The Last Autumn in Legoland a Tragedy ______

______HANNA RUT CARLSSON THE LAST AUTUMN IN LEGOLAND A TRAGEDY ______

SISTA HÖSTEN I LEGOLAND Norstedts 2019, 305 pages Sample translation of pages 5-69, by Saskia Vogel

Norstedts Agency [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Four acts: SAND, SUN, RAIN & SEA

Dramatis personae:

AMIR, oracle (if but an unorthodox one, the reader will just have to deal with it) KATJA, biology student MALIK, architect and father JOANNA, schoolchild and daughter ALICE, recently graduated literary scholar

additionally

MIRANDA and IRVING, Amir’s oracle colleagues LEO, SUSANNE and CLAIRE, fellow commune dwellers of Katja and Amir’s sanitation workers HALIMA and UBAH the young men MALTE, KONRAD and MADS various Copenhageners (extras)

Scene:

COPENHAGEN

SAND

row, row

IT IS THE LAST of all autumns. Far away in West Jutland a storm is tearing through the protected sand dunes. The Nature Conservation Commission’s signs are being tossed around by the wind; two past-season German tourists drive past without seeing them. Unwittingly, they park their motor home illegally in the middle of the beach. Beyond the thin walls the storm is yowling. Thundering masses of water come crashing across the beach: it is the sea. The sea, from which life comes, and to which life will once again return. But the German tourists can barely hear the waves. They’re being drowned out by the howling wind and the sand hammering against the motor home. Darkness falls and they heat stew up on the gas stove, play two rounds of Uno. The ruckus outside starts to settle and they make their bed believing that the storm has blown over, but in fact their motor home has been buried, packed in, become but a bulge in the raging darkness. The protected sand dunes rise up, whirl whining high into the air, and the next morning they roll in over Copenhagen.

THE ORACLES ARRIVE

The oracles Amir, Miranda, and Irving walk down Nørrebrogade. It is dawn and very windy. The streets are almost empty. Amir walks along, writing on the wall next to him with a permanent marker, but puts it away when he spots two sanitation workers up ahead.

Irving looks at Amir’s marker, Miranda’s painted nails, his own threadbare suit.

IRVING: What a certifiably shitty job. MIRANDA: Don’t say that, it’s Amir’s first, after all. IRVING: But it’s not like we’re equipped. We’ve got nothing. No cult, no priesthood. MIRANDA: These are different times. IRVING: Not even a position of political power. Who’s even interested in receiving our message? MIRANDA: I have tons of followers on Instagram. Here, Amir, this is where you’ll be working.

They stop outside of 5 King’s Kebab.

AMIR: Wow. IRVING: Yeah, wow. No kidding.

Irving takes in the graffitied building.

6 MIRANDA: Well well. So I guess none of us were supplied with an optimal human harbor this time around.

Amir peeks in.

AMIR: But imagine the difference we’ll be able to make. Finally they’ll be able to find out what’s going on. IRVING: I wouldn’t get your hopes up. AMIR: Why not? It went well for the last one, didn’t it? Everyone knows about the oceans rising now.

Irving is about to speak, but something blows into his eye.

MIRANDA: Come on, let’s go. The sand will be here soon.

They move along.

AMIR: Does it always feel so, so…

Amir looks down at his new physical form.

MIRANDA: (Smiling.) Yes. You’ll get used to it. IRVING: Just wait until you stub your toe.

WHEN THE SANDSTORM rolled in across Copenhagen it was early yet, and the Copenhageners hadn’t quite woken up. On Vesterbro the first grains of sand landed on a skylight high above Vesterbrogade, above a tidy, sparkling apartment—even rows of books, neatly folded clothes, chair pushed in at the desk, piles of equally spaced papers marked with names, Prometheus, Pandora, Medea. But Alice was tangled in her bed sheets. The grains of sand swished against the window, the mobile phone next to her lit up when a message arrived. Alice groaned as she reached for it, but she didn’t wake up. Her hand fumbled across the empty half of the bed beside her, stopped, and still asleep she curled back up. A new beam of light, new grains of sand against the glass, but she didn’t notice. Not yet.

Not far away, among the much larger apartments on Fredericksberg, the first grains of sand landed in the drains and whooshed down the pipes towards the street. The wind found its way in through a half open window, past a blind, and made the papers pinned to the walls inside flutter. Sketches and drawings whispered and waved over a desk. In the double bed across the room Malik lay on his back, snoring and deaf to everything. But his ten-year-old daughter Joanna was woken by the pattering on her bedroom window. She lay there in her silk pajamas listening, waiting for an explanation that didn’t come. The sand pecked more and more persistently against the window and the pale morning light was starting to cast a strange hue. Eventually she crawled out of bed and pressed her nose to the window, trying to see what was there.

The wind swept its brown sand clouds across Jagtvej and the Nørrebro roundabout. Up on Nørrebro it blew past a black anarchist flag and in through an open window, where it strewed a few grains of sand on Katja’s bare thighs in someone else’s bed. She glanced at the grains, poking at them with a black-painted nail. She was far too tired to wonder where they’d come from, too tired even to keep herself awake, and yet the guy who was sitting on the windowsill rolling a cigarette kept on talking. “… and I mean, I don’t even think in terms of men or women or whatever, I treat all people equally, but then we were supposed to sit there talking about unconscious bias the whole afternoon, when we could’ve been out putting up stickers or doing anything else, right, so like that’s when they lost me…” Maybe it was just as well she went home. She could catch a few more hours of sleep, and she’d wanted to tackle her essay today. The guy said something about being easily offended and she was overwhelmed by a desire to read about habitat change among small mammals. She glanced at the floor, looking for her clothes, but it felt impolite to take her eyes off him. He gestured with the rolling paper. It didn’t seem like he’d ever finish with that cigarette. “… and that’s what I said: it’s all about perspective, isn’t it, there’s no reason to go around dividing people up on the inside when capitalism is the true enemy here…” Katja fixed her gaze on his lip piercing. It moved back and forth as he spoke. God, she was tired. “… and that’s how we could end fascism, stop wage slavery, put our foot down with these pigs, so they really get it once and for all, are you with me, if only people would stop treating these meetings like some fucking therapy session. Want some?” Katja blinked, loosed her gaze from the piercing, and watched as he reached a cigarette out to her. Oh, cigarettes. She wanted one so bad. “No thank you,” she said. “I’m trying to quit.” She decided the statement might as well be true. The guy shrugged and lit it himself. He drew a breath as if to keep going, but Katja got there first.

9 “I better run.” “Now? Already?” Katja climbed out of bed, grabbed her panties, and searched the floor for her T- shirt. “Yeah. It looks like we’re in for some bad weather.” The wind slammed the open window into the guy’s back as if to prove her point. She put on her pants and found her T-shirt under the bed, brushed some dust off, and pulled it over her head. “It was fun hanging with you,” the guy said. “It’s like you get me.” “For sure. Of course. See ya.” A quick hug by the window, then she was hurrying out through the party’s leftovers, stepping over two punks in the kitchen, dashing down the stairs, sticky with beer, and out onto the street. She was the lone cyclist on Nørrebrogade. Only two sanitation workers were out and about.

WHEN MALIK ROLLED the blind up everything was brown. The sun had long since risen, but its rays could barely reach the roofs or in through the apartment windows. He had to turn on the light in the bathroom when he went for a pee, and when he did his morning push-ups in front of the bedroom mirror his face was cast deep in shadow. It wasn’t a bad look, actually. Joanna was already awake, of course. He could hear her clattering on the keyboard before he reached her door. “Have you seen this weather, princess?” he said, leaning against the doorframe. “Shame it’s Saturday, huh? Otherwise school would definitely be canceled.” She looked up from her computer, cracked a smile, managing somehow to still look earnest. “Do you think it will be canceled on Monday?” she asked. “Because that’s when we’ll be getting the myths.” Malik yawned. “I don’t know. It’ll probably pass. What kind of myths?” “The Greek ones. The ones for the big project.” “Right.” Malik had a vague recollection. He walked in and put his arms around her, looked at her computer screen. It read: Culture in Ancient Greece. “Not too shabby,” Malik said. “We didn’t learn anything that advanced in fourth grade. Have you already started?” “It’s an introductory assignment,” Joanna said. “We’re going to write an essay. Just one page. But we have to find our own facts, and not just take them from the book.” “Wow,” Malik said. “It’s not much of anything yet. I’ve barely started.”

11 “But still. Hold on.” He reached over her shoulder and changed the font to Comic Sans. “Dad!” “Okay, okay.” Malik laughed. “Serious people use serifs. Something in the Century family, maybe.” He switched to Century Schoolbook. “There you go. Do you want breakfast?” “I’ve eaten.” Joanna changed it to Calisto. “I finished the cereal.” “I’ll go out and buy us lunch later.” He let go of her and kissed her hair. “But dad,” Joanna said. “Going outside is a bad idea. The newspaper said it could be dangerous.” “The newspaper?” “Online. I’ve been reading up on sandstorms. They can spread particles that are bad for the lungs, and they dramatically reduce visibility on the road.” “The newspaper can’t tell me whether or not to leave the house. But okay. I’ll wait for it to calm down.” Joanna nodded and looked at her computer screen. She switched back to Century Schoolbook, and Malik went to the kitchen to make coffee.

THE WIND INTENSIFIED. The clouds thickened. The afternoon glided slowly by, but the sky over Alice’s skylight grew darker and darker. This was the Last Judgement. She hadn’t sensed it coming, hadn’t been prepared; what she’d wanted was to tell Eli about the school project and the myths today. But she’d woken up, there’d been something wrong with the light, and next to her were already two text messages.

Alice we need to talk Call me plz

And now: Eli’s voice on the phone, but her tone was off. Alice had gotten out of bed and was still waking up, blinking at the brown world, trying to understand what was rattling against the window. “I need a little time to myself,” Eli said. The words bounced right off Alice’s consciousness and refused to penetrate. “What do you mean?” she said. On the streets below, a filthy twilight reigned. The street lamps were lit, but their light barely reached her through the haze. Eli sighed. “I just need, I don’t know, a little freedom. Space.” “But you’re in Berlin,” Alice said, trying to get Eli’s words to match up with reality. “Exactly,” Eli said, and Alice didn’t understand anything. What had gone wrong? The half-light in the room, this conversation, the whirling chaos outside. She was supposed to be telling Eli about the myths, that was what was supposed to happen today, and Eli was supposed to be laughing and feeling

13 moved and maybe even be impressed by Alice’s effort, this little stunt she was pulling with the Danish curriculum. “So we probably shouldn’t be in touch for a while,” Eli said, and this wasn’t at all how it was supposed to be. Reality had split in two. Alice stood in-between, not understanding what to do. “So when will we be in touch?” The silence on the line, the storm’s deafening roar. “Eli?” Eli sighed. “I don’t know. I just need some space now, okay?” What could Alice say to that? “Okay.” She fumbled for more, a few words that could stop this, make it good again. But the words flitted around and couldn’t be caught. “I have to go,” Eli said after a while. There was banging on Alice’s window, the wind seemed to be shaking the walls, there was nothing to say. “Bye,” Eli said. And she was gone. Alice sank into the chair at the desk. In front of her the myths lay in their piles, each and every one marked with the name of one of Eli’s paintings: Adonis, Achilles, and that damn Orpheus. She should’ve told her today, finally revealed what she’d been preparing all term, and Eli would’ve called her romantic and silly but she would have loved it, and they would’ve had a fresh tie to bind them together through the fall. The image of all that should have been lingered, so close, as if it could still happen. And she had to have a chance to… She leapt out of her chair, called Eli, hands shaking, pacing back and forth as it rang. It couldn’t be, what had she meant, and the myths, she had to know, Alice had made sure that… The storm hurled itself against the glass, the phone kept ringing. Eli didn’t answer and everything that should have been glided a bit further out of reach.

14 A while she’d said. How long was a while? Still on the desk were the piles of paper, ready to go out to Alice’s fourth-graders. The curriculum had been approved by the principal, the children had already started writing the introductory assignment. But how was she supposed to continue with this on Monday? Not without Eli, that would be meaningless. Not without there being an Eli working on the same myths, not without Eli’s voice on the phone, not without Eli’s laughter, Eli’s hands, Eli’s curls falling on Alice’s shoulders, tickling her throat, resting on her cheeks. What had she meant, wouldn’t they, would they never… Alice crumbled in the bright order of her room. Above her the storm continued to rage.

PEOPLE, THOSE SMALL ANIMALS on the surface of the planet. There are things so much greater than they are. The sand dunes spin. Banging and wailing, the wind rolls through, over the city, the land, the sea. The waves rear and rumble, crashing into every one of Denmark’s beaches. But there are things greater than the wind as well. Only the very surface of the sea is moved by it. Below the surface the silence is immediate. There the deep lies in waiting, dark and vast. Water is heavier than air, denser than air, and it is where it is, would never move out of the way for a trifle like a hurricane. Now and then a foundering life-form falls through the surface. A seagull, a leaf, the antenna of a motor home. They sail slowly down towards the black bottom. The sea only gets a little ruffled at the tips of the waves.

AND THEN IT WAS MIDDAY in Copenhagen. It brightened a bit. The sand clouds no longer crowded in a compact mass, the wind reached full gale force, and it made the sharp grains patter even harder through the moorings and pennants in Svanemølle Harbor. It sanded the color off the canal boat ticket booth in Nyhavn and scratched the glossy black façade of Den Sorte Diamant en route to the harbor. When it reached the cheap rental apartments in Sydhavn it drove between the buildings and flurries of sand pummeled the window of an untidy apartment, where three young men were playing FIFA and comparing Tinder profiles. “You might as well be up front about it,” one of them said about the other’s swastika neck tattoo. “But I didn’t get a single match,” said the other. “Being honest with yourself means being honest with others,” said the third, who’d read that in a self-help book. “They’re going to see it anyway as soon as you meet up,” the first one said and chose to play as Finland, because Denmark was already taken. “Anyway you shouldn’t feel ashamed because you have values.” “Maybe I can use this one… with the Danish flag in the background?” said the other. The wind drove on, singing through the canals on Christianshavn and filling the ashtrays of Christiania with sand, before swinging up through the harbor again, into the inner city where the streets were almost deserted. The only people walking down Strøget were a group of Swedish senior citizens, shielding their faces from the sand with their maps, while searching for an open smørrebrød restaurant. They took a detour to avoid a bearded man wearing ski goggles and carrying a sign that read THE

17 END IS NIGH. They never saw the back of it, which read EVERYTHING WILL COME CRASHING DOWN, WE DON’T HAVE LONG, YOU HAVE GONE TOO FAR AND NOW THE GROUND IS CRUMBLING BENEATH YOUR FEET, CHAOS WILL REIGN IF YOU DON’T STOP RIGHT NOW. The wind kept thundering up a deserted Nørrebro Street—past 5 King’s Kebab where the Oracle cum dürüm wrapper Amir sat on his own stirring a tub of stiffening kebab sauce—howling through the trees at the Assistens Cemetery and continuing up toward Nordvest. At the commune on Svanevej sand was building up on the balcony, so thick that by the afternoon the door couldn’t be opened. In the kitchen was a refrigerator covered in political stickers, a number of neglected potted plants, streamers left over from the previous party still dangling from the ceiling, as well as a group of people who’d had to cancel their plans that day and so were instead sitting around the kitchen table getting on each other’s nerves. “Take oysters, for example,” Leo said. “If an organism has no nervous system, can it be said to experience suffering?” “Nothing that comes from animals. It’s so much easier that way. No animals. Period,” Susanne said. “What is an animal, really? Different definitions serve different purposes, and for this purpose maybe…” “Why are we going around changing definitions left and right when you could just stop eating them?” Katja sat there with her cell phone, saying nothing. She’d slept for another few hours after biking home from that guy’s place at dawn, but she absolutely did not have it in her to get involved in all of this. She scrolled through her Facebook feed, clicked on three political articles that someone had shared, left the tabs open without reading them, then opened Tinder. There had to be somebody out there who wasn’t completely fucking hopeless. “Definitions are the most important things we have, distinctions are what we build our morality on,” Leo said. “So that’s why it’s important we take a close look at them, and not be lazy.”

18 “But why are you so dead set on eating shellfish? I don’t get it,” Susanne said. Katja started listlessly swiping left. No thank you, no thank you, no, no, no. Claire came into the kitchen, sat down at the table, and twisted her dreads. “Where’s Amir?” she said. “At work,” Katja said. No, no, no. “In this weather?” Claire said. “But he won’t be able to get home.” She looked out the window, where the sand crackled as it hit the walls and the window. Then she took a bag out of her large pants pocket and started rolling a joint. “What are you up to, Katja?” “Tinder,” Katja said and showed Claire her phone. “I mean look at this. A Danish flag in the background. What an idiot.”

NOBODY CAME INTO 5 King’s Kebab all day. The hours, infinitely small fragments of the universe that hardly existed or counted at all, stretched out like elastic now that he was in the midst of them. Amir had never been in the midst of hours before, he had no idea they could feel so long. His body tingled unpleasantly, and he felt like doing silly things just to fill them, like smearing the kebab sauce on the counter. He checked to see that nobody was coming, all of Nørrebro was deserted, so he went ahead and did it. It was remarkable. He felt as silly as humans were. After a few hours he threw away what was left of the kebab sauce. He made a fresh batch and put it in the fridge. He changed the oil in the fryer. He took the fans down and scrubbed them. The display windows rattled when the wind and sand slammed into them. The elastic hours passed. Time might be able to stretch, but not endlessly. It was almost closing time. Through the haze he saw someone on a bicycle coming his way. One small person, out in this great storm. Fascinated, Amir watched the person on the bicycle come down Jagtvej, the only living being on the street. It was being batted back and forth by gusts of wind, came close to falling, but stubbornly cycled forth, straight towards Amir. He tracked the person all the way to 5 King’s, where it parked its bike and walked in. The bell tinkled and the wind wailed before the door shut. “Hi,” the person said. It sounded out of breath. “Hi,” said Amir. “Some weather we’re having!” Amir knew there were lines he was supposed to respond with, but there was so much to keep track of. His body was rushing and pounding, time marched forward,

20 there were light and sound and sensory impressions to be taken in, and this interaction opened the door to countless possibilities. The message has to be spread, but Amir wanted to be sure that the person was receptive. So he had to rouse sympathy, establish credibility, play up their commonalities, hold and break eye contact at the right moments. Hundreds of social ties seemed to be taking shape between Amir and the person. He could almost see them in front of him, like silky spider threads holding them together. It was beautiful. But also very distracting. “Yes,” Amir said. The response felt a little weak, so he added a nod. The person blinked and took a few panting breaths. “I’ll have a falafel,” it said. “One pita and one dürüm.” “Yes,” Amir repeated, and dropped a few frozen lumps in the fryer. He would have liked to say more, the time to spread the message was now, but the person walked away and looked out the window. Amir made the falafel as slowly as possible while trying to pull himself together; he did in fact know how to do this. But there was so much happening all at once and the person didn’t seem to want to talk. The pita and the dürüm were ready. The person paid. “Thank you,” it said, then went back into the wind. Amir watched it knot a scarf around its nose and mouth, put on sunglasses, and cycle off. He watched it fight its way through the storm until it was home. Time was moving a little more quickly now; there was so much to think about. He wasn’t entirely happy with his encounter, but it had been good practice anyway. Looking out over the apartments in town, he observed the interactions inside, seeing the same social threads endlessly being spun between people. They navigated them so naturally using their gestures and words, as though they weren’t thinking about them at all, and yet everything they did seem to be governed by those ties they had to others. Amir could have kept watching all afternoon. But it was closing time. The wind had eased a bit by the time he walked home. It was still whipping the sand into small brown swirls, and it tore at Amir’s jacket as soon as he stepped outside, but the visibility was better, he could see all the way up to the yellow

21 cemetery wall. He squinted to keep the sand out of his eyes, knotted his shawl so that it covered his nose and mouth. His face. Imagine so many sensitive bodily functions being concentrated there. He pulled up his hood, it blew off, he pulled it up again, it blew off, he pulled it far down over his nose and knotted it, he didn’t actually need his eyes to see. There was still nobody outside. Amir took the marker out of his pocket, he wanted to get something done today, anything. He should have crossed over to the left side of the street to write, but a leaden feeling overcame him, it was difficult to walk a straight line through the gales. Tired. He must be tired. He switched the marker to his right hand and wrote on the walls as he walked. It came out backwards, mirrored. It would be what it was. He came to the end of the façade, continued writing on the next one, over a display window, right across a door. The sand twirled around his feet. A long tail of words stretched all the way from 5 King’s up towards Svanevej:

…MORF EMOC YEHT EREHW TEGROF NETFO ELPOEP

SHE WAS STUCK INSIDE all day. Joanna didn’t mind one bit. She sat at her kitchen table, trying to draw clothes and people in togas. It wasn’t going well. She was much better at drawing animals, but she wanted to practice. The sand was still churning in the air outside, and she couldn’t see very far down the street. She’d tried to keep working on the introductory assignment, but couldn’t concentrate knowing that her dad was out there. It was better to sit by the kitchen window, where she could keep an eye out for him. And everything always felt better when she was drawing. At least they didn’t have to come up with an outing that day. Dad always wanted them to go out and do things on the weekends, ride a canal boat or go to a museum or to Dragør and eat lunch, and sometimes Joanna wondered for whose sake they were doing these things. But it’s not like it wasn’t fun sometimes. Best was when dad gave her a ride on the Christiania bike: the feeling when she lay down on the bed and looked up, the street lamps and the other cyclists zipping past, the sky and clouds and the breathtaking whiz in her gut as they gained speed. It felt like flying. But she’d sort of outgrown being given a ride. Once she’d finally figured out how they were supposed to fit, it turned out that drawing togas wasn’t too difficult. She added details, tried to shade them, drawing on faces and hair. Feet and sandals were trickier. When the door opened in the hall she realized it had been a while since she’d last looked out the window. “Woo!” Dad shouted. He walked into the kitchen, pulled down the scarf covering his mouth, pushed his sunglasses onto his forehead. Sand fell from his clothing onto the hall and kitchen floor. “It was unbelievable, princess, you should’ve felt that wind! And look: falafel, from your favorite place!”

23 “Yum,” Joanna said, trying to sound as upbeat. “And not a single person outside! It was like I owned the city!” Dad shed his outer layers, put the food on the kitchen table, took water out of the fridge, and sat down. Joanna pushed her pens out of the way. “It was like something out of Mad Max. Unbelievable!” She folded down the foil around her falafel and took a bite. It tasted good. A little too good. “Dad. Did you tell them to hold the crème fraîche?” He answered with food in his mouth. “Mmm. Course I did.” Joanna inspected her pita bread, pushing the falafel to one side. “But I think it has crème fraîche in it. I’m, like, sure it does.” Malik gave a little sigh, his temples still sweaty from the bike ride. “Joanna, can you please stop worrying for one second? I told them not to put any in. It’s probably something else. And it wouldn’t be the end of the world if you happened to get a little crème fraîche in you, would it?” Joanna tried not to think about cows. She tried not to think about the word “udder,” or how big and swollen they’d been on the videos she’d seen on the web. The cows had cried out for a milking, they had stood in place while flinging their heads around in their crowded stalls. But dad had biked through an entire sandstorm in order to buy her falafel. “Okay,” she said. She took another bite. It tasted like chili and falafel and lettuce and then that fresh, sour taste that she was sure was crème fraîche. “You know,” Malik said. “I think they have a new sauce that tastes exactly like it. But it’s vegan. Yes, that’s it, that’s what it said on the sign. New vegan sauce.” Joanna tried to chase off the images in her head. “Oh good,” she said. She took another bite. Udders. Udders. Udders. Mucous membranes. Blue veins. Fit to burst. She took another bite.

PEOPLE OFTEN FORGET where they come from. They look out over the sea after the storm has eased and only see a steely surface. But the sea is the deep where everything began. When life first emerged it was infinitesimal. It was in the deep sea trenches where the water was boiling, collecting in warm pockets in the dark, learning to consume sun or other life-forms. It floated up on the northern hemisphere; some life-forms had small shells that protected them against larger life-forms. The shells were made of calcium. Some life-forms were animals, some life-forms were plants, most were neither nor. These individuals lived for small meaningless spans of time, but life itself continued. The calcium shells were what remained when someone died, solemn memorials sinking through the deep that immediately became dust on the bottom of the sea. Then it got very cold and the sea froze and almost all life in the north disappeared. The ice lay thick and full over the earth. It was larger than everything. There was no land or sea anymore, just ice, and deep down in the darkness were different materials upon which the ice rested. Shells that had been crushed to dust were down there and were being crushed a little more. When the ice moved it was on a timescale that only mountains would understand. None of the small insignificant short-lived animals would have been able to notice. But they were moving. And when they moved they dragged the very surface of the earth with them. The small calcium shells, now dust, were dragged a ways along the continental shelf.

25 Then it got warmer. The ice melted and everything became water and the earth rose up like a body inhaling after holding its breath. The shells, no longer dust, rose up to the surface. They had been compressed into white stone. A number of life- forms climbed up on the stones and the bodies became earth, then larger life-forms arrived and lived there, and one day one of the large life-forms decided to build on top of the white stone that had once been dust that had once been shells that were made of calcium. This became a city. They called it Copenhagen. And now people in Copenhagen look out over the sea, and all they see is a flat, steely surface.

THE WIND HAD STILLED. The streets were quieter than ever when Amir and Katja went out to dumpster dive. They’d waited until after closing time, even though Netto didn’t seem to have been open that day at all. The sand hissed as it slid off the container’s steel doors. “Look,” Katja said as she heaved herself over the rim. “Quark!” Bananas and carrots, Twix and stockings. Leeks, like always. Amir rubbed the corners of his eyes to get the sand out; he felt, what was it called, blasted. Amir knew what everything was called, but sometimes he had to check. Milk cartons and red beets, a melon that had cracked and made everything else sticky. “And cheese!” Katja shouted, holding two packets up to Amir over the rim. “It’s seriously our lucky day.” Amir was tired. It stank. Green potatoes and clementines, protein powder and diet soda. The social ties swarmed in the air between him and Katja, but he was getting used to it. Besides they were unusually simple and uncomplicated with her. “Katja,” he said. “Just checking: you’re vegan, right? But you eat cheese?” “Only container cheese,” Katja said. “Only what we save from a terrible fate in the trash incinerator.” She held up the soda. “This will never get old. But it’s probably full of aspartame. Want it?” Amir shook his head. “There,” he said. “By your foot.” Katja bent down and picked up a head of cabbage, under it was a bottle of olive oil. She cheered. Amir laughed. They hurled things over the rim, and Amir packed it into bags. “What else?” Katja said.

27 Amir looked around. “Do you like Digestives? There, under the bananas, next to the salmon.” Katja moved a few bunches of bananas aside and found the cookies underneath. “How did you see them?” Amir smiled and shrugged. They filled all of their bags. In the windows across from the loading dock a light was on, but the street outside was quiet, only two sanitation workers were out and about. Across the courtyard the Hell’s Angels clubhouse was dark. “It’s nuts that we got such good things,” Katja said as they left. “We must be the only people who were here today.” “It’s the sand,” Amir said. It creaked beneath his feet. The bags were heavy, his arms were like two sinkers. As were Katja’s. Way up high the wind was still blowing, black clouds dashed past the moon. Amir knew that now was the time to say something, to build the trust in this human relationship and improve his chances of reaching her with the message. Being with Katja was easy, the threads between them felt so stable. “I started writing about SLOSS today,” Katja said, and Amir was happy that she was the one to speak, he liked it when she talked. “Do you know what that is?” Amir hesitated. He couldn’t lie. But Katja wasn’t expecting a reply. “Single large or several small. Nature preserves, you know. It’s pretty exciting. Apparently ecologists are having crazy fights over it.” “So what’s better, then? Single large or several small?” Amir said. Asking wasn’t a lie, even though it made it seem like he didn’t know the answer. “It seems to depend a little on what’s in the preserve. And,” Katja said, swinging the bags, “I read that organic farming can be worse than regular farming, when it’s less efficient and more farmland is needed. How crazy is that?” “Super crazy,” Amir said. “Just imagine making such a big effort to protect biodiversity, only to find it was actually worse all along. But at least it’s good for the insects.”

28 “Mm,” Amir said. He knew exactly which and how many species benefited from organic farming, but he was tired. Whenever he blinked he could feel the grain of sand stuck in his eyelashes, and yet he didn’t have the energy to put the bags down and wipe it away. All he wanted was to go home and rinse off the food and change his clothes and go to bed. It was exhausting being human.

THE LAST JUDGEMENT passed, and it was Monday again. So hellish life could be. Alice gathered up her myths from the desk and biked with them to work. Somewhere, in Plato’s ideal world maybe, there was a morning in which Alice was cycling in the other direction, towards the humanities department and a doctoral position of her own. In that morning Eli was still in the kitchen washing up after breakfast, because Eli usually cooked dinner and Alice always fixed breakfast for her before leaving. It wasn’t like Eli would have given up her artistic dreams for her sake, no, Alice reflected, it was just that Eli would already have had her six months in Berlin, left the artist’s commune, and come back home to her. In spring. It would have been in the spring. But now it was October, the bike rolled slowly through the thick drifts of sand on the bicycle path and Alice was on her way to a middle school class that understood nothing about literature. She was no longer certain their shared spring would ever be. The thought forced her to slow down and catch her breath. Reality had become so foul. The traffic along the brown sand piles, the school with its ramps and fire escapes, the entrance and the corridors painted in garish colors that was meant to appeal to the kids. But did it? Everything here was a bad facsimile of ideals, like these pointless children’s drawings on the walls, identical to every other children’s drawing. And now Alice was standing there handing out hand- outs, and everybody was acting as though this was exactly how it was supposed to be. “How come there was so much sand over the weekend?” Viggo asked. “You’ll have to ask your science teacher about that,” Alice said.

30 “But don’t you know?” Nioosha said. This wasn’t in her job description. This was beyond her capabilities on a day like this. Besides she was only a substitute, didn’t they get that she was only a substitute, she wasn’t actually supposed to be here? How long was a while? “We have get going on the project now,” Alice said. “You’ll pick your own…” “Pick our own?!” “… way of presenting it from the following three options: an essay, a lecture, or a play.” “A play!” The class shouted and started chattering and shouting at each other to split up into groups. Alice gulped her coffee. No, she probably wasn’t really here. It was too vile to be true. “First we’ll choose the myths,” she said, and the class settled down a bit. “We want a love story,” Vilde and Amalie shouted. Alice gave them Medea.

ON MONDAY AFTERNOON the sky was clear and the air was still. The sun rose over Indre By, it was a regular weekday in early October, and on the main streets the trash machines had already cleared the sand to make room for shoppers. The docks were clean, Strøget as well. The sand had been swept into various side streets of lesser interest to tourists. There, almost nothing was making its way through the drifts. Only two sanitation workers were out and about. “Ubah, please tell me,” the one said, “weren’t we hired to pick up trash? Does this look like trash to you?” Ubah was walking on the other side of the street and shoving a large pile of sand in front of her with a dust pan. “I think we’ve been hired to pick up anything that doesn’t belong on the streets, darling.” Halima snorted and scratched her back. Sand had found its way under her clothes. “Because what is trash really?” Ubah said, leaning on her shovel. “It’s just something that’s out of place, something that has ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Matter out of context.” “This particular matter is heavier than what I was hired for,” Halima said and swept a drift up on to a cart. Ubah shrugged. “God works in mysterious ways.” “God and the recruitment agency,” Halima said.

JOANNA WALKED HOME from school dragging her toes in the sand that still lined the buildings, leaving patterns behind her on the sidewalk. What a weird day. Vilde and Amalie had asked her to be in their group and she had no idea why. Vilde and Amalie were super strange. All they did was giggle, it was hard to know what they actually wanted. Once last year they’d pretended to be friends with Maja Elisabeth for a whole week. They’d sat with her in the cafeteria, nagged to be on her team in P.E., and hung out with her at recess. It had been over the top, obvious, and the worst part was what Maja Elisabeth sounded like when she talked to them, her nervous laughter when they complimented her ugly shoes. The following week they’d pretended she didn’t exist, like they couldn’t even hear her when she was talking to them. It made Joanna’s stomach feel like it was rocking, like that one time they’d gone into the marshes by grandma’s house and the ground didn’t really hold. But maybe they’d changed. And Joanna wasn’t like Maja Elisabeth, who’d switched schools when they were about to start fourth grade. Maybe all they wanted Joanna for was to do the boring writing part of the assignment, so they could focus on the play. She was fine with that. Maybe it meant Joanna could get out of acting in the play. Joanna shouted hello when she came home, but nobody was there, as usual. Dad had been working at home, you could tell by his room, pens and brushes were strewn across the desk. He’d taken his drawing with him; the paper on top of the stack was white. Joanna walked in and ran a finger over it. It was textured, not shiny and plasticky like photocopy paper but neither was it coarse like the thick, cheap card she used for watercolors. And she knew that from the tip of the slender pen that lay

33 beside it flowed black ink, coal black and wet like a brush, but sharp like a mechanical pencil, and when dad drafted with it it was like he was filling in lines that had always been there, and would be exactly as he had drawn them. Joanna picked up the pen and held it, but she didn’t twist off the cap. She wasn’t allowed to use dad’s good pens and good paper, and any way it wasn’t the same when she was the one drawing. When she was younger she had loved going to the art supply store with her dad, where the small pots of ink were lined up in glass bottles like magical drinks and potions. There were so many different kinds of black, dad had shown her once, there was black that leaned towards blue and black that lean towards brown or indigo, and dad could stand in the store discussing this with the salesperson for twenty minutes: something as simple as choosing the right shade of black. Joanna liked the watercolor palettes even more, with their small squares of color like candy or jewels. She could’ve collected them and left them untouched, keeping them in a box and only opening it sometimes to order them along a color scale, allowing her index finger to bounce between the nuances. From leaf green to lime green, to sunny yellow, fiery yellow, orange. Slight, slight shifts in color, and suddenly she was somewhere else entirely. Leaf green was not orange. Slight, slight shifts, and suddenly there was nothing left of what you started with. Joanna didn’t go with her dad to the art store anymore. She left his room, went to the kitchen, and mixed herself a glass of chocolate milk. When doing this on her own at the kitchen counter, she always thought about filling the whole glass with chocolate milk powder and dribbling rice milk on it until it became a batter, then eating it with a teaspoon, and laying dad’s large papers out on the floor and painting whole worlds on them with the watercolor pens he kept inside the box, and putting on the silk shirt and a hat that he never wore, and pouring a glass of the liqueur he let her taste sometimes, the one that smelled like banana candy. But she didn’t. She stirred in an extra half teaspoon of chocolate powder. Then she went into her room, started her computer, and pulled up the Wikipedia page

34 about ancient Greece. Alice had said they weren’t allowed to use Wikipedia, but Joanna began her research there anyway. It mostly said things she’d already read in her textbook. Lots of names were hyperlinked. There was information about culture, philosophy, and theater, and this: free men. Free men were allowed to go to the theater. Not women or slaves. She took a sip of chocolate milk and clicked on the word “slaves.”

THE ORACLES INSTALL THEMSELVES

Amir, Miranda, and Irving sit in the café at the main library on Kristalgade. Irving’s THE END IS NIGH sign is leaning against the wall.

MIRANDA: They’re intuitive beings, after all, even if they think they’re intellectual. So it’s all about connecting on an emotional plane. AMIR: Okay. MIRANDA: The art reaches their subconscious via associations, and it creates new frameworks of understanding, changing unconscious thought structures that led to non sequiturs.

Amir nods.

MIRANDA: It can establish a conception of reality where the problem becomes clear in the end, and they have deep insight because the realization is their own.

Amir nods.

IRVING: Or you could tell it like it is.

Miranda glares at Irving.

IRVING: I mean, if you ask me. (Irving slurps his coffee.)

36 AMIR: But Miranda, that new art piece you’re making, the thing with the globe, how do you think it will… MIRANDA: Hold on a sec, what? You’ve seen my new piece? AMIR: Yes? You know I see everything… MIRANDA: But that shouldn’t include us! IRVING: Come on, Amir, get yourself together. MIRANDA: We’re colleagues after all, we can’t go around watching each other.

Amir looks unhappy and confused.

IRVING: Did nobody talk to you about this? AMIR: No. IRVING: That’s what I’ve been saying, Miranda, they haven’t lifted a finger this time. No schooling, nothing. AMIR: I thought… I’m sorry. MIRANDA: No worries. But it’s not polite, okay? AMIR: Okay.

They’re silent for a beat.

AMIR: All I mean… Do you really think sculptures are an effective enough method of spreading the message? MIRANDA: I always work with art. It reaches a narrower group, but the ones who get it really get it. AMIR: But if they’re going to have a shot at changing something, then almost everybody has to get it. And soon. IRVING: Yep. The whole city will have to get it. MIRANDA: Really get it. AMIR: Exactly.

37 IRVING: But that’s not going to happen, they never get it together in the eleventh hour. MIRANDA: And when they do get, it they’ll only make it worse anyway. Look at the so-called solution they came up with for the rising seas. AMIR: So… Why are we even here? MIRANDA: Amir, it’s just a formality. The people upstairs want to be able to say they gave them a chance. And there are always a few who get it right as it blows. Catharsis, regret and reverence. IRVING: (Chuckles.) The people upstairs love stuff like that.

AFTER THE LECTURE Katja stayed at the university looking at maps of Denmark. She wanted to find examples to use in her essay in order to compare the ecology of natural and man-made habitats. But it was harder than she’d anticipated. Most of all she wanted to give evidence of biodiversity in completely natural environments, but there didn’t seem to be any in the entire country. When she googled it, all she found was a bunch of humanists problematizing the term “natural”. She could find facts about moss in ancient forests, but moss was super boring. She wanted to do something with animals. Small mammals were of no help either. Rodents seemed to move in anywhere, whether or not district heating had been installed the year before or if a motorway viaduct was nearby. Is that how it worked? Could you go ahead and refashion nature any which way, and it would keep on working? Was there anything that could actually be called nature? She found an article about the dormouse. At least that one was threatened with extinction, finally, but it was a little bit unclear whether or not it was because of changes in habitat. Out of habit she considered taking a smoking break. But she had decided to stop. Yes, if you could change Denmark’s entire ecology, then you should be able to change your own addictive relationship to tobacco. She decided to put the hypothesis to the test. At least for another hour. She looked at the blank document on the computer, wondering what she should name it. Then she opened Tinder on her smartphone.

PEOPLE ONLY SEE the surface of the sea. There was a time when they imagined the depths of the ocean like they imagined the depths of the heavens above: immeasurable expanses between them and the stars. People lived on the edge between two enormous, black seas. Now people have sailed across the seas and have encountered land on the other side. They’ve dropped their sinkers down and found that expanses are finite, too. The sea has a bottom; it is sludgy and full of rocks. People have turned their gaze to the stars, to see if they’ll make the same discovery there. The sea has become a fishing camp, a bathing spot, a transport route. But now it is rising. Before, when the sea crept up the land, people moved out of the way. Now it’s not as straight forward, because they’ve built so many lovely things: jetties, bicycle paths, open-air restaurants on the pier. They’ve made their home in a gigantic playground. They don’t want to move out of the way just because the seas are coming. And these people have turned their gazes to the stars. They don’t pull out and rebuild, now they just keep building up, up, up. They’re not afraid of the sea anymore, because in this Legoland nothing is actually dangerous. The sea is but a steel gray surface, and people have bright yellow excavators. They don’t worry, don’t waste time keeping watch and praying, no, they’re building a fortification against the sea: a dam.

“COPENHAVEN,” MALIK SAID. “Dam sounds so boring. It’s going to be so much more than a dam." The people around the table were spinning their pens, scratching themselves, looking at the sketches he had put up at the front of the room. “We were only thinking of a little fortification,” one of them said. “I mean, is all of this really necessary?” “Absolutely not,” Malik said. Their expressions made him smile, a couple of them responded with a chuckle. “But we have gone beyond. Why limit ourselves to working with pure necessity, when we could be working with vision?” He gave them a moment to take that in and gestured towards the best picture, where the proposed fortification’s trees were reflected in the sea at sunset and cafés along the new beach promenade were full of yellow light and people. “I don’t know,” someone else said. “It sounds pretty expensive. Wouldn’t the dam have to be at least ten meters wider?” Malik nodded. “Between five and fifteen, depending on the location.” “That much earth won’t even be extracted from the subway construction. What kind of material are you thinking of using, Mr. Reed?” Malik noted the formal address; they still weren’t interested in talking about this as if they were doing it in collaboration with him. He pulled the map of the subway system closer and pointed at a highlighted line that ran right through the others. “There have been plans to build this line for years. Why don’t we go through with it? It would free up enough earth to fill the entire area in question.” One person clucked their tongue, another leaned in for a look.

41 “The research and analysis has already been conducted,” Malik said. “The documents are in order. In principle construction could start immediately. It wasn’t possible under the previous city council, but I know you all are more forward- thinking than they were.” A snicker went around the table along with something akin to a scoff. Maybe his flattery had been a smidge over the top. “As if people weren’t already tired enough of subway construction,” somebody said. Malik didn’t respond. The comment was so obviously irrelevant. “Aha, okay,” someone else said. “I don’t know what you all are thinking, but to me it feels like a little much. Constructing a brand-new subway is one heck of a project in itself.” “The machinery is already here and can be brought in from other sites,” Malik said, but he knew he was fighting a steep uphill battle. “There are even tunneling machines available, all they need to do is blast open new shafts for them to bore into.” “I’m not particularly keen on more blasting. Those were quite the decibel levels we had last time.” The rest of the table mumbled in agreement. Malik stifled a sigh. This wasn’t a pro or con argument about construction. These were emotional reactions. But it was also a sign that the conversation had tipped too far in the wrong direction. It was time to shift focus and make sure the conversation didn’t get stuck here. “There’s a lot to take into consideration,” Malik said. “I’ll leave the prospectuses here, so you can take in the details at your own pace. And we’ll stay in touch over the coming weeks.” Everyone took a prospectus and shook his hand as he walked around the table, and yet on his way out he knew he had failed. It would take much more persuasion to push this through.

DARKNESS SETTLED OVER Vesterbro. Flashing on the buildings were yellow lights from the street-sweeping machines taking care of the last of the sand. It was a cold October evening, but for Alice, resting on her bed with her eyes shut, it was a July night. “I’ve always thought it should be called stomachs,” Eli had said, the two of them in bed naked on the night that was the end of everything,but hadn’t felt like it yet. “It’s what I used to say when I was little: your stomachs.” “But there is only one,” Alice said. The window was open to the cemetery outside. “I know,” Eli said. “But that’s not what it feels like.” She ran her hand over Alice’s stomach. Alice shut her eyes and tried to comprehend its presence, Eli’s hand touching her, here and now. But it couldn’t be grasped. Eli removed her hand and brushed a tendril of hair off her forehead. Alice opened her eyes. The walls in the room were bare now that all of Eli’s photos, posters and paintings were packed up. Anyone could have been living here, these could’ve been any walls in any Copenhagen apartment. Alice blinked and looked away. “I love your stomachs,” she said and slid under the covers. “This one,” and she kissed Eli’s solar plexus, “this one,” and she kissed her right above her belly button, “this one,” and she kissed her side. “And this one,” and she kissed the whole round swell furthest down. Eli laughed out loud and tugged at her hair, repositioning her so that Alice’s light locks cascaded around their faces and mingled with Eli’s dark curls on the pillow. “Are you cold?” Eli asked.

43 “No,” Alice said. “You have goosepimples on your arms. I can close the window.” “No, stay. I’m not cold.

Cold October evening; Alice lying in the half-light of her room. She looked up when the street sweepers slammed into the curb. The ceiling bulb had called it quits a few days ago. She should buy a new one, but what difference would it make? Eli hadn’t been in touch, might never be in touch again. She shut her eyes again. “Why should Orpheus be the bard?” Eli had asked. “Shouldn’t it be Eurydice, the forest nymph, who makes the seeds sprout and the birds sing when she plays?” And Alice was still with her, it was still a July night, and as long as Eli was talking, Berlin was but a Neverland where Alice could join her. “There is no room for women’s art in a patriarchy,” Eli said. “It would be impossible, it would mean acknowledging them as fully valid people.” Alice lay there listening to her, caressing the baby hairs on her arms. All she wanted was to be rocked in this moment and for it to keep going and going. “This is what I want to reinterpret. All those myths you’re talking about, I’d like to turn them into a utopia, strip them of those ridiculous hero stories and see how they’d be narrated by a woman.” And Eli kept talking, and around them her paintings materialized, sketches made of countless brushstrokes. They were in the studio she was going to have in Neukölln, in the Neverland of Berlin, and they were there together, together, together. “There’s plenty of beauty in the Orpheus myth,” Alice said. “Not in the heroics, but in the failure. The desire for utopian love, the despair that destroys it, and how he loses everything in disappointment.” “And how his head washes up on the shores of Lesbos.” “That too.” Alice laughed and rested her chin on Eli’s chest. “Imagine if I could teach that to the kids this fall.”

44 “Can’t you?” “We probably have to read H.C. Anderson.” She was mumbling, feeling her lips move against Eli’s soft skin. “You’re the boss, Miss.” Eli sat up, smoothed Alice’s hair into a ponytail, mimicking her voice. “Listen up, children. I’m your teacher for this term, and we’re going to deal in blood and death and the destruction of the patriarchy.” Alice laughed and closed her eyes, trying to pull together the feeling of Eli’s hands in her hair and save it, distill it, preserve it forever.

She would give her all the time and space in the world if only she came back.

“I’VE SLEPT WITH LOADS of feminists,” he said. “And you know what? They all basically want to be dominated in bed.” Katja didn’t respond. It was hard to argue with statistics, even ones as lacking as these. Besides she didn’t know what his point was, only that she didn’t agree with it. There was no elaboration. The guy turned on his side and put a hand on her breast. She hesitated before kissing him back. Actually she’d been thinking about biking home and reading an article about dormice, but his fingers on her nipple were sending a pleasing shiver through her body.

Afterwards they smoked on his balcony, each wrapped up in their own blanket. A drained bottle of wine on the balcony floor was now half filled with sand, and Katja sat there rolling it back and forth. Her body was soft and hot, as it always was after she came, and he was handsome when he was smoking, bare shoulder and arm sticking out of the blanket. “I’ve been thinking about quitting,” she said ashing against the balcony railing. “You think too much,” the guy said. Katja looked at the birds above the roofs across the street. The last waves of well- being receded. “Are you saying it’s too much for my little lady brain?” she said. The guy laughed. “You think I’m one of those woman-haters,” he said. “But I’m, like, the least misogynistic person in the world. I love women.” He flung out his arms and smiled.

46 “All us guys just want to be ourselves. You’re the ones painting us with the same brush when you call us that.”

“WHAT A DICK,” Susanne said, ladling up the porridge from the pot on the kitchen table. She sent one of the mismatched plates on to Claire and started dishing up the next. The streamers over the table swayed gently in the steam rising from the food. “The whole biological approach is so exhausting,” Leo said. “How can people not see the role they play in how society creates gender?” “But, you know, he means well,” Katja said, taking one of the plates. “He’s a nice guy. He just doesn’t get it yet.” “In that case, he doesn’t want to get it,” Susanne said. “It’s not like feminism was invented yesterday. He’s had access to the media in the last century, hasn’t he?” “Did he really say ‘reverse sexism’?” Leo said. “Where’s the power analysis in that, huh?” “Maybe I was judging him too quickly, too.” Katja poked her spoon around the bowl. “No,” Susanne said. “No,” Leo said. “What’s this?” Claire said, holding up a long, threadlike leaf from her plate. “Kale,” Amir said. “It was getting old.” “Kale in rice porridge is a little out there, Amir,” Katja said. “But really nutritious,” Claire said while chewing. “Kale is a superfood.”

MALIK HAD BEEN FIGHTING all day. He had fought to get a meeting with the council to re-pitch the project, but had failed. He had called his best contact, Marianne who smiled at all his jokes during the pitches, but not even she seemed willing to help him. Then he fought to keep up the mood at the afternoon meeting, where a few people in the office seemed convinced that there would be no CopenHaven, and they’d only get enough resources to build a small dam. He’d worn his new blazer, walked in with his scarf in a perfect messy knot, he couldn’t have looked better—a wonder of optimism and confidence. But of course people were worried. By the end of the day he’d been fighting to keep his own mood in check. Now he was finally getting home and there were voices coming from the kitchen. Girl voices. He realized how long it had been, how long it had been since Joanna had invited friends over. He walked into the kitchen before taking off his shoes, stood in the doorway, took off his scarf and smiled. “Hi!” The two girls who were with Joanna giggled. “Hi, Dad,” Joanna said. In front of her were three glasses of milk and one of them was a deep dark chocolate-powder brown. “Malik,” said Malik and reached out his hand in greeting. He was being almost ironically grown-up, as though they were all playing grown-up together, and it worked. The girls giggled when they reached out their hands. “Vilde,” the one with the long blond ponytail said. “Amalie,” said the curly red-haired one.

48 “Nice,” Malik said and kicked off his shoes, not bothering to line them up on the shelf per usual. “Vilde and Amalie. I won’t bother you. I’m gonna go to my room and do some work. Have as much chocolate powder as you like.” He winked at them and as he walked into his room, an explosion of giggles detonated in the kitchen. If only it could always be this simple.

CULTURE IN ANCIENT GREECE by Joanna Aeroe Reed

Greece was called Ancient Greece from 700 BC to 300 BC, and in this time Greek culture flourished. There is a lot of art, literature, and theater from Ancient Greece. That’s when theater was invented. It started when a chorus that usually sang songs about different stories started telling the stories using their normal speaking voices. After a while it got popular to have various actors playing various roles. They wore masks. That was really popular, and there were competitions to see who could write the best piece of theater. Only men were allowed to go to the theater, but not men who were slaves. This meant that few people could go to the theater. Maybe it was because it would have gotten too full at the theater, and maybe it was because slaves had other things to do and weren’t allowed. Slaves made up about one-third of Athen’s population. Slaves were not in charge of their own lives and had to work all the time. If they didn’t, the people who owned them would beat them. They might also be sold to another family. They were given worse food and lived in worse houses than other people in Greece. It’s a wonder they didn’t protest, but it was because they would be beaten or maybe even killed by the people in charge.

“Great,” Vilde said. “Should there be so much about slaves?” Amalie said. “They’re members of society, too,” Vilde said. “Joanna knows what’s up. She’s hella smart.” Joanna could feel herself blushing and looked down into her chocolate milk. “Meh, I know,” Amalie said. “I didn’t mean it like that.” Joanna snuck a look at her room, trying to figure what they thought about it. It wasn’t a kid’s room, she’d made sure of that; it was nicely decorated and painted in three different shades of blue. Maybe it was too boring? But she and dad had hung a

50 string of lights with colorful balls over the bookshelf, and the curtains were made of a lovely patterned fabric they’d found in dad’s favorite store. “Posters are so much nicer when they’re framed,” Vilde said. She was turned away from the computer and must have followed Joanna’s gaze. Joanna felt exposed even though it was a compliment. Over her bed was a print from Louisiana. Vilde sat on the floor with her glass. Amalie nodded and sat down too. “It’s so ugly when it’s taped up. I have to tell mom.” They sipped their chocolate milk and their giggles seemed friendly, Joanna tried out a giggle, subtly and soundlessly. She sat down on the soft rug. It had been ages since she’d sat on the floor. “Louisiana,” Amalie read out loud. “I went to Louisiana with mom and her boyfriend and it was sooo boring.” Joanna felt the rocking in her stomach again. “Mmm,” she said. “Meh,” Vilde said. “It’s not always boring. It depends on the exhibition.” “I’ve never seen a fun one,” Amalie said, looking around the room. “It’s hella boring going around looking at paintings.” “Joanna,” Vilde said, and Joanna sat up straight out of pure reflex, “doesn’t your dad do stuff with art?” “No,” Joanna said. “He’s an architect.” “Ah,” Amalie said. “Much better. At least that makes sense. Has he designed anything in Copenhagen?" “Mmhm,” Joanna said. “What?” Vilde asked. She and Amalie were both staring at Joanna. “Really?” “So like, has he done any super famous buildings?” Joanna couldn’t look them in the eye. “No. Or, I mean, well yeah, or no. Not super famous. But you know the Hendrickslund School? He drew that one.” “Whaaa?” “That’s so cool!”

51 “Hendrikslund is really nice,” Vilde said. She was digging around with the teaspoon in her glass trying to get the chocolate all the way at the bottom. “Joanna is cooler than she lets on, Amalie.” Amalie snorted and giggled so hard she was choked for breath. Joanna stirred her chocolate milk and tried to laugh along.

LEGOLAND IS A PLACE for things that are easy. Since the dawn of life it has been hard to not die, life has had to fight to keep itself warm and safe. But people have slowly, slowly lowered the barriers and the resistance. They’ve put in grocery stores full of nourishment, district heating in buildings, safety railings around every dangerous height. Staying alive has become easy. But the instincts remain, a worry over missing a beat in the midst of the excess. People continue to simplify, secure, collect calories. They build escalators in the Earth's crust, on which they can stand still and slowly glide down. Down below they build trains that take them to where they need to be. They’re expending almost no energy, their forefathers’ genes cheer. If people could, they would do away with all the friction in the universe. They want to live without anything being heavy or hard, sailing through time almost weightless.

AMIR STOPPED WRITING. A dad with a stroller was making his way down the stairs, down to the inner courtyard where he was. Amir put his pen in his pocket. He was sitting on a bench behind the bike shed, closed his eyes, and while waiting to be alone again he peered into the city. Not much was happening: outside of Christiansborg three activists were protesting the construction of a new motorway on Norsjaelland; in Christiana a gang of teenage boys had finally cleared all the sand out of the skate park; in Sydhavn three young men with shaven heads were at Lidl trying to figure out which coffee was grown closest to Denmark. “Can’t they grow it here, in a greenhouse?” one of them asked. “It would probably take up too much space,” the other said. “Take the one from Ecuador, Malte,” said the third. “You gotta treat yourself sometimes.” The dad rolled the stroller across the courtyard and out through the front door. Amir got up hoping to pick up where he left off, he wanted to write something of consequence, but when he looked around more people were already on their way into the courtyard. Finding a spot where he could be alone and where lots people would be able to read what he was writing was really hard. And this place was probably a nonstarter: in a few of the scenarios he could foresee, the graffiti would already have been cleaned up by the afternoon. He sighed. He felt weird. What time was it, should he have eaten more today? Maybe, or maybe it was time to sleep. It was hard to tell the difference, there was the same heaviness in the body, the same difficulty keeping your thoughts together. The back door opened and another stroller rolled in, but Amir was already heading for the street.

ALICE WADED THROUGH reality. The cars reeked at the crossing down on the street, the buses bellowed. The sand from the storm had worn into a dust that was finding its way in everywhere, all the way into the apartment, staining her clothes. She’d tried to do everything right. And still Eli wasn’t getting in touch. Still the children didn’t understand the difference between the Greeks and the Romans in the Disney movie Hercules. Still her old classmates from university wrote to her, and she had to respond, but how could she respond from where she was? She hadn’t heard from them all summer, had spent all of her time with Eli, and they didn’t even know she hadn’t gotten into the PhD program. In another reality she would’ve invited them to dinner, they would’ve talked about literature all night, Eli would’ve come home late and shared their wine, and once they’d gone home she and Eli would’ve… But this was her own fault. She had noted all of Eli’s favorite artists, sent her letters in Berlin, given her a list of all her free weekends. But that’s not what Eli had wanted.

Eli, I think you can be with me still

She didn’t know how to finish the message. She put the phone down and opened the refrigerator, but there were only spices and sauces left. She would have to go out and buy food. The very thought of it filled her with despair: making her way over the disgusting dusty streets and into a hard plasticky grocery store where she’d select various objects for purchase, returning home and heating them up, shoving them in her mouth and swallowing. It was so repulsive—the whole mire of meaningless actions that pushed the day forward—and to what end?

55 Eli, you don’t have to write to me, or call, I just want you to

But how could she prove her independence while begging for contact? And the broken ceiling lamp. It needed to be switched out, too, she should do that today, the darkness was depressing. Couldn’t it just work? Wasn’t it clear that she needed light? She grabbed her canvas bag and started down the stairs. Reality was a gray, thick sludge.

Eli, I don’t need anything.

Opening the door to the courtyard and the bike rack, she was met by a roar. Outside two sanitation workers were washing away graffiti with a high-pressure hose, filling the courtyard with a gentle mist. She looked at her bicycle. The water had mixed with the dust that had blown off the roof; the bicycle was covered in sludge. Yes, reality was a gray, viscous sludge. Alice paused on the landing. A long text was being slowly erased from the wall by the stream of water, and the two women doing the washing were wearing rain ponchos over their reflective vests. They’d reached the end of the text:

TAKE AWAY ALL THE FRICTION IN THE UNIVERSE. THEY WANT TO LIVE WITHOUT ANYTHING BEING HEAVY OR HARD, SAILING THROUGH TIME ALMOST WEIGHTLESS.

The words were being erased, one by one. They want to live without anything being heavy or hard. I know, she wanted to scream. She stared at the sludgy saddle. Then she turned around, walked back up the stairs and into the apartment, her canvas bag dragging on the floor. Sailing through time almost weightless. This was all they wanted, wasn’t it? It was unfair, so utterly unfair. She hadn’t even known… how could Eli not even have given her a chance?

56 They want to live without anything being heavy. And yes, love could be heavy. She had applied everything she knew about it to Eli. She’d thought it was a good thing. And now it was too late. The universe was turning to dust, and what was left was her refrigerator and the broken ceiling lamp and the awful jejune fact that she had to go out and earn a wage in order to keep living from one meaningless day to the next. She walked into the apartment, and paused at her desk. It was getting dark. Reality was pressing itself against the windows, threatening to smother her. She turned on her desk lamp. A puddle of light spread in the gloom. She refused. She couldn’t anymore. She grabbed one of the books, tore out all the ugly post-its scrawled with notes for the school project and opened it on the tragedies. She refused to even stay in this millennium.