the melancholy Dane - numer eins.

I hear my people have a “culture of low expectations.” We’re easily contented because we’re used to losing. Well, my dearly beloved Western nations, why o why would Denmark be used to losing? Could it be because our ancestral religion was unceremoniously trounced by Christianity, transparently changed for the purposes of the church? Or, no –– maybe it’s because the wind burns off our ambition whenever we walk out the door. It’s hard enough to live back home. It’s hard enough to stand our frozen ground. We’re not like you.

We’re not bitter, though, and we won’t take your blood money. We are Danes, and Denmark is not our prison; there’s nothing rotten there. It is one of few free places left in the world, along with this place: existentialist France, proto-Christian Judea, and ancient Greece (among others), nestled in –– of all places! –– America.

“Mr. Wodsen?”

My name is Søren, but people are in the habit of calling me Mr. Wodsen. It’s how we operate here: last names, straight-backed chairs, fifty pages of ancient wisdom a night, not counting the dreams. A place like this conjures interesting dreams.

“Yes, Mr. Julius?” I haven’t been paying attention. This is our music class. It’s always more or less the same, a pleasant break from independent thought. The dynamics are written out in front of you. Someone else’s genius becomes your voice, flowing and ebbing, cracking when the intangible link between the centuries-old ink and your throat slips and falls apart.

Our instructor is notoriously witty. The quip is coming. It’s always there, waiting to materialize.

“Just because you finally hit the right note does not mean you have the right to hold it.”

A good one, but I’ve heard better. It must be an off day. “Sorry, sir.”

My mind has been on her hair. It falls in deep brown ringlets to her shoulders and always seems a little bit out of order, which I like. She’s a little Polish, a little Hungarian, a lot American. Her eyes are wide and brown, and she stands in front of me in freshman chorus –– an alto, I think. I’m a baritone, edging on bass, and my singing voice is actually rather terrible.

I sing, we sing. Class ends, and she turns around and smiles. She pokes me. She pokes me a lot.

She’s a fan. She’s obvious about it, always sitting to my right in seminar, going off on elaborately constructed tangents about the old gods and the new faces. The rest of the class thinks they’re spontaneous, I’m sure. Oddball scholars though they may be, they are not me. I don’t think a single one of them has a drop of Germanic blood –– they’re Celts, Moors, Magyars, Romans, Tatars, Slavs. Not Scands. Certainly not Danes.

It’s not that I’m in love with her. I don’t think she’s in love with me, either. It’s just a mutual interest, a curiosity. We’re all curious here. We just happen to be curious about one another.

We walk out on the quad. Some of the upperclassmen are playing croquet, but we’re new here, and croquet is still bizarre to us. She carries her books close to her heart: Plato and Aristotle and some Neal Stephenson novel, clutched like an infant, a treasure, invaluable and irreplaceable. Books are important. It was a shock to find so many Americans who find books so important –– a good shock.

“Been downtown yet?” she asks me. She’s from around here. (I’m not.)

“No.”

“Want to go? There’s a gelato place you’d like.”

Gelato. She has me there, and I smile, and she knows it.

“Let’s go,” she says, and she starts walking faster, toward the gate. When I don’t pick up the pace and follow, she stands there, looks back at me with a kind of perverse smirk on her face. I imagine my eyes look blank, a little confused as she grabs my wrist and drags me off campus.

Whatever. It’s gelato, and she’s Faith, and all is right with the world.