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.”
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 c
ould 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 rem
ained 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.”