In the taxi I keep an eye out for the sights of Trondheim. I see a large cathedral with copper-green roofing. Also a red-and-white communications tower.
Sunshine, clear blue sky. I don’t feel in the least drowsy, and just now, when I told the taxi driver I wanted to go to Østmarkneset, he understood me even though I don’t know any Norwegian and had to guess at the pronunciation.
We drive across a long bridge, after which the town rapidly thins out.
The road isn’t even metalled any more. Rolling hills. Tall spruces. Here and there a row of new wooden houses, no longer the work of craftsmen but of machines.
The taxi pulls up. The driver turns to me, reaches over the passenger seat to open the door on my right and points to a half-finished structure ten or twelve storeys high.
‘Geologisk Undersøkelse,’ he says.
I can see why he can’t drop me off any closer. Surrounding the block is a zone of potholes, primed radiators, felled trees and sawn timber. I pay him and get out of the car.
Although there are bricks in ample supply, there isn’t a bricklayer in sight. But then, as I draw near to the building, I catch sight of two workmen struggling to right a sheet of plate glass the size of a small football pitch.
I wave at the men, calling out:
‘Geologisk Undersøkelse!’
I can see myself reflected in the glass between them.
One of the men doesn’t react, both his hands being occupied, but the other frees his left hand briefly to describe a circle in the air.
I set off in the indicated direction, walk around the perimeter, find my path blocked by bushes, don’t dare go back, push my way through the bushes and find myself in a kind of forecourt with a parked jeep and a vehicle on caterpillar tyres.
Some warm-up for my meeting with Direktør Hvalbiff!
I pause to dust myself down. Anyone watching? No.
This part of the building appears to be finished. It has windows and even a small door.
There’s nothing to stop me entering, and I step into a narrow corridor. Finding the secretary’s office is my next challenge.
One I needn’t rise to. A figure emerges from a laboratory filled with throbbing machines. He comes towards me, smiling. He has white wavy hair and wears a bow tie. I give him a meaningful look, thinking he must be Direktør Hvalbiff in person.
‘I’d like to speak to Direktør Hvalbiff, if I may,’ I say.
All innocence.
And I am innocent.
‘Direktør Hvalbiff? He is not in today. I am Direktør Oftedahl, of the Statens Rå hstoff laboratory.’
‘Isn’t the Norwegian Geological Survey in this building?’
‘Not in its entirety, or rather not yet. But maybe I can help you. Come with me.’
I go with him, down the corridor and into his office. He seats himself behind his desk and motions me to a chair.
‘Our building is by no means finished yet, as you can tell. What did you want to see Direktør Hvalbiff about?’
‘Professor Nummedal made an appointment with him on my behalf. I’m from Holland, doing postgraduate research. My thesis will be about the soil structures of Finnmark. I was supposed to pick up some aerial photographs at Professor Nummedal’s office, but he didn’t have them. Professor Nummedal said I could get them from Direktør Hvalbiff, here in Trondheim. Professor Nummedal said he’d telephone Direktør Hvalbiff to tell him I was coming.’
‘Telephone? From Oslo?’
As though eager to redress any oversight that might have been committed, he picks up one of the two telephones on his desk, asks something, says something, of which I can only make out his concluding words: ‘Takk takk’. He replaces the receiver.
‘They don’t know anything about a phone call. Direktør Hvalbiff was here briefly yesterday, then went straight back to Oslo. We are in the process of moving, you understand, and most of the property of the Geological Survey is still in Oslo. Both our departments will be housed in these new premises.’
He begins telling me about the new building. Direktør Oftedahl’s English sounds flawless to my ears, and apparently he considers mine good enough not to propose switching to another language. He talks at length. He’s not in the least concerned about my having come all the way here for nothing, nor about whether Hvalbiff did or did not react to a putative telephone call from Nummedal.
Oftedahl’s face is red and fleshy, with white bushy eyebrows like overhanging eaves, but the scars on his neck draw and hold my attention. The bow tie is far too small to hide them. All the way up to his jaw his throat looks as if it has been scooped out with a large spoon. I can’t imagine what kind of operation this could have been — but then what do I know of operations? It doesn’t look as if there could be much left of his larynx or his tongue, but there must be, because he has a strong, deep voice, and, given his clear diction, there can’t be anything wrong with his tongue either.
‘Is there any chance,’ I ask, when he’s run out of steam about the problems of relocation, ‘that the aerial photographs have already have been moved here? I can’t think why else Professor Nummedal would send me to Trondheim.’
And in my mind I add: Professor Nummedal was positive that the photographs were here.
*
Oftedahl rests his forearms on the desk and eyes me intently for a moment or two, then says:
‘Possible. Possible. Let us have a look.’
He stands up.
I get up too and move to the door while Oftedahl comes out from behind his desk.
Beside the door hangs a framed photograph, a portrait with an autograph: Roald Amundsen
‘Amundsen,’ I say, while Oftedal holds the door open. ‘Is the signature real?’
‘It certainly is. Do you know why Amundsen was successful? He wore clothes made of animal skins, with the fur on the inside. He didn’t wear anything underneath. Capacious, warm clothes, you understand, warm and yet well ventilated. Whereas others, such as Shackleton and Scott, wore thick shirts and woollen underpants. Their clothes got drenched in sweat, froze solid in places. It was impossible to get them dry. But Amundsen was fine. That is why he was the first to reach the South Pole.’
We go down the corridor, turn a corner and find ourselves in another corridor, low-ceilinged, wider than it is high.
‘It doesn’t bear thinking about,’ Oftedahl muses, ‘the way explorers like Amundsen had to relieve themselves — at fifty degrees below zero, ha ha! It must have been a very quick business!’
The corridor, lit by concealed ceiling lights, has moiré rosewood panelling and a parquet floor.
*
‘So you studied geology,’ Oftedahl says, tearing himself away from Amundsen and the South Pole to focus on me again. ‘Interesting. My training was as a geophysicist. My department keeps track of every significant geological finding. I feel like a warehouse steward at times, and then I regret not being a geologist. I spend too much time in the office with paperwork. Fieldwork is better, more romantic. Geologists are the last explorers in the world.’
He laughs.
‘But do watch out! Better not step on the planks, just use the beams. The builders are months behind schedule, as usual in the construction business. All this ought to have been finished long ago.’
The parquet flooring comes to an end. No more partition walls either. Nothing like a corridor or passage. We cross a floor surface that is no more than an unmade-up layer with concrete pillars between one slab and the next. At the far end of the space is a stairway of raw concrete, up which we go.
‘What brought you to Norway?’ Oftedahl asks as we arrive on the next level, which is in the same unfinished state as the one below.