Professor Andersen's Night (9 page)

In the morning he woke up very early, in the pitch-dark. ‘Henrik Nordstrøm.’ The name. It didn’t have to be him. The man in the window didn’t have to be Henrik Nordstrøm. Henrik Nordstrøm was just the name that was on the doorbell which belonged to the apartment where he had seen a murder being committed. It could have been rented out to another person, for a long or a short period of time, most likely short, since Henrik Nordstrøm’s name was still there on its own without anyone else’s taped over it. Or it could have been lent out to a friend at Christmas, either by Henrik Nordstrøm or by his possible tenants. Or even worse: the tenant was a woman, the woman he had seen standing at the window just before midnight on the night before Christmas Day. Professor Andersen turned cold inside. He got up straight away, turned on the light, looked at his watch. Half past six. He had to get back to Oslo immediately. He mustn’t lose him. What if he had disappeared
already
? He called reception to request them to make up the bill. Got ready to leave. He was in a daze. He felt that he might have made an irreversible blunder going off in the way he had done. Down at reception he asked the man behind the desk to phone the airport and book a seat on the first plane available. That was done, and soon after Professor Andersen was sitting in the back seat of a taxi on his way out to Værnes Airport.

At Værnes he managed to phone his colleague and apologise, saying that he unfortunately had to leave for Oslo, for he had received a message which meant that he had to return straight away. Where he came from, he added to himself. On the plane he ploughed through the newspapers. Nothing. There was nothing outside the windows either. Thick mist. Grey. White. His eyes smarted from looking out and down. The plane lurched due to air turbulence. Rough Norwegian weather. He couldn’t avoid having a guilty conscience. Towards his colleague and his young wife. He had, after all, invited them to dinner at Palmehaven tonight. They had
been
looking forward to it, and he had been looking forward to it himself because they, especially the young wife, Mette, so evidently and candidly had been looking forward to it. He recollected that he hadn’t even cancelled the table he had reserved yesterday evening, a table for three at Palmehaven. But he would have to do that when he arrived in Oslo. He felt a bit sorry for his colleague, who probably didn’t have much cash, starting a second family had its costs, even for a professor of literature, especially when the possessions of one’s former life were to be divided in two, and not a penny less, he reckoned, bearing in mind what he knew about his colleague’s ex-wife. It had therefore been something for them to look forward to, having dinner with the lavish colleague from Oslo (Professor Andersen). They had fixed up a babysitter, too, and then he, Professor Andersen, had just done a runner from the whole thing. It wasn’t on. No, it wasn’t on.

In the taxi from Fornebu Airport to Skillebekk he tried to calm himself down, but couldn’t. He was too tense. He hastily opened the main door of the building where he lived, and went quickly up the
stairs
and unlocked the door to his apartment. He went straight over to the window. The curtains were drawn back, but there was no sign of anyone in there. In other words he had to prepare himself for a wait. Waiting took a long time, remarkably long it seemed, although he tried, and partly succeeded, to do some routine work, such as washing up, putting a load of washing in the machine, reading a little in a book, Thomas Mann’s
Joseph and His Brothers
, which he held in high regard, but this idle waiting and unbearable tension, and almost panic-stricken fear that it would turn out that the suspicion he’d had, when he woke up in a daze in Trondheim earlier that day, had been justified, was followed by a tremendous feeling of relief when he caught a glimpse of a shadow that passed through early in the afternoon, in a room where the light still hadn’t been turned on. Then the light was turned on. He felt relieved, although he couldn’t be certain who was in there, but he thought it might be the youngish man who had been standing there on Boxing Day in the evening, though he
couldn’t
be absolutely certain before the man appeared at the window. He did so not long afterwards, and it turned out that it was him. He was still there, then, and Professor Andersen could breathe a sigh of relief. But just then he was gripped by anxiety. Professor Andersen’s reflexive consciousness surfaced suddenly and anxiety flowed through his body. For what was really about to happen to him? For the relief he felt now was actually frightening. Really it ought to have been quite the opposite. He was feeling relieved because he, the murderer, was still there. Imagine if Professor Andersen’s suspicion in Trondheim this morning had been right! That he had vanished, and wouldn’t turn up again, that he had just borrowed the apartment for Christmas and now had left it again, and quite simply disappeared out of Professor Andersen’s life, what a relief that ought to have been! When that wasn’t the case, but on the contrary quite the opposite, it made Professor Andersen extremely worried. He was concerned about himself, and more intensely than he could
remember
ever having been before. He was so concerned about himself that he noticed he was trembling and sweating from pure anxiety. ‘I’m damned,’ he thought. ‘Now it has happened. I’m not able to go through with this.’ But he couldn’t put a stop to it. With alert self-scrutiny he observed himself as if through a transparent membrane. He couldn’t reach himself through this film. He was, indeed, a damned soul. Behind this transparent membrane. He came home from Trondheim four days after Christmas Day, and up until after New Year’s Day his powers of observation and concentration were directed at the window on the other side of the street, and at the figure inside, whom he was afraid would disappear from sight, since it might still be the case that he had just borrowed the apartment for Christmas and would disappear unnoticed, for instance with a small suitcase, for instance on 2 January, more than likely in the early morning. In this way he was tied to this murderer, of whom he had failed to notify the authorities.

Professor Andersen spent the last days of the year in his apartment, alone and indoors, only interrupted by short trips out for newspapers, the mail, food and drink. He kept watch on the window over on the other side. He recognised him now. He even observed him outside as he went out of the main door of the building and along the pavement, before he disappeared round the corner of Drammensveien. Not with a suitcase or other travel bags, fortunately. This was repeated several times. He could be gone for hours, but he always came back. Professor Andersen didn’t put on the light in his own living room, and was extremely careful not to move about in there in the few hours of daylight. But it was from the window here that he observed him, after the lights had been lit in the building on the other side of the street. He spent most of his time in his study, where he put on the light, but very often he stood behind the curtain in the dark living room and looked across at the window in the apartment in the building on the other side of the street, very carefully at that time of day when there was still daylight, motionless, on guard, so as not to arouse suspicion, something he didn’t need to bother about after dark. It was in this fashion he moved around in his own spacious apartment, from the dark living room, through the equally dark dining room, to the bright study, where he then sat down for a while and pretended to read, before he got up and went back through the rooms in the apartment, brooding, self-scrutinising, fully aware of what he was up to, but nonetheless shaken by the incomprehensibility of it.

‘It isn’t my not reporting it that worries me, or is it that after all?’ he asked himself. ‘Even if I can explain it. But why couldn’t I seek Bernt’s advice?’ he thought. ‘Why was I unable to let him, or someone else, in on this? That is the reason for it, that’s what’s behind it. The whole wretched mess, which is so extraordinary. It’s more sinister than I like to think about. Who am I? Who is sitting and standing and walking here, and not knowing where to turn, making certain that a man whom I don’t want to be associated with at all, with any of his misdeeds, doesn’t disappear from sight? If he disappears,
I’m
free again. But I don’t seem to want to be free again – that means something surely, but what?’ reasoned Professor Andersen.

‘I can’t pretend I’m not doing this absolutely voluntarily,’ he thought. ‘Even if I feel forced to do it. I have tied myself to this misdeed, which I don’t even dare think about, which has taken place in that apartment, after the curtains were drawn. Where is the body? The blood, all the shit, from the woman. The fair-haired woman, whom I think was young. What has that poor devil done in there? To be able to bear what he has done. Alone with the body. The blood (which he must have washed away, along with all the shit). Where is the body? It must be gone now, since the curtains are drawn back and the young man is going out in the evening and doing errands, whatever they amount to.’

‘Life really lasts too long nowadays,’ he thought. ‘In our day and age. There is probably a lot to be said for meting out a man’s life, all things taken into consideration, so it lasts about fifty-five years; then one has lived through the phases of one’s life, without wear and tear. Childhood, youth, maturity, manhood, and then a short final phase. That should be enough, everything after that is an ordeal. If one is fifty-five years old the maturing process has gone so far that one ought to realise things are moving towards a rapid close. Then one would take that into account. That is the natural life cycle, which progress has wiped out, as if it were a germ, and thus made us ridiculously vain, childlike, both in mind and body,’ thought Professor Andersen. ‘We live far too long, both as children, as youths, in the years we mature, and as mature men. And even then our ordeals haven’t started. The slow closing drama, fairly static, a horrible, slow end; the vainer you have been, the longer it lasts, this endless finale, the real face of modernity in the twentieth century. My life, in other words,’ Professor Andersen added.

‘Did I grasp the opportunity?’ he asked himself, suddenly, ‘Was that what I did? When I decided not to report it. It was terrible really, not to report it, that was what I didn’t understand. I was blinded by recklessness, that’s what I was. And am,’ he added. ‘Society exerts a
tremendous
influence over one. That was what I didn’t understand, despite always having preached it – to my students, for instance. Why have I set myself up against society in this way? What is it I want to
see
? In myself ? Or in him. He whom I saw murder?

‘I can’t defend it,’ he thought. ‘That’s the heart of the matter. I’m not proud of it, not at all, but I couldn’t have acted otherwise. The thought of informing on him revolts me, even if he is a murderer, that is a fact which I just have to take into account. I understand this, and stand by it. But why couldn’t I tell Bernt about it, or someone else? What was it I feared in that connection? That I don’t understand. Did I fear Bernt’s arguments against it and his condemnation? I don’t think so, for I know the arguments myself and agree with them. No civilisation can accept and defend the notion that someone who witnesses a murder could fail to bring it to the attention of society. It is surely the primordial crime. Even a father is duty-bound to report his son, and he does so, and if he doesn’t, he suffers greater
torment
than I do now. I know all of this and am unable to disagree with it, but at the same time: I am also unable to report him. Not then and not now, either. Am I suffering from a boundless feeling of sympathy? In other words, compassion beyond all bounds? Am I suffering along with the murderer, and do I wish to continue to do so? But what about the murder victim? She is dead! Subjected to the primordial crime, but she is dead. The murderer is alive and must continue to be so. Along with me. Beyond all control, in secret. The murderer and his silent witness. The murderer who doesn’t know about his silent witness, but is watched by him and observed. When shall we meet? What on earth is this? Why don’t I want him to disappear from my life? Why do I fear that he’ll disappear from my life?’

Agitated, Professor Andersen wandered around his apartment and brooded over thoughts which didn’t give him a moment’s peace. No matter how much he brooded, he found no answers to his questions. He felt harassed and irritable over trivial irregularities in his routine, such as not
being
able to find the cheese slice, which he thought he had placed there, in the kitchen drawer, but which he found on top of the fridge, something which unleashed great irritation, directed at himself, because he lived alone and didn’t have anyone else to blame when he couldn’t find his cheese slice. It was New Year’s Eve. The light was on in the window of the apartment opposite. Professor Andersen had purchased food and drink for a New Year’s Eve alone in his own apartment. Fillet steak. Horse. A good red wine. Italian, a Barolo. At any rate, he would treat himself to a good meal, while he kept an eye on the man in the apartment in the building over on the other side of the street. He had also decided to read the latest Shakespeare translation by the poet Edvard Hoem, chiefly to see what misunderstandings were to be found in the translation or adaptation. He thought he learnt a great deal by studying the misunderstandings which were liable to arise when the English spoken by mysterious beings living in the Renaissance period was translated into Norwegian, a stubborn minority language in the twentieth century. ‘Hmm, hmm,’ he thought, with a
sudden
burst of good humour and anticipation. But then the light was turned off in the apartment. In that one over on the other side of the street. He saw it from his study, from where he had a sideways view. He went quickly into the dark living room and stationed himself behind the curtain. A little later he saw the man coming out of the main entrance, dressed up for a party in thin, black shoes and a thick overcoat with a white scarf slung nonchalantly around his neck. He saw him walk up to a waiting taxi and get in. The sight almost annoyed Professor Andersen. He felt a little offended. Here he was, forced to spend New Year’s Eve all alone in a darkened living room, and then
he
, the other, goes out to amuse himself. ‘But he won’t amuse himself,’ thought Professor Andersen. ‘After all, he can’t do that any longer. It’s impossible for him, poor man. It’s just a game he has to go through with because life has to go on as before, as though nothing has happened.’