Chapter 1
The smell of the doctor’s waiting room isn’t just the mix of different people’s body odors and hand sanitizer.
It is also the smell of grief, worry, and fear. A teenage boy waiting with his mother in the corner: his worry smells like sweat.
A few chairs to our left sits an elderly woman with a hunched back.
Her fear cannot be smelled, but it can be seen. Her dark green felt hat sits askew over the fine, white hair she nervously brushed in front of the mirror before leaving home. A large silver brooch with gemstones shines on the chest of her blazer, right over her heart.
It depicts a bird.
It seems as though she dressed up just in case she were to drop dead in this waiting room.
Ready to be laid in the ground.
But my sister does not smell of fear.
I observe her profile like a painting, where in her stillness she blends into the clinical backdrop of the walls. Her usual energy contrasts with this still frame, caught on the smooth weave of the canvas.
Click clack, click clack.
The doctor’s practiced footsteps against the linoleum floor. He doesn’t need to try and figure out who to look at as he calls out the patient’s name, because he knows my sister.
— Cecilie Jeremiassen.
She rises in her usual, steady manner, whereas I leap up eagerly, bundling my spring jacket, bag, and phone into my arms. I feel out of place and clumsy.
It used to be mom, not me, who came with her to the doctor.
The consultation room is rectangular, and as we approach the window at the far end, I get a feeling of zooming out the closer we get.
On the outside, Cecilie’s aura remains cool, but if you know her, you notice her index finger and thumb rubbing against each other in a rhythm-less, endless circle.
— Hi, Cecilie. How have things been since last time?
Cecilie hesitates, thinking for a moment to construct the right answer. An impersonal, dishonest, and convincing answer.
— Things have been fine, thanks. I haven’t really noticed anything since I fainted last time.
— Okay, and that was...?
Cecilie weaves the memory together with other memories to gain an overview of the timeline: They were at the fishmonger’s, the stench of pickled herring filling their nostrils. Snowflakes landed peacefully on the car windows, where wiper blades violently and immediately swept them away again. Mom and Dad were there.
— That must have been around Christmas.
The doctor glances briefly at the computer screen, as if to check what month we are currently in.
— Great, that sounds promising then.
He turns his gaze back to the screen.
His eyes wander over the sentences, words whose purpose isn’t even to convey my sister’s life.
The words are so far away; they are tiny, dried-up, and one-dimensional.
Cecilie lies down on the examination table immediately after her blood pressure and pulse are taken. She lies on her back, ready for the ECG, staring up at the ceiling.
My gaze follows like a curious impulse.
In the corner of the ceiling, the contours of one panel are particularly distinct, and I realize it’s a hatch.
An exit.
I wonder if Cecilie is looking at it too?
After the examinations, the doctor reminds Cecilie of her lifelong mantra.
— Remember now, no overexertion.
We step out the door of the medical clinic. The sky is cloudless, the air dense, and patches of adhesive from the electrodes still cling to Cecilie’s chest and collarbone.
We stand out in the parking lot in a moment of silence, as if we aren’t quite used to having only each other yet.
— Do you want to grab a cup of coffee? I ask, my tone strangely polite.
She gives me a look where her raised eyebrows and suspicious eyes clearly convey: are you serious?
— No, okay, a beer then, I yield with a laugh.
The heaviness from the clinic evaporate in the summer heat. We improvise a route through the town until we reach a recess between two apartment complexes.
— Should we try walking down here? I gesture toward the narrow side street—more of an alley, almost a portal.
-ˋˏ✄┈┈┈┈
After the sudden death of our parents, we had decided to uproot our lives together and move to a new, smaller town. We needed the absence of memories, the house, and the attention.
The large sum of money we had been left easily covered every imaginable expense and much more. Cecilie had put a couple of million into a locked stock investment account, but mine was still in the bank—I think I could feel that I would soon need it for something important.
-ˋˏ✄┈┈┈┈
On the other side of the alley, we are met by a small, cobbled square surrounding a bronze fountain. The sculpture depicts a young, naked woman holding a ring in an outstretched arm. At her feet, a lamb stands on its hind legs—ready to leap—spouting a stream of water through the ring.
The square is devoid of people, and only a storefront covered in graffiti adds bright colors to the scene.
— Hey, should we go in there?
She points toward a small pub to the left of the painted facade.
— Yeah, definitely, I agree absently while looking at the professionally painted graffiti of cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse and Son Goku. On top of the figures are rushed, amateur graffiti tags drawn in thick strokes.
Above the facade, it reads:
L O O P D I S K
The pub’s deserted landscape of empty chairs and clean tables looks straight out of a movie set, the scene obscured by directionless smoke in the air. The walls are covered in hundreds of sepia photographs. No one is here, but the swinging door to the back room sways gently.
— Hello? Cecilie says, her voice starting louder than it ends. As if she regretted asking.
— Good afternoon, comes a voice suddenly from behind us. Startled, my hand automatically reaches for Cecilie’s. Her fingers feel fragile and soft in my chubby grip.
— Hi! Can we get two beers? Just bottled, please, Cecilie says.
The man himself has a nicotine-yellow sheen, as if he were behind the same filter as the walls and their photographs. His wrinkles are most pronounced between his eyebrows and around his eyes.
Smile and worry combined in a single face.
He nods and goes behind the bar, disappearing below it before returning to the surface with two beers. He pops open the two green bottles and says, “There you go,” with a gesture of his arm.
I raise the beer, but before taking a sip, I look at the label.
— Herkules?
The bartender smiles self-satisfied, almost proud, despite my confused tone. I smile back out of politeness and look at Cecilie, but she is studying the label. I shrug and let the bitter taste hit my tongue.
— I didn’t think Maribo Brewery existed anymore, Cecilie breaks her own silence.
— It doesn’t.
Cecilie looks up.
— But I love this one, he continues, reaching under the counter for one for himself.
— Beers were better back then.
Cecilie narrows her eyes slightly and sits down inquisitively on the barstool.
Unsuspecting, I follow suit.
— Not just the beers, she points out.
The bartender’s laugh is both rich and light. I am merely a spectator to this interaction that I don’t quite understand.
— Yeah, that’s bloody right. If only one could go back.
— Things were easier back then, Cecilie says. She suddenly seems a bit shaken, like waking from a dream you wished was reality.
— Easier? Nah, he begins, lighting a cigarette.
— It sure wasn’t easier; quite the opposite. Everything was bloody complicated.
The smoke from his cigarette settles in horizontal bands of air like soil layers dividing geological periods.
We listen.
— But that was precisely what made it better, he mumbles with the cigarette in his mouth.
— You sort of live through the process when everything isn’t just handed to you on a silver platter.
Cecilie and the bartender reminisce together about two different eras. She remembers the 2000s in particular, while he longs for an older time.
At first, I look at whoever is speaking. But by the time we leave, I know all the names of the display beers on the back wall by heart.
My head is spinning as I lie down to sleep. My brain chaotically recaps the day, as if trying to sort through the impressions. But it is blind either to the impressions or the sorting, and fragments of the day dance around.
When I finally fall asleep, I dream that I walk into the shop next to the pub, Loopdisk, where the bartender—in my dream—also works. He has several cigarettes in his mouth. He hands me a DVD through a wall of smoke so thick that only his hand is visible.
Even though it isn’t shown, I know the movie is about my life.
