The Half Brother: A Novel (43 page)

I thought about my homework for the following day.
Where does digestion begin? In the mouth. On the tongue. In the fingers that lift the food from the plate; in the hand that carries the food to its destination.
I thought of Tale, the girl I never got to dance with, she who never got to dance with anyone. “Are you asleep, Barnum?” “No,” I murmured. “So say something, then.” I lay still a long while. In the end I asked: “Where have you been?” “Nowhere.” Fred said nothing for a while himself. I think he was lying there laughing. I didn’t dare look. I didn’t dare put the light out. “Are you going to start at dancing school, Barnum?” “Don’t know,” I whispered. “Maybe.” “You don’t know? Don’t be stupid.” “Boletta’s enrolled me.” Fred laughed all the more. It was a laughter that went inward. It emptied space of air. “You could borrow my plus fours instead, Barnum. Wouldn’t that be fine, eh? Dancing pumps and plus fours. Take some sticks with you too.” “Don’t talk like that, Fred.” “And if the girls try to make fun of you, just say they’re my plus fours. Those are my brother’s pants, you can say. Right?” “Please, Fred.” He was silent a moment. “Are you crying, Barnum?” “I’m not crying.” “Yes, you are. I can hear you. You’re crying, Barnum.” “I’m not,” I told him. Fred sat up in bed. “You cry about everything. You’re a sissy, Barnum.” “I’m not crying!” I shouted. “I’m not crying!” Fred took a deep breath. He got up. “Perhaps you could answer me about one thing, Barnum. If you really don’t want to start at dancing school, why don’t you just say no?” I didn’t reply. Fred went over to the door to put the light out, but at just the moment that he stood there with his fingers on the switch, he turned toward me and slowly shook his head. He looked sad — not angry just sad. “No goddamn idea why I keep picking you up.” That was how he put it. He used precisely those words —
picking you up
— as if I were a stamp, an autograph, a hood ornament or a bottle cap. He lay down once more and shortly afterward I could hear that he was asleep. But I just lay there thinking. I thought about those pants, and I pictured Fred’s pants with the world’s mightiest hem, and the blazer that was too long, and me in all these clothes with the patent leather shoes on my feet and my golden curls on top — Barnum from Fagerborg. The picture was blindingly clear in my head, and there were girls there too — girls from Skillebekk and Skarpsno and Bygd0y — girls who would most likely peer open-mouthed, before becoming all well brought-up and wicked and concealing their laughter. Before hiding their smiles and their sneers behind little hands covered with rings, and huddling together and talking just low enough for me to hear them:
Look at that Tiny Tim over there, he’s hardly worth picking up, you’d have to be down on your knees to get to know him.
That’s probably the way they’d have talked and thereafter turned away completely as if I were nothing more than thin air it wasn’t worth mixing their perfume with. And I’d most likely have to dance with Svae instead, an LP against my stomach, and as we danced the stitches in the hem would come undone and the folds would roll down over my shoes and onto the floor. And all the couples would stop in the middle of the waltz and stare at me crawling toward the door with my pant legs trailing behind, as I shouted out that they weren’t my pants at all but Fred’s, my half brother’s, the illiterate blockhead —
they’re his pants, and it’s his fault.
And as I thought all this, all at the same time, in one furious picture that flashed past my eyes between two black frames, the stitch in my stomach that I got now and again came back, and I sank down and couldn’t keep it in.
Explain how food is continually pressed on. The intestines have muscles that are drawn together and expanded. In this way the food is pressed through.
My bum was doing its homework. It flowed out of me. I closed my eyes in the dark. It was running. If I’d had the choice at that moment I’d rather have been dead. My pyjamas were sticking to my thighs. It felt warm and soft. It was impossible. Fred woke up. I could feel his eyes. I lay as still as I could. How long was it possible to lie like this? How many sewing machines were there in the world? And were there just as many pairs of scissors? Fred’s shadow grew restive. “What have you done now, Barnum?” “Nothing.” “Nothing? You’ve done nothing?” “Cross my heart, Fred. Aren’t you going to sleep?” If I just lay like that long enough it would pass; it was all just a question of time — the one who holds out longest wins or bores himself to death. And it was almost a comfort to know that I could lie like that and let time pass; the seconds would work for me like the old clock. If I lay like this till I was dead, I could pull out a drawer of toilet paper and the minutes would wipe up after me. That was settled. I wouldn’t get up again. I’d lie here, and this bed would be my grave. Fred lit the lamp and looked at me. “It can’t be,” he said. “What, Fred?” “It can’t be,” he said again. It was dropping onto the floor too, watery brown drops. I was a drain, a gutter — I was a toilet that someone had forgotten to flush. I surrendered, because how else could I give myself up? “Help me,” I whispered. “Help me, Fred.” Fred stood for a bit holding his nose with both hands. Then he opened the window and came over to my bed. He stood there for a bit looking down at me. “So what are we going to do about this, Barnum?” I just shook my head, because everything inside me had gone to pieces. “I don’t know. Help me, Fred.” And he thought a good while. Not even the cool air from the dark outside lessened the stink. “Should I give Mom a shout?” “I’d rather you didn’t,” I whispered. “Should I get your father?” Fred laughed before I had time to answer. “No, damn it, he’s not at home. Where is your father, Barnum? The one with the hairstyle.” “Don’t know,” I answered, my voice as low as his. “Working perhaps.” “Of course. He’s working. But where’s my father? Shall I give my father a call too?” “Don’t know,” I whispered. “Don’t know what?” “Where your father is.” Fred smiled. “Wrong, Barnum. You don’t know who my father is. Then how can I call him?” I said nothing. Fred bent over me. “Well tidy up after you,” he said at last. “What do you mean tidy?” I asked cautiously. Fred gave a deep sigh and went backward, toward the window. “Get rid of the shit and change the bedclothes. Maybe I’ll throw you away too.” “Don’t you think Mom’d notice?” “If I threw you away? She’d thank me, Barnum.” “Don’t talk like that, Fred.” “You’re so small no one would notice the difference anyway. If I threw you away. I’d just say you fell down a drain and were gone.” I think I started crying again. Fred came closer. “Do you any better ideas?” he asked. But I didn’t. I got up, slowly and stiffly. Brown mush ran from my pyjamas. Fred stared at me. This was something he wouldn’t forget. Then he left. He closed the door soundlessly. No one could be as silent as Fred. I stood there by my bed. Perhaps he wouldn’t come back. That would be just like him, to let me stand there in my own shit. I was freezing. I didn’t cry. He came back. He had with him a fresh set of bed linen and an enormous piece of brown paper. I’d stopped asking questions. There was nothing else I wanted to know. He could do exactly what he wanted. He pulled off the quilt cover and the sheet, folded them up and put everything in the paper. Then he turned to me. “Take off your pyjamas.” I took them off. I stood there naked. I was pretty much freezing. Fred considered me. “Can I ask you something, Barnum?” I nodded. “What’s it really like being so damn small?” I looked down. My skin was covered in goose pimples. My behind itched and burned. And then I answered in a way I didn’t expect myself. “It’s quite lonely,” I said. Fred looked up and met my gaze — not for long, just a second, less than a second even. But he met my gaze nevertheless, suddenly, as if he was just as stunned as me, and perhaps he recognized something of himself, perhaps he saw the shadow of blackness in my eyes too, since we were brothers after all. “Shall we dance, Barnum?” Fred laid his hand on my shoulder. I sank instead. Then he laughed quietly, almost soundlessly right close to my face, and let me go as quickly as he’d held me. He tied a piece of string around the bundle, took it up under his arm and was off once more. I think I heard his quick steps going down the kitchen stairs. I sneaked out to the bathroom as quietly as I could and showered. The brown water rose in the drain; all at once I felt sick and afraid. I tried to press it, the brown water, and finally it diminished, ran away through the pipes, in the city’s dark sewers, and out into the fjord by the Fred Olsen docks, where the eels lie shining fat in the stinking mire on the bottom. I listened. Everyone was asleep. There was no sound except that of the escaping water. I took out the talcum powder from the cupboard above the sink. I doused myself in talcum — a dry snowstorm of it — and squirted a little cologne on my tummy and thighs and throat. No one heard a thing. I was standing in the middle of a great, deep sleep. I could do whatever I wanted in the middle of the others’ sleep. Perhaps I was just someone the sleepers dreamed of? I turned to face the mirror and saw my face, pale and only just visible, my curls hanging like punctured spirals around my head. I was real, for a dream can’t be reflected — no one’s managed that yet. I didn’t find any clean pyjamas, but in the next drawer I discovered Mom’s panties. I put on a pair of them instead. They were far too big, even though Mom herself was pretty petite; I could pull them right up to my chest and they felt soft and fine — I almost didn’t feel them on me at all. Like that I tiptoed back to our bedroom, in Mom’s panties and covered in talcum powder and cologne. Once there I changed the bed and lay down once more. I wondered if I could manage to be ill the following day. There were only a few hours to go. It was just beginning to get light. I could, for instance, cut off a finger with Fred’s knife. I would be in good company in the family. Dad only had five fingers in all since what remained in the way of a thumb on his right hand could hardly be counted, it was more a lump of grizzled flesh. I could just cut off my little finger. I didn’t have so much use for it anyway. When I considered it, I realized it was pretty much surplus to requirement. I couldn’t think of a single thing I couldn’t do without. What had become of Fred? I got up again and went over to the open window. I stood there, in Mom’s panties, and felt strange, weird, as if I’d changed bodies. And I felt a dragging in my stomach, though this was a different kind of pull, quivering and dark. I had to lean against the window frame. Was Fred down in the laundry with the sheet and quilt cover? If I stood there long enough, I’d get chilled. With a bit of luck I could contract pneumonia too. I wondered what it was human beings dreamed of. Was there someone who dreamed of me? Fred was probably away at the garbage shed chucking everything there. I shut the window, put on Freds bathrobe, which smelled of moths and sweat and dragged over the floor. I was like a boxer who’d been put in the wrong weight category. I was a fly in the heavyweight’s robe. And then I sneaked through to the living room. I tried to sneak like Fred, for Fred roamed and sneaked. Mom’s sewing machine was up on the dining table. Freds old pants were hanging over the back of the chair. They’d been taken up. They resembled shorts, gray shorts with a crease. I put my little finger under the needle. If I got the machine going now I could stitch them up and ruin them. Then Mom was there. I hadn’t heard her. I hid my hand behind my back. Mom smiled and held her nightie tight around her. “Are you excited?” she asked.

I looked the other way. “Couldn’t you get to sleep?” “Had to go to the bathroom.” “You don’t have to dread this, Barnum.” “I’m not dreading it. Just a bit excited.” “Of course you are. Do you want to try on the pants now?”

I shook my head. I thought I saw Fred’s shadow behind Mom, at the end of the corridor. Someone moved on the floor below — perhaps we’d soon have awakened the whole street, I thought. Perhaps my heart, banging in my chest, would awaken the whole city and the rest of the world too. “Tomorrow we’ll buy you new shoes,” Mom said. “You can’t start dancing classes without new shoes, now can you?” “Can’t I just borrow Fred’s?” “They’re just a bit big for you. Even if you have extra socks.” Mom suddenly took a step toward me and her eyes narrowed. “Have you been using perfume again, Barnum?” I wrapped the bathrobe still more tightly around me. “A little,” I whispered. She gave a deep sigh and breathed out. “How often do I have to tell you? You’re not to use perfume. What would the girls think if they smelled perfume on you?” That I couldn’t answer, for somehow I couldn’t think that far. I couldn’t even imagine them coming close enough to know what I smelled like, and if they did get that close they’d have to bend right down. No, it was impossible, it was almost like thinking of space — then the thought just dissolved in a measureless blue wind. And when the thought traveled so far that it no longer existed, it lost hold and fell slowly toward the inside of my scalp without ever landing. “Dad uses perfume,” I breathed. “He uses aftershave,” Mom said quickly. “And Fred doesn’t like you borrowing his bathrobe.” “Sorry,” I said. “Are you cold?” “Not especially.” Mom drew her hand fast through my curls. I twisted away and she just laughed. “Go and lie down again, Barnum. But wash your face first.” I ran out to the bathroom, stuck my head under the tap and got into bed, after hanging Fred’s bathrobe back in the closet. I heard Mom going from room to room, as if looking for something she’d forgotten about ages ago and couldn’t remember where she’d left it, or perhaps she was just walking off a restlessness that left her sleepless and irritable, and that no sewing machine in all the world could mend. Then her steps finally stopped, and instead I heard something different — Fred’s laughter — he was lying in bed already and was laughing quietly. I hadn’t noticed him before, and I didn’t quite know what I liked least, Mom’s pacing or Fred’s laughter, when he laughed as he did now. “What is it?” I murmured. “Nothing.” “What did you do with my pyjamas and the bedding?” “No need for you to worry about that, Barnum. That’s taken care of.” All at once he stopped laughing and sat up in bed. “Do you hear me?” “Yes, Fred.” “You say yes to starting at dancing school, even though you don’t really want to. Is that right?” “Yes,” I breathed. “Then there’s only one thing to do, Barnum.” I sat up myself. “What’s that, Fred? Tell me, Fred.” “Get yourself thrown out. As quick as possible.” “How do I do that? Get thrown out, I mean.” Fred hid his face in his hands for a time, almost as if he was sitting there crying or had pain somewhere, the kind of headache Boletta tended to get when it was thundery and she’d been drinking beer at the North Pole the night before. I didn’t want Fred to get dangerous again. I tried to think about my homework instead.
How often should we purge our bowels? At least once a day. What should we do to avoid slow bowel movements? Exercise, eat brown bread, fruit and vegetables, and keep placid and clean.
“But how would I get thrown out?” I asked again. Fred looked up. “First you see what everyone else is doing. Then you do the exact opposite. It’s easy, really.” Fred had said enough and lay down once more and turned away. I heard the paperboy coming up the street — his great bunch of keys, the whining wheels of his blue pushcart — the pushcart that was most likely full of bad news.
It’s easy, really.
If the others were to take one step forward, I’d take one step backward, or maybe two, just to be on the safe side. When the boys were to bow, I could curtsey. I almost grew happy just thinking about it — it was like a joy in the dark — as if a burden had suddenly been lifted from my shoulders, and the whole weight of outer space released in my head. It was as if I’d been set free. I could do whatever I wanted. Fred was smart. While everyone else changed their shoes in the changing room, I’d go straight onto the parquet floor with boots covered in mud, creepy crawlies, wet leaves and dog shit. The record player needle would jump the grooves as the trumpet of Eddie Calvert was burned down in a black memory with a hole in the middle. But when I thought of shoes, my stomach began to slide again, just a little, and I curled up inside Mom’s panties and did everything possible to think of nothing whatsoever. Was it possible to become thoughtless, to douse each and every thought that glowed inside, one by one, just as lights die out in a town at night, to end up with nothing more than profound peace and long silence? The paper boy ran up the steps. I didn’t hear him running back down. Fred was snoring, far away, and when I was awakened by the rain on the window he had left. I saw before me a big day, perhaps one of the biggest in my life. Mom opened the door a little. “Hurry, Barnum, or you’ll be late.”