Justine. Iben Mondrup

      Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Chapter Sixteen

       One

      An orange spot in the dark. A meteor has fallen. I head that way. Toward the heat. And the house. The flames are orange. They stretch up in the sky red licks the wood burns. My house is burning. People are here. They’re standing around the house that’s mine, and they’re watching it, or are also just now arriving. They shout. They draw, push, urge me forward. I’m standing next to the hedge. The flames leap hop, hop, hophophop from wall to roof to bush. My phone’s in my pocket. I can’t get it out. I think I’ve forgotten it’s there. No. I have it. And here comes Vita. She has a phone. She’s dialing. She says: Hello. She says it. My house is burning. The flames are black, leaping. You can’t save it, Vita says, she says: What’ll you do? Dry-powder extinguishing. Then the workshop collapses. It groans, cants outward tumbles inward. Settles onto the lawn pumps embers onto my hands. A child screams and cries. Mom screams the child screams for a mom. And there she is. I can see her. In flames. The fire devours a breast and an arm melts down to fat. Bent Launis shouts. They’re coming, they’re coming. The sirens seethe of wheels. A massive firetruck. A massive firetruck is coming. Firemen spring out, spring over great gaps, pull out the hose, turn on the spigot, pull on their masks, pump water onto the house and onto the workshop. The farmhouse roof squeals, bows, is warped, is coming down. Snaps. Falls. Ends.

      First there’s a headache and a throat and a person prone on a couch. They belong to the hands, which hurt. It’s me. It’s me that is me. I’m sure of that now. A growth on the couch, a cushion-wedged tumor. I’ve woken up on Vita’s couch, still in my clothes.

      I reach for something. A bottle maybe. No. A body. I reach for a body. I’m in Vita’s house. It’s Vita’s body I’m reaching for in the light from the window. Morning falls onto my boots. I lean forward to loosen the laces and see that there’s mud on the floor. Or vomit. My fingers won’t, and the laces snarl.

      Now she comes from the bedroom, parts the drapes with her hand, steps in or out. It’s not a Dream, it’s Reality in a shirt she looks like a young girl who fibs. Or a ghost, the way she blends with the drapes.

      “I’m here,” I say.

      “You’re here,” she says. “Indeed.”

      “Indeed.”

      “You need to sleep.”

      “I need to wake up.”

      “You stink.”

      I’ve got a uvula in my mouth and a tongue that’s swelling. I can barely get Vita down, it’s so crowded in there. She’s almost transparent with her eyes she’s seen my house.

      “Let’s go down and see it,” I say. “I’d like to see it, too.”

      “It’s not going anywhere,” she says. “In any case, you should do something about your hands first.”

      I’d like to go to the bedroom with her. She’s probably going to change clothes. Oh, won’t you stay with me? Go down to the house with me, won’t you? You and me. C’mon.

      I head into the hall and look at myself in the mirror. Strange. My head looks too small for my shoulders. Shrunken. My mouth looks like an asshole. Is that really me? Yes. You.

      I splash some water on my face. It’s so still around my face soaks the liquid up. Vita is somewhere else in the house, I don’t know where.

      “I’m doing it,” she says from that place, “Now I’m really leaving.”

      She evaporates.

      Three two one. I think.

      Water has scattered the pebbles. It flows out of the yard and turns into mud. There are trenches where cars scraped lines in the puddles. Grandpa’s gate is gone. I can walk right in. It crunches, I scrape the surface with my foot. Bitter is how it smells. Small is what it’s become. Flat under the open sky. In the kitchen, pipes stick out of the earth. The sink hangs counterless. My armoire is gone, yes, gone plain and simple. Grandpa’s armchair is just a jumble of springs. Plastic glasses are black clumps. No walls, and the worskshop roof is still on the lawn. The workshop itself, and everything it held, is gone. No walls prop up no works among shards of pots and glass, wood, paper, leather, brushes, sketches, cloth, and there’s the nail gun in a mess of rock wool. The neighbor’s tin shed has acquired a black façade and a fig bush with the fruit dripping syrup.

      Now Bent Launis comes.

      “It’s just awful. And all your things,” he says.

      He looks like he’s about to . . . no, Bent, don’t cry.

      “And your grandfather . . . it was one of the society’s finest houses,” he says.

      I see the house as he sees it, an afterimage between us. In the absence of red, it looks green, almost turquoise.

      “Of course we’d all like to see the house rebuilt. It was one of our gems. You’ve got insurance, right?” he says.

      “Just stop,” I say. “Just stop. Don’t you see it’s all red and burnt? I’ve got blisters on my hands—they burned inside, you know.”

      I hear myself shouting, and I hold my hands out to him. Bent takes them and says:

      “Well, for a start let’s go and put something cold on them.”

      He opens the door and pulls me inside.

      “Sit down there,” he says and wraps, wraps, wraps, and cools.

      “What were you just talking about?” he asks. “What did you say? There wasn’t anyone in the house? Oh hell, there wasn’t anyone, was there, Justine?”

      “No, no, no,” I say. “Who said that?”

      “Well, you did.”

      And then he wraps some more and nods.

      Avery young policeman takes down the report about the fire