It was as though the house had shrunk while I was gone. The decay became clearer without the two old men; the marks on the wall from the old picture frames, the Amager shelf in the living room, the empty shelves. Anton’s bed, freshly made under the only surviving wall decoration in Great-Grandmother’s room—a small, clumsy crucifix, the kind sold in flea markets. Not even Jette had been able to cope with the greasy layer of dust congealed in pudding form on the wall over the kitchen table. The brown linoleum on the kitchen floor was worn down to the raw splintered floorboards in some places. I let the water run a little in the steel sink before filling my glass and feeling the warmth throb in my temples after the drive.

The mangy kitten was nowhere to be seen.

I’d called the leader of the search team on my way home, but he didn’t think it was realistic to ask the farmers to stop their combine harvesters.

“This is farming country, and those who know have said the heat wave will end with a bang tomorrow night. Torrential rain and rain all day every day for the week. Anders and his brother will understand that the machines can’t be stopped now. But we’ve called everyone who is harvesting in the area and asked them to be extra careful. And they will be. Believe me, nobody wants to end up with a man wrapped up in their hay bale.”

“All right,” I said.

“Yes, you understand.”

The wind hit the microphone, and I could hear him saying something to someone above the noise. Then he was back. “Does Anders know anyone in the area? Old friends. Someone he may have wanted to visit. We’ve already talked to the home carer, but she didn’t really know anything.”

“Anders is—he’s afraid of other people.”

“Hmm. Yes, we’re almost at seven hours now. So it’s beginning to get a bit harder. But keep yourself busy. We’ll call if something happens.”

A new text from Kirsten, who had called twice, too.

If you want to talk about it.

I stared for a long time at the unfinished sentence. If I wanted to talk about it, then what, Kirsten? It seemed like the kind of outstretched hand that people felt obliged to offer the acutely suicidal.

The night she’d found my letters to Janne on the computer, she’d become physically ill with fever and vomiting. I came home to a house with all the windows wide open and found her in bed, covered only with a crumpled, soaked sheet. She’d printed out the letters from my laptop and put them in a circle around her so she could effortlessly reach out for a random read, then put it back again. It didn’t help that the letters had never been sent. Nor did it help that I slammed doors, threatened to walk out and later pleaded for her forgiveness. Nothing helped. And she rejected my care. Sat stubborn and restless in bed, reached out for a glass of water and the tray with toast and a banana cut into slices and locked the door whenever she dragged herself to the toilet to vomit with a deep, hoarse gurgle.

If we were together, I’d have you wear only thin stockings that go up to the middle of your thin thighs. So any time and anywhere I wanted, I could put a hand under your dress and caress your stomach, and your ass, and your shiny wet pussy.

“Who is she?” she asked.

But I couldn’t even begin to explain.

“What the hell were you doing on my computer? They’re not letters for anyone. I’m writing a novel.”

Later, when she was up and about, I tried to talk to her, suggesting we should be honest with each other. She looked at me as if I were a half-dead toad that had dragged itself in over the kitchen floor. Words that I’d never heard her say before came out of her mouth. Asshole. Lecher. Pussy.

“You haven’t been so easy to be married to, either,” I said, causing her to expel a low, snorting laugh before turning away and crying into a pot of pasta.

“Guess we’ll just have to hope your young girlfriend can live with your little cock,” she said. “I hope you’re really happy together.”

I could no longer remember if I tried to deny again that the letters were letters, or if my guilt was fully established.

“It’s not my job to stabilize your fragile ego anymore. Your cock is like your morality—a bit below the waist. I say that in keeping with the new honesty between us.”

And then she left. Left me alone on the kitchen floor with my below-average manhood.

I emptied the washing machine and hung the clean white sheet on the line in the small patch of garden out by the road. It sagged heavy and dead in the still heat, and it was hard to cope with the mosquitoes and rainbow-colored flies swarming around my wet neck.

In the darkness of Great-Grandmother’s room, I opened the wardrobe and tried to get an overview of its contents. Seventies-style shirts and pants, some newer and softer in dark fleece, and woolen underwear from Bilka. I thought I recognized Jette’s practical taste and her synthetic flower-perfumed fabric softener. To the right, a beautifully folded stack of sheets and plastic covers for the mattress. Old age was frighteningly concrete when you stood holding that kind of thing. I went back to the living room and smoothed the light, white sheet over Anders’s hospital bed.

It was stiflingly warm under the hot roof tiles up on the second floor. The floor of Anders’s old room was still covered in stuffed plastic bags, holed linen, tablecloths with crocheted edging and my great-grandmother’s initials embroidered in the corners.

I opened the window and lit cigarette number thirteen of the day. The statistics didn’t lie when they said that divorced men smoke and drink too much and die like flies. I was reducing the number of active years with a present high quality of life. Men without women were fragile creatures, except maybe for those who’d never been married.

Where had Anders gone?

By now, he could have reached Auning or Grenå or wherever the hell it suited him to disappear to. There were bogs, streams, ditches and plantations where an old man could lay down to rest and never wake again.

I didn’t care for the way nature consumed human beings—that you could end up lying in the woods for foxes and ants and wind and forgetfulness. There was nothing as cruel and universally meaningless as a death without spectators. But that was the very nature of nature, of Satan.

I picked up some folded tablecloths and put them on a shelf in the closet. Grabbed a full, old-fashioned plastic bag, got a glimpse of its contents and stopped.

The first thing I noticed when I poured everything from the bag out onto the floor was that I needed to take a piss. Badly.

I got up on creaking knees and tramped down to the bathroom, where I pulled down my zipper and released my pathetically warm pee. It hurt, and I stood there for a long time like a storm-damaged tree, leaning over the toilet with my dick in my hand.

Then I washed my hands and walked slowly up the stairs again. Sat on the floor and spread Anders’s treasures out in front of me. All his stones, his glass, his pearls and, in the middle of it all, a single white mussel shell on a dark leather cord.