Professor Andersen's Night by Dag Solstad Page B

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