Dag Solstad - Professor Andersen's Night

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?

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.

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.