat in his hand. He looked up at us as if nothing had happened. Peder opened the window. “Hi!” his dad called. “Is that the dancing bears up there?” “And how often were you stopped by the police today?” Peder shouted back. His dad just laughed and pointed at me instead. “Barnum! Do you like deep-fried black pudding and raw onions?” I didn’t manage to reply but he noticed that my jaw dropped. “Nor me, Barnum!” And then he vanished, and we ran downstairs to find the living room table already set, and it certainly didn’t smell like black pudding and onions, but something I’d probably never tasted before but which smelled good all the same. And Peder’s mom came in with a large dish, and soon afterward Peder’s dad came in too; he bent down to the wheelchair and gave her a long kiss. After that we could sit down. And I kept thinking that only a short time ago there’d been a naked man standing here, and here we were eating dinner in the same room. I had to help myself first, and Peder’s dad watched me closely. “Don’t be scared to eat,” he said. “Don’t plague Barnum,” Peder sighed. “I’m not plaguing Barnum. I’m just saying that there’s plenty more where that came from.” I put an all but transparent slice of meat on my plate and passed the dish to Peder, and immediately realized I ought to have passed it to his mom instead, just in the same way that you get up for the elderly and the infirm on trams. Now I was about to spoil everything yet again and get put out and told never to come back, the thing I dreaded more than anything. But it was too late now, and Peder took a double portion right away, and poured gravy over it until there was no more room left on the plate. He turned to me, armed with knife, fork and napkin. I hadn’t been thrown out after all. “Duck,” he said. “Straight from Frogner Park.” “Be quiet!” his mom laughed, and threw her napkin ring at him as his dad rescued the remainder of what was in the dish. But Peder wasn’t done yet. “Oh, yes. Mom goes on duck hunts in her wheelchair. First of all she feeds them. Then she wrings their necks. Right, Barnum?” “Don’t listen to him,” his mother exclaimed and sloshed apple juice into my glass. “Oh, yes,” his father continued. “Mother gets all our food from Frogner Park. Fish from the pond and swans from the fountain!” “I do not!” “And rabbits in winter. Did you know there were rabbits in Frogner Park?” “Don’t listen to them!” Peder’s mother laughed. “Before she used to hunt with a dog. It pulled the wheelchair just like a sled.” And that’s the way the talk went until they tired of it. Peder ate about twice as much as we did put together and in the same amount of time. And before the dessert was brought out a gradual silence fell; satisfied and sleepy it was. We looked at each other and smiled. I almost couldn’t fathom how happy I felt. Here I was sitting in Peder’s living room eating dinner. I had been in his room. I had laid beside him on his bed. This was somewhere Fred could never come. This was mine and mine alone. Peder’s father ran his fingers through his wife’s great mass of shining hair. “Did you get anything drawn today?” he asked quietly. She nodded and rested his hand on her lap. “Barnum says it’s finished,” she said. He turned in my direction, taken aback. “Do you know about these things, Barnum?” Peder got up and spoke before I could answer, and it was perhaps for the best. “When Barnum says something’s finished, it’s finished. Can we finish this debate?” We nodded, and Peder carried the plates out to the kitchen and was there a fairly long time. I had the urge to go after him but kept my seat, for no one had said I could go and I didn’t want to be cheeky and make them think I was badly brought up and ungrateful. I wanted them to like me, like me in every way. Peder’s father lit his pipe, and a cloud of smoke rose over the table. “Barnum,” he said. “Yes,” I replied. “Barnum,” he repeated. “Yes,” I said, and thought that now it was he who was in the process of spoiling everything, if he too made comments about my name and made fun of it, as most people had a habit of doing. “Barnum,” he said for the third time. “I had a stamp with Barnum on it. An extremely rare American stamp.” At that moment Peder returned with dessert. “And Mom caught these on the dog run,” he said, and put the bowl down on the table. “Poodle ears in cream!” It was actually peaches and cream, but I could barely manage to eat because I was still thinking about the stamp, the Barnum stamp. I had my own stamp, Barnum’s stamp; if ever I became wealthy enough, I’d trace each and every one of them, buy them, and send cards to all those who’d mocked my name. Especially the vicar — he’d get a whole pile from me, all complete with my stamp and
Greetings from Barnum.
He’d have no time for anything else except picking up my cards. “Come on now, Barnum, have plenty to eat,” Peder’s mother insisted. “Before Peder’s had it all.” I helped myself to another poodle ear, and Peder’s dad lit his pipe again and it clouded over once more. “Today an old lady came into the shop,” he said. “She wanted to sell a stamp. I asked her how much she’d thought of getting for it. She answered that she’d imagined about fifty kroner. Her stamp was worth at least eight hundred.” Another match was required to get the pipe lit, and I could barely see Peder’s father behind the fog. Peder began to grow impatient. “That means you made seven-fifty,” he said. But his dad shook his head. “I couldn’t do that. Deceive the old lady, I mean.” Peder was on the point of getting to his feet, but he’d probably eaten too much and didn’t quite make it. “Deceive!” he exclaimed. “But she was the one who named her price!” “Yes, but she knew nothing about stamps, Peder.” “What did you give her then?” he murmured. “I
gave
her precisely what I thought it was worth. Eight hundred kroner.” Peder buried his head in his hands and groaned. “I suppose I’ll sell it to a Swedish collector for close to nine hundred,” his dad said, and turned to his wife. “That’ll make a profit of a hundred.” She put her hand over his. “You’re far too nice,” she told him. “He’s far too stupid!” Peder roared. His father put down his pipe and looked at me with a strange smile. “I’m neither nice nor stupid, Barnum. I’m just honest.”