The Half Brother: A Novel (87 page)

Then one of the men knocked on the window. They were done and drove off with the ladder on the roof of the van. We went out. They’d changed the sign. “I’ll make your ideas visible,” Peder said. He ran in again. It was still snowing. Then something happened. The letters flickered, as if they were about to come loose from the wall. Peder came peacefully out, smiling, and stood beside me in the snow. Soon enough the letters stilled and our names were lit bright red above the door: barnum & miil. I put my arm around Peder. And that’s the beginning of what I call (borrowing an expression from the silent film era) our electric theater — that would take me to Room 502 in Coch’s Hostel, and later to R0st where I dried up in the salty wind.

Row 14, Seats 18, 19 and 20

The silent film got its expressions from photography and the world of mime, from the brothels and the music halls, from ports, taverns, circuses and graveyards. The face never lies. The faces story is primitive and clear, just as the Old One’s features were delineated by loss, but also by the joy of bearing the Lost One’s daughter, Boletta. We are double. We are half. The face’s story is both tragic and comic. The script wasn’t there yet. The plot was a movement, a raised eyebrow, a tear, a smile. Words were only there in the form of explanatory text between scenes — flickering white letters on a black background, and the sole function of these words was to convey the fact that time had passed.
“Later.” “Next morning.” “The same afternoon.”
But after a while these simple pieces of information, these time indicators, became too brief. It was as though a great vanity infiltrated the words, and soon you could read things on the screen like
“Long and terrible days drag by, filled with the hopelessness of doubt.” “Imperceptibly the brutal morning slipped by”
The language began to go wrong. In the end time stood still in the words. Not even the music could compensate. The pianist gave up. The actors began whispering to each other, gripped by the same panic the audience was experiencing. The plot had to develop. Speech forced its way through and with speech came the script. There are moments when I experience the same thing — time has stopped. The pages lie there. I can’t get finished. I’m standing in the back room. I drink as slowly as I can. Intoxication is also time, and at the heart of intoxication time runs amuck — a clock that explodes in sleep. I look out on the guests. I don’t hear them. Peder’s invited half the city. The place is heaving. I recognize faces from Norwegian Film; the director’s there, the patches on his elbows have come undone. The dramaturge drops her cigarette and grinds it into the carpet when she thinks no one’s looking — but I am. There are a few journalists; Bente Synt’s taking notes — she’s the evening’s bard, and in her pocket she has a camera. There are musicians in scruffy jeans, bad-tempered directors (in particular the famous couple, one of them draped in furs), vociferous actors, tragic underground poets, nannies, close relatives and other pale-faced inhabitants who weren’t invited but who’ve sniffed out a party with the efficiency of trained bloodhounds. I’m impressed. Peder and Vivian go around smiling to everyone. They’re host and hostess. They’re elegant. My eye follows them. They’re the finest fish in the aquarium. I’m standing on the other side, in a void. I like it there. Vivian turns and suddenly catches my eye — it’s overwhelming and lasts no more than a second. Not even that, less, just a glance that’s past, fleeting, a movement that doesn’t stop. I smile and raise my glass, too late, and realize that she’s no longer mine, and that perhaps she never was. I’m an incapable man. And at the same moment that thought gets through to me, I feel closer to her than ever. Peder gets up on a chair and makes a speech. I see mouths collapsing in laughter and applauding hands. Then the voices suddenly impact on me, a wave of sound floods through to me and I can hear Peder calling. He wants me to say a few words. I go over to them. I clamber up onto the same chair. There’s a certain expectation. I look at Vivian. She waits there peacefully. “Come on, Barnum!” Bente Synt exclaims. Peder’s sweating like a pig. One of the earliest films to be made in England was called
The Cheese Middens or the Lilliputians at the Restaurant.
The director, Robert W. Paul, well known for his stunts and particularly his dolly shots, filmed a scene as normal and then dressed his characters in black, rolled the camera thirty feet back, put in another lens and filmed over the original scene. In this way he could get both full-sized people and small, fantasy apparitions in one and the same picture. This is the most famous scene — a sailor’s incredulity and utter astonishment when he sees a whole trail of dwarves crawling out of a cheese he’s about to eat. I’d like to say something about this. I want to say that I’m a midden myself; I’ll pop up everywhere — you’ll find me when you pull out a drawer, leaf through a book, put your hand in your pocket, go to the bathroom, open the glove compartment and your glasses case and the fridge — I’ll be there when you fall asleep and not least when you wake up. I am a midden. I have to say something. But I don’t say that. “The night’s still young,” I say instead. I climb back down. There’s ragged applause. Others just look at each other. Bente Synt slips past. “Have you become a good boy since we saw you last?” she asks. I nod. “How boring,” she murmurs. She puts her head on one side. “What do you really want with Peder Miil?” she inquires. I whisk away her camera and loom in toward her long face, her red snout. “I’ll photodamngraph you!” I screech. I do it. I steal her soul. Bente Synt laughs. It’s a great evening. The director stops right behind me. “Have you thought about my suggestion?” he asks. “No,” I reply. He gives me a pat on the shoulder. It’s still a great evening.

Soon everyone’s gone. The detritus is left behind — the cigarette butts, the leftovers, the glasses, and particularly the crumpled, mucky napkins, which I suddenly see as damaged birds. I lift out one of them and smooth the wings that are soiled with lipstick and ash. No surprise they can’t fly. We sit around the table and polish off the last bottle between us. Vivian, Peder and myself. “We’re on the road,” Peder says. “We’re on the road,” I repeat. Vivian’s tired and happy. She raises her glass. “Here’s to Miil and Barnum,” she says. “Barnum and Miil,” I correct her. Peder laughs. “Here’s to Vivian!” We toast each other. The evening’s no longer young. It’s night now and the sign above the door, still lit, is coloring the snow red. A Christmas tree with a star is lying in the middle of the street. Perhaps someone’s thrown it out of a window or from a balcony. We’re pensive and silent as we finish off that last bottle. “A comedy,” Vivian says out of the blue. We both look at her. Vivian’s stopped smoking and lights up a cigarette. “About mothers. Inspired by ‘Paul’s Hens.’” Peder and I don’t quite follow. We sing “Paul’s Hens” and understand what she’s going on about when we get to the last line in the chorus.
Now I don’t dare come home, mother dear.
I kiss Vivian on the cheek. That night I’m in love. Peder thumps the table. “Lauren Bacall!” he exclaims. I turn toward him. “What about her?” “If we can get Lauren Bacall involved in one of our projects it’s in the bag, right?” “Lauren Bacall? Are you exceptionally smashed, Peder?” “Hell, are we supposed to make do with the old crew in Dr0bak, huh? Nothing’s impossible!” That’s how we talk and lift one another. Things are almost as they were before. But there’s something different about our voices. We’re talking too loudly We’re talking too quickly. “The garage burned down,” Peder says quickly. “It burned down?” I take his hand. He nods over and over again. “The whole fucking thing burned down. That’s only fair, right?” Vivian and I go home. Peder wants to stay behind and clean up. I can’t get that chorus out of my head.
Now I don’t dare come home, mother dear.
The cold makes me wide awake. I can’t get to sleep. Vivians back is naked. Carefully I put my hand on her hip. She pushes it away in her sleep. I get up. I sit down at the table.
The Night Man
is lying in a drawer. The drawers are full. I set a new piece of paper in the typewriter and hammer out
Finally winter casts off her white cape and reveals her pale green dress.

I look out. Vivian’s sitting under the parasol on the balcony On the little round table there’s a red drink. She leans her head back and smiles, but not to me. In 1911 Will Barker made
Hamlet
in the course of just one day and the film lasted fifteen minutes. That’s a record. Vivian’s gone to the salon. The phone rings. It’s Peder. Peder screams into the receiver as if he’s standing in a telephone booth away back in childhood and has a whole lot to say and only one coin. “Something we have to talk about, Barnum!” “No time,” I tell him. “Lunch at Valka’s then.”

I put on my sunglasses and went out, and before I reached Marienlyst the summer was almost over. There was a crackling in the trees; that particular dry sound of leaves burning and falling — the great wheel. But it was the cranes I heard; they stood like mechanical predators in the street beyond our yard, and the entire roof was covered in green tarpaulin that billowed in the wind — it looked like some enormous balloon, and beneath it the yard hung by a thin thread. They had started building the attic apartments already. And I thought to myself,
Now they’re pulling down Mom’s story.
I went down to Valka’s. Peder was sitting by the window. I ordered a hair of the dog. Peder was drinking cola; he’d already eaten some cake. I looked around at the slow diners. “Is this how I’m going to end up too?” I hissed. A silent waiter came to the table with my order. First I had my drink. “Well, you’re certainly well on the way,” Peder said. “Was that what you wanted to talk about?” Peder shook his head. This was the corner for sullen men. Time stood still here, and on the rare occasions when it did pass (when someone needed a pee) it went backward. Right in at the corner the director got up. He wasn’t the director any more. The helicopters had taken over. It was just a case of looking out of the gray windows. The new men and women hurried past in their weightless capes, armed with credit cards and stiletto heels. American hamburger joints had opened up on each and every corner. Even the drunks on the Ma-jorstuen steps had ironed pants. It wasn’t just our block, it was the whole city — ready to take off like another of Andre’s flights, and who would come looking for
us?
The only thing that was immutable was the Salvation Army quartet. That was the one guy line that held a shred of real life secure. They stood beside the tram stop with their frail guitars and sang the same old songs. And I thought to myself that these were the ones who were searching for Fred. In every city in every land they stand there singing and watching, singing and watching and saving. “Have you heard of Arthur Burns?” I asked. Peder hadn’t. No one ever has. I related Arthur Burns’ story. He died the previous year. He was ninety-four years of age. One of the pioneers of film. He was a young and gifted dramatist who moved from New York to Hollywood and began writing filmscripts right back when Mary Pickford was at the height of her career. He kept on writing. He was writing scripts when Douglas Fairbanks was the great god; he wrote for James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson and John Wayne. He was writing when James Dean and Marlon Brando came with their melancholy to the screen; he wrote when Clint Eastwood got out his magnum, and didn’t stop even when Sylvester Stallone entered stage right, his torso bare. Arthur Burns was one of Hollywood’s most respected screenwriters. No one had been at it longer than him. He was a living legend. He survived all the great screen heroes, and Warner Brothers paid for his funeral. There was just one tiny flaw in Arthur Burns’ magnificent career. Nothing came of it. Not one single script was filmed — not a scene, not a scrap of dialogue, not so much as a voice-over was used. Arthur Burns wrote in water. I ordered another drink. Peder yawned. “And what is it you’re trying to say?” “I have a drawer full of scripts that no one wants either,” I told him. Peder leaned over the table. “Adaptations,” he said. I retracted my arm in a hurry. “Adaptations?” “You heard me correctly. We’re going to talk adaptations.” “Don’t insult me, Peder.” “Go to the library and find yourself some books with a good story to them. That’s all I’m asking you.” “I’d prefer to use my own ideas,” I told him. Peder folded his hands. “But if your own ideas are waiting in the wings right now, then you could always be inspired by other people’s in the mean- time, right?” “You know what Scott Fitzgerald says about adaptations?” “No, Barnum. But I’m sure you do.” I nodded. “Get a good friend to read the book, ask him to relate what he remembers of it, write that down and there you have your film.” “Marvelous,” Peder said. At that moment the former director returned from the bathroom. He stopped beside our table and looked down at me, as Peder paid. “Are you writing?” he inquired. “Yes,” I told him. “But are you writing about your brother, Barnum?” I don’t quite know why, but I got so mad I stood up and shoved him away. I’m convinced I didn’t push him all that hard, but push him I did. There must have been something wrong with his balance. He toppled backward and lay there between the chairs. I was thrown out of Valka’s for good. It wasn’t two o’clock yet, and Bente Synt was on her way in; I had time to catch her smile — she was my bad omen, since each and every time she appeared on the scene something awful happened. Peder got hold of my arm and dragged me over to one side of the street before I could do any more mischief. The Salvation Army was singing. “Are you writing about Fred?” he asked. I pushed Peder away too, but he didn’t fall over — Peder was too heavy. “No!” I shouted. We went into Deichman’s in Bogstad Road and borrowed twenty novels — among them Hamsun’s shortest,
The Swarms, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Dracula,
the sagas, and the last one by a young, long-haired writer by the name of Ingvar Ambjörnsen. We took a taxi down to the office. One of the letters over the door had burned out. We were Barum and Miil. We were like a hotel with the bathroom in the hall. Peder let us in, and there sat Vivian. She got up immediately. “Haven’t you heard?” she said. I went all cold. I’m not sure what was in my head, but I expected the worst. “What haven’t we heard?” I breathed. “They’re pulling down Rosenborg Cinema,” she said. Peder dropped all the books on the floor, and we got a taxi and went there right away. It was true. They were demolishing Rosenborg Cinema to put a fitness center there. They were carrying out everything to a huge Dumpster blocking the entire road. Now yet another place had gone. But they couldn’t throw away the images. They couldn’t pack up the light in bags and dispose of that. Something remained that could never be lost. That was a comfort. Peder negotiated with the foreman for approximately an hour. Then he wrote out a rather hefty check, and we were allowed to clamber into the Dumpster. In the end we found our seats — row 14, seats 18, 19 and 20. We lugged them (the best seats in the theater) over to Boltel0kka and set them down on the balcony. “I want to sit on the outside,” Vivian said. I protested. “You have to be in the middle,” I told her. But she sits on the outside nonetheless — it doesn’t matter what we say — in seat 18 in the fourteenth row, and I have to sit in the middle. Of course Peder has a bar of milk chocolate, which he breaks into three equal pieces. The Sten Park trees still have their magnificent, trembling leaves. But the great wheel is creaking. The sun is going down. The Night Man is going over Blasen, and everything is coming closer. “Can you see all right?” I ask. “Quiet,” Peder and Vivian hiss.