Eyde ushered Singer over to a Mercedes that was parked outside the station. Next to it stood a chauffeur. When the man caught sight of Adam Eyde, he rushed over and reached for one of Singer’s heavy suitcases, but Singer said he didn’t need any help. The chauffeur opened the car’s trunk, and as Singer hoisted one suitcase into it, the chauffeur grabbed the other and with a quick movement placed it inside. Eyde and Singer got into the back seat, and Eyde told the chauffeur to drive to the hotel where Singer had reserved a room for his first night in Not­odden.

  The hotel was located in town, which the Mercedes reached by driving past the Hydro plant and then taking a sharp turn onto a steep street. As the car made the turn, Singer found himself in the town. They drove up the steep street lined with shops on both sides, and he caught a glimpse of cross streets where, because of the way the people were walking, he could partially make out the other streets running parallel to the steep one they were on, and on all sides he saw Not­odden. A real town in the heart of Telemark. The hotel stood on the main square, and the Mercedes drove up to the entrance and stopped. The chauffeur quickly got out and took Singer’s luggage out of the trunk, and while Adam Eyde said he would wait in the car as Singer checked in, the chauffeur carried the two heavy suitcases into the hotel lobby, and Singer followed. He checked in, got his key, and was about to take his luggage and head for the elevator, but the chauffeur refused to hand over the suitcases. As was customary in provincial Norwegian hotels, there were no bellhops, so the chauffeur carried the suitcases over to the elevator, pressed the button, and when the elevator arrived, the chauffeur stepped inside along with Singer, still carrying the two suitcases. They were only going to the second floor, and the chauffeur carried the suitcases all the way to the door of the room and then took them inside after Singer used his key to open the door. Then he said that he would be waiting for Singer in the car, whenever Singer was ready. But Singer said he was ready now, and so they went back downstairs together, walking through the lobby and out to the street, where the Mercedes was parked, waiting for them, with Adam Eyde sitting in the back seat. The chauffeur got in behind the wheel, and Singer climbed into the back, sitting down next to Eyde.

  “Home, Kristiansen,” said Adam Eyde.

  They drove farther up through the town, then took a right and passed a stately and quite modern-looking church from the 1930s, which stood on another square, or plaza, and then they headed into a residential neighborhood. At the end of this residential neighborhood was a park, and in the middle of this park was a magnificent white building. It was a grand villa, or maybe it should be called a small palace, majestically fronted by a number of columns on either side of the entrance. The Mercedes pulled in and parked, and the chauffeur got out to open the back doors, first on the side where Singer was sitting, then on Eyde’s side. Singer got out. To the left of the grand building or small palace were two big tennis courts, to the right something that was probably a caretaker’s residence, although big enough to be mistaken for a substantial home. Adam Eyde said a few words to the chauffeur and then headed for the entrance, with Singer following close behind. He unlocked the door and they stepped inside a large foyer with splendid paintings on the walls. Landscapes by Theodor Kittelsen and portraits by Henrik Lund. Adam Eyde set his briefcase on a small table, opened a door, and showed Singer into a stately sitting room with a high ceiling and plenty of space between the walls. Exquisitely decorated with furniture from the first decade of the twentieth century. Along the walls, between priceless paintings by Theodor Kittelsen, Henrik Lund, Edvard Munch, Hans Heyerdahl, Hermann Cappelen, and Lars Hertervig, stood lavish grandfather clocks, radiating antiqueness in all their glory, like soldiers on a parade ground. On the tables were precious vases and centerpieces made of pure gold and pure silver. Placed between them were small treasures glittering with diamonds. Adam Eyde rang a small bell, equally adorned with diamonds, and an elderly woman appeared immediately. She came over to Eyde and politely stood before him with a friendly and inquiring look on her face.

  “Shall we have a drink out on the terrace before dinner?” said Eyde, turning to Singer. “Gin and tonic?”

  Singer nodded.

  “Two gin and tonics, Mrs. Semb, and please set the dinner table for two.”

  Adam Eyde led the way out to the terrace. It was at the back of the house, facing an even more impressive park than the one out front. At the end of the park was a balustrade right on the edge of a precipice, as Singer noted. The lawn looked as if it had been treated with emollient that made the green grass sparkle, and it also looked as if it had been cut by hand, with sharp nail scissors made of silver. Eyde invited Singer to take a seat on one of the comfortable and shaded patio chairs grouped under a weeping willow that leaned its branches over the terrace. Mrs. Semb arrived with two gin and tonics. To his delight, Singer saw there were ice cubes in his glass; he’d worried that Eyde might prefer his gin and tonic in a lukewarm state. They raised their glasses in a toast and then sipped at their drinks.

  “Not­odden,” said Adam Eyde, “is not what you think. Even though you’ve never been here before and don’t know much about the town, it’s not what you think. Come on, let me show you.”

  He got up and went over to the balustrade at the end of the park, and Singer followed. From there they had a splendid view of the Hydro plant in Not­odden, and old Lake Heddal. Eyde pointed at the shore of Lake Heddal closest to them, where a rotting dock stretched out into the water.

  “That’s Not­odden,” he said, with great emphasis. “Do you see the ship to England? Out there?” Eyde pointed at the horizon, at the far end of the lake. “No? It must be delayed today! But surely you can see the ship to America? It’s that sleek boat over there, at the wharf! The America ship, that regularly travels from Not­odden to New York, taking mostly immigrants from here and bringing well-heeled tourists back from New York. What a splendid trip, especially the last stretch into Norway. You see the America ship, don’t you? No? You don’t see anything? Can’t you see that Not­odden is a port? Can’t you see you’re in one of Norway’s biggest seaports way up here in the interior of Telemark? Well, that’s what Not­odden is. Not­odden is a port town. If it’s not, then there’s been some mistake, and it’s that mistake that I have to deal with, seventy years after those in the know realized Not­odden was one big mistake. But come over here,” he said, moving a short distance to the left along the balustrade; there he leaned over the framework and craned his neck, then came back and motioned Singer closer so he could do the same.

  And that’s what Singer did. He leaned over and looked straight down at the Hydro plant, which seemed to rise up toward him quite dramatically as he was leaning over like that.

  “What do you see?” asked Adam Eyde.

  “I see the Hydro plant,” said Singer. “It’s an impressive sight.”

  “But you don’t see anything else?”

  “No,” replied Singer, beginning to feel an ache in the back of his neck; he also felt a little dizzy.

  “Take a good look to your left,” said Adam Eyde. “Turn your head sharply, yes, like that. What do you see now?”

  “Now I see the Not­odden train station,” said Singer.

  “Yes, that’s exactly what you see,” exclaimed Eyde, “and yet you aren’t able to see any ship to England. So keep looking at the Not­odden train station!” Eyde exclaimed again, as Singer made a move to retreat from this very uncomfortable leaning-forward position as he stood at the balustrade.

  “The Not­odden train station,” Eyde repeated. “Can you read the date above the entrance?”

  Singer tried but could not.

  “It says 1909,” Eyde told him. “That’s when it was opened. Okay, let’s go back to the terrace, and if we’re lucky, Mrs. Semb might bring us another gin and tonic before dinner.”

  They went back. They took seats on the terrace, and Mrs. Semb appeared with another round of gin and tonics.

  “The Not­odden train station,” Eyde said again. “You realize, of course, that it’s an end station, right? Maybe you noticed that earlier today when we arrived?”

  Singer nodded.

  “And that’s exactly right,” Eyde went on, “though it’s not, as you may think, the end station for the spur track of the Sørlandet Line between Hjuksebø and Not­odden, because that spur track wasn’t opened until 1917. We’re talking about 1909. Come with me,” he said, and got up again to walk back across the park’s lawn to the balustrade, followed closely by Singer. This time he took his glass along, and Singer did the same.

  “What you see down there, if you lean out again — no, you don’t actually have to do it — is an end station, but an end station for a railroad that starts deep in the wilderness. Not­odden is the end station for the Rjukan Line. Not­odden, the port town. The Rjukan Line was opened right down there — no, you don’t need to . . . — on August 9, 1909, by the first general manager of Norsk Hydro and in the presence of His Majesty King Haakon VII, in the fourth year of his reign. What you’re looking at down there is a fairy tale, a Norwegian mountain fairy tale, Mr. Librarian. Back at the start of this century, an Oslo engineer bought up the waterfalls on the back side of the mountain called Gaustatoppen, which you can see way up there to the north — beautiful, isn’t it? On the back side, in the wilderness, this Oslo engineer bought up the waterfalls. His sole idea was to harness the hydropower so it could be used in industry. At about the same time, a Norwegian physics professor discovered that it was possible to bind nitrogen so that synthetic potassium nitrate, or saltpeter, could be produced. The world’s natural saltpeter deposits were in danger of being depleted, and all over the world people were working to develop methods for producing synthetic saltpeter. Norsk Hydro is a result of that competition.

  “I don’t suppose I need to tell you the name of that Oslo engineer, do I?” asked Eyde, and then paused.

  Singer shook his head.

  “No, you don’t,” Singer replied, “but if you want to be accurate, you should call him the ‘Kristiania engineer,’ because back then Oslo was called Kristiania, and it’s a good idea to call a town in a certain period by the name the town was actually known by at the time, and not use a later name, if the town’s name happened to change. So call him the Kristiania engineer, that’s the advice I can give you, and Kristiania spelled with a K, not with a Ch; if you’re talking about the Norwegian authors Welhaven and Wergeland, they lived in Christiania with a Ch, but our Kristiania engineer was from Kristiania with a K; people often make a mistake about this,” he said.

  “Is that right, is that right?” said Adam Eyde, and he was about to go on, but much to his surprise, Singer interrupted him again.

  “I mention this, because it’s a problem that we librarians often have to deal with,” said Singer, “since we catalog books based on where they were printed, along with the year. A book produced in 1874 by a printer in what is now Oslo will be cataloged under Chra, while a book produced by the same printer seven years later, meaning in 1881, will be cataloged under Kra, so it’s important to keep a clear head when you’re looking for books printed in Kristiania, spelled either with Ch or K, in the previous century,” said Singer, smiling.

  “Hmm, interesting, interesting,” said Eyde. “You’ll certainly have to tell me more about that at dinner. But to get back to the Norwegian mountain fairy tale. Back to Norsk Hydro,” he said firmly.

  “To make a long story short,” said Eyde, “Norsk Hydro was founded in order to make use of the physics professor’s patent. Norsk Hydro was founded in order to build a power plant in the wilderness on the back side of Mount Gaustatoppen, a plant powerful enough to develop this violent heating process into a viable manufacturing operation. Meaning a new, history-making branch of industry, a modern factory, that would produce something never before produced. Synthetic saltpeter. At a time when the natural saltpeter deposits were becoming depleted, this factory would be located on the back side of Mount Gaustatoppen. On the back side of the moon, I might say, and equally inaccessible. And not only that, it had to be situated in a valley so narrow and closed in that the sun could hardly reach down into it during much of the year; it had to be cloaked in eternal shadow six months of the year, and it was there, right there, that Norsk Hydro would create its great fairy tale. Because it was there, in the bottom of this valley, and only there, that it was possible to collect this radiant vision of a waterfall, which is what the mighty Rjukan waterfall is. It was there, in the bottom of the valley, that the resources lay, not up above where you can see the beautiful waterfall plunging freely, but down there, at the bottom, where this waterfall could be collected and transformed into something new, into power, into electricity, at enormous temperatures, so explosive that I feel faint at the mere thought of it, even eighty years after the idea was devised for the very first time. Ah, yes,” sighed Adam Eyde, shaking his head with both emotion and resignation upon hearing his own words. He pulled himself together, took a sip of his drink, and raised his glass to Singer, who raised his glass to Adam Eyde before taking a cautious sip of his own.

  “But this engineer, whose name you’re familiar with, was unable to attract enough international investors to turn his big project into reality, into Norsk Hydro’s project. Instead Norsk Hydro purchased another waterfall, a smaller waterfall, at a spot in Telemark on this side of Mount Gaustatoppen and started its own project, a test project, and on a much smaller scale. This somewhat smaller waterfall was located near Not­odden, a rural community with a steamship dock, two tourist hotels, a Christian teachers college, and two shopkeepers. The waterfall would be tamed, diverted into pipes, and the water sent to a hypermodern power station that would arouse admiration all over Norway. In Not­odden, near the shore of Lake Heddal, a factory was built that would make use of this power. The Not­odden Saltpeter Factory. A test factory, an experiment that would show the international investors that the idea was worthy of a much bigger plant, even something on a huge scale. The plant workers at the power station and saltpeter factory were hired in 1905. In the fall of 1907 the first trial production began.

  “Not­odden, 1907,” said Adam Eyde, dreamily, his eyes closed. “In 1905 a small rural community; then in 1907 everything changed. After that it became a town. A totally new town rose up during the construction period, and it endured. Come over here,” he said and began walking along the balustrade, this time moving to the right. “Look there,” he said, pointing down. “Grønnebyen.”

  Singer looked straight down. There he saw a strangely uniform housing development. Directly below them, a little to the right, were numerous identical and quite large wooden buildings, each with its own courtyard or garden. The wooden buildings had been erected at regular intervals, neatly lined up, with a grid of streets that intersected precisely.

  “Grønnebyen,” said Adam Eyde. “Homes for Hydro’s workers. It was erected there, newly built, in 1907. And here,” said Eyde, as he turned and pointed. “Do you remember the residential neighborhood we drove through right before we arrived here? Those big beautiful houses painted white? They were the residences of Hydro’s upper echelons, built for the engineers and managers at the Not­odden Saltpeter Factory. They were constructed in the beginning of 1907. And the crown jewel of the whole thing was: this!” said Eyde, throwing out his hands to embrace the enormous building before them, and the entire park. “The residence of Hydro’s general manager. It stood here, towering over the Not­odden Saltpeter Factory when operations began in the fall of 1907. That small test factory. It was a Hydro enterprise. And meandering between the homes for Hydro’s workers and the homes for Hydro’s upper echelons was the center of town, with shops, a school, a fire department, a police station, and everything else that creates a town, attracted by the Hydro enterprise.

  “That must have been a strange year, 1907,” he said pensively. Adam Eyde turned around again to face Lake Heddal and the Hydro plant as he stood at the balustrade with his guest, Singer, at his side. “Even before production began — in fact, even before they knew whether or not their experiments to develop a method for creating synthetic saltpeter would turn out to be successful enough to be commercially profitable and to start up production — this town called Not­odden stood here, ready and waiting. There was a great hustle and bustle; every day new people arrived with their possessions in moving vans, coming to seek their fortune. There was something so grand about the idea of an industrialized wilderness in Øst-Telemark, it attracted people and ideas from all over. And it was then that the idea of Not­odden as a port town also arose. Even before production at the test factory started up, extensive plans for a canal were presented, toying with the idea of a shipping route between Not­odden and New York, and between Not­odden and London, that selfsame England ship I mentioned. This idea did not originate with Norsk Hydro, even though the company was quick to seize upon the proposal, of course. No, the idea came from a bureaucrat. It came from the Waterways director. It was the Waterways director himself who proposed a plan, showing how it would be possible for large steamships to travel from Skien on the coast up through the inland lakes and rivers of Telemark to Not­odden at the northern end of Lake Heddal. A large-scale project, to be sure, that would involve building an enormous lock system at Skien and huge masonry and excavation works on the river connecting Lake Norsjø and the waters of Lake Heddal, but it could be done. The Waterways director knew it was possible, in fact it was so possible that he ordered a detailed plan drawn up, and he presented it to the authorities in charge. It was also the Waterways director who fantasized about a ship to America and a ship to England traveling at full steam into Lake Heddal. Norsk Hydro’s project certainly stirred up a lot of ideas, got a lot of brains churning, and now even the sober-minded bureaucrats wanted to open the interior of Telemark and connect it to the sea,” said Adam Eyde. “Skål,” he added enthusiastically, raising his glass and reaching out to clink glasses with Singer, which they did.