The Girl Between

by Lisa Strømme

  “You are washed out,” he said, closing the door. “What is it?”

  I could not look at him.

  “It’s Tullik, isn’t it? What’s happened?”

  “She doesn’t leave her room, doesn’t eat much—only strawberries. She doesn’t read. They won’t allow her to leave the house alone, but she won’t come out with me. She’s withering,” I said. “Her fire is out. Sometimes I don’t even understand what she’s saying. Fru Ihlen and the admiral are talking about sending her to Gaustad.”

  Munch said nothing. Then he pulled me around to his easel where the painting still sat. “You must take this to her,” he said. “She will know it. She will understand it.”

  I looked at the painting and shivered. The abstract figure, neither a man nor a woman, was now skeletal in form, its head a skull with sunken, empty eyes. It was holding its hands to its face, covering its ears, and it appeared to be screaming from its gaping mouth. I felt as though I had been struck, hard, in the stomach. I wanted to run. Frightened, I saw Tullik in the image. The fiery-red-and-orange sky was like waves of her hair; the anguish of the face was everything I had seen in her: the green streaks around its nose and mouth were like the sickness I saw in her face; the way she had held her hands to her ears was uncannily similar to the figure in the picture. Even the ominous whirlpool in the background gave me a feeling of impending, inescapable doom, like the hurricane Julie Ihlen seemed to have predicted.

  “It’s her,” I said, backing away from the painting and turning to him. “It’s her, as she is now.” The whining sound that came from the painting had become louder. “It’s screaming,” I said, “like her.”

  “It’s nature,” he said. “Have you ever felt that bloodred scream of nature? So vast, so overwhelming? That is what tears at our souls. The loss that comes from separation. But we are not separated; we are joined. Everything in nature is joined. You must give her this and tell her I understand. Tell her this is the Scream.”

  He went to lift the painting down from the easel, but I stopped him.

  “I can’t take it with me now,” I said. “It’s Sunday. I’m staying at home tonight. I will have to return for it in the morning.”

  “Then I will leave this door unlocked,” he said. “Now, paint if you wish.” He lifted a different canvas from the floor and took it outside with his newspaper bag and his paints.

  Scream stared out at me with its round, white eyes. Its tortured cry scared me, but I was also strangely attracted and found a part of myself connecting with it at some deeply unreachable level. I covered my ears with my hands to block the sound and slowly leaned in closer to inspect it.

  He’d used egg tempera to help it dry quickly. I’d seen the tubes lying around the studio. On top of the paint, lines of color were etched on in crayon and chalk: blue and green on the sea, orange and red in the sky, and white and yellow highlighting the skeletal screamer’s face. Parts of the cardboard remained untouched—unfinished, as he would say—as if to give some taste of where this painting came from. It had a sense of its own creation. Like nature, it carried a force, simple and undeniable. To be with it was to know the terror of being parted from the self, the things that make us who we are, the parting of souls, and the fear of a world without love or meaning. It was chaotic and terrifying, and yet it was profoundly connective. Something in it unified us all. Perhaps it would heal Tullik? Perhaps it would comfort her to know that Munch had been there, at the edge of madness, too.

  • • •

  It was another sleepless night. Andreas kept hanging over the side of the bed and asking me a torrent of questions I did not want to answer.

  “So it was true about Miss Ihlen then? Is she engaged to crazy-man Munch? Is she crazy too? Does she talk about him to you? What’s going to happen to her?”

  “I don’t know,” I kept saying, wishing it were true. “I don’t know anything. Now get to sleep.”

  I closed my eyes, but all I could see was the horrifying face of the figure in Munch’s Scream: the vacant eyes and the gaping mouth. I could not shake the image from my mind, nor could I ease the breathlessness from my chest.

  As soon as I felt the sun on my face, I rose and dressed quietly. I stubbed my toe on the uneven floor, which still rattled and wobbled even though Andreas and I had covered it with a thick mat.

  Mother was awake, but in bed, when I came into the parlor.

  “You’re early,” she said.

  “There’s a lot to do today,” I said. “The cleaning’s more thorough now the season’s winding down.”

  “The Heyerdahls are leaving next week,” she said, “but the cherry tree at the Central Hotel might still have some fruit. Be sure to take them a bowl. There’s still time for him to finish a painting, you know.”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  I slipped out of the house and walked the wrong way to fool her.

  As soon as I had passed the huts, I cut up a narrow lane between the houses and joined Nygårdsgaten, doubling back on myself to return to Munch’s house.

  I hesitated at the gate as the image returned to my mind. Picturing the bloodred sky and the hollow mouth, I realized I had not stopped thinking about it all night. Already, it haunted me.

  The screams began as I crept to the studio door. The volume of the painting was enough to fill my entire body with noise. I suddenly thought of my father and his longing for silence. He could not have looked at this painting—it was too unsettled, too deafening. At the thought of Father, everything around me came into sharp focus: the droplets of dew shimmering on the morning grass, the shapes and sizes of all the other paintings scattered throughout the garden, the burgundy walls of the studio, and the faded white door with its flaky, peeling paint.

  I reached for the handle, jerked the door open, and edged my way in, feeling the wall behind me for support. The painting was sitting where Munch had left it on the easel. I approached cautiously, the way the farmers did with wild horses. No sudden movements, no signs of fear, no direct eye contact. I let my eyes stare vacantly until they became blurred, then concentrated on the bottom edge of the painting, latching onto the wavy figure’s black body so that I wouldn’t have to look at its face. But it forced me into submission and drew my eyes upward, pulling me into its anguish. I met its unearthly stare. There was something raw about it, a deep sense of anxiety, something I wanted to run from, but I knew there was no escape because part of it was part of me. Looking at the figure again and its long, wavy hands, I began to wonder if it was actually shielding its own ears from the sound. Perhaps it was not the figure that was making the scream but the landscape around it? Is that what Munch meant when he said It’s nature? I sank into the wavy lines of the fjord, the shoreline, the sky: red, blue, green, yellow. The primary colors that wove and curved together to produce a primal scream.

  I lifted the painting down from the easel and clamped it under my arm, pulling it in close to muffle its cries. It was not a large painting, only a foot or so by two, and because it was painted on cardboard, it was lighter and easier to carry than the canvas had been. But Scream was the hardest painting I had smuggled because the circumstances were now so altered. Tullik was confined to her room. Caroline had charged Ragna with keeping a close eye on me, and Ragna was as inquisitive as ever, lingering in rooms longer than necessary and using the vantage point of the kitchen window to observe any outdoor activity. It was impossible to avoid her. I would have to hide the painting until nightfall and bring it into the house after Ragna had gone to bed. Getting caught with it was unthinkable. The repercussions would be devastating.

  Munch was not yet awake. I closed the studio door behind me and headed out to Nygårdsgaten, half running, half walking to the mouth of Fjugstad forest. Although I was carrying out Munch’s instructions, it felt like a theft. All the other paintings had been given to us; this one had been swiped from the painter’s studio itself. But it wasn�
��t just that; it was the depth and intensity of emotion in Scream. It was as though I was stealing a feeling, stealing Munch’s own soul.

  Since I could not take it to the house immediately, I veered off the footpath and trod through the plants and undergrowth, chopping at leaves and branches with my free hand, pressing the painting to my body. Eventually I found the cluster of rocks where Thomas and I had kissed on the night of the dance. I knelt down in the moss and managed to slide the painting into a crevice between them.

  “You will have to stay here until it is dark,” I said. “Then I will come find you.”

  The painting seemed only to scream louder as I walked away. It was like abandoning a child.

  • • •

  I returned to Scream in the middle of the night. A high, full moon had come out to assist me, illuminating parts of the path between the whispering trees. I inched my way out of the house painstakingly slowly, barefoot and in my nightgown. First I stole into the dining room and took a tablecloth from the dresser, then I waited at the back door. I did not turn the handle until the clock in the hall struck two, hoping its chime might conceal any noise. As soon as I was across the road I began to run. I would have to work quickly and get back to the house with the painting before anyone awoke.

  The forest was cold. Gone were the balmy nights of the summer. The air had not yet grown the teeth that would bite us in the winter, but there was a sharp nip to it that heralded the approach of autumn. Everything was bland in the moonlight. The leaves colorless, merging into one. Rocks protruded like gravestones in the shadows, gray-white slabs against the dark undergrowth. Then I saw it, the blazing red and orange—Tullik’s fire—alive in Scream’s troubled sky.

  “You waited,” I said, talking to the painting to calm my own nerves. “That’s good. I’ve got you. There we are.” I lifted it up from between the rocks and covered it with the tablecloth. “I need to wrap you in this so they don’t see you.” A rumble crossed my chest, and my breathing grew fast and shallow. Scream was angry. It did not want to be hidden. “Tullik will see you,” I said. “In the morning, Tullik will see you.” I hugged the painting to my chest as I folded and secured the cloth, then slid it under my arm and ran back to the house.

  I was relieved to find everything just as I had left it. No one had stirred, and the rooms were still dark. In the kitchen Henriette greeted me with a loud meow, then she circled me suspiciously as though sensing the waves of sound that streamed from the painting. The noise reverberated through my body. I was a fool to think I could sneak a scream into the house unnoticed.

  I had learned how to move through Solbakken quickly and quietly in hurried steps from one point to another. My first point was the post at the bottom of the stairs. I glanced at the clock. It was almost a quarter to three. The pendulum swung as though timing my movements. I held my breath and dashed out to the stairs. The next point was the back window in the curve of the staircase. When I reached it, I turned back on myself to check that no one was behind me. The last point was my bedroom. I was about to spring forward again when I heard the conspicuous whine of a door.

  My heart thumped hard in my ears, and coupled with the noise of the painting, it was impossible for me to locate the sound. I didn’t know if it was above me or below me, in front of me or behind me. I leaned Scream up against the wall, detaching myself from it and stepping away. Then I realized there were two sounds. One was the tread of footsteps in the hall downstairs; the other was a bedroom door. The only person who could possibly have been below me was Ragna. I peered over the banister and saw the top of her head approaching the staircase. Gathering Scream up into my arms, I ran to my room without knowing whose bedroom door had opened or who had seen me.

  I threw the painting under Milly’s bed and leaped under the covers. My feet were filthy from the forest, and I tried not to let them touch the sheets, hovering my legs uncomfortably above the surface. I sucked at the air to force my breath to slow, but I could hear Ragna’s footsteps on the stairs. She was getting closer. From my bed, I saw my door handle twist. I clung to the sheets. Peering over the side of the bed, I noticed that a corner of the tablecloth was showing: Scream was peeping out. The door opened. I shuffled the coverlet with my knees and hoped it would drop to the floor before Ragna saw anything.

  Before she came in, I heard her voice, whispering loudly.

  “I heard a noise,” she said.

  “It was me,” I heard Tullik say. “You can go back down now.”

  “Shouldn’t I see you back into bed, Miss Tullik?” she said. I could almost hear her black eyes scanning Tullik’s body. I could tell from her tone that she knew it was me she had heard on the stairs.

  “No,” Tullik said. “Go.”

  Tullik waited for Ragna’s footsteps to recede before she came into the room.

  “Johanne?” she said. “Are you awake?”

  “Tullik!” I swung my dirty feet off the bed and sat up. “Thank goodness it was you. Are you all right?”

  Her eyes seemed clearer, brighter, in the moonlit room.

  “I heard a moaning sound, a wailing,” she said. “Were you crying?”

  “No.”

  “Johanne, you’re freezing,” she said, touching my arm as she sat down beside me. “Where have you been?”

  “I went to the forest. I have a painting for you.”

  “Is he here? Is he here?” she said.

  “Sort of. He said you would know it and understand it.”

  “Show me,” she whispered. “Where is it?”

  I got down on my knees and pulled Scream out from under the bed. Standing opposite her, I peeled away the tablecloth and let it fall to the floor, holding the painting up with the screaming figure facing me. Slowly, I turned it around.

  Tullik’s mouth dropped open when she saw it, and her hands flew up to her ears. She was its mirror image.

  “Look at the strokes.” She ran her fingers across the lumps in the cheerless blue fjord. “The sky is on fire. We are afraid…of everything around us—of this world. For if we are parted, there is nothing but pain. Our souls scream. It is a vast, endless scream.”

  She collapsed back down on the bed.

  “I must go to him,” she said, her face bright yet sober.

  “Tullik, are you sure?”

  “I see it clearly now, yes. I must go to him.”

  “But your parents will—”

  “They don’t have to know,” she said.

  “They’ll find out. It’s too dangerous. Ragna is watching our every move.”

  “I’ll think of something,” she said.

  She took the painting and ran her finger around the gaping O of its mouth. She could hear it too.

  “Make sure you hide it well,” I said as she left.

  She didn’t answer.

  • • •

  Morning found me in nightmares of bloodred skies and the dizzy swirl of whirlpools, and boats with no sails being pulled by the current into the dark-blue depths of the fjord.

  Fru Berg was knocking at my door.

  “Johanne, you’re late,” she said. “What the devil’s gotten into you? Up! Up!”

  I felt her chunky hands on my shoulders as she shook me awake.

  “Johanne! Come on! The breakfast!”

  “Sorry,” I murmured, sitting up in bed, confused. “I was having such a terrible dream.”

  “Well, if you don’t hurry up, it will come true. Come on, girl!”

  As she walked away, she slipped on the tablecloth that was still lying on the floor.

  “What in the Lord’s name is that doing here?”

  “It’s for the laundry,” I said. “You can take it. I brought it up with me last night by mistake.”

  She bent over and scooped the cloth to her bosom. “Hurry, girl!” she said as she waddled out.

  Ragna wa
s visibly outraged when I arrived in the kitchen. Her bony shoulders twitched with tension, and her eyes flashed from side to side, watching me hungrily. She knew she had been close to catching me in the night and was furious I had escaped her. Throughout the morning she deliberately overheated every soup and every sauce, blackening the bases of the pots and pans so that they would not come clean without a vicious scouring.

  She eagerly stacked them up, knowing I would have the task of cleaning them. Around midmorning, when I had finished the dusting and the floors, I went outside to wash the pots in a steel tub by the hen coop. To fill it, I had to use a heavy double-handled pot from the stove, and it was laborious work. Kneeling over the tub’s deep edge to lift and scrub the pots was backbreaking, and exhausted from my lack of sleep, I was close to tears. But it had been worth it, just to see a glimmer of fire return to Tullik’s eyes again.

  I was just lifting a potato pan from the water when a cry shot out from Tullik’s room. Crimson. White. The window was open, and the ear-splitting howl was so sudden that I dropped the pan. Then the cry changed shape, and it became the sound of my own name.

  “Johanne! Johanne!”

  At first I did not recognize the voice because I had never heard it raised before. It was Fru Ihlen. She was shrieking helplessly.

  I fled from the wash tub and, with my hands still dripping with water, ran up the stairs to Tullik’s room.

  “Johanne!” Fru Ihlen was shouting. “Oh, Johanne, there you are. Thank goodness. You must help us.”

  She was flanked by Ragna and Fru Berg, who were staring at the floor as though someone had just died. Tullik was sitting on her bed with her arms folded across her chest. An oppressive droning sound weighed the room down.

  My trip to the forest and all my efforts to conceal Scream had been for nothing.

  Tullik had hung it, blatantly, in the middle of her wall.

  “You must get this dreadful thing out of here,” Fru Ihlen said to me, pointing at the shocking picture. “I can’t even bear to touch it. Where did you get this filth from, Tullik?” Julie said.