Free Professor Andersen's Night by Dag Solstad Page B

matter how sympathetic our attitude may be to their pursuits, and not least to the intentions behind them. They are and will continue to be total outsiders. They do not affect us, our very structure and sensibility, which form the way we think. Indeed, it frightens me,’ he repeated. ‘It really frightens me. It frightens me much more than the fact that I’m childless.’ Then he held his tongue, and remained sitting in silence. His colleague didn’t say anything either. He looked at Professor Andersen, he seemed to be about to say something, he drew himself up the way someone does who is going to say something he must or ought to say, but is uncertain if he will after all, but he finally decided not to say anything, and remained seated, looking, rather puzzled, at Professor Andersen.
    It went quiet for a while. The two men drank whisky in Professor Andersen’s room at the Britannia Hotel. To tell the truth , they drank a lot; the bottle was close to being half empty. It was no later than 3 p.m. Outside the window it had already begun to get dark. Professor Andersen’s colleague was a few years younger than him, approaching fifty, though he hadn’t reached it yet. He had just started a new life, in so far as he had got married a second time, to a young woman, one of his students no less. This Professor Andersen knew, but he hadn’t touched on it as yet, and his colleague hadn’t had an opportunity to do so himself, as Professor Andersen had started talking straight away about what was on his mind, and which, after all, was the reason why he had phoned his colleague from Fornebu when it suddenly occurred to him to go up to Trondheim. He poured yet another whisky for himself and handed the bottle to the other man, while he was thinking that he must try to continue with his deliberations before he became so intoxicated that he couldn’t continue, but would just repeat himself, over and over again, using exactly the same words, as he knew he had a habit of doing under the influence of alcohol.
    ‘Recently I’ve begun to look at myself in a different light than I did before,’ continued Professor Andersen. ‘Previously I regarded myself as a person who was able to use my resources to the full, and was, to be perfectly honest, proud of that ability. Now I see clearly how limited my horizon is, and it surprises me that I haven’t seen it before. Imagine how I’ve gone round calling myself enlightened and aware, even claiming to have an understanding of history, and actually I haven’t any knowledge of my ancestors even three generations back, and worse still: I’ve not even been concerned about this. It is utterly disgraceful,’ he shouted, and thumped his fist on the table-top, so that the blue Farris (the second one) overturned, and the whisky splashed over his glass. ‘This is the state of the human spirit in our time,’ he continued, after drying the table-top with his handkerchief. ‘Of which we are both outstanding and excellent representatives. There is something primitive about it which we haven’t been able to face up to. I’m scared,’ he said, ‘and frightened by my own ignorance. I’ve reached the age of fifty-five, and am not eager to throw myself into a new field of study.’ He went silent. ‘But if that is the case,’ his colleague said eagerly, ‘then what you say is surely an unusually weighty defence as to the necessity of art and literature.’ ‘Oh, don’t be so sure about that,’ said Professor Andersen with a fierce smile, which he reckoned he would have characterised as evil if he had seen himself from outside.
    He felt quite inebriated, so he decided not to continue this conversation. He asked his colleague how he was, and the latter immediately began to talk about his affairs. The contents of the whisky bottle became dangerously low, and Professor Andersen was obliged to call room service and order two more bottles of blue Farris, as well as a bucket of ice. It can’t be