He went through it all once again in his mind. A murder has taken place. The murdered person is dead; the murderer is alive. It was not the murderer’s responsibility, but the murderer’s consternation that it hinged on, that was undoubtedly how it was, viewed from Professor Andersen’s angle, therefore he had laid down the receiver again, after first lifting it up, after he had witnessed the crime and rushed to the telephone, which stood out in the hall on a little table there. When he now thought carefully through all this and urgently asked himself ‘why?’, he noticed that he had a tendency to refer to his actions, or lack of action, in turns of speech which were clearly erroneous, such as answering that he didn’t want to ‘inform on’ the murderer, or that he didn’t want to ‘add stones to his burden’, something which, on second thoughts and subjected to critical testing, couldn’t stand being presented openly as sensible reflections. ‘To report a murder one has seen isn’t informing,’ thought Professor Andersen, slightly taken aback at having to go to the lengths of putting himself right about such an obvious matter. But such notions as these were lodged, quite entrenched, in his consciousness. ‘I don’t want to stone him,’ he might catch himself exclaiming in his own defence, ‘it’s too primitive.’ He then had to admit that deep within him was the notion that there ought to be something primitive about the act of reporting that one has witnessed a primordial crime, because this notification would lead to the criminal’s arrest, with criminal proceedings and punishment. It ought to mean ‘throwing the first stone’. If one set these notions against the clear, self-evident idea Professor Andersen had thought of quite spontaneously, and which involved a recognition of a divine principle, with which he was now faced, and had to see his own sin of omission in light of, Professor Andersen had to admit that this indicated that he did have a notion that this insight into the necessity of God was strongly interwoven with the feeling that he was now standing face to face with the Desert God, and that it was the Desert God’s command to stone the murderer, even throw the first stone, which he so strongly hesitated from following. A primitive feudal God orders Professor Andersen from the university at Blindern in Oslo, the capital city of the modern state of Norway towards the end of the twentieth century, to carry out a primitive action ordered by God. ‘No wonder I hesitate,’ he thought, ‘but the fact is that it doesn’t add up. I haven’t met the Desert God, and the action I have been commanded to carry out isn’t primitive, but necessary in order to uphold civilisation.’
All the same. Professor Andersen wasn’t able to report him. No matter how easily all the arguments for not doing it were punctured and exposed, reporting him was out of the question. ‘It makes me furious,’ he thought. ‘I get disgusted at the thought. I don’t want to be the person who does it.’ Even if he could show that by focusing on the murder victim, the young woman, and envisaging her last seconds, which he saw with his own eyes, when she knew that she was on the point of losing her life, being murdered, strangled by a man she knew, indeed was celebrating Christmas Eve with, the pain and the completely incomprehensible and, in her case, irreversible, nature of this, then there was nothing left which could justify any sympathy or pity for the person who had done it; ‘It must have been terribly painful,’ he exhorted himself, ‘both bodily, and not least mentally. No human being should be allowed to inflict such fear in another person and go unpunished,’ he cried out inwardly. ‘Admit at least that it is rash of you not to report him,’ he pleaded. But to no avail. For Professor Andersen she was dead, and no punishment could make her rise up again and reappear at the window of the apartment on the other side of the street, where she stared out, on the evening before Christmas Day. His concern was for the murderer, the person who was left there, with the body in front of him, the murderer chained to his own misdeed, which he had witnessed.
The murderer, with his misdeed, and Professor Andersen, who has seen it. Professor Andersen snaps his fingers and the murderer gets up, draws the curtains and removes the body, washes away all the traces, and on New Year’s Eve, at seven o’clock in the evening, one can see him walking calmly out of the main door of the building he lives in and seating himself in a taxi and driving away, before he, as though nothing has happened, comes back, in another taxi, at two o’clock in the morning, on New Year’s Day, and walks up to his own place again, not sober and not drunk. Professor Andersen has snapped his fingers, and a murderer goes free. Professor Andersen smiled to himself. He had given his answer. This was it. To snap one’s fingers. Professor Andersen felt a sense of relief stealing over him, almost blissful, at the thought of what he had done. He had reconciled himself to his deed. The moment he thought of how he had snapped his fingers, he knew that he knew what he had done, and that he had reconciled himself to his deed. Now he would sleep, even if it was the middle of the day. He would dive into bed, lay his head on the pillow, shut his eyes and give himself over to sleep, and to all the dreams, good and bad, where anything can happen. ‘I’m not afraid to sleep,’ he thought, ‘despite all the nightmares I’ve had over the years, right from the time when I was a little boy. I never think about them when tiredness overcomes me and I just want to sleep, even though I know that I risk waking up, immersed in fear. I know that, but I don’t think about it, it’s a little strange,’ thought Professor Andersen, while his 55-year-old face lit up with a broad smile. He felt tired and liberated. But he no sooner felt tired, and liberated, than he noticed that he had become uneasy. ‘That was very simple, then,’ he thought. ‘Snapping one’s fingers, and then I am reconciled to my deed, and know that that was why I couldn’t report him. But it is true, though,’ he added, ‘yes indeed, it’s true. But it’s terrible, though!’ he then exclaimed.
‘A snap of the fingers and then I’ve sundered myself from God,’ he thought. ‘Well, I must say, I didn’t believe it was as simple as all that. But that’s the way it is, then. And what can I do about it? Nothing. It’s as though I’m standing outside myself, just observing. Dare I say with a shrug? No, I daren’t say it, because it’s not true. Oh, now I know why I couldn’t confide in Bernt!’ he exclaimed. ‘I had thought it might be because I feared his disapproval, but that didn’t add up, as I couldn’t imagine Bernt disapproving, when all was said and done, not seriously. Of course, it’s the opposite way around. I couldn’t say anything to him because I was afraid of him approving of it. I couldn’t stand him approving of it. Least of all for Bernt’s sake. But also for my own sake, it would have made me so lonely. I had done what I had done and I couldn’t undo it, but I couldn’t stand the thought of Bernt approving of it, and thus abruptly: my own terrifying loneliness. I don’t discount that, strictly speaking, Bernt would have dissociated himself from it, on account of public morality, and he would have requested me to consider the consequences, to see the whole thing from the murdered young woman’s point of view, but there would have been something half-hearted about the way he spoke, I’m certain of that. I wouldn’t have been able to avoid noticing the respect for my action on his face, indeed his partial, and secretive, admiration, because the fact that a person with cancer rots away and dies suffering violent pain, only just alleviated by morphine, that is something nothing can be done about. But to let the murderer get away, in any case, at least between ourselves, is a secret wish. But no one can have their own God, not even the godless,’ cried Professor Andersen. ‘At least, not without being damned. And doomed to stand and contemplate damnation, because no one is able to entertain a feeling of admiration, not even in secret, for their own ability to snap their fingers, when the opportunity arises, so that the murderer can get up and flee from his misdeed, and in that way make an eternal protest against the unbearable cruelty of existence, indeed, its meaninglessness. I must already have realised it at the time,’ thought Professor Andersen, ‘that Bernt Halvorsen’s secret admiration would have appeared meaningless to me, because it brands my action as understandable, something I would have been unable to tackle in my desperation. Because I had witnessed the murder and been negligent with my eyes open, I had sunk into a state of desperation which had long ago transformed my action from an apparent revolt into a form of damnation. But I didn’t have words for it then. And Bernt wouldn’t have comprehended it either. Serious Bernt Halvorsen, with his high ethical standards, wouldn’t have understood a word of what I wanted to express, even though he would have done his utmost to attempt it, and in purely logical terms he might even have made some comments about it, being such an obliging man, so that we might at least have been able to conduct some kind of conversation about it, since it was so evident that it meant a great deal to me, not least dressing up my thoughts in this religious-coloured language, which I wasn’t actually capable of doing at that time. Yes, really,’ thought Professor Andersen, ‘I can well imagine what would have happened if we had informed all the dinner guests, telling them what had happened to me, as each of them arrived, on Boxing Day two months ago; Trine Napstad and Per Ekeberg, Judith Berg and Jan Brynhildsen, along with Nina, who would have been the first one to be told, and all of them would have reacted in the same way. Requested me to consider the consequences, and urgently appealed to me to go to the police and report what I had seen, but all the same, among all of them, a secret wish that I didn’t have to listen to them, something they would have confirmed, making solemn vows of secrecy, in case I didn’t follow their urgent appeals.’ He had held his tongue, because he couldn’t talk about damnation then. He himself had had no words for it then, and if he had had words for it at the time, then they wouldn’t have understood them. They would have retained their secret admiration, even if he had said that he was damned, for being damned, the way he regarded it at the time, in all his wordless desperation, would have appeared so strange to them, so odd, that they wouldn’t have been able to take it into account. ‘And that’s how I feel about it, too, now, at this moment,’ thought Professor Andersen, ‘that it’s strange, odd, even though I know I’m damned.