The Half Brother by Lars Saabye Christensen

Author:Lars Saabye Christensen
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Contemporary, Fiction
ISBN: 9781559707152
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Published: 2002-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Nude

There was a naked man standing in Peder’s living room. He was standing completely still, his arms folded, and it looked as if he were thinking intently about something, or else about nothing at all. His skin was smooth and golden, his muscles well defined and taut over his tall, thin body — and I didn’t dare take in any more than that. He was naked and standing in Peder’s living room. My first thought was that it must be his brother, but Peder didn’t have a brother, and besides, this fellow was at least thirty years old, so that idea was ruled out. “Quiet,” Peder whispered, and took hold of my arm before I’d so much as said a word. We stood in the hall behind a stand stuffed with scarves, coats and hats. “Mom’s working,” he said, his voice even lower than before. And now I could see her too. She sat in a deep chair by the window, over which the curtain was closed, drawing on a sheet of paper. Now and again she looked up, squinted and held the pencil in front of her, as if she were measuring the height under the ceiling. Then she bent over the paper once more. Now I observed that it was no ordinary chair she was sitting in either. There were wheels on it. It was a wheelchair. The naked man still hadn’t moved a muscle. I held my breath too. He might as well have been dead, dead and magnificent and standing tall. Peder all but leaned inside my ear. “I think Mom’s got a crush on him,” he breathed. “She’s been working for three months on just his face.” He gave a small laugh, and now it was her turn to look at us. “Hi, boys!” she exclaimed, stuck the pencil in her mouth, and came over the floor in her chair. She extended her hand, and I took it. She had a big blanket around her that almost buried her completely. But I remember her great, beautiful head of hair — it was auburn, it glowed and shone, as if she always wore a soft crown. “You must be Barnum,” she said. I nodded. “And you had forgotten that Barnum was to be having dinner with us today,” Peder said, and took the pencil from her mouth. “That I hadn’t,” she laughed. “We’ll have food on the table all right. Look here, Barnum.” She showed me her drawing. “It isn’t finished, but what’s your opinion?” I liked the fine, quick strokes. If you closed one eye and just looked at it with the other, it suddenly became quite different, as if the lines went the opposite way and represented something else entirely But I could see what she’d drawn all the same. The face wasn’t quite right, but the rest was unmistakable. Peder sighed. “Don’t plague Barnum,” he said. His mother sighed too. “I’m not plaguing Barnum. I just want to know what he thinks of it, Peder.

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