Frank and Pirjo Establish Atu's Identity and Her Role as His Vestal

Frank Brennan and Pirjo Abanshamash Dumuzi’s relationship changes when Frank abandons their shared celibacy and establishes the identities of Atu Abanshamash Dumuzi and his vestal. What begins as a joint spiritual discipline becomes a hierarchy: Frank claims a new freedom for himself, while Pirjo accepts a narrower role that she will try to alter.

The shared discipline

For the first few years, Frank and Pirjo live in celibacy despite Pirjo’s desire for him. Their restraint is not presented simply as the absence of intimacy; they understand it as a way to leave the soul unhindered and able to draw on all available energy. The arrangement therefore gives their spiritual experiments a governing rule, linking the management of the body to their search for the soul.

That search unfolds amid a broad exploration of mysticism. Alongside working at the Burger King at Rådhuspladsen, the pair pursue clairvoyance, yoga courses, meetings with clairvoyants, horoscopes, tarot cards, and other branches of the occult. The contrast between fast-food shifts and spiritual inquiry locates their belief in ordinary practical life: they must earn a living, while the rest of their time is directed toward expanding consciousness. Celibacy belongs to that wider experiment, rather than standing apart from it as an isolated romantic decision.

Frank’s change of course

The arrangement ends when Frank decides that the planets, psychological forces, and future point toward different goals. His explanation marks a change in direction, not a mutual reconsideration of the rule. He says, “I’m ready to feel my body against others,” announcing a desire for bodily experience beyond the relationship’s former discipline.

The distinction between Frank’s choice and Pirjo’s position is central to the episode. The transformation is reserved for him alone, and Pirjo accepts it reluctantly. Her desire remains directed toward Frank: the narration asks why she should have sex with other people when he is the only one she wants. His new latitude therefore does not become a reciprocal opening for her. The old shared restriction gives way to an unequal permission, shaped around Frank’s wishes while Pirjo bears the emotional cost of consenting to the change.

Atu and the vestal

This shift in their understanding of the relationship lays the roots of Frank’s alter ego, Atu Abanshamash Dumuzi, and Pirjo’s identity as his vestal. The new names turn the personal imbalance into an explicit structure. Frank’s alias provides the figure around whom the role is organized; Pirjo is positioned in relation to that figure rather than as an equal partner in a shared discipline.

Pirjo’s assigned place is described as both knight and servant to Atu. The paired terms matter: “knight” suggests a valued position in the order around him, while “servant” makes its subordination unmistakable. The role can be desirable when compared with the positions available to many others, yet it remains restrictive in practice. Its prestige does not remove its limits; it may instead make those limits harder to challenge, because Pirjo occupies a favored place within an arrangement that still denies her equal freedom.

Ambition within the hierarchy

Pirjo does not simply settle into the role. The narration identifies the disparity between them as something she will do everything possible to change, then emphasizes that she has ambitions. That sequence makes her acceptance provisional in meaning even if she has agreed to the transformation: she remains within Atu’s order, but does not treat her subordinate position as the limit of what she wants.

The episode’s decisive movement is thus from a discipline shared by Frank and Pirjo to an identity system centered on Frank’s alter ego. Celibacy had imposed the same rule on both; once Frank changes course, the consequences divide unevenly. Atu receives the freedom to pursue other bodily experiences, while Pirjo becomes his vestal and confronts the restrictions built into that status. Her ambition supplies the counterpressure in the relationship: the hierarchy is established, but the text also makes clear that she intends to change the disparity it creates.