The Chestnut Man

by Søren Sveistrup

Mustn’t let the dead overshadow the living.

“We need things to be normal if we want to move on.”

grief is love made homeless, that one needs to live with grief and force oneself on.

Sometimes life just doesn’t work out the way you’d hoped.”

But society didn’t work like that. The blessings of the world were unequally distributed.

I think the not knowing is the worst thing.

Hess had long thought of death with indifference. Not because he hated life, but because existence was painful. He hadn’t sought help, nor had he gone to the few friends he’d had. He hadn’t taken the advice that had been given to him. Instead he’d fled. He’d run as fast as he could, the darkness chasing him, and sometimes it had worked. Small havens in foreign corners of Europe, where his mind gave itself over to new impressions and new challenges. But the darkness always returned. Along with the memories and the dead faces he gradually accumulated. He had no one, he was no one, and the debts he owed weren’t to the living, so if death did come it was no skin off his nose.