Justine (14 page)

G
randpa died in the garden house one winter day. He sat in his recliner with a blanket over him and fell asleep, just like my grandmother, and in a strange way, if I'm finally able to see the positive in it, who wouldn't want to go like that? Not by murder, not by suicide, not incrementally by destructive behavior, but undramatically, a death come when least expected, just . . . and that's how Grandpa died.

He'd put the first charcoal strokes on a new painting, and then he'd sat down to let the motif form before his eyes, I thought. Perhaps he'd considered how exactly to come at the painting, had laid back his head, perhaps he'd snoozed, his heart, at any rate, had stopped beating, bum bum b u blmm . . .

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.”

T
he 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.

Y
ou 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.

W
ho 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.

T
he 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?

A
n 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 site of the fire . . . that feels very definitive.

J
ustine'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.