The Half Brother: A Novel (29 page)

It had happened in Wergeland Road, at the corner of the park. The Old One had waited to go to the Palace to see the guardsmen hoist the mighty royal banner to half-mast from the balcony. She had wanted to say farewell to her Danish prince, her companion. The driver of the truck (who was on his way to the docks with pallets) said in his testimony that the Old One suddenly swerved out into the crossing and that he had no chance of braking in time. Witnesses of the accident (the man selling papers in his shop, and a whole host of customers who were in there to read the latest news) could confirm this, and they added that it was a miracle the driver had managed to avoid hitting the boy, who had run out into the street too. The Old One had been thrown against the hood and flung several yards through the air. But no one could say precisely what had happened in the moment the Old One let go of Fred’s hand and tumbled out into the street. And whether he tripped, got banged on the head, or basically just went off into his own heavy world of dreams that black morning. I’ve often thought of it subsequently, of what really transpired in those seconds prior to the accident, before the Old One lost her balance at the corner of Palace Park and landed in front of the truck. No charges were brought against the driver, since the police considered the pedestrian had acted “extremely irresponsibly.” When the ambulance arrived, the Old One was already dead, and Fred was sitting speechless on the edge of the sidewalk with his comb in his hand, and no one got another word out of him for the next twenty-two months.

The church bells rang out between twelve and one each and every day before the Old One’s funeral. On the radio there was nothing but ponderous music; the flags hung at half-mast, and even the national team played with black armbands, and managed a score of 2-2 against the Swedes, having been blessed by the bishop. Mom and Boletta didn’t have time to cry any more. There was so much that had to be sorted out: notices, wreaths, hymns, sandwiches, cakes and papers. I realized that death was tiring, at least for those who were left behind. And they tried to get hold of Dad, who was off on his travels, but they found no sign of him, and neither did he get in touch. They paid no attention to the fact that Fred still hadn’t said a single word. I did. For each evening when we went to bed, he lay there dumb with the same frozen eyes open all night long.

Dad arrived in the middle of the committal. When the Ma-jorstuen vicar had spoken in tongues and we who were there (those always present at our funerals, and they didn’t number so very many) had sung as well as we were able, the door at our backs was flung open loudly and there he stood, hat in one hand and white flowers in the other. “The queen is dead! Long live the queen!” Dad cried. Then he walked down the aisle, laid the bouquet on the coffin, gave a deep bow, sat down beside Mom who had flushed to her roots, kissed her, and pointed to the vicar. “Now you can go on,” Dad said. I turned toward Fred. Fred was staring at his shoes. Boletta was hiding behind a handkerchief. The vicar stepped down and took Dad’s gloved hand. “You are obviously a man who always comes too late, Nilsen,” he whispered. Dad stared at him hatefully and smiled at the same time. “And he who comes too late should not blame himself for it!” The vicar dropped his hand and hurried over to the coffin, on which he scattered some earth. I felt angry. I wished that Fred had stopped him. Fred did nothing. He didn’t move. His hands lay in a white knot on the Bible in his lap. I was on the verge of getting up; I wanted to kick the vicar and tear the spade away from him, but Dad laid his arm over my shoulders and afterward we drove down to Majorstuen in the Buick. Mom was beside herself. “Where have you been?” she shrieked. Dad shifted the pillow he always had on his seat and glanced over the steering wheel and got the low sun right in his eyes. “Where have I been? Haven’t I been working?” “For two weeks!” I managed to catch sight of the gray smoke rising from the tall chimney of the crematorium and thought that it was thus the Old One would go to heaven. Dad laughed. “It took a bit longer than I planned,” he said. “The speed limits are lowered in a time of national mourning.” “At least you could have telephoned!” “I came as quickly as I could,” Dad murmured. “As soon as I read the notice I drove here!” Now Mom laughed too, but her laughter was dark. “And crashed your way into the service like a clown!” Dad took a deep breath, and his hands slid around the steering wheel in their tight gloves. “Oh, I believe the Old One was well used to waiting. Or are you in the vicars camp today?” “Be quiet!” Boletta exclaimed and held her ears. “I have a headache!” Mom turned around toward us, for Boletta was sitting between Fred and myself in the backseat. “A headache? Really? You who’ve been serving coffee since the war?” Then Boletta started to cry, and Mom couldn’t take any more either; it was all too much for her, she was sobbing, and Dad swung into the curb and stopped. “There, there,” he said. “Today everyone can cry themselves out to make plenty of room for laughter. But would you be so kind as to tell me where we’re going?” We were going to the upper floor of Larsen’s. And I can remember that Fred and I each sat on a chair by the wall in a brown room; at the far end in the corner, there was a black piano with two candles on it, and the grown-ups sipped from tiny glasses and ate equally tiny sandwiches. Arnesen and his wife were there, Bang the caretaker didn’t miss the opportunity to be part of things either, and Esther had sweet things for everyone from her kiosk. That was everyone, and there were plenty of empty chairs. This was my first funeral, and for the first time I wondered if the Old One had been lonely during her life. “Why are they all talking so quietly?” I asked. Fred didn’t answer. Then Dad got up and silence fell around him. “I am glad I got to the Old Ones funeral,” he said. “She chose a grand time to die. The whole nation’s clad in black, the royal families across Europe are in mourning, and the Akershus cannons are thundering. And it has been earned. The Old One was loved. I dare say that she was also, now and again, feared. Already she is sorely missed!” Dad drank from his tiny glass and kept standing by his seat. Fred shifted his feet on the floor. Dad smiled, refilled his glass and stayed on his feet; he drew out this pause, further and further, until no one had a clue what was going to happen next. The silence became intolerable, and Boletta was on the verge of tearing the cloth from the table. Then Dad seized the initiative once more. “But what I will say is that I consider it disgraceful that the Old One let herself get knocked down by a lousy truck! She could at the very least have gone in front of a Chevrolet or a Mercedes! Cheers!” The silence lasted one more second and then we laughed — every one of us except Fred. Because that was the thing about Dad, that he could make people laugh; sorrow somehow didn’t affect him, it ran off of him like water off a duck’s back, and perhaps it was for that reason no one could quite help liking Arnold Nilsen, the man with the stuffed fingers in his glove. Mom put both arms around him and laughed, and they kissed; I felt a warmth and a goodness inside as I saw them, and from that time onward there was no more whispering. “Dad’ll sort things out,” I said aloud to Fred. But Fred just stared at his shoes and spent ages tying his laces. Mom let go of Dad, and he came over to us with two halves of bread with egg on them. I was hungry. Fred didn’t want one. Dad looked down at him. “How could this happen?” he asked. Fred sat there, silent; his bent neck trembled. “What?” I asked, my mouth stuffed full of egg. Dad sighed. “That the Old One was run over, Barnum.” He ate the other piece of bread himself. “Didn’t you take good care of her, Fred?” Fred looked up sharply, and I wondered if he was going to say something, since he opened his mouth; a thread of saliva hung between his lips. But at that moment Mrs. Amesen began playing the piano at the other end of the room; the only tune she knew and the one she had played every day all those years since the time when, because of a crazy misunderstanding, she’d been made a widow for two and a quarter hours. Gotfred Arnesen, the insurance broker, who came home that day to find his wife a widow, hid his head in discomfort and shame, and would have dissuaded her from playing there and then, but Dad turned around and held him back. “Oh, yes, now is the time of reckoning,” Dad said. Arnesen grew nervous. “What do you mean?” Dad smiled. “The money under the clock that we’ve saved, Mr. Arnesen. Our life insurance.” The broker shoved away Dads hand. “This is most certainly not the right time for such talk,” he hissed. Dads smile was even wider. “The right time? Well, we can certainly wait till your wife’s finished.” That took time, and the piano on the upper floor of Larsen’s wasn’t in particularly good tune. We sat there with bowed heads. And when she did finally hit the last chord on the keys, she did so with such violence that she managed to blow out the flames of the candles on each side of the table. And silence fell once more, because no one knew what to say or do, and Mrs. Arnesen herself just kept sitting as if she’d been glued to the piano seat, there between the smoke from the black wicks, until Dad finally raised his arms aloft. “Bravo!” he cried. “Bravo! I envy you for each and every one of your ten fine fingers!” Now we could all applaud, while Arnesen offered his thanks and followed his wife out. After that I fell asleep, and Dad carried me home. I think I dreamed that the Old One stood and waved from the Palace balcony; it was raining and she had almost no clothes on, and it was as if all color ran from her. When I woke up, the church bells had stopped ringing, Dad went to fetch the Buick from outside the upper floor of Larsen’s, and Fred was asleep with his eyes open. I stole over to his bed, across the white line, and woke him up. “What have you dreamed?” I whispered. But Fred made no answer, not yet — it would be a long time before he replied, and when he finally did, I would no longer remember what the question had been. I went in to join Boletta and Mom instead. I tried to sense whether the world had changed now that the Old One was dead, and I hoped it had because I couldn’t bear it if you died and everything just went on as before as if you hadn’t been noticed. I stopped by the bedroom. Mom and Boletta were tidying, they were tidying the Old One’s things. I almost felt relieved. The world had changed after all, and things could never be the same again, at least not in our apartment in Church Road. “Now there’ll be more room,” I said. Mom turned sharply, tight-lipped, but Boletta dropped what she had in her hands — a long, thin dress with a flower in the middle — held me, and smiled between her wrinkles. “That’s quite right, Barnum. That’s why we humans die. To make more room.” “Is it?” Boletta sat down on the bed. “Yes, it is indeed,” she said. “Because otherwise there wouldn’t have been room for anyone in the end, and what would we have done then?” Boletta’s face was still and leaden for a time. I was disappointed — death had to mean more than this, more than cleaning and a game of musical chairs. Were things such that we got thrown out of the world when it began to get too cramped? Was death just a grumpy janitor who chased us out of the playground? Boletta got up again. “And now I’ve moved forward in the line,” she said. “Next time it’ll be my turn.” Mom stamped her foot. “I forbid you to talk like that!” she hissed. Boletta laughed. “Ill talk exactly as I please, just as long as I mean what I say!” She picked up the dress from the floor; the long, narrow dress with its flower — she held it up in front of her and danced across the floor humming a tune I didn’t know. Then Mom turned too, smiled, and joined in the humming of that slow song that sounded so strange and sad but familiar nonetheless. Soon I could whistle it too, and I became aware of the sweet scent of Malaga that was everywhere. I breathed deeply and whistled, dizzy and bewildered and happy. That day after the Old One’s funeral. All at once Mom stopped. Boletta fell silent too. I was the only one whistling. “Fred,” Mom whispered. I turned around. It was as if my mouth withered away. It was Fred. He was wearing the clothes he’d had on the previous day: the black suit that was far too broad for him and the white shirt. I thought that at last he was going to say something. Then he just turned away and left. Mom sprang after him. Boletta held me back. Shortly afterward we heard the door slamming. Mom came back and went on nonchalantly clearing drawers, cases, boxes — everywhere the Old One had kept her things. “Did he say anything?” Boletta asked. Mom just shook her head without looking at her. Boletta sighed and opened yet another closet. The sound of clothes hangers clashing together was something I couldn’t stand — I had to cover my ears. I don’t know why but I just couldn’t bear it; the clashing hangers as Boletta sorted through the thin dresses. Since that time, I’ve never been able to stand that sound either; whenever I’m staying in a hotel, I put my clothes over a chair instead, or else throw them on the floor or lay them on the bed. Because as soon as I hear the noise of clothes hangers in a cramped wardrobe, I feel again the touch of the Old One’s soft, cold lips against my fingers, as if I have disturbed a great silence. I ran over to the window. Fred disappeared between the buildings on the other side of the road without turning around a single time. It had rained during the night. The sidewalks were glistening. The leaves were thick in the gutters. The pale light hung trembling like a veil in the air. Where did I stand in the line? Certainly I was behind Fred in the long line, and in front of him were Mom, Dad and Boletta, and we never stood still; the whole time we got closer, and one of us would perhaps be wrenched out of the line before our time. And behind us the unenlightened pushed and shoved because they imagined it was all about getting there as quickly as possible. ... I couldn’t bear to think about it any longer. “Can I help?” I asked. Mom leaned against the bedpost and nodded. I got to clean the bedside table. I didn’t like the dentures in their glass of water, as if teeth were all that were left of the Old One — the inside of a mouth, a smile. The potty on the floor was empty, mercifully. But when I lifted the Bible she also had lying on her bedside table for safety’s sake, something fell out — a picture, probably a clipping from a magazine or a newspaper, since it was thin and curled at the edges. Slowly I read what was written underneath.
The dreaded Ravensbrück camp. Eventually the concentration camp became too crowded, and some no longer even had any prison garb.
An emaciated girl, almost transparent, a shadow — was sitting beside a woman who had to be dead. “What is it, Barnum?” Mom came over to me. And when I gave her the picture, she sank down onto the bed and her hands shook. Boletta had to see it too, and she quickly hid her face in her hands. “Why did she never show it to me?” Mom whispered. Boletta sat down beside her. “Because there are many different ways of caring,” she said, her voice equally low. Mom bowed her head and wept. “I always knew. But still I didn’t know for sure until now.” Boletta put her arm around her. Mom dropped the picture, and I picked it up again. I saw the dead in the arms of the dying — their visages and over-large eyes staring at me. The dark girl who wouldn’t take her gaze away — perhaps she was only seconds from her own death. Perhaps he who took her picture was her executioner too; perhaps he was holding a sword or a pistol in one hand and the camera in the other. I knew many nights would elapse before I got any sleep again. A fearful thought struck me, that I would never sleep properly again while these faces stared at me from every vantage point in the darkness. And if I shut my eyes, they would be there just the same — those faces — for I’d seen them. “Who is she?” I asked, and could barely hear the sound of my own voice. Boletta took my hand. “It’s Mom’s best friend,” she said quietly. It sounded so strange. “Did Mom have a best friend?” “Of course, Barnum. She was named Rakel. She was extremely pretty and she lived across the way” I looked at the clipping again. I didn’t want to, but couldn’t help it. I was somehow sucked into that chill picture — the dead in the arms of the dying, an ordinary girl from one of the neighboring apartments, a best friend staring at her own executioner. “Why did they do that to her?” I whispered. Boletta considered this a long while. Mom went on clearing the Old One’s things — her slippers, her perfume bottles, her jewelry, her glasses — and everything she did she did slowly, as if she were doing it all in her sleep and were tidying up in a dream where she would never quite be done. “Because people are wicked too,” Boletta said. I didn’t understand, but nor did I ask any more.
It’s these steps I hear disappearing out of my life.
It’s Mom’s song. Now she turned around abruptly, almost smiling, holding out something she’d found in the jewelry box. There was a rhythm to her thoughts. It was a button, a shiny button from which there still hung a black thread. She gave the button to Boletta, but she had no idea either. They sat there quite still, staring at the button that was bigger than the top of a lemonade bottle. “Can I have it?” I asked. Mom looked up. She was pale, her cheeks sunk deep into her face, and for just a moment I thought she resembled the girl in the picture — her best friend, Rakel. I turned away. I didn’t want to see any more. “Of course you can, sweetheart,” Boletta said. “Since you’ve done so well at tidying.” She gave me the button. It was heavy and cold between my fingers. “Thank you,” I whispered. I went into our bedroom. I put the button in my pencil case. I tried to do my homework. The drawing of the king was still not finished. But I couldn’t pull myself together. The only thing I did was to cross out what I’d written underneath the thin, crooked figure —