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
Similar Books
