Professor Andersen's Night

by Dag Solstad

  Henrik Nordstrøm had finished his meal. He had requested, and received, his bill, and also paid, but he didn’t leave. He sat beside Professor Andersen, commenting on the sushi the latter was eating. And talked about the Far East and his relationship to it. Professor Andersen finished the last piece of sushi and ordered coffee. The coffee arrived, and he drank it, while Henrik Nordstrøm sat beside him, without making any move to leave. While Professor Andersen was drinking coffee, Henrik Nordstrøm sat without saying much. He sat gazing into space, evidently lost in his own thoughts, or stealing a look at the other guests, who were mostly Japanese, probably connected to the Japanese diplomatic legation. When Professor Andersen had finished his coffee, he beckoned to the waitress and requested his bill. He was given it and he paid, and then stood up in order to leave. Henrik Nordstrøm got up, too, and together the two men fetched their overcoats from the coat stand and left the restaurant. As soon as they were out in the dark winter evening, Henrik Nordstrøm stuck out his right hand to introduce himself. ‘Henrik Nordstrøm,’ he said. Professor Andersen gripped it with his own right hand, and greeted him in the same manner. ‘Pål Andersen,’ he said. ‘That was a lovely meal,’ he said next. Henrik Nordstrøm nodded. ‘But I miss not having a good Chinese or Vietnamese restaurant in this city,’ he said. Professor Andersen nodded and began to walk in the direction of the building where he lived. Henrik Nordstrøm walked in the same direction. They walked around the corner and entered the street where Professor Andersen (as well as Henrik Nordstrøm) lived. Outside the main entrance to his building Professor Andersen came to a halt. He took his keyring from his overcoat pocket and searched for the key to the main door. He felt intense excitement running through his whole body. Now, it was now he had to make up his mind. Now, right now. Hadn’t this young man almost latched on to him from the moment he had accidentally sat down beside him? He couldn’t flee now. Therefore he invited him up for a drink. Henrik Nordstrøm opened his eyes wide, looked at him in a friendly, but slightly ironic way, before saying, ‘Yes, thanks, I’d love to.’ Professor Andersen unlocked the main door and they went up the stairs to his apartment. They came into the hall and Professor Andersen showed his guest into the study, at the same time as he locked the door to the dining room. He told Henrik Nordstrøm to take a seat on the sofa. He himself went out into the kitchen and found whisky, seltzer and ice cubes. ‘Goodness, what a lot of books!’ Henrik Nordstrøm exclaimed when he came back in. ‘Have you read all of them?’ ‘Yes, most of them,’ answered Professor Andersen. ‘Do you remember everything you’ve read, too?’ ‘Yes, most of it,’ replied Professor Andersen. ‘Is all that in there in your head?’ said Henrik Nordstrøm, surprised, and gestured with his hands towards the bookshelves, which covered all the walls of the room. Professor Andersen nodded. He poured whisky and seltzer, and added ice. But when he handed one of the glasses to Henrik Nordstrøm, the latter requested a glass with just seltzer instead. ‘Oh, I was quite sure that you drank whisky,’ said Professor Andersen, apologetically. ‘I do and I don’t drink it,’ answered Henrik Nordstrøm. ‘There’s a time and a place for everything.’ ‘Quite so, because I was pretty certain that you drank sake a while ago, so that was why …,’ said Professor Andersen in an almost unhappy voice. ‘Yes, but that was then,’ said Henrik Nordstrøm. ‘Now I’d rather just have a little seltzer.’ ‘Yes, of course,’ said Professor Andersen, and fetched a new glass for Henrik Nordstrøm, which he filled with seltzer and ice. He was a little annoyed. Why hadn’t Henrik Nordstrøm told him that he only wanted seltzer when he saw that Professor Andersen was making two drinks with whisky and seltzer, instead of waiting until he was served the drink which was intended for him? And why hadn’t he got up and left when he had paid his bill at the sushi bar, instead of remaining seated right until Professor Andersen had finished his meal, and paid? He made up his mind to come straight to the point. He told Henrik Nordstrøm about himself. That he had lived alone in his apartment for ten years now. That prior to this, he had been married for fifteen years. He talked a little about his marriage, although he disliked doing so, both generally speaking and in particular to this young man. But he had to tell him that Beate lived in the same town as him, though with a completely different name from the one she had had when she was married to him. Now she was called Beate Beck, and he hadn’t seen her even once for ten years, because they didn’t have any children together, after all, therefore there was no necessity for them to meet, and they had been spared any accidental meetings. He asked if Henrik Nordstrøm was in a position to know about marriage at first hand. Yes, he said, he had exactly the same experience as ‘you, Pål, old chap’. Divorced, with a wife he didn’t see any more, even though in his case it was only two years since they had separated. But his wife also had a different name now from the one she had had when she was married to him, for then her surname was Nordstrøm. Now she was called something else and was living in Hammerfest. He mentioned her name in passing, and Professor Andersen took note of it. Professor Andersen finished his drink and started immediately on the one that originally had been intended for Henrik Nordstrøm, while Henrik Nordstrøm merely sipped at his seltzer. There was something about the young man’s appearance that he couldn’t fathom. He was about thirty years old, of that he was certain, but where around that mark was absolutely indeterminable. At first he had thought he was younger than thirty, he was certainly twenty-eight, he had thought, but at the very instant that thought occurred to him, he had looked at him and had thought that no, no, he isn’t twenty-eight, he’s more than that, he’s over thirty. He’s thirty-two, he had thought, but when he regarded him in that light, then that wasn’t right either, he wasn’t thirty-two, he was much younger. So he was probably exactly thirty, then, since twenty-eight was far too young, and thirty-two far too old, and he looked at him and thought that he was exactly thirty, but he didn’t think that could be right either, when he first looked at him, because then he thought, ‘He isn’t thirty, he’s either somewhat older or else he’s somewhat younger, I’m unable to decide which, although it’s evident that he’s either the one or the other, but he can’t be what I think he is at a particular moment, because it’s never right when I look at him.’ Henrik Nordstrøm began to talk volubly about the Far East again. No one here in our country knew what was happening in the Far East these days, not properly; even those who were the best informed surmised only a snippet of it all. It is now at a great turning point, where everything is changing and bursting forth. It’s teeming there. Everything’s being transformed. And East is West, and West is East, and never the twain shall meet. Billions of people. Billions of people becoming the West in the East, If every Chinese was to eat an egg at breakfast, the world would come to an end. It’s as simple as that. The world such as we know it, that is. It’ll happen soon. ‘When it has happened, these books can’t tell you anything any more,’ he said pointing at the bookshelves which covered the walls in Professor Andersen’s study. ‘And you who have all of that in your head!’ he exclaimed. ‘Poor you!’ he said, shaking his head. Professor Andersen felt obliged to say then that no matter how things went, he considered it to be an advantage and not a drawback that he had all these books in his head. ‘It might just be that one day it may give me a quiet sense of pleasure which will only be granted to a few people,’ he said, and that made Henrik Nordstrøm open his eyes wide and stare at him with his young, indeterminable face. ‘Well, well, it’s everyone’s right to believe what they like,’ he said, after he had thought it over. ‘But I like talking to you,’ he added, emptying his glass of seltzer and standing up. He thanked him for the ‘drink’, as he called it, but now, unfortunately, he had to go. He had another engagement. Professor Andersen got up, too, and followed him to the door. As Henrik Nordstrøm was about to go out the door which Professor Andersen was holding open for him, he asked if Professor Andersen had anything on next Wednesday. Because if he hadn’t, he’d like to invite him to the Bjerke Racecourse. Henrik Nordstrøm owned
a racehorse, along with three other people. A three-year-old thoroughbred horse which was to run the first race in its life next Wednesday. Professor Andersen was perplexed. He didn’t know how to answer. He said that he didn’t know if he had time next Wednesday afternoon, he didn’t think he had any engagements, but was, after all, in a position where matters might suddenly crop up that required his attention, and which he couldn’t ignore. ‘Yes, well, let’s do this then,’ said Henrik Nordstrøm. ‘I turn up here at your place on Wednesday at 5 p.m. and, if it suits you, then you come along.’ Professor Andersen said that was an agreement, and they parted.

  The minute Henrik Nordstrøm had left, Professor Andersen opened the door to the dining room, went through it and into the living room, where he stationed himself behind the curtain. He saw Henrik Nordstrøm come out of the main door and hurry towards his own entrance, unlock it and disappear in there. ‘Uh-huh, another engagement!’ exclaimed Professor Andersen to himself. He remained standing there for a while in order to see if a person really did come and ring the doorbell at the entrance of the building where Henrik Nordstrøm had his apartment. That did not happen. However, Henrik Nordstrøm himself came out this same entrance a little while later and walked over to his car, which was parked outside, and drove off. Professor Andersen checked the time. Quarter past nine. Too late to phone Hammerfest? No. He called directory enquiries and asked for the number belonging to the name which Henrik Nordstrøm had said was the present name of his former wife. He called the number and a woman answered the telephone. She confirmed that she was the person bearing the name which Professor Andersen enquired about. And so he put down the receiver. He had his confirmation, and he didn’t like it.

  For now we are back where we started, and Professor Andersen is in a great fix. He is standing in his Italian suit looking at the telephone receiver, which he has just put back down on top of the telephone again, after getting the confirmation he didn’t wish to get. That woman, who from his window on the night before Christmas Day he had seen Henrik Nordstrøm strangle in his apartment, was not his wife, but a strange woman. A woman who has not been reported missing and who probably cannot be connected to Henrik Nordstrøm in any particular way once she is found, or eventually reported missing. If, that is, she ever is. Professor Andersen was standing out in the hall where the telephone stood and was sunk deep in his own thoughts. He veritably sank down under the weight of them. Now he had returned to the starting point, and that felt worse than being stuck there around New Year’s Eve. Everything that happened to Professor Andersen, from this evening until the murderer rang his doorbell the following Wednesday, appeared to take place in a kind of fog. Professor Andersen felt ill, so ill that in the morning he called the university and requested to be relieved of his duties that week. Afterwards, he went to a doctor, not Bernt Halvorsen, but another one, whom he had consulted previously, and he was granted fourteen days’ sick leave. Strain. He sent notice of this sick leave to the university straight away. He was really unwell, his head ached, he saw spots before his eyes and he felt queasy all the time, but didn’t throw up. He put on his pyjamas and went straight to bed. But he couldn’t manage to lie still, so he got up, put on his dressing gown and wandered around his apartment, from room to room. This day, and the next day, and the day after that. While he brooded. And waited until next Wednesday. He had no idea what to do. His belief, or delusion, that Henrik Nordstrøm had murdered his own wife meant that he had thought the net was closing in on him, and that it could only be a matter of time before he was exposed, and that had reassured him to such an extent that he had managed to live an approximately normal life during the two months which had passed since he had witnessed the murder from his window. That had turned him into a kind of observer. Perhaps one could say that out of primitive curiosity he had kept an eye on the apartment across the street, and on its inhabitant, of late. A glance now and then, to catch sight of the man whose destiny would soon catch up with him. But now he was back at square one. The murderer and himself, he, who had witnessed the murder. And who hadn’t reported what he had witnessed, and who therefore was the reason why Henrik Nordstrøm walked around freely, without destiny catching up with him. And next Wednesday the murderer would ring his doorbell, so they could go to the Bjerke Racecourse together to see the murderer’s horse running in its first race ever. ‘I should have reported him,’ he mumbled. ‘Had I known what this would lead to, I would have reported him. If for no other reason than to know what really happened. Who was the woman I saw in the window on the evening before Christmas Day. Who is now dead. Why did he kill her? And what has he done with the body? And why has no one reported her missing? Indeed, I might be tempted to get dressed again and go to Majorstua Police Station right away, just to solve the riddle.’ The thought raised his spirits, until it struck him yet again that this was just a flight of fancy, which gave him only a moment’s comfort, and that he wouldn’t seriously consider doing it. Even though he could now say he regretted not having reported the murder on the evening before Christmas Eve immediately after it had happened, when he had indeed gone to the telephone and lifted the receiver in order to call, it turned out – in spite of the sadness he now felt when he imagined this situation, when he lifted the receiver and put it back down again shortly after, without ringing the number which could have liberated him from what would later cause him such trouble and which now troubled him more than ever – when the thought of reporting it now arose, he was just as powerless as before. It had been and still was impossible for him to report Henrik Nordstrøm, even now, after meeting him. ‘And I rushed headlong from Trondheim because I was afraid I would lose him. Good God! At least I wouldn’t do that again,’ he exclaimed. ‘Wouldn’t you?’ he added hastily, ‘are you quite certain about that?’ he heard himself thinking, in a sarcastic tone. ‘You’ve said that you don’t know why you did that, haven’t you? And if you don’t know why you did it, how can you be so sure that you wouldn’t do it again? Oh, leave off, leave off !’ He walked round his apartment in his pyjamas, with a dressing gown tied at the waist to keep him warm. Now and then he felt far too hot, and he loosened the belt and let his dressing gown hang open. ‘But,’ he thought, ‘my not reporting him is based on a single supposition, let that be clear. And that is the fact that it was a chance murder, not planned, but committed in desperation, out of a sense of injury, anger. If it had been a murder committed for the pleasure of it I wouldn’t have hesitated in reporting it. Likewise, if it had been planned in cold blood. Oh no,’ he said in dismay, ‘I wouldn’t have reported a premeditated murder. That’s true,’ he said quietly, ‘I don’t want to pretend. But a murder for pleasure, that I would have reported. But how could I know what kind of murder it was!’ he then exclaimed. ‘I only saw her being strangled; that was all I saw. But I have assumed that it happened in a frenzy, in blind fury, and thus blindly. Therefore I couldn’t report him. I couldn’t stomach doing it. Stomach?’ he interrupted himself. ‘Stomach, you say! Well, brain then. Consciousness. I couldn’t bear to be the one to intervene so that justice could be done, as I assumed he was so appalled by his actions that I didn’t want to prolong his suffering: better to relieve it instead, if that were possible. He didn’t really mean to murder her. It was the act of a man who had lost his head. I might well have done it. You don’t say,’ he put in scornfully. ‘You, who have just admitted that you couldn’t have reported him even if you had known that it was premeditated. Could it have been you, then, too? Oh no,’ he answered, ‘I couldn’t have planned a murder in cold blood. But I feel sorry for the person who has done it. It’s unbearable to imagine oneself in his stead if such a dreadful deed, an atrocity, had been fully premeditated, yes, calculated. Therefore I want him to go free, escape, yes, maybe even forget the whole thing; yes, I do indeed, at any rate I can’t assist in his arrest. But why then make an exception with regard to a confirmed murderer, my dear Pål Andersen?’ thought Professor Andersen, splitting hairs. ‘Because an unrepentant killer
is dangerous. He can do it again. Ah but,’ Professor Andersen interrupted himself exultantly, ‘then you mean that someone who has planned a murder and afterwards carried it out in cold blood, without the least little bit of compassion for the person he has murdered or, even worse, is going to murder, isn’t dangerous? Well, I must say!’ he added. ‘Yes, indeed, you must say,’ Professor Andersen mimicked, ‘but it is a fact that a premeditated murder is an isolated action carried out to solve a problem that must be solved, looked at from the point of view of the person who performs it, and which otherwise wouldn’t have been solvable, and it is extremely doubtful, yes, statistically impossible, I should imagine, that one and the same person finds himself, or herself, twice in what is for them such an irresolvable situation, which may, in fact, be solved in this way. But an unrepentant killer murders because he likes to kill, and as long as there is someone to kill, then it’s possible he’ll do it again. Therefore, he must be reported so that he can be rendered harmless. Oh, I can’t bear to think about it any more; no matter what I think, there is always something wrong. I only hope that he can get away, away from me at any rate, or vice versa,’ he thought. ‘Oh, I must get rid of him,’ he thought, all of a sudden. ‘Now, now, I didn’t mean it in that way,’ he added, and almost had to laugh. But the thought made him feel like laughing, and he had to repeat it. ‘I must get rid of him,’ he thought, and almost had to laugh again. ‘Indeed, not in that way though,’ he added, and now he really had to laugh. He laughed so much he couldn’t stop, and started coughing. He laughed and coughed and between the outbreaks of laughing and coughing he thought, ‘I call that a morbid sense of humour,’ and the hiccups of laughter broke out again, so that he walked around his apartment bent double, from room to room, in pyjamas, with a dressing gown over. He wasn’t barefoot: he was in his socks, because he didn’t want to catch influenza, on top of it all. Professor Andersen never wore pyjamas, for that matter, except when he was ill, as he now was, though he lacked the peace of mind to lie quietly in bed. He had just one pair of pyjamas, the ones he had been given many years ago by his long-departed mother, and which he hadn’t worn much, as Professor Andersen was rarely ill. He walked through the rooms in his apartment, at his wits’ end. He looked at the books on the bookshelves lining the walls of his study. He was pale from the laughing fit, which he now regarded with great concern, as it was an expression of emotional agitation by a man standing on the brink of something or other. All those conflicts he had read about, all those men under duress, at crossroads, forced to make a choice, metres and metres of books on the shelves dealt with just that, but these could not help him at all now. ‘Oh, but I have learnt nothing,’ he sighed, ‘because there is nothing to learn; I have all these books in my head, as I pointed out to the man who is behind all these troubles, but not literally speaking, after all. If that were actually true, I couldn’t have opened a single cupboard in this apartment without old skeletons falling out, and that isn’t how it is, after all. I can prove that, just by opening a cupboard,’ he thought. ‘But don’t do it,’ he added, ‘not now, in the state you are in.’