Professor Andersen's Night (5 page)

If any of those present had taken photographs of the dinner group, what would you have seen? Immediately after they were developed, those who were there, the seven people around the table, the hosts and the five guests, would have recognised themselves and smiled a little at their own traits; and then have been even more amused, perhaps, by the other guests’ traits; all seven of them would, in other words, have been concerned with both their own and the others’ mannerisms, and in doing so given acknowledging smiles. But in thirty or thirty-five years’ time the same picture, now in a photo album belonging to, let’s say, Nina and Bernt’s son Thomas, might perhaps, while he was showing it to his own children, who are in their twenties, call forth smiles of acknowledgement from Thomas, too, and his young sons (or daughters if you like), but now because
this
photo is so typical of the period. Typical of the Nineties, the time when Nina and Bernt Halvorsen were in their prime, and typical of this period in that set, that social grouping, which was theirs. They, that is Nina and Bernt’s heirs, would look at the photo of these seven people around a dinner table, in old-fashioned clothes, in strange positions, and they would exclaim, even though the original photograph was supposed to have been taken spontaneously, so the people being photographed didn’t know they were being photographed just then: So stiff they look, so arranged, and in spite of the fact that the very generation who were photographed here, and precisely this social grouping, with their shared development and background, were such that they individually and as a group were particularly preoccupied with this very thing – trying to appear natural, relaxed, indeed spontaneous in every way, for such is the relentless nature of an image frozen in time; the rigid, the arranged is always apparent, and probably this rigid, unnatural, arranged
look
was actually the prevailing state of affairs at the time when the photo was taken, and of which they were such utter prisoners without noticing it themselves, but which now, an imagined thirty or thirty-five years on in time, streams out of the picture and brings about the feeling which calls forth the good-natured smiles we all adopt when we see photos from a time which isn’t our own, and which you can call smiles of acknowledgement because one acknowledges what was typical of the Nineties in this chance photograph from a party on Boxing Day at their grandparents’ house at Sagene, and taken before they, in other words Nina and Bernt’s second-generation offspring, were even born. But while, let’s say, Bernt Halvorsen, on taking a look at this photograph of himself, would have shaken his head, because he would at once have recognised some habits from his medical profession which he never managed to exclude from his private life, which therefore had to be called bad habits in such a setting and which he regarded as slightly comic, though obviously it was much too late to do anything about them now, at this stage in his life, such things as laying one hand
over
the other, originally to calm patients, but now one of his characteristic traits, even when he was hosting a party in his home on Boxing Day, he could only shake his head in partial resignation, before he went on to study the rest of the people in the photograph, his wife’s little idiosyncrasies which came to light in the photo, and Per Ekeberg’s intense way of leaning forward, or Professor Andersen’s way of slightly tilting his head, which undeniably gave him an arrogant look, so typical of Pål, Bernt would have thought then, and smiled, because he knew that this arrogant, tilted head was a posture, created and built up to conceal the deep social insecurity that the 55-year-old had felt all his life, in the same way that his grandchildren, looking at the photograph in, for instance, the year 2029, would think how typical when they regarded their grandfather and Professor Andersen respectively, but they wouldn’t think how typical of Grandfather, and how typical of Professor Andersen, but would exclaim, at the sight of them both: So typical of the Nineties to hold his hands like that, and his head like
that
! The spirit of the times operates like this, concealed from the person who is its prisoner, but apparent to someone who observes us in photographs from another period, liberated, from the outside.

There must undoubtedly have been something about this party in the home of a married couple who were both successful doctors in Oslo in the Nineties which would lead you to point to it and exclaim: Typical Nineties, even though both the hosts and the guests spontaneously expressed their individuality. What that might be would have been difficult (not to say impossible) for them to determine themselves, and, of course, so painful (herein lies the impossibility of it) that one would rather not be preoccupied with it, but Professor Andersen was thrown suddenly into a strange inner (and outer) existence which led, for one thing, to a strong feeling of unease about his own position within this group, in which he felt partially at home, not least because he knew its social codes, in other words what was regarded as good taste, the sense of humour, if you like, but in which
he
also felt partially trapped, so that he really would have liked to break out, in a tremendous act of will, in a tremendous leap, if that had been possible.

What was it that united them as a group that was easily recognisable as quite definitely belonging to that period? What, in other words, was their mark of distinction? Their individual development and individual lives had in many ways been similar to the development you would have found in any social grouping like the one to which they belonged. Success had made them adapt. Good food, good drink, spacious living accommodation, holiday houses and weekend homes, cars and boats set their mark on the privileged people who enjoy such benefits, radical or non-radical. But if this generation or, to be more precise, this small minority within their own age group, who were confident, and probably justly so, that they were right to claim their own hallmarks as hallmarks of their generation, for if they had any hallmarks to speak of, any small but important detail that made them stand out amongst other fifty-year-old professors, medical consultants, celebrated actors, heads of administration, senior psychologists who
were
radical youths in 1950 or 1970 or for that matter whatever one may predict will exist among fifty-year-olds in 2020, then it must have been their refusal to be pillars of society. They were strongly disinclined to regard themselves as pillars of society. Because they didn’t feel they conformed: not to the authority, or rather duties, which they enacted, nor to the social group to which they belonged. They denied being what they were. They didn’t feel that they conformed to their given status. They were consultants, heads of administration, senior psychologists, celebrated actors and professors of literature, but in their innermost thoughts they believed, every single one of them, that they had not adopted the attitude that was expected of them. They were still against
them
, the others, although they could scarcely be distinguished from them any longer, apart from in small ways; they liked to wear blue denim trousers, so-called jeans or Levi’s, when they carried out their duties as heads of administration, professors, etc.; indeed, Professor Andersen himself rather liked to dress in jeans, and did so
with
glee, when he turned up at meetings at the National Theatre, where he was a board member. They continued to be against authority, deep inside they were in opposition, even though they were now, in fact, pillars of society who carried out the State’s orders, and no one besides themselves (and old photographs from the year 2020) could perceive that they were anything other than State officials, part of the State fabric, and the fact that most of them voted in elections for the ruling party would hardly surprise anyone other than themselves, but they, on the other hand, would argue that they didn’t want to throw away their own vote and by so doing bring the right-wingers into power. Nor were they being hypocritical. They just fundamentally did not conform in their own eyes, when all was said and done, to what they actually were.

Another of their distinctive traits was their relationship to the good things in life. They ate as became their position, resided likewise, had holiday homes and cars and boats and ever-increasing affluence, but it meant nothing, so they
claimed
, and rightly so. They had never dreamed of material wealth; in their dreams for the future, material wealth hadn’t even been part of the scenario. Therefore they behaved as though these material goods were encumbrances in their lives. They didn’t really concern them; they didn’t define themselves through these objects which they enjoyed and which were there for one and all to see. This was particularly evident when one of them owned something that was extremely expensive or conspicuously striking, and that happened every so often, as they didn’t deny themselves the good things in life. It would be explained as a personal deviation, and it was the person who owned the particularly expensive or striking object who themselves explained that it was a highly personal deviation. Per Ekeberg, for instance, owned a fast and extremely elegant car, and he explained this was due to him being possessed by a ‘speed demon’, which he never managed to banish, and Bernt Halvorsen had a large sailing boat lying at his fairly unpretentious holiday cottage in the county of Vestfold, and he apologised for this by saying that the wind and sailing
held
an almost abnormal attraction for him, which was connected to his childhood in a little town in Vestfold, the same one, by the way, that Professor Andersen had grown up in, without having to acquire a sailing boat when he was a grown man. Instead, Professor Andersen had another vice: a passion for Italian suits. In his wardrobe hung five light-weight woollen Italian suits, bought in Italy, it’s true, while there on literary conferences, so they didn’t cost more than an ordinary suit at home, he made a point of stressing – a whopping lie by the way. His Italian suits cost every bit as much as an Italian suit bought here at home; that is to say, if that suit could have been bought here at home at all, then it would have cost two or three thousand kroner more, so that, in a way, you could perhaps say that he had saved the price of one or two cheap Adelsten suits for every suit he bought in Italy. It wasn’t often Professor Andersen wore one of these Italian suits, but what a delight it was for him when he did so once in a while. He seldom wore them when he had to be smart at a party, or
when
he had to represent the university or go to receptions, or quite simply when he gave a lecture. Tonight, for instance, he was wearing an ordinary, grey suit, the same one, by the way, that he had worn on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and on most days for everyday purposes he wore jeans. But now and then he had a great urge to get dressed up in one of his Italian suits, and then he did it, no matter what the occasion. Consequently, he could turn up at the university at Blindern dressed in one of his extremely elegant Italian suits made of pure wool. He delighted in turning up like that in front of his students, maybe just to lead a postgraduate seminar, or maybe even just a single tutorial with a postgraduate student in his office. He didn’t do it to make an impression on his students, but to make an impression on himself. Getting dressed up in one of these suits gave him a heady, liberated feeling. Then he liked to go to a restaurant afterwards, alone, not an expensive restaurant either, and he delighted in dining absolutely alone at a small table by the window.

A non-materialistic dandy in an Italian suit alone at a table by the window in a restaurant. Fifty-five-year-old Professor Andersen, a representive of the small minority within his age group who could rightly claim to be a distinctive generation. Maybe the distinctive traits associated with their ways of acting and thinking could be traced back to a lifelong infatuation with the spirit of modernity, which had hit them and struck them down like lightning in their youth sometime in the Sixties. The avant-garde. The overriding futuristic alliance between political radicalism and the avant-garde in art. It was lodged deeply in their minds, as though still lightning-struck, like a lifelong infatuation. How much was left of their radicalism now was difficult to say. During the second referendum on whether Norway should enter the Common Market, which is now called the European Union, the seven people now gathered here were split more or less down the middle as regards how they cast their vote. Four of them had voted against, three had voted for, and who had voted
one
way or the other was relatively uninteresting, in Professor Andersen’s opinion; what was interesting was that whether they had voted for or against, either way their vote was grounded in the spirit of their own youth or modernity. Professor Andersen himself had voted against, that was because he didn’t see any reason to vote in favour, when most people living in all the far-flung corners of the country were so against; he didn’t think he could quite defend going against farmers and fishermen and lorry drivers in thinly populated Norway, when it evidently meant so much to them that Norway shouldn’t enter the European Union. Moreover, it pleased him to know that a number of ambitious young bureaucrats and politicians, several of whom he had tutored as students, missed out on a number of juicy positions within the EU bureaucracy, and they were really juicy positions, as regards both money and eminence; so when it was made known that the referendum result went against entering the EEC, then he thought about them in particular, especially the ones he actually knew and remembered as students, and he laughed, not so heartily as he had laughed the first time a
referendum
turned down entry into the EEC, in 1972 – no, much more heartily, in fact, much more crudely, for in 1972 he had been genuinely moved, as were many others. But Per Ekeberg had voted for entry, and he had made some condescending remarks about Professor Andersen’s ‘anti’ standpoint, which he deemed rigid.

In order to understand these men and women who were seated around a dinner table at Nina and Bernt Halvorsen’s, the two married doctors, on this particular Boxing Day, then you have to understand Per Ekeberg and not least his self-assurance. For it was Per Ekeberg who was most loyal to the spirit of his youth. It might sound paradoxical, since he was the one who on the face of it had changed the most. He had made a complete break and left his senior position as a psychologist in the public sector for a position as director in an advertising agency which served large, commercial customers. It’s true that he didn’t use the title of Director, but continued to be called senior psychologist, a whim, or idea, which he
had
forced through, and which impressed people by turning out to be a highly creative idea in advertising terms, at the same time as it was a vehement expression of Per Ekeberg’s own opinion of his new and, financially speaking, far more lucrative life. It was no fundamental change, in actual fact. He carried out the same duties as before, just in a new and more exciting setting. From being in state administration to being an agent in the open market, that was not a fundamental change. From being a social-democratic therapist to being a capitalistic player, that was not a fundamental change. This was an opinion which Per Ekeberg was able to uphold strongly and heatedly, just as he had upheld heatedly his views on any issue in which he had a consuming interest, ever since Professor Andersen had got to know him in the autumn of 1962. Per Ekeberg was the man of the future. That made him unflinchingly radical, he claimed, because it meant that he was able to consider without prejudice, and not least without old prestige, the new problems which arose, and Professor Andersen was by no
means
certain he wasn’t right. Because their radicalism had perhaps only been a chance expression of the spirit of modernity, which was their one great fascination. So when Per Ekeberg was able to crow over Professor Andersen, telling him that it was he who was radical, and not Professor Andersen, who remained stuck in the out-dated ideas from his long-departed youth, then he did so with a self-assurance and deep sense of conviction that Professor Andersen himself didn’t possess when he was trying to put forward his view, unsure of its radicalism. Because radicalism wasn’t the issue, neither for Per Ekeberg nor for Professor Andersen. It was modernity. What gave the well-to-do advertising director his deep sense of conviction and (as far as Professor Andersen was concerned) crowing self-confidence wasn’t the certainty that he, Per Ekeberg, was just as radical as he had always been, but that he was just as modern as he had always been. He claimed to be radical, but that was because his point of view was grounded in the modernity which had always influenced Per Ekeberg’s life and work, and hence the standpoints of Professor Andersen and the other three
who
had voted against the EEC for the second time were stuffy and represented a decrepit radicalism. Professor Andersen found it difficult to defend himself against this, not because he happened to be against the EEC, but on account of what was associated with this standpoint, and which Per Ekeberg didn’t have any trouble putting into words. Indeed, he had to admit that he envied Per Ekeberg his deep sense of conviction and pleasure at finding a shining modern policy for his own life. It wasn’t Per Ekeberg crowing over his inability to adopt truly radical points of view that hurt him, because the hurt he felt on such occasions struck so deep that it had to be founded in nothing less than the fact that he perceived Per Ekeberg’s accusation – about no longer being capable of adopting truly radical standpoints – as equivalent to accusing him of having lost the sense of modernity he had been infatuated with all his life, and which he had believed was an inalienable part of his character, and he felt stung by it. Faced with Per Ekeberg, Professor Andersen felt like a stuffy man in his
fifties
. He stuck to his standpoints, but he didn’t like them, and would have liked to exchange them for more modern points of view if it had been possible for him to do so.