Professor Andersen's Night

by Dag Solstad

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Dag Solstad

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Copyright

  About the Book

  It is Christmas Eve, and 55-year-old Professor Pål Andersen is alone, drinking coffee and cognac in his living room. Lost in thought, he looks out of the window and sees a man strangle a woman in the apartment across the street.

  Professor Andersen fails to report the crime. The days pass, and he becomes paralysed by indecision. Desperate for respite, the professor sets off to a local sushi bar, only to find himself face to face with the murderer.

  Professor Andersen’s Night is an unsettling yet highly entertaining novel of apathy, rebellion and morality. In flinty prose, Solstad presents an uncomfortable question: would we, like his cerebral protagonist, do nothing?

  About the Author

  Dag Solstad is one of Norway’s leading contemporary authors. His work has consistently won critical acclaim and he is the only author to have received the Norwegian Literary Critics’ Award three times. His first novel to be translated into English, Shyness and Dignity, was shortlisted for the 2007 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and Novel 11, Book 18 was longlisted for the 2009 prize.

  ALSO BY DAG SOLSTAD

  Shyness and Dignity

  Novel 11, Book 18

  IT WAS CHRISTMAS EVE and Professor Andersen had a Christmas tree in the living room. He stared at it. ‘Well, I must say,’ he thought. ‘Yes indeed, I must say.’ Then he turned and ambled round the living room, while he listened to the Christmas carols on TV. ‘Yes, I must say,’ he repeated. ‘Hmm, yes, what shall I say?’ he added, pondering. He looked at the tastefully laid table in the dining room. Laid for one. ‘Weird how ingrained it is,’ he thought, ‘and so utterly devoid of irony, too,’ he added, shaking his head. He was looking forward to dinner. Under the Christmas tree lay two presents, one from each of his grown-up nephews. ‘If I say I hope I manage to get the crackling crisp, might there be a hint of irony in that? No,’ he thought, ‘if the crackling isn’t perfect, I’ll be furious, I shall swear out loud, even if it is Christmas Eve.’ Just as he had sworn out loud when he had struggled to set up the tree on its base, and afterwards to make it stand straight and not lop-sided, like a tree should indoors. Just as he had done when he fastened the electric lights on to the branches of the tree, and discovered that this year, as usual, he had gone in circles, all the business with the wires, getting them entangled, so that he’d had to stop and unwind them, take off the lights one at a time and start all over again, almost right from the beginning. ‘Damn,’ he had said then. ‘Damn.’ Loudly, and clearly, but that was yesterday. ‘Funny how Christmas Eve is so ingrained in us,’ he thought. The solemnity. Holy Night. Which will come to pass at twelve o’clock tonight. Not before, as many people in Norway think; this is the evening before Holy Night. Or Silent Night. He went out into the kitchen. Opened the oven door. Took out the pork ribs. Inhaled the delectable aroma, and regarded the crisp crackling with satisfaction. Got everything ready, and carried it in for serving before he went into the bedroom and quickly changed his clothes. Came out again dressed in his good grey suit, white shirt, tie, well-polished black shoes. He sat down at the table to partake of his Christmas dinner.

  Professor Andersen savoured his traditional Christmas meal. He ate pork ribs with surkål, vegetables, potatoes, prunes and whipped cranberries, as was the custom in the region of Norway he came from, and at the same time that most people throughout the country partook of Christmas dinner, some time between 5 and 7 p.m. He drank beer and aquavit, as one often does with this rich dish, which one seldom eats except at Christmas time. He ate slowly and ceremoniously, and drank thoughtfully. When he was finished, he carried the plate and the serving dishes out into the kitchen and carried in the dessert, which was creamed rice, another tradition in his family, although not particularly tasty, he thought. But he ate that, too, with ceremony. Afterwards he cleared the table and went into the living room, where he set out the coffee things on the little table in front of the fireplace. He lit the fire and sat down. Coffee and cognac. ‘I’ll skip the Christmas cakes,’ he thought. ‘Spare me the Christmas cakes. I’ll just have to drink more coffee and cognac,’ he chuckled contentedly. He stared at the lit-up Christmas tree, which was standing quite near the fireplace. Simply but tastefully decorated with tinsel and Norwegian flags in symmetrical rows around the tree. ‘Most people decorate the tree far too much,’ Professor Andersen said to himself. ‘Well, that is usually when there are young children in the family,’ he added in a conciliatory tone. He opened the presents from his nephews. One had given him a novel by Ingvar Ambjørnsen. The other had given him a novel by Karsten Alnæs. ‘Well, well, so Christmas came round this year, too,’ he thought, with a little sigh.

  Professor Andersen felt at peace, tonight. He had this feeling of inner peace which was not of a religious but of a social kind. He liked to indulge in these Christmas rituals, which in fact meant nothing to him. He did not have to do it. He celebrated Christmas on his own, after all, and he was not tied to these customs with deep and sincere emotions; he could easily have managed without the Christmas tree, for instance, no one would have reacted to him not having a Christmas tree; on the contrary, the people he could count on visiting him during Christmas would be more likely to express surprise at him having a Christmas tree, and such a big Christmas tree, bigger than he was himself, in fact, and he might as well begin right now to dismiss the witticisms which would rain down on his poor head because of this, he thought and had to laugh. No, Professor Andersen had a Christmas tree, a Christmas tree somewhat bigger than he was; it had to be that big, he thought. He celebrated Christmas. Mainly because he felt very uneasy at the thought that he might have done the opposite. Not given a damn about anything connected to Christmas Eve, let Christmas be Christmas and dropped Christmas preparations and Christmas celebrations, and behaved as though it were any old day, and thereby gained an additional and sorely needed working day. Sat in his ordinary jeans and worked on a lecture, or seen to his correspondence, with which he was far behind, particularly the official part. Eaten meatballs with boiled cabbage in the kitchen, or one of the pasta dishes he was so good at making. Carried on with his own affairs and let others celebrate Christmas in their own way, in the thousands of homes where lights were lit. The idea that he could have done that, without arousing any particular reaction, upset him. In a way, he would have felt emotionally stunted if he were to do that. ‘Yes, I would actually have felt emotionally stunted,’ he thought defiantly, if somewhat surprised because that was, in fact, how it was. He could not reject Christmas; he had to observe the traditional customs. It was the right thing for him to do, anything else was quite out of the question, even though the customs he observed and the celebration he thereby took part in, in his own way and without any feeling of obligation to his family or others, beyond the feeling of duty he felt to himself, and that actually came from within, pointed to a meaning of some kind which for him was meaningless. Utterly alone, indeed without anyone even knowing about it, or caring about it, he took part in the celebration of the major Christian ceremony in memory of the Saviour’s birth, and he felt a sense of inner peace from doing so, and for once he felt reconciled with his state of being, something he rarely had an opportunity to do, despite his high social rank and his position as professor of literature at the country’s oldest university.

  He sat in front of the fire and gazed into the flames. He threw the colourful Christmas paper from the two presents in the fire, and watched the flames flare up. He didn’t throw the two gift tags into the fire
, he kept them, mainly because he could not bring himself to throw away any personal greetings; after all, handwritten names on a gift tag must be called personal when all was said and done, he thought. He drank coffee and cognac. Gazed into the fire, lost in his own thoughts. Time passed. Now and then he went over to the window and stared out. At the empty street with the locked cars along the edge of the pavement in rows, and at the lights from the apartments opposite. Some of them were in darkness, apart from the faint lights on Christmas trees further within, which meant that the people who lived there had gone away, to their families, in order to celebrate Christmas Eve there. But other places were lit up. There, people were at home, celebrating Christmas. He noticed four apartments in particular where he could see that many people were gathered. For a second it annoyed him that he hadn’t thought of going over to the window to stare at the apartments on the other side of the street while he was in the middle of his Christmas meal, as perhaps then he might have seen the four families sitting at the table at the same time, all of them within his field of vision, each in the light within their own apartments, right across from each other, and beside each other, distinctly separate, and without really knowing about each other, although they were gathered round the same thing, after all, and for the same ceremonial occasion. Oh, how he would have enjoyed that, the very sight of it, which would have struck him as familiar, a naive, confessional, civilised beauty, but now it was too late. Nevertheless, the scenes he was now able to observe in the four lit-up apartments were such that they filled him with a peculiar feeling of rapport. He could dimly see figures in all the apartments. Figures who were sitting in drowsy calm behind candles burning in seven-armed candlesticks in the window, or under glittering candelebras, or beside the dim lights on Christmas trees. He imagined the warm glow from their faces and bodies in there in the heated rooms, and an exhausting torpor, which transmitted itself to Professor Andersen as a familiar, drowsy calm. He felt a rapport with them. On this evening, as the hours moved towards twelve o’clock and the Holy Night was about to begin, in which he wanted to take part, at least for a few short hours, even if they didn’t give that a thought and he personally was also far removed from it, nevertheless there was now a rapport between Professor Andersen and those he was watching from his window, who were sitting in a drowsy torpor in their apartments, because they were all participants in this deep-rooted cultural ceremony, if not in the full sense felt by only a few here in the capital, then at least in time.

  It must have been about eleven in the evening, an hour before what is called the Holy Night or Silent Night came to pass, a night celebrated on the same day in our country and in the other Nordic countries, though with the main emphasis on the previous evening, so-called Christmas Eve, celebrated for the same purpose, to commemorate the Holy Night when Jesus of Nazareth, the Saviour, was born in a stable in the town of Bethlehem in Judaea in the year which has been termed the year nought, that Professor Andersen stood like this staring across at the lighted apartments on the other side of the street, filled with this peculiar feeling of familiarity because they were all carried back to 2,000-year-old images tonight, whether they heeded it or not. In his mind’s eye the desert sky was stretched over Judaea in the December of the year which starts our reckoning of time. The thousands of stars, which twinkled and twinkled in the deep blue sky. The shepherds in the fields outside Bethlehem. An angel standing in front of them and declaring tidings of great joy. Professor Andersen saw the angel in his mind’s eye, in front of the shepherds and the sheep, lit up, and derived pleasure from visualising the angels, lit up in the dark night. He imagined he heard the angels praising God, and this, too, filled him with a strange sacred feeling. A crib in a stable. Mary and Joseph, dressed in smocks, bowing over it, and the shepherds kneeling, and the sheep looking at them. The large, yellow star of Bethlehem in the desert sky. The three wise men riding on camels through the desert, following the large star, coming to a halt outside the stable in Bethlehem. Kings of the Orient bowing in front of the crib. Gold, incense and myrrh. Oh, these images which he could allow himself to be captivated by with childlike delight, as images without deeper religious meaning. Godless devotion to these relics in an age where little or nothing seems to have the slightest opportunity to survive, going astray in the fog of history in a matter of seconds and ending up lost forever, thought Professor Andersen, with a little sigh. ‘Here I stand, half-drunk and sentimental, and I am gripped by the Christmas scripture,’ thought Professor Andersen. ‘A 55-year-old professor who has opened his mind to his inner nature, and is thus enabled to imbibe ancient tales of religious origin, and a feeling of peace arises in his mind, is that how it is, perchance?’ he wondered. ‘Yes, it must be so,’ he added. ‘And let it be so,’ he added further, thoughtfully. ‘I am a non-believer, but belong to a Christian culture, and without a touch of irony I can let the Christmas spirit fill my mind. Soon it will be the Holy Night. But fortunately I have my limitations,’ he thought next. ‘I cannot utter the words “the Holy Child” without it automatically becoming “the Choly Hild”, and I start to laugh,’ he thought, and felt laughter bubbling up inside him. ‘Nor can I utter “Jesus”,’ he added hurriedly in order to become serious again, ‘without immediately having to add “of Nazareth”; “Jesus of Nazareth” I can cope with, but not just “Jesus”. “The Saviour” I can say. “Christ” as well. If anyone asked me if I believe in Jesus, then I would cringe, but if anyone were to ask if I believe in Christ, then I wouldn’t have any trouble answering politely and truthfully that no, I do not,’ thought Professor Andersen, as he stared across at the lighted windows on the other side of the street. Saw the people sitting in their living rooms, with their lit-up Christmas trees, celebrating this 2,000-year-old event. ‘Gripped by a ritual which for many of them means nothing, but which they cannot neglect to observe, in their finest attire, like me,’ he thought. ‘With a childlike nature. Yes, with a childlike nature,’ he repeated, ‘here in the far north, in the bleak midwinter, cold, in a modern capital city in a technologically advanced, wealthy country towards the end of the twentieth century,’ he thought. ‘Yes, a man ought to experience images of the Holy Night with his childlike sensibilities intact,’ he thought, ‘at least with a nod and a smile towards these aspects, or possibilities, in his innermost thoughts, encouraging their presence, rather than putting them in their place, as one often does, and often rightly so, too,’ he added prosaically, while standing in front of the window in his apartment, waiting for the Holy Night to come to pass, a night he would spend an hour of, or perhaps two, sunk in reflection before he went to bed, or so he had decided, as he stood there in front of the window in his finest attire and stared at the lighted windows on the other side of the street.

  But lo and behold a woman appeared at one of the windows. It did not belong to one of the four apartments he had under special surveillance that evening, but to one of the smaller apartments in the same building, which had been lit up the whole time, he had noticed, but without arousing his curiosity to any extent, maybe because the residents were sitting so far inside the apartment that it was impossible to get an impression of them. But now a woman was standing there. She was staring out of the window. She was beautiful, it occurred to Professor Andersen, standing there in the window with her long, fair hair, staring gravely straight in front of her. She need not be beautiful in reality, but from the way she appeared in the window, she seemed to be beautiful, with a slim, girlish figure and her long, fair hair. ‘Young,’ thought Professor Andersen, ‘maybe an office worker, or someone who studies, either full-time or on the side.’ He did not manage to observe her for long, however, for she turned round suddenly, because another figure appeared in the room behind her. It was a man; he, too, seemed to be young, although Professor Andersen was unable off-hand to say why he assumed the new figure to be a young man. ‘But one is reasonably certain about that kind of thing, it strikes one immediately; it may be something about the sprightliness with which he
appeared on the scene, for instance,’ he thought, before he reared back in horror as the man whom he had declared with such immediate certainty to be young put his hands around the woman’s neck and squeezed. She flailed her arms about, Professor Andersen noticed, her body jerked, he observed, before she all at once became completely still beneath the man’s hands and went limp. The young man straightened up, and Professor Andersen hurriedly hid behind his own curtains, for he saw that the young man was heading over to the window. When Professor Andersen peeked carefully from behind his curtain, he saw that the curtains in the other apartment had been drawn.

  ‘I must call the police,’ he thought. He went over to the telephone, but did not lift the receiver. ‘It was murder. I must call the police,’ he thought, but still did not lift the receiver. Instead he went back to the window. The curtains were still drawn in the window in the apartment on the other side of the street. Nothing indicated that anything unusual had happened there. Late Christmas Eve, the curtains drawn, quite common. ‘But I saw it with my own eyes,’ he groaned. ‘I have witnessed a murder, I must let someone know.’ He stared across at the window with the drawn curtains. He stared and stared. Thick curtains that did not let a glimpse of light in or out. ‘What on earth has happened?’ he thought. ‘It is horrible really, and right in front of my eyes, too. I saw it with my own eyes, didn’t I? Yes, I can describe it in detail. I must call the police.’ He went over to the telephone, but didn’t lift the receiver. ‘What shall I say,’ he thought, ‘that I have seen a murder? Yes, that’s what I have to say. And then they will laugh at me, and tell me to go and lie down, and to call back when I have sobered up, because it is a well-known fact,’ he added, ‘that when you have drunk a bit and try to sound sober, you may easily be considered fairly heavily intoxicated, because you get so anxious about sounding slurred that slurring positively takes hold of you. And so beside myself as I am now, it won’t work.’