The Half Brother: A Novel by Lars Saabye Christensen Page A

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 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