The Half Brother: A Novel (51 page)

Boletta was looking at me; those small eyes scratched at my spine. I put the letter back where it belonged, pushed shut the drawer and turned in her direction. She lay there smiling. She said something strange. “How old have you actually become?” she asked. I told her my age, even though she knew it herself without a shadow of doubt. Boletta smiled with all her wrinkles. “In seven years you’ll be just as old as my father.” I had to go nearer to her. “What did you say Granny?” “I never met him. And had I met him now, I’d be three times as old as him. An old hag like me meeting her young, handsome father. Just think of that.” “Have you taken a long time to work that out?” I breathed. Boletta took my hand. “Each day and every day I work it out, Barnum. It keeps me alert.” She let my fingers drop and I went toward the door. I heard her sitting up. Perhaps even now she’d add a new day to her reckoning. “Hows your new friend?” Boletta asked. I turned around. “Peder? Fine. I’m meeting him this evening. I mean tomorrow. Or today.” Boletta smiled once more, but this time the smile was sad; her mouth was nothing more than a fold in her wizened face. “You have to look after Fred,” she whispered. “Me? I can’t look after Fred,” I told her. “Yes, you have to look after Fred too, Barnum. Now you’ve friends of your own.” “He doesn’t need me,” I exclaimed. “Yes, it’s now he does need you. Because it isn’t easy for Fred to find friends.”

I ran into my room. I was almost angry. But I didn’t dare go up to the loft again. I sat at the window till the first light began showing in a narrow strip along the sky, midway between the pale moon and the city. Fred didn’t come down. I left before the others had gotten up, before breakfast — not even Esther had opened her kiosk yet, and she’d have to clear at least a ton of snow before she did. I cleared most of it for her with a shovel I came across in the entry-way below, so at least one person could be happy that day Because I was both full of dread and anticipation. That was just the way it was. I looked forward to the arrival of the snow, but I dreaded the snowballs. I looked forward to meeting Peder, and I dreaded what might happen. The thing I’d feared, as a suspicion, a feeling, was suddenly written in tablets of stone in my mind — that pleasures must be paid for with dread, that laughter is the voice of darkness. Fred was at the very core of my being, but how could I, little Barnum, look after him? It was Fred who had to look after me.

The first thing I got when I came into the playground was a snowball in the face. It wasn’t especially hard, but what it lacked in solidity it made up for in wetness; it kind of melted on impact and ran down the inside of my shirt. My teeth just chattered, and I laughed. And there isn’t much more to tell, except that at recess it was my turn to throw. I aimed at the open school kitchen window. It was rather a good aim. I could hear the crashing pots and frying pans. The following period the head teacher came around to discover who the guilty party was. I put my hand up without the slightest hesitation and had to wait behind for three quarters of an hour. Basically I had no problem with that. In addition I had to write thirty times in my best writing
I
must not throw snowballs.
When I had done that I started a new sheet. On this I wrote
You must not lie in your coffin before you are dead
nineteen times. Then my three quarters of an hour were up and I could go home. There was no one standing in the park waiting to wash my face in the great snow-plowed mounds behind the church. That was the good thing about having to wait behind. But I didn’t go home all the same. I went down to the corner of Bygdøy Alley and Drammen Road instead, and stood under the tree there waiting for Peder. There were still some leaves left on the branches. Winter had come too abruptly. Autumn hadn’t had time to finish properly. When I leaned my head backward and looked up into the great crown of the branches, the leaves resembled red water lilies floating in a white pond falling down over me. I stood like that for at least an hour. Then I felt someone shaking my jacket. It was Peder. “You look like the son of the goddamn Abominable Snowman!” he exclaimed. He kept brushing away at my clothes. “Have you been standing here long?” “A while,” I admitted. “I got the time wrong.” Peder leaned against the trunk of the tree. “Snow is the most ridiculous thing I know,” he said. “Why?” “Why? Give me one good reason we should have snow.” I thought about it. “You can go skiing,” I suggested. Peder looked at me with something akin to disgust. “Skiing? Do you ski a lot, Barnum?” “No, not particularly,” I admitted hastily “No, you can see that. Ill tell you something. About forty inches of precipitation descend on Oslo each year, and I have to clear about five of them. Otherwise Mom couldn’t get out.” Peder produced an umbrella he had secreted under his duffel coat, and he put it up over us. We stood there for a bit not saying anything, sheltered from the falling snow. “What did you mean by that?” I asked. “You think Mom can clear snow by herself? And Dad can’t be bothered. But at least I get a weekly wage doing it. That’s the only good thing I can say about snow. That I make some money out of it. I insist on a tenner for every sixteenth of an inch.” “You said you could see I wasn’t a skier,” I breathed. “What did you mean by that?” Peder laughed. “You think I look like a cross-country skier, huh?” I shook my head. “Not in the least,” I admitted. “Well, neither do you!” We both laughed. Neither of us would be particularly efficient at it — we weren’t made for it. That was crystal clear. We’d be better off going in other directions. Then I thought of something. “Perhaps I know a good reason after all,” I said. “And what’s that then?” “Your mother can paint it. The snow, I mean.” Peder groaned. “Mom said that too. I think she likes you. There’s just one thing I keep wondering about.” Peder stood still, absolutely silent, under the black umbrella. “What?” I asked. “It must be possible to paint snow without having to clear it.”

We didn’t say too much after Peder said that. It was enough to consider. We stood there behind the red tree so no one would see us. It was the first time I’d waited for somebody along with someone else. The class would begin in fifteen minutes, and the first pupils had already gone into the Merchant Building, as if they believed they’d get asked to dance just because they were early. “She’s not coming,” I said in the end. “Of course she is,” Peder said calmly. “You want a bet on that?” “How much then?” “What have you got?” “Two kroner twenty.” “All right, then that’s what we’ll bet.” “Deal,” said I. Peder pounded my back. “And you’ve just lost two kroner and twenty 0re!” Because Vivian was coming down Bygd0y Alley, running through the snow, a great red hat on her head. She jumped over the edge of the sidewalk and splashed her way over to us. Her face was wet, and she quickly drew her hand over her brow and joined us under the umbrella. It began to get a bit crowded there. We were breathing on each other. “Barnum didn’t think you’d come,” Peder said. Vivian looked at me. “I came all right,” she said. “Perhaps Barnum’s used to being disappointed,” Peder went on, not letting up. “Perhaps,” Vivian said, and took off her hat. “Have you said anything at home?” I asked, so as to change the subject. She shook her head, and droplets showered from her hair in a shining circle. “What they don’t know won’t hurt them,” Peder said. “In other words, ignorance is bliss.” Now the rest of the class was coming with their dark clothes and bags with over-narrow shoes in them; they looked as if they were going to a funeral at the very least, or were on their way to the slaughterhouse where they’d imminently get knocked on the skulls and be hung up on hooks from the roof till tender, while Svae played
Oh Heiderröslein
over and over before flaying the lot of them with a nail file. It wasn’t just a sad procession; it looked rather a pathetic one too. We laughed. We pointed at them and laughed. Now it was our turn. We laughed at them. We were so superior. We were together. It was us against them, us against the crowd, and we had supremacy. And perhaps it was the first time, just then, under the black umbrella there behind the red tree, that I felt this sense of belonging that’s beyond one’s own family — yes, that’s outside your own self. This belonging that eliminates the anxiety in your innermost being and that gives you a place on which to stand. I felt that, strongly and clearly, that evening with Peder and Vivian. Then there was just the snow and all the steps imprinted in it between the streetlights on Drammen Road, and we could hear the music from the windows on the upper floor — the beat — and the steps spreading out over the parquet floor we had left once and for all.

We didn’t say anything for a bit. We just looked at each other and smiled. There was nothing to worry about. If we wanted, we could climb up to the top of the tree and sit there for the rest of the evening. Peder folded up the umbrella. It had stopped snowing. “Well go to Dads place,” he said, and started off. We followed him. He was walking down in the direction of Vika. It wasn’t wise going particularly much further. The streets hadn’t been plowed, and the snow was all brown. But I wasn’t worried. We were together. It wouldn’t take much for Vivian to reach for my hand, and no one had ever held my hand except for close family members. At last Peder stopped outside a shop in Huitfeldt Street. Above the window, which was covered in a metal grill, there were words in large letters — miil’s stamps — bought and sold. Peder produced a great bunch of keys and unlocked the door. We went in and he closed it behind us. There was no one there. Peder lit a lamp in the ceiling that shone sharp and white. I’d never seen so many stamps. There was a glass case full of old letters. The place smelled of glue and tobacco, and something else that I couldn’t diagnose — maybe a particular type of steam used for lifting stamps from letters without them falling apart. “Smells like rubber,” Peder said. “You get used to it eventually.” Vivian looked about her inquisitively. “Can you really live off of selling stamps?” she asked. “Of course,” I said. “A stamp from Mauritius costs 21,734 kroner.” Peder smiled and pushed us through to the back. There was a sofa and fridge there, and a desk on which strange, shiny instruments were lying — magnifying glasses, lenses and microscopes. It was more like an operating table. Peder got out some beer and some Coke from the fridge and opened both bottles with a pair of tweezers. Then he mixed the two in a glass, took a gulp himself and passed it on to us. It tasted sweet and sour at one and the same time. A humming began in one of my ears. We sat down on the sofa, with Vivian in the middle. “Are you allowed to be here?” she asked. Peder splashed more beer into the Coke. “Dad says I’ve got to take over the whole dump anyway. I’m the one who counts the cost!” Peder laughed loudly and produced a stamp lying right at the back of a drawer that first had to be unlocked using two keys. He sat down with us once more. “What I like most about stamps is that the ones that have things wrong with them are of most value.” He showed us the stamp he’d sought out, and we took turns holding it. It was Swedish, yellow, and looked as if it had been sent a good while back. “A three shilling stamp from 1855,” Peder whispered. “Should really have been green. The King of Romania bought one for five thousand pounds in 1938. Just because it was yellow and not green.” Peder put the stamp back in its drawer and turned back to us. But it was Vivian he was staring at. “I’m fat,” he said. “And Barnum’s tiny. What’s wrong with you, Vivian?” I almost didn’t dare breathe. There was quiet for so long I thought Peder had ruined everything. But then she did say something after all, and she looked up and smiled. “I was born in an accident,” she said.

I thought about that the whole way home, about what she’d said about being born in an accident. I thought so much about it that I forgot what I was going to say myself. Were we worth more because there was something wrong with us? Mom was already standing in the hall, and in the living room Dad was sitting drowsily in a chair. Boletta wasn’t to be seen anywhere, so she probably had her usual affliction and was at the North Pole. “Were you kept behind again?” Mom demanded, and her mouth was trembling. “Yes,” I admitted. “Well, it’s at least good you don’t deny it, because the head teacher called to tell us! How could you?” Dad got up from his chair and that was easier said than done. “Well, well,” he said. “So you threw a snowball through a window, Barnum.” “Yes,” I breathed. “That sounds promising indeed. Once the spring comes well get going with the discus, and the great thing about the discus is that it gives you a better grip on the girls too!” “Be quiet!” Mom shrieked. Dad just laughed and began sitting down once more. Mom tugged at my jacket. “And you’ve been to dancing in these clothes!” I looked away. “We were only doing the cha-cha-cha,” I said. Mom sighed heavily, and her hands flew in all directions. “And where’s Fred? Have you seen him?” “He’s lying in a coffin in the drying loft.” Mom’s arms dropped. Dad remained on his feet, suddenly awake and white-faced. “What did you say?” he asked. “Nothing.” My throat was quite parched. My tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth. Slowly Dad came closer. “Nothing? You said nothing?” “I don’t remember what I said,” I whispered. Dad stopped in front of me, his whole body shaking. “You said that Fred was lying in a coffin in the drying loft.” I looked down. “Yes, I suppose I did.”

No one would have believed Dad could have taken stairs so fast. Mom hurried in his wake, and barely managed to keep up with him, and I came last. I had to know what had happened. This is what I see: Dads come to a halt inside the drying loft, right under the attic window. The coffins lying on the floor. Mom’s face is buried in her hands, and she screams without emitting a single sound. But the strange thing is that Dad doesn’t look at the coffin first but rather at the clotheslines, the clothespins, the remains of the dead bird, the empty coal sacks — and he breathes so heavily he redistributes the dust in the room. He stands there like that, staring at everything about him as if he’s forgotten the reason he went there in the first place, forgotten himself entirely. Then Fred himself raises the lid of the coffin and sits up. It almost looks comical. He sits there gasping for breath, pale and thin among all the silk folds. He stares at me. I stand in the shadows behind Mom, whose face is still hidden behind her hands. “Don’t hurt him,” she murmurs. And Dad turns toward her, almost sorrowful and apologetic. Then the strangest thing happens. He bends down and puts his arms around Fred, holds him close and pats his back. Even Mom has to look now, because Dad doesn’t beat the living daylights out of Fred, he hugs him instead — and I catch a glimpse of Fred’s expression over Dads shoulder, bewildered and horrified. And one of them is crying — not Fred, but rather Dad, Arnold Nilsen.