The Half Brother: A Novel (57 page)

But Fred didn’t go up to Solli Square to take the tram there for Majorstuen — that would have been the quickest way home. Instead he went down toward the railway tracks and the bridges. He went inward. He went through the shadowy part of town whose boundaries are Munkedam Road to the south and Arbien Street to the east. I don’t know why he did it. Perhaps he wanted to take a shortcut to the harbor. Perhaps he was just confused and didn’t know what he was doing. He should never have gone there. Because by the first of the bridges, where the netting over the rusted railways casts shadows like dappled water and a foul stench from the garbage on the tracks comes up from below, was a gang of four, bored out of their skulls and with nothing more to do than get the last out of a cigarette end, reluctant to go home to a dinner of leftovers and a mouthful of abuse, and with the day too young for anything of importance to be happening. And then something happened after all. They see Fred coming, a thin Fred in his tight pants, coming toward them like a gift — a stranger, an interloper, sent right into their arms. Fred sees them too; he slows his pace, just a fraction, so they don’t notice. But he doesn’t turn tail; he could have run away, got the hell out, but he goes on. There’s four of them; they’re all wearing dark clothes, but their faces are pale — one of them, the smallest, has a black eye, a swelling. That’s the one standing at the front and smiling. Two others stand slowly combing their hair; Fred sees all of it — the quick glint of metal shining harshly in the sunlight, a key ring perhaps, brass knuckles. A nerve in a neck twitches; there’s a jerk at the corner of a mouth — and at the back the oldest of them waits. He seems uninterested, careless, aloof; but when Fred passes them, he’s the one who stretches out his arm, drops the cigarette butt to the ground and says, “Hell of a lot of trash on the road today.” Freds forced to stop. They stand around him. The smallest blinks his damaged eye, and a dark stain runs down his swollen cheek. “Ow.” The two others laugh. In actual fact they’re not threatening. And if anyone had seen them from a window close by, they might have imagined these were just five good friends standing there talking about the summer holidays, girls, jobs up for grabs at Akers Mek, training, games — five guys having a good time in the flickering, yellow afternoon shadows. But Fred knows it isn’t like that. He stands between them and feels their quick, warm breath. He knows what they’re going to do. He’s in the wrong place. He went down the wrong street. It doesn’t matter what he does. It doesn’t matter what he says. He’s on the other side. A train passes by beneath them. The bridge shudders. His shoes itch. Fred’s already made his calculations. The arithmetic’s simple. But working it out doesn’t make any difference. The one who spoke is the leader. But the smallest of them, the one with the damaged eye — he’s the most dangerous. The two others are just there. They comb their hair. “Hell of a lot of trash,” the smallest echoes; the most dangerous of the lot. “I can see that,” Fred says. They shuffle closer. “Talking to us?” Fred smiles and slowly turns around and counts. “One, two, three, four. Four pieces of trash.” There’s quiet. It lasts only a moment. This silence isn’t real. Fred feels a stab in the back, but he doesn’t turn around. The one who’s the leader puts his hand on Fred’s shoulder. “Shall we do some tidying up?” he asks. Fred doesn’t answer, and it isn’t a question anyway. And perhaps it’s exactly what he wants, for them to take the money he’s saved; perhaps he thinks it’ll make it easier to bear that he got to Miil’s Stamps too late and didn’t manage to buy back the letter. But none of them realizes Fred has anything more valuable on him than a comb and a lighter. They take him down to the slope beside the railway line, where a tall fence of planks hides them from the blocks of apartments closest by, and where the drunks sit with their glinting bottles. They get up and go when they see who’s coming. Fred waits. But no one does anything yet. All of them are waiting. Fred stands between them. Someone calls for their kids. A window bangs. Slowly they start to move around him. They’re counting too. They’re counting the seconds. They’re counting and waiting, waiting for the next train. It’s on time; a thunder approaching through the tunnel — freight cars passing. And then the fists come — the youngest first — he hits wildly and without thinking and only gets in a few punches.
Fuck,
he shouts, but no one can hear what he’s saying. He jumps instead and smashes his fist right in Fred’s face, his mouth — as if he’s banging in a nail — and at that moment the last freight car passes and the silence comes back in a chill shadow. And Fred stands there, hands against his side, the blood trickling from his lips. Blood and gravel — it feels like that — blood and gravel. His mouth has come loose, and in the very heart of this mire he smiles, Fred stands there smiling. The smallest, the wild man among them, wipes his hands in the grass and groans. He’s the one who groans. The leader weighs up Fred, for a moment taken aback, more taken aback than enraged — then he smiles too, and the sun suddenly blinds them. A train comes from the other side — a locomotive through the heart, a locomotive through the blood that deadens the pain. And it’s the two others who punch now; Fred sees the windows like a film rolling, and passengers looking out at them — they think they’re dreaming. He hears the train whistle as a thin and shining streak of sound in the air. Fred stands there. Hands by his sides. He can’t feel his own face, as if someone’s put a mask on him. Soon he won’t be able to see. He smiles with his broken mouth. It’s that smile that makes the smallest of the gang madder still. He tears a plank from the fence, storms toward Fred, and smashes it against the back of his head. Fred staggers forward but keeps his feet. “Ow,” he whispers and laughs. There’s a wave at the back of his forehead, a black wave pitching within him. There’s a nail in the plank — a bent, brown nail. The smallest one wants to hit him again. He can’t bear this any longer. But the leader holds him back. They move away. They’re the ones who get the hell out. They’re the ones who’re frightened. They see Fred stagger but to keep his feet — they don’t understand it, it’s all wrong, it’s unnatural. He should be on the ground, begging for mercy. And perhaps they’d have picked him up, made sure he was still alive — but Fred’s on his feet, he’s standing there laughing. The smallest guy sees there’s blood on the plank he’s holding and chucks it away He climbs over the fence after the others. Fred slowly raises his hands.

And I can hear Montgomery screaming. And when Montgomery screams, he wakes the entire city whether we’re sleeping or not. Montgomery screams like a possessed rooster, and no longer knows the difference between the sun and the moon. He crawls along the railway tracks in his long army jacket, weeping and screaming, the old and broken soldier. He’s still at war, because the war is still in him. He left his senses in Normandy in 1944, and now there’s just a front-line trench in his soul and a bloody beach in his heart as far as he can see. And every night Montgomery screams to wake the dead. He lies down beside Fred, who’s sunk into the frail brown grass now. And Montgomery carefully lifts his head and pours brandy into his mutilated mouth. Montgomery cries; he screams and cries and whispers. “Don’t be frightened, boy The Allies are coming soon.”

And I’m dancing with Mom. She’s cleared the living room, and we have the floor to ourselves. We dance together and Boletta’s sitting on the divan following every step. I have my arms around Mom and lead her as well as I can from corner to corner and diagonally over the floor and back again. Boletta’s most disappointed. “Did you learn nothing at all at Svae’s?” she asks. Mom laughs and pushes me against the wall. “He’ll dance better with Vivian,” she says, and gives me a quick kiss on the cheek. Boletta comes and takes over. I dance with her. Mom sits on the sofa and lets out her breath. I dance with Boletta. She leads. She shakes her head. “Have you forgotten everything I told you about who should lead?” she asks. “Yes,” I say and push her away; I’m rough and firm, and after a moment the ghost of a smile crosses her face. “That was better, Barnum! You’re allowed to be a bit rough!” And we dance like that for the rest of the evening. We sit on the sofa and let out our breath one after the other until Mom and Boletta dance together, and they look like two old wallflowers, full of mirth, whom no one wants to dance with. And when there’s no music left on the radio, we give up and go to bed.

It’s far into the night when Fred comes back, it’s almost morning. The light’s frail and shimmers in the room. I’ve been sleeping and dreamt something weird. I dreamed I was lying in the coffin that Fred brought home. And I’m not alone. Vivians holding me. Its cramped, but that makes no difference. She takes her hand and strokes it down over my stomach. We’re not dead yet, by the way. And she takes my hand and takes it where she wants it to go, and I rub. Someone knocks on the lid. We pretend we don’t hear. I remember wondering just who it could be knocking on the lid — Peder or someone else entirely? It’s from this dream I wake suddenly to find Fred there. I see him. He’s turned away. My stomach is all wet. He says nothing. I dry myself off on the quilt. “Where have you been?” I ask. Fred doesn’t reply. He’s breathing heavily, as if he has a cold — it sounds like whining, the noise of a draft. It makes me think of Dad. I feel afraid. I sit up. There’s something on the floor, something dark. There’s something dripping from Fred’s bed, dripping onto the floor. “What was it Dad said before he died?” I whisper. “Shut it,” Fred tells me. But there’s something wrong with his voice. He can barely speak; he’s like a radio that’s not tuned right. There’s a grating noise there. I grow still more afraid. I tiptoe over to him. I can’t see his face. I light the lamp over his bed. I shut my eyes because what I’ve seen can’t be right. I open them again. It is. Fred turns and stares up at me. He’s unrecognizable. His face has been mashed. There’s blood everywhere. His hair is full of it; his nose is smeared over his swollen cheeks, and his mouth is just a hole from which more blood trickles now and again. Everything is crooked and shattered in Fred’s face. His eyes are barely visible between blue chunks of flesh. I don’t know if he can see me. I feel like crying. “Who’s done this?” I breathe. He doesn’t answer that either. He just lies there. “You have to go to the doctor, Fred.” “Shut it,” he says again, almost inaudibly — it’s more like a groan, and he takes my hand, holds it in a vicelike grip and won’t let go. I have to sit down on the bed. I sit there for a good while. I don’t quite know who’s comforting whom. Finally he lets go of his hold. I get a cloth from the bathroom and wash his face as delicately as I can. “Dry my eyes,” he whispers. “What?” I ask him, because his speech is so unclear. “I can’t see, Barnum.” So I wash his eyes. Slowly his face comes to view, just a shattered mess, and he sees me now too, as if doing so for the first time. “Thank you,” Fred says. “Thank you.” “Who did this to you?” I ask him again. “Shut it,” is the only answer I get. After that he sleeps. At any rate I hear no more from him except his heavy breathing, which somehow seems locked in his flattened nose. And I can’t help thinking that it reminds me of Dad, and it seems so bizarre that Fred should be lying there making me remember Dad. I wipe the blood from the floor. I sit with Fred for the remainder of the night, and once I’m absolutely sure he’s asleep, Mom and Boletta have already gotten up and I go out to join them in the kitchen. Boletta waves at me with a teaspoon and laughs craftily “I guess you do look tired, Barnum. Did we old ladies exhaust you completely yesterday evening?” I just shake my head and realize I’m not hungry. I’ve even forgotten what day it is, though most likely it’s an ordinary day in the middle of the week, as far from one of the high days on the calendar as it’s possible to be. “Has Fred kept you awake?” Mom asks me out of the blue. I shake my head. And just as suddenly she gets up and makes for our room. “Don’t,” I tell her. She stops and looks at me surprised. “Don’t what, Barnum?” “Don’t go in to Fred,” I whisper. Mom stands still a few seconds, then shrugs her shoulders, annoyed, and quickly opens the door. I look at Boletta. Her brow is furrowed, and she leans over the table. “Has something happened, Barnum?” she asks. And at that moment Mom screams. She screams and immediately afterward storms out and stares at me wild-eyed. “What has happened to Fred?” “He tripped,” I tell her. Boletta’s gotten up too, and she goes in to look. She shrieks at the sight of him herself. She’s even quieter when she comes back. “He’s tripped, Barnum?” “Yes, when he came home during the night. Right on his face.” Mom takes hold of my arm. “You’re not telling lies? This isn’t just something you’ve made up?” “I swear! I had to dry up the blood too. Just look at the cloth!” Mom goes back into the room and fetches the blood-soaked rag, which has somehow stiffened; it resembles one of those marzipan roses you put on expensive cakes, except that the cloth is a lot larger and not particularly appetizing. But it does look as if Mom’s holding a ruined artificial rose in her hand, and she just shakes her head. “He won’t say a thing. I think he’s been drinking. He stinks of brandy!”

Boletta called the doctor. I took a taxi to school. That was the way Mom was, until long after Dad’s death — she got me a taxi to school so I wouldn’t get there late. But I was late anyway I asked the driver to go around Wester Gravlund three times, slowly, and I could see that someone had been digging right down in the corner of the dark-green graveyard. And anyway it didn’t matter one iota that I went into school late, nor was I made to give answers to my homework, because my father had just died. Since that day I had been shielded, but not as I’d dreamed when I thought up accidents and suffering, and that I aroused everyone’s pity so I was crowned the all-powerful ruler of world compassion. Now I imagined instead I could see laughter behind each and every face, a hidden laughter on everyone’s lips, because a more hilarious death than Arnold Nilsen’s was impossible to imagine — a discus in the head in the middle of Bislet on a Sunday morning. They laughed behind their faces and behind my back, and I thought of the list I’d found in Dad’s pocket because this laughter should have been included. I’d have called it shameful, the shameful laughter, which ought to fall backward and stick in the throat, and slowly but surely strangle the person who’s dared to emit it. That was pretty much my thinking as I sat by the classroom window, shielded into loneliness and abandonment like a leper, covered with scabs of mockery and grief. Right at that moment I wished that Peder and Vivian were in my class; one thing I could have done would have been to send a note to them with no more than the words
the shameful laughter
on it, and right away they’d have understood what I meant. But Peder went to another school outside town and had to take the bus there every morning or else go by car with his dad if he managed to get the Vauxhall started. And Vivian had private lessons — that’s what she said at least, perhaps it was her mother who tutored her. So we never did go to the same school, and perhaps that was for the best, perhaps that was what rendered us inseparable, the fact that we longed, yes, longed for each other when we were separated. Perhaps the tyranny of recess would have caused trouble; perhaps music, woodworking, gym and Norwegian periods would have made us enemies. Instead we could meet beyond the playground, beyond the timetable, in our own great free period — under the red tree in the park, inside the cool movie theaters. It was just the three of us — Peder, Vivian and Barnum — we were outside, no, we were inside; we had our
own
places, and it was all the others who were outside. “Are you not feeling so good again, Barnum?” Knuckles is the one asking the question, and her voice is brittle, her words wrinkled. She’s beginning to grow tired of me and everything that has to do with me. I turn around slowly and everything is still. But far off I can hear Montgomery screaming. The war goes on. Every day is D-Day. Knuckles stands with her hands folded, and behind her the board is completely black. We’re having Religious Education. “Just a bit leprous,” I tell her. And I get up and go. Knuckles tries to stop me, for a moment impatient, indignant. She feels the time for shielding me should be over soon (widows mourn for just one year), but I won’t let it go, this lonely freedom of mine, even though I realize it can’t last. I leave and don’t turn around. And the others in the class are envious of brokenhearted Barnum; they’d like to have a dead father too.