Professor Andersen's Night Read Online Free PDF Page A

Oslo to study at the same time, Bernt medicine and he the arts and humanities, and they had remained close throughout their student days, despite belonging to different faculties. After a while Bernt found his Nina, who also studied medicine, and Professor Andersen had got to know her too. He had found a wife who also studied the arts and humanities, and from the end of their student days the two newly married couples had spent much time together. They had continued to see each other often, with intervals when one or other of the couples had been living outside Oslo – Nina and Bernt because they worked at a hospital out of town, he because he was abroad , either on a research grant or as a Norwegian visiting professor in Strasbourg, right up until he got divorced ten years ago, and then he had continued to see Nina and Bernt on his own. Both he and Bernt had been successful in life, he had secured a post at the university early on, had done a PhD and become a professor while still relatively young, at the same time as Bernt had made a career for himself in the hospital sector, where as a young man he had become a consultant, a position he held today at Ullevål Hospital.
    The other guests were Nina and Bernt’s friends, but for that reason they had also become close acquaintances of Professor Andersen. Per Ekeberg he remembered well, as a psychology student from the early Sixties, and also Trine Napstad he remembered from the dozy reading rooms at Blindern, where she, like him, had studied the arts and humanities. Small and animated, she had talked non-stop in a far-too-loud, piercing voice the moment she escaped the silence of the reading room. That had grated on his nerves somewhat, he remembered, even though he had thought she was attractive enough. When he had met her again, at Nina and Bernt’s, as Per Ekeberg’s new partner, and thus, in reality, his second wife, he on occasion found himself wondering about Per Ekeberg’s first wife, since Per had settled down, found solace, with this woman on his journey through life, which also for him, Per Ekeberg, has an unavoidable conclusion, as we all know, and which, at least for brief periods of time, cannot fail to cause us concern. Per Ekeberg was a senior psychologist. It was a title he took with him when he moved from the public sector into private enterprise to be a director in the Norwegian branch of an international advertising agency. He appeared to be just as content in the private sector as he had been in the public one, and in addition he earned a lot more money, and it’s possible he also set greater store by the creative side of his new profession, which, among other things, was such that he didn’t need to call himself Director, but could continue to present himself as senior psychologist, which undoubtedly seemed more intriguing when the title was used in an advertising context.
    If he were to choose, then he had greater respect for Jan Brynhildsen and Judith Berg than Per Ekeberg and Trine Napstad. Jan Brynhildsen had, as a newly divorced 45-year-old (after being married to a female colleague who at that time was far more successful than he was), fallen head over heels in love with an air hostess. A rather weary-looking beauty in her forties, who was a single mother with a teenage daughter from a short-lived affair with an Italian business magnate. Jan Brynhildsen was at the time a typical second-rate actor and his falling in love with a faded air hostess undeniably had a strong element of comedy to it, of the more malicious kind that Professor Andersen, for his part, couldn’t claim to be entirely innocent of being partial to. But in this amorous project Professor Andersen had been Jan Brynhildsen’s secret admirer. He had looked up to him, and inwardly urged him on, Jan Brynhildsen, the walk-on actor at the National Theatre, to follow the convictions of his heart. ‘The person who is unable to be fascinated by his youthful dream of the Air Hostess