Brother Mine

("Brør Min")


     It was really a bad boy that I had run up against. He was very mean to me and led me to embitter several days of my life figuring on revenge.
     At the age of sixteen one can both love and hate. When we reach the thirties, we only "like" or "dislike," and become reasonable.


     I was sixteen, and I was plotting revenge. The sum total of all corruption and all meanness was stalking about in the world wearing a high, white collar, a red necktie and a stiff hat. All his shabby tricks and all his silly, nauseating ways were so obvious. Clearly and distinctly it was impressed upon my mind that he must be punished, that I must avenge myself upon him.
     Everything was to be returned tenfold, everything that he had done against me he would have to pay with interest and compound interest. I piled up evidence against him, every little thing had to be counted, and around every little thing circumstances were grouping themselves, and blacker and blacker he became. Nothing of all that he had done would be forgotten.
     I would make him suffer for this trick as well as that. He would have to pay for everything.
     The fact that not everybody else could see his meanness as clearly as I only increased my indignation. With a mingled feeling of sadness and bitterness I realized that the sense of justice is not strong in this world, since there were people who failed to see through him as I did. There were also acccomplices: people who in spite of better knowledge took his side. That I was right seemed clear as day.


     Then I dreamt about him one night. It must have been a bad dream, a nightmare; for I was wrestling with him, I felt how my hate and thirst for revenge gave me strength to crush him down beneath me.
     And now I had him. Now he would get it. Right in his face I would strike him—now I would make him pay.
     But there was something that paralyzed my arm. My fist would not clench itself for a blow. Beneath me I could now see a face, not of my enemy, though I still took it to be his—but this was a child's face, all swollen from weeping.
     And it was more than this, it was my brother—one that I had lost and forgotten. It was my brother that I had struggled so hard to break down beneath me.
     In fact, I had once lost a brother, whom death took away from me. That was my first great sorrow; but this was not the one.
     Yet this one was my brother, too. Now I knew it all at once. He had been lost to me, and I had forgotten him—now I understood—
     A feeling of strong joy came upon me; but there also came strong remorse, for I was just on the very point of striking him.
     And he was not only my brother, but he ws small and helpless. Besides, someone had been mean to him, for he was red with weeping, and disconsolate. And it was I who had been mean to him, because I had not known. . .
     "And I came so very near striking him," I thought, and raised him up to me.


     Not that I could stop his bitter weeping now. Maybe it was too late. Oh, that he would only stop weeping! And it must have been my fault.
     I wished to speak to him, tell him that I was about to strike him, that I did not know him at first, that I was fond of him, that I would never hurt him. But I could not speak. On the contrary, my throat was convulsed with violent efforts to weep.
     I no longer had an enemy beneath me to avenge myself upon, but I had a weeping and disconsolate little brother in my arms, and an injustice to make amends for.


     His tear-stained eyes did not recognize me.
     If I had only known—
     But I could not check my own weeping, much less his.


     Suppose I had struck him? I thought, and forgot I had an enemy. For this was my brother, and he was small and helpless. I came very near doing him an injustice, because I did not know—


     No revenge was taken. At the age of sixteen it is so easy to forgive. It is when we come up into the thirties that wrongs must be properly atoned for and settled, and one must be roundly abused with all the decorum which the age of manhood requires.
     My enemy was not my brother; there was not a trace of consanguinity between us. And yet we were no doubt relatives, for we had many peculiarities in common.
     An unkind word, for instance, would stir up his feelings, and he harbored a bit of vanity which was easily wounded. He screamed when someone stepped on his toes, and had an innate inclination to return a blow when he was assaulted.
     In short, there were many things that indicated that we were related to one another.
     And when I think of him now, where he is, I do it with joy, as when one thinks of a brother whom he has lost and forgotten but found again.

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