The Half Brother: A Novel (11 page)

But Vera kept silent. The Old One waited. The clock chimed a single time again out in the hall. Time was going backward. “Well, all right. If you won’t speak to me, then I can speak to you instead. You heard the telephone ringing all right.” The Old One felt the hesitation; the comb got caught in a tangle of hair and Vera tried to pull it through, hard and fast “You’re not to scalp me, my sweet. Who do you think it was? Who was calling? Boletta? She’s not allowed to call from the Exchange. But it was bound to be her all the same. And then she got cut off. I can’t abide telephones. You always say the wrong thing when you’re speaking on the telephone and can’t look the other person in the eye. Because it’s the eyes that count, you know, not the words. Shouldn’t I know that, Vera, eh? I was silent too in my time, but that was in films. On the screen I was silent and my eyes did the talking for me. We painted our eyelashes green so they’d shine. I could have been a great star, Vera. Bigger than either Greta or Sarah. I really could have! But one day my eyes didn’t shine any more, even though they were so made up I was almost blind.”

The Old One fell silent. She now sensed Vera’s hands behind her. “Well, well, my little hairdresser. Am I done now or are you just fed up with all my old stories? Because I certainly am. All that I’m telling you I’ve heard before. Far too many times. There’s nothing new to add any longer. But perhaps you would fetch me the bottle of Malaga? It’s behind Johannes V Jensen now.”

Vera let go of her hair and went to the bookshelves in the living room. The Old One sat up. She was more bent than usual; soon she would be a whole circle. She had lain down with her red slippers on and both feet had gone to sleep — yes, her feet were the only part of her that ever got any sleep. She tried to rub them but couldn’t reach down, despite being already bent. Instead she just sat and waited for her toes to wake up again. That was what growing old meant — waiting for your toes to wake up. The comb lay by the pillow, full of long, gray hair — it almost resembled a dead animal. Quickly she cleaned the comb and put the hair behind the divan. She shivered and pulled the blanket around her. She heard Vera pulling out
The Lost Land
and
The Glacier,
and at long last she returned with the bottle and a glass, which she carefully filled and then gave her. The Old One held the glass up to the light to see the sun illuminate the brown wine and fall to the bottom like mahogany dust. After she’d seen that she slowly drank up and her back grew soft as straw, and her small, crumpled feet awoke so well they were on the point of getting up and going of their own accord. “Sit here with me for a while,” the Old One said. “We have plenty of time today. Perhaps we could get a photograph taken of us all together? Once Boletta comes back home?” Vera sat on the divan, and the Old One began to comb her hair. It was fine and soft and cascaded so smoothly through her fingers. “Are you looking forward to going to the movies again, Vera? Maybe you could take me with you to the Palace Cinema? Or the Colosseum. I haven’t been to a theater since sound came. Can you imagine that? The last film I saw was
Victoria.
With Louise Ulrich as the heroine. She wasn’t bad, but unfortunately she was German. Oh, no, it was a sad day when they brought in speech. The eyes disappeared. The eyes and the dance disappeared and the mouth took over. Do you know what they used the Palace Cinema for all those years? A potato warehouse! But there’ll be others you’ll want to go to the movies with rather than a
chaise-longue
like me. Anyway, my feet would just go to sleep.” The Old One sighed and put her hand on Vera’s arm. “Your knights in shining armor were here yesterday asking for you, by the way. You can pick them off one by one, Vera, slow as you like. There’s no hurry. For heaven’s sake, don’t hurry. Men are basically like forged banknotes who aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. Apart from Wilhelm, of course. But sometimes it’s more exciting to say no than to say yes. Believe me.”

A tremor went through Vera, and the Old One had to hold her tight a moment. She laid her cheek against Vera’s jutting shoulder and stroked her back, smoothing out the creases in the silk. “Wilhelm gave me this nightgown just after I met him. Imagine that! Giving me a nightgown before we were married! Is it any wonder that I locked my door every night and put the moon and the stars in the keyhole to be sure no one would find a way in? Not in the least. Shall we read some of his letter this evening, Vera? From the part where they’re stuck in the ice.”

Vera bent forward and her hair parted so that her slim neck curved in a white bow. The Old One drank another glass of Malaga and wondered where she had found this great weight of silence. And what frightened the Old One most was that she recognized this silence, as if it had come as an inheritance and had consumed Vera with even greater intensity. Her silence was loud within her. “Did you think it was Rakel who wanted to talk to you just now?” the Old One whispered. Vera shut her eyes. “Because don’t believe that, Vera. Waiting without hope only prevents you from living yourself. I know that. I’ve waited so long now that it’s too late to give up. I’m still waiting, Vera. And I’ve used up my nine lives many times over. Those who are silly and sentimental amaze me. But I know better. Hope is a tired and feeble old lady.”

The Old One turned to Vera again and it was then she noticed it, a mark on her neck, a nick in the skin with tiny capillaries of blood extending outward from it. At the moment she noticed it and was about to raise her hand, the kitchen doorbell rang. Vera sat up. Her hair fell back into place. The Old One thumped her fist into the divan. “If that’s the wretched handyman again, I’ll knot his tie once and for all! Don’t be surprised if you hear screams, Vera!”

The Old One went out barefoot into the kitchen and opened the door. And there was the caretaker as before, the same enormous bow hanging from his lapel, except that it was tied askew now, and his breath was so bad it could have stripped the paint off the walls. He leaned forward in an attempt to execute a bow. The Old One narrowed her eyes and waved him away like a fly. “What do you want now? Is there a stone missing from the gravel? Is peace giving you a headache?”

Bang stood tall again, but his gaze was fixed somewhere down by the Old One’s foot. “I only wanted to inform you that you have left your clothes basket up in the loft.” “And?” “I also wanted to say that I can fetch it and have no objection to bringing it down to you.” “But I
do
object, young man. Thank you very much and goodbye.”

The Old One shut the door in his face and waited until she could hear him limping down the steps talking to himself. And when the caretaker talked to himself like that it was generally about the triple jump and records he’d have broken if it hadn’t been for injury, envy and fate in general, and he got himself pretty worked up when he talked like that. But the Old One trotted back to Vera and sat down with her again, passed the comb through her dry hair and lifted it so she could see her neck again — so thin it was that the Old One could almost have cried. She tried to laugh. “Men always go in the same suit regardless. Whether it’s a wedding or a funeral, war or peace, they’ll have on the same worn suit. Except for Wilhelm. He never wore a suit. Have I told you about the last night he was with me? I’m bound to have, but I’ll tell you again all the same. I let him in, even though I’d locked the door beforehand with three different keys and put a whole constellation in the keyhole. He was to leave the next day with the SS
Antarctic.
I was your age, Vera, and I was bleeding so heavily right then I thought I’d die, that there’d be no blood left in my heart. And so he came to me, Vera, through all the locks, or maybe I’d forgotten to turn the last key, who knows? And he lay down so quietly with me and stopped the blood. That was our first and last time. Our first and last.”

The Old One fell silent and let go of Vera’s hair. The nick on her neck wasn’t the result of scratching. It resembled a bite mark, a blue dent in the skin made by teeth. She felt a sudden chill pass through her. “What was it that happened up there in the loft, my child?” she whispered. “Was someone bad to you?” Vera sank into her lap and wept silently — that was her only answer — a great wave that passed through her body until no more tears remained. And the Old One sensed a rage rising inside her, a rage that was the other side of sorrow, and of that sorrow she had already had her fill. Yet it was sorrow that nourished her, that gave her strength, that powered her heart. She stroked Vera’s cheek and believed that if someone, if anyone at all really had interfered with her then she would hunt them to their death. “There, there,” she said, her voice lilting and soft. “There, there. It’ll pass. Everything passes. Even a world war. And now I think I’ll go up to the loft to fetch our things.”

Vera gripped her arm. “It’s all right, little one,” the Old One told her. “I’m not afraid of the dark any more. And that way we can avoid having the handyman around again.” Vera’s hand fell onto her lap. “Do you want to come with me? Or don’t you feel like it?” Vera remained where she was, looking into space, her eyes troubled and trembling. “All right, then. I’ll just go myself. And later you can borrow Boletta’s dress. And don’t forget that photograph we’re going to have taken.”

The Old One put on her red slippers, a long coat over her nightgown, and a broad hat since it was always so drafty in the loft, even now in May and in the middle of the day. And when Vera saw her in this getup she suddenly began laughing, she had to cover her mouth and the Old One laughed too.
Yes, laugh, my child,
she thought —
laugh at me and fill these rooms with laughter.
The nightgown hung below her coat and the hat was askew, but this was hardly the time to worry about it either. “Should I take my stick with me? Yes, I surely will. Oh, stick! Where have I put you?”

And for safety’s sake she took the key to the bathroom with her too, and she began to struggle up the long staircase. She noticed that the doors were ajar on every level as she passed, and the eyes were no doubt watching her. But the Old One couldn’t have cared less; nor was she the type to tiptoe past, rather she banged her stick against the banister rail so they would know she was coming, and the doors closed silently again once she had passed.

She was aware of the wind as soon as she reached the loft — it was as if the whole building was softly whistling. She went along the corridor, past the storerooms. The stroller was still on its side with the logs that had fallen from it; there was a ski strap in national colors and an empty brown bottle gently rocking. The clothes basket was standing in the middle of the floor, beneath the loose lines from which a single gray woolen sock was still hanging. A dove was sitting right up on the comer roof beam. The Old One opened the attic window with a long pole that lay there for that use, and she stamped hard three times, but the dove didn’t move. She waved the stick at it but it was to no avail, the dove remained where it was and might have been dead. The Old One muttered to herself, unpinned the sock and lifted the basket — but immediately put it down again. Because in the thin layer of dust on the white floorboards she saw several footprints, and they were bigger than any Vera’s small feet would leave. And then she spotted something else. In among the clothes in the basket there was a button, a clear and shiny button, and one that didn’t belong to them. She picked it up. A black thread was still fastened to it. Someone had lost it there. Someone had been there, and a button had been torn from a jacket. The Old One put it into her coat pocket, hooked the stick over her arm, carried the basket down to the apartment and immediately telephoned Dr. Schultz in Bislet. He had been to see them before, several times now, when Vera was suffering her various childhood illnesses and screamed both day and night. Dr. Schultz came over from Bislet and generally advised
fresh air
— fresh air was definitely his best medicine — and he went as far as to call Nordmarka the great pharmacist. One could walk into that wild country summer and winter and get as much fresh air as one wanted — and all of it for free. Consequently it was with real unwillingness that the Old One telephoned him now, but there was simply no other doctor she could imagine contacting. When Dr. Schultz eventually answered, his voice sounded slurred and impatient. He could just about guarantee looking in that evening, as long as he wasn’t dispatched to other locations in the city; the fight was far from over yet — something each and every citizen should be damn clear about — with the danger of desperate Germans and native traitors striking back at any time. There had already been skirmishes and loss of life — these were the last twitchings of war, the final writhings of the vanquished before the
rigor mortis
of defeat. And Dr. Schultz from Bislet couldn’t shirk his duty now at this late stage; he had to be prepared to intervene on behalf of wounded patriots, he had to be at his post. The Old One sighed and put down the receiver; she hid the button she had picked up in her jewelry box in the bedroom and then went in to see Vera. She was sitting on the divan and hadn’t moved a muscle. The Old One thought that now she resembled the bird on the roof beam, and she tapped three times on the door frame just to be sure. “Now well get the dresses ready,” she said, “and after that well play patience and drink some Malaga.”

Vera slowly followed her into the kitchen and once there they ironed the dresses and Vera put on the green one, Boletta’s. It was far too big for her, but the Old One brought it in at the waist by pinning each side and then together they stood in front of the tall mirror in the hall. Vera looked down. Vera looked away. She refused to meet her own gaze. The Old One put her arm around her. “Look,” she told her, “you’ve caught up with me. I’ve begun to grow down instead. I’ll soon be standing with my head in the ground.” And they were still standing like that in their finery in front of the mirror when Boletta arrived home, white and perturbed. She got no farther than the door and stared at them amazed — for a moment almost relieved. “You look lovely, Vera,” she breathed. And Vera lifted the hem of her skirt and hurried back into the dining room. Boletta watched her go. “Has she said anything?” “We have to clean the windows,” the Old One said. “Before long the sunlight won’t get through.” Boletta gripped her mother’s arm. “Has she spoken? Has she said anything?” The Old One looked in the mirror again. “My time’s over,” she grumbled. “I look like a lonely circus.” Boletta was at the breaking point. “Could you stop talking like a whole circus too?” The Old One sighed. “Your headache’s back. You should have a nap instead of shouting.” Boletta closed her eyes and breathed deeply. “Can you answer my question?” “Did you bring anything nice with you? I’d love hot chocolate with butter!” Boletta had to support herself against the wall. “What has she said? Do I need to drag it out of you?” The Old One sighed again, but even more deeply now. “She hasn’t said a word, Boletta. But she’s combed my hair, if you hadn’t noticed. And there’s another thing, I feel we should hoist the flag on the balcony. We seem to be the only ones who don’t have a flag flying today.” Boletta wanted to go after Vera. But the Old One stopped her. “Let Vera have a bit of peace.” Boletta stood there and smoothed her brow. “Are you sure we shouldn’t call the doctor?” “Be quiet!” the Old One hissed. “I’ve called the idiot already.”