The Half Brother: A Novel (18 page)

And Arnold hears all of this. He lies there in his skin-dead state and hears all that is both unheard and full of riddles. He hears his father lying about his age, making him younger than he is, and the doctor’s strange voice answering so mysteriously —
extremely well-equipped.
And now the selfsame doctor rubs a cream over his forehead and pronounces, “The boy is only barely conscious as a result of his time underwater. He requires rest and cleanliness and regular bowel movements. Then he’ll come to of his own accord.” Aurora’s voice is clipped. “It is always clean here! And the potty is always ready!” With those words she departs and bangs the door behind her, and the father takes the doctor into his confidence, for neither of them takes the skin-dead Arnold into consideration. “Does the good doctor think that Aurora and I might be blessed with more children?” Evert asks, and his hands are twitching as he speaks. “Well, she’s certainly got the temperament for it,” the doctor replies, and then adds, “How old is she?” Evert has to give this some thought. “We’ve been married sixteen years now.” It’s the doctors turn to think, long and hard. “Don’t have too high hopes,” he says in the end. And when Dr. Paulsen’s taken back to the mainland that same night after having left behind both quinine and Glauber’s Salt, Arnold is still aware of the pressure of his thumb against his eye, the heavy glass on his chest, the fumes of alcohol that flowed over him, the tight knot around his finger. Neither would he ever forget the sight of his own face in the doctor’s clear pocket mirror. “Skin-dead,” Arnold whispers. “I’m skin-dead and extremely well-equipped!”

And for ever after Arnold Nilsen said that he really could not have had a better time of it. “I was a prince there where I lay! No, I was a king. I was made a monarch. No, closer to God one couldn’t • have come without leaving this world entirely Those were the best weeks of my childhood. Believe me! I can recommend being skin-dead to all those who want some peace and quiet. It’s wonderful. It’s like being in a hotel!”

And so Arnold quite simply goes on lying where he is, still skin-dead, when Hoist, the teacher, the portly graduate who’s an optimist in September and a great danger to himself in June, arrives to impart knowledge and learning to the restless youngsters of R0st for fourteen days. Thereafter he departs exhausted for the mainland once more, well aware that his words and wisdom are forgotten the moment he’s out of sight, and he gives them up to the school of life as some call it, where the curriculum is the ocean, the sea stacks and the grass. After a fortnight he’s back, paler and more seasick, for such is the ebb and flow between book and physical labor, pointer and fishing line. And the days grow shorter in Hoist’s head too and he stares exasperated at Arnold’s still empty desk. For Arnold lies on at home, suffering and content, and Aurora nurses him, more and more concerned — she barely manages to coax mashed potato and lukewarm fish soup into his mouth. Evert stands in the shadows by the door watching his wretched son, and he’s aware that there isn’t any change in Aurora either; her waist is as slender as ever, and he wonders in the stillness and yet the anxiety of his heart,
How long can a person remain skin-dead?
It eats away at Evert’s patience to have a son who’s skin-dead. Either living or dead Arnold would be a sorrow, a cross to bear, but skin-dead hell soon become quite unbearable. Besides, the talk has started. He encounters the rumors about his own son whichever path he takes. And it’s the teacher, Hoist, who rows out with those rumors every fourteenth day.

Aurora carefully dries Arnold’s lips, kisses his brow and whispers, “I’ll always look after you.” She doesn’t look at Evert as she passes him with the washing bowl, cloths, underwear and leftover food. And it’s on this October night Evert makes up his mind. He sends for no less than the vicar,

And it’s on this night too that Arnold begins to feel bored. He’s not just been crowned the skin-dead king, he’s also been elevated to the status of the greatest lowliness, for he can listen but not speak. And there was something about his mother’s words that terrified him, that filled him with restlessness, with unbearable anxiety. He hears his mother crying out in her room, the dog whimpering at the door, and his father banging the table. And on the same morning Arnold hears too the heavy sound of oars out on the sound, the cries of the oarsmen as they keep up the rhythm of their rowing, and the hymn that booms through the storm and drowns out the roar of the breakers:
God is God though every land laid waste.

Arnold just can’t help himself. He gets up. He rises from the skin-dead and looks out of the window. He sees the boat rolling in toward the dock, the men rowing in a circle of white sea, and at the stern there stands an almighty form, the vicar himself, his arms outstretched. He resembles a giant cormorant, a black sail, and it’s he who’s singing
God is God though every man were dead.
Arnold gets shivers down his spine and shouts, “The fatty’s coming! The fatty’s coming!” Then his father steps out of the shadow by the door, whirls Arnold around and smacks him full in the face, a blow that burns as hotly in Everts fist as on Arnold’s cheek, for Evert has punched in wicked delight, in grand terror, almost as if another power controlled his arm in that instant. And he looks down benevolently, almost shamefully, at his own son standing ablaze on his bed. “That’s no fatty! That’s the vicar, you little bugger!” And his father drags the terrified Aurora with him and races to the dock to meet the vicar and send him back where he came from as quickly as possible, for Arnold is
compos mentis and
has recovered his speech and is in need of no vicar. “The boy’s up and about!” Evert shouts to them one and all. “Go home while there’s still time!” But the vicar’s already standing steady on the dockside and he places his hands on Everts trembling shoulders. “Well, well, my good man,” he says. “If your boy’s truly awakened, then I’d like to speak to the miracle in person.”

And no one can say no when a vicar invites himself. Before long the whole population is trooping up to Evert and Auroras house. The men have laid aside their equipment, the women leave their washing lying in the tub and the children are only too happy to come in late to Hoist the teacher’s first lesson. And the teacher himself, quite out of breath, is the last one to join the long, expectant trail of humanity that has designated an ordinary morning in October a holy day.

Arnold sees them from the window. Arnold sees all the approaching faces; the vicar’s red chin shrouded by its black beard, his parents’ nervous hands, Elendius’ quick smiles, the teachers thin hair beneath his wet hat. And all the figures are leaning forward, as if someone’s pushing them from behind, and Arnold knows there and then that they’ve caught up with him, that he’s been overtaken. He was lost, but at that moment he’s found, and it’s now that Arnold Nilsen’s second life begins.

He lies down, shuts his eyes, and hears the vicar whispering out on the doorstep, and it’s both a terrifying comfort and a friendly threat: “I want to speak with the boy alone.” And when Arnold opens his eyes next the vicar is leaning over him in all his might and says, “Tell me. Tell me what it was like to be skin-dead.” Arnold doesn’t know how to respond and so he decides to say nothing. The broad head waits above him, and Arnold searches for some kind of sign, a hint in the man’s face, a clue to follow — anything that might indicate what’s right to reveal or withhold. Then a heavy drop falls from the vicar’s shining nose onto Arnold’s forehead. The vicar lifts an edge of his cloak and wipes the great drop away. “It was fine to begin with,” Arnold says. “But in the end it became a bit depressing.” The vicar nodded slowly. “Yes, I can appreciate that all right. Jesus only endured three days.” Arnold sits up on the bed, and the vicar places his hand on his head and Arnold leans forward. “Look me in the eye,” the vicar says. Arnold looks up as much as he’s able and meets the vicar’s gaze. “You are to honor your father and mother,” the vicar says. “Yes,” Arnold whispers. “You shall honor the sea that is the dwelling place of the fish and the heavens where the birds have their home.” “Yes,” Arnold whispers. “And you shall honor the truth!” “And that too,” Arnold says. The vicar has come even closer, he’s no more than a whisker away. “Yes, not least that!” the vicar cries, and Arnold tumbles backward, but it makes no difference because the vicar follows after. “And what, pray, is the truth?” he asks. Arnold thinks and thinks. He doesn’t know. He’s stuck for an answer. “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry,” he says instead. The expression quivers and breaks into a smile. He breathes deeply, draws his hand over his eyes and smiles, and that smile is just like a bow between laughter and tears. “No,” he says. “That’s exactly what we poor, amazing humans just don’t know. Whether to laugh or to cry.” The vicar gets up and stands in the middle of the floor with his back to Arnold. His cloak is like a black pillar about him. Outside there is the sound of anxious voices. Someone knocks on the door. Apart from that everything’s still. Then the vicar turns back to face Arnold and is about to say more, but Arnold beats him to it, for he has something on his mind. “I want to go away,” he says. “That’s the truth.” The vicar listens and smiles a second time. “You’ve traveled far, Arnold. But you went in the wrong direction, son.” “Thank you,” Arnold whispers. And for a second time he receives the vicar’s hand on his head. “And now it’s time to go back to our people,” the vicar says. “Where we belong.” The following morning Arnold’s there at the schoolroom door, and the whole crowd turns in his direction and someone shouts from the rear bench: “The fatty’s coming!” The laughter tumbles from their faces, and Arnold laughs himself; he laughs and realizes that everyone knows just about everything. Not absolutely everything, for only the vicar knows that — but they know just about everything, and that’s more than enough. For everything he says and has said and will say flits from person to person, words he’d prefer to keep to himself; they’re like a shoal caught in someone else’s nets. And Arnold thinks as he laughs,
It’s too small here. Its too cramped.
And Arnold laughs the loudest of the lot. Then the teacher bangs his pointer on his table and gives Arnold a bow in the sudden ensuing silence. “Welcome back, Arnold Nilsen. Sit down so we don’t think you’re going to leave us again.” Arnold walks between the rows and finds his place. His desk is just as big as it was before the summer. Perhaps it’s even bigger. His feet don’t reach the floor. His feet are left hanging in thin air, heavy as lead. Hoist the teacher comes toward him. He has his hands behind his back. He’s smiling. Perhaps he’s smiling because he’ll leave for the Lofotens that very evening to rest there for fourteen wonderful days. He stops right in front of Arnold. “So you’re going to sell wind?” the teacher says. And the laughter starts once more. The laughter has been skin-dead too and now it’s come back to life. Hoist the teacher lets it take its course, until he’s had enough. Then he stamps hard and the laughter falls away. “But tell me, Arnold Nilsen, are you going to sell wind by the pound or the gallon?” Arnold can’t get a word in because Hoist is thoroughly enjoying himself and is not about to be stopped. “I know,” he goes on. “You’ll sell it by the ton. Quite simply, you’ll find the wind in tons and send it all south so that when it’s calm on the Oslo Fjord — exactly what it is most of the time — and the sailing boats can’t move a jot, they can just open one of Arnold Nilsen’s tons of wind and pour it into the sails!” The class roars. They hang over their desks laughing. Hoist the teacher looks down on Arnold and shoves his pointer under his chin to force him to look up, and Arnold feels the end of it pressing against his throat, against his Adam’s apple, as the laughter keeps pealing about him. “But how are you going to manage to close your containers before the wind’s escaped again, little Arnold?” But now it’s Arnold’s turn to laugh, and he laughs more than all the others put together. “I’ll just put your fat bum on them first,” he replies. There’s utter silence. Hoist the teacher drops the pointer. He barely manages to bend down to pick it up, very slowly, and his breathing is more like quick wheezing. “What did you say, Arnold Nilsen?” “That I’ll just put your fat halibut of a bum on the containers first!” Arnold laughs, and that instant the pointer whams down on the bridge of his nose. Arnold just gapes in amazement at Hoist who is already on his way back to his table to sit down; thereafter he leafs through the hefty register and dips the nib of his pen in ink. It’s at that point Arnold first becomes aware of the pain — it’s like an aftershock, delayed, too late and awful — the blood swells behind his forehead and gushes into his mouth, drips onto the floor in great big drops. And Arnold slides down from his seat, gets up in bewilderment and leaves the classroom; behind him the silence is more profound than ever and Hoist the teacher lets him go. For he has more than enough to do recording incidents in the registers columns, clearer than the black ink with which he’s compiling his account in oblong columns beside appalling test marks, so that future generations will know the barbaric conditions in which he had to work, out here in the very mouth of the sea.

Arnold stops on the doorstep. He glimpses his father down at the dockside. He goes there and his father turns toward him. “Have you gone and fallen again?” he asks. Arnold carefully shakes his head and more blood comes, he has to tilt his head backward and look up at the heavy, gray skies. “No,” he whispers. “I haven’t.” His father takes a step toward him, impatient. “What’s happened then, boy?” “Hoist the teacher caught me with the pointer.” His father bends down. “You mean he hit you?” Arnold nods, equally carefully, as if everything in his face is loose and could fall to pieces at any moment. His father pulls a rag from his pocket, quickly dips it in water and gives it to his son. Arnold wipes away the blood and starts crying, even though he is determined not to. But it stings, it stings so badly and something inside him has shattered. “I think your nose is squint now,” his father tells him, and he takes the blood-soaked rag from Arnold, spits on it and rubs off the marks on his chin, and it amazes the boy that those massive hands can be so gentle. “You’re not crying?” his father asks him. “No,” Arnold replies, and swallows. “Not now.” “That’s good. You won’t die of a crooked nose. Did he really hit you with the pointer?” “Yes, with the full force of it.” His father ponders a moment. Then he starts walking away from the dockside. “Where are you going?” Arnold calls after him. “Don’t go.” But his father doesn’t turn around. “To have a chat with Hoist the teacher.”