by Lisa Strømme
I left him alone to find answers to his unanswerable questions.
• • •
Ragna was boiling eggs when I arrived. She didn’t look at me, but eyed the roll of paper in my hands and pursed her lips as though I had said something offensive.
“Good morning,” I said with deliberate charm.
“Mmm-hmm,” she said, staring into the pan with the concentration of a scientist about to make a shocking new discovery.
She had not started the coffee yet, and breakfast was still a while away. I leaped up the stairs and rapped on Tullik’s bedroom door.
“Yes?”
“It’s me,” I whispered.
The door swung open. Tullik reached for my arm and pulled me in.
“You’re back!” she said. Her face was radiant. She hugged me close, as though she had not seen me for several weeks.
“I have something for you,” I said, handing her the scroll. “It’s from him.”
Tullik gasped and snatched the picture out of my hands. She took it to the window and carefully unraveled it toward the light.
“Look!” she said, inviting me to join her. “Come look at it!”
The sketch was made in a combination of pencil, pen, charcoal, and paint. It was of a woman, obviously Tullik, standing between the trees in the forest with the fjord in the background. Munch had sketched Tullik first in pencil, then outlined her in black pen. She was standing with her hands behind her back, her chin lifted, her chest pressed out, exactly as she had been a few nights ago. Tullik was at the center of the picture, with tree trunks behind her to her left and right. The trunks were sketched in charcoal. Some were filled in with smears of dark paint. On the left there was a gap in the trees where Munch had drawn the column of moonlight stretching across the water. It was messily filled in with yellow. Above Tullik’s head was a row of branches, some of which had been smudged with green. The yellow moon and the green branches were the only colors in the otherwise black-and-white picture. Out on the sea Munch had drawn a tiny rowing boat where the outline of three figures sat, unaware of the beauty hiding in the trees.
“I will treasure it,” Tullik said.
“You’d better hide it somewhere,” I said.
Tullik opened her enormous wardrobe and beamed at me. “They don’t go in here,” she said, tucking the picture away behind a swish of coats and dresses.
“He’s waiting for you,” I said. “Outside.”
Another gasp.
Tullik grabbed my elbows.
“Tell them I’ve gone to pick berries,” she said, “or to get some air. Tell them anything, Johanne. I must go to him.”
Her eyes were a vivid gleam of fire, hot with a danger she could not resist.
9
BLUE
They are like two rivers which have their source in one and the same mountain, but subsequently pursue their way under totally different conditions.
—THEORY OF COLOURS, JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
Munch was a wanderer. He had the ability to tuck himself away, to blend, chameleon-like, into his surroundings where he could silently observe. He was not approachable, but he had always fascinated me. He painted. He sketched. He did the things I wanted to do. Communicated in shapes and colors, like me. As a child, I would find a spot some distance away and sit with him, although we were always apart. He knew I was there. We sensed each other.
Gradually I started to move closer, and he didn’t seem to mind. I observed him while he observed life. Sometimes he would rip a page from his sketchbook and let me draw with him. I sketched shells and stones, the boats on the fjord, simple drawings that allowed me to talk. Still we hardly spoke. Then last summer I met him one day on the beach. It had rained, and the sand smelled fresh like mud. He had no jacket and was sheltering under the fallen branch of a tree that had been tipped by the wind.
Seeing him, I stopped.
“Hello, Johanne,” he said, pulling me toward him with a rare smile. “Come here. I have something for you.”
His attention scared me, but I followed his instruction. He was holding a book in his hands.
“Take it,” he said. “You should study it.”
In silence, I accepted it.
“You think about color and light and perspective, don’t you, Johanne?”
“I draw,” I said, lost.
“Then read this book,” he urged. “It’s by Goethe—look, his Christian name is Johann, almost exactly like yours. Read it. Study it. It will help you understand light.”
I flicked through the book, noticing the occasional diagram: circles, stars, checkered patterns, triangles.
“And nature,” Munch said. “It will help you understand nature.” He stood by my shoulder and turned to one of the first pages. “There, read that,” he said. “Go from Nature speaks to other senses.”
I cleared my throat. I was not a strong reader.
“Nature speaks to other senses,” I began, “to known, misunderstood, and unknown senses: so speaks she with herself and to us in a thousand modes.”
“Go on,” Munch said.
I gripped the book and held it close.
“To the attentive observer she is nowhere dead nor silent; she has even a secret agent in inflexible matter, in a metal, the smallest portions of which tell us what is passing in the entire mass. However manifold, complicated, and unintelligible this language may often seem to us, yet its elements remain ever the same. With light poise and counterpoise, Nature oscillates within her prescribed limits, yet thus arise all the varieties and conditions of the phenomena which are presented to us in space and time.”
I barely understood the words I had read but had a sense that they were in some way magical, that this man, Johann, had understood and been able to unravel the very secret of nature itself.
I was spellbound.
• • •
I hid the book under a pile of handkerchiefs in Milly’s top drawer. Nestled in its back pages were the only two drawings I had ever managed to conceal from my mother, pictures of the coast and the bay, the first sketches I was ever proud of. Along with Munch’s sketch in Tullik’s wardrobe, the hidden book was the first of a series of secrets and deceptions that Tullik and I would conceal. As the strawberries ripened and the season began to flourish, so too did Tullik’s passion and Munch’s creativity. Tullik began to disappear for long stretches of time. In the afternoons she avoided calling hours altogether and drifted off to the forest, claiming she needed the air. Whenever I could be released from my duties she took me with her, using me as a foil. She protested to her mother that the Strawberry Girl must not be denied her berries and insisted we pick fruit together in the forest. But when I went off to sell my wares at the Victoria Hotel, Tullik went to meet Munch. Ragna and Fru Berg were infuriated by my absences, but Tullik was delighted, and that was all that seemed to matter to Fru Ihlen.
One afternoon Tullik returned from the forest and found me in the garden hanging laundry on the line. Her cheeks were flushed, and her hair was tousled. She had made no attempt to tidy it.
“Inger has returned to Kristiania,” she said.
“Why?”
“It’s Laura. She is very ill. Hardly even talking anymore.”
I thought of the woman in the painting, dark and gray. So Munch’s youngest sister had finally succumbed to her shadow.
“They’re sending her to Gaustad,” Tullik said.
“Where’s that?”
“It’s a hospital, for women. At Ekeberg,” she said. “Edvard says she will receive proper treatment there. Maybe they will be able to help her.”
“How long will she be there for?”
“They don’t know. Inger and their aunt Karen will talk to the doctors. It will probably be indefinite.”
Although this was apparently bad news, I couldn’t help but se
nse an element of achievement in Tullik’s eyes.
“They must be very worried,” I said.
“Oh, terribly. Poor Edvard. He will, of course, need a companion to offer some comfort. I can’t allow him to wallow, can I?”
After that, Tullik’s disappearances became lengthier and more frequent. She always returned with a sketch. All of them were of her. We found an old cut of black fabric in Caroline’s cupboard and tacked it to the back of Tullik’s wardrobe with pins, making a false back behind which we hid the sketches. Shielded by her fine gowns and coats and dresses, Munch’s drawings lay hidden in their silent scrolls.
Tullik tested the limits of her freedom and began staying at Munch’s until late in the afternoon, sometimes even skipping dinner.
Then one night she didn’t come back at all.
“That’s the third time she’s missed dinner,” Caroline said as I cleared the plates from the table.
“Where could she have gotten to, Nils?” Fru Ihlen said, tapping her lips with her fingers.
“You know what she’s like,” said the admiral, “enjoys a good wander, an adventure in the woods. Just let her be. She’ll be back soon enough.”
They moved through to the green room to take their coffee, and I returned to the kitchen to wash the dishes.
“You know where she is, don’t you?” said Ragna, who was scraping leftover jam back into the jar.
“No,” I said. “How would I know where she is?”
“You and her,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s not right.”
I ignored her and continued with my chores. I dried the china and returned it to the dining room, removed the tablecloth and took it out to shake it in the garden. I swept the floors and wiped all the surfaces and even polished the cutlery. The hours dragged slowly by, and still there was no sign of Tullik. I tried to busy myself with tasks, cleaning everything twice to fill the time. I started on my chores for the next day to avoid going to bed, unable to settle without her. Eventually, when the clock was drawing toward midnight and there wasn’t a chore left in the house, I climbed the stairs and went to my room.
I stood at the bedroom window, straining my eyes to see if I could see her, inspecting every shadow. I scoured the landscape—the edge of the forest, the churchyard, and the length and breadth of Kirkebakken—but there was no trace of her. Downstairs, the Ihlens were heavy in discussion. Caroline was angry, Julie anxious. I could not hear their words, but the tone of their voices, the rises and lulls in their conversation, and the deep growl of the admiral told me that they would not rest until she was home.
I heard the parlor door swing open, and then there were footsteps on the stairs, followed by a knock at my door. Without waiting for me to answer, Fru Ihlen came hurrying in with Caroline at her heels.
“Oh, you’re still awake, Johanne,” she said, momentarily searching the bed, then finding me at the window. “I hate to trouble you, dear,” she said, “but Tullik’s still not back. The two of you are close, aren’t you? Do you know where she might be?”
“No, I don’t know,” I said. “Perhaps she’s with friends in Åsgårdstrand?”
“Not until this late, surely?” she said.
“You do know, don’t you, Johanne?” Caroline said. “You know where she is.”
“Really, I don’t,” I said, holding a blank expression, determined to protect Tullik. “She didn’t tell me where she was going.”
“Would you mind going to look for her, dear?” Julie said. “I wouldn’t normally ask, but we are so very—”
“Of course,” I said, speaking out of turn. “I’ll go.”
I reached for my shawl and rushed down the stairs to where the admiral was waiting for me with a lantern. His penetrating stare told me to hurry, and I fled from the house by the front door.
The night was cloudy, and the air had turned surprisingly cold. I clutched my shawl about my chest with one hand and held the lantern in the other. The forest was an inky-blue darkness. No longer my friend, it had become threatening. The crack of twigs beneath my feet coupled with the pained cries of the crows above me and the endless sighing of the trees urged me to run. As the lantern swung in my hand, an amber glow pooled around my feet, but I could not see further than a few yards ahead of me. Although I knew every bit of the forest, it now seemed foreign to me, hostile, as though it was trying to expel me.
I was relieved to see the Nielsens’ farmhouse looming on my right, even though the house was dark and the animals were quiet. I chose Nygårdsgaten over the beach, as I would only risk being seen by my mother if I crossed in front of the fishermen’s huts. Being found there at this hour was a circumstance I did not care to explain. Creeping along the street like a housebreaker, I held the lantern low by my side. I could have walked down Nygårdsgaten blindfolded and had no need for the weak glow of the oil lamp.
When I reached Munch’s house, fear slid its icy hands about my throat. What if Tullik wasn’t there? What if she was genuinely lost? What would I say to him? What would I say to the Ihlens? I opened the gate and stood motionless for a while, holding my breath to listen. A murmuring sound was coming from the back of the house. Approaching, I recognized it as the sound of voices. Barely audible at all, they were rippling softly like the distant waves of the ocean. I leaned against the house and inhaled deeply, gathering strength, ogled by the panicked stares of the people rushing from the painting. Terrified of what I might find, I inched my way around to the back.
They were sitting on a bench in the garden, coupled together at one end of it. Tullik was wrapped in Munch’s arms with her cheek raised to his face. He was whispering to her, pressing words onto her neck and into her ear. Her eyes were closed, and her expression was serious. A dark bottle and two empty glasses stood at their feet. They were so involved with each other that I didn’t want to interrupt. I felt a fool, standing there watching them in the middle of the night with my lantern hanging by my side.
“Tullik,” I said plainly. “It’s time to go home.”
Her eyes snapped open, and she searched the darkness for my voice.
“It’s me, Tullik,” I said, stepping closer. “I’ve come to fetch you. It’s time to come home now.”
Munch jumped from the bench and held his arm out to me while Tullik roused herself with a shake of her head.
“I do apologize,” Munch said. “We must have lost track of time.”
“What time is it?” Tullik said, scrambling to her feet.
“It’s after twelve,” I said. “Your parents are worried.”
“Oh,” she said vaguely. “Yes, Edvard, I must go.”
They kissed. I tried to avert my eyes but could not turn away. I had never seen such intensity: how they gripped and possessed each other. Finally, Munch let her go, and she came reeling toward me like the loser of a fight.
“Would you like me to walk with you?” Munch said as I cradled Tullik in my arms.
“No,” I said, fearing we might be seen with him—another circumstance I did not care to explain. “I know the forest like my own hand.”
Tullik was cold, and her shoulders were sloping and rounded beneath my arm.
“We must hurry,” I said. “How long have you been sitting out like that?”
“I don’t know,” she said, stumbling as I moved her. I could smell a cloud of alcohol about her head.
“Have you been drinking, Tullik?”
“A little. Just a bit of port that Edvard brought back from Germany. He uses alcohol to blur the edges.”
“Edges of what?”
“Life,” she said absentmindedly.
Dulled by the port, Tullik was unaware of the trouble she was in. She had floated over into her world without a care for the reality she had left behind. Time was stretched. Edges were blurred. But what did it matter if passions were being followed?
“Wait, bef
ore you go,” Munch said. “The painting, Tullik. I want you to have it.”
He accidentally kicked over the empty glasses as he crossed to the steps at the back of the house. Tullik rushed to pick them up again, standing them neatly on the grass.
Munch reappeared with a canvas under his arm.
“Here it is,” he said. “For you. It is you, Tullik. Your voice, as it was in the forest. Take it. It’s simply called The Voice.”
Tullik took the painting without looking at it. She kissed him on the cheek, and he patted her back as a father might pet a child.
“Go on now,” he said. “Go with Johanne. Good night.”
I helped Tullik with the painting, and we carried it out into the street. Without studying it, I recognized it instantly as a painted version of the first sketch Munch had given her—Tullik in the forest. I saw the brown lines of the tree trunks and the pearly white shine of Tullik’s dress in the moonlight. I clasped the painting in my arms and let Tullik carry the lantern as we dashed back through the forest.
“Where are we going to put this?” I said.
“It’ll fit in the wardrobe, won’t it?” Tullik said.
“Tullik, your father is waiting for me to return with you. How are we going to pretend you have been anywhere but Munch’s house when we arrive carrying this?”
“Oh. Yes, I see,” she said, suppressing a giggle. “We’ll have to hide it somewhere until morning. The church. We’ll hide it there.”
“It won’t be open at this hour,” I said.
“Then we’ll hide it in the graveyard. Slip it behind a gravestone. You can retrieve it before Ragna and the others wake up,” she said.
We emerged from the forest and stole up the path that led to the church. Tullik walked ahead with the lantern, and I ambled behind, pacing gracelessly with the canvas in my arms. Solbakken’s windows were glowing with candlelight. Julie and the admiral were waiting. We veered off the path to avoid the clear view from the house and slipped around the back of the church, creeping around its walls with a fearsome tread, afraid we might awaken the dead.
“Here,” Tullik whispered. She had drifted out among the graves and was pointing at a wide gravestone below the linden trees. “Will it be concealed here?”