The Half Brother: A Novel (85 page)

I put the check into the bank at Majorstuen, and beside the bank was the “pole.” Afterward we walked slowly home. The rain had stopped. The air was thin and cold. “Are you down?” Vivian asked me. I stopped at the telephone booth at the Valkyrie. I had a few coins on me. I looked up the Theater Cafe in the book and called their number. I booked a table for eight o’clock. I left a couple of coins in the slot. Perhaps some kids would find them and have enough for juice and sweets from Barnum’s kiosk. I put my arm around Vivian. “No,” I answered. “Good, Barnum. It’s just a case of writing more, isn’t it?” And she kissed me until we all but dropped our “pole” bags.

But I couldn’t write. I wanted to start on my divine comedy, but the words died as soon as they reached the page. Perhaps it was true, that when you talk about something it’s impossible to write it thereafter, for you take the power of the story and dilute it in everyone’s hearing. You’ve betrayed yourself. I wrote at the very top of the blank sheet:
professional discretion.
Then I leafed through my notebook instead. I felt like throwing it away. I felt suddenly that my ideas were pathetic. The notebook was weightless. If I chucked it in the garbage chute, it would never land. I could see the ideas before me, weightless, and the writing being rubbed out by rotting leftovers, grease, diapers, the dregs of coffee, cigarette butts, vomit, blood and other body fluids. Finally I got out “Fattening.” I put a line through the opening scene and changed my name to Pontus. But what difference did it make? That evening I drank faster than I thought.

The first time the phone rang it was six-thirty. Vivian came out from the bathroom and hesitated before answering it. I could hear the voice all the way over to where I was. It was the director of Norwegian Film Ltd. Vivian handed me the receiver. “Perhaps he’s changed his mind,” she hissed. From the word go he started talking in an equally loud voice. “You’re a fox, Barnum.” “Am I?” “Bar-num’s no pseudonym, nor are you an only child.” I didn’t say a thing for a while. “Are you still there?” he inquired. “Where else would I be?” The director laughed. Quickly he became serious too. “Listen, Barnum, and listen carefully. I want this story. And only you can write it.” I grew quite bewildered. And underneath this bewilderment was an equally powerful disgust, a sense of nausea. “What story?” “The story of your missing brother,” the director said. Vivian sat on the bed drying her hair. She looked up sharply. “How do you know about that?” I asked him. He laughed again. “Haven’t you read the afternoon edition of the paper yet?” I put down the receiver. I rushed out to the stairs and pinched the copy belonging to the neighbor who always forgot to close the garbage chute. Ditlev’s last article was there on the last page. Now I knew what he’d been talking to Mom about. There was a picture of Fred, from the fight at the Central Boxing Club, taken just as he receives the deciding blow and his face twists, as if his skin is detached and being pushed around the side of his head. Underneath they had a much smaller picture of me being given my check by the director, and the cognac in my inner pocket’s visible — the protruding cork of it. The heading read:
The winner and the loser.
I went back to Vivian and sat down on the bed. I gave her the paper. “Read it,” I breathed. And she did:
“Barnum Nilsen was today awarded first prize in Norwegian Film’s script competition. For readers with good memories, the name of Barnum Nilsen will not be entirely unfamiliar. Back in 1966 he was in Oslo City Chambers to receive his award for winning a junior writing contest for his story ‘The Little City.’ What lies behind his new tale, ‘Fattening,’ is something the author’s reluctant to reveal, but it’s possible his brother’s story’s more dramatic still. Fred Nilsen, our one-time hope in the ring, vanished twelve years ago. Vera Nilsen, the boy’s mother, relates that she’s sought the assistance both of the police and the Salvation Army, without success.”
I tore the paper from Vivian, crumpled it up and chucked it out onto the balcony. I couldn’t even escape Fred’s shadow. “Come here,” Vivian whispered. I went over and lay down with her. “Who’s the winner, and who’s the loser?” I asked her. “Now you’re being stupid,” Vivian said. I turned away. “Fine.” “Don’t be angry with your mother,” she told me. I tried to laugh. “That’s rich coming from you.” “She just wants Fred back, right? Perhaps somebody reading the paper will have seen him in one place or another.” “I’m not angry” I said. Vivian unfastened my belt and pulled up my shirt. “Have you told her we’re going to have a child?” I lay there and for a moment froze completely. I had to defrost my voice. “Are you pregnant, Vivian?” She laughed. “Not yet, Barnum.” But she kept staring at my stomach. I could feel that she was naked. She sat over me. And while we were going at it, the phone rang for the second time. We didn’t answer it. Her hair came down over my face and was still wet. She lay down beside me and put her legs along the side of the wall. “What was it the director actually wanted?” she asked. “A script about Fred.” Vivian rubbed her hands over her stomach. “Do you want to write it?” I waited a moment before answering. “Maybe I’ve already begun it.” “Really?” “Yes,” I told her. Vivian swung down her legs and turned to me. “What’s it called?” “I think I’ll call it
The Night Man”
“Can I read it?” “Not yet, Vivian.” It was already seven. I showered, had a drink and got dressed. Vivian had put on a dress I hadn’t seen her in before — it was blue with black stripes. It suited her. We looked at ourselves in the mirror. We didn’t look too bad. We were off to the Theater Cafe. Then the phone rang for the third time that evening. I answered it. It was Peder’s mother. “Congratulations,” she said. “I see you’ve won a prize.” “Yes, by gosh,” I said. “Many thanks!” “I’m proud of you, Barnum.” And yet there was a strangeness about her voice. It was slow and joyless. “I have to tell you something,” she breathed. I sat down on the bed. I was stone-cold sober once more. “Yes?” “Peder’s father died last night.” “Died? But how?” Vivian turned around and dropped her ear stud on the floor, Peder’s mother was quiet a long while. I just heard her breathing. “He took his own life, Barnum.” “Oh, no,” I murmured. Vivian came a step closer — pale, shaky. “I’d so much like it if you could both be at the funeral,” Peder’s mother said. She put down the phone. I looked up. “What is it?” Vivian whispered. I pulled her down to me and told her. And I sensed a tremor pass through her — a quick breath of relief, just as I sensed it in myself — for it isn’t Peder that’s dead. And this relief becomes at once shame and sorrow. We’re dressed in our finest clothes. We stay at home. And I see before me the empty table at the Theater Cafe with my reservation there —
Barnum Nilsen, 8
p.m.
— the only table no one sits at. And this is an echo too, an echo of time, the shadow of a discus spinning through blinding sunlight. I put my arms around Vivian. “Now Peder must come home,” I whisper, and start to cry.

The Last Picture

But Peder didn’t come. Vivian and I waited out at Fornebu. It was early in the morning on the day of his father’s committal. We stood at the huge window through which we could see the plane landing, slowly as if its wheels would never touch the ground. The runways shone after the night’s rain. We rushed down to the arrivals area on the ground floor. We weren’t alone. We could barely get through. I sat down. Perhaps I wouldn’t recognize him. Perhaps it was he who would have to recognize us. But Peder wasn’t on the plane from London. Peder didn’t come. In the end only Vivian and I remained there, together with a dark-skinned cleaning lady sweeping away flowers, cigarettes, flags, and a child’s shoe with her great wide brush.

We took a taxi back to his mother’s. She was sitting ready in the wheelchair — tiny and all in black. “The flight was canceled,” I told her. Vivian nodded and looked the other way. Peder’s mother put her withered hands on the wheels. She wanted to be pushed up to the crematorium. There was time enough. Perhaps this was her way of preparing herself and building up courage, by taking a roundabout way — because who wants to hurry where one doesn’t want to go? We went slowly through Frogner Park, behind the Monolith, and came into Wester Gravlund, where the Old One and Dad were buried. I saw T’s grave too. The grass was tall and golden around the low stone. I had to stop for a moment and take a deep breath. We are forgotten. Peder’s dad had closed the garage door, gotten into the car, and turned on the engine. In the morning he was dead. It was the paper boy who found him. He was still holding the steering wheel and they had to break his fingers free.

The crematorium bells rang out. We walked the last part of the way, lifted the wheelchair up the steps, and wheeled her into the darkness nearest the white coffin. The place was already full. Only Peder was missing. There were wreaths from the family, fellow philatelists and friends all down the aisle. Vivian and I joined Mom and Boletta. The organist began playing. And I thought to myself that if we’d gone to see them that time we were coming back from Vivian’s parents’, and hadn’t just stood there at the comer looking at the lights on the ground floor, then maybe everything might be different. If I hadn’t complained about the broken window in the car and asked him to get it repaired, perhaps he’d be alive now. Is that all it takes? And I thought to myself,
How little does it take to save a person?
There was utter stillness — neither a cough nor a sob — as if this death had frightened us into muteness. We waited. Peder’s mother laid a rose on the coffin. Then she turned the wheelchair and smiled to all those who’d come. She was transparent and beautiful. Her voice was clear and slow. “Oscar didn’t want there to be any vicar. He didn’t believe in any life beyond this one. We often talked about death. But never that it would happen in this way.” She closed her eyes and the silence became more profound still. The seconds thudded past. Then she went on with her speech for her dead husband. “I loved Oscar exceptionally deeply. He was patient with me. I love him just as much now, and I always will love him. I will remember his laughter and his forgetfulness and all the joy we shared. This is my only comfort today. That sorrow does not have retrospective effect. That the sorrow of today cannot erase all of yesterday’s colors.” She had to stop a second time. And she said something as she bowed her head, quietly, and maybe I was the only one who heard her, and those words were branded into me — she whispered, she moaned, “Oh, God. Oh, God, I didn’t know him!” Then she straightened up again. “Peder should have been with me now, but he’s been prevented from doing so. My thanks to all those who are here.” She turned back once more to face the coffin.

Formality fizzled out at the graveside. And it was there I understood that the suicide of Oscar Miil hadn’t frightened us into muteness, but instead had rendered us embarrassed and therefore dumb. That old word
condolences
didn’t work. This was a shameful sorrow. Some people slipped quickly away, to the parking place or the station, and just left a visiting card in the basket at the exit. Peder’s mother sat there, a green rug over her legs, accepting this silent compassion. I noticed that she could no longer manage to raise her hand. When it was my turn I bent down and kissed her cheek, not to try to be any better than the others but to hide the fact that I was crying. “Come home with me too, both of you,” she whispered. And we pushed her the same way back. It was even farther now. We helped her into the hall. “Peder!” she suddenly shouted. But Peder gave no answer. Peder still hadn’t come. She didn’t want us to go. She wanted us to stay. There was already a bottle of wine on the table. We sat in the living room and drank in silence. We each said cheers. She could barely manage to hold her glass. She’d cleared away all her canvases and frames. I could see the garage through the window. The door had been brought down, but only halfway. Maybe it needed airing. And the only question I wanted to ask was
why?
But it was an impossible question. “Did you ever finish your pictures?” I asked instead. She looked at me abruptly and I realized there and then the question was indelicate in this brittle and fragile moment, that it was in danger of breaking it. With huge strength she raised both hands. “Perhaps. Perhaps not,” she murmured. “As Peder would have put it,” I said. Her arms fell into her lap once more. Vivian poured us more wine. I got up to go for a pee. I stopped in the hall and leaned against the wall. The door to the bedroom was open. Peder’s dad’s pyjamas were still lying there. On the bedside table were two clocks. The one showed a quarter past five. The other was set to American Pacific time, so they could always follow Peder’s day. The door to his room was locked. I went for a pee and then returned to them. Vivian had gotten up. We ought to go. “Do you need any help?” I asked. Peder’s mom wheeled herself out into the hall. “Oscar used to carry me to bed.” “I can do that,” I told her. She smiled. “I’d rather sleep down here tonight.” And she suddenly held me, and I felt the grasp of her thin and wrinkled fingers already failing. “Do you think things can ever be the way they were before, Barnum?” she murmured. I didn’t know what to say, and I couldn’t lie to her. “No,” I said, my voice as quiet as hers.