by Lisa Strømme
• • •
Herr Backer did not question my association with Tullik. In his rheumy old eyes we were a pair of young girls out running errands together. Nothing in the world could have been more natural to him.
“Give it a few days,” he said, handing the lavender balm over the counter. “And don’t be going near any turpentine for a while. Some skins react worse than others. It’s a good thing you’re not a painter, Johanne.”
“No,” I said, “I’m not a painter.” Not yet.
Tullik took the balm and put it in her pouch.
We left the shop and came out into the town square where the hectic thrum of the market was in full swing. The cries of the traders slapped our faces and whipped our backs, some so loud they bordered on frightening. Tullik kept wincing and reaching for my arm.
“Do they think we’re deaf?” she said.
“The ones that shout the loudest sell the most.”
“They won’t have any customers if they scare us all away, though, will they?”
“Don’t they have markets in Kristiania?” I laughed.
“Of course,” she said. “Not that I’d be allowed to go to them. Only the maids are given that privilege.”
“I usually stand here,” I said, pointing to a lamppost opposite the Victoria Hotel. “That’s where I sell my strawberries.”
“I will come with you one day and shout at all your customers for you.” Tullik giggled.
“You might scare them away.”
“Good,” she said. “Then I would eat all your delicious strawberries myself.”
We drifted past the fish stalls, and the salt in the sea air became more potent. I hadn’t been thinking about Thomas, but suddenly he was in front of us, swiping his cap from his head and smiling at me with his twinkling eyes.
“Johanne!” he said, locking me in his glare like a blinkered pony. “Are you buying? We have cod and mackerel.”
“No,” I said, “we were just…” I guided his eyes to Tullik, who, despite her damp, golden hair and loud giggle, appeared to have gone unnoticed by Thomas.
“Hello, Miss Ihlen,” he said. “Would you care to buy some cod?”
“Thomas!” I said. “We’re not buying anything!”
“Although we would love to,” Tullik gushed. “But I’m afraid our dinner is already being prepared.”
“Are you coming home soon?” Thomas said, fixing his eyes on me again, unaware of his own tactlessness.
“Thomas!”
Tullik laughed again.
“There’s another dance,” he said, determined to embarrass me, “at the Grand. On Friday. Kristian’s playing. Will you come?”
“Thomas, really! This isn’t the time to be—”
“She will,” Tullik said, folding her arms across her chest.
Thomas nodded firmly.
“Right then,” he said, returning his cap to his head as though he’d just agreed a fair price for a pallet of cod. I thought he might shake Tullik’s hand. “I’ll see you there.”
Tullik tucked my hand into the crease of her elbow and pulled me away from the fish stall before I had time to say anything else. She didn’t seem to notice the looks we were getting from the Kristiania ladies. If she did see their curious disapproval, it didn’t penetrate her skin.
“I’ll see you there,” she said when we were out of the square and hidden away on a quiet lane. “Who was that?”
“It’s just Thomas,” I said shyly.
“Just Thomas? Just Thomas who?” she teased.
“Thomas Askeland.”
“He likes you,” she said. “Do you like him?”
“I might.”
Tullik threw her arms around me and squealed.
“You might?” she said. “Just might? How much is might? Is might a lot, or is might a little?”
“Tullik!” I said, enjoying her playful teasing. “Stop it!”
“But you might like him,” she continued, squeezing me tighter until her forehead was almost touching mine. Beneath the rim of her hat and behind the drape of her hair, we were close enough to share the most intimate secrets. “You might like him, a lot!” she said. Her plump lips skimmed my cheek, and I felt her breath on my mouth as she goaded me seductively. “You might want him,” she whispered. The outside world began to disappear as Tullik bewitched me with her soft teasing. “You do want him,” she purred, “don’t you, Johanne?” Her tongue brushed her open lips as she drew me ever closer. Her hands were about my waist. We were concealed in the overhang of a jasmine bush whose delicate perfume was captivating, playing games with my senses. Locked in Tullik’s world, I allowed her to pull me further, hold me tighter. “You do want him—you do, you do,” she breathed as her tone became husky and serious. Our breasts were cushioned together now, our skin sticky in the heat, chests heaving with fast-pounding breath. The fire of her touch enthralled me as the delicate lines between reality and fantasy began to blur. Her lips dusted mine again and lingered there for a split second, enough to ignite the burn and swell of desire between my legs. I was the only person in Tullik Ihlen’s world, and for that brief moment, I knew what it might feel like to be truly loved.
As I opened my mouth to receive her sweet kiss, she broke into a peal of laughter and stepped back to release me.
7
LIGHT
From these three, light, shade, and colour, we construct the visible world, and thus, at the same time, make painting possible.
—THEORY OF COLOURS, JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
For the next few days at the Ihlens’, I was caught between two worlds, the chasm between which was ever widening. Fru Berg became sterner with me, Ragna even more reserved. I rose early and dined alone. As my chores became standard and routine, they required less mental effort, and gradually I was able to visit the room in my head while I worked. Analyzing the treasures I had consigned there took the strain out of beating rugs and removed the drudgery from floor mopping. This, and my growing friendship with Tullik, counteracted the resentment that Ragna was brewing in the kitchen.
At Tullik’s request, I stayed at Solbakken every night. When I was finally released from my duties and weary to the bone, Tullik and I sat in her room, whispering secrets long into the evening. We talked about many things, but mainly we talked about Munch.
“What did you mean,” she said one night as we sat together on her bed, “when we met him on the hill?”
“What did I mean about what?” I said.
“About this job? About it being the reason why you couldn’t go paint? Were you going to paint with him?”
“Oh, yes,” I said. “He saw my drawings last year and thought they were quite good.”
“You draw too, Johanne?” she said, scrambling closer to me and squeezing my arm.
“I try to. It’s easier to say what I mean in drawings. But my mother doesn’t like it. He gave me a book. I have to hide it from her.”
“Which book?”
“It’s called Theory of Colours,” I said, surprised by the sound of the book on my lips. “It’s by a German man called Johann. His name’s almost the same as mine.”
“Johann von Goethe?” Tullik said excitedly.
“Yes. That’s it.”
“But I have one of his books,” she said, jumping from the bed. “Over here, in this pile.” She crawled to a tower of books on the floor by the window and began quoting a poem as she hunted. “You can’t, if you can’t feel it, if it never rises from the soul, and sways the heart of every single hearer, with deepest power, in simple ways. It’s Faust,” she said. “Do you know it? Something, something, something, then, Let apes and children praise your art, if their admiration’s to your taste, but you’ll never speak from heart to heart, unless it rises up from your heart’s space. Has he read Faust too?” she said. “Does he have it?”
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“I don’t know,” I said, sounding hopelessly inferior. “He just gave me the book about colors.”
“Then you must let him teach you,” she said. “We will go to his house again. I will go with you.”
“I can’t do that,” I said. “I must work, here. And if my mother ever caught me at Munch’s house, I would be beaten. She thinks he’s the devil.”
“She doesn’t have to know, does she?” Tullik said, her eyes gleaming with urgent fire.
“That’s what he said. But still…”
“Still what?” Tullik said. “If it rises up from your heart’s space, if your heart wants to paint, then paint you must. We will go tomorrow!”
“But how can I? There is so much to be done here.”
“I will think of something,” she said, tapping the cover of Goethe’s Faust as though it contained all the answers.
• • •
Tullik was the youngest of the Ihlen daughters, and as such, the admiral and his wife enjoyed indulging her.
“I told them I needed you to help me pick out fabric for a new dress,” she said when we were out of the woods in Åsgårdstrand.
“Wouldn’t your Kristiania friends be better suited to that task?” I said.
“Oh, they’re so tedious,” she said. “Mother knows I have no time for them. She likes you, and as long as your work gets done when we return, she doesn’t mind you accompanying me.”
The chores would pile up, and Ragna and Fru Berg would be furious, but with the sun bringing the summer to life before my eyes, I immersed myself in Åsgårdstrand without another thought for cleaning or detergents. The clematis had begun to flower, and roses clung to fences, framing doorways and windows with their enthralling perfume. Nature had started painting, and so must I.
“We can’t just go into his house,” I said as we approached Munch’s hut.
“Why not?” Tullik said.
“You have to be invited. He needs to be…I don’t know, in the mood for guests.”
“Then we must make him in the mood,” she said, removing her hat and ruffling her hair. “Come on!”
We passed the front door of the hut. Munch never used it. It remained closed to the road for the entire summer, encouraging passersby to keep on walking. Tullik stopped at the gate and turned back to face me.
“Well?” she said, taking my hand. “Are you ready?”
How could I ever be ready to enter Munch’s garden?
“Hello?” Tullik called before I could stop her. “Herr Munch? Are you home?”
He was sitting at an easel at the back of the house. His palette was hooked over his left thumb, and a bundle of newspaper sat on the ground beside him. The package contained tubes of paint. He liked to carry them around like that. The painting he was working on was of a man on a bridge looking out into a swirling, violet fjord. Soft tones of blue and brown and black dominated the lower half of the picture. The man on the bridge in the foreground was wearing a dark coat like Munch’s and a fedora like Munch’s. Two figures in top hats and black suits walked away into the background. The wavy sky was colorless; it had not been painted yet.
The sorrow of the painting made me step back and clutch my chest. I could have taken Munch in my arms right there in his garden, so great was the ache that radiated from him.
“Tullik,” I whispered, “we should go.”
She dragged me closer to him, despite my resistance, and at once she was all around him like the scent of the roses.
“We were just passing,” she said as he looked up. “Is it an inconvenience?”
To my astonishment, Munch left his easel and returned his brush to a jar on the ground.
“Miss Ihlen,” he said. “It’s you.”
“Yes.” She smiled. “We came to say hello.”
Munch turned to me, and I looked at his sad blue eyes apologetically.
“Johanne,” he said, “there’s a canvas waiting for you in the studio. I’ll get it. While you’re here, you may as well…” His voice drifted away, and he shaped the words into the air with his hands. “I’ll ask Inger to make some coffee.”
He took the painting of the man on the bridge down from the easel and disappeared into the studio. Tullik hung her hat on the back of his chair and wandered around the garden, looking at the other canvases scattered among the plants.
“Prime it with chalk,” Munch said, coming out of the studio with a canvas under his arm and handing me a stick of white chalk. He put the canvas on the easel and motioned for me to begin. “Just rub it on—that’s right,” he said. “I’ve been mixing this paint with cadmium pigments. They give the most vibrant colors, especially yellow. Look at this,” he said, showing me a bright-yellow liquid in a jar. “Do you want to try it?”
When I’d finished priming the canvas, he handed me a brush.
“Go on,” he said. “The canvas is jute; feel the texture of it. It will absorb paint quickly, so layer it on.”
Lacking inspiration, I gazed out at the garden. Tullik was meandering by the fence, looking intently at the paintings leaning up against the stones.
“Paint not what you see, Johanne,” Munch said, handing me his palette, “but what you feel.”
I dipped the brush into the yellow liquid and slapped it onto the canvas, moving it around, smudging it in with the thick horsehair bristles.
How do I feel?
How does this feel?
The shape of the sun appeared on the canvas before me. Without thinking, I added yellow waves, like the waves of Tullik’s hair reaching out from the sun. Tentacles of fire.
“Look for the light,” Munch whispered. “Yes, that’s it. Let the brush move how it wants to.”
My brush began to move faster, skimming across the canvas in short strokes, making the sun’s tendrils move and pulsate with life.
How do I feel?
Spirited. Vigorous.
How do I feel?
Happy. Joyful. Free. I feel free.
“Look for the light,” Munch whispered again.
I mixed red in the palette and lined the curves of the sun’s fiery limbs with crimson.
How do I feel?
Purposeful. Alive. I feel alive.
My brush flicked faster and faster across the jute canvas, creating more waves and arms and branches from the sun at the center. In some places, the paint was sparse and the canvas showed through; in others, great dollops of cadmium yellow coagulated to make ridges of fire. Burning. Vivid. Electrifying. Curling. Whirling. Radiant. I continued to paint. Stroking, dabbing, listening. It was as though I was having a long conversation with myself. The garden around me blurred, and time was suspended. My emotions, my feelings, came pouring from me in an expression I had never been able to utter in words. The daubs of yellow were fueled by my affection for Tullik, the time she almost kissed me in the jasmine. Her full lips. Her hair. Then Thomas, dots of uncertainty. Munch. Sweeping, curious waves. I lost all awareness of where I was and could barely feel my body or hear my own thoughts. It was only when Inger Munch appeared at my shoulder that I finally sat back and looked at what I had done.
“It’s very vibrant,” Inger said. “I didn’t know you could paint so well, Johanne.”
I shuffled out of the chair and placed the brush on the stand.
“I didn’t know I could paint at all,” I said.
“Would you like some coffee?”
I looked to Tullik for instruction. She was standing in the middle of the garden with Munch. His head was bent, and his hands clasped behind his back. Tullik was leaning toward him, and they were talking quietly.
“Edvard!” Inger shouted. “Coffee!”
“Hmm?” he said, turning back toward the house. “What is it, Inger?”
“You wanted coffee?” she said.
“Right, very well then,”
he said. His jaw tightened.
Tullik and Munch looked at my painting before joining Inger at the table.
“You have wonderful insight, Johanne,” Munch said. “But your story is not yet complete. I will leave it here for you to come back to.”
“It’s marvelous,” Tullik said, but she wasn’t really looking at my painting. Her eyes were fixed in study on Edvard Munch’s face. “There’s a dance tomorrow,” she said, “at the Grand Hotel. Maybe that will inspire her to paint more? Don’t you think so, Herr Munch?”
“As long as she paints what she feels, inspiration can come from anything at all,” he said, easing Tullik’s chair back, inviting her to sit down beside him.
• • •
My father used to say that there were many ways to enter a forest. You could run into it with enthralling expectation, never knowing what discoveries you would make; you could walk into it, talking and laughing with friends, oblivious to the subtle sounds that surrounded you; you could stroll into it, hand in hand with a lover, seeking sanctuary and a stolen moment alone; or you could creep into it, silently, noticing the very breath of nature, communing with it through a magical and inexplicable osmosis.
This was how Tullik and I entered the forest the following evening. We crept along the path, aware of each other’s presence, but belonging only to the woods. The early evening light, muted and tired, stretched the remains of the day out through the branches of the trees, thinning it like gossamer, delicate and elegant in the final moments of its dance. Unannounced, the rush of the stream came racing past us, flowing to the sea with a tumultuous bubble and thrash. On high, the birds made their aerial chorus: meaningful songs of survival, of love. The breeze caressed us as it caressed the plants and the leaves, surging through the forest, racing on to where it was bound. The unmistakable backdrop of the sea and the flow of the waves, lazy and hypnotic, could be heard from time to time through breaks in the trees. That was where I found my comfort, in the fjord that had provided for me since the day I was born.
I was wearing one of Tullik’s dresses. She said I could borrow it for the dance, that Thomas might like it. It was a beautiful pale-lemon gown, embroidered with tiny fans and delicate knots on the sleeves and hem, so minute and complex it was as though it had been crafted by the hands of fairies. I could not even begin to imagine the hours of work that must have gone into this exquisite dress, a work of art that had been tailor-made for Tullik. The fabric flowed around my skin, cool and fluid like a pitcher of cream. It smelled of jasmine and of Tullik’s musky hair.