‘Well, we have reserved the best suite in the best hotel in Bergen, and the banquet will serve the best fish in a wonderful new recipe named after his greatest heroine, Nora. What more could we do?’
‘That we shall probably find out,’ said Høgset drily. ‘Come – we’d better go to the station. He will be here in twenty minutes’ time.’
‘I shall walk to clear my head.’
Høgset nodded. His own open carriage was waiting outside in the street. He was a ship owner, and he believed that his position as one of Bergen’s richest men depended on the messages he sent out to the hoi-polloi. He did things in style – always, in every respect. Nothing, if he could help it, was to mar the visit of Herr Ibsen. It was to be the high-point, the glory, of his period of office as mayor.
The five-minute walk to the station brushed away the cobwebs from Herr Fossli’s brain, but offered him no illumination of possible future dangers that could be circumvented. At the station he surveyed the modest streamers of welcome to the man who had once been in effect the director of the town’s theatre company, then joined the party of notables gathered, no doubt on the station-master’s instructions, a short way up the platform.
Høgset nodded to him, but nobody said anything. If it had been King Oscar there would have been some conversation, but for Herr Ibsen there was only a tense silence. Everyone was terrified.
On time to the minute, the train from Voss steamed merrily into the station. Herr Ibsen had been resting in the mountains and superintending the arrival of spring. Seated in the compartment which drew neatly up beside the reception committee was the man they had come to meet and honour. He had a large head, emphasised by the unruly halo of white and grey hair. His mouth was a small, unyielding line, also surrounded by hair, but the men on the platform waiting were mainly transfixed by the eyes. It was as if one was large and one was small: the latter was quiescent and good-humoured, while the other, large one was spraying sparks of contradiction, malice and ire. As the other travellers began to disembark the important visitor sat still, unblinking, as if posing for one of the innumerable paintings and busts of himself that were currently being produced for the seventieth birthday.
‘I think he expects us to go to his compartment,’ murmured Høgset. ‘Perhaps Herr Fossli and I—?’
There was no jealous murmur from the rest, only a silent sigh of relief, possibly observed by the malicious great eye from the train. Høgset and Fossli boarded the train, reached the Great Man’s compartment, and bowed their greeting.
‘Welcome back to Bergen, Herr Ibsen,’ Høgset said. Herr Ibsen immediately got up, revealing a smallish body with delicate hands and feet, surmounted by that mop of grizzled hair and the monstrous eye.
‘Thank you, thank you,’ he said, leading the way and gesturing to his suitcase and bags on the rack, confident they would be seen to. At the door he surveyed the waiting notables.
‘You are very kind,’ he murmured, each word prissily and distinctly enunciated. ‘Will you excuse me if I do not shake hands with you all? After my visits to Copenhagen and Stockholm my right hand is suffering from overuse.’
He waved a swollen paw, then suffered himself to be led through the station and out to Herr Høgset’s carriage, the fine white horses to draw which were champing discontentedly in the street. Herr Ibsen looked at the sparkling scene, then up towards the sun.
‘It is never sunny in Bergen,’ he said. ‘How is it you have not arranged the usual rain for me?’
‘Perhaps we thought you had given us enough rain in your Ghosts,’ said Fossli, greatly daring. It was, after all the only Ibsen play he had seen, attracted by the rumour that it was a ‘dirty play’. He was rewarded with a chuckle.
The people of Bergen going about their daily business stopped and waved or cheered as the carriage clip-clopped – slowly, by order – around the lake and towards the Hotel Bristol. Ibsen kept looking around him, trying to take in the lie of the town.
‘It is so different, so changed,’ he said. The word forandret was beautifully enunciated, each sound elongated. Neither man was sure whether he meant it was changed for the better or worse, but he removed doubt by adding ‘And still so beautiful.’ There was another sigh of relief, and that too was probably observed by that most observing of men.
At the Hotel Bristol the staff were lined up in order of importance from the street door to the Grand Staircase. Herr Ibsen nodded as he came through the door, then paid the lines of honour no more attention. As so often when respect was shown to him he seemed torn between pleasure at his own celebrity and consciousness that he was renowned as a fighter against hypocrisy and pretension. When the trio had gained his suite, which was adorned with a large if mass-produced portrait of King Oscar, who had stayed in it, his eyes went round the room, a near-smile played on his lips, and he turned to Høgset and Fossli.
‘We had nothing like this in Bergen in my day,’ he said. ‘Thank you. And now I am tired. I must rest and take a bath.’
‘If we may we will call on you to take you down to the banquet,’ said Mayor Høgset. ‘This is Bergen, so we shall have some very fine fish.’
The smile on Ibsen’s face became a wicked one.
‘I am happy with a sandwich and a bottle of schnapps, if the spirit of hospitality is there,’ he said. Then he sat down in an armchair and closed his eyes, the large one last. Høgset and Fossli tiptoed out.
‘Phew!’ Høgset said. ‘I can’t believe how well it is going.’
‘Too well,’ said Fossli.
‘Hmmm. We shall see. I am accustomed to keeping things on an even keel. I look forward to seeing you and your lady wife tonight. Best bib and tucker, tell her.’
‘My wife intends to wear her bunad,’ said Fossli.
‘Ohhh. National costume is all very well, but Herr Ibsen is an international figure and this is an international occasion … Oh well, women won’t be told, will they?’
‘I shouldn’t say that in Herr Ibsen’s hearing,’ said Fossli.
While Høgset went out to his carriage, Fossli lingered at the reception desk to check that the last undecided details of the banquet’s courses and seating arrangements had now been satisfactorily settled. Then he walked out into Markeveien.
‘Hei, Mishter! Got a few øre for a poor chap?’
It was a drunk, a feature of Bergen after two o’clock. Herr Fossli turned towards Torgalmenning.
‘Hei, you’re one of the knobsh, aren’t you? Hobnobbing with the great Ibsen? Itsh your great day, ishn’t it? Guesh you could spare a krone for a glash of schnapps.’
The accent was not Bergen. Fossli thought it was odd. Drunks in Norway usually kept to their home beats. He turned and looked at the man: red-faced, bleary-eyed, dirty. The face was unknown to him, yet somehow familiar. The small, straight mouth …
‘What is your name, my man?’
‘Your man? You recognise me, don’t you?’
‘I’ve never seen you in my life. I asked your name.’
‘Whatsh my name? I’ll tell you. Itsh Henriksen. What else, eh? Eh? What else would it be?’ And he held out his hand.
The import of the question struck Fossli like a wet haddock. He stopped, fumbled in his pocket, then drew out an overgenerous number of kroner.
‘Five kroner,’ crowed the man. ‘Itsh what he gave me. Said it was what he gave my mother.’
The wet haddock came back from another blow across the other cheek. Fossli paused for a moment, then turned and hurried back into the hotel.
‘I have to use your telephone,’ he said.
The Bristol was the only hotel in Bergen to have a telephone. Einar Høgset was one of hardly more than a dozen private subscribers, which gave him great prestige but a limited list of conversationalists. Høgset was not yet home, so Fossli spoke to the man who would be a butler if Norway had butlers, but who was called by Høgset his head of staff.
‘Something extremely important has come up,’ Fossli said. ‘I need to talk to Herr Høg
set urgently and in private. Perhaps he could call round at my home on his way to the banquet. Or, better still, immediately. I shall be at home in five minutes. Please stress that it is of the utmost importance.’
Then he went to his corn chandler’s store, above which his home occupied two floors. Fossli belonged to the cultured mercantile class in Bergen, whereas Høgset belonged by marriage to the uncultured shipowning class. Arnoldus Fossli always thought his superior reading gave him a slight edge, enabling him to shrug at Høgset’s flourished proofs of his superior wealth. He also occasionally mentioned to intimates that Høgset’s wealth came entirely from marriage and arse-licking.
He heard the arrival of the mayor’s carriage ten minutes later, and hurried his wife off to the kitchen. ‘No listening,’ he ordered. When the bell rang he ushered Høgset into his business office, and told him of the encounter outside the Bristol.
‘When I asked his name—’
‘Why did you do that? Of some common-or-garden tramp?’
‘Because there was something about his face. His accent. He came from East Norway. We don’t export our drunks from town to town in this country. And when I asked my question he looked at me and said, “Henriksen. What else?”’
‘What could he mean by—? … Oh, my God.’
‘Yes. Son of Henrik. The son he had in Grimstad when he was about eighteen. By some kitchen maid or other. The drunk who rolls about Christiania boasting about his paternity. Actually went and cadged money off him once, so they say.’
‘Five kroner,’ said Høgset wonderingly.
‘By an odd chance I gave him the same. And he said, “It’s what he gave me.” And apparently what he gave the mother too. So all the stories are true.’
‘Or this drunk made up the stories and now believes them,’ said Høgset. ‘He’s here to cause trouble.’
‘How on earth did he get here? The boat fare would be beyond him.’
‘Who knows? Perhaps some kind man in Christiania gave him the ticket. They have no love for us there.’
‘Or for him either.’
‘Leave it to me!’ said Høgset, as if inspiration had struck. ‘Do nothing, above all say nothing, not to your wife, not to anyone. I’ll see you in the Bristol fifteen minutes before the banquet.’
And he marched off with the sublime confidence of a man who has spent his life solving tricky problems, or thinks he has. Fossli was troubled. He went to the kitchen to find his wife, now resplendent in her bunad.
‘Would you mind if we didn’t go to the banquet together?’ he asked her. ‘Could you go along with Fru Lysne or Fru Ryall?’
She shrugged.
‘Of course. Or I can go on my own. I have a great desire to see the Great Man but no desire to get near him to make conversation with him.’
So that was all right. Arnoldus Fossli dressed himself quickly in full evening rig, brushed his hair over the bald expanses of his head, and left the house. It was not exactly that he distrusted Einar Høgset, but he did have the feeling that the man’s judgement was not quite as good as he thought it was. And this feeling was accentuated when he arrived in Torgalmenning and saw Høgset at the other end of its wide space.
He was already dressed for the banquet. He was talking to a figure whom Fossli recognised as one of the town’s drunks – someone who had been up before him (and doubtless before Høgset) many times when they sat as magistrates. He saw Høgset reach into his pocket and take out money. He turned, shaking his head, and made towards Markevei and the Bristol.
The idea was all right: to give one drunk enough to get two drunks incapable, with the proviso that he take the newcomer from Eastern Norway off somewhere and make sure that the rest of Ibsen’s visit was free from embarrassment (he was to leave by the next morning’s steamer for Stavanger). It was the detail that concealed the devil: to do it in daylight, in evening dress, in the centre of town, to make it obvious that money was changing hands. Everyone in Bergen knew that Høgset, before becoming mayor or since, was not a man to give good money to a drunk.
But when Høgset arrived at the Bristol he was in high good humour, and together they went up to Herr Ibsen’s room without fear. The Great Man was already clad in evening dress, which made him look as if he were buttoned up in stiff cardboard, and on his chest he wore the Grand Cross of the Northern Star, recently awarded him in Stockholm by King Oscar. It was perhaps this (for he was known to value such distinctions well beyond their merits) that had kept him in high good humour.
There was to be no high table, no raised-dais affair, with one line of diners very visible from the floor of the hall. This was by order of Herr Ibsen: the man who could flaunt his latest bauble was a mass of contradictions and forbade any singling-out. Thus he entered the banqueting hall of the hotel to great applause, which he acknowledged by several blinks of the eye, then he walked through the assembled people of Bergen flanked by Høgset and Fossli till he came to their table by the windows and his place in the centre facing the other tables. As they sat down Høgset introduced the other notables:
‘Herr Lie, our city treasurer and Fru Lie, Herr Høydahlsvik, our director of education, Herr Østergård, our secretary of commerce …’ and so on until he came to the young lady whose place was opposite Herr Ibsen. ‘And I have taken the liberty to place my daughter Anne-Lise opposite you, which is to her a great honour, as you can imagine.’
Herr Ibsen’s partiality for young girls – plump, charming, admiring – was well known, and hosts who acknowledged this preference, instead of filling every spare place with boring local placemen, enjoyed the full sun of his favour. Arnoldus Fossli had never seen the mayor’s daughter before, though he had known his late wife, whom Høgset had married for her ships. Fossli wondered if this young miss was the Great Man’s type of girl. There was, behind the girlish mannerisms, a steely sparkle to the eyes that to him suggested a single-minded stupidity. Was the stupidity an inheritance from her mother? Or was the combination of single-mindedness and stupidity, conceivably, a link with her father?
She started in as soon as Herr Ibsen, after greeting her, had sat down.
‘You must be wondering why a seventeen-year-old is in a place of honour like this, Herr Ibsen, but Mama died several years ago and I’m going to take her place as the mayor’s lady, and I couldn’t have a more wonderful baptism in the role than this dinner to honour someone who has done so much for women in this country, everybody says so, and even I can see it’s true. I read Rasmusholm last night and of course everyone knows about Nora and slamming the door and all that, it’s so wonderful your coming to Bergen because really Bergen is the heart of Norway, not Christiania, which Papa says is just a mushroom city with no history – oh dear, that’s Papa on the job as always, they never stop badgering him for one reason or another—’
Herr Ibsen’s eyes, which had glazed over, now turned to Einar Høgset seated two places down from his over-confident daughter. An official of some kind had tapped him on the shoulder, and was now whispering in his ear. After a brief report from his underling, Høgset gave a few short orders and turned back to his gravlaks.
‘Just a disturbance out of Sandviken – some of the local drunks.’
‘Isn’t it dreadful,’ Anne-Lise began at once, ‘how these people disgrace the name of Norway? Why do they drink? Here we are in the most beautiful country in the world and all they can think of is akevitt and beer and—’
On she went, and Herr Ibsen sighed and turned his attention to the kveite Nora which had replaced the salmon. Arnoldus Fossli registered the mayor’s first unquestionable miscalculation of the evening.
‘Shall I—?’ he whispered.
‘Shut her up? No, no. It allows us to think our thoughts. I have a feeling that Herr – Høgset is it? – will have only a brief period of duty as mayor.’
However that might be, some forty-five minutes into the banquet the official tapped once again the mayoral shoulder and had a further consultation. This time faces were grave. But whe
n he had taken himself off, Høgset turned an apologetic face to his guest.
‘Nothing to worry about, Herr Ibsen. A drunk has been fished out of the fjord. These things happen all the time, though he’s not a local. I doubt we’ll find out how he got there. If he was pushed, the man who did it probably won’t remember. I apologise for the interruption, Herr Ibsen. I like to be kept informed about everything that happens in the town.’
‘Obviously,’ muttered Ibsen under his breath.
When the kalvefilet Oscar had come and gone, and before the desserts and the coffee, the moment arrived for the speeches. This time, once again, the Great Man had put his foot down. The awful experience in Stockholm of being addressed with tipsy familiarity by a local notable was not to be repeated. He would be welcomed and introduced in a speech of not more than two minutes, after which he would reply in a speech of not more than ten minutes. A splendid fob watch had been laboriously unbuttoned from the depths of his waistcoat and now lay before him on the table.
At least he was being introduced by Høgset and not by his daughter. After two minutes of innocuous introduction, written for him by one of the Town Hall secretaries who had seen a couple of the plays, the mayor handed over, amid polite applause, to the Great Man. The large, searching, irritable eye and the softer, more friendly eye surveyed the massed tables of diners. Inevitably it was the fierce eye that everyone noted.
‘My dear friends from Bergen!’ Why did the tone of voice belie the words, making them sound more like a threat than a greeting? It was well known that there was a wonderful harmony of opinion between Norwegians and Herr Ibsen: he didn’t much like them and they didn’t much like him. ‘My heart is full to be back with you, in the most beautiful of Norwegian towns. And it is full of memories and of questions too. How could the trustees of the Bergen theatre – the Nationale Scene you called it, confident that you were the nation! – How could they, back in 1851, have been so foolhardy or far-sighted (choose the word you prefer) as to entrust your theatre to a mere boy from the wrong side of Norway, who hardly knew more of plays and stagecraft than he knew of steam locomotion or the theory of gravity? What daring they showed, and how little, perhaps, I justified their faith.’
The Detection Collection Page 10