“But you’re already seeing. Now you’re seeing. Just let your eyes see whatever they want to now.”
I rubbed my eyelashes as they closed softly over my eyeballs, and suddenly I saw them: flames, and a woman in their midst with sparks leaping from her forehead.
“Tell me what you see,” said Juanna. “You can tell me.”
“But you’re burning,” I shouted.
I opened my eyes and saw Rikke burning, she still smelled of grease and flesh.
Rikke thought it was a strong vision, strong and violent, and she was curious to discover what lay beneath it.
“You should’ve stayed there,” she said. “You were on the verge of something really important, I think.
She wanted me to tell her about it, but I said that since I was no longer in a trance it was pointless.
“That doesn’t matter,” she said. “We can still analyze it.”
During the last two days of Juanna’s visit, Rikke talked a lot about the fire. For some reason she was obsessed by it, she was eager to see me transform it into a work, and she would make sure the work found its way into an exhibition. Juanna liked the idea, and I thought I’d try to make something out of it. So one afternoon during the vacation I set one of the school’s basement spaces on fire and then quenched the flames. Where the flames had consumed the paint, the walls were black and gray, and a small window looking onto the street had cracked in the heat.
Rikke came to see my work. Her face was expectation become disbelief. Then she caught sight of Ane’s drawings, forgot the fire and asked Ane if she’d considered of showing them, they were really great, she thought. Ane said it was certainly possible, but where? I stood at a fire site and observed Rikke standing there, consuming Ane and Ane’s drawings.
Eight
Vita towers up, stands white and blue, spreads her bones, bares the wound. Hack. I reach my hand up, scrape the skin with my fingernails to rare meat, red and sticky.
“Tell me, who do you really think you are, you, you there, yeah, you there, you just lie around and tinker and scrape.”
“You have a nice little button there, right above the hole, swollen and shimmering red, almost cerise,” I nibble at the button lick my fingers fondle.
“Will you piss on me?”
“Tell me this—just who do you think is pissing here, woman? It’s not me,” she says.
With her fingers she parts the flesh reveals an opening, small, fine, forces the drops out, and red washing to yellow falls gold on the skin on the face on the pillow.
She’ll be happy when she hears the whole Greenlandic thing is over, when she hears I’ve sent it packing up the river toward the falls. Other things have dissolved into ash and smoke. No more dead fish, huts, drums. The drum I’m actually sorry to have lost. It was, to me at least, as beautiful as hide and hell.
I made it from from a piece of skin I got from the butcher. At home I washed it in water and brown soap, I rubbed it until the fat was rinsed off, and then stretched it over a barrel hoop. When the skin dried, it became firm and elastic, almost transparent, and then all it needed was a handle. The sweet reek of grease and hide filled the house.
Vita couldn’t stand the drum because it stank, she said. It reminded her of death, the whole house reminded her of death and brought to mind the fact that Grandpa had died here at home with me.
Grandpa didn’t stink.
She suggested that I operate with those themes, death and skins and such, on a philosophical level, or an artistic one. Dead skin is something one discards, she said, because it’s chock full of bacteria. I told her that the hide was cleaner than a person’s ass. I told her it was art, perhaps not sublime art, but fuck me, it was still art.
If only she knew that a guy in a band had hired me for a concert after he saw me perform with my drum. He couldn’t stop touching it.
“I mean, it’s just so organic,” he said. “And soft.”
I told him my time was dear. He licked the drum and said it tasted like a deer. I said a wild animal lived in that drum. He laughed and covered my mouth with my hair. I forced the drum down over his head so that the skin cracked and split, but it couldn’t be heard over the night’s uproar. The party had expanded in all possible directions, way down to Sønderhaven.
We ran ducking past the brick house, but then the guy suddenly popped up and shouted over the hedge to Vita:
“Come out and fight like a man, if you dare.”
I kicked him in the shin.
“She’s not a man, she’s a dog. A bitch,” I said.
“What are you talking about? Is she your girlfriend? For fuck’s sake. Are you a lesbian?”
“Wolf.”
“Well, then shouldn’t we ask her if she wants to join?”
“That bitch will eat you up and spit you back out.”
We galloped guffawing to my place.
“I’ll show you something strong and organic,” he said, tossing his pants aside as he walked in. “Soft as a grub, strong as a lion.”
He took the dark muscle in his hand. It really was huge. And soft. And hard. The head beamed atop its swollen stalk.
“What a sight,” I said. “Let me blind it.”
I took it between my hands and drooled on its eye.
“That’s it,” he said. “Blind him, he deserves it. Greet him and eat him.”
Vita said she didn’t want to come over, not before she was certain I’d thrown the drum out. She was scared of what she might find if she were to open a drawer or lift a pillow, something nasty, something rotten. It was only the one drum, though, and it no longer exists anyway. The fact that she didn’t want to come over was much more threatening.
Yet now, dear Vita, no more of that. You get it, right? I don’t care anymore, I just don’t care. Now it’s happening. Something else.
In the hotel room there’s a desk with a wall lamp, and at the desk is a chair. I’ve used that chair to sit everywhere in the room. The camera is still on the tripod, but it has yet to take a picture. I just don’t know what to aim it at. The apparatus stares at me with its black eye, I think: What should I do? Now I’ll pick up the camera. I pick it up and do something with it, turn it on, peer through the lens, direct it at the street, at the people below. The building next door is a temple and the choir that’s been practicing is taking a break. I zoom in on a large woman with thick legs on bent heels and think: soprano. Next to her is a man with a beard. I think: beard. Then I think: Now I know what I’m going to do. I believe.
I sit on the chair in the center of the room and take two pictures using the self-timer. After that I take off my shirt, sit back down and press it twice more. On my shoulder I draw a tattoo, Butch, with a magic marker. I look tough and dykish and take a couple more self-timed shots. Next to the window it occurs to me that it would be nice to have a Salvation Army uniform, maybe a banjo or a ukulele. I think the latter would fit better, even if it doesn’t really fit at all. How can it be going better after just, yes, fifty-five minutes and around ten pushes of the self-timer. But it’s going better, and I pack the camera up. Now I’ll head to the thrift shop to find some clothes and other things, perhaps some shoes.
It goes so well that I don’t even notice that she’s called several times. Now she’s calling again. Now I notice.
“The police have been out here,” she says, sounding quite matter-of-fact, with an odd buzz on the line.
“They’re obviously continuing their investigation. I assume they think it’s arson.”
“Arson,” I say.
Not questioning. Confirming.
“I don’t know how they can tell something like that. They rummage around. Dig in the black. Overturn boards. They have magnifying glasses and gloves,” she says.
“Okay,” I say. “How’s it going with you?”
“With me? It’s going. I’m on a faraway continent.”
That thing she says about faraway, that cuts. She could’ve at least called earlier, isn’t she interested i
n how I’m doing? After all, she has time to go and ponder that sort of question now.
“Do you still have my spare key?” she asks. “You should hurry up and get rid of it. You should stay away from my house. It’s not good for you to go there. I’ve noticed that you’ve been there multiple times. It’s not a good idea for you to be sleeping in my bed.”
I can tell by her voice that the price for saying such things is high, and now it’s buzzing even more.
“Anyway, I hope you find out something. You should call the police one of these days, I think. You should also call the National Gallery. It’s no good having it go through me, Justine.”
Silence.
The darkness is pleasant. His breath and the heat flowing from his skin dampens us. We’re lying close together. After a few minutes the warmth becomes water that pours between us and wets the mattress.
I draw away, I just can’t take all this closeness any longer, but Bo follows me in his sleep, rolls with me over the narrow mattress and onto the floor.
“Hey, where are you?” he asks.
“Right here,” I say.
“I thought you’d gone.”
“No. It was just hot.”
He pulls me back and throws his thigh across me, now we’re together again.
“I was dreaming,” he says.
“About what?”
“About this Saturday. The kitchen.”
His hand finds my damp breast. My body can’t do it anymore, but now my nipple contracts, racing through my body to my crotch.
“I’m dreaming about ice cream,” I say. “Vanilla ice cream with raspberries.”
“Something like this?”
He squeezes my nipple and laughs soundlessly.
“I’m dreaming that you’re serving me something. Or that you’re taking me one more time,” I say.
“I don’t know if I’m up to more,” he says.
He raises onto his elbows and now I’m sharply aware of the moistness from his mouth.
“Of course I am. You’re something really, really special. What do you want?”
“How am I special?”
“I can’t explain it, but allow me to demonstrate.”
He rises from the pallet and walks through the dark away from my nakedness.
“I don’t want you to go,” I say.
“I’m coming right back,” he says. “It’ll only take a moment.”
“Don’t,” I say. “I don’t need anything.”
He comes back and crouches beside me.
“What about the ice cream?”
“I’d rather not.”
“I can grab it in a second?”
“Screw it.”
“I can easily grab it. And if there’s anything else you want?”
I touch his shin. Finally, he collapses beside me.
“Come. Lie down on top of me,” I say.
“Like this?”
“Yes. You’re wonderfully heavy.”
“All flesh and blood.”
“Something’s full of blood.”
“Yeah, it is. You’re going to get it. And you are something really special. I already said that, though.”
“Special how?”
My arms can reach all the way around his torso, I squeeze, oil myself with his dampness, his body, and his smell. His engorged member rubs against my thigh. Luckily, he’s not circumcised. The skin is elastic and soft, and the animal inside slips lightly back and forth.
“Especially greedy.”
What was it she said? Something about her just wishing I’d flown? She would’ve liked it if I’d just sat on one of my hides and flown off to hell? Or did she say she’d like to cram the hide down my throat? She’d like to tan me, cleanse the shit out, cleanse me of filth? Did she say anything at all? The evening it burned.
I don’t remember the whole of it, barely the half. Glass shards. She sat there cracked at the edges, kept her calm, swallowed the outrage, oozed us onto the glass strewn about. Now I know what she said, because I remember it. She said: “Ready, aim, misfire.”
No, she didn’t. She’d never come up with that. It’s too childish. She said:
“You’re being a child. Smashing things doesn’t help.”
Or something like it. In any case, she said I was childish. And I said:
“I’m a child.”
She agreed.
“An annoying glass child.”
No. Glass is just something my brain has conjured up, it’s a good image to have when things go to pieces, my brain thinks, and so it conjures splintering molecules and glass.
“An annoying child.”
Yes.
Does she know where it strikes, that viewpoint? It whizzes through the air to come cascading around me as splintered glass. Now all that remains is the image of the child sitting inside the armoire. Not the child. The image.
Is it even possible to find a cut-off? An exact moment when it all went wrong? A point around which all events are distributed? Before the after? A crime scene? A weapon cast in a backyard? The road to murder is a slippery slope of things that are said and done. An eye that saw amiss. Something that should’ve remained hidden. Or something that didn’t happen. After the murder there’s the clean-up. The cover up. Someone must pay the penalty. Others must receive it.
Vita had some sculptor friends she occasionally met with. They talked about enticing jobs and saw exhibits they found exciting.
The circle consisted of three women who’d once shown together. However, over the years they’d gone in such different directions that it no longer made sense to refer to them as an artist group, Vita thought.
The other two women were exhibiting in Nikolaj Kirke. Vita hadn’t seen them in a long time and was both looking forward to it and not. She tossed her things around the living room and tried on three different pairs of shoes before settling on an old pair of boots.
“Can I borrow your lipstick?” she asked.
We arrived at the church in a flurry of lipstick and activity after the opening was already underway. One of her friends had constructed a giant table and fourteen chairs out of unplaned wood.
“The man she’s standing there talking to—he’s from the municipal procurement committee,” Vita said, pulling me close.
The table was set with plates and a massive flower arrangement in porcelain. The floor was strewn with sawdust.
We headed into the church and met Vita’s sculptor friend Hilde, who waved a greeting and came over. From the outside all was fine. The women chatted loudly, the space resounded with question and assent. After a moment the other friend, Eva, joined them. She’d made a tile walkway that stretched across the floor and up over the wall and two posts before heading to the bar.
Vita’s face softened. She called us girlfriends. We kissed with our lipstick.
Hilde’s stomach bulge was obvious, she was pregnant with soft hips in a tight dress that she kept tugging down.
I walked the path to the bar. When I came back, a man with bushy brows over his brown eyes had joined the group. He was Hilde’s boyfriend. He also knew Vita, he said, and smiled with his mouth. How violent he is, I thought, violent and radiant. He barred his teeth, big and sharp, almost like they’d been cast. A predator.
Hilde and Vita disappeared. Eva was nowhere in sight. Hilde’s boyfriend fetched more wine and talked about a house they’d just bought in an allotment society in Brønshøj, and about his work restoring old furniture. He’d also seen Sønderhaven, he’d fallen in love with my house while there, postcard perfect, he called it.
All the while there were the teeth and the smile playing around his mouth. The room dissolved and fell away. In the darkness outside the church we met between the buttresses.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “I can’t keep my fangs away. You’re forcing me into this.”
He touched my cheek with the back of his hand.
“Hey now,” I said. “Are you out to destroy your wife?”
“
That’s pretty far out,” he said. “I tend not to do things like that. But things for me are getting a little hot.”
His hand fumbled at my throat and his breath became uneven.
”I’m ready to explode. Where are you hiding your ignition?” I asked.
“Are you out to destroy your wife?” he asked and groaned. “Should we commit double murder?”
I called Vita’s name. The woman was an idea that slipped between my fingers. His hands were around my neck. His mouth was insatiable.
“You’re burning, you’re so burning hot,” he mumbled and struggled with his jacket. “Can I see you again?”
Vita sat at the kitchen table working on a sketch far, far away.
“During the week? Soon, at least?”
She lifted her head and looked at me, both near and distant in her thoughts.
“What do I get out of it?” I asked.
“A crime of passion,” he said.
I told Vita that if she was meeting up with Hilde and Eva anyway, at least they could stop by an exhibit on Overgaden that I was part of.
“No, I don’t think so, Justine,” she said.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “That exhibit is all about space. That’s what you’re all interested in, right?”
“Yes, of course, but . . . We’ll see it another time.”
She said it was infuriating that the curators hadn’t included any sculptors, even though that wasn’t actually the case. The sculptors had built a kind of library: a social sculpture where you could exchange books. I’d placed a couple of books on the shelves myself.
She was meeting the others on Saturday. Vita turned, waved a gloved hand, and looked like someone from a farewell scene in a movie. She was running late.
Hilde’s boyfriend, on the other hand, was breathlessly on time. He’d run the whole way from the bus station. He stopped at the door.
“Okay?” he said.
Justine Page 7
