“Books,” he said. “You must have read a lot of books. A strange occupation. Sitting and reading. I often do it myself, though maybe not that often, when I think about it, at least not the sort of books that you undoubtedly read; but when, on rare occasion, I do sit down and read a book, then I quickly find myself thinking about what it is I’m doing, and I think: Jesus, are you sitting here and reading? Don’t you have anything else to do? Reading just for the sake of relaxation doesn’t come into the discussion, crime fiction is not for me, it has to be something more than that. But even that isn’t enough. Life is too short. Too exciting. It’s here that things are happening. . . . But we do need books. Especially philosophy. Did you know that every business executive tries to find a philosopher to be his successor? I swear it’s true. General Manager Holte is looking for a moral philosopher. That’s what he would prefer, but it’ll probably be someone with an MBA, or maybe a lawyer. I happen to have an MBA myself, but I’m fascinated by philosophy. Do you think that’s strange? Our work has to do with philosophy. There is no one, other than the great philosophers themselves, who comes closer to philosophy than we do. That’s why General Manager Holte would prefer to see a philosopher succeed him. Trying to find a philosopher, after all, is a way of summing up your own life and activities. That is how you end up in philosophy. At least you do if you’ve been head of Norsk Hydro for twenty years. A general manager of Norsk Hydro looks back in order to choose his successor, which is a way of looking forward, isn’t it? By looking back in that manner he is looking forward, and seeing himself, what he has actually been, and what he is — he now acknowledges that he’s been living under a sign of philosophy, without having had the chance to cultivate it personally, in a theoretical fashion, but he’s been living it, living it to the fullest, in his daily activities. General Manager Holte would prefer to have an actual moral philosopher as his successor, and that says the most about him. But he’ll probably choose one of us; anything else would be a breach of the rules of the game. But someday someone will have to breach the rules and point to reality. Maybe I’ll be the one. Maybe I’ll be the one to choose a philosopher as my successor as general manager of Norsk Hydro. If so, that’ll happen sometime around 2010. But it won’t be a moral philosopher. General Manager Holte is mistaken when he thinks that large, international corporations need moral philosophers to be in charge; it’s not that simple. That’s not fundamental enough. For my successor I want a philosopher who asks fundamental questions. A fundamental philosopher. A philosopher of language. Ludwig, who finally returns home. Wittgenstein, you know, a Wittgenstein who returns to the greatest thing of all. And what is that? It’s running large companies, that’s what. Nothing else can make your heart swell with greater pride, or cause your mind to stand still, gaping with awe. Or make you fumble for words. Wherein lies the secret? It’s called a company, sir. It’s called being in charge of a large concern, the language is already in place, as if spontaneously invented. All that’s necessary is to study it. Where is the secret, to which the fundamental philosopher can find his way and present it to us, in his capacity as general manager of Norsk Hydro anno 2010? What is it that occupies us? Financial calculations. Budgets. Trimming the organization. Cutting costs. New areas of interest. Reorganization. Mergers. And what is the guiding principle? Profit? Yes, of course, of course. But why do we constantly need greater profit? Couldn’t we say: no, right now the earnings are so good that we’re managing just fine. We can sit back for a while and let the wheels roll on as we observe the whole operation. Never mind an ammonia factory in Not­odden, we’re doing fine, and things are going well in Herøya, so never mind. Why don’t we do that? What sort of laws dictate our behavior? I think I know where to look, I think I could provide guidance to our fundamental philosopher. He should look to the law of gravity. It’s all a matter of a single, rather abused word, and that word is ‘cheap.’ The concept of ‘cheap,’ that’s what could make us better understand our civilization. It’s one of the dual pillars of truth. Cheap. Cheap enough. Yes, ‘cheap enough’ is the key. It’s the watchword that fundamental philosophy should use in order to enter philosophical heaven, where the answers to the big questions glitter in self-evident radiance. Cheap enough. That’s what makes the practical world, to which we are witnesses, the world as it is and not something entirely different, or even slightly different. So it’s not a spaceship up in the air above Lake Heddal at night. New York’s skyscrapers — have you seen them? You haven’t? Well, then you have something to look forward to. It’s the most magnificent sight on this planet. But what is the truth behind this impressive sight? It’s the land prices in New York, which for natural reasons are so astronomical that they have to build up. That is cheap enough, that’s how something looks that is cheap enough. Can’t you just picture it? Oh, wait,” he said and abruptly got up. He looked around, searching for something, and finally found what he was looking for, a piece of white paper, and he sat down again.

  “Can’t you just picture the photograph of New York,” he said, “and the caption underneath: Cheap enough. But that’s only one pillar. There’s also a second pillar, and together they form the two pillars of a formula, which would be the full caption under the photograph of New York’s impressive skyline.” Adam Eyde wrote something down on the piece of white paper, rather secretively, using one hand to hide the words from Singer as he wrote. But when he was done, he handed the piece of paper to Singer, who read: Cheap (enough) and (mere) luck.

  “It wasn’t that easy to work it out. Plain cheap and luck, sure, but something gets lost in that. I could also write: Cheap enough and mere luck, but it’s really more than that. The way I wrote it, that’s how it needs to be written. New York. It’s mere luck. In a place with sky-high land prices, the soil is such that it’s possible to build upward. If the soil conditions in Manhattan had been different, how would New York have looked today? And imagine if the land prices had shot up at a time when the technology didn’t exist for building skyscrapers, even though the soil would allow for it. How would New York have looked today? No, this is the second pillar guarding the heaven of truth, the philosopher’s promised land,” said Adam Eyde. “Oh, excuse me,” he added. “Here I am, babbling away and I didn’t notice that your glass is empty.” He grabbed Singer’s glass — because Singer had actually finished off his drink while Eyde’s was still half full — and went over to the bar to get him another whiskey.

  “What is cheap,” he said as he handed Singer his drink and then sat back down, “what is cheap is the law of gravity; it’s burdensome for us, yet tremendously simple, and at the same time difficult to understand fully as the enormous driving force that it plays in a person’s life. Precisely something that a fundamental philosopher, whom I believe has to be a philosopher of language, can sink his teeth into. There’s a lot of new territory, waiting to be described. By researching the concept of ‘cheap,’ or ‘cheap enough,’ I think you can come up with a philosophical conceptual apparatus that will make our understanding of life more closely approach life itself, the dynamics of life. It’s a key concept, and explains what drives the work itself, creating the great enterprise. But it has to be juxtaposed with (mere) luck, because otherwise it would be too mechanical to become a truly great philosophy. Luck, that unpredictable element that has to do with chance and boldness. The concept of cheap (enough) can give you insight up to a certain point that is crystal clear right before the decisive moment occurs, like a lightning bolt out of the blue. At that decisive moment it’s a matter of luck. Take Ivar Kreuger, for instance. Have you heard of him? He already had a monopoly on matches, so what did he do? Did he raise the price so somebody else might come up with an idea for producing an alternative light source, such as butane lighters? No, he kept the price the same, but he took out four matches from each box, which contained fifty. Nobody counts the matches in a box of matches; he took out four, which meant that, with this simple operation, he made a bigger profit, comparable to Sweden’s total national budget, meaning what it cost the Swedish nation to run schools and hospitals, offer services for the poor, administer communications, the mail and telegraph service, the universities, and provide maintenance for the former world power’s countless grand edifices, as well as pay the salaries of all the government officials and civil servants. Not to mention the Swedish army, the Swedish navy, and the Swedish cavalry. The sum total of all of this was what Kreuger could stuff into his own pocket, and without anyone even noticing. That is cheap enough. But Kreuger lacked something else, when it came to the decisive moment. At that decisive moment he ended up firing a bullet into his own forehead. Because he didn’t have luck. If he’d only had luck, the world would have looked different; we don’t know how, but it would have. Regardless of the calculations, regardless of estimates and precautions, insurance and double-insurance, no one can foresee everything. Something unforeseen will always occur, and then what counts is having luck. Without luck, even the mightiest of financial empires will collapse. It’s here that having the philosopher as head of a large enterprise comes in. Ludwig Wittgenstein’s homecoming. The merging of the mightiest industrial giants within a field is, of course, one way of reducing the unpredictability of luck, but it turns out that even that is not enough. The secret structures of luck are mightier than that. But with philosophers in charge, you have a management group that works with that very element, and they can reduce the horrors it spreads, and increase the gentle rain trickling over the blessed. I’m talking, of course, not about moral philosophers, but fundamental philosophers, meaning philosophers of language, those who research the foundation of speech and thereby also have access to what we cannot express in words. It’s with philosophers — meaning people who have a deep knowledge of this unpredictable element in life, which is, in fact, so active, it’s what makes the world look precisely the way it does — that large companies will find natural leaders, and so the rest of us, MBAs, lawyers, engineers, computer experts, statisticians, can modestly put our special expertise at the disposal of these natural leaders. Oh, yes, this is what I believe. I’m convinced that this will make its way to the forefront. By 2010.”

  Adam Eyde had become gripped by his own words, as he excitedly strode back and forth in the library. Suddenly he realized that there was no more whiskey in his glass, which he held in his right hand as he strode back and forth, and so he stopped.

  “Let’s have a drink,” he said, looking at Singer, who at that very moment was emptying his glass. “A drink,” he repeated. “And a midnight snack.” He went over to the bar and poured two more whiskey and sodas, then handed one of the glasses to Singer and set the other down in front of his chair. He disappeared into what Singer assumed was the kitchen and came back a few minutes later with two small plates, two forks, and a can of fish balls. He opened the can with a can opener, then they ate the fish balls right from the can. They used their forks to fish out whole fish balls and stuffed them in their mouths. Between bites they took swigs of whiskey.

  “Marvelous,” said Eyde. “A marvelous conclusion to a festive day. It has been incredibly pleasant for me, all of this, getting to know you. I really must say. But now I’d better let you go. I have to get up early in the morning,” he said, glancing at his watch. “I’ll get Kristiansen to drive you back to your hotel.”

  He accompanied Singer through the rooms and out to the front hall. In the hall he caught sight of an escritoire and went over to pull open a drawer. He took out some papers and said:

  “Wait here a sec,” and then left. A moment later he was back, and he was holding a stack of papers in each hand. He put one pile in the drawer and stuffed the other in an envelope, which he gave to Singer.

  “Take these,” he said. “It’s my system for betting. It doesn’t really have anything to do with philosophy; it’s all about calculating the odds. Betting on soccer scores is a matter of skill, and that’s when my modest expertise comes into its own. When I’m abroad — for instance in Lausanne — and my colleagues and contacts are out on the golf course, I sit in my hotel room and work on this. I can’t stand golf, which of course puts me at a disadvantage, considering my ambitions, but if it’s not possible for me to be named general manager of Norsk Hydro without being willing to trudge around, lugging golf clubs, then so be it. Anyway, this is my system. I’m giving you a copy. If you use it, you’ll get rich. The big system may be too much for your pocket­book, but if you make use of the little system, things will go your way.” For a long moment he stared at Singer, who stood there, holding the envelope he’d been given. Then Adam Eyde briskly turned on his heel and moved toward the front door, with Singer following.

  Eyde opened the door and paused in the center of that ostentatious entrance with the heavy, white double pillars on either side; Singer stood slightly behind him, and the light from the enormous luxury villa flooded out from the open door. They glimpsed the Mercedes parked under several big oak trees. When the villa’s front door opened and light flooded out, they heard the slam of the car door, and now they glimpsed the figure of Kristiansen standing alongside the car in the dark summer night. Followed by Singer, Adam Eyde headed for the Mercedes and its driver. Eyde asked Kristiansen to drive Singer to his hotel, and while the two men said their goodbyes, Kristiansen stood ready, holding open the door to the back seat. Singer got in, Kristiansen closed the door, climbed in behind the wheel, and turned on the engine. As they drove off, Singer turned to see if he might be able to wave goodbye, but Adam Eyde had turned around and was on his way back to the house. They drove through night-quiet Not­odden, illuminated by street lights, both in the residential neighborhood and in the center of town. Not a soul in sight. The Mercedes pulled up in front of the hotel, and as soon as the car stopped, Singer grabbed the door handle wanting to get out before Kristiansen could come around and open the door for him. But he couldn’t open the door, it had been automatically locked. Kristiansen got out and came around the car to open the door. Singer climbed out, offering his sincere thanks for the lift, to which Kristiansen replied with a polite smile.

  The next day Singer went to see his new workplace, the Not­odden library. And with that he began his new life. He ended up staying in Not­odden for years, the whole time as librarian at the town’s municipal library. But an event like the one that occurred on the day he arrived in Not­odden never happened again. He never revisited the enormous luxury villa belonging to Norsk Hydro. Occasionally, rarely, when he was out for a walk he might pass by the place, and then he’d cast a glance at the villa as he passed at some distance and think about the peculiar evening he’d spent there as a guest, many years earlier.

  He had nothing more to do with Adam Eyde. It’s true that he caught sight of him a few times in the center of Not­odden, the first time about six months after the man had so suddenly and surprisingly entered Singer’s life, in the train car of the little rail trolley at Hjuksebø station, waiting to leave for Not­odden, and subsequently laid claim to him in his own home, for an entire evening, until the late hours of the night. The first time that Singer saw Adam Eyde again after that evening, he was surprised and thought: Jesus, that’s him, that has to be him. But he saw him from far away and wasn’t completely sure about that. Later they once ran into each other on the same sidewalk. Adam Eyde gave him a friendly greeting, and Singer responded in an equally friendly manner, but neither of them stopped to exchange a few words; they simply continued on, in opposite directions. This happened several more times over the coming years, until Adam Eyde disappeared from Not­odden. Singer never saw Kristiansen the chauffeur again, not him or the Mercedes, nor Mrs. Semb, though he probably wouldn’t have recognized her if he’d run into her on the street.

  Yet even if he hadn’t passed Adam Eyde on the street, even if they hadn’t greeted each other in passing, he couldn’t have dismissed his experiences in the Hydro villa as a dream, at least not after a few years, because Eyde’s predictions for Not­odden’s future all came true. The last Hydro factory in Not­odden was shut down the very next year, in 1984. In 1985, passengers who took the Sørlandet Line and changed trains in Hjuksebø could no longer see factory smoke off in the distance if they looked inland toward Not­odden. And the new Not­odden sprang up, just as Adam Eyde had foreseen. Art and culture. Data and information technology. Expertise and education. All of it came true. Except maybe for the fact that Not­odden did not become the new fashion center — otherwise everything fell into place, one thing after another. Hydro’s old ammonia factory became a museum of industry; in addition, Hydro’s offices were turned into a business park, dubbed Hydros næringspark, or the Hydro Business Park, where one modern niche company after another moved in. And at Hydro’s transformer station, which was built in 1907 in the middle of the residential neighborhood for Hydro officials, no less than Telemark Teledata took over, uniting the local with the global, like a spearpoint that resembled electrical sparks, a forward-shooting bolt of lightning. In that sense it was almost reassuring for Singer, now and then, on rare occasion, to catch sight of Adam Eyde hurrying along a sidewalk in the center of Not­odden — for instance in 1987, three years after Hydro had shut down its own operations — as if he were a man from the past who had come back to haunt the place and would not stop until all his promises were kept, and the enormous Hydro villa at the top of Not­odden, with its view of Lake Heddal, could put down roots for all eternity, as the monument it had always been.

  Yet after 1987 Singer couldn’t remember seeing Adam Eyde. Sometime afterward he must have disappeared for good. But Singer did not forget him; his first evening in Not­odden had been too peculiar for that. And besides, he’d received a gift from Eyde. He kept it in the envelope that had once been handed to him. Sometimes he would take the betting systems out of the individual envelopes and study them as he slowly shook his head. But he never made use of the systems in order to seek his fortune, neither the big system nor the smaller one that was more suitable for him.