by Lisa Strømme
There were three rooms inside. The front door opened onto a kitchen at the center. It contained nothing more than an iron stove and a side table. To the right was a small bedroom where Andreas and I shared bunks, and to the left was a parlor. Mother and Father stored mattresses under the sofa and pulled them out at night to make beds on the floor. In the corner of the parlor was an old table with flecks of paint on the surface and four odd chairs that sat at different heights around it.
We dodged around each other as we brought in our things, banging our elbows on the edge of the furniture and stepping over the homeless chests. I wondered how the Andersens living upstairs would manage. They had the same amount of space as us and were a family of seven, with five children ranging in age from six months to six years.
With the Heyerdahls gone, there was no longer any reason for show, so my mother changed back into her ordinary clothes and set about the hut with a rag. Andreas and I unpacked. My first thought was to find a hiding place for the book, and I slipped it under my mattress as a temporary measure. Mother would be washing the bed linen often and turning the mattresses to beat them. It would not be safe there for long.
I rummaged in my trunk to find a dress for the dance, but all I had was a blouse with a sailor collar and sleeves that puffed to my elbow, a cotton skirt, and a belt to cinch my waist.
“Oh!” Mother said when she saw me. “Well, that wasn’t such a chore, was it, Johanne? If you run a brush through your hair, you might look half decent.”
I hadn’t told her about the dance. I would wait until we were on the beach in front of the whole town, where she wouldn’t want a scene. For now, I would let her believe I wanted to look like the Ihlens, the darlings of Kristiania whose housemaid I was about to become.
“Would you do my hair for me?” I said.
Her eyes lit up, and she rushed to her trunk.
“The tortoiseshell combs are in here somewhere. We can fix it into place with those,” she said, hauling me through to the highest of the odd chairs at the dining table. “Andreas, fetch water for the pitcher,” she said. “We all have to get cleaned up for dinner.”
I allowed my mother to groom and primp, fastening combs here and there like a child with a doll. My thumbnail found a clump of dried paint on the table, and I began to sketch out a curving shape in it, scratching backward and forward like I did with my pencil.
“Oh, stop fidgeting, Johanne,” Mother said, pulling my head aside with my hair. “Look at the mess you’re making. Keep still; I’m trying to make you look nice. You can be such a pretty girl when you want to be. Didn’t you hear Herr Heyerdahl say so himself?”
I had heard no such remark, only that my eyes were blue and my hair was like a cornfield.
“He might paint you again this summer,” she said, gripping a comb between her teeth as she braided my hair into painful ropes that clamped my head. “Be sure to visit them, won’t you? Take them strawberries, and cherries too, when they ripen.” She took the comb from her mouth and scraped my scalp with it as she fixed my hair tightly into place. “Nobody said you only have to pick strawberries. Cherries can look just as good in a painting, can’t they?”
The bowl in the other painting sprang back to mind: the ripe fruit, the pregnant woman, and the cut bough that had stolen her happiness.
• • •
We gathered at the sandy beach on the other side of the pier. The temperature had fallen, and a warm breeze whispered around the small packs of townsfolk. Women were washing plates and cutlery in a pot over the fire. The older ladies sang folk songs as they worked, while the younger ones hummed sweet harmonies with subdued respect. Tired after the chaotic frenzy of the day and mellowed by beer, men were slumped into deck chairs and sitting on the edge of fishing boats, talking about netting and timber prices and telling lewd jokes. Their voices rumbled and boomed on the air amid the cracks of the fire and the women’s song. With the tireless energy that only summer evenings can bring, the children paddled in the water and played running games, squealing with delight as they chased one another along the shore. Andreas and his friends were skimming stones, bouncing them skillfully across the rippling sea.
The liquid sun melted in orange streaks on the water’s surface and pulled me to it, mesmerized. Resisting the temptation to remove my boots and wade in, I paced along the beach, running sideways like a crab when the waves rushed in. I had almost reached the curve of the bay when Thomas found me.
“Johanne!” he called. “Wait.”
I turned to see him running toward me, his wild curls bouncing as his pace quickened. He was going so fast I thought he would knock me over, but when he reached me he stopped dead in his tracks as though he had mistaken me for someone else.
“What is it?” I said.
“No, nothing—you just look…” He swept his hand through his hair, panting. “Are you ready? For the dance?”
“Yes,” I said, lifting my chin.
“You look different,” he said, retrieving his lost sentence.
“Mother braided my hair.”
“She’s allowing you to go?”
“She doesn’t know yet. Father gave me permission,” I said, “with it being my last night and everything.”
“Last night? What do you mean?”
“Mother’s found a job for me in Borre for the summer, as a housemaid.”
“Oh.” His face paled the way my father’s had.
“I’ll be back on Sundays, though, and on evenings when I’m not needed.”
“A housemaid,” he said, baffled by the word. “But you pick strawberries.”
I couldn’t tell whether he was confused about my qualification for such a job or if he was already mourning the secret kisses he stole from me while I foraged for fruit in the woods.
“I’ll still pick them,” I said, “when I have time.”
He snatched my hand and jerked me toward him.
“Come on then, Johanne,” he said. “Let’s go.”
We hurried back along the beach, my eyes scanning the crowds for my father. It was almost impossible to find him. Halvor Lien was a thin, quiet figure who blended with his surroundings and could be difficult to locate, even in an empty room. As we stood there at the water’s edge trawling the beach for him, I heard my mother screech my name like a crazed gull.
“Johanne! I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” she said, flicking a glance at Thomas. “What are you doing? We’re going home now.”
“I’m going to the Grand Hotel—there’s a dance,” I said.
“You’re doing no such thing,” she said, her face firing. “You start your new job in the morning, and you’ll need to be up early.”
“I asked Father for permission, and he granted it,” I said, beginning to walk away.
She dug her hands into her hips as she pieced together my treachery, seeing the part she had played in my preparation for the dance, fixing my hair and fussing around me, making me pretty. I thought she would start screaming, but my father appeared at her side and hovered over the eruption he must have predicted.
“Halvor!” she blurted. “Tell her she’s not going anywhere. Especially not with that—”
Before she had time to say “that Thomas,” my father had slipped his arm around her waist and begun to twirl her around. It was clear that he had drunk his fair share of beer, perhaps to quell my mother’s inevitable fury.
“Oh, come on, Sara,” he said. “You were young once, don’t you remember?”
“But she’s starting that job. I never went dancing at her age, not when there was work to be done—why should she? Halvor!” she squirmed. “What if she’s late? What will they think of her? What will they say?”
“I don’t believe you will let her be late, dear,” he said. “Come now, let your hair down, woman; I rather fancy a dance myself.” He whirled her under his arm and p
ulled her toward him, tottering into a jig. For a second my mother held him and allowed herself to be spun on his arm, but then a cheer burst out from a group of men sitting on a fishing boat and one of them raised a bottle.
“Halvor!” Mother wailed. “Halvor! Really!”
• • •
The Grand Hotel sat between the two beaches at the foot of the steam pier. A handsome white building, it cornered Havnegata and the shore, opposite the Kiøsterud house that Herr Heyerdahl and Munch liked to paint. The hotel was glowing when we arrived. Light poured from its windows, and the plink of fiddles drew us in with a sense of rhythmic urgency. Thomas took my hand again, and we ran up the steps.
“Come on,” he said. “My cousin Kristian’s playing.”
The doors were open, and the sound of chatter and laughter swelled as we entered.
People were drifting from the dining room where a dinner had been held for the summer guests. Waitresses were clearing away plates, and I could hear the clinking of china and cutlery. Cigar smoke snaked and hung in wisps in the air, and at once I felt grown-up and recklessly free.
Thomas steered me into the lounge where the dance was beginning. The fiddlers sat on stools at the back of the room, dipping their elbows and tapping their feet, immersed in their own music. Armchairs had been pushed to the side to make way for the dancing. Guests were grouped in small cliques. Some had pulled chairs from the wall to form circles.
Several couples were already whirling around the floor in the center of the room. Thomas and I skirted around them as he waved to his cousin at the back. We lingered by the wall for a moment to watch the city guests as they poured in. The women wore evening dresses with frills and bows and bustles at the back. Intricate detail had been worked into them as though they were entries in a competition. One of the dancers had a dress embroidered with pearls and appliquéd swallows and butterflies. Another wore a gown adorned with golden leaves and trimmed with lace. Some women had piled their hair up in a stack of braids hung with pearls; others had worked flowers into their hair and teased out tendrils to curl about their faces.
A willowy woman in her early twenties stood alone, detached from the others. She was wearing a delicate white dress with short sleeves that sat just off the shoulder. A single red rose was fitted into her low neckline. Her corset was drawn in so impossibly tightly that her waist was barely even visible. She was holding her skirt and sweeping it back and forth slowly, not in time to the music, but gently and purposefully, as though she were listening to a different tune entirely. She had blue eyes that would have been piercing had they not looked so glazed, and wavy red hair that simply hung loose around her bare shoulders.
When the band struck up a new tune, Thomas clutched my arm and leaped forward.
“Let’s dance!”
He pulled me into his arms and wheeled me around so quickly my stomach lurched. My feet barely touched the ground as we spun to the quickening tempo of the jig. I laughed with exhilaration as the rest of the room whizzed past me in a blur of gold and white and a unified shriek of laughter and drunken cries. I clung to Thomas’s upper arm and felt wonderfully secure, despite the rhythm and pace of the dance. I gazed into his gleaming eyes, happy to be at his mercy, and when the fiddles finally stopped and I lifted my head, he planted a kiss on my gasping mouth.
The evening progressed quickly. We drank beer and apple cider to quench our thirst, we danced and laughed, and we kissed. Liberated, I didn’t care who saw me or what they might say, and I forbade my mother from entering my head. Eventually we found an empty sofa, and I crumpled into the curve of its arm. Sweat was running down my temples, and I had to loosen my belt.
“I can barely breathe,” I said. “How did you learn to dance like that?”
Thomas was smiling again.
“Sailors just know how,” he said.
He settled in beside me, and I allowed him to drape his arm across my knee as we watched the other dancers.
It was then that I saw Munch. He was sitting at a round table in the corner of the room, alone. An empty glass of wine sat next to a full one that seemed forgotten and ignored. I wanted to go to him, to tell him about my job, to tell him that things had changed and that tomorrow would be different, but his expression was stern and his arm was busily sketching shapes in a large book. I could not disturb him. Following the line of his eyes, I realized he was drawing the girl in the white dress. She was still standing apart from the others, rustling her skirt.
“Who is that girl over there?” I said, as much to myself as to anyone else.
“Over where?” Thomas straightened up.
“The one in the white dress, standing on her own.”
“Oh, that’s Miss Ihlen, one of the admiral’s daughters.”
“Ihlen?”
“Regine, the youngest,” he said, “although they call her something else—Tullik, I think it is. They stay in Borre during the summer.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve heard.”
“Looks like the madman has spotted her.” He laughed, pointing at Munch who was still sketching furiously, drawing the waves of her hair and the curve of her waist.
“Do you think he’s mad?” I said.
“He must be. Haven’t you seen his paintings?”
“I will be her housemaid tomorrow,” I said, changing the subject. “I’ll have to wait on her and serve her and clean that pretty dress.”
Thomas wasn’t listening. He had already taken my arm and pulled me to my feet again. I surrendered completely and returned to the dance floor. I reeled and spun and followed wherever he led; but this time it wasn’t Thomas I was looking at. I couldn’t take my eyes off Tullik Ihlen, the girl Edvard Munch was so eager to draw.
3
RED
In looking steadfastly at a perfectly yellow-red surface, the color seems actually to penetrate the organ [eye]. It produces an extreme excitement, and still acts thus when somewhat darkened.
—THEORY OF COLOURS, JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
I arrived at the house just before seven. Mother, who had been awake all night fearing I would oversleep, was up at dawn laying out my clothes on the paint-speckled table and fetching water for the pitcher and soap to scrub me with.
“I think you should be on your way soon,” she said, tossing a washcloth at me. “Do your face and behind your ears, and I’ll fix your hair.”
My head was pounding. I could still taste the remnants of the evening’s beer that had drained me and left me thirsty. I still felt the kisses Thomas had pressed onto my face, still tasted him on my lips as I dragged the washcloth over my mouth.
“What’s wrong with you?” Mother said, jabbing my back. “Straighten up. Ladies don’t slouch like that—you’ll have to learn.”
I endured her onslaught, and before the clock had even reached six, she pushed me from the hut, chanting orders and instructions in a loud whisper. Barefoot, and with a looser skirt, the walk through the forest to Borre would have taken me less than twenty minutes, but trussed up as I was and treading carefully in my effort to stay clean, by the time the church came into view the sun was so bright on the horizon I thought I might be late.
Unlike Åsgårdstrand, Borre was mainly flat and gently sloped to meet the sea. At its center was the church, a few hundred yards from a dramatic Viking burial site by the beach. The enormous mounds where ancient kings had been laid to rest among their treasures always impressed me more than the stone-walled church and its ancient wooden beams.
The Ihlens’ house was directly opposite the church on the other side of Kirkebakken. Chestnut-brown, with a wood-bound picket fence and a tiled roof, the building attracted the sun and shone like the houses in Åsgårdstrand. Mother called it the “big house,” but that was only in comparison to the rest of the huts and cottages that dotted that side of the road. The rectory by the church dwarfed the Ihlens’ house and
could have housed every person in the village. But none sat prouder or prettier than the Ihlens’.
I opened the gate and approached the front door, which was framed by four wooden pillars. Stepping up onto the porch, I ran my hand along the carved railings, not knowing whether to reach for the door knocker or wait until I was discovered. Two grand windows on either side of the door followed my movements like a pair of transparent eyes, chiding me for having the gall to enter by the front door. In a panic I scooted around to the back. I was met by the sound of hens clucking in a coop in the yard. I bent down to look at them and was just about to squeeze my finger through the wire when a voice called out from the house.
“You’d better get your apron on, if you’re going to be touching Miss Tullik’s hens.”
Startled, I leaped away from the coop and turned to see Fru Berg standing at the back door. Her bulky frame filled the rear entrance. A large tin tub dangled from her fist, and a steel washboard was clamped under her arm. She came striding out into the garden, calling to the hens, each of which had a perfectly normal human name.
“Coo-coo! Ingrid!” she called. “Coo-coo! Margrete! Cecilia, you be sure to lay some eggs for me today, young lady; you gave us nothing yesterday, did you? And you, Dorothea, I’ve a good mind to pluck you and roast you for supper if you don’t have any eggs for the admiral’s breakfast.”
She continued to prattle to the hens as she laid her tub down by the well, where a pail was waiting to be filled.