The Half Brother: A Novel (2 page)

She took her hand from my hair and for a moment smelled it, while I ran on to catch up with Fred — and it’s this I remember, this is the muscle of memory — not the old woman’s fingers in my curls, but rather my running and running after Fred, my half brother, and it being all but impossible to catch him. I am the
little
little brother, and I wonder why he’s so furious; I feel the sharpness of my heart in my chest and a warm, raw taste in my mouth, because it’s possible that I bit my tongue when I ran out into the street. I clench my fist around my change, that one warm coin, and I chase after Fred — that narrow, dark shadow amid all the light about us. The clock over at the NRK building is showing eight minutes past three, and Fred has already sat down on the bench by the bushes. I sprint as fast as I can across Church Road; because it’s a Saturday there’s almost no traffic. Only a hearse drives past and all of a sudden breaks down right at the crossroads; the driver, who’s clad entirely in gray gets out and hammers and hammers on the hood, swearing. And inside the car, in the extended space behind the seats, there’s a white coffin, though it must be empty because nobody gets buried on a Saturday afternoon — the gravediggers are bound to be off, and if there
is
someone lying there it won’t matter anyway, for the dead have plenty of time. That’s the way I think. I think that way to have something else to think about, and then the gray driver with his black gloves finally gets the car started again and disappears towards Majorstuen. I inhale the heavy stink of exhaust and gasoline, and hurry over the grass, past the tiny pedestrian crossings and traffic lights and sidewalks that have been constructed there, like a city built for dwarves. And once a year we’re brought here to learn the Green Cross Code by tall, uniformed policemen with tight, broad belts. It was there, in the Little City, that I stopped growing. Fred’s sitting on the bench looking away toward something else altogether. I sit beside him and it’s just the two of us now, this Saturday afternoon in May.

Fred sticks a sharp piece of sugar candy in his mouth and sucks it for a long time; his face bulges and I can see the brown spit beginning to trickle from his lips. His eyes are dark, almost black, and they’re trembling — his eyes are trembling. I’ve seen it all before. He’s silent. The pigeons waddle soundlessly in the dull grass. And I can’t stand it any longer. “What is it?” I ask. Fred swallows and a shudder passes through his thin throat. “I don’t talk with food in my mouth.” Fred stuffs more sugar candy in between his teeth and slowly crushes it. “But why are you so mad?” I whisper. Fred finishes all the sugar candy, crumples up the brown bag and chucks it out onto the sidewalk. A gull swoops down, frightening away the pigeons, scrapes the concrete with a screech and rises toward a lamppost. Fred brushes back his bangs, but they fall down over his forehead again and he leaves them that way. At long last he says something. “What was it you said to that old lady?” “To Esther?” “Who else? Are you on first name terms now, too?” I’m feeling hungry and queasy. I want to lie down in the grass and sleep there, in among the pigeons. “I don’t think I remember what I said.” “Oh, yes you do. If you think about it a bit.” “Honest, Fred. I don’t remember.” “So why is it I remember, then? When you don’t?” “I don’t know, Fred. Is that why you’re mad?” Suddenly he puts his hand on my head. I crumple up. His hand is clenched. “Are you stupid?” he asks. “No. I don’t know, Fred. Be fair. Please.” He lets his fist lie in my curls. “Please? You’re very near the edge, Tiny.” “Don’t talk like that. Please.” He glides his fingers down my face and they smell sweet; it’s almost as if he’s rubbing me with glue. “Shall I tell you exactly what you said?” “Yes. Do that. Say it.” Fred leans down toward me. I can’t bear to look him in the eye. “You said many thanks.”

I was actually relieved. I thought perhaps I’d said something else that was much worse, something I should never have said that had just slipped out, words I didn’t even know — pure crap. I coughed. “Many thanks? Did I say that?” “Yes. You sure as hell said
many thanks!”
Fred shouted the words, even as we sat there on the same bench, close together.
“Many thanks!”
he screeched. I didn’t quite see what he was getting at. And now I became even more scared. Soon I would have to go to the bathroom. I held my breath. I wanted so much to do what was right, but I didn’t know what I should answer, since I didn’t know what he meant.
Many thanks.
And I certainly couldn’t start crying. Then Fred would have gotten even madder, or made fun of me, and that was almost the worst thing possible, that he’d make fun of me. I bent over my knees. “And so?” I whispered. Fred groaned. “And so? I guess you’re dumb all right.” “I’m not, Fred.” “And how do you know that?” I had to think about it. “Mom says so. That I’m not dumb.” Fred was silent for a moment. I didn’t dare look at him. “And what does she say about me then?” “She says the same,” I said quickly. I felt his arm on my shoulder. “You don’t tell your brother fibs,” Fred said, his voice low. “Even if I am only your half brother.” The light around us blinded me. And it was just as if the sun were full of sound; a high, resounding noise from every side. “Is that why you’re so angry with me, Fred?” “What do you mean?” “Because I’m only your half brother?” Fred pointed at my hand, where my change was still lying, a twenty-five 0re coin. It was warm and clammy, like a flat candy someone had sucked for ages before spitting out. “Whose is that?” Fred asked. “It’s ours.” Fred nodded several times and I felt all warm with joy. “But you can have it, of course,” I said quickly. I wanted to give him the coin. Fred just sat staring at me. I grew anxious again. “Why on earth do you say many thanks? When you’re getting back money that’s ours?” I drew in my breath. “Just said it.” “Well think before you do the next time, all right?” “Yes,” I breathed. “’Cause I don’t want a brother who makes a clown of himself. Even though you are only my half brother.” “No,” I whispered. “I won’t do it again.” “Many thanks is a load of crap. Never say many thanks. Understand?” Fred got up and shot a thick, brown clump of spit in a high arc that landed with a crash in the grass in front of us. I saw a flock of ants scrambling toward it. “I’m thirsty,” Fred said. “Sugar candy makes me goddamn thirsty.”

We went over to Esther’s again, to the kiosk just by Majorstuen Church — the white church where the vicar wouldn’t baptize Fred, and later refused to baptize me too, though that was just because of my name. I positioned myself in front of the hatch, on tiptoe, and Fred leaned against the guttering to one side and lifted his head and nodded, as if we had decided on something monumental. Esther came into view, smiled when she saw it was me, and had to feel my curls one more time. Fred stuck his tongue out as far as he could and pretended to vomit. “And what’s it to be, young sir?” Esther asked. I shook her fingers out of my hair. “Carton of juice. Red.” She looked at me, rather taken aback. “Yes, all right. One red carton of juice it is. Message received loud and clear.” She produced what I’d asked for. Fred stood there, in the shadows, almost blinded by the fierce glare of reflected light from the church wall opposite. Fred just kept staring at me. He didn’t let me out of his sight. He was seeing everything. He was hearing everything. I lay the coin quickly in Esther’s hand and immediately she gave me back five 0re. “You’re welcome,” she said. I looked her in the eye. I stood on tiptoe and kept looking at her right in the eye, swallowing several times as the skies rolled still and slow above us, toward the woods, like a giant blue wheel. I pointed at the five 0re piece. “That’s ours!” I said loudly. “Just so you know!” Esther almost tumbled out of the narrow window. “Goodness. What’s got into you?” “Nothing to say thanks for.” And Fred took me by the arm and pulled me up Church Road. I gave him the carton of juice. I didn’t want it. He bit a hole in the corner and squeezed it out leaving a red trail behind us. “Not bad,” he said. “You’re coming along.” I was so happy. I wanted to give him the five 0re too. “Keep it,” he said. I closed my fingers around the brown coin. I could play heads or tails with it, if anyone wanted to play heads or tails with me.

“Many thanks,” I said.

Fred sighed deeply, and I was afraid he’d get mad again. I could have bitten off my tongue. But instead he put his arm around me while he squeezed the last drop from the carton of juice into the gutter. “Do you remember what I told you yesterday?” I nod quickly and barely dare to breathe. “No,” I whisper. “No? Don’t you remember?” I do remember. But I don’t want to. Nor can I forget. I’d rather that Fred hadn’t begun to talk at all. “No, Fred.” “Shall I ask one more time?” “Yes, I do,” I whisper. And Fred smiles. He can’t be mad, not when he smiles like that.

“Shall I kill your father for you, Barnum?” he asks.

My name is Barnum.

THE LAST MANUSCRIPT

The Festival

Thirteen hours in Berlin and I was already a wreck. The telephone was ringing. I could hear it. It woke me. But I was somewhere else. I was somewhere nearby. I was unplugged. I wasn’t grounded. I had no dial tone, just a heart that went on beating heavily and out of sync. The telephone kept ringing. I opened my eyes, from a flat, imageless darkness. Now I could see my hand. It wasn’t a particularly beautiful sight. It came closer. It felt my face, investigating, as if it had woken up with a stranger in bed — attached to another man’s arm. The stubby fingers suddenly made me queasy. I lay there. The phone kept on ringing. I could hear low voices and, now and then, moaning; had someone already answered the telephone for me? But why was it still ringing? Why was there someone else in my room? Had I not gone to bed alone after all? I turned around. I could see that the sounds were coming from the television. Two men were forcing themselves on a woman. She hardly looked enthusiastic, just indifferent. She had a tattoo on one of her bottom cheeks — a butterfly — and the choice of site was unfortunate. Her thighs were covered with bruises. The men were overweight and pale, and they barely had erections, but that didn’t stop them — they grunted loudly as they took her from every possible angle. It looked awkward and lugubrious. The woman’s indifference was for a moment replaced by pain; a grimace twisted her face as one of the men slapped his flaccid cock across her mouth and hit her. My hand left my face. A moment later the picture was gone. If I punched in my room number I could watch twelve more hours of pay-TV. I didn’t want to see any more. I didn’t even remember my room number. I lay sideways across the bed, with my suit jacket half off, probably after an attempt to undress and go to bed properly. I obviously hadn’t gotten far before the bulb went in the innermost cubbyhole in the west wing of my head. Yes, one shoe was lying on the windowsill. Had I actually stood there admiring the view, or had I been thinking of something else altogether? Possible. Impossible. I had no idea. One of my knees was hurting. I found my hand again. I shoved it toward the bedside table and, as it hung there like some sick, wide-spanned bird above a white rat blinking with one single red eye, the phone stopped ringing. The hand flew back home. The quiet washed back and pulled down the tight zipper in my neck, and licked my spine with an iron tongue. I didn’t move for a good while. I had to get myself into water. The green bubble of air had to find calm soon in the capsized flesh, in the hollow of the soul. I could remember nothing. The great eraser had rubbed me out, as on so many occasions before. And the erasers I had already used up were not few. I only remembered what I was called, for who can forget such a name as Barnum? Barnum! Who do these parents really think they are, who condemn their sons and daughters to life sentences behind the iron gates of their own names? Can’t you just change your name, as someone who didn’t know what they were talking about once suggested? But it doesn’t help. A name will pursue you with double the shame if you try to get rid of it. Barnum! For half my life I’d lived with that name. I was on the point of liking it. That was the worst of it. All of a sudden I noticed I was holding something in my other hand, a key card, a plain piece of flat plastic with a number of holes in a particular pattern that one could shove into the door’s cash dispenser to empty the room’s account, so long as it hadn’t been overdrawn by previous occupants who’d left behind only nail clippings under the bed and a hollow in the mattress. I could have been anywhere. A room in Oslo, a room on R0st, a room without a view. My suitcase was standing on the floor — the old, silent suitcase, still not opened, and empty anyway, no applause in it, just a manuscript, some rushed pages. I’d come and gone. That’s me. Come and gone and crawled back again. But I could still read. Over the chair by the window the hotel’s white bathrobe was draped. And on it I could see the hotel’s name. Kempinski. Kempinski! Then I heard the city. I could hear Berlin. I could hear the diggers in the east and the church bells in the west. Slowly I got up. The day was in full swing. It had started without me. And now suddenly I remembered something. I had an appointment. The telephone’s red eye kept blinking. There was a message for me. I didn’t give a damn. Who other than Peder could be calling and leaving messages right now? Of course it would be Peder. He could wait. Peder was good at waiting. I had taught him the art. No one with half a brain had meetings before breakfast on the first morning in Berlin — except Peder, my friend, my partner, my agent — he had appointments before breakfast, because Peder was in charge. It was twenty-eight minutes past twelve. The numbers were illuminated square and green beneath the lifeless TV screen, and became twelve thirty precisely between two irregular heartbeats. I dragged off my clothes, opened the minibar and drank two Jägermeisters. They stayed where they were. I drank one more, and went out to the bathroom and vomited for safety’s sake. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten. The toilet seat seal was unbroken. I hadn’t even been to the bathroom yet. Then I brushed my teeth, slung on the bathrobe, stuck my feet in the hotel’s white slippers, and before going out saw that the telephone’s red eye was still staring at me. But Peder could just wait; that was his job. Peder could waffle on until the room he sat in was on fire.