The Half Brother

by Lars Saabye Christensen

  She peeped in on Vera. She was asleep, and at that moment, in such light, she resembled the child she had been, not so very long ago.

  The Old One heard the bang of the door and the quick steps on the stairs. She clasped her hands over her breast and gave up a short prayer, almost shameful, for hadn’t God, if He was indeed somewhere in us or between us, in the power of word and thought, enough to sort out as it was?

  The Telegraph Exchange

  Eighteen women sit beside each other in front of the switchboard on the first floor of the Telegraph Exchange, and the nineteenth still hasn’t got there even though its already nineteen minutes to ten. Seat number eight from the right is not occupied, and Boletta hurries through the low, rounded room and just manages to hang up her coat by the director’s table before taking her seat, for she has seen Miss Stang. The manageress herself (she is the one who has been here longest), and the one, as a result, who has the stiffest neck and the most frequent headaches, makes a careful note in her logbook, and gives Boletta a hard stare as the newcomer plugs in and affixes earphones and microphone. The other women turn toward her momentarily and give her a resigned smile. Everything’s chaotic today anyway. Today the network is in tatters. Today all that can be done is to make the best of it, and there are just these nineteen women and the manageress controlling Norway now. They send signals along power lines across mountains, in cables beneath towns; they weave in to the right apparatus in this apartment and that home, so all of a sudden it rings and someone can lift the receiver to hear a voice they thought was lost, the voice of someone they may love who has something precious and beautiful to say. And they connect all these voices to conversations, they bind the country tight with threads of words, in a flood of sound waves, they open the lines to a thrill of electricity, they conduct this language and decide who it is who gets through. A fisherman from Nyksund will talk to his daughter, who is a maid in Gabel Street. A woman from T0nsberg wants to be put through to Room 204 at the Bristol. A girl from Hamar is trying to find her fiance and begs tearfully for the numbers to Victoria Terrace, 19 M0ller Street, and each and every hospital across the city. Someone too wants to call Grini, and a teacher from Drammen is searching for a colleague in Vads0, but Finnmark is closed, Finnmark is still out of touch and it never ends, there’s a line on the lines from Stockholm and Copenhagen and London, they’re red hot and the relays are burning and sometimes the lines get crossed and several conversations end up confused on the same line. But it doesn’t matter, because today everything is chaotic anyway — a true chaos — for peace has broken out and these nineteen women, Boletta number eight from the right, are Norway’s shadow cabinet. I saw them once, and I remember it with a curious clarity and intensity, because it was the day both the Old One and King Haakon died. I was seven and Mom had fetched me from school and taken me with her to the Exchange to tell Boletta, to tell her that the Old One had died in a traffic accident and that Fred was in Ullevål Hospital, uninjured, but in shock and unable to talk. We went first into the enormous public hall, and I saw the painting that all but covered the furthermost wall inside, and then we went up to the first floor, the switchboard, and Mom stood in the doorway and held my hand. We couldn’t see Boletta among the women who sat there, all thin and in black they were, and I believed they already knew the Old One was dead, that that was why they were so gloomy and gaunt, but that was impossible since only Mom and I knew that the Old One had been knocked over at the Palace Park, when she went there with Fred to look at the mourning wreath that hung from the balcony on the day of King Haakon’s passing — September 21, 1957. But at that moment I imagined there was nothing they didn’t know, for after all they heard everything that was being said, and now they were passing it on, that the Old One was dead. They talked and talked into tiny mouthpieces and wore heavy ear muffs that crackled, and as we stood looking for Boletta an even older woman came over to us (she was in black too), and with a completely bent neck as if her head had been screwed on at the wrong angle and couldn’t move. And she asked, in a not over-friendly way, what we wanted, and Mom said that we were looking for Jebsen — it was so strange when she said it, her whole name, Boletta Jebsen. Was it perhaps her break now? Then the woman smiled as crookedly as her head was fixed, and told us that Boletta Jebsen didn’t work here any longer, at this very switchboard, because she had been moved down to the basement several years ago, and were we not aware of that? Mom went red and all funny, and we went down to the public hall again and she asked me to wait there while she went to fetch Boletta. I stayed there in the high vaulted hall and looked at Alf Rolf sen’s fresco. There were only men in the picture, men clearing broad swathes through forests, men heaving cables across mountains and under towns, men erecting telegraph posts. It was a heavy, precise ballet of labor, and these pictures resembled sacred stories, as I remember them now, like the stations of the cross. And after that it was the women who blessed this labor by connecting it — connecting the electric signals in relays and sending them off on their journeys. And perhaps it’s just me adding to my own recollection, connecting my writing and pictures to the memory in some great dialogue with myself, but I state it nonetheless — I was seven years old and I believed I was standing in a church. The telegraph building in Tolbu Street became a cathedral, that day the Old One and King Haakon died and Fred was struck dumb, and the thin black-clad women were souls in mourning who called on God through their cords and apparatus. I remember Mom being gone a good while. Then at last she came back, alone, and she still hadn’t found Boletta. “She must be eating,” she whispered. And now we went to the canteen, but she wasn’t eating. She was standing behind the counter serving coffee. When we sat together in the taxi to go up to Ullevål Hospital, Boletta said that coincidence knew no limits; the Old One had come to Norway in 1905, the very year King Haakon came, and now they had left this life on the very same day. “God has to have a sense of humor,” she said, and lit a cigarette. Mom was suddenly enraged and told her to be quiet, but all this is far in the future, and I should realize that myself, that one shouldn’t break a narrative like this. How many times have editors scrapped a flashback, without even bothering to read it, for flashbacks mean trouble, and flashforward even more. These become the detritus of the editing room, and on the occasions when I have painstakingly researched poetic retrospective reflections, as well as all the anticipated memories, I’ve been told that what you can’t convey in the present tense, in hard currency, is nothing but bullshit and artistic ambition that you can take back home and make short films with.

  And instead I cut back to Boletta, to where she’s sitting number eight from the right on that first day after the end of the war, threading the electric signals through the country as she thinks of Vera. But there isn’t time to think of anything other than the conversations that have to be connected, for everyone in the country is falling over each other to get a word in edgeways and Boletta is in the present tense, she is now. She is aware of an incipient headache; it creeps along her neck and spreads out toward her forehead like a magnetic wind — and they call the pain Morse. For it will attack sooner or later and render many of them sleepless and nerve-racked, and when finally one o’clock comes Boletta can go to the staff room along with half the duty team, but the conversations continue in there — conversations that have to be listened to. Boletta remains silent, thinking about Vera and Vera’s blood, and the other women pay no attention, for they’re used to Boletta’s silence — she has never become one of them, one of these telegraph women, all of whom resemble one another despite their different ages. They come from spacious apartments in Thomas Heftye Street, Bygd0y Alley and Park Road; they are perhaps the youngest from a flock of brothers and sisters, and have suddenly found themselves left over. They have spent at least one summer in France — in Nice or Biarritz — where they ventured down to the beach, their parasols at the ready, and the oldest among them are even paler thanks to the vinegar they rubbed on their skin. They are unmarried, childles
s, have barely known the touch of a man’s hand, and speak two languages stiltedly. Boletta is a spinster too, but she has a daughter, and this is not only unusual, it is unheard of. They’ve never quite got to the bottom of this scandal, and they’ve long since given up hope of finding out more than they already know, and that’s almost less than nothing. All they do know is that Boletta Jebsen lives with her Danish mother, who apparently was a star of the silent film world in her younger years, and with her daughter Vera, who was born in 1925, and although these bird-like women from the Exchange go to church each Sunday, read their Bibles and are otherwise God-fearing in every respect, they don’t set much store by virgin births and miracles of that kind. But now they’re falling over each other to get a word in, of lost fathers released from Grini and brothers they imagined were dead but who suddenly emerged from hiding places in the depths of Nordmarka. Each one has a hero in their family today, and each has at least one story to tell, but suddenly they fall silent almost as if someone has unplugged them, and Boletta realizes they’re all looking in the direction of the door — she turns and Stang is standing there. The manageress, who is by no means a participant in chitchat at break times, would have preferred the professional discretion of official silence. She’s looking in Boletta’s direction and nods, her head bent. “Director Egede wants to talk to you. Now.” Miss Stang returns to her table before Boletta can ask what this is about, and none of the others says anything at that moment, but perhaps they’re thinking, not without a certain triumph and Schadenfreude, that now the Director’s had enough and the top floor’s going to put its foot down — Boletta Jebsen has come in to work late for the very last time, and there are plenty of young women of spotless conduct who would give their eye teeth for positions at the Exchange. Perhaps they do think that way, privately, but to say so openly isn’t allowed, for when put in front of Egede, the man behind the door on the floor above, they will stand together with military precision. Instead they help Boletta to tidy her hair, they lend her a pocket mirror and powder, and she’s moved by their thoughtfulness as she’s given a word of encouragement for the long journey up to Egede’s office. And when she finally knocks on the door, she thinks this herself, but with no hint of triumph, Today I’ve arrived late for the very last time, and now were going to be left high and dry. She hears Egede’s order to Come in, and she barely remembers opening the door and closing it behind her. Egede is sitting in his leather chair behind his enormous desk, and Boletta walks slowly toward him, collects herself and curtsies; she curtsies like a schoolgirl before the headmaster, and it angers her — and the anger does her good.

  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!”