Justine (18 page)

Actually, it's nice that she hurts me a little.

“I think you need glasses, Ane.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“I've thought about it. It's so strange, Justine. I see a bunch of things out of the corner of my eye, but I'm not certain they're right.”

“They're definitely right. I think you can count on that.”

I thought about the time she had the baby. He was so tiny and gray turned red, completely nice and unspoiled. I thought of the long cut in her belly, of the interior stitches that would dissolve of themselves, and of the boy that wouldn't nurse. I thought of all the small adjustments that happened when he came into the world, the continuity that broke and took intimacy with it.

“No, no,” I said. “There's nothing to do about it. It should've been done ages ago.”

When I was about to leave, she told me that she would rent her studio to an artist from Sweden. Now she would stay at home with the boy, and also babysit another boy. Now she would make some money.

M
arianne Fillerup makes some final adjustments, wipes a couple of greasy fingerprints off the glasses that the errand boy left. She sighs, not with irritation, but because she's satisfied, her body speaks its satisfaction with a simple attitude. Now she also says it in words: “It really turned out great.”

There's a kind of tranquility over the whole exhibit. I've hung up thirty pictures. In a separate room I'm showing two videos that are cast by two projectors in one corner, so that the images almost blend together.

The photographs are each the size of a fully grown body and hang side by side as living sculptures, each with their still meaning, documenting a single narrative's multiple states.

“It doesn't matter that your settlement combusted,” Marianne Fillerup laughs, “if this is what replaced it.”

The bar is being set up, two cases of white wine and five cases of Heineken. The bottles look handsome beside the glasses, it all looks so handsome there on the tablecloth. Now the first guest arrives, it's still early, but nonetheless. It's just a museum employee, but behind her comes another guest, someone I don't know, now more guests are arriving, there are many, artists and still more artists, many more, I don't know them and yet I know them, I'm about to lose the overview, and now Marianne Fillerup is going to speak, she'll open the exhibition.

“I'm so satisfied with the result,” she says.

She emphasizes the SO and looks at me, so satisfied.

“For me it's a great thing to open an exhibition that's so simple and yet so complex. It's a wordless language that's spoken here, the language of the body.”

She's really sweet standing there and meaning what she says, she's happy, it's her project, too, there's something luminous about her, she beams at the photographs that beam back at her. Maybe it sounds strange, but right now I'm also glad the settlement combusted, to use Marianne Fillerup's word, or what do you say, Inngili, now: you're still here? Do you think this is well done? You shrug your shoulders, do you think it's amusing? Well, now people are clapping, Marianne Fillerup is finished, and the exhibition is open, and here comes Ane together with Torben and the boy, who's asleep on Torben's arm. Ane walks quietly up, squeezes my arm and looks content, she peers curiously at the pictures.

“I almost don't recognize you. Maybe because you look so normal,” she says.

“Normal?”

“Maybe normal isn't the right word, but so still and peaceful. You look still and peaceful even though you obviously aren't still and peaceful. It's your opening, after all . . .”

“Still and peaceful is good enough, thank you very much,” I say.

“Congratulations. It's great,” Torben says and walks over to the bar to get a beer.

“Will you show me the videos you made?” Ane asks.

I'd love to.

We go into the dark room together and watch the two projections. The images are cast onto the walls in one corner, staggered in time, but living, and also still like photographs. I've posed while the camera ran, multiple consecutive movements, almost a dance, a slow pantomime.

“They speak to each other, the two recordings do,” Ane says and nods. “And still they don't have a lot to do with each other, those two women there.”

“I'd like to talk to you some more,” I say.

“Sure, of course,” she says.

“We'll do it soon.”

We return to the other guests. Bo has come, too.

“Congratulations, congratulations, Justine. Man, this is tight.”

He's in a good mood, his eyes sweep the room, his mouth is large and smiling and moist. Now he's apparently found someone he knows, and here comes Trine Markhøj.

”Wow,” she says. “It's sculpture. It's truly sculpture!”

Someone taps me on the shoulder, George Kold, I knew he'd come, that is, I didn't actually know, I thought he would. Or I hoped he would. I stopped by his gallery with an invitation and also to explain why it was so crazy on his street that day. George Kold wasn't especially interested in the demonstration. He was more interested in seeing what I worked with, and he liked the fact that I was exhibiting in X-Room. Galleri Kold hadn't been on Bredgade long, but George Kold has some good artists, and he thought I should invite him to see my studio. I suggested he come to the opening, and now here he is, adjusting his glasses, looking around.

“Yes, yes, exhilarating,” he says.

Yes. I don't know what to think. Have a little more white wine, examine the whole thing from the outside, from above and below. It's warm out. Ane and Torben are about to leave. On the stairs I can see an attractive woman who is on her way in. She's wearing zebra leggings and a blue jacket. Behind her come two policemen, they're also on their way in. Before me there's a mass of people that I'll just cast myself into now, just like that, one, two, three.

I
ben Mondrup is a trained visual artist from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts who is also the author of four novels, including
   
Justine
, its sequel, and
   
Godhavn
.

K
erri A. Pierce has published translations from seven different languages in a variety of genres—fiction and non-fiction, novel and short story. Her translation of
   
The Faster I Walk, The Smaller I Am
by Kjersti A. Skomsvold was a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.