The house was cold, and that was good, because he’d sat there for around three to five days. Grandpa’s neighbors wondered why they hadn’t seen him. Keld, as the guy was called, had gone into the garden and looked through the window. He could see the back of Grandpa’s chair and his legs sticking out.
We waited for the ambulance to come and retrieve him, but they’d already confirmed he was dead, he was completely white, after all, and dead. The two uniformed men lifted Grandpa out of the chair, leaving behind the blanket and a brown stain.
“He’s my Grandpa,” I said. “I’m his only grandchild.”
Slowly we drove to the hospital.
“We have other family, but we hardly ever see them. We only see each other. Actually, it’s almost like we’re all that’s left.”
The ambulance man said something comforting and swung into the hospital drive.
“I don’t know why he’s dead. It’s fucked up. Now I’m all that’s left.”
The house was quiet but not empty, he was everywhere inside. Everything had gone through his hands. The marked canvas . . . maybe he was just down at the firepit drinking a beer with the others? I crawled into his bed at night, a pretty dismal place for someone who’s lost their entire family. How did he not want to be buried? The white bread in the drawer hadn’t even begun to mold. Could that stain be removed? No. Just no.
And you can probably tell, Vita, that you were a Free Me From This Evil, not because I couldn’t learn to be alone, and I wasn’t completely alone at that, but belonging somewhere is always nice, and he was gone, after all, the one I’d ALWAYS had, and so it was nice when you came, it was nice being together with you. Only half a year or so had passed, and there you stood, radiant in the yard, and we staked our sense of belonging in each other.
Now that you’re gone I seek you in all possible directions, and you should know that it’s hard, now that I’ve also got your short-haired woman in sight, the cow. I seek, at least I try, I grope along a chain of Before Now and After. I lift my feet and head that direction. That direction and not that direction. Now I draw away, now I pull closer. With every step I take I accomplish something, I move a direction, I turn away from something toward something, I leave a trace.
Now. No. Not now. Soon I’ll be passing a spot, just up there along the path. I know it, because I’ve set foot there before. Should I go around, should I go through? I’ll cross my own tracks. Now. Now come the thoughts. They’re unavoidable. They’re quickening. They’re caught in the trace. Ahhrr.
You smiled indulgently. We sat together talking, you and me and Ane. As usual, Ane was complaining about Torben, and you smiled indulgently. Things with Torben weren’t so bad, you thought, and you told Ane she knew what was best for her. You gave Ane a nice dose of security, she was so happy, yes, she was relieved, you’re smart, she thought, so what’s there to worry about? Before I knew it, Ane, now optimistic, asked how it was going with us, and about our future together?
“The future,” you said. “The future . . . well, when it comes to our future, we’ll just have to see.”
Your tone, your words, it was all made of rubber, pliable. It sounded like we’d agreed that we’d just see about the future. Ane added, sweet as she is, bordering on naïveté, that of course one never knows what the future holds.
What did you mean by all those ifs and buts? Didn’t you know how awkward it sounded?
I clasped your body as it collapsed onto the bed, the light was red become black, I straddled you, caught your head below the chin above the pulse, twisted your sweater out of shape as you chimed in with arms and legs, and you, like the dog you are, breathed: “Yes, yes.”
The material gave, and you devoured my shoulders with nails then teeth.
Who knows Ane? And who knows Torben? What I do know, for example, and Ane does not, is that Torben is fooling around with some girl from the academy. He was together with her back when Ane was at home with a cold, and that was before she even had the child. One night at Andys Bar I saw him in the far back next to the juke box pressed together with the girl in a deep French kiss. Later I saw him in the men’s bathroom, where he stood with his back bent over the girl whose crotch he was in the process of groping. I saw his butt crack, I could’ve touched him, I could’ve shoved him. He would’ve landed on top of the girl.
I couldn’t make myself tell her, so I just asked: “Does Torben go into the city often?”
“He should have the right to go wherever he wants to go,” she said. “Just because I’m pregnant doesn’t mean he doesn’t want some distraction. And you know how important it is to go to openings and all that stuff.”
“So he’s just working?”
“What else would it be?” she asked. “Isn’t that also what you’re doing when you go to openings you don’t want to be at? You do it anyway. Don’t you? Why should it be any different with him?”
“You’re the one who knows him, so what do I know?”
“And anyway, all that’ll be over soon. After I’ve had the baby. Then we can’t just go wherever we want all the time. So when did you see him at Andys?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“He wasn’t together with her, I mean, together together. He just slept at her house. He was too drunk to drive home. Stay out of it, Justine. It’s under control, I assure you. We talked about it.”
She disappeared into the bathroom and came back with red eyes.
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore. It’s our business. It’s our relationship. It’s not always as easy as you think. Just because you go around cheating on Vita, that doesn’t mean that other people are like that, too.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“What did you say then?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you and Vita just move in together already? Is it because you’re too scared to find out what it’s like to be a serious couple? Anyway, it’d certainly do your relationship some good. Then you’d learn what it’s like to accept others as they are.”
I never did tell her about the whole Torben thing, and I also haven’t managed to do it since. It’s a form of dishonesty. It’s a suppression in any case.
The house is dead, all that’s left is black. Was there ever a house even, and if there was, was it mine? Who’s to say that the last few years haven’t simply been the extremely concentrated content of a dream? I think I can feel myself twitching, could it just be REM sleep? Are there witnesses to the catastrophe in my life’s collapsing?
An investigation is underway, and there’s evidence. I’m at the police station, and they know something they’re about to divulge. Now is the time to do it, I’m as primed as I’ll ever be.
The linseed oil rags weren’t at fault, they say, nor the wiring, which I ought to have changed. Nor was it Vita. The fire started outside the house on the cement tiles in front of the door. I’m the one responsible, they said, there’s proof.
No. It was my grill, not the grill itself, of course, but . . . now I see it:
The coals were an obvious weapon, and I hurled the grill and crap on it at Torben, the pig, who hightailed it out of the yard, shooting away like a rocket in a swarm of sparks. And the sparks that burned my skin disappeared beneath the tarpaulin of the, oh yes, the enormous woodpile that’d been stacked for the winter. I headed to Kluden with a throbbing ass and burned hands, I sat at the bar until I’d forgotten the whole thing and could safely go home again.
“And unfortunately, that makes a difference to the insurance,” says the policeman, but it isn’t his happiness that lies crushed before him.
“After all, it’s a matter of negligence. It could’ve been avoided. The clean-up and rebuilding will have to come out of pocket for you, that is, if you’re thinking of rebuilding again.”
It’s painful overall to realize that fact, not because I think that Grandpa’s house can simply be rebuilt, or that there’s someone waiting to do it for me. But to be the only one left with the si
te of the fire . . . that feels very definitive.
Thirteen
When I open the door to my room, the walls are red. The bed, which I left in a state of disorder, has been made. A shimmering coverlet hides the bed linens, it spreads out over the bed, and someone has lit the candle in front of the mirror, the light glows out of the red. Hanging over the chair back are the clothes from the secondhand shop folded into sets smelling of fabric softener. Right away I take my old clothes off and put on a pair of garters and a lace bra and lie down on the bed. The woman behind the camera says that I should draw in my legs a bit more, so that I don’t appear so vulgar, “your pubic hair shouldn’t be visible,” she says. I turn over on my stomach and stick my rump in the air, so that she has a frontal view. I imagine my butt as a gently clefted mountain rising above my naked back, “could you take off the bra and wrap a towel around you instead,” the woman asks, “so we can do a kind of bath scene,” “like this?” I give her half an eye over my bare shoulder. She likes what she sees and snaps and snaps, I twist around, my body is a corkscrew.
We take a break to drink some wine, “Done deal, perfect!” the woman says. I run over and open the closet, it’s completely empty, and grab the huge underpants that I also got secondhand, white with a slight discoloration on the seat, but that hardly matters, they’re underpants, after all, no, I’d rather be naked.
I take a healthy slurp of the adrenaline that courses through my veins and slops onto the fabric, then I sit in the closet, “let’s do some pictures in here,” as I sink onto my back with my legs against the wall and piss in a stream, allowing it to drip onto my stomach and puddle around my back.
The woman giggles, setting down her wine and moving the camera, “it’ll be insanely freaky,” she says, snapping and sniggering, “hey wait,” I say, “I’m not even alive, I’m dead, I’m lying in the closet out of sight, can’t you see that?”
The woman adjusts the lens and zooms in, she flips on the reading lamp and directs it at the closet, “yeah, yeah, that’s obvious, sit still, I’m trying to take pictures, you’re rotten through and through,” she says and wets her pants from laughing. I tumble out and rip the camera from her hands, “let me see,” I shriek, “I want to see,” we tumble around on the floor with laughter, “no, be serious,” I shout and cover her mouth with my hand, “we’re not finished, now we have to go down to the foyer.”
In the foyer she’s another woman. Attractive. Primed. Sharp. We find a white wall to use as a background and photograph a pair of neutral attitudes. She adjusts my T-shirt, “it should either be tucked out or tucked into your pants,” she says.
“Out,” I say.
I work my body and show that I’m surprised. I’m marveling. I’m mystified. Doubtful. Shocked. All the things one can be all at once.
Justine’s eye itches. There’s a film over the image is turned milky. She doesn’t want that. Where did it come from? From her head out through her eyes leaking water. No. It’s not just the eye that’s bad, the whole thing is sick. She replaces the patch. She needs a drink.
Justine sweeps through city streets that all lead to the art scene. That’s how it’s always been, and why is she at the National Museum? That’s the exact opposite direction, and the air here is too thin and dry.
Justine tumbles the whole way up the steps of the spiral staircase leading to the showcases, she can see right through the big glass cabinets, all that she’s put behind her stands before her. Her pupils dance across bird skins, bird feet, anoraks, pants, Kamiks, and white splotches of salt on a belt adorned with teeth from an animal or a child? If she wants, she can touch something, simply touch, she must be careful, you must wear gloves when you handle olden times, a thousand years ago, grope back in time. Her pupils touch, fondle and touch.
Now the eye is getting worse. Not only does it itch, it hardly even works. Blue violet becomes black. Is Justine about to lose her vision, too? In any case, she’s having trouble breathing, and here come two men to seize her arms. She makes a sound, a high-pitched toot. Is she an elephant? They tell her to stand up, but she’s already standing on four good legs, you idiots, who the fuck are you anyway? Let go of me, goddamnit, everything is fine, fine, now she stumbles forward, rises, puts one leg before the other down the stairs where Inngili hangs over of the railing and waves, “come again soon, my girl, come again soon, I know where the animals migrate to!”
A long elastic band draws Justine to Amager Strandpark, backward she bikes with a couple of wine bottles, her legs pump up and down, automatically heading toward Øresund, completely out into the water. At the beach, she takes pictures of the foreign landscape, sky and sea become interchangeable. Pictures. Now she’s a beached corpse in the shallows with sand on her skin near her mouth and in her hair. She’s been flesh in the water for a while, utterly dissolved, and wine’s bordeaux becomes blue in the waves as the drowned one transforms and becomes a drunk man who’s fallen asleep up a tree, wakes up wet in the night to true dark. He can’t figure out who he is, is he a woman, is he a man, or perhaps a child? He’s a child who pushes the patch, which has slipped down his cheek, up onto his forehead and inhales deeply. He isn’t just a child, he’s also a woman. Justine.
I really should, I hate that word, I really should have gone to the openings out in Valby, I should’ve. Now I ought to pull myself together and swear to do it tomorrow. I swear it. No more corpses lying around at low tide.
The street kitchen made the newspaper today. If I cover my bad eye with a hand, I can read all about it. That’s certainly not good, but it’s still better, and obviously it doesn’t help that I’m sitting in this closet, so I let some light in and force my attention on the newspaper. It’s mostly photos. The journalist is fascinated by the fact that garbage can be turned into food and has taken several close-ups of munching mouths.
I flip to the last page, and now it’s dull again. When I uncover my eye, violet fills the space. Why can’t anyone discover what’s growing wild in my head? The nurse didn’t even call a doctor, but what does she know about brains or whatever? Now I’m forced to ask Vita, who’s not a doctor, but who nonetheless has a certain understanding of all things. I’ll say to her: “It’s not great, what’s happening, but maybe we can still be there for each other.” And I’ll say: “If we want to. And I want to.”
We can still be a lot of things for each other, we still can, only not today.
The days drag me along, and the office manager at The Factory stopped by and knocked because he wanted to know how long I’d be staying. He looked down at me with watery eyes. If I’m going to stay more than the month, he said, we need to draw up a sublease, even though he knows Ane is on maternity leave. Even then.
Maybe he and Ane crossed paths when he left, I don’t know, at any rate she’s standing in the door. Torben has taken the day off, he’s watching the boy, and she wants to know how my eye is doing.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“You dropped the patch? I thought you’d put out your eye or something.”
That’s right, I’m sans a patch, I’m trying to get used to the fact that things are now rotten. “I’ve just come to check on a few things,” Ane says, glancing toward her paintings. I ask:
“Should I leave in the meantime?”
“If that’s okay?”
I make four laps of The Factory, but I’m hanging by a shred, I’m thirsty, I’m splintered, get your act together, I say, you’re more than just your present state, you’re also a far stretch into the future.
I take myself firmly in hand and walk in and look at Ane’s paintings spread out over the floor.
“My breasts are ready to explode,” she says.
She still hasn’t left.
“It took longer than I thought.”
“What are you going to do with them?” I snigger.
I mean the paintings, of course. What’s she going to do with them? They’re lying there, she’s signed them all.
She glances my way with
her mighty big breasts, which are about to explode.
“I’m going to take them home. But now it looks like rain,” she says.
She rummages under the table, finds some paper, finds some old canvases, some rods, some poster rails, and finally some rolls of plastic.
“Sorry, Justine. I’ve got to run,” she says.
She picks a corner of the role with a nail.
“I don’t think I’ve even told you,” she says, “what ended up happening with Torben’s gallery and me. Did I tell you that? Did I? You know that Torben has given some serious thought to leaving his gallery, right? Anyway, he’s not going to do it immediately. He’s decided that the most reasonable thing is to stay and maybe try to make it abroad sometime. If he decides he can’t take it any longer.”
Ane smiles with bristling teeth.
“He thinks my paintings are tight,” she says.
“Tight,” I repeat, the word tensing my mouth.
Ane smiles and smiles. Is that really her only grimace? She’s tidy, it suits her and her situation. There’s an aura of good fortune and happiness about her, it’s going so well.
“We’ve agreed to do something together for that exhibition, the one he couldn’t think of anything for. My paintings will work in some way or other. Anyway, I’ll have them framed, then we’ll see what we can come up with.”
“So he’s going to use your works in his exhibition,” I say, smearing it on.
Ane’s eyes narrow to slits.
“That’s not how it is. I don’t know what you’re thinking, but he’s got something in mind.”
Justine Page 11
