Professor Andersen's Night

by Dag Solstad

  Was he disappointed? Had he hoped that the figure which passed through the room had been a woman after all, and that the young woman with fair hair would be standing at the window now? Professor Andersen didn’t know. If he had been hoping this, and it had been keeping him glued to this window, and to this view, both in reality and in his thoughts, then his hope had been unrealistic and actually a prayer for a miracle. Or rather a prayer that he, Professor Andersen, might not be able to trust his own senses, his own eyes, in decisive situations, and that what he thought he saw might equally well be a fantasy or a hallucination, had he cherished such a hope? Even, when all is said and done, if it meant his reason was threatened? Or was what he saw now exactly what he had hoped to see: the murderer’s face? Professor Andersen didn’t know, and suddenly he started to cry, not with tears, but with words. ‘I’m crying,’ he said, and gave himself over to this simple sentence, which he repeated several times while he stood at the window, long after the youngish man in the other window had turned away, walked through the room and retreated out of sight, to somewhere from which he didn’t reappear.

  The next day was the day after Boxing Day, a working day, shops and offices, banks and post offices were open. Professor Andersen decided to go away for a while. He packed a small suitcase and took a taxi out to Fornebu Airport, where he checked in on the first plane to Trondheim. He phoned the Britannia Hotel and booked a room. Then he called one of his colleagues and said that he was going to be in Trondheim over the New Year, and they arranged to meet the next day. On the plane trip up there it was so overcast that he couldn’t see a thing. From Værnes he took the airport bus to the Britannia Hotel and checked in. On the flight he had ploughed through the newspapers and, as he expected, found nothing about the murder he had witnessed. Now he ploughed through them again. Nothing. No woman reported missing, for instance, who could be connected to what he had witnessed. He went outside and strolled around the streets of Trondheim. The man’s name was Henrik Nordstrøm. He had found that out before deciding to go to Trondheim. He had gone across the street and stopped in front of the main door of the building, and had found out which nameplate and doorbell must belong to the apartment where he had seen the murderer’s face the evening before. As ever when he visited Trondheim, he went into the late-twelfth-century cathedral, the only thing from the Norwegian Middle Ages that bears witness to a sophisticated culture. He also popped into Erichsen’s coffee shop and had a cup of coffee and a piece of cake; that, too, was a habit of his. While he was walking around the streets, he suddenly bumped into his colleague’s ex-wife, with whom he had to pass the time of day, as it was too late to pretend he hadn’t noticed her. He didn’t mention that he was going to meet her ex-husband the next day. When he came back to the Britannia, a man who had been sitting in the foyer got to his feet and came towards him. It was his colleague. He would really like to meet him at once, today, he said, since he didn’t have anything special on. That pleased Professor Andersen and he invited his colleague up to his room.

  He told his colleague to take a seat in an armchair, while he fetched a bottle of whisky, which he had wisely just bought at the Wine Monopoly in Kjøpmannsgata in Trondheim. He got hold of ice cubes and Farris mineral water from the mini-bar, while he went on about how one had to be careful that it was blue Farris one had, and not yellow. Once, it was at Hoyer’s Hotel in Skien, he had just taken Farris without thinking any more about it, and his whisky had a taste of lemon. ‘Bloody hell! And the worst of it was,’ said Professor Andersen as he put two empty glasses, blue Farris and a glass of ice cubes on the table, ‘there was just yellow Farris in the mini-bar. What a hotel!’ ‘That’s so the guests don’t sit in their rooms drinking whisky, but go down to the bar and buy it there,’ said his colleague. ‘Yes, of course, but still, it’s not particularly agreeable.’ They both poured themselves a whisky and skolled their unexpected encounter. When Professor Andersen saw that his colleague was sitting there, dying to know what on earth had brought him to Trondheim in the Christmas period, he decided to come straight to the point. ‘Have you ever thought,’ he said, ‘how short a historical memory we have? Can you remember your own grandparents?’ ‘Yes, of course,’ said his colleague, surprised, ‘I remember them well.’ ‘I do, too,’ said Professor Andersen, ‘even though both my grandparents were dead when I was born. But I’ve heard so much about them that for that reason I can say, historically speaking, that I know them. But what about your great-grandparents?’ His colleague went quiet; he was thinking about it. ‘You know, I don’t know much about them.’ ‘You do have eight great-grandparents,’ said Professor Andersen with emphasis on the words. ‘And there is probably barely a hundred years between the birth of the eldest of them and you. And already they’re no longer part of your consciousness. Indeed, even worse, they’ve never existed in your consciousness.’ His colleague looked rather taken aback. ‘It isn’t as bad as all that,’ he said, after he had thought about it. ‘I do know something. I’ve even seen one of them in a photograph. He was a shoemaker in Fredrikstad.’ ‘And where is that photograph now?’ ‘Ah, I don’t know that.’ ‘And you call that knowing something about your great-grandparents?’ His colleague looked a little taken aback again. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘It’s peculiar, and I’ve never even thought about it before.’ ‘It’s more than peculiar,’ said Professor Andersen, ‘it’s embarrassing. Perhaps even frightening. Here we are, the two of us, sitting in a hotel room in Trondheim around Christmas, and the light of our consciousness doesn’t reach back more than two generations. After that it begins to fade, a twilight memory here, a photograph no one knows the whereabouts of there. Then it’s dark. And we are both professors of literature.’ ‘Yes, indeed, of literature. We aren’t historians,’ said his colleague, defending himself. ‘Besides, we do have another kind of recollection which goes much further than our ties of kinship, we remember things with a connection to our work, in our case within the field of literature. You know many tales about Ludvig Daae, too, don’t you? Or you can conjure up the memory of Lorentz Dietrichsson, indeed, maybe even Jonas Collett?’ his colleague said triumphantly. ‘You’re right about that. But these eight great-grandparents of yours have nevertheless given you your genes; barely sixty or seventy years ago they were young and passed on their genes to the person who in turn bred the person who gave you your genes, and you have no recollection of them – isn’t it … ?’ ‘Well, yes, peculiar. Not embarrassing. And not frightening,’ his colleague broke in. ‘I find it frightening,’continued Professor Andersen, unremittingly. ‘What does it mean? Is it something common to humans, in other words a human trait, as living creatures, which we haven’t bothered to register, because the fact that humans are historical beings is so commonplace that it can’t be challenged? Or is it a characteristic of humanity in the present day, and in our cultural circle? Or does it only apply to us who come from the common people? I don’t know, but it has something to do with our day and age, that’s for sure. There is something about it which makes us not particularly interested in what has gone before us, at any rate much less than we pretend is the case. It has something to do with being modern. And it must have begun early on, for both of us would have known about our great-grandparents if our parents had any interest in telling us about them, but evidently they didn’t; it isn’t that they quite simply forgot them, I don’t believe that. Our down-to-earth parents, these stuffy people, with their enthusiasm for plastic and the weather forecasts on the radio, must, in that case, have been bearers of a fundamental modernity, which they’ve passed on to us, without anyone being aware of it even. This has only dawned on me quite recently. The fact that my enlightened consciousness goes back no further than two generations, then it’s dark.’ ‘But now I must be allowed to interrupt you a moment,’ said his colleague eagerly, ‘because with regard to what you’re saying, I can only answer that there are few countries where you’ll find so great an interest in history as in our country, particularly history at
the grass-roots level. Remember, every single town or small village has its own local history book, usually in three volumes. And every generation would like to write a new one, right from scratch and in three volumes. So don’t give me that. Or take the enormous interest there is in genealogy in this country. Or all the kinship gatherings at which people assemble every summer.’ ‘Well, well, that’s true. But nonetheless it doesn’t apply to either of us, and we are, after all, professors of literature. Our common social consciousness isn’t influenced by these cranky genealogists or local historians. Praiseworthy though they may be, these cranks who sit beside us in the University Library pursuing the traces of their own origins down through the ages, though they ought to give us hope, because they demonstrate that it is possible to break out of this common consciousness and go one’s own way, if only one’s passion and personal determination are great enough, they are and remain cranks who fail to leave any mark on the common consciousness, no matter how sympathetic our attitude may be to their pursuits, and not least to the intentions behind them. They are and will continue to be total outsiders. They do not affect us, our very structure and sensibility, which form the way we think. Indeed, it frightens me,’ he repeated. ‘It really frightens me. It frightens me much more than the fact that I’m childless.’ Then he held his tongue, and remained sitting in silence. His colleague didn’t say anything either. He looked at Professor Andersen, he seemed to be about to say something, he drew himself up the way someone does who is going to say something he must or ought to say, but is uncertain if he will after all, but he finally decided not to say anything, and remained seated, looking, rather puzzled, at Professor Andersen.

  It went quiet for a while. The two men drank whisky in Professor Andersen’s room at the Britannia Hotel. To tell the truth, they drank a lot; the bottle was close to being half empty. It was no later than 3 p.m. Outside the window it had already begun to get dark. Professor Andersen’s colleague was a few years younger than him, approaching fifty, though he hadn’t reached it yet. He had just started a new life, in so far as he had got married a second time, to a young woman, one of his students no less. This Professor Andersen knew, but he hadn’t touched on it as yet, and his colleague hadn’t had an opportunity to do so himself, as Professor Andersen had started talking straight away about what was on his mind, and which, after all, was the reason why he had phoned his colleague from Fornebu when it suddenly occurred to him to go up to Trondheim. He poured yet another whisky for himself and handed the bottle to the other man, while he was thinking that he must try to continue with his deliberations before he became so intoxicated that he couldn’t continue, but would just repeat himself, over and over again, using exactly the same words, as he knew he had a habit of doing under the influence of alcohol.

  ‘Recently I’ve begun to look at myself in a different light than I did before,’ continued Professor Andersen. ‘Previously I regarded myself as a person who was able to use my resources to the full, and was, to be perfectly honest, proud of that ability. Now I see clearly how limited my horizon is, and it surprises me that I haven’t seen it before. Imagine how I’ve gone round calling myself enlightened and aware, even claiming to have an understanding of history, and actually I haven’t any knowledge of my ancestors even three generations back, and worse still: I’ve not even been concerned about this. It is utterly disgraceful,’ he shouted, and thumped his fist on the table-top, so that the blue Farris (the second one) overturned, and the whisky splashed over his glass. ‘This is the state of the human spirit in our time,’ he continued, after drying the table-top with his handkerchief. ‘Of which we are both outstanding and excellent representatives. There is something primitive about it which we haven’t been able to face up to. I’m scared,’ he said, ‘and frightened by my own ignorance. I’ve reached the age of fifty-five, and am not eager to throw myself into a new field of study.’ He went silent. ‘But if that is the case,’ his colleague said eagerly, ‘then what you say is surely an unusually weighty defence as to the necessity of art and literature.’ ‘Oh, don’t be so sure about that,’ said Professor Andersen with a fierce smile, which he reckoned he would have characterised as evil if he had seen himself from outside.

  He felt quite inebriated, so he decided not to continue this conversation. He asked his colleague how he was, and the latter immediately began to talk about his affairs. The contents of the whisky bottle became dangerously low, and Professor Andersen was obliged to call room service and order two more bottles of blue Farris, as well as a bucket of ice. It can’t be denied that Professor Andersen listened with only half an ear (of altogether two whole ones) to what his colleague told him about his affairs. For his part, his colleague was still clearly preoccupied with what had brought Professor Andersen to Trondheim over the Christmas period, and when he heard that there wasn’t any particular reason for it, and that he didn’t have any particular plans for the next few days either, he immediately invited Professor Andersen to stay with him, an offer Professor Andersen emphatically declined. He preferred, in fact, to stay at a hotel when he was out travelling. ‘Yes, if you can afford it,’ said his colleague, possibly slightly offended. ‘I treat myself,’ answered Professor Andersen, and he noticed that he was proud of being able to say that he treated himself to staying in a hotel when he was out travelling. His colleague got up and made a phone call. Professor Andersen understood that he was phoning home to his young wife, for he heard him say that he was bringing a guest home for dinner. He also heard sounds which could be interpreted as protests on the other end of the line, and his colleague said: ‘It’ll be fine,’ before he put down the receiver and, beaming, invited Professor Andersen to dinner. A little later the whisky bottle was empty, and the two gentlemen left the Britannia Hotel in an excessively good mood.

  Outside on the street his colleague pointed at a car parked by the kerb, and said, ‘That’s my car. I had no idea I’d be drinking in the afternoon.’ They walked along the street. Professor Andersen asked where they were headed. ‘Home to my place,’ said his colleague. ‘We have to get a bus as it’s too far to walk.’ ‘Can’t we take a taxi, then?’ asked Professor Andersen. ‘Taxi?’ said his colleague. ‘Yes indeed, we can take a taxi. I hadn’t thought of that.’ So they hailed a taxi, and a little later they came to a stop outside a house on a hillside above the centre of Trondheim.

  Professor Andersen paid for the taxi and they got out and went into the house. There his colleague’s young wife was standing, holding a small child in her arms. She breast-fed it, unselfconsciously and openly. She said that they only had fishcakes for dinner. Professor Andersen said that he looked forward to eating fishcakes, especially in Trondheim, where they really could make fishcakes. The young wife and mother replied that they were ready-made fishcakes, the kind you could buy in every supermarket in the country, but Professor Andersen said he looked forward to them, nonetheless. He asked what the child was called, and told them an anecdote from the University of Oslo, which his colleague, as well as his young wife, thought highly amusing. ‘Well, as you can see, I’ve begun on a second brood,’ said his colleague to Professor Andersen when his young wife was out in the kitchen preparing the fishcakes. ‘She’s still studying,’ he added. The dinner was splendid. Indeed, Professor Andersen enjoyed sitting like that in the kitchen in a private home eating ready-made fishcakes with boiled potatoes and grated carrots. With a brown sauce. And fried onions. The only thing he was slightly dissatisfied with was that there was only half a bottle of beer to share between them with the meal; that was rather little for him, with the alcohol still going to his head. But after the meal they had coffee, and then his colleague got out a bottle. ‘This isn’t exactly whisky or French cognac,’ he said, ‘but something much better. A drink popular in Trøndelag: karsk.’ He poured this into the coffee. They stirred it and drank. ‘Skol for your child,’ said Professor Andersen, and both his colleague and his young wife nodded in a friendly way, and smiled happily and skolled in return and thanked
him; the young mother didn’t have karsk in her coffee, it’s true, but she skolled and thanked him, nonetheless. His colleague said it was terribly nice that Professor Andersen had chosen to spend the Christmas week and New Year’s Eve in Trondheim, and his young wife agreed. They immediately invited Professor Andersen to a New Year’s Eve party. Not in their own home, but with some friends of theirs, and when Professor Andersen protested and said that it might well be inconvenient, his colleague got up and phoned the friends they were going to visit, and said that he would like to bring along another guest, Professor Andersen from the University of Oslo, and when he put down the phone, he said that they would be pleased if Pål Andersen came along. Tomorrow he wanted to go skiing with Andersen. But Professor Andersen didn’t have any skiing equipment with him. ‘We’ll fix that,’ said his colleague and went down into the cellar and brought up a pair of old skis. Professor Andersen had to try skis and ski-poles, boots and bindings, and his colleague didn’t give up until everything fitted. He borrowed an anorak and knickerbockers as well, his colleague’s discarded ones; not exactly the latest fashion, but he hadn’t come to Trondheim to look stunning on the ski slope, had he, ha ha. His colleague’s young wife sat down with her sewing things and measured up and sewed in the anorak and the knickerbockers, so they wouldn’t hang off him, flapping around, as his colleague was a good deal stouter than Professor Andersen. In high spirits, even though it was quite early, Professor Andersen said goodbye to his colleague and his wife. Back at the hotel he ransacked the mini-bar looking for a drink, before he recollected that in Nordic hotels there aren’t any drinks in the mini-bar, just wine and beer. He called room service for a double whisky and soda. He had to have something to send him to sleep, and also to get rid of the reek of karsk which still lingered, even though he had drunk as little of it as possible.