She got up and limped toward the bookcase. The bird followed her, alighted on her hand. She lifted him to the topmost bookshelf and he took his spot there like a brooding animal from pagan times.
The cliffs, the round hill. Justine’s body. The jacket up over her head. She had started to get breasts; they were already fairly large. That foster child, she was sitting on Justine’s stomach and was starting to take off her pants. How suddenly everything changed, because Justine broke away and began to run, slipped and fell directly down on the stones below.
How they ran and ran.
“We’ve killed her!”
“Let’s go!”
“Are you crazy? We have to get someone, her mom.” “No, no, let’s run away!”
“No, we’ve got to get help!”
“Blame yourself then, if we get sent to jail!”
Gerd was her name, she suddenly remembered. Gerd was the one who forced them to run to the house.
“We’ll just say she stumbled; we were playing and she just fell.”
They rang the doorbell again and again. After a while, Flora stood there with her hair in curlers. She looked at them with mistrust and told them she was in a hurry.
They had to wait while she took care of her hair, stand in the hallway with the odor of shampoo and cigarette smoke.
The woman grabbed her coat, looked down at her calf. “Look at my stockings! Damn it!”
“Please hurry, ma’am.” Gerd pulled at her coat. That she would dare.
“Where did it happen?”
“Over there by the cliffs.”
“I have always said that you need to be careful. It appears that you are just as disobedient as she is.”
That very word. Disobedient. She kept up her grumbling as she walked, rubber boots and coat. Justine spread out on the stones. Her clothes were on, but her jacket was to the side with arms still tied together. She looked to them like a sacrificial victim.
“Look. We’ve finished off this bottle in record time,” said Berit. “I intended it for you; it was a gift for you.”
“Doesn’t it seem to you that they put less wine in the bottles nowadays?”
Berit rolled up the tissue and stuffed it in her bag.
“Yeah, I’ve noticed that.”
“There’s more wine in the basement.”
“There is…?”
“You’ll have to go get it… It’s in the same room with the old washtub. I know you’ll see it.”
She got up stiffly, afraid that the bird would notice and attack her. Justine laughed with a tone in her laugh that Berit had never heard before.
“You’re walking like a spastic! Don’t be such a bunny rabbit. It’s just a goddamn bird.”
It wasn’t just the bird. She was back in the old days, these very steps, she and Jill, their strength from ganging up together, the smell of submission, of degradation. And she remembered what the child Justine had said about that washtub. Flora. That was the name of that woman with the painted eyes, the doll woman who was playing the role of mother.
She found the wine bottles right away. They were arranged on a shelf, just as Justine described. It was dark down here; she hadn’t found the light switch. Shyly, she glanced at the washtub; saw it with the eyes of a little girl. The partition for the wood, did she really put a little girl in that and light a fire? To think she just sat there, waiting for the heat. The scalding heat.
She pressed the bottle to her chest and rushed upstairs. “Justine… there’s a lot that we need to work out.” Justine shook her head.
“Yes, we do! We really do! You have to listen to me, I can’t get any peace.”
There was an unusual expression that arose in Justine’s eyes.
“You want me to cross out the past as if it never happened.” “Yes…”
“Learn the great secret of life: love, forgive, and forget?”
“Well, something like that. Some kind of forgiveness… or… reconciliation…”
Justine regarded her without saying anything. She drew her fingers through her hair, which then stood straight up. She broke out into a violent and jangling laugh.
“Just open the goddamn cork, why don’t you!”
Chapter SEVENTEEN
Mark came during the day and they read together. He would touch her sometimes, but not much. To him, she was just a child.
This provoked her. Her breasts were changing and the skin over them was painful and tender. She took off her headband, and she never put it back on again.
“Tell me about America,” she asked.
Then he began to speak in English so fast that she didn’t have a chance to keep up with him at all. She threw her pillow at him, right into his sneering face.
He lay down over her, pressing down her arms. “You’re just a little piece of shit, aren’t you.”
Enraged, she kicked him right in the crotch with her good leg. He turned white and fell off the bed.
He had a girlfriend in Washington.
“What looks she like?”
“What does she look like?” he corrected her.
“Yes, but what does she look like?”
“Brown eyes, big tits.”
It sounded nasty.
“Her name’s Cindy. She writes me every other week.” “Are you in love with her?”
He grinned.
“Tell me! Are you?”
He stood in front of the window and jerked his hand around his zipper.
“Start reading your book now. I’m not paid to answer your stupid questions.”
“It’s much too difficult. I can’t.”
“Read!”
“Da nyoo man shtands…”
“The not da! New not nyoo.”
“The nyoo man…”
“This is a fantastic book, Justine. Maybe you’re just too little. Too bad. You miss a lot, being so little.”
That put her off balance.
“What am I supposed to do then?”
“Nothing you can do. That’s just the way it is.”
“You’re an idiot!”
“How’s your foot doing? Getting any better?”
“Eventually.”
“What really happened?”
“I fell off a cliff.”
“You’ll just have to learn to walk properly.”
“I do walk properly. I just slipped, that’s all!”
No, she wasn’t too little. During the evenings, she lay turned to the wall and imagined how it would be. She and Mark in a whole different way. She felt her breasts, if they had grown, and her hand went down to that sinful place that was so wonderful to touch. A kind of restlessness came over her. She wanted to get away. But the cast was a ball and chain, it protected her from what was out there, but also transformed her into a prisoner.
Then the day came when winter had completely gone, when they took off her cast, sawing and cutting it away. A frail and shrunken leg appeared together with a sour smell.
But she was back to normal. And now school was over and the schoolyard had been filled with students in colorful clothes. All the teachers had been to the hairdresser; the flag had been taken out and raised.
She had been able to avoid all of that.
She imagined that it would be difficult to use that sticklike, narrow leg, but noticed that it was, deep inside, just as strong as before. In the evening it might swell and ache a bit, but she could walk and run, just like before.
She stood in the lee of the uprooted tree. There were candy wrappers on the ground.
She was alone.
She followed the forest path.
The Hunter was sitting on his front porch, whittling.
Shyly, she stepped into the garden.
He saw her. He didn’t say anything.
She sat right next to him, his back was tense. His hands kept whittling.
She sat right next to him, and put her hand on his arm. His skin was brown and old.
No.
Not old.
She stepped into his sparkling clean kitchen. The wax tablecloth had been wiped; the dish rack was empty. The floor was white and swept.
He got up and followed her.