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

Vera, what have you done?” Water was trickling over the edge of the bath, gray and tepid. Vera made no answer. “It’s over now, Vera. Its over. There’s nothing to be afraid of any more.” The Old One sat down on the laundry basket in the corner; she sighed and massaged her shoulder. Boletta gently caressed her daughter’s arm. “Rakel will come home soon, that’s for sure. You don’t want to be ill then, do you? You’ll get pneumonia lying here.” The Old One gave an even deeper sigh. “Take out the plug,” she said simply. “That’s enough talk.” Vera drew back her arm. Boletta tried to keep hold of it, but it was far too thin and slippery, and it just slid from her fingers. “Say something!” Boletta shouted. “Say something to me!”
    But Vera remained cocooned in her muteness, and the only thing she could do was hum. Her lips were almost blue — they quivered as she kept cooing. The Old One got up and raised her hands toward the ceiling and folded them there, like a clenched fist above her head. “Pull out the damned plug, for God’s sake! Or do I have to do it myself?” Boletta put her hand into the water. And then Vera hit her. She hit her smack in the face with the floor brush, and Boletta screamed so shrilly Vera had to cover her ears. And people in Church Road and Jacob Aall Street, those who have lived long enough to remember those days, say that they can never forget that scream, which was talked about for years. It loosened the plaster, shook chandeliers and caused whole slates to fall — indeed it almost made some believe that the war had started up again. It wasn’t that the blow itself hurt so greatly; Boletta screamed more out of sheer terror, for she was sure that now they had lost the plot completely, that finally the war had robbed them of whatever sanity they’d ever had. For now Vera was hitting her own mother, she was sitting with a floor brush in the bath hitting her own mother in the face. The Old One had to calm Boletta forcefully, and when finally she’d managed to do so and the two of them were kneeling breathless together on the stone tiles, Vera began scrubbing her neck. She scrubbed at it with the hard, stiff brush, as if there was some speck there on her neck that she hadn’t managed to get rid of. “I can’t take any more,” Boletta sobbed.
    And right then the kitchen doorbell rang. For a second, the briefest moment, Vera stopped scrubbing herself. Perhaps she thought it was Rakel, Rakel finally home and ringing the kitchen doorbell because she wanted Vera to come out and join her. Perhaps she did believe that, in the fleeting blink of an eye between two seconds, but then she continued scouring, even harder; she bent her head and her neck vertebrae stood out like a taut bow of glowing coals. “Who can that be?” Boletta hissed. The Old One leaned against the side of the bath and let her hand trail in the water; five twisted and wrinkled fingers in that dark water, carefully trailing around Vera’s body. “There, there, child. You’re clean enough now.” The doorbell rang again. The Old One pulled her hand out of the water. “Who the devil? Can’t we be left in peace! Don’t you think so, Vera?” And Vera turned toward them; it almost looked as if she wanted to give in, to give herself up to Boletta and the Old One, but she remained in her cave of silence nonetheless. The Old One plunged her arm into the water again and pulled out the plug. “Now I’m going to throw someone down the steps,” she said.
    Gradually the water began to sink around Vera. Boletta put a towel over her shoulders without her protesting. The Old One struggled out to the kitchen and opened the door. Of course it was none other than Bang, the caretaker for the building who had his own subsidized apartment in the very bottom corner by the garbage sheds. It was Bang — protector of the flowerbeds, guardian of the laundry, terror of tomcats, and commander of law and order. He was