The Half Brother: A Novel (76 page)

He’d been silent for twenty-two months, and Cliff Richard had got him to talk. He’d sailed to Greenland with the whaler the
Polar Bear,
left the ship in Godthåb, peeled potatoes on board
Bremen
and lost a tooth in a storm around Cape Farewell. But he hadn’t settled down. Soon enough he’d set out on his third journey, his last and his longest, the one that would take all of twenty-eight years.

It was a Monday at the beginning of December. I stood at the kitchen window watching the snow falling in thick flakes, and Bang the caretaker trying to sweep them away. But he never managed and in the end gave up, sat down on the steps instead and just let it snow — he was snowed in. If he sat there long enough he’d disappear completely. I didn’t have school to go to. I’d been suspended again. It was quite a good arrangement. I stayed away. Then I got suspended. It was almost like getting a reward. But I didn’t see any more movies at Rosenborg Cinema; the projectionist had either died or retired. I had begun going out with Vivian that winter. I heard Fred coming in and standing right behind me. “I’ll be heading off,” he said. “Where to?” I asked. “That’s what I’m going to find out,” he replied. And maybe I imagined he’d be back in a couple of days’ time, or at least before Christmas; that he’d just go off wandering for a bit to begin with. There were nights I lay awake, many years later, after we’d held a memorial service for him, and I believed he’d checked into Coch’s Hostel — Room 502, Dad’s old room — and that now he stood in the window laughing at us. “You mind telling Mom?” he whispered. “Sure. What’ll I say?” “That I’ve gone.” I turned around. “Gone? Where?” Fred shook his head. He was wearing his suede jacket and his black suitcase was standing by the door — Dad’s old suitcase — empty of applause. “Can I borrow it?” Fred asked. “Sure,” I replied. He raised his hand and touched my cheek, gently. I should have known then that he didn’t intend to come back.

And when Fred had been away over a month and Christmas had passed, Mom took a taxi to the other side of town, to Willy, the welder who’d tried to teach Fred to punch. But he didn’t know where Fred was and hadn’t heard a thing from him. Mom wasn’t worth approaching for several weeks after that. Later, once a full six months had elapsed and we were still waiting for Fred, she and Boletta went to the police and reported his disappearance. I went to the movies, with Peder or Vivian, but preferably alone. In the end, when Mom couldn’t take much more, the Salvation Army’s missing persons team was brought into the hunt.

And this was the last thing Fred said to me before he left, “Hope you get something written while I’m away, Barnum.”

I turn slowly, and all that’s twenty-eight years ago. I’m sitting at the desk, between the window and the wall. The room’s dark. The curtains are drawn. Only the computer screen’s bright, a blue hum against my face. In the top comer is the movie title,
The Night Man.
I click on
home.
The text jumps, as if nothing is there behind the screen, as if the writing is just an illusion, a thin film — and I’m overcome yet again, as the words slide into blue emptiness, of this eternal fear of losing them, of deleting. On occasion, I get out the old Diplomat, but I can no longer type with it. And so the beginning comes into view; I’m equally relieved each time it does, and I print out the first two scenes. I hear the dragging of the printer — the ink has to fill the electronic points — it’s a mouth that speaks slowly. I haven’t slept. I’ve stopped sleeping. I take pills to keep me awake. A sheet sweeps down onto the floor. I can’t be bothered to pick it up. I sit down on the stool and read.

SCENE 1. EXT. CITY. EARLY MORNING
(dream)

A
BOY,
pole and thin, eight years old, is running through the streets. No one else about. Only him. He runs for all he’s worth. He has a dogged expression, full of anticipation. Fog swirls around the boy and all but hides him for a moment. He runs on. The fog grows thicker still. He comes around a corner and arrives at.
. . .

SCENE 2. EXT. HARBOR. EARLY MORNING
(dream)

The harbor. The boy stops. Out of breath. Smiling.
THE BOY’S POV:
The wharves are empty. No boats. Hawsers hang down into the still, dark water. The fog slides in from the fjord. Close to the boys face. His eyes. The disappointment. He’s on the verge of tears. He takes a few steps. Stops again. Looks about him. Quickly wipes a tear away with the back of his hand. Then he hears the ringing of a
SHIP’S BELL,
far away. The boy listens. He hears the breaking of waves somewhere through the fog. He runs forward right to the edge of the quayside. The shadows of the ship can be glimpsed right at the heart of the driving fog. The boy shouts something, but without our being able to hear the words. And a sailing vessel appears out of the fog, made ready for the ice. The ship’s name is
ANTARCTIC.
Right at the head of the prow stands a
MAN
in a white uniform keeping watch. The boy calls again. Now the man hears him.

THE BOY: Father!

The man on the ship turns for a moment in the direction of the quayside. He raises his hand and smiles as he slowly shakes his head. The boy stands with his arm raised aloft. He lowers his arm. He calls out a final time. Soundlessly. And he sees the ship disappearing into the fog once more. The fog that’s close to the boys face. He shuts his eyes.
THE BOY’S POV:
The inside of his eyelashes
—
thin, almost transparent skin, veins, and a sharp light that’s coming closer.

I pick up the sheet, cross out the word
dream
in both scene directions, and do the same with the onscreen text. Isn’t film one long dream anyway? Can dream be separated from dream, like water in a wave, like wind in a storm? I cross out that thought too. There’s hardly a producer who would bother to read a script that begins with a dream, and most likely that producer doesn’t have the money to make movies. And if he has any money at all, it’s just too little to buy an option on the script (something he’d much prefer avoiding anyway), but he has enough to buy you a drink in the bar. And after five drinks (which you yourself have paid for), he suggests you write something else, at lightning speed, before anyone swipes the idea. What idea, you ask, tired but happy, and he leans against your ear and pitches some idea of less merit than the current pickup lines trotted out to the girls, as he puts his tongue into your ear and fills your brain with spit and bad breath. The phone rings. I don’t answer it. I leave the machine on; it’s like in childhood days — I don’t dare turn out the light. It’s winter, early in February. I’m white, too. I’ve been white for a long time now and cross off the days on the calendar, a line for each white day — like a prisoner marking time till the date of his release, or his execution. I am a white lie. I don’t go from cafe to cafe, I go the rounds of the antique shops. I start off in the best of them, down in the city center, where first editions and leather-bound collected works are arrayed in locked glass cases, where you have to hand over your bag at the counter when you go in and where smoking isn’t permitted —
libri rare.
And I end up in the dun-colored secondhand bookshops with their pocket series, where they don’t take credit cards. And it’s in one of those, the last one — Volvat Antiquarian Books — in among the empty premises along S0rkedal Road, that it happens — as the owner asks in a tired and impatient voice, after I’ve been trawling the shelves for at least an hour: “Is there something in particular you’re looking for before we close?” “Good ideas no one realizes I’m stealing,” I reply. “Stealing? No one steals anything here. I’ll have to ask you to leave now.” “I pay good money for everything I steal,” I say. It’s then my eye falls on it, in the section devoted to rare volumes — a script, 200 yellowed, typewritten sheets with a cover, and a glued-on label like the ones put onto old-fashioned jam jars. And in small, red letters are written the words
screenplay, Aug.
And it’s then and there, twenty-eight years later, at that moment, that the images mingle as they tumble together into a form that appears clear and incomprehensible to me — scissors plus musk ox equals hunger. From all of my life that’s been cut away there rises a smell — a hot, strong smell. Bar-num’s rulers burning. It’s the script I once saved from being blown away in the streets of Oslo. I give the shop owner what change I have and hurry home — to what I call home — the one room and balcony in Boltel0kka where Vivian and I spent our first years. I take the stairs at a run and unlock the door. I have to get changed first. I go out onto the balcony and see the red sun going down over the fjord and the clouds of frost piling over the city like moving mountains. Then I sit down at my desk. I open the script.
Knut Hamsun’s
Hunger —
Henning Carlsens screenplay from the script of Peter Seeburg.
On the following page is a full cast list, from Pontus to Inspector Brand, and under Inspector Brands name two columns of extras: a cyclist, a street sweeper, a sick man, a maid, six ghosts — over fifty extras in all. And I realize I can barely recall them — they’re faces that are gone now. Vivian could have been
little girl (with response).
Peder and I could have been
children in Vaterland.
Two of us could have been a pair of lovers. I light a cigarette. There are twice as many external scenes as internal ones. YLAJALIS STREET. That was where we were. That’s the trick, to find the right place. There’s a draft from the balcony door. I shut it. I catch a glimpse of a hearse moving behind the thin trees, and I think to myself,
It has to be empty, it’s after hours, the graveyards are all closed.
I keep standing for a moment, dizzy, and have to support myself against the table. This is the screenwriter’s credo — the nerves that connect the eye to the brain are twenty-three times bigger than those connecting the ear to the brain. Write pictures, not sounds. I sit down in the tall chair. I begin reading, and I understand now. It’s the camera that’s the main protagonist. I’m quite simply reading a three-sided story between Pontus, the city and the camera. But the camera is the main character — intrusive and threatening. The camera should have appeared at the top of the cast list. All of a sudden I shout out loud, “God’s eye! It’s God’s eye, damn it!” I put my hand over my mouth. I’m a sad single occupant with over-loud thoughts. When God’s eye shuts we cease to exist. I’ve pulled out the phone. I’m playing. I’m retrieving things and I’m adding. I’m writing us in. We’re running through Palace Park, the camera at our backs. I’m making us visible once more. I find the sheet I carried back to the director; that simple scene which made me decide to become a screenwriter. A gust of wind in a street was all that it took.
PONTUS sees
—
a little dog running home in the gutter, a hone in its mouth.
Then I hear the postman on the stairs. It’s morning already. That means I didn’t sleep last night either. The snows lying like thick quilts on the balcony. I cross off a day on the calendar — yet another white day — and go down to get my mail. There are two letters for me. I take them up with me. The fattest of the envelopes is from Peder. It’s my tickets to Berlin: Oslo Fornebu — Berlin. I’m traveling that night. Peder’s gone ahead to arrange our appointments. My reservation for the Kempinski Hotel’s enclosed too. That’s costing a fortune. About the equivalent of four options plus script development funding. Peder says it’s worth it. The Kempinski Hotel’s halfway to a contract. If you’ve got a suite at the Kempinski and a card at the bar, then all you need’s the small talk. Peder’s still an optimist. He goes on thinking he’ll manage to lose weight, and he trusts me. I open the other envelope. There’s a button there. That’s all. I recognize it. It’s the button that lay hidden in the Old One’s jewelry box. It’s almost weightless. There’s a note there, too. The letters are sloping, comprise just two words:
Dad’s button.
I look at the envelope again. It’s blank, has neither my name nor my address. He must have left it there himself. No. It’s not possible. It can’t be right. I go over to the window. The snow’s lying like thick quilts on the balcony. A red bird flies up from the railing. I quickly pull the curtains once more. Barnum’s ruler’s burning now. I know it. It doesn’t help. Ninety percent of our knowledge comes to us via the eye, five percent from our hearing, the remainder from touch and scent. I crumple up the sheet and put it in my mouth — chew and chew and then swallow it. I chuck the button in the toilet and pull the chain. And with the pressing of just one finger, lighter than a butterfly, I could delete it all — cut myself out and empty the screen to leave a smooth and shining silence. I go into the kitchenette instead, climb onto a stool, open the air vent and stick my hand in to bring out what I’m looking for, something I’ve hidden there myself, but not well enough for the white liar — a bottle of vodka. The juice is in the fridge.

Fattening

A filmscript by Barnum Nilsen

1. INT. EVENING. MOVIE THEATER.