The Half Brother: A Novel (79 page)

From the theater comes the noise of catcalls and shouting.

41. INT. EVENING. MOVIE THEATER.

The screen is black and the theater lies in empty darkness. There’s no one there. Only the audiences things are left behind
—
their jackets, candy wrappers, umbrellas, gloves, shoes and scarves. There isn’t a sound to be heard.

And then a crackling strip of light appears on the screen.

A faded black-and-white picture is finally shown
—
of the door frame in the original bedroom. Different marks and dates. The last of them
—
9/4/1962.

THE END

THE ELECTRIC THEATER

The Nameplate

We got married at the platemaker’s in Pilestredet. We’d chosen a copper plate with large letters: vivian and barnum. I’d have preferred it to be wie and nilsen. That had a better ring to it. But I let Vivian have her way. The shop assistant wrapped it in brown paper and put in four screws. I paid for it, and we went home and screwed the plate onto our door, vivian and barnum. On the mailbox down at the front door I’d just glued up a piece of paper on which I’d written our surnames — Nilsen and Wie. That was our engagement ring. Now it was for real, vivian and barnum was etched in copper on the second-floor door in Boltel0kka, a small red-brick block of apartments entered from Johannes Brun Street. It was Vivian’s father who’d gotten us the place — one room, a sleeping alcove and an ample balcony. We sat down there. It was early autumn, a Saturday, and the air was clear and sharp, the sun still warm. Right behind the dwellings to the west I could see the spire of Sten Park — Blåsen; I was in my landscape, I was there where my story belonged. To the south we could see the fjord; it lay clear and still and colorless, as if it had frozen over already. I opened the first bottle of champagne and filled our two glasses. A neighbor stood below on the small lawn; she waved up to us, earth on her fingers. I drank. Vivian closed her eyes and leaned back. The light became gold on her face. I sensed a happiness I hadn’t known before — the ease of alcohol and the peace of the moment — the dizziness and the occasion fused to become as one. “How long do you have to be missing before you’re presumed dead?” I asked. “Your whole life perhaps.” Vivian didn’t open her eyes. I sloshed more drink into my glass. I drank. I laughed. “Your whole life? That means people who’re missing have eternal life. They never die. They just keep on living.” Vivian turned toward me. All of a sudden there was a tiredness in her eyes. She held the tall, thin stem of her glass in both hands. “Do you miss Fred?” she whispered. I could have asked her the same question. I didn’t reply I went in for a new bottle instead. I drank a first glass. When I came out once more, Vivian had put on sunglasses. I sat down beside her. Half the balcony had fallen into shadow. Soon it would get colder. “I want to have kids,” Vivian said. I drained my glass. “Then we will,” I said. I took the bottle in with me; Vivian pulled out the sofa and made up the bed, and we lay down together. It didn’t take long. We were — how shall I put it? — to the point and single-minded in bed. After that bit of madness in Frogner Park by the summer house all those years ago, an event we never talked about again and didn’t so much as allude to, we’d become scared and shy, except when I’d had a drink. It was as if we opened up to a kind of darkness when we made love, and for that reason didn’t dare look each other in the eye. We just wanted to get it over and done with. But I could still get a faint hint of musk ox. I filled our glasses again. “Did I reach?” I asked. “Oh, stop it,” Vivian said. “Did I reach my public?” Vivian laughed too. I made her laugh, for the time being. I bent down to her stomach and listened. “Do you think there’s a child there now?” I breathed. “Perhaps, perhaps not,” Vivian said. I sat up. I was cold. There was still a little left in the bottle. Vivian held my hand. “Aren’t you drinking a bit too much?” she said. “A bit too much?” “Yes, a bit too much. You’ve all but taken care of two bottles on your own.” “Are you counting?” “Not all that difficult, Barnum. One and one’s two.” “You’re as good as Peder,” I said. Vivian let go of my hand. I lay down once more. “I drink because I’m happy,” I whispered. She got up and went out into the bathroom, where there was room for just one person at a time — one and a half when things were desperate. I heard her turning on the shower. I drank up what was left. Vivian tended to take a long time in the bathroom. When she came back, I got up. “Can we go to bed early tonight?” she sighed. “I have to write,” I told her. She turned away. She just had her red towel around her. Her wet hair lay fanned out on the white pillow and made a dark shadow that grew and grew. “You mustn’t get cold, Vivian.” “I’m warm. Are you cold?” “No, fine. Shall I put out the light?” “Sure you can, Barnum.” I turned out the bracket lamps above the bed and sat down at the narrow work table we had just enough room for in front of the window, between the balcony door and the bookshelves. But when I put on the lamp there, it lit up the rest of the room too, even when I bent down as close to the paper as possible. Vivian pulled the quilt over her head. That was how small the place was. We had two pictures on the wall — the photograph of Lauren Bacall and the poster of
Hunger.
All at once I thought of “The Little City.” Now I was grown up at last and lived in the little apartment. I was, if not old, then at least over the first threshold — that which follows innocences meridian, and where laughter changes color. All the same there were still lots of people who didn’t think I was twenty yet, and must therefore still be something of a threadbare teenager. From time to time I’d be refused admission to an over-18 film and had to show my identity card. I stopped going to see them. The last time I got stopped it was for
The Shining,
and Peder laughed his head off. After that I had to produce some form of identity in bars instead. That came to an end too. But those who came close enough and had a really good look, who didn’t let themselves be fooled by my curls and my small stature (which in better moments I called my quiet length), could see by my facial features what the reality was, and those features were unmistakable. Vivian was already asleep. I often envied her that sleep. I got myself ready. This is an inventory of my tools: 400 sheets of Andvord paper, my ruler, a pencil, three pens, M. S. Greve’s
Medical Dictionary for Norwegian Homes,
an eraser, correction fluid, and my typewriter from Fred. I went out into the little kitchen and had a drink from the little bottle. And had a little thought — “The Little City,” part two (or part one and a half) — a dwarf who lives in the world’s smallest studio begins a relationship with the world’s tallest woman. I drank a second bottle, made some coffee and sat down at the desk again. I got out my notebook. These were my ideas. 1.
Laughter and tears, Bar-num’s account of the human condition. 2. The swimming pool.
3.
Close encounters with the famous
—
The Beatles, Per Oscarsson, Sean Connery, etc.
4.
Fattening.
5.
The triple jump.
6.
The Night Man.
These were just some of my titles — my working titles — each listed precisely and with a detailed breakdown of direction and dialogue, and a character list. This was my finest hour, when I brought the paper down between the rollers or raised my pencil instead, so as not to awaken Vivian. Then I reigned supreme. Then I was my own master and master of time too. Darkness hugged the window. The lights down in the city center were never still. It was raining. Someone was playing the Sex Pistols at full blast. The Boltel0kka cats were yowling. Then, all at once, there was silence. I heard nothing more than Vivians easy breathing. She was our engine. This was my time. I would make my stories tall — not small and slow — no, I’d lift them higher than the marks on the door frame, higher than myself. Was this too great an expectation? And it’s at that moment, when the hand holding the pencil nears the page, when the finger falls toward a letter on the buckled, worn keyboard, that I’m in my element. From this moment on anything can happen. I am the little god. Now I’m heavier than my own weight, bigger than my own thoughts, wider than my own authority — in this in-between place, in this hesitation of a second, like a drop of water under a leaky tap or a nose, and this drop has the power to become an ocean. Vivian turned over and moaned softly. Perhaps she’d dreamt something. Perhaps a person was growing inside her now — that was the way my mind began working — my cell and her egg, no less; the characteristics already lying embryonic in there in the warmth — a boy’s wrinkles, a girl’s dimples, a child’s heart. In M. S. Greve’s
Medical Dictionary
this was the definition:
Fertilization, the process through which the fertile egg cell is readied in order to develop a new independent individual
And my pencil landed on
The Night Man.
I wrote the first scene.
A BOY, eight years old, thin and pale, runs through the streets.
When I shut my eyes, I could see him running through the empty streets in a deserted city in the early morning. His clothes are old-fashioned; I can hear his breathing, his labored breathing. I can hear music too, because this scene has to have music — something soft, slow and symphonic. Where is the boy going? What is it he has to reach, given that he’s running so fast? I put down my pencil. It became too much for me. I wasn’t ready for this story yet — my cornerstone, my major work — this story that would center around absence. I wrote the word in the margin and underlined it. Absence. I knew the things I wanted to write, but not the order in which I wanted to write them. This is what the narrative is: the order of things, the course of events, what comes next — that lopsided logic that isn’t composed of cause and effect but with another sort of humanity, the poetic chronology I still wasn’t tall enough for this task. I had to grow with it, stretch out beyond my mandate to become my own superman. I would fill the absence and so cancel it out — Fred, who’d been gone for ten years, our great-grandfather, Wilhelm, who’d disappeared in the ice, Boletta’s unknown husband, Dad’s shadowy journey from the time when he carried his suitcase of applause around the corner of the road to the day he came driving up Church Road in a shiny gold Buick. And I couldn’t forget Peder either — Peder who’d studied economics at the University of Los Angeles. Perhaps it’s these very people the boys running to meet? Vivian slept. I went to get myself a beer and tiptoed out onto the balcony. I could see the shadow of Blåsen. That’s where the Old One used to sit and where Mom would go to find her. I had yet another idea and hurried inside so as not to forget it — that was my great fear already forgetting things, and it’s for this reason I went and recorded it. I wrote:
Places. Stories about peoples attachment to individual, set places. For instance, the Old One to Blåsen. Boletta to the North Pole. Esther’s kiosk. The backyard. A place is not a place before a person has been there. A person isn’t a person before they have a place in which to be.
And is it in these places that our memory lies? Where’s my place? I don’t know. But can’t time be a place too? I would have my place in time. I wrote at the bottom in large letters:
Graveyards. Whose are they?
Then I leafed back to an old and trusty idea —
the Triple Jump.
I would make the triple jump my poetics. The various stages of the triple jump are inescapable and definitive — the fast run-up, the springy takeoff and equally springy contact with the ground. The hop, the stride, then every atom of strength gathered for the last mighty leap toward the sandpit, as the legs stretch forward in descent — an almost impossible and yet more beautiful movement. I imagine an account of the triple jump’s history, how the technique has been refined over the years without disturbing the quintessential properties of the discipline itself — the hop, stride and leap — the very trinity of the triple jump. In particular I’m interested in the run-up; it’s here the foundation is laid, for a bad jump may be detected as early as the run-up. I’d imagine there’s a whole series of stock shots from various sports tournaments and championships, both from home and abroad, that can shed light on the triple jump’s composition and significance. I have, after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, made up my mind to have Bang the caretaker as the main protagonist — the lame hero of the triple jump. This is what I imagine — the old caretaker has brought in sand to the backyard and dug a pit for it. Everyone has now gathered to see him jump. It’s springtime, a Saturday afternoon; we’re leaning out of the windows and crowding the steps; we’ve positioned ourselves along the length of the run-up, the narrow path strewn with gravel. We cheer, and now Bang the caretaker makes his appearance, clad in his worn shorts and yellow jersey, to the sound of great jubilation and much applause. Determined and limping as he runs, he hits the wooden platform and leaps upward with a groan, and it’s right there I freeze him — I let Bang the caretaker hang like that in midair, and from that point I go backward in time to the morning of the jump. Who was the first in the world to devise the triple jump?