The Half Brother: A Novel (64 page)

One of the best and most interesting weeks of the year. Lively contact is embarked upon with foreign friends or business contacts. You’ll have plenty of opportunity to engage in some flirting and you’ll maybe find it takes a serious turn.”
Peder chucks the magazine away and looks at me. “Did any of that happen, Barnum?” “Not that I remember,” I agree. “Not even a little bit of flirting with foreign friends?” “I couldn’t honestly say so.” “You see. It’s just crap.” “It’s not a certainty they’ll be right for everyone,” Vivian says. Peder turns to her. “So you think you believe in horoscopes?” “Sometimes.” “That it’s God Himself who writes the horoscopes for
Now?
In Norwegian?” Peder pretends to look amazed and shakes his head over and over. “In the autumn it said I would meet two interesting men,” Vivian says. “And then I met you two.” All at once she gives a loud laugh. “Sheer chance,” Peder says. “If you make things up the whole time a bit of truth’ll slip in sometimes. By the law of averages.” Vivian closes her eyes. “What do you believe in?” she asks. “Peder believes in figures,” I tell her. He smiles. He leans close to Vivian and speaks in hushed tones. “If you come to our room tonight at thirteen minutes past twelve, Barnum’ll show you something.” Vivian opens her eyes again. “What?” “That will be revealed,” Peder tells her. And he says no more that evening. He just sits in his deck chair counting boats on their way into the fjord, and he records the number in a book with a whole lot of earlier calculations. When we’ve gone to bed, we don’t actually
go
to bed, but sit instead at the edge of it waiting for Vivian. The house is utterly still. I’m the one who cracks. “What is it we’re going to show her?” I demand. “Be quiet,” Peder says. “You stink of seaweed.” I pour some water from a blue jug to wash my hands and face — it’s lukewarm and no longer fresh. “It was just something you said, right? Right, Peder?” “What? That you stink of seaweed?” “That I’d show her something.” Peder leans backward. I can see him in the dark window; a shifting, blurred image in the reflection thrown by the low, red lamp by the bedside. And all this is mixed with the light of a lopsided moon that looks as if it’s hanging by a single thread right down into the fjord. “You think she’ll come, Bar-num?” I turn toward him. “No.” “But I think so.” He gets up again. “No, I don’t think so,” he says. “I know so.” “How can you know?” Peder smiles. “Because she’s curious, of course. Wouldn’t you have come if she was going to show you something?” “Yes.” “You see, then. She’ll come. Just you wait.” I sit down on the bed beside him. Peder smells my hands. “That’s better,” he says. “Women don’t like seaweed.” We rub some deodorant under our arms too and don’t say any more for a bit. “What’s the time?” Peder asks. “Eight minutes to twelve.” “We mustn’t drift off, Barnum.” “No, we’ll keep each other awake.” Peder washes his face in the same water. “Wish I had a big brother,” he suddenly says. “Do you?” He sits back down and borrows my towel. “Mom couldn’t have any more children after I was born.” I think about this for a bit. “But then you’d have had a little brother anyway,” I tell him. “If you’d had a brother after you were born.” Peder gave this some thought too. “You’re damn right, Barnum.” We’re awake. “You think she’ll come?” I ask him. “Just wait,” Peder says. “Vivian’ll come.”

And she did come. At thirteen minutes past twelve there was a cautious knock on the door. Peder opened up. Vivian sneaked in. Peder closed the door and listened — we all listened. The house was still. No one had heard us. The fjord glided past. “What is it you wanted to show me, Barnum?” Vivian whispered. I looked at Peder. Peder just smiled. Vivian walked back in the direction of the door. “If you two are just going to be smutty then I’m off!” Peder laughed quietly. “Sh,” he said. But Vivian wasn’t about to be shut up. “If you two try anything, I’ll scream!” She suddenly took a step toward me. “Ill beat you up, Barnum! Just so you know!” She was on the point of going for me. Peder had to intervene and stand between us. “Vivian, didn’t it say in your horoscope that we were two interesting men?” Vivian calmed down. Now she was just impatient. “Tell me what it is then!” Peder pushed me around the side of the bed. Vivian followed us with her eyes. “Barnum wants to show you his suitcase,” Peder told her. Vivian became suspicious again. “I don’t want to see Barnum’s suitcase!” It looked as though the very thought made her ill, and she hid her face in her hands. What did she think, that I’d pull my pants down and reveal everything? Barnum’s suitcase? Peder laughed. “Just relax, Vivian. Barnum isn’t a suitcase.” He glanced at me, blinked twice, then pulled out my old suitcase and laid it on the bed. “This is Barnum’s magic suitcase,” he whispered. Vivian let her hands drop, and she stared at the suitcase. “What’s inside it?” Peder opened it. Vivian backed away, even more suspicious. Then she came closer again. “But it’s empty,” she said. Peder turned to me. “Explain, Barnum!” “There was applause in it,” I tell her. Vivian sat down beside the suitcase and traced one finger carefully along the soft lining on the inside. “Applause?” “I inherited it from my dad. And he’d been given it by the circus ringmaster, Mundus.” “The one who was at the funeral?” “Yes. Dad was to look after it. It was in this they packed all the applause. And my dad used to carry this suitcase.” Vivian looked at me. “And where’s all the applause now?” “Perhaps it’s used up. I don’t know. Perhaps he lost it.” Peder stood by the window looking at us. He didn’t say a thing. He just stood there and shook his head now and again. “Was this what you wanted to show me, Barnum?” Vivian asked. “Yes,” I told her. She just touched my hand. “That was lovely,” she said. We were silent for a time. Suddenly we were drenched in a brief, white light — as if there had been a flash of lightning. We turned toward Peder, squinting. He put my camera down on the windowsill. I thought of our souls, that to lose your soul is the same as dying, that being photographed is the equivalent of being executed — if it was right what Peder’s mother said. But how many times can you lose your soul? “Barnum’s camera,” Peder breathed. Vivian looked up at me. She had dark shadows under her eyes. “Sure there’s no applause left in the suitcase?” she asked. “Doesn’t look like it.” “Not a single clap? Perhaps your dad hid some for himself?” Peder got excited. “Good thinking, Vivian. Of course he must have saved some. Well have a look!” Peder got out a knife and sat down on the bed. He looked at us. “Shall we?” he breathed. I nodded. And Peder cut into the lining, made an incision in the board inside the lid to see if there was some secret chamber there where Dad could have hidden the rest of the applause. There was nothing. It just smelled strongly of mold and mothballs. Peder put the knife back in its sheath. “Did you really think we’d find anything?” He lay back on the bed and laughed. “What was it your father used to say, Bar-num?” he asked. I looked at Vivian. She was looking at the ripped and empty suitcase. “It’s not what you see that matters most but rather what you think you see,” I whispered. Peder sat up again. “But I think it’s the other way around,” he said. “It’s what you see that’s most important. What do you think, Vivian?” Vivian didn’t say anything. She just pointed at the edge of the lid. “Look,” she said. Something was sticking out there, the corner of a sheet or a book — something. I worked it free. It was a card that Dad must have hidden there, or forgotten, an old postcard. And I can still remember the simultaneous feelings of joy and fear that came with the shock of finding it; the pride of having something to show them because my suitcase wasn’t empty after all, but the equal sense of fear too at what this could be that lay concealed in the lid of the case I’d inherited. It was a picture of the world’s tallest man, Patur-son from Akureyri. I breathed a sigh of relief. His name appeared at the bottom, both printed and signed, and his height of eight feet eleven and a half inches was recorded, as measured by the Copenhagen medical congress. Peder and Vivian peered over my shoulders. My hands shook with happiness, with wonder, with I don’t know what — but my hands shook. The hand-colored drawing of Paturson was faded; the colors were pale shadows. And the sight of it stirred me; I became sad and excited at one and the same time, and had to hold on to my own hands. Paturson’s face was long and his mouth small, a thin bow above a broad chin. He had a very pronounced part, almost right in the middle of his head, and the eyes that once had been blue resembled two holes in a mask. He was wearing a black suit. His shoes were white and without any laces. “Eight feet eleven and a half inches,” Peder whispered. “That’s not possible.” “That’s what it says,” I told him. Peder looked more closely. “His face would have had to have been at least a couple feet in length. That’s impossible. It’s a con.” “You think the entire medical congress in Copenhagen would make something like that up, huh?” Peder sighed. “Almost nine feet tall? No damn way.” I got annoyed. “You think my father would make it up?” Peder looked at me, was about to say something, and didn’t get that far. It was Vivian who spoke. “There’s something on the back, too,” she said. I turned it over. There was a stamp on it. It was Icelandic. It had been franked. Akureyri. 5/10/1945. We could just make out the date that appeared obliquely over the green Icelandic stamp. May 10, 1945. The card was to Dad. Arnold Nilsen. Finding him had been no easy task. First it had been sent to Sirkus Mundus, Stockholm, Sweden. That address had been crossed out and a new one written underneath — Coch’s Hostel, Oslo, Norway. And in my mind’s eye I could see the postmen with this card for Dad, having to take it from Iceland to Sweden, from Sweden to Norway, to the abandoned room in Coch’s Hostel on Bogstad Road. But they hadn’t found him there either. He’d moved. And once again the card was sent on, north now, back to the scattering of islands he’d escaped from — R0st. But no one there knew where Arnold Nilsen was, and the card must have lain there for several years as a scandalous reminder of the prodigal son who’d slipped away one night and fallen as far as any man could fall — to the big top of the circus. But so it was he found the card himself when he journeyed there with Mom to have me christened. “Read it,” Vivian whispered. The writing was pretty indistinct and the words had lots of mistakes in them, and the lines were cramped to make sufficient room. I read it aloud.
Dear Arnold, my good friend.
I looked at Peder and Vivian. “That’s my father,” I said. “Arnold.” I had to begin again. My own voice was unrecognizable.
Dear Arnold, my good friend. I’m writing to you now to share the good news of the end of the war and the wretched Germans defeat.
Now you can hold your tail in the air for good! Are you still with the circus? I’m banking on that. I myself have returned to Iceland. And can you remember the one we always called the Chocolate Girl? Sadly she’s dead now. She got an illness that she couldn’t get over. She was a good person. She always spoke of you with great affection. I hope our paths will cross one day. I wish you all the very best in life, Arnold. With good wishes from the world’s tallest man, Paturson.
We were silent a long while. I could have cried. I’d already made up my mind. This card would never be seen by anyone else. I put it in the pocket of my toiletries bag. Peder looked at me and nodded, as if he understood what had gone though my head and agreed. “Now you’ve got your own letter,” he said.

I didn’t sleep that night. I lay awake excited, listening to Peder’s easy breathing and the wind in the apple trees, the sounds in the grass, the moon in the fjord. And if I listened carefully I could hear Vivian slowly turning in her bed in her room. There was no longer space for everything inside me. I was overflowing — I had to get up. I had to breathe out. I sat in the chair by the window and thought to myself that it
was
possible to be happy, that it wasn’t all that difficult after all — it was just so unfamiliar, and happiness was a bewildering bouquet to hold in one’s hands. We got up and lay once more on the rock ledge and slept there instead, while Peder’s dad sat in the shade reading a stamp catalogue and his mother worked on with her painting. The sun was hot and heavy on our backs. And then I experienced something strange. I woke up sharply, dizzy and frightened, with one single thought in my head:
an accident happened.
It was just as if I could feel someone else’s pain. And right at that moment I was stung by a wasp. It got me in the throat. I began swelling immediately. I screamed. Peder and Vivian got up. “I’m dying!” I shrieked. “I’m being strangled!” My voice left me as I rolled around. My head exploded. I was dying. And the last thing I saw was Peder, who thought I was just kidding. I tried to say something, but it was too late. Soon I’d be on the other side. I gave up. I was filled with a deep sense of peace, veering on unconsciousness. My soul was slipping away.
Goodbye, dear friends.
But then Vivian bent down over me and put her lips on my throat, as if to kiss me for the first, or the final, time. She was pretty rough with me. She bit. She sucked. She spat. She sucked some more, sucked the poison out of me and saved me, for the first, but not the last, time.

And so suddenly the vacation was over, with a wasp sting and a kiss. I traveled back to the city again with Vivian. Peder stood in the middle of the rope bridge waving until he could see us no longer. My suitcase was heavier than when I’d come. We sat outside in the seats at the back of the boat. Then I caught sight of something, in the channel between the island and the mainland. “Look!” I shouted. Vivian turned. “What?” she said. “Can’t you see?” “What?” “Peder’s mom!” And I saw the wheelchair rushing over the water at top speed; the wheels spun through the waves, and the gulls were a shrieking white swarm about her. Vivian leaned against my shoulder, closed her eyes and said nothing.

It was Fred who was waiting for me at Quay B when
Prince
docked. I felt frightened, almost sick. Where was Mom? Why was Fred there? I hoped Vivian wouldn’t see him. He was thin, exhausted. He had on a sweater that was way too big for him. Vivian had already seen him. But Fred didn’t bother to look in her direction. It was me he stared at and came over to. “Bye,” said Vivian loudly. She let go of my hand and slowly walked over to where her dad was waiting for her in a taxi beside the shop. I followed her with my eyes. I hoped she wouldn’t turn around. She turned and waved. I raised my hand. She hesitated a moment, then sat down in the backseat and the door was closed. “Got yourself a girlfriend now?” Fred asked. I shook my head. “Where’s Mom?” “Mom’s with Boletta, Barnum.” “Why?” “Boletta fell on the stairs this morning. When she was coming home from the North Pole.” “Was she all right?” “No.” “How not?” “She thought she was in Italy, Barnum.” Fred took my suitcase, and we went up to Ullevål Hospital. There was Mom. She’d been crying a lot. There were streaks down her face, tunnels. And when she saw me she cried all the more. “You’re brown,” she murmured. “Did you have a good time?” “I was stung by a wasp,” I told her. Fred grew impatient. “Has she come to yet?” he demanded. Mom shook her head and let go of me. A doctor appeared from Boletta’s room. We went in. She was so small there in the bed. She had a bandage around her head and was attached to a piece of equipment on which various lights and lines lit up and flashed like some gigantic radio. We had to whisper. Boletta was completely blue and her eyes were enormous, but empty all the same. She could have been dead. She’d come back from the North Pole and hadn’t managed the last steps. She’d toppled backward and fractured her cranium before rolling all the way down to the ground floor. It was there that Mom had found her, lying in a pool of blood. That was what I’d sensed, just before the wasp stung me — Boletta falling. “Boletta,” I whispered. Mom caught my hand. “She can’t hear you, Barnum.” The doctor came back in. He said something to Mom. She became nervous and upset. Can we feel one another’s pain? Yes, we can. I’d felt it, I’d felt Boletta falling. Fred stood silent against the wall, staring at the floor. What had I felt when he was hit? Is pain infectious? How much of each other’s pain can we stand? “It isn’t certain she’ll wake again,” the doctor said, his voice low. I turned and pointed at him. “I’ll photo-damngraph you!” I shouted. Mom buried her face in her hands. Fred looked up. The doctor left once more. “What are you saying, Barnum?” “Boletta’s going to wake up,” I told her.