The Half Brother

by Lars Saabye Christensen

  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.