The Half Brother

Thirteen hours in Berlin and I was already a wreck. The telephone was ringing. I could hear it. It woke me. But I was somewhere else. I was somewhere nearby. I was unplugged. I wasn’t earthed. I had no dialling tone, just a heart that went on beating heavily and out of sync. The telephone kept ringing. I opened my eyes, from a flat, imageless darkness. Now I could see my hand. It wasn’t a particularly beautiful sight. It came closer. It felt my face, investigating, as if it had woken up with a stranger in bed - attached to another man’s arm. The stubby fingers suddenly made me queasy. I lay there. The phone kept on ringing. I could hear low voices and, now and then, moaning; had someone already answered the telephone for me? But why was it still ringing then? Why was there someone else in my room? Had I not gone to bed alone after all? I turned round. I could see that the sounds were coming from the television. Two men were forcing themselves on a woman. She hardly looked enthusiastic, just indifferent. She had a tattoo on one of her bottom cheeks - a butterfly - and the choice of site was unfortunate. Her thighs were covered with bruises. The men were overweight and pale, and they barely had erections, but that didn’t stop them - they grunted loudly as they took her from every possible angle. It looked awkward and lugubrious. The woman’s indifference was for a moment replaced by pain; a grimace twisted her face as one of the men slapped his flaccid cock across her mouth and hit her. My hand left my face. A moment later the picture was gone. If I punched in my room number I could watch twelve more hours of pay TV. I didn’t want to see any more. I didn’t even remember my room number. I lay sideways across the bed, with my suit jacket half off, probably after an attempt to undress and go to bed properly. I obviously hadn’t got far before the bulb went in the innermost cubbyhole in the west wing of my head. Yes, one shoe was lying on the window sill. Had I actually stood there admiring the view, or had I been thinking of something else altogether? Possible. Impossible. I had no idea. One of my knees was hurting. I found my hand again. I shoved it towards the bedside table and, as it hung there like some sick, wide-spanned bird above a white rat blinking with one single red eye, the phone stopped ringing. The hand flew back home. The quiet washed back and pulled down the tight zip in my neck, and licked my spine with an iron tongue. I didn’t move for a good while. I had to get myself into water. The green bubble of air had to find calm soon in the capsized flesh, in the hollow of the soul. I could remember nothing. The great eraser had rubbed me out, as on so many occasions before. And the erasers I had already used up were not few. I only remembered what I was called, for who can forget such a name as Barnum? Barnum! Who do these parents really think they are, who condemn their sons and daughters to life sentences behind the iron gates of their own names? Can’t you just change your name, as someone who didn’t know what they were talking about once suggested? But it doesn’t help. A name will pursue you with double the shame if you try to get rid of it. Barnum! For half my life I’d lived with that name. I was on the point of liking it. That was the worst of it. All of a sudden I noticed I was holding something in my other hand, a card key, a plain flat piece of plastic with a number of holes in a particular pattern which one could shove into the door’s cash dispenser to empty the room’s account, so long as it hadn’t been overdrawn by previous occupants who’d left behind only nail clippings under the bed and a hollow in the mattress. I could have been anywhere. A room in Oslo, a room on Røst, a room without a view. My suitcase was standing on the floor - the old, silent suitcase, still not opened, and empty anyway, no applause in it, just a manuscript, some rushed pages. I’d come and gone. That’s me. Come and gone and crawled back again. But I could still read. Over the chair by the window the hotel’s white dressing gown was draped. And on it I could see the hotel’s name. Kempinski. Kempinski! Then I heard the city. I could hear Berlin. I could hear the diggers in the east and the church bells in the west. Slowly I got up. The day was in full swing. It had started without me. And now suddenly I remembered something. I had an appointment. The telephone’s red eye kept blinking. There was a message for me. I didn’t give a damn. Who other than Peder could be calling and leaving messages right now? Of course it would be Peder. He could wait. Peder was good at waiting. I had taught him the art. No-one with half a brain had meetings before breakfast on the first morning in Berlin - except Peder, my friend, my partner, my agent - he had appointments before breakfast, because Peder was in charge. It was twenty-eight minutes past twelve. The numbers were illuminated square and green beneath the lifeless TV screen, and became twelve-thirty precisely between two irregular heartbeats. I dragged off my clothes, opened the minibar and drank two Jägermeisters. They stayed where they were. I drank one more, and went out to the bathroom and vomited for safety’s sake. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten. The toilet roll seal was unbroken. I hadn’t even been to the loo yet. Then I brushed my teeth, slung on the dressing gown, stuck my feet in the hotel’s white slippers, and before going out saw that the telephone’s red eye was still staring at me. But Peder could just wait; that was his job. Peder could waffle on until the room he sat in was on fire.