The Half Brother: A Novel (34 page)

That same evening, she asks in a low voice, “How did you get hold of that car?” I lie in bed listening. I hear Dad clearing his throat and beginning to pace the floor. “I’ll make a long story short,” he begins. “Yes, you do that!” Now it’s Boletta’s turn to be loud. “Be quiet,” Mom says to her. “A friend owed me a favor,” Dad murmurs. “Which friend?” Mom demands. Dad lets out a peal of laughter. “I have many friends,” he replies.

I can’t sleep that night. Joy renders me sleepless. We’re going on a summer holiday. We’re going abroad. I’ve been given an Italian coin by Dad to practice with. I say the word into myself —
lira, lira.
It’s so light in my hand and worth less than an 0re. And this weightless coin reminds me of Mom’s dark depression that morning; it’s the shadow over my joy that night. What can I buy with a coin like this? What’ll I do with it then? I drop the coin onto the floor and don’t even hear it landing. “Why was Mom so sad?” I ask carefully. But Fred isn’t there, and there’s no one to answer me.

We left two days later. Dad drove, Mom was the navigator, and Fred and I sat in the back with Boletta between us. She was awkward and demanded so much room that we had to press our cheeks against the windows. It wasn’t much after four when we drove down Jacob Aall Street and out of the silent and abandoned city, where not even the paperboys were up. Our black box was stuffed with suitcases, bags, flasks, gasoline cans, sleeping bags and suntan lotion; we drove past the fjord that resembled polished linoleum, because Mom did at least manage to find the road to Moss. But just before Moss she got carsick; Dad had to park at the side of the road while she knelt in the ditch and vomited for quite a while. Perhaps it was because the Volvo Duett had worse suspension than a toboggan. In the meantime Dad felt that it was becoming a strain having to look at the map while driving at thirty-five miles an hour. “What’s the point of this!” Boletta exclaimed, and was equally reluctant. “The point?” Dad repeated. We were waiting outside the car. Everything was beautiful that morning, except for Mom. She was still down on her knees. Boletta pointed at her. “Don’t you see that you get ill traveling like this?” Dad lit a cigarette. “Yes, traveling’s strange when you’re used to a sedentary existence,” he admitted. Boletta went up to him. “Shut up!” she shouted. Dad just laughed. “I remember very well she got seasick on land too.” But Boletta wasn’t about to give in. “It’s a sacrilege to disturb the dead,” she hissed. Dad gave a start. “Dead? Is Fleming Brant dead?” Boletta was uncharacteristically aggressive. “I know nothing about that, Arnold Nilsen. But the Old One is dead, and we are not going to disturb her.” Mom got up from the ditch and took a deep breath. “Let’s go on,” she said. Dad clapped his hands, hesitated a second, then finally pointed at me. “From now on you’re my navigator, Barnum.”

I changed places with Mom. I was the navigator. I sat beside Dad. He had to have three cushions to see over the steering wheel. I got to borrow Fred’s sleeping bag to sit on. I had a wonderful view. I laid the map of Europe in my lap and followed the red lines with my finger. We were off again. There had been a time when I’d thought we could just trundle our way to Italy (it was downhill all the way after all); that it was simply a question of crossing Ma-jorstuen when the lights changed to green, and that was it. Now I knew better. It’s both up and down, and there’s no shortcut. A navigator needs to know that. “How far is it to Helsingborg?” Dad asked. “It’s three hundred fourteen miles from Oslo to Helsingborg,” I told him. “But we’ve already driven forty-two miles.” “In that case we’ll make the ferry before dinner time,” Dad said with satisfaction. “And the ferry to Helsing0r takes twenty-five minutes,” I informed him. “Good, Barnum!” Dad slapped my thigh. “And how far is it to the moon, you jerk?” Fred demanded. Even Boletta laughed. We rolled down our windows and ate dry buns. We were the only ones on the road. A train passed over the empty fields. People waved from the last car. We waved back. The sun rose and emptied its light over everything, and the air was clear and mild. If God had seen us then, he might have thought the car we sat in was just a matchbox blown over the world He’d sent out into space.

We got gas at Svinesund and bought Villa mineral water and Kit Kat bars in the little kiosk. Mom and Boletta joined the line for the ladies’ room, and Dad had to produce a whole bundle of papers for those on duty at the border. Then we were let through. We were abroad. I didn’t notice any difference, except that we had to drive on the left. There wasn’t so much as a bump where Norway became Sweden, and the sky looked exactly the same. “How far is it to Helsingborg, my
pojke?”
Dad asked me. Perhaps that was what happened when you went abroad. You immediately started speaking Swedish. And when we crossed into Italy, would we be able to speak Italian too? I did every calculation I could on the map. “Two hundred thirty-six miles, Dad.” I was still speaking Norwegian, as far as I could tell at any rate. “But how far is it to Göteborg?” he wanted to know now. I did my adding and subtracting of the miniscule figures written alongside the various roads on the maps. Soon I wouldn’t be able to see any more. My eyes were carsick, and I shouldn’t have eaten that bar of chocolate. “Eleven miles,” I murmured. “In that case we can eat in Göteborg, right?” My stomach was a spinning drum. I kept swallowing and swallowing. Borders and roads and towns and lakes floated together into one nameless zone. Perhaps I couldn’t cope with driving on the left? Dad glanced at me. “How are you doing, Barnum?” he inquired. “I’m sorry,” I told him. Now I was talking Swedish too. And then I was sick. I vomited all over the map, the dashboard, the steering wheel and the windshield. I broke in two. Dad screeched to a halt, Mom shrieked, Fred laughed, Boletta went on sleeping and a bus roared past blaring its horn. I fell down into the ditch at the side of the road and got rid of what remained in my stomach. My mouth, my nose and my eyes were all running. Every orifice was in action. And ever since, I’ve gotten carsick even thinking of figures or glancing at a map. I failed geography miserably and have never managed to pass my driving test. My time as a navigator was over — two miles into Sweden. Mom hung up the map to dry. Boletta got out some clean clothes for me. Dad washed the car and Fred shinned up a tree and wouldn’t come down again. But when I came to once more, he was sitting in the front with Dad and I was lying in a bundle between Mom and Boletta. I could smell the sea. I got up. We could look across to Denmark. We were an hour in the line. After that we drove on board the ferry. We climbed to the upper deck because you don’t get seasick if you can see the horizon. In the middle of øresund Dad began talking Danish. “Do you want some ale, Boletta?” he asked. But Boletta didn’t bother replying. She just turned away and went off into the saloon. She was becoming more and more difficult the farther south we went. She didn’t want to go to K0ge and see the house where the Old One had been born, nor did she want to go to the zoo and see the musk oxen that were direct descendants of the beasts that had been finally brought back to the King’s city by the SS
Antarctic
in December 1900. “It’s wrong to disturb the dead,” she said again.

It was already late evening by the time we trundled onto land once more in Helsing0r. Dark was falling over Denmark. Fred had to use a pocket flashlight to see the map. We ate fried fish at a roadside inn. Finally Dad was able to drink his ale. Mom asked if there were any rooms available — there weren’t, but if we had a tent we were welcome to put it up in the garden. We didn’t and slept instead in the car. Once we’d stowed our luggage on the roof rack and put down all the seats, there was just about sufficient room for all of us. Fred preferred to sleep outside. Boletta talked in her sleep. I didn’t understand what she was saying. Perhaps it was her night language, a tongue only she could comprehend? Mom gently told her to be quiet. Dad breathed heavily through his nose; it was a wind instrument. I edged open the door and crept out to join Fred. He was awake too. I sat down beside him. The sky was bigger here than in Norway probably because Denmark was so flat. A Danish insect hummed by and left the stillness even more pronounced. “Why’s Boletta so strange?” I whispered. “Boletta isn’t strange,” Fred replied. “What is it then?” “She’s old, Barnum.” I loved it when Fred talked to me like this. I leaned my head against his shoulder. “Are you looking forward to it?” I asked. “To what?” “Italy, of course.” Fred was silent for a bit. “Wish we’d gone to Greenland instead,” he said. At that moment we heard a strange sound, a whirring in the dark, a wave that beat against us without getting us wet. Fred got up and started walking, in the opposite direction from the car. I went after him. We got closer. We went into the wave and stopped. A great wheel was rolling through the night and yet stood still too; or perhaps it was a bird that couldn’t get off the ground. It was a windmill. And a memory was reawakened within me, there where we waited in the depths of the Danish night — a memory that was invisible and heavy, outside my consciousness and inexplicable to me, and therefore not fixed in my mind. It was more like a scar, an imprint — put there in dreams — and something first interpreted only when I returned to Røst, years later, like a refugee, and found the sorrowful remains of Dad’s invention on the heights of Vedd0ya.

We reached Flensburg the following day and were waved across the border by two men in tight-fitting uniforms. Boletta was our navigator now, and she’d folded Europe away and put it in the glove compartment a long time ago. I think what she wanted more than anything was for Dad to go the wrong way. I wanted him to speak German to us, but instead he was silent and sullen. He wanted to make progress, and he swung down onto the Autobahn. It went to Hamburg, where we were going to spend the night. I saw nothing except the speedometer needle rising toward fifty-five. The Volvo Duett shook. We had to hold tight. But we were still being passed the whole time. Low sportscars raced past us, and it was just as if we were standing still. We were the slowest. Dad pushed our speed up to sixty. It made no difference. His new gloves were slippery on the steering wheel. He was sweating. Everyone else was just driving faster. I grew sad. How could we be last when we’d never driven so fast before? And Dad told us about those drivers who become
speed blind,
who think they’re standing still and get out of the car while driving thirty-five at least. Ever since, I’ve always thought that Fred wasn’t dyslexic —
word
blind — but rather
speed
blind; he left language too quickly. Then everyone had to slow down anyway since a bit farther on blue lights were flashing; something had happened, an accident. Perhaps it was a word-blind driver who’d misread a sign. I caught a glimpse of a crashed car and the accident’s detritus — an arm, blood on the pavement, clothes, a kneeling woman, a stretcher, a dead dog and a crumpled stroller — before Mom put her hands over my eyes and held me tight. She held me like that all the way to Hamburg, where we got lost at a rotary, and it was then Dad first began talking, and it was Norwegian he spoke. All of a sudden a guy ran out onto the road in front of us waving his arms and pointing at something, and we thought we had a flat, that that was what he was trying to tell us. Dad swung up onto the sidewalk and rolled down his window. The stranger bent down and looked in, beaming. He had a scar at the corner of his mouth that was like an extension of his smile. “Norway?” he said, his accent rather broken. Dad nodded. “Norway?” he said again. “Yes,” Dad said. “We’re from Norway. What do you want?” The German stuck his arm through the window to shake hands with each of us. “I was in Norway during the war,” he explained. “A magnificent fatherland!” Dad stared at him, incredulous. Boletta pushed his hand away as if it were unclean and infected. Mom put her arm around Fred and me. The smiling German with the scar on his face was moved. He wiped away a tear. “I hope I can come back to Norway one day,” he whispered. Then Dad snapped. He took off his glove and exposed his mutilated fist; it was as if he clenched that fist with all its missing fingers and shook it right under the Germans jaw. But then all at once he changed his mind. Perhaps he remembered we’d gotten lost at a Hamburg rotary and that it was late in the evening and we still had nowhere to stay because none of us was keen to spend another night in this black box of a Volvo Duett. Instead the injured fist relaxed in friendship and the man took the lump of flesh in both hands and wept. “We’re just two injured soldiers, you and I,” he whispered. Dad was greatly moved. “Could you recommend a hotel around here?” he inquired, and quickly drew back his arm. “Only the best is good enough for you,” the German said, and pointed in the opposite direction. “On the righthand side of the lower lake you’ll find Vier Jahrzeiten.” Dad rolled up his window so it closed with a thud and spun the car away from the sidewalk. I turned and saw the German soldier, the polite loser, still standing at the rotary with his hat raised in salute. “Oh, yes, you really won that war, Arnold Nilsen,” Boletta said. “Couldn’t you just have knocked him down?” Dad didn’t reply. He leaned pale and sullen against the steering wheel and pulled on the glove with the artificial fingers. Someone honked their horn behind us. There were cars everywhere. We just flowed with the traffic down into Hamburg, as in a river on wheels, and there, beside a small lake surrounded by a thin belt of trees, lay the hotel, Vier Jahrzeiten. Dad stopped in front of the broad steps. A doorman stood in attendance on the red carpet. “It looks expensive,” Mom breathed. Dad just smiled, brushed back his hair, polished his shoes with his handkerchief, lit a cigarette and went up the steps — quickly giving some money to the little doorman. Up at the top another employee opened a golden door to admit him. We waited. Time went by. “Can’t we just turn and drive home?” Boletta whispered. Mom was annoyed and leaned forward between the seats. “You are not going to ruin this vacation for me!” Boletta turned around and said for the last time, “You shouldn’t disturb the dead.” Just then the doorman pressed his face against the windshield to take a look at us. He resembled a clown with his shiny lips and white cheeks. Boletta raised her fist and he retreated, bowing, to the red carpet. “Perhaps the rooms have showers,” Mom murmured. We sat in silence then, just waiting. We could see guests in the foyer slowly walking back and forth with glasses and cigarettes and sparkling jewels. Eventually Dad returned. He shoved the doorman to one side, tumbled into the car behind the wheel and drove off. He was angry about something or other. His hands were shaking so badly he could barely manage to steer. “There were no vacant rooms,” he mumbled. Mom attempted a smile. “No vacant rooms?” Dad breathed heavily. “And just be thankful there weren’t!” he shouted. “That wretched youth hostel of a place only had five stars anyway.” Boletta glanced at him. “Five stars? Isn’t that a lot?” Dad roared with laughter. “I’ve stayed in hotels with ten stars and that’s twice as many as five!” Boletta laughed herself. “Perhaps we weren’t good enough for Vier Jahrzeiten,” she suggested. Dad fell silent and had to stop at the corner. He was in a black mood again. Mom dried the sweat from his brow and could have wrung the handkerchief out afterward. “What do we do now?” she asked carefully. Dad produced a map of Hamburg from his pocket. In the middle of the creased paper there was a cross. “In their great charity they recommended a hotel in Grosse Freiheit,” he replied. “Grosse Freiheit?” Mom repeated. “It’s a well-known street here, love. We have to look out for an elephant.” We drove on — not down, but in — to the loudness and the light that quickly engulfed us, all the way till we reached the inner chambers of the city’s godless heart. It was a heart that beat madly and unevenly, a wonderful systole that made the car’s hood shudder; and finally we came to a halt in a blood clot in a narrow street where the windows were all red. I glanced out. I saw women with naked thighs, sailors drinking beer, shadows that resembled dogs in dark alleyways, men with high heels and doormen enticing people to come inside. Mom put her hands over my eyes again, hard this time, so I could barely breathe. “An elephant?” she murmured. Dad pointed. “There!” he exclaimed. Mom released her hold and down a lane we saw a sign with an elephant on it. Its trunk hung in a circle that shone in several colors. Dad drove the last part of the way there and parked in front of the entrance. The place was called the Indra Club. There was no red carpet, no doorman and no stars. “Have you taken us to the circus?” Boletta asked. Dad said nothing. He sat thinking for a bit. Then, all of a sudden, he’d made up his mind. He wanted us all to come with him and to bring our luggage there and then. Fred and I took our suitcases through the door of the Indra Club. We came to a cloakroom. Behind the counter a man with a shaved head stood looking at us in amazement. And at last Dad talked in German. He spoke at length and he spoke fluently, and I haven’t the slightest idea what it was he said. But the bald man listened intently, pointed to the ceiling and mentioned something that sounded like a number. Dad turned to us with satisfaction. “I’ve just got us a room on the second floor!” he announced. We were led through a smoky place where a handful of guests sat at round tables drinking from wide glasses with handles. They looked at us as we passed and, smiling, shook their heads — foam on their mouths. On a stage in back, against the wall, there was a set of drums and three amplifiers. A black electric guitar lay on the floor. Then we went up a steep, angled staircase and arrived at what was to pass for our room for the night. Mom stood there staring. There wasn’t even a sink. The double bed sagged in the middle, and it had obviously been a good while since the sheet was changed. On the windowsill there was a light with a red lampshade full of flies. On the pillow was half a roll of toilet paper. Even Dad himself had to take a deep breath. “We’ll just have to make the best of it,” he said. Boletta sat down on the one and only chair. “But not with the best of them now,” she murmured. Fred rolled out the sleeping bags. Mom crept out into the corridor to find a shower. She came back almost immediately, even paler than before. “What is it?” Dad asked. Mom had already begun gathering up her things. “Are we really going to spend the night in a brothel?” she shouted. Dad blinked. “A brothel?” Mom was seething. “Oh, yes! A brothel! There are women in these rooms!” Dad tried to put his arms around her, but his attempt failed — not even laughter was a help now. “I’m not staying here one second longer!” she hissed. And with that we left the room, our bill and the Indra Club hastily and soundlessly. Mom had her hand on my neck and whispered the whole time, “Look straight ahead, Barnum. Look straight ahead!” We reached the bottom of the stairs and discovered a rear exit on the ground floor. And just as we sneaked out, I caught sight of five boys in tight pants and lilac jackets jumping onto the stage, picking up their guitars and drumsticks. I stood still for a moment. I wanted to hear this. The tallest of them leaned toward the microphone, twisted his mouth, counted in English —
one, two, one two three four
— and was about to begin singing. I saw his lips shaping into a yell. I saw the cords on the guitars, the drumsticks falling heavily toward the drums, the pointed black shoes about to begin keeping time. And right at that moment, before they started, before the five boys began — in a strange and heavy silence as in the seconds between lightning and thunder — Mom pulled me away and the door closed behind us. We ran to the front, tossed suitcases and bags in the trunk, and flung ourselves into the car, and Dad drove off as fast as he could between the neon lights and the stars. And the last I managed to glimpse of Hamburg was a gaudy poster on a brick wall:
The Beatles. England. Liverpool.