He sat in front of the fire and gazed into the flames. He threw the colourful Christmas paper from the two presents in the fire, and watched the flames flare up. He didn’t throw the two gift tags into the fire, he kept them, mainly because he could not bring himself to throw away any personal greetings; after all, handwritten names on a gift tag must be called personal when all was said and done, he thought. He drank coffee and cognac. Gazed into the fire, lost in his own thoughts. Time passed. Now and then he went over to the window and stared out. At the empty street with the locked cars along the edge of the pavement in rows, and at the lights from the apartments opposite. Some of them were in darkness, apart from the faint lights on Christmas trees further within, which meant that the people who lived there had gone away, to their families, in order to celebrate Christmas Eve there. But other places were lit up. There, people were at home, celebrating Christmas. He noticed four apartments in particular where he could see that many people were gathered. For a second it annoyed him that he hadn’t thought of going over to the window to stare at the apartments on the other side of the street while he was in the middle of his Christmas meal, as perhaps then he might have seen the four families sitting at the table at the same time, all of them within his field of vision, each in the light within their own apartments, right across from each other, and beside each other, distinctly separate, and without really knowing about each other, although they were gathered round the same thing, after all, and for the same ceremonial occasion. Oh, how he would have enjoyed that, the very sight of it, which would have struck him as familiar, a naive, confessional, civilised beauty, but now it was too late. Nevertheless, the scenes he was now able to observe in the four lit-up apartments were such that they filled him with a peculiar feeling of rapport. He could dimly see figures in all the apartments. Figures who were sitting in drowsy calm behind candles burning in seven-armed candlesticks in the window, or under glittering candelebras, or beside the dim lights on Christmas trees. He imagined the warm glow from their faces and bodies in there in the heated rooms, and an exhausting torpor, which transmitted itself to Professor Andersen as a familiar, drowsy calm. He felt a rapport with them. On this evening, as the hours moved towards twelve o’clock and the Holy Night was about to begin, in which he wanted to take part, at least for a few short hours, even if they didn’t give that a thought and he personally was also far removed from it, nevertheless there was now a rapport between Professor Andersen and those he was watching from his window, who were sitting in a drowsy torpor in their apartments, because they were all participants in this deep-rooted cultural ceremony, if not in the full sense felt by only a few here in the capital, then at least in time.
It must have been about eleven in the evening, an hour before what is called the Holy Night or Silent Night came to pass, a night celebrated on the same day in our country and in the other Nordic countries, though with the main emphasis on the previous evening, so-called Christmas Eve, celebrated for the same purpose, to commemorate the Holy Night when Jesus of Nazareth, the Saviour, was born in a stable in the town of Bethlehem in Judaea in the year which has been termed the year nought, that Professor Andersen stood like this staring across at the lighted apartments on the other side of the street, filled with this peculiar feeling of familiarity because they were all carried back to 2,000-year-old images tonight, whether they heeded it or not. In his mind’s eye the desert sky was stretched over Judaea in the December of the year which starts our reckoning of time. The thousands of stars, which twinkled and twinkled in the deep blue sky. The shepherds in the fields outside Bethlehem. An angel standing in front of them and declaring tidings of great joy. Professor Andersen saw the angel in his mind’s eye, in front of the shepherds and the sheep, lit up, and derived pleasure from visualising the angels, lit up in the dark night. He imagined he heard the angels praising God, and this, too, filled him with a strange sacred feeling. A crib in a stable. Mary and Joseph, dressed in smocks, bowing over it, and the shepherds kneeling, and the sheep looking at them. The large, yellow star of Bethlehem in the desert sky. The three wise men riding on camels through the desert, following the large star, coming to a halt outside the stable in Bethlehem. Kings of the Orient bowing in front of the crib. Gold, incense and myrrh. Oh, these images which he could allow himself to be captivated by with childlike delight, as images without deeper religious meaning. Godless devotion to these relics in an age where little or nothing seems to have the slightest opportunity to survive, going astray in the fog of history in a matter of seconds and ending up lost forever, thought Professor Andersen, with a little sigh. ‘Here I stand, half-drunk and sentimental, and I am gripped by the Christmas scripture,’ thought Professor Andersen. ‘A 55-year-old professor who has opened his mind to his inner nature, and is thus enabled to imbibe ancient tales of religious origin, and a feeling of peace arises in his mind, is that how it is, perchance?’ he wondered. ‘Yes, it must be so,’ he added. ‘And let it be so,’ he added further, thoughtfully. ‘I am a non-believer, but belong to a Christian culture, and without a touch of irony I can let the Christmas spirit fill my mind. Soon it will be the Holy Night. But fortunately I have my limitations,’ he thought next. ‘I cannot utter the words “the Holy Child” without it automatically becoming “the Choly Hild”, and I start to laugh,’ he thought, and felt laughter bubbling up inside him. ‘Nor can I utter “Jesus”,’ he added hurriedly in order to become serious again, ‘without immediately having to add “of Nazareth”; “Jesus of Nazareth” I can cope with, but not just “Jesus”. “The Saviour” I can say. “Christ” as well. If anyone asked me if I believe in Jesus, then I would cringe, but if anyone were to ask if I believe in Christ, then I wouldn’t have any trouble answering politely and truthfully that no, I do not,’ thought Professor Andersen, as he stared across at the lighted windows on the other side of the street. Saw the people sitting in their living rooms, with their lit-up Christmas trees, celebrating this 2,000-year-old event. ‘Gripped by a ritual which for many of them means nothing, but which they cannot neglect to observe, in their finest attire, like me,’ he thought. ‘With a childlike nature. Yes, with a childlike nature,’ he repeated, ‘here in the far north, in the bleak midwinter, cold, in a modern capital city in a technologically advanced, wealthy country towards the end of the twentieth century,’ he thought. ‘Yes, a man ought to experience images of the Holy Night with his childlike sensibilities intact,’ he thought, ‘at least with a nod and a smile towards these aspects, or possibilities, in his innermost thoughts, encouraging their presence, rather than putting them in their place, as one often does, and often rightly so, too,’ he added prosaically, while standing in front of the window in his apartment, waiting for the Holy Night to come to pass, a night he would spend an hour of, or perhaps two, sunk in reflection before he went to bed, or so he had decided, as he stood there in front of the window in his finest attire and stared at the lighted windows on the other side of the street.
But lo and behold a woman appeared at one of the windows. It did not belong to one of the four apartments he had under special surveillance that evening, but to one of the smaller apartments in the same building, which had been lit up the whole time, he had noticed, but without arousing his curiosity to any extent, maybe because the residents were sitting so far inside the apartment that it was impossible to get an impression of them. But now a woman was standing there. She was staring out of the window. She was beautiful, it occurred to Professor Andersen, standing there in the window with her long, fair hair, staring gravely straight in front of her. She need not be beautiful in reality, but from the way she appeared in the window, she seemed to be beautiful, with a slim, girlish figure and her long, fair hair. ‘Young,’ thought Professor Andersen, ‘maybe an office worker, or someone who studies, either full-time or on the side.’ He did not manage to observe her for long, however, for she turned round suddenly, because another figure appeared in the room behind her. It was a man; he, too, seemed to be young, although Professor Andersen was unable off-hand to say why he assumed the new figure to be a young man. ‘But one is reasonably certain about that kind of thing, it strikes one immediately; it may be something about the sprightliness with which he appeared on the scene, for instance,’ he thought, before he reared back in horror as the man whom he had declared with such immediate certainty to be young put his hands around the woman’s neck and squeezed. She flailed her arms about, Professor Andersen noticed, her body jerked, he observed, before she all at once became completely still beneath the man’s hands and went limp. The young man straightened up, and Professor Andersen hurriedly hid behind his own curtains, for he saw that the young man was heading over to the window. When Professor Andersen peeked carefully from behind his curtain, he saw that the curtains in the other apartment had been drawn.