Justine

W
ater 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.

A
very young policeman takes down the report about the fire and the house. It's all minutiae. He's only asking the standard questions, he says, and then he explains the investigative process. It's important, he says, to find the cause of the fire so that they can rule out criminal activity. Generally, though, that's just important for the insurance, he tells me, and asks do I understand? Yes, I understand. Am I insured? I am. Who owned the house? I did. Where was I when the fire started?

I sit on my side of the table and look at him and wonder if he knows it was Grandpa's house that burned. How would he know that? He definitely doesn't know that I have an exhibition in September, and that the artworks I was going to show were in that house, packed away in the plastic and cardboard that burned so beautifully. Actually, I was just waiting for the movers to come and pick everything up.

“I was at the pub and came home and saw it burning,” I say.

I wasn't there celebrating, there hasn't been anything to celebrate in a while, Vita doesn't want to be with me anymore, and so I left. I just left, it's been a while, a couple of weeks at least. Or was it just the other day? Last night? What's happening? She was right there, now she's not, and anyway, I think she was there this morning.

I watch the officer, he's so blue. He watches the paper and the pen as it wanders the spaces. He flips the page over and continues writing on yet another clean surface.

Vita didn't want to go to Iceland with me. She didn't want to go anywhere with me, she said. Why should she? Hey you, it's over. Now she's sitting at home and waiting.

The policeman has finished writing, there are no more questions. He says:

“Well, that's it then. Goodbye.”

S
he's not here.

And every last bit is burned. I try to remember whether I locked the door before leaving. Why should I? I never do. Anyone could've waltzed in and poured out a gas can and set it ablaze. She could've grabbed a bottle of alcohol of the shelf, and then voilà: fire. But who the hell would come up with that idea? Am I losing it?

I feel something in my pocket that sends a tingle through my gut, a key. No. Two of them.

Vita still isn't home.

Jens and Lisbeth and Peppe are sitting beneath the flagpole in the Society's park. They've raised a T-shirt that's currently flying half-furled and they call:

“Justine. Hey girl. What happened to your place? Grab a beer, tell us all about it.”

I grab a beer from the cooler on which Peppe sits. They've figured out how it's all connected, they've just been discussing it, Peppe says. They're certain someone's after me, and I'm pretty certain of it, too. That's what I say somehow or other.

“You can always come down here,” Lisbeth says. “I remember your grandfather well.”

Her legs are swollen, taut and glossy with a bluish tinge.

Peppe cuts in. He says that he also remembers Grandpa. Actually, he owes Grandpa a favor. I can stay with him and Jens.

They haven't seen Vita. They don't notice when I leave either.

B
eneath a piece of particle board at the fire site is the door to the small earthen cellar. There's still a package of butter, a chunk of cheese, and an open milk. I wander around and try to comprehend it, find a banana-shaped sneaker, sink down under the apple tree, puke. Never again will I hear Grandpa growl his irritability about this, that, or the other, snap at him, apologize and sympathize and move on.