The Half Brother: A Novel (10 page)

The Director smiles and motions for her to sit down. Boletta remains standing, looking straight at him. Once upon a time he was perhaps a good-looking man. Now he has outgrown his own face, and even a world war has made no impression on the double chins that roll the length of his collar in waves of pale fat and are too heavy for him to raise — his head bobs forward in the space between. He lights his pipe and takes his time. Boletta waits. She holds her hands behind her back and can look anyone in the face now. “Yes, yes,” Egede says at last. “It’s good that it’s over.” Boletta says nothing to this. But it amazes her that he can go around the garden path like this. She doesn’t like it. Her rage is in danger of cooling. “Yes, thank God,” she says, nonetheless, her voice low. Egede puts down his pipe in the ashtray and dries the corners of his mouth.
This is it,
Boletta thinks and clenches her fists behind her back.
Now he’s going to tell me that enough is enough.
“And all is well with your family?” he asks. Boletta doesn’t know what to say. She just nods. Egede looks up. “Your mother is an actress, is she not?” Boletta becomes even more bewildered. “Yes,” she replies. “But that was a long time ago.” “Yes, it must be back in the days of the silent movies. In all honesty I miss the silent movies.” Egede gets up, and it takes a time for him to leave that deep chair. “And you yourself have a daughter, is that not so?” “Yes. I have a daughter.” Boletta feels a spark of anger now.
If his game is to try to embarrass and humiliate me before he gives me the sack, then let him just try.
She has nothing to be ashamed of. She’d happily clean out that pipe in the middle of his face. “And how old is she now?” “She’ll be twenty this summer.” Egede shakes his head and sighs. “It’s sad to see our young ones cast aside by the war. Has she left school now?” Boletta is still more bewildered. She has no idea what he’s driving at, and that’s perhaps the worst of it. She decides to be polite in her answers, but to say no more than is necessary. “She has completed secondary school.” “I see.” Egede goes over to the window. He remains standing there with his back to her, looking out over the city. “What does your daughter herself think of pursuing?” “She’s very eager to work with photography.” Egede turns to face Boletta and laughs. “Photography? Has the young lady ambitions to become a photographer?” Boletta swallows, she has to swallow to make any kind of answer at all, and she curses this dressed-up pile of suet for daring to laugh in her face like this. And yet as soon as she begins to speak again she hears the meekness and politeness of her own voice; it’s as if she has always too much in her mouth and should be ashamed of herself. “What she’s really thought of is getting a job at a photographer’s.” Egede brushes the answers away with his hand as if he’s suddenly fed up listening to all this, even though it was he who pursued the matter to begin with. He sits down heavily once more and Boletta doesn’t say a word, she is silent and would be glad not to make another sound. “You’ve been here many years now,” he says, his tone suddenly friendly again, almost flattering. Boletta lets out her breath and has no idea where all this is going. Egede lights his pipe again and the tobacco smells stale. Boletta feels the urge to turn away, but she remains rooted to the spot.
This is it,
she thinks. Now he’s raised her as high as possible and can let her drop like a stone.

“It won’t happen again,” she mutters. Egede looks at her. The pipe hangs crooked from his thick lips. “Happen again? What won’t happen again?” “My arriving late. But this morning all the clocks were wrong.” Egede gives her a long look and then laughs again. He puts the pipe down once and for all and a fit of coughing puts an end to his laughter; when he recovers his voice sufficiently he asks, “Would you like to move up a couple of floors?” Boletta can hardly believe her own ears and has to lean forward a moment. She is aware that her expression must be completely silly. “To the fourth floor?” she whispers. “There’s no need to look so frightened.” Boletta takes a step backward and tries to look sensible. “You mean to the Exchange office?” “That’s precisely what I mean. We need more operators there. And we need women with experience. As you have. A great deal of experience.” Suddenly Egede looks away as if he’s caught himself saying something improper. Boletta likes seeing him like that. Somehow it gives her the upper hand. She composes herself. She should be pleased, grateful. She can rise to where there are no more headaches. She smiles. “I only have experience with the main switchboard,” she points out. Egede shrugs his shoulders. “We give courses. It’s easy work. For someone like you.” Egede taps the ash from his pipe. Boletta can see that the mouthpiece is almost completely chewed away. The man has something of his own to struggle with — a conscience. All at once she feels sorry for him. He has a thick black stripe under the nail of the middle finger which he uses to fill his pipe. A white dust like a halo encircles his thin, dry hair whenever now and again he makes a sudden movement. Like now. He gets up quickly, as if he’s aware of a change in Boletta’s expression and wants to recover the reins. “So what do you say to my offer, then?” Boletta knows what she wants to say all right, but she bides her time, she wants to savor this as long as possible. When Egede sees her hesitating, he sits down again heavily as if forgetting he got up only moments ago, and rests his elbows on the desk. “Well, well. You can think about it. Of course there’s no hurry. But all the posts will have to be filled by the autumn.”

Egede looks down and starts leafing through some papers, and Boletta nods, she doesn’t curtsey this time but gives a hint of bow and moves backward toward the door. But as she puts her hand to the gilt handle of the Director’s office door in the building known in the streets as the Telegraph Palace, but which inside I christened the Telegraph Cathedral, Egede raises his arm and looks once more at Boletta. She lets go her hold and stands there silent while a new anxiety begins to grow in her, that somehow all this has been too good to be true, that life itself had taught her that there’s plenty that’s too good to be true, and that triumphs are shorter-lived than disappointment. “There can’t be many such photography jobs?” he asks. “No,” Boletta breathes. Egede gets up and comes over to her. “If you do accept my generous offer, there’ll be a position vacant down at the switchboard, is that not so?” “Yes,” Boletta replies. “That’s true.” “And then it would be very convenient if your daughter were to take it. You could show her the ropes.” Boletta looks right at him and smiles. “It’s very kind of you. But that isn’t going to happen.” Egede’s eyes darken, bewildered. “Isn’t going to happen? What do you mean?” “As I said, my daughter has other plans. But thank you all the same.”

Boletta reaches for the door handle once more, and at the same moment feels his hand on her shoulder. Slowly she turns and sees his fingers hanging there, almost like a large insect that had crept mistakenly over her. Now she knows. This was where he wanted to go — right there. “I will let you know tomorrow,” she tells him. “Oh, there’s no hurry. Take your time.” Egede lets his hand fall over her arm and the black nail scratches over her dress, making a low crackling. “May I go now?” The Director takes out his watch, opens it and studies the hands for a long time. Then he snaps it shut and puts it back in his waistcoat pocket. He looks at Boletta, his expression no longer dark — just gray and indifferent. “Pity,” he says. “Your daughter would have fitted in well here. Since she won’t have considered marrying right away?” Boletta laughs. She laughs out loud, her hand over her mouth. She can’t believe what he’s standing there saying. “Won’t she? That’s not so unlikely.” Now it’s Egede’s turn to laugh; his chins ripple beneath his face. But suddenly he’s silent and his head almost tips forward, as if all this has tired him enormously. “And who do you think will want to marry an illegitimate child?” he breathes. “What did you say?” “You can go now.” Boletta clenches her fist. “My daughter is as legitimate as anyone else’s!”

Boletta hears the door closing behind her. She crosses the tiled floor and hears the sound of her own steps, but almost delayed, as if all her senses are still catching up with her. Three men appear from the control room and pay no attention to her. She has to clasp the banister as she goes down the stairs. She sneaks into the toilet on the half landing and washes her hands; it stinks of tobacco and ash, and when she looks at her reflection in the mirror she’s almost astonished that it’s her own face she sees there. She feels the desire to be sick, but drinks some water instead and waits until her breathing has eased. She fixes her hair and her skirt, then walks the last bit down to the switchboard, sits at her place, plugs in, as all of them look at her. Out of their minds with curiosity, wondering what in the world happened for her to be so long with Egede. The manageress herself is on the point of quizzing her, but Boletta sits there as solid as stone; she looks neither to the left nor to the right and meets no one’s gaze, and never will she reveal a jot of her conversation with Director Egede. Then she does something forbidden, but she has nothing more to lose — that’s how she thinks at the moment, that she has nothing more to lose — she connects to her own telephone number, she sneaks into the line, breaks into the ingenious network, and in the silent rooms of the apartment in Church Road the black telephone begins to ring.

The Button

Vera heard the ringing, far away, on the other side of sleep, of war; she heard the telephone that no one answered. She got up slowly, surprised, and went out into the hall and found herself there so suddenly that she couldn’t remember the distance, the seconds, from the bed to there, as if she had been cut straight from one room to the other. The telephone continued to ring and inside the dining room Vera could see the Old One lying with her back to her on the divan, her hair a great gray tangled mane about her shoulders. Did Vera hope that it might be Rakel, her Jewish girlfriend, who was calling? If Rakel had indeed come back home she wouldn’t phone, rather she could come racing across the yard and up the kitchen stairs to throw her arms around Vera, and Vera would tell her everything. Yet maybe she’d had an accident, had broken her leg perhaps, or else something different had happened that meant she had to phone instead, so quickly Vera lifted the receiver of the black contraption. Its numbers operated back to front, so that when you put your finger in the frame of the nine, turned it right around and let go so that the spring would return the dial to its normal setting and break the connection, it was broken just once, not nine times, and in this way only one impulse would be transmitted to the Exchange. So nine corresponds to one, eight to two, seven to three — that was the way the back-to-front Oslo telephone worked. Just as Vera picked up the receiver, a split second later, as if the threads of time had been severed, there was nothing but the dial tone — the humming of the network like wind in an electric forest. She was out of reach, out of reach of the conversation, and just as quickly as she had lifted the receiver she replaced it. The silence carried from room to room and left its mark in the light. The Old One lay still on the divan. Why was she lying there now? Why was Vera wearing the Old One’s Chinese nightgown? The clock from Bien struck the half hour. Vera turned abruptly and everything came back to her — the memory opened like a wound. She ran to the bathroom, leaned over the sink and drank from the tap. She didn’t have the courage to look in the mirror. She checked carefully under her nightgown and the towels were dry, she was dry. There was no longer any pain. That amazed her. There should have been pain. She would rather have had some sort of pain to make her forget. She was just thirsty. In the bath there was a wide band of dirt, as if the water had dried to dust along its edges. She opened the cabinet above the sink and caught the smell of Boletta’s heavy perfume. It almost made her sick. Maybe Rakel had been calling from abroad, from somewhere very far away and the connection had been broken — she was bound to call again when she reached another telephone, one that was nearer home, in Denmark or Sweden, where the connection was better. For just a moment she felt happy at that thought. She took the comb that was lying on the Old One’s shelf, shut the cabinet and looked up in spite of herself — at her face in the mirror. There was a shadow along the length of her cheek, a cut in her forehead. With a bit of powder it would be invisible. What was it possible to see? Something in her eyes? Something in her mouth when she opened it? On her tongue? Had he been there too, in her mouth? Vera couldn’t remember. All she could remember was a missing finger and a bird on the clothesline. She went in to the Old One, sat on the divan, carefully lifted her gray hair and began combing it. The clock in the hall chimed twice. The Old One’s hair smelled sweet, of earth and foliage. “Did you think I was asleep?” she whispered. But Vera made no reply. She just kept combing. Her lips were locked. “I never quite sleep, you know. When I sleep it’s just another way of waiting.” The Old One sighed and lifted her head a little. “I like you combing my hair, Vera. It makes me think of the sea. Of beaches of sand. It brings back good memories. I’ll do your hair later. We don’t need to go to some hairdresser’s, do we?” The Old One listened but heard only the sound of Vera’s fingers. “You can talk to me, my love. I won’t hear you anyway. My ear was damaged, you know. In the terrible explosion of 1943. I don’t quite remember which of my ears it was, but I’m just as deaf in the other one too, so it makes no difference. So speak to me, if there’s anything you want to tell me, my little Vera. I won’t hear a thing.”