The Half Brother: A Novel (74 page)

They left before Mom had finished making supper. I ran out to the kitchen. She was still cutting wafers of goat cheese. Waiting had made her meticulous and slow. “The premiere’s on the 19th of August!” I told her. She was just as sluggish turning around. “Have they left already?” “Yes, and the premiere of
Hunger
will be on the 19th of August!” Mom gave a sigh. “Perhaps Fred’ll have come home by then.” At that moment the bell rang again and I saw a tremor pass through her, and she dropped the cheese slicer on the floor. I ran to get the door. It was Peder again. “I forgot something,” he breathed. He brought out an envelope and pushed it toward me. “Don’t exactly think your brother’s in the army,” he muttered, his voice even quieter. I stared at the envelope.
Branum Nilsen, Miil’s Stamps, Oslo, Norway.
One corner was plastered in Danish stamps. Fred had sent it to Peder’s dad. Now Peder was giving it to me. I said nothing. I just stared at the envelope. “Well, well,” Peder murmured. “Everything has a meaning.” He turned and retreated down the stairs. I sneaked back into the bedroom, the letter secreted under my shirt. Once there I hid it under the mattress. Suddenly Mom was behind me. “Was that Peder again?” she asked me. I nodded. “What did he want?” I swallowed and sat down on the bed. “He was just giving me some math questions he’d forgotten.” “Didn’t he want any supper?” I shook my head. “He didn’t have time.” Mom smiled. “If he didn’t have time for supper, then he really is in a hurry.” “Yes, you’re right.” “Are you going to bed already?” I gave a long yawn. “I’m pretty tired,” I said. Mom sat down beside me. She was searching for the right words. Under the mattress was the letter from Fred. “It’ll be fun with the movie,” she said. “To think we’ve got a second actor in the family.” She laughed a little. “An extra,” I reminded her. “Well, it’s almost the same.” Mom was silent for a time. I wished she’d go. I yawned again and stretched out my arms in the air, and it struck me, as I opened my mouth, yawned loudly, and lifted my arms — that everything I did was exaggerated, each and every action was larger than life, as if that would render me more genuine, as though the exaggeration was twice as real. “I can’t sleep,” she said. “I can’t sleep as long as he’s away.” “I’m sure Fred’s fine,” I breathed. “He’s a night man.” A tremor passed through her once more, as if my words had given her an electric shock. She took my hand and clasped it, whether in anger or sorrow I don’t know — perhaps in love, too. I don’t believe she slept that night either. But when things were sufficiently still, I brought out the envelope and opened it carefully. Inside there was a postcard. It was a picture of a musk ox. It was standing on a barren slope, head bent, and it looked pretty shabby and lost. And on the back Fred had written in his clumsy handwriting:
Don’t say anything. Fred.
That was all.
Don’t say anything. Fred.
I’ve no idea how long I sat staring at those words. And I made up my mind. I’d say nothing. Yes, I could have said something, I had a choice — isn’t it always about that, a choice one has to make, and for which there’s no excuse? I could have done otherwise. I could have broken my promise to Fred, gone in to Mom and shown her the card. I didn’t. I kept my promise and let her lie there sleepless. I cried a little. “Satan fanny shit!” I shouted and bashed my own mouth. I listened. Everything was just as still as before. Then I put the card back in the envelope once more and hid the envelope somewhere I knew Mom would never find it. And so began the lie that lasted so long.

And each and every day that passed was a continuation of that lie. I said nothing, so I lied. I kept my word, and I lied at the same time. I have two tongues and one face, or rather, I have many faces and one tongue. Mom lies sleepless each night. She visits Willy sporadically to get any news of the
Polar Bear.
When she comes back she’s more silent then ever, and Boletta sits in the living room and shakes her head. I compose the first draft of “Fattening” but am dissatisfied with it and discard it as soon as I’m finished. I have to change the typewriter ribbon. We wait. Time is slow and reluctant. Fred does not come back. A summer fades. Peder starts at Katta that autumn and is elected treasurer of the college club. Vivian sits at home reading, studying one subject at a time, and I go through the Fagerborg gates to begin yet another first day of school, the sun at my back. I see the whole crowd of them turning away as one and weighing me up with their eyes, and I decide to set a new record in skipping school. I manage that fine.

Three days later,
Hunger
has its premiere. We warm up at the Stortorget Inn, but don’t get the beer we order, just tea. That’s of no consequence. For Peder has gotten hold of a bottle of champagne and has it hidden under the table, and Peder’s the only one ever to have taken the cork out of a bottle of champagne at Stortorget Inn without getting caught red-handed. A bit of a damp lap is all he suffers. We gulp our tea as fast as we can and slosh champagne into our cups. We’re sitting at the table farthest in. There’s a strange scent coming from Vivian. After two cups of champagne I get a wildness in my head and twist my face down into the hollow of her throat. Vivian shoves me away, but I only come back. “Barnum!” she bursts out. “You’re biting me!” She disappears to the bathroom, and Peder stretches over the cloth on the table and laughs. The other customers turn in our direction; dark faces in the golden light of the pints they raise with both hands. The waiter’s expression becomes rather stony, and he comes to empty the ashtray Our teacups are bubbling. “I trust you’re not consuming alcohol you’ve brought onto the premises?” “Musk ox,” Peder replies. The waiter shakes his head, walks around the table and slowly goes back to the counter. I lean toward Peder. “Musk ox?” I murmur. Peder manages to get more champagne into our glasses. “Vivian’s perfume, Barnum. Tapped from the balls of musk ox.” “Musk ox balls?” “Makes you really horny.” “Horny? Who?” “You.” Then Vivian comes back from the bathroom. The scent’s gone. Perhaps she’s washed her throat. I say nothing. I can’t think straight. There’s too much to consider, and my thoughts just don’t fit together. Peder looks at his watch and raises his cup. “Time to hit Saga,” he says. We drink up and head over to the theater, arm in arm, for our very first premiere. It’s the evening performance. There’s a line outside. And I’m the one who has to produce my identity card to prove my age. Peder puts his hand on the ticket collector’s blue arm. “Let me inform you that we are in this evening’s film,” Peder explains to him. “And you surely aren’t going to refuse actors admission?” “Extras,” I put in. “Shut up,” Peder says. “If he’s old enough, he’s old enough,” the ticket collector says. Peder gives a loud sigh. “If he’s old enough to have a part in the film, then he’s got to be old enough to see it.” Vivian laughs, and we get in. And everyone’s there. I see them the moment we take our seats, down in the front row — Mom and Boletta, Esther from the kiosk, Peder’s parents (his mother is in her chair at the bottom of the steps), and yes, Vivian’s father is there, and behind him is Ditlev from the afternoon edition of
Aftenposten.
He can’t see a great deal and is moving about in his seat and gets told to be quiet. They’re all there because the news has missed no one that we — Peder, Vivian and myself — are in the film; we’ve even written about it in essays and spoken about it in interviews. I spy Bang the caretaker, Knuckles, the Goat, Aslak, Hamster and Preben — distant faces in the sloping theater. I see Tenner, the twins, Talent and Tommy — the boys from the boxing club, with their crooked noses and slightly longer hair. I see the parents of T, pale and thin and closest to the emergency exit; and I think to myself as the curtain slides to one side and the lights are dimmed, that almost everyone who’s played a part in my life is here. Some have just passed by in the background while others have loomed large, and as the darkness and the silence fall together I think to myself that there are perhaps more here than would be at my own funeral, were I to die now. And just before Vivian takes my hand and Pontus comes into view on the screen with his back to us, leaning against the railing on a bridge over the Aker River, as he writes furiously on a scrap of paper which he then puts in his mouth and eats, I see that someone’s sitting in the shadows beside Mom and that someone is Willy.

We’re not in it. We’re not in Palace Park. We’re invisible. We’ve been cut out. We’re on a roll of film that’s been tossed into a can somewhere in Denmark — surplus to requirements, rejected. And so it’s a kind of funeral after all. It’s Barnum’s ruler again. Barnum’s ruler’s too short. There’s always one inch missing. We leave before the credits have finished. “At least you got to keep your souls,” Peder’s mother whispers as we hurry past her. We’re already outside. The streets are wet. Autumn’s arrived. Peder and I have to pee be- hind a corner. We throw away our tickets and pee on them. “Shit movie!” Peder exclaims. And that’s all that’s said before we get to Solli Square. Our tree is red and shining in the dark. Then Peder says, “If he was so damn hungry why didn’t he just go up to Nord-marka and pick a few berries? Huh?” “Maybe it was another sort of hunger he was feeling,” I whispered. “Oh, really? He damn well went on about sausages the whole way through the film! All he had to do was make a hook, use his shoelaces as line and haul in a couple of cod, you know! Goddamn lunatic!” “At least he could have eaten the chocolate twirls,” Vivian puts in. We look at her. “Twirls?” Peder repeats. “Didn’t you notice? There were a couple of caradamnmels and a licorice twist left in the leaves in Palace Park.” Peder looked at me. I looked at Peder. “Really?” Vivian nods. “Absolutely.” Peder’s on the point of shaking the tree down he’s laughing so much. “We ruined the film! Chocolate twirls in 1890!” I laugh too, but something makes me so sad all the same — everything that comes to nothing, that’s cut and thrown away — as if scissors were my own emblem. “See you!” Peder suddenly says, and he starts walking away over Bygd0y Alley, between the chestnuts. “Hang on!” Vivian calls after him. But Peder doesn’t wait. He keeps on going. I let go of Vivian’s hand and chase after him. “What’s up with you?” Peder leans against the fence and smiles. “Is there something up with me?” I lay my hand on his shoulder. “You don’t need to go home yet, surely?” “Maybe I’m hungry.” And his smile, his laughter, has a softness to it, a fragility — as if his mouth might start crying at any given moment. “It’s you two now,” he says. “It’s the three of us,” I tell him. Peder shakes his head. “No, I’m one too many. I’ll see you.” And he keeps on going over the crossroads. He doesn’t turn around. I just stand there. I don’t know what to do. I want to run after Peder. And I want to go back to Vivian. It’s she who comes over to me.

That evening something else happens. We go together to Frogner Park. It’s beginning to get dark. It’s still raining. Up by the white summer house Vivian sits down in the grass. I sit down beside her. It isn’t particularly comfortable. It’s wet. I lend her my jacket. And it’s now it happens. Vivian sits on top of me instead. I can’t move. She’s gripping me tight. I twist my head from side to side and feel the soaking grass in my hair and neck. She starts doing something. She pulls down her panties and whips them over her feet. Then she opens my fly. I don’t dare move a muscle. She fits a condom and guides me in. She just sinks down, heavy and hard. She’s utterly still. I am too. I can sense it again — the scent of musk ox — heedless and raging, that’s to be my gateway that evening, musk ox and scissors. I’ve come. It’s over already. Vivian gets up, her back to me, pulls on her panties and straightens her skirt. I lie there. I’m freezing. I shut my eyes. I don’t dare open them. There’s a stinging. I feel ashamed. I hear her moving away. By the time I get to my feet she’s gone. I tear off the condom, scream, and throw it after her. I take my jacket, stagger my way to the fence and clamber over it. I rip my pants, fall down in the bushes on the other side, and crawl out onto the sidewalk. A tram goes past. There’s a whine as it tilts at the sharp bend. I hold my ears. I could go to Peder’s. But I don’t. I’ve got nothing to say. And how would I say it? I run up Church Road. I’m glad it’s raining. I run till I don’t feel like running any more. Now I am, I tell myself. I say it again. Now I am. Now I’ve done it. I’m relieved. I’m not happy, but I am relieved. It’s not so bad. It was really me who got
her.
Of course it was me. It was my fault. It was me who took her with me to Frogner Park, to the summer house, to the shadows by the summer house. As if no one realizes what
that
means. I went so far as to put my jacket in the grass for her to lie on, in the wet grass, if that was how she wanted it. It’s not so bad. I’ve done it. Done it with Vivian. It was me. It’s my fault. I stop. I can’t remember. If I finished. If I finished completely if I did it. If I came. I search around for a bit in the grass among the bushes below the summer house. A black dog comes over to me. I shoo it away. It won’t go. It comes right up to me again. I kick out at it. But it’s to no avail. Then I find what I’m looking for. I pick up the condom. The dog whines. It’s impossible to see. It’s raining. The twisted yellow condom’s dripping. I can see nothing at the tip of it. Just water, rain and mud. I throw it away. The dog’s there at once and catches it in its jaws. Someone whistles a long way off, perhaps from the bridge, and the dog vanishes.

I go back home. Boletta’s sitting in the living room. “At last you’re back!” she says. I stand there, in the shadows behind the stove, beside the picture of the little genius. I say nothing. Boletta stretches forward in her chair. “You’re not disappointed, Barnum?” I just shake my head. “Because you really shouldn’t be. You’re not the first to have been cut out. The Old One’s almost world famous for all the films she was cut from!” Boletta laughs. “And I’ll tell you this — even though it’s long enough since I last went to the movies, and that was back when they were using the Cinema Palace as a potato warehouse during the war — I thought it was an extremely strange film. To think that a beautiful woman like that would touch such an unkempt daddy longlegs of a man!” “It was just a dream,” I told her. Boletta falls silent for a moment and stretches out her arms. Slowly I go forward between them. It’s only now she sees just what a sight I am. I’m a mess. I’m stinking. “Have you been fighting?” she asks. I look down. Boletta holds my soaking jacket, takes a quick deep breath, and looks up at me in surprise. “No, you obviously haven’t, Barnum.” She smiles. “Where’s Mom?” I ask her. Boletta lets me go. “She’s with Willy. Willy Halvorsen.” “What’s she doing there?” Boletta sighs. “Your mother needs friends too, Barnum.” And just then she returns home. We can hear even now, before she’s properly closed the door, that something’s up, everything’s far from well. All at once she’s there in the living room. “The ship’s come to grief,” she breathes. Boletta gets up. “What are you talking about?” “The
Polar Bear.
In the ice. Oh, God.” Mom sits down. She brings something from her handbag. Her hands are trembling. It’s a clipping from a Danish newspaper that she’s been given by Willy, Willy Halvorsen. Boletta puts on one of the lamps. It’s a photograph, an aerial shot, of a ship trapped in the ice. It’s the
Polar Bear.
The crew, ten men in all, have gone over the side of the ship and are standing in a huddle on the floe, midway between two fissures in the ice. Mom reads the accompanying text, and her voice trembles every bit as much as her hands. “On
the passage back from Myggbukten at the end of July, the whaler the
Polar Bear
was trapped in an ice floe south of Greenland. The vessel took in water, deck planks snapped like matchwood, and the ship had to be evacuated. The crew on the ice are awaiting an American helicopter to bring them to safety. All those on board were rescued”
Mom stops abruptly and searches for a handkerchief. “But then things are pretty much all right,” Boletta sighs. “If they were all rescued!” Mom shakes her head and all but tears the handkerchief in two. “But he isn’t there! Fred isn’t there!” Boletta holds Vera’s hands in her own. “Are you sure?” I pull the lamp closer and take off the shade while Boletta goes for a magnifying glass. And despite the fact that the far-off men in the photo resemble small, black marks on the ice, it’s not impossible to see that Fred isn’t among them. Fred is not there. Suddenly Mom glares at me in the sharp light, for a moment back in this world. “What a mess you are! Go and get yourself cleaned up!” I get up and go before Mom bursts into tears again. I go into my room. I call it my room now. But as I shut the door I hear a whisper. “Quiet, Tiny” I turn on my heel toward the other bed. It’s Fred. Freds lying there with one finger on his lips. He’s changed. There’s something in his face that’s different, some characteristic that wasn’t there before. Maybe it’s just because he’s tanned — his face is quite dark and his hair’s shorter. I could have lain down beside him. I don’t, though. Perhaps my lie’s over. That’s all I can think of, that now my lie’s over. Fred’s come back. He removes the finger from his mouth. He’s lost a tooth. “When did you come in?” I hiss. “While you were at the movie. So was it good?” “Yeah, sure.” “Sure? Was it good or wasn’t it?” “It was pretty average. But I liked the ending.” “How did it end?” “The main character leaves the city.” Fred looks at me. I know I mustn’t start crying. I don’t. He reaches out his hand and smiles. “Been fighting, Barnum?” “No, screwing.” Mom’s in tears in the living room. Boletta’s comforting her. It’s raining. “Good,” Fred murmurs. “And who were you screwing?” I turn in the direction of the door. “Why weren’t you there when the
Polar Bear
went down?” Fred sits up. He’s smiling. “I quit in Godthåb. I’d seen enough.” Stillness has fallen once more. “Go in and see Mom,” I whisper. Fred runs his hand through his cropped hair. His smile evaporates, as if his lips are sucked in through the dark gap between his teeth. “What’ll I say, Barnum?” “Just say you’re getting a sweater.” I open the door. Fred hesitates a moment; then he goes in to where they are in the living room. I’m the one who stands there watching it all. I see Mom getting up and Boletta with her hands over her eyes. I see Mom growing mad and almost ugly with joy, fury, helplessness. She doesn’t throw her arms around him. She doesn’t kiss him. She hits him. This is how I’d express it — Mom hits him in wicked joy and splendid terror. And he doesn’t put up any fight. He lets her hit him. In the end Boletta has to make her stop, and it’s only then she becomes different. She takes Fred’s hand, and I don’t hear him speaking the words but I’m sure he does: “Just getting a sweater, Mom.”