That wasn’t true. He could have, but he didn’t want to. Even during his short marriage, his eyes were usually fixed on the door to the office. He corrected essays in there, or watched the traffic down on Tagensvej. The young people biking to and from school, their thin hair rustling under knit caps. It was nice to sit there and watch them from above, and once in​ 113a while over the years there would be a girl in his class, one of those with potential. She would make something out of her essays. Often she’d be standing nearby when he came out of the teacher’s lounge. Her eyes would be large with questions, and in the end she’d vanish. Now there are scouts across the road, but out on the flats there’s a hunting cabin. It says manitoba in black paint on a length of driftwood, up on the gable. Two mugs have been set on the windowsill, a teaspoon in each. So two people sit out there at regular intervals. They sit and watch the roe deer, the foxes. If it were him sitting out there, he’d be relishing the fact that you can always withdraw a little bit further.

When that woman, Mona, was in the house, she said, “But then your kids must be in Copenhagen, right?” He didn’t owe her an answer. Her children were spread out, but they were grown now, she said. She took the dog on walks, of course, and now he’s got the sense that people pity him. There’s nothing to pity, even if it cost him the marriage. But a divorced man who isn’t being looked after is a man in free fall, plunging into a swamp of his own making. That’s how they see it, so he keeps the gravel and the driveway tidy. Each morning, he raises the blinds. The young farmworkers who live around town never think to raise their blinds. That’s a woman’s job. It isn’t until the farmworkers get a girlfriend that the blinds go up. But he raises his own blinds, so he’s probably gay. He used to be a teacher and have to deal with other people’s kids. And that’s what he did, until she was standing there with her lunchbox. It was during lunch hour, by the bike shed. For a long time he drove a Lada, but then he switched to a bike. She stood quietly next to his luggage rack. From a distance it looked as 114if she wanted to ask about an assignment. Up close, the skin of her face was thin and alive.