The Half Brother: A Novel (17 page)

A SUITCASE OF APPLAUSE

The Wind

The sun is green and runs down the steep mountainside to the women who’re waiting on the shore to haul it on board the boat. More come running down. There’s an avalanche of heavy green sun and Arnold stands on the heights with his scythe; hell soon be twelve and the scythe is far too big for him — almost twice his size. And he sees that the grass just bends beneath the narrow blade; he can’t cut it, no matter how hard he tries, and try hard he does. He just combs the grass, which only rises once more once the scythe’s passed; he combs the hair of this outcrop’s precipitous head that sticks up out of the sea, that looks right out in this world of wind. Arnold thumps the blade against the hillside, and it sparks when he hits a stone; he’s on the verge of tears, but he doesn’t cry. Arnold laughs instead and looks up at the huge sky and hears the quick hisses of the other scythes and the green sun that rushes past him; he hears the chittering of the bewildered gulls circling over the fishermen who aren’t at their nets today but are dizzy harvesters instead, cutting the grass that grows so thick and richly in this fertile guano ground here on the golden islets that frost and sea have dried and left behind — smoldering leftovers of creation. Arnold leans on his scythe, and he doesn’t need to stretch up to see. Here he can view everything, even though he’s so small in stature; he can see the whole world, and the world is bigger than he can imagine. The world stretches farther than the eye can see. For the horizon hangs before him, farther out than anyone could ever row, and behind him the mountains lie in blue mist, and behind those mountains are towns in which more than a thousand people live, and there there are church spires higher than the mast on the mail boat and electric light. Arnold sits down, because he can see just as well that way. He doesn’t cry but rather he laughs, and he hears too the laughter of the women down on the shore. Aurora, his mother, waves up to him before she has to collect yet another green sun, bound up tightly like a precious gift, while his father stands a bit away his scythe burning through the grass, cutting it low and quick. He glances over at his son, who’s already sat down. The others have a rest themselves. The women wash their hands in the water, and Arnold thinks the ocean turns green thereafter. Only Aurora keeps standing, and Arnold waves to her. Then his father shades his eyes. He takes the scythe from Arnold. “Do some raking instead,” he tells him. So Arnold fetches a rake from the other boys — they’re younger than he and bigger — some aren’t more than nine years old, and he doesn’t even reach their shoulders. And the rake is so heavy in his hands he has to grasp the middle of the shaft, but then he drags along soil too and the teeth stick fast in the soft scalp. He lets go of the rake, gets down on his knees and uses his hands instead. He rakes the grass with his fingers, and it’s soft and moist to the touch. The other boys stop for a second, they look at each other and laugh. “What are you going to be when you grow up, Arnold?” they ask, their voices full of mirth. Arnold thinks and then he answers, “I’ll sell wind!” He shouts this a second time because he thinks it’s such a thumping good answer. “Ill sell wind!” The fathers who’re standing with their backs to him in a steep row, swinging their scythes in rhythm like some great orchestra, they turn around too, and his father comes over to him again, his face darker now. “You can bind for us,” he says, and his words are clipped and tight. And Arnold crawls back to the boys and begins to tie old fishing line around the grass, but it slips, he can’t get it into place. It’s like packing light, and he feels the tears at the back of his throat, and for that reason he begins to laugh instead — he laughs as the grass tumbles about him. And Arnold sits there at the steepest point, where only the birds and the dogs can keep their balance. He curls up into a ball, shuts his eyes, and lets himself fall. No one notices him before it’s too late — Arnold, the only son of Evert and Aurora Nilsen, tumbles like a runaway wheel down the slope. Faster and faster he spins, and the women on the shore drop their grass and cry out, and Aurora cries loudest of all of them. Evert throws away his scythe and chases after Arnold, but he can’t catch up with him — it’s too steep and Arnold’s wheel is far too fast. He just remains suspended in the air with his arms stuck out, almost as if he’s trying to catch hold of the falling light. And it’s utterly still on this green islet on the outer edge of Norway, on the edge of the sunset, as Arnold hits a broad stone on the shore, is thrown up into the air and lands in the green bay, head first, and disappears from sight.

And for ever after Arnold always said that it was when he came to rest there on the bottom and rose up in the heavy soft sand with the Norwegian Sea itself on his small shoulders, that he made up his mind to escape. He had to get away and as quickly as possible. “I couldn’t scythe,” he used to say. “When I was supposed to collect eggs, I let them lie because I felt sorry for the birds. I got seasick on the water. And when I gutted fish, I more or less hacked off my fingers too!” Then he would always take the specially made glove from his right hand and show off the sewn-up chunk of flesh that he could only just move, and I shivered and had to look at it more closely. I had to touch it, feel the rough skin, and Arnold wiped away a tear and murmured, “I was born in the wrong place. Even the color of my eyes wasn’t right!”

And he gazed at us with that dun look that had saved him so often, while slowly putting his glove back on, the glove that had been fitted with five pieces of wood so that the missing fingers wouldn’t be noticeable to one and all.

But that early evening in July, when Arnold is transformed into a living wheel spinning wildly down the land’s edge and stands now on the bottom, making his dark plans underwater, he feels his father’s fists grasping his shoulders and hauling him on board, a humiliated and dripping creature from the deep, a halfling from the ocean floor. And Aurora holds him close and weeps while the other women throw grass onto dry land again to lighten the boat. And his father rows them home, faster than anyone has rowed that stretch of water before; the water rushes in sheets from the oars. He’s relieved and raging, he’s gloomy and happy in spite of everything, he both praises and curses himself. In short, Evert Nilsen is a deeply troubled man, for he doesn’t know what to do with Arnold, how he’ll make anything of him, turn him into an able fellow of some sort — and Arnold is the only son that he and Aurora have been blessed with. And Evert Nilsen can’t get the thought out of his head:
I’ve only got half a son.

Arnold is dried, wrapped and rolled up in woolen blankets and fur rugs. They give him a cup of brandy — Arnold gasps and smiles, and they take this as a good sign. They even light the stove so the July night won’t catch them out and creep with its somber sea cold beneath the door. He gets to lie with Tuss beside him, the retriever everyone says that Arnold resembles, and the dog growls low and puzzled, and licks Arnold’s face. Evert and Aurora keep watch over him and whisper low to one another words that no one hears. And for some reason Evert suddenly wants her; she pushes him away but he won’t be stopped, and in the end she lets him have his way. He’s wild and silent, and doesn’t need more than a few seconds; he holds her so hard up against the wall that for a moment she’s breathless and all she thinks is:
Dear God, don’t let Arnold wake now, keep him in dreamland where he can neither hear nor see a thing.
But afterward it isn’t she who cries but rather Evert Nilsen, the heavy man of few words, who just as suddenly has become a stranger. He sinks down on a chair and buries his face in his hands; a wave passes through his bent back and it’s Aurora who has to comfort him. She pulls her dress straight, turns slowly toward him, and cautiously puts her hand on his shoulder. She can feel his shaking. He turns away, for he just can’t bring himself to look at her. “It’s too late,” Aurora whispers. “We just have to make do with Arnold.”

Next morning Arnold is stiff as a stick; he can’t so much as wiggle a finger and he seems even smaller there where he’s lying on the narrow bed, almost as if the sea has shriveled him up or he’s lost precious inches in his fall. The dog’s gone, they can hear its howling over by the graveyard. And when they bend over their son, he just stares right through them with eyes of brown glass. They send for the doctor. He comes after two days. Dr. Paulsen from Bod0 comes ashore on this island that isn’t intended for humanity but rather for mad dogs and birds, a landfall for shipwrecked souls who should abandon it as quickly as possible whenever the opportunity presents itself. Instead they cling to it, hang by their fingertips to this tiniest twig of geography. It’s raining and a thin, silent fellow at once opens a torn umbrella over him, but Dr. Paulsen’s shoulders are wet already, and he’s aware that further maladies and complaints will spring up the minute this fragile population claps eyes on him. Then the patients will be lining up and he’ll be forced to harden his heart, because it’s not possible for him to cure the incurable. God can take care of the irreparable, but here he is in this forsaken ocean outpost, under half an umbrella, dreaming of office hours in the capital, tables for reservation in restaurants, and warm operating theaters. “I sure hope its something serious when you drag me all the way over here,” he says in an irritated voice. Evert Nilsen goes out into the rain and grasps the ancient umbrella with both hands. “We can’t get any life into our son,” he mumbles. “We don’t know if he’s alive or dead any more.” “And is there really any great difference out here?” mutters Dr. Paulsen, and tramps into the cramped living room, shakes the water from his coat and demands silence before anyone has said so much as a word. He turns toward Arnold, who’s immobile as before, and lying deep and barely visible in his woolen blankets. The doctor goes a step closer and screws up his eyes. “Well, for God’s sake unpack the boy! I haven’t come here to thump the dust out of dirty blankets!” Aurora bows her head in shame and rolls Arnold out all the way until he’s lying naked in front of them all. Evert turns away — he looks out of the door at the angled rain, the sea like a white collar around the lighthouse, the dog leaping about on the shore. The mother weeps at the sight of her son — the tiny, all but blue boy in the bed, as still as it’s possible for a living thing to be. For a moment Dr. Paulsen is moved and humane. “Well, well,” he says, “we’ll just have to see, we’ll just have to see.” Then he opens his leather bag, takes out his medical kit, sits down on the chair made ready for him and begins painstakingly to examine Arnold. Faces pass the windows, quickly glance in and then vanish again. Elendius, the neighbor who is always the bearer of bad news and who always looks forward to sharing it, stands there longest, until at last Evert hounds him away. Dr. Paulsen checks his blood temperature. He carefully presses Arnold’s right eye. He ties a thread tightly around Arnold’s left index finger. He places a pocket mirror over Arnold’s pale mouth. Eventually he straightens up and looks at Evert. “Are there spirits to be found in this hut of yours?” he asks. And Evert pours a glass for him there and then, but the doctor doesn’t drink it at that moment. Instead he first places it on Arnold’s chest, bends down and closely scrutinizes the liquid. After that he drains the glass and asks for more. Reluctantly, Evert pours another measure, but only a half one this time. And again the doctor places the glass on Arnold, and puts on his glasses to see better, whatever it is he’s looking at. At long last he lifts the glass and drinks it. “Skin-dead!” he pronounces. “Quite simply the boy is skin-dead.” Aurora sinks down by the bed wailing. “Is it dangerous?” “Is it or isn’t it,” Dr. Paulsen replies. “I wouldn’t recommend someone to become skin-dead just like that. But the boy’s more alive than dead and actually far from dead.” “Oh, thank God,” murmurs Aurora. “Thank you!” The doctor sighs. “But did you not notice the movement of the liquid? Like the sea. Like a wave on his chest! Ill happily show you again. If there’s more in the bottle.” Evert is quiet and hesitant. The bottle’s to do both Christmas and New Year. The doctor notices his reticence and his brow tightens. “Perhaps I’d better stick a hat pin in the boy to observe if the heart muscle motions can be seen on it?” Evert pours a third glass and the doctor puts it down on Arnold, and everyone bends to see if the liquid remains steady or not. And then they catch sight of a wave rising through the clear water from the very depths of Arnold, a sudden jolt. And when they’ve seen enough, Dr. Paulsen drinks up this drop in the ocean. “His little heart is beating,” he says and gets up. He remains on his feet looking down at Arnold. “How old is he?” “Ten,” Evert answers quickly, and when Aurora’s about to say something else he repeats loudly, “He had his tenth birthday this summer!” Dr. Paulsen smiles weakly and lets his gaze fall full over Arnold’s dumpy body. “Well, your boy is small all right. But to make up for it he’s extremely well-equipped.” The doctor turns toward Evert, who nods, and Aurora folds the blanket carefully over Arnold as her face flushes and she looks away.