The Half Brother: A Novel (19 page)

And Arnold hurries after his father with his hand covering his sore and out-of-joint nose. His father doesn’t stop until he reaches the classroom door and is looking in on Hoist who closes his register with a bang. “I am Arnold Nilsen’s father,” he announces loud and clear. The teacher looks up quickly and uncertainly, his eyes swivel a bit before he glances at the register again and smiles. “Yes, Evert Nilsen. Naturally I recognize the fathers of my dear pupils.” Hoist the teacher got up. “And your son has learned an important lesson today. For my part I consider the matter of no consequence and will not pursue it any further, either here or in the portals of my superiors.” Evert Nilsen stands there dumb and dark, as if he’s forgotten quite why he’s there. His broad figure casts a long gray shadow through the room. Arnold waits behind him, hidden. He tugs his father’s jacket hard because he knows he can’t cope with too many words at one time — they just bewilder and exhaust him. “And now we must continue our class,” the teacher says, getting up and looking right past Evert Nilsen. “Arnold, would you be so kind as to sit down at your desk?” But his father holds him back. Then he goes forward to the teacher’s table, between the restless pupils who realize already that something’s about to happen they’ll never forget. Evert Nilsen says nothing. Enough has been said already. Hoist the teacher looks at him in amazement. And Evert Nilsen takes the pointer and hits Hoist on the forehead; the blow isn’t perhaps all that hard, but he folds up all the same, more in astonishment than in pain. He howls and clutches at his face, and Arnold considers that it was his father who first hit him, then Hoist the teacher who hit him, and now his father has hit Hoist, as if the one action has led to the next with a kind of justice that Arnold can’t quite fathom. Evert Nilsen then snaps the pointer and drops the two halves over Hoist the teacher, who’s still kneeling in front of the class. He leaves the classroom and takes Arnold with him, out into the mighty wind where there’s room for everyone. “You’ll never go back there,” his father tells him.

The following day Arnold goes out in the boat with his father. Aurora says no to begin with, but Father stands his ground. The boy has to be toughened up. The boy’ll survive all right. There’s nothing else to consider. It’s simple, obvious and fine. That’s what it all comes down to. Now Arnold’s sitting on the hatch, his blue nose packed into a rough bandage so he has to breathe through his mouth. He sits there gaping while his father rows with a slow, inexorable rhythm, taking them out from land. It’s calm, calm indeed for October; the sea lies dark and broody like a black mirror. But as soon as they’ve passed the breakwater and can see the lighthouse standing like some wide neck in a collar of foam, the breakers start beneath them, lifting the boat in a constant, intolerable motion. The father smiles and looks at his son; he rows and doesn’t take his eyes off him. The breakers roll beneath them and nothing is still any longer; there isn’t a single thing to hold on to. Not his father either, who smiles, rows, rows them out, farther still, until they can only glimpse the island like a plateau in the very depths of the fog. Arnold shuts his mouth and can barely get breath. He is shut in himself. The breakers fill him with a warm queasiness. He tears off the bandage and chokes back his own scream, chucks the dirty thing onto the water and breathes in quick, blissful gulps of air. His father looks at him and smiles, keeps rowing, for they haven’t got there yet. Arnold carefully feels his nose; it’s tender and soft and runs jagged down his face. “You look like a boxer now,” his father says all at once. Arnold looks up at him in surprise. “A boxer? Do I?” “The one there was a picture of in the newspaper. Don’t you remember?” “No. Who do you mean, Father?” “The one who’s actually boxed in America. Otto von Parat.” For a moment Arnold forgets his queasiness and senses instead a wonderfully good feeling. His father has spoken to him. His father’s said he looks like a boxer. Arnold punches the air and laughs. It hurts high up in his forehead. He’s happy and it hurts. But just as the good pain passes, the sick feeling grows once more, and he notices that his father is sculling back the water as if he’s trying to moor the boat on the waves themselves. Then he puts one oar over his thighs and points behind Arnold. “Pay attention now,” he tells him. “When the flagpole crosses the beacon and the lighthouse is in line with the breakwater, you’re lying right.” Arnold turns and looks, while his father keeps talking, and it’s a long while since Evert Nilsen has said so much, and perhaps he’s happy too at that moment being there with his son. “Those are our landmarks, Arnold. The flagpole, the beacon, the lighthouse and the breakwater. It’s like a constellation. When everything’s confusion and currents, they’ll stand firm. Never forget that, Arnold.” And Arnold screws up his eyes and looks, looks at these landmarks that create this strange form, this image that is broken if they move by a single pull of an oar in one direction or the other. And the more Arnold stares at the landmarks, the sicker he becomes, and it dawns on him that out of everything in the whole world he’s the only thing that can’t manage to stand still. “What was it you said to the teacher?” his father suddenly asks. Arnold has to think. “I just said that his bum was bigger than a halibut.” His father laughed loudly. “Bigger than a halibut! Did you really say that to that great bag of wind!” “Yes!” Arnold exclaimed. “Twice! I said it twice!” Arnold looks at his father. They’re outside the normal conventions of behavior. It’s just the two of them. They’re free, were it not for the waves and the queasiness. His father falls silent again and Arnold sits as still as he can, for he doesn’t want to destroy this moment. Then his father asks, “What was it the vicar said to you?” Arnold has to think again. “He said I should honor my father and mother.” “Did the vicar really say that?” “Yes, that I should honor you and Aurora.” And as he says those words Arnold vomits. He vomits up the contents of his guts right into his father’s lap. His father swears and raises his arm as if to lash out, and Arnold has to vomit again; he cries and vomits and through a film of tears he sees that the landmarks have disappeared. Everything slides apart. He’s out of rhythm. He sinks down into the bottom of the boat and closes his eyes. “Now I don’t much look like a boxer,” he whispers.

His father rows back. He’s silent the rest of the day. Aurora puts out food on the table. Arnold can’t face eating. He goes to bed early. Everything’s still rolling. He’s brought the breakers home. His bed is a boat. The boat bears Arnold. It bears him out to the landmarks of his dreams.

His father rouses him early the following morning. “Find the landmarks,” he orders him. When they have passed the breakwater his father changes places with Arnold and gives him the oars. Arnold rows. The waves press against them. Arnold rows and watches. His father doesn’t take his eyes off him. The oars lift aside the surface of the water like huge, slippery spoons. Arnold turns and gazes in toward land. But the landmarks aren’t where they should be. They’ve moved around. The beacon has moved in front of the flagpole, the lighthouse has sunk into the sea, and the waves are tearing down the breakwater, stone by stone. The constellation has been thrown to the four winds. Arnold thinks to himself,
My landmarks are here, there and everywhere! Here, there and everywhere are my landmarks] My crooked nose’ 11 point me in the right direction.
His father grasps him by the shoulder. “Further out!” he cries. And Arnold rows further out. He makes up his mind. He’ll do it now. He’s an oarsman — Arnold the oarsman! And Arnold rows into the heart of the breakers. He rows through the waves. He rows into the storm. The oars aren’t spoons, they’re trees. And each trees crown is the blade of the oar that pushes the sky backward. But he doesn’t find the landmarks. The landmarks aren’t there. Nothing at all will stand still. The wind is gnawing at their hills and soon there’ll be nothing but dust on the surface of the water, like fly shit on the windowsill. His father shouts something, but it’s impossible to hear a word. His father points, but there’s nothing to see. Arnold rows through rain and foam. He rows with his mouth open and he gulps the sea and throws it up; the ocean on whose floor he stood and made his most secret plans. His father rips him away from the hatch, takes the oars and rows in once more. Arnold tumbles down between his huge boots. He wets himself. He cries. His father kicks him away. “Are you out of your mind, boy?” he shrieks. “Are you trying to ruin my boat?” Arnold can’t say a thing. His father rows, giving long pulls to the oars. His father swears and rows. Arnold gets up and sees to his amazement that the water is dead calm. Aurora is standing right out on the breakwater. She is a patient, black shadow. And Arnold goes onto land for good. He follows his mother up to the house, hearing the laughter of the boys over at the classroom. “Don’t worry,” his mother whispers. “I’m not a bit worried,” Arnold replies and clenches his teeth. “Did you go green again?” she asks him. Arnold doesn’t answer. He is the land crab encircled by sea. He is the seasick one, born on an island. “My father,” Aurora says. “He got seasick too. Every single day he got queasy and vomited.” She laughs, and her laughter is queer, and she takes his hand. Arnold is silent, for he doesn’t know if this is meant as a comfort or a threat. No, it’s not a threat, but it’s poor comfort.

One day Arnold is sitting on the dockside gutting fish. His father’s at sea. Arnold raises his knife. The knife is weighty in his hand. Time passes slowly and heavily. The old boys are keeping an eye on him. They mumble together about this half portion of a boy They tell the stories they’ve told all down the years. Soon the stories’ll be about Arnold. When they turn away, just for a second, perhaps because that lazybones Elendius is approaching to inflict bad news on them, Arnold loses hold of the knife and it slices his finger right to the bone. His finger is left hanging by a thread, a sliver of flesh, yet Arnold doesn’t cry out; he’s completely silent and just stares at his hand, at the index finger from which blood is pumping in great gouts. He hears the knife landing on the ground and the others getting up, and Elendius screeching so the whole island can hear, “The Wheel has chopped off his finger! The Wheel has chopped off his finger!”

And it’s this Arnold remembers when he comes to with just nine fingers, that they called him the Wheel. Arnold is the Wheel and won’t be known as anything else. Everything that powers through the world has wheels — cars, trains, buses — even ships have wheels, and wasn’t the ocean itself one great wheel that rolled from coast to coast, and wasn’t the earth too a shining blue wheel spinning through the dark of the universe? Because nobody could forget that Arnold had rolled like a human wheel down the steepest slope, and neither did Arnold forget the promise he had made himself, there where he stood on the sea floor with the waves on his shoulders, that he’d get away from this island, whatever the cost. He doesn’t know where he’ll go, he only knows he has to do this one thing — get away. He is a wheel and he can’t stop. The road is his home. That’s the way he’s been made. And one night he steals out. He leaves a letter for his mother. His father’s fishing far out on the fjord. The nights are starting to grow lighter. For several weeks he’s been composing this letter, trying to find the right words and put them in the right order. It’s short enough, since Arnold Nilsen isn’t one to whom the written word comes naturally. This is what his mother will read when she rises early the following morning, startled by the silence of the tiny dwelling. She’ll see the piece of paper on the kitchen table.
My dear mother. I’ve left home. I’ll return when the time is right, or never. You’ll find the boat on the other side. Good wishes to my father too. Loving greetings, Arnold.

And Arnold slips out into the bright night. Quickly he goes down to the dock. Tuss follows him, confused and happy He strokes the dog and then sends it back up to the house again. He’s taken a loaf with him, coins he’s been saving for two years, and a drop of his father’s brandy. He looks around him. He sees everything he’s going to leave behind. He releases the mooring, and the night is still and his heart hammers. He cries with joy and sorrow. He has surpassed himself. He is bigger than himself. Soon there won’t be room for him. And while he rows with his nine fingers, he sings so as not to hear his own crying,
God is God though every man were dead, God is God though every land laid waste.
And the whispers are to be heard still about this voyage through the roughest and most dangerous of currents — a feat it was indeed, a miracle. Arnold must have had the Almighty Himself in his oars that night, and perhaps the feat cooled his father’s rage and grief — his half portion of a son taking on the ocean like a man, thereby transforming himself into a whole legend.

And on the evening of the third day, Arnold stands in front of the church on Svolvaer and everything’s bigger than he’d imagined it would be. People live on top of each other in houses of stone. The lampposts are dense as a forest, and there’s electric light in the shop windows. But it amazes Arnold that it’s so quiet, that a town could be so still. Maybe they’re already asleep in towns by this time of day, Arnold thinks, so that by nighttime they’re rested. Because in towns everything’s topsy-turvy, the sun goes down when people get up. But then he hears something approaching, and indeed it’s several things, for the hillside is vibrating under him. Arnold turns and sees a whole procession of humanity trailing past on the opposite sidewalk, both adults and children. There are fishermen and tradesmen, women and men, dogs and cats, and every type of person imaginable, and as if this isn’t enough the vicar himself emerges from the church, the heavy door bangs behind him and he lifts the skirts of his robe so as not to trip over, and runs like a woman to join this amazing crowd turning down the main street toward the quayside. Arnold hides behind a lamppost and the vicar doesn’t see him. They’re on their way to the other side of the quay. There, on the rough ground between the sawmill and the silo, are booths and merry-go-rounds, blazing lights, a plethora of colors, mechanical horses riding around in circles, and a great tent pitched in the midst of it all, fastened to a hook in the heavens that is the moon, and above golden portals Arnold reads: circus mundus. He observes that everyone has to pay a uniformed gentleman with a neat mustache curled under his nose, and then they stream in, one after another, shouting and fighting and pushing each other over to get in first and find the best possible seats. Arnold’s left standing there in the dust, on the outside edge of the old soccer field. Soon he’s able to hear the playing of the orchestra, the neighing of horses, the trumpeting of elephants, the firing of guns, laughter and the crack of the whip. Arnold shuffles closer. There’s no one on duty now. The uniformed gentleman’s gone. Arnold remains for a moment beneath the ornamental portals looking about him one final time. A placard hangs on a post close by. Here one may find the famous snake-man, Der Rote Teufel. Here there are sword-swallowers and lion-tamers, grotesque human freaks and beauty queens. Not least, here is the worlds tallest man, Paturson, the legendary Icelander. Arnold takes a deep breath and slips inside. He steals between booths and tents. The horses circle riderless on the shining merry-go-round. Is it not perhaps this he’s dreamed of and longed for? Hasn’t it been here he yearned to come to; wasn’t getting away all about this very place? He stops outside the tent where there’s a sign with the words:
Mundus vult decipi.
What amazing sounds. This is a language for haddock and halibut a thousand yards down. He lifts the flap to one side, but before Arnold has seen a thing a hand pulls him out and drags him roughly around. The gentleman with the uniform and the mustache is staring down at him. “And where are you planning on going?” The man speaks Norwegian. He bends down closer. “I’m looking for my parents,” Arnold answers quickly. “Well, well, have you wandered off from your parents, then?” Arnold smiles. He’s no longer afraid. Lying is that easy. The words are put into his mouth and transformed into truth. “Yes,” Arnold whispers, “I’ve wandered off from my parents.” But these words, that are both the truth and a lie, have unwanted consequences for Arnold. The man in uniform actually lifts him bodily into the air. “My name is Mundus,” he says. “And no one will lose their nearest and dearest if Mundus can help it.” With that he carries Arnold right into the big top. Der Rote Teufel is in the process of sticking his head between his legs as he hangs beneath the dome from a trapeze, and everyone is gazing in his direction. He folds himself up and peers out from between his own thighs, and now he’s only holding on with one hand, and the onlookers gasp and hardly dare look. The drummer gives a drum roll that goes on and on. Then suddenly there’s a rustling sound from on high and there’s unease on the trapeze. It’s Der Rote Teufel’s gold-embroidered hosiery that’s ripped in the most unfortunate of places. For a moment the bulk of the audience think this is part of the performance, but then they realize this is a scandal of the highest order and that Der Rote Teufel hasn’t been given his name by accident, for an unmistakable smell fills the tent, and the poor snake-man is lowered at top speed with his white bottom cheeks like a shameful moon above his burning, tightly clenched face. A great hissing breaks out on the benches at the back; the men get up and chuck balls of paper and earth in the direction of the Teufel, and it’s now that Arnold Nilsen makes his debut. Mundus realizes that the show is about to go to pieces, and so he carries Arnold out into the middle of the big top and holds him up. Silence falls all around, and the cocky, exuberant fishermen sit down in the end and Mundus seizes the initiative. “Ladies and gentlemen!” he shouts. “This little gentleman I have in my arms is missing his parents! Would his mother and father make themselves known, and reunite themselves with him in our presence before the world’s tallest man rises in our midst?”