My grandfather lives in a small house in a small town in Denmark—which, as it happens, is a small country. The town is Græse Bakkeby, which boasts a population of 2,300 people, though it is part of the larger Frederikssund townscape. It’s the kind of place no one who visits the country ever really experiences, in part because there’s no reason to, and yet it’s often the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Denmark. The smell and tang and feel of his house is the same as it was in the house he and my grandmother used to live in, in Værløse, before she died in 1999. It’s a mixture of the coffee maker, my grandfather’s cologne, his many annotated books, and the general cleanliness of the place (he is a neat man and takes pride in it). To the sound of the news on the radio or a Mozart concerto I see him scurrying about his little home, well-dressed, a comb in his back pocket, forever clearing his throat. He sips his coffee while squeezing his eyes shut, as if to intensify its flavor. He pulls a volume from the shelf (Ulysses? The Brothers Karamazov? The Magic Mountain?) and revisits his younger self. He thinks of me and my siblings. He thinks of his sons, my father and uncle. He thinks of his wife.
