The Half Brother: A Novel (52 page)

I ran downstairs again and went to bed. The others came a little later, their voices low and unhurried. I put my hands over my ears just the same. I didn’t want to know what they were saying. But I couldn’t hear Fred. Perhaps I’d get a hammering from him because I’d told them where he was, and most likely I’d get a double helping because Dad hadn’t smacked him. That would have been the best thing ultimately, if Fred
had
got his usual hammering and that had been that. I was dreading this already and couldn’t sleep. I was as bewildered and horrified as Fred. He came in when everyone had gone to bed. He sat down by my bed. I didn’t say a word. Then I couldn’t wait any longer. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. Still Fred didn’t say anything. A great stillness held his shadow aloft. He had something in his hands. I couldn’t see what it was. Finally he was going to say something. He breathed out. “I think I’m evil,” Fred said. I wished he hadn’t said anything after all. “You aren’t evil,” I murmured. Fred leaned closer. “How do you know?” I had to think about that. A beating would have been better. “You’ve never done anything evil,” I told him in the end. “Haven’t I?” Fred had done a fair amount; he’d mailed my pyjamas to the caretaker, he hadn’t spoken for all but two years, he’d lain in a coffin in the drying loft, and that wasn’t the half of it. But if there was a God, wouldn’t He turn a blind eye to all those things? Would He really make a tally of them? “You’ve never done anything truly evil,” I said to him. Fred looked away. “Not yet,” he breathed. Now I was whispering myself. “Not yet? Are you planning to, Fred?” A car drove down Church Road, and the glow from its headlights swept through the room. Then I saw what it was he was holding in his hands. It was the discus. He didn’t answer. He just kept sitting like that, the discus in his lap, stroking his fingers over its surface. “A junior discus,” he whispered. “Three and a third pounds.” That was all he said. He lay down to sleep. He left the discus on the windowsill. I took it back into the living room. It certainly was heavy. I was glad it wasn’t a senior discus. What was in Freds mind? I felt anxious. I took the letter back with me, lit the small lamp above my head, and read aloud. I don’t know if Fred heard me, or if he’d already gone to sleep. But I read it nonetheless, the whole letter, from beginning to end. Right to the final sentence, the most beautiful thing I knew, and I managed to read it without crying once. It was the last time we read it.

There were no coffins reported missing in Oslo around that time. Dad took off the gilt handles, removed all the silk, and chopped it up for kindling, which he used for the stove in December, when it began to get cold and the balcony door was letting in the draft. It burned pretty well. But I didn’t particularly like sitting in the warmth it gave off; it made me sweat and feel chilled at one and the same time, so I tended to go out when Dad lit the wood of the coffin Fred had lain in. And late on one such evening, after everyone has become somewhat strange with the fierce and feverish heat of the stove, and even Dad himself has gone out to cool down, Boletta tears open the door to our room and stands there shaking a single finger, scarcely able to speak. I had no idea she could get so angry; I’d never seen her like this. The gentle Boletta was like a bird with her feathers all ruffled. “Where is the letter?” she breathes. It’s Fred she’s staring at because he’s at home too; he lies in bed and simply shrugs his shoulders. “No idea. Do you know, Barnum?” Boletta turns to me. “Isn’t it in the drawer?” I ask her. “No, it’s not in the drawer!” “Maybe you took it to the North Pole?” I suggest. Boletta lifts her tiny hand into the air. “Are you trying to make a fool of me, Barnum?” “No, Granny. But I put it back in the cabinet after I read it last.” Boletta turns the guns on Fred once more. “If you’ve taken that letter, you’ve brought dishonor on the living and the dead! Do you hear me?” Fred gets up. “I haven’t touched it!” he shouts. “I haven’t touched the goddamn letter! Why do I always get blamed for everything?”

Mom’s there too now. She has to support Boletta. Thereafter they ransack the whole apartment, but they never do find the letter. “You’ve gone and lost it yourself,” Mom tells her. Boletta doesn’t know what to believe and as a result will believe almost anything. Bewildered and miserable, she lies down on the divan. I sit down beside her and try to comfort her. “It’s not so bad,” I tell her. “I know it by heart. Boletta opens her eyes. “By heart?” she breathes. I nod and wipe away beads of sweat from her brow. And then I begin reading the letter to her — with neither the paper nor the words in front of me, I read the letter in its entirety. But when I’m done, after I’ve spoken the final words and neither added nor removed anything, not so much as a comma, Boletta takes my hand and slowly sits up and whispers, “It’s not the same, Barnum. No, it’s not the same.”

I said no more. And so we sat there like that on the dining room divan that December as the stove sent out its rays of heat, and since that time I’ve never been able to think of the letter, written in the land of the midnight sun amid ice and snow, without remembering the coffin.

The Accident

Vivian was born in an accident. It happened on May 8, 1949. Aleksander and Annie, who will become her parents, are driving a Chevrolet Fleetline Deluxe, a gift from his father on their wedding the previous autumn. They’re driving up toward Frognerseter. They’re young and at the start of their lives together; she will give birth in a couple of months, and he has one year of his law studies at Oslo University left — he’s considered the sharpest of the class. She was crowned queen in the graduation festivities the year before. They’re the kind of couple that others admire and envy; the shining stars amid the paler ones around. Their joy is inevitable — they know nothing, that day,
besides
the joy of being. They are on their way into the future, and the future is on their side. It’s the sun that counts. The blue skies. The green trees. They stop at the Hol-menkollen slope. Aleksander Wie rolls down his window and points to the top of the ski jump and the ground below; this man who knows the letter of the law becomes poetic and attentive to every detail. It’s love. It’s her. It’s both the moment and the future. “It’s you and I who’re standing in that tower now, Annie,” he tells her. She puts her hand over his. “We’re the ones standing in the tower,” he says again. “We’re setting out and we aren’t afraid.” “No,” Annie laughs. “We’ll fly higher than any of the rest.” “Yes, Aleksander!” And he bends down to her lap; she leans back in the seat that’s like a bed, and Aleksander listens, he listens to the child inside her, and he thinks he can hear two hearts pounding — Annie’s and the baby’s. He lies like that a long while, listening. She runs her hand through his hair. “You’re beautiful,” he whispers. “Have I told you that before?” Annie laughs. “You told me this morning.” “And now I’m telling you again. You’re beautiful — both of you.” He kisses her. He puts up the seat and becomes the pragmatic lawyer once more, the one who will protect her. “You must sit properly. The child could be harmed. You must be careful.”

They drive on. Aleksander closes the passenger-seat window. He doesn’t want it to be drafty for her. He accelerates for a moment, goes a bit over the limit on the last hill, and feels this power that is gentle and manageable; but slows down at once as they swing around toward the woods. There’s another car coming toward them. He can scarcely believe his eyes. “My word,” he exclaims. “A Buick!” And the cars each stop on their respective sides of the road. Aleksander opens his door. Annie quickly grasps his hand. “Where are you going?” she asks. “Where am I going? I have to take a look at his car.” “Don’t be long.” He sits back down in his seat again. “You’re not feeling bad?” She shakes her head. “Just a bit cold.” “Cold?” “I don’t know. I got so cold.” “We’re driving home,” he tells her. She laughs. “Hurry up. It’ll pass.” “Sure?” “Quite sure. I’m better already.” Aleksander quickly kisses her cheek and hurries across the road. The other driver — a short, dark-haired man wearing light gloves — is already standing beside the open coupe, and he lights a cigarette. Aleksander thinks to himself at once that he looks like an upstart out on the road to show off; maybe an ordinary guy from a whaler who’s made too much money There’s a boy in the front who looks sullen and bad-tempered; a thin, pale woman sits behind him and is smiling shyly, as though she knows this isn’t the right car for them, that it’s out of their league. A strange bunch they are altogether, but Aleksander greets the small, idiotic fellow who’s speaking a different, northern dialect and trying to disguise the fact by speaking slowly and in capital letters. They walk around their cars and boast about them a bit. “Is that your wife?” the stranger inquires. Aleksander nods. “Yes, it is indeed.” “She’s most beautiful.” Aleksander’s embarrassed by the intrusiveness of the comment. A shadow sweeps over them and draws the light with it. The clouds are increasing. He stops and quickly goes back to the Chevrolet, gets inside. “We’re going home,” he announces. But Annie wants to go on. “No, not yet. I want to go right up to the top of the tower.” Aleksander laughs and feels this joy that knows neither blemish nor flaw. She’s with him. She’ll follow him. She wants to follow him to the very top. “All right then! In that case we can avoid driving after that charlatan!” He fastens his seatbelt, and at that moment the rain starts. He puts on the windshield wipers and drives on toward the next sharp curve. Annie turns and notices that the woman in the other car has turned around too — just for a second — then they’re out of sight of each other. And it’s on the far side of this curve that the accident happens. Perhaps Aleksander Wie was driving too fast, perhaps the road was slippery on account of the warm rain, perhaps some creature or other suddenly came out of the wood and startled him. Whatever the reason, he loses control of the nearly two-ton Chevrolet — it all happens before he has time to react, before he can manage to straighten up. Forces loom against him, the car swerves to one side, plunges down a steep slope and crashes into a tree. Annie is slung against the windshield, which shatters over her face. There’s utter stillness. Only the rain keeps falling. Only a bird flutters upward from a branch. Aleksander sits pinned between the seat and the wheel, all but completely unharmed — but for a cut in the forehead. He frees himself and turns toward Annie. He can see nothing but blood; her face is a mass of blood — a piece of glass has cut her face diagonally and divided it in two. Her neck, her chest — everything is blood, everything is shattered. “Annie,” he murmurs. “Annie.” And he doesn’t hear his own voice but rather something else — not a sound but rather a movement, and he looks down to the floor by her feet and sees a bundle. A bundle of flesh and blood, a human being, still attached to Annie, who suddenly bellows and gurgles, and presses her hands against her ruined face. The glass breaks between her fingers and she roars and roars; Aleksander tries to bend down to the newborn baby — a girl — they’ve already decided the baby will be called Vivian if it’s a girl.

It was a girl, and Vivian turns toward us. “Come on,” she says. Peder looks at me and nods; he’s pale and almost appears thin there where he’s standing. And we follow in Vivian’s wake through the dark and silent apartment, cheek by jowl with Frogner Church. It’s the first time we’ve been there, at Vivian’s, and it took long enough for her to dare to invite us. “Quiet,” Peder breathes. “What did you say?” I ask him, my own voice as muted as his. “Quiet,” he repeats. We go into her room, and soundlessly she shuts the door. It’s as if no one sleeps there at all. Everything is neat and tidy. Everything appears untouched: her bag, her books, a sweater, a pair of slippers side by side. And it strikes me that this room is almost completely empty; there’s nothing there, nothing — no record player, no radio, no magazines.
Maybe this is the way girls’ rooms are,
I think to myself,
tidy.
But I realize that Peder’s noticed it too, and we crash down on the gray sofa while Vivian sits on a stool, for there’s nothing else to sit on there except the stool. We’re silent for a bit, as if the stillness of the apartment is infectious. Peder has to break the silence first. “Cool,” he says finally. Vivian looks up. “Cool? What do you mean?” “Our place is stuffed with crap. Here there’s nothing.” There’s a ghost of a smile on Vivian’s lips. “Full of crap?” she repeats. “But at Bar-num’s it’s even worse.” He looks at me and laughs, and I realize Peder’s talking for the sake of it, and he doesn’t quite know what to say and so is babbling like this. I feel freezing cold. Peder’s freezing too. His neck is covered in goose pimples. “Full of crap,” I quickly put in. Vivian shakes her head, realizing we’re just talking crap, and we know that she knows, and no one says any more for a long while, and this time I’m the one to break the silence, and what I come out with’s pretty stupid. “Did you tell your parents you’d given up dancing classes?” I ask her. Vivian shrugs her shoulders in exactly the same way Peder does, and it makes me rather worried. “It’s all the same to them,” she says simply. It’s then my eyes alight on a picture on the wall behind her, and I just sit there gazing at it because I can’t take my eyes off it, as Peder goes on spouting crap. It’s a photograph of a lady — black and white — and definitely fairly old; she’s holding a cigarette in her fingers, and the smoke is rising in a faint spiral in front of her face. Her mouth is thin and wide; there’s something hard and cold — almost hostile — about her face. Yet at the same time there’s also something about it that’s inviting and alluring, as if it’s you and you alone she wants to join in something you’ve probably never done before and which you’ll probably never have the chance to do again.
Marble and marzipan,
I think to myself. The words just tumble from nowhere. Marble and marzipan. “If I could choose,” Peder was saying, “I’d rather have had nothing at all than a lot of crap.” “But here there’s actually a lot of both,” Vivian says, smiling. “Both nothing and crap.” Peder’s sweating now and unfortunately turns to look at me. “And what have you to say to that, Barnum?” “Marble and marzipan,” I reply And both of them start laughing; both Peder and Vivian laugh, and it’s as if the sound of laughter doesn’t belong there, but I laugh myself. We lean in toward each other and laugh — marble and marzipan. It’s us three — we say things no one else could comprehend beside ourselves. And then someone knocks on the wall, and a more sudden silence I’ve never heard before. We sit up as if we’ve been caught in the very act, and arrested for committing some heinous crime. We were laughing. We don’t laugh any more. “It’s Lauren Bacall,” Vivian whispers. “Who knocked on the wall?” “No, you nut. The one you’re staring at.” Vivian turns toward the photograph, the only thing on any of the walls. Peder looks at it too. “Who is she?” I ask. “An actress,” Vivian replies. “My great-grandmother was an actress too,” I tell them in passing. Vivian looks at me again, and I feel she does so with new eyes, that all of a sudden she sees me in a new light. “Was she?” I nod. “Yes, she was.” “In movies or on the stage?” “Movies.” “Must have been the silent movies then,” Peder says, and laughs again, as someone opens the door suddenly and soundlessly. It’s Vivian’s father. His hair is completely gray — that’s the first thing I notice, that and his slender nose. He looks in at us. Peder gets up at once. I get up too. Vivian remains where she is. Her back is curved like a cat’s. Her father nods. He smiles momentarily; his lips tremble.