The Half Brother: A Novel (69 page)

They came just before dusk — Pontus, the maestro and the whole crew. They came in that half-light that rises shimmering and somehow won’t let the day depart, in the month before the fog from the fjord sweeps through the streets and rubs away distances and corners. The sun was a red shadow between the trees. There was a glimmer in the leaves that trembled along the banks. They rigged everything up behind the guards’ sheds. We went a bit closer. Everything seemed rather chaotic. Everyone was running around in circles. Perhaps they were short of time. The pale lady with her furs had her face made up and became paler still. Pontus sat down on a bench that had been brought there for him. It looked like the bench from St. Hans Hill. Lights came on. A machine blew leaves in Pontus’ direction. I hoped the whole script might blow away so that I could pick it up page by page and bring it back to the director in the correct order. I tried to wave to Pontus, but he didn’t see me. He wrote something on a scrap of paper and was in a world of his own. I knew there and then that I’d like to be him. Peder took hold of my arm. “Tell him your grandmother was a famous actress,” he hissed. “Who, Pontus?” “No, the director, of course! He’s the one who makes the decisions.” “Decisions about what?” “Everything, Barnum.” The director waved his arms about and looked like a conductor who couldn’t get his orchestra to play in tune. Finally he sat down in his chair and folded his arms. I thought about the Old One, who never came to be in any movies at the end of the day “My great-grandmother,” I whispered. “It was my great-grandmother who was the actress.” “Same thing. Just tell him.” Peder gave me a nudge in the back. I think Vivian nudged me too, more carefully. I took a deep breath and slowly made my way over to the director. He seemed pretty annoyed when I stood there in front of him. “Can’t we ever get rid of these kids?” he exclaimed. I gave a deep bow. “My great-grandmother was a famous actress,” I told him. The director looked at me with a single eye. “Really. Your great-grandmother was a famous actress in Denmark? And what was her name?” I told him. He shook his head. “Not familiar with the name, I’m afraid. It was way before my time.” The director looked down at the script again. I stayed standing where I was, mostly because I didn’t quite
know
what to do, and because the leaves were so heavy to walk through. I stood like this for a good while. The director looked up from his bundle of sheets and took off his glasses. “How many are there of you?” “Three,” I answered. The director flung wide his arms. “All right. Since I can’t get rid of you, I’ll use you instead.” He got up and went over to two women, one of whom was the makeup artist, and spoke to them. And what happened now I really have to relate as quietly as I can, because the following year when we sat in the Saga Cinema for the premiere, our disappointment was so great. Yes, we felt downright cheated, and that deep sense of disappointment was mingled with something still worse — namely shame. For that reason I’ll relate this
sotto voce,
I’ll just whisper — we were to be extras. We were dressed up in old-fashioned clothes, expansive pants that scratched our thighs, overlarge shoes and jackets with more buttons than we had fingers. “You have such fine curls,” the makeup lady whispered, and combed them a bit too much. Vivian was given a long rustling dress, high boots and a heavy mantle. We were quite a trio. The year was 1890. The city was called Kristiania. We were on our way home through Palace Park, having been to visit an aunt and uncle in Wergeland Road. “You’re siblings,” the director told us. “Isn’t that a bit odd?” Peder objected. “Odd? What do you mean?” Peder took up position beside me and pulled Vivian in closer. “Do we really look like siblings?” The director sighed heavily. “In past centuries siblings looked as you do. You can just walk completely naturally. And don’t turn around! Got that?” We nodded. “Should we think of anything in particular?” I inquired. The director gave me a hard stare. “Think?” “Yes, what should we be thinking about?” Pontus was there himself now. “Have we become colleagues then, Bar-num?” “Looks like it,” I said. Pontus laughed with yellow teeth and hollow cheeks. “I’ll tell you what you can think about. You can think about all the sandwiches you’ll eat when you get home. Turkey. Ham. Beef. Sausage. With rich mayonnaise. And chocolate with cream.” The director broke in. “That’s enough, Oscarsson. You’ve given them plenty to think about now.” Shortly afterward things were underway. We walked down toward the shadowed pond where a few ducks were swimming as the filming began at our backs. We didn’t turn around. We didn’t say a word. I don’t know what Peder and Vivian thought about, but I worked out in my mind how I’d write this. To start with we wouldn’t have been siblings. Rather three friends on our way home from a party or a ball — yes, a ball, and Peder and I are both in love with Vivian, and that’s the catalyst for a showdown between the two of us — it’s either him or me. But then Vivian falls in the pond at the point where the water’s deepest; she can’t swim, the water’s freezing at this time of year and she’s on the point of drowning. And Peder and I have to join forces to save her; we throw ourselves into the water and get her to the bank. But it’s too late. She doesn’t manage to survive the ordeal and dies in our helpless arms. “Think we’ve gone far enough now,” Peder murmured. We’d all but crossed Park Road. And when we did finally turn, the director was standing in a shadow in front of the floodlight, waving. We ran back. “Perfect,” he said. “Shall we do it again?” I asked. “No need. That was perfect.” We got changed once more and were given a fiver each. We got paid. We went the same way down toward the pond, and we’d been paid for being in a movie — five kroner each, fifteen kroner altogether. “We have to celebrate this!” Peder exclaimed. “We’ll get drunk!” The ducks rose up from the water with heavy, dripping wings. “Yes!” I shouted. And we did get pretty drunk, particularly Peder, and most likely me too. “Barnum gets drunk quickest because he’s small,” Peder used to say. And then I’d say that Peder took the longest to get drunk because he was so fat. Then we’d drink still more. We went to Mill’s Stamps — Bought and Sold, and we emptied the fridge in the back. There was a bottle of champagne there, in the event of a really exceptional deal being struck — and maybe Dad and Oscar Miil had drunk champagne the day great-grandfather’s letter was sold and bought. We drank it at any rate. We opened it with a pop and drank the foaming, tickling juice right from the bottle, because wasn’t this an exceptional occasion, too? We’d been in a movie, we’d acted in
Hunger.
And we sat there for the remainder of the evening, in that cramped back room, with the heavy smell of old letters, toasting each other with champagne and Campari and cola. Peder used to say that Vivian didn’t get drunk because she was so beautiful. But I felt it again, that giddiness I’d first experienced on Ildjernet, and that I’d first sensed in Mom’s bedroom when I drank in lungfuls of air and got the sweet, dark taste of Malaga on my tongue. Together we sat there and drank. I took off, slowly at first, and then it was just as though a switch was flicked, and the strange thing was that most of me was plunged into darkness, but at the same time a light came on in another room. It was a room I hadn’t known existed, and in this room I was king, for as long as the light lasted. There I could lay out Barnum’s ruler; the shadows I cast were long and lithe — the ideas came so easily, they lined up and I was king. I got out my notebook and wrote on a blank page: “Fattening.” That was the word I wrote. “Fattening.” That was my new idea, even though many years would pass before I finished writing the piece and won the new scripts competition at Norwegian Film for it. I’d started. “What do you have there?” Peder asked me. I flicked back through my notebook to “The Little City.” “Just something I’ve written,” I told him. “Written? Have you written something?” I got up. I wasn’t standing completely steadily; I floated over the floor in the same way my thoughts floated through me. “Yes,” I said loudly. “I’ve started writing!” Peder clapped his hands. “Read your work to us, Barnum!” And I did read, the start of the first things I’d written, apart from my school compositions, which didn’t count. When I was done, Vivian smiled while Peder fell silent and opened another bottle of beer. “Great,” Vivian said, and gave me a quick hug. I tried to hold on to her but couldn’t manage to. It isn’t true that she didn’t get drunk because she was so beautiful. She didn’t get drunk because she didn’t drink. That was maybe why she was so beautiful. “You’re so beautiful,” I said, and sank down on the sofa. “Don’t be silly,” she said. I looked at her and suddenly saw she’d kept her wig and that her face was covered in makeup. “Yes, you are! I’ll write about you one day!” Peder grew impatient. “But what happens after that? You can’t just finish it like that?” I thought about it. My mind was working. Things were rolling now. I was a wheel. “He’s put in prison!” I shouted. “And everything there’s much bigger, just as everything was tiny in the Little City. So he who’d been the world’s biggest person becomes its smallest The only thing he has to remind him of the Little City are the flowers he has hidden away.” I said no more and for a time there was quiet. “I liked that part with the flowers,” Vivian whispered. Peder got up. “But what does it mean?” Vivian laughed. “You can always count how many words there are,” she told him. I laughed too. “Yes! Count up the number of words I’ve written! Then you can see if you understand it!” Peder came closer. “But do you understand it yourself, Barnum?” I shook my head and really shouldn’t have. “Not a
clue”
I admitted. It was Peder who got me home. When I came to once more, I was sitting in front of the clock in the hall. It stood still. There were no coins in the drawer. Time was penniless. Mom was standing in front of me too. But she didn’t stand still. The whole of her was moving about; it was as if she was trying to keep her balance with just her fingers. Behind her, behind the dead clock, was Boletta — leaning against her stick, and I thought I could hear Fred laughing in our room. Someone was laughing. It was only me. Mom was crying. “The headmaster phoned.” “Did he? What did he say?” Mom stopped crying and grabbed my schoolbag. “You have just one chance, Barnum! To tell the truth!” “The truth?” “Yes, what is it you’ve been doing today? Because you certainly haven’t been at school!” I turned it over in my mind. I wasn’t floating any more. I was sinking. I wasn’t a wheel. I was a lopsided, unusable wheel rolling down a hillside covered in hedgehogs. “I’ve been writing,” I whispered. “Writing?” “Yes, and afterward filming. Don’t you believe me, or what?” Now Mom got angry instead. She opened my bag and rummaged around inside it with feverish hands. “The headmaster’s fed up with you skipping school!” she shouted as she went on rummaging. “You won’t pass your exams if you go on like this!” I shrugged my shoulders. They were heavy to lift. “All the same to me,” I said. Mom leaned toward me, her mouth trembling. “Don’t try to imitate Fred, Barnum! Because you’d never manage to do it anyway!” But my mouth was trembling as much as hers. “It’s true!” I told her. She took a step backward. She stood with
Hunger
in one hand and my notebook in the other. She melted for a moment. But she froze again just as quickly and bent down once more. “Have you been drinking too, Barnum?” I nodded. I shouldn’t have. I slid down from the chair into the clock’s shadow. I didn’t have much to say for myself. And I can’t say all that much now either. I just slid down from the chair, and what I say now has been related about me by others. I am the story, the one that’s told — there I lie like dead time at Mom’s feet. But this much I know — Boletta’s cure was administered, something that she in her time had inherited from the Old One and given to Mom. It was Chinese wine minus the Malaga, and the next time I woke up I was mercifully lying in my own bed, and I’d heard right after all — Fred was laughing. Fred lay in his bed, and his laughter was deep and low. “What are you laughing at?” I murmured. “Guess,” he said. “Me?” “Wrong. I’m not laughing at my little brother.” “Thanks, Fred. Thank you.” “Have you written anything today?” “Yes, half a page of the notebook.” “Good, Barnum.” Fred held his laughter inside him for a time. There was a humming in my heart, as if the speed had been increased so that time went faster inside me; perhaps I’d aged by several years in the course of that one night, perhaps I’d died, or maybe I’d awoken old and wise. “Were you drunk?” Fred asked. “I guess so,” I whispered. “Did you like it?” he asked. I tried to remember. “For the time that it lasted.” And I felt frightened then, because I couldn’t remember how I got home, from the time we shut the door of Mill’s Stamps to when I sat there in front of the clock. It was as if a sheet of my life had been ripped from top to bottom; it was my first black hole, and it certainly wouldn’t be my last. Fred let out his laughter once more. “Now it’s Barnum who’s the naughty boy,” he said. “It
is
me you’re laughing at then,” I said. Fred stopped. “I’m laughing at Arnesen.” “Arnesen? Why him?” “Just wait,” Fred said. “Don’t you hear how quiet it is?” I listened. Yes. There was stillness. It was a long while since it had been so quiet in the yard. Mrs. Arnesen wasn’t playing the piano. “Good night, Barnum.” I dreamed nothing and the following morning Fred had already got up and left. Mom was sitting on the edge of the bed stroking her hand through my hair and smiling. “You really got to act in
Hunger”
she said when she was sure I was awake. I felt old all right, but not particularly wise. “Yes, as extras. Peder and Vivian and me.” “If only the Old One had known,” Mom sighed. “Just imagine.” “Yes, just imagine. We walked through Palace Park and were filmed.” Mom stayed her hand, let it rest in my curls. “But promise me never to get drunk again. You’re far too young.” “Yes, Mom.” “Drink turns the heart nasty, Barnum.” “Has Boletta’s heart become nasty?” I asked. She pulled my hair quite hard. “By rights I should be furious with you, Barnum. You should be grounded for at least a month!” “All right,” I breathed. “But first you can tell me how you got hold of the alcohol.” “We borrowed a bottle of champagne belonging to Peder’s dad. “Borrowed?” Mom’s face loomed nearer mine. “Do you have a sore head?” I wanted to be honest. “Yes,” I said. Mom smiled. “That’s the idea. That you should have a sore head.” “Yes, it’s what’s called postal surcharge,” I told her. Mom stared at me for a long while, and her eyes weren’t quite right. Then she went to fetch the