The Girl Between

by Lisa Strømme

  “Edvard,” Tullik said defiantly.

  “Johanne.” Fru Ihlen set her clear eyes on me. “You must take this dreadful thing away from here and burn it.”

  “No!” Tullik yelled.

  “Take it,” Julie said, indicating to Fru Berg and Ragna to restrain Tullik.

  Tullik tried to reach for the painting, but the two women wrestled her back down onto her bed.

  “Johanne! No!” she pleaded. “Don’t take it! Don’t take it from me.”

  “Pay no attention to her,” Fru Ihlen said. “It’s for her own good.”

  I knelt on Tullik’s bed and, following Julie’s orders, reached out for the painting.

  “No, Johanne!” Tullik cried. “You’re my friend. You understand it, don’t you? It’s him. He’s in this. It’s him and me. It’s our pain. Our pain together. Don’t take it!”

  “Don’t listen to her,” Julie said. “Take it away.”

  Ragna and Fru Berg tightened their grip, and with her arms pinned down, Tullik started kicking. Her foot thumped against my stomach as I leaned toward the wall.

  “Johanne!” she shouted. “Don’t do it!”

  My arms dropped.

  Julie touched my shoulder, then bent down to hold Tullik’s legs.

  “Please, Johanne,” she said calmly. “It must go. Quickly.”

  I lifted my arms but then lowered them again. I couldn’t take Scream from Tullik. I would be stealing part of her soul too.

  “For heaven’s sake, girl!” Ragna shouted over Tullik’s cries. “Take the damned thing away.”

  “Hurry, Johanne,” Julie said. “Get it out of here.”

  I moved in and lifted Scream down from the wall without looking at Tullik. I could not bring myself to witness any more of her pain, and I was ashamed of my betrayal. I fled the room in silence, and Fru Ihlen hurried after me.

  “There is no place for something so inhuman, something so monstrous, in this world. Burn it,” she said solemnly. “Do not come back until it is done.”

  16

  NATURAL

  Let the eye be closed, let the sense of hearing be excited, and from the lightest breath to the wildest din, from the simplest sound to the highest harmony, from the most vehement and impassioned cry to the gentlest word of reason, still it is Nature that speaks and manifests her presence, her power, her pervading life.

  —THEORY OF COLOURS, JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

  Scream and I were alone in the woods again. This time there was no tablecloth, and the picture was exposed, as it wanted to be. Fru Ihlen had given me a bottle of turpentine and a box of matches, but I had no need for them. When I reached the shelter of the forest, I cast them into the bushes. Looking at the face of Scream again, I began to cry. Pale-blue tears. I didn’t know why I was crying.

  “I won’t burn you,” I said, looking at the forlorn face and the hollow eyes. “I will protect you.”

  But how?

  “I can’t take you back to Munch,” I said, wiping my eyes. “He’ll think it’s a rejection. He wants you to be with Tullik. I just need to keep you safe for a while, until she can get you back again.”

  I ran to the rocks and slid the picture into the crevice that had protected it the night before. I had to find a safe place for it but needed help. Who could I trust with this secret?

  Lifting my face to the sky, I closed my eyes. With my hands held out and my palms turned upward, I wandered around in circles, silently begging the forest for help. It was only when I tripped over a fallen branch that the answer came to me and I sped from the woods, leaving Scream alone.

  I raced through Åsgårdstrand and went straight to our hut. Hunting inside and out, I had to know it was empty. Then I rushed to the pier to look for my brother.

  “Andreas! Andreas!”

  My cries caught the attention of the fishermen by the walkway.

  “You’re in a hurry, Johanne,” one of them called. It was Thomas’s father. His hands were full of worms that he was threading onto hooks.

  “Have you seen Andreas, Herr Askeland?” I said.

  “He was on the other side of the boathouse this morning,” he said, pointing across the pier. “He and the lads were fishing.”

  I tore away and ran to the boathouse at the end of the beach. Rounding the corner, I found Andreas with his friends Markus and Petter. He was sitting with his feet hanging over the ledge at the back.

  “Andreas!” I said, gasping for breath. “I need you to come help me.”

  “I’m fishing,” he said, waving his pole at me.

  “It’s important.”

  “This is important,” he said, unmoving.

  “Just hurry, will you!”

  He handed his rod to Petter.

  “Hope you have more luck than me,” he said, stepping over his friend’s legs and pulling his cap tight on his head.

  “Where’s Mother?” I said.

  “How am I supposed to know? I’ve been here all morning.”

  “I need you to go to Father’s workshop. Ask him for some spare sailcloth or an old sail he doesn’t need.”

  “What for?”

  “Just do it. And get a hammer and some nails.”

  “Why can’t you ask him?”

  “I’m supposed to be at work, aren’t I? I don’t want any questions. Leave the hammer and nails in our bedroom and then meet me in the woods with the sail. Don’t tell a soul. We need to hurry, while Mother’s out.”

  I threw a stern look at him, then turned and ran back to the forest.

  By the time Andreas caught up with me, I had lifted Scream from the split in the rocks and found a place for it behind the birches by the Nielsens’ farm. I crouched behind the trunks, snatching glimpses out to the path. When Andreas appeared, I came rushing out, ambushing him unawares.

  “What are you doing?” he said, jumping away from me and dropping the sail he was carrying.

  “Sorry,” I whispered. “No one can see us, and we must work quickly.”

  “Lord, Johanne,” he said, turning pale. “Have you killed someone?”

  “Don’t be a half-wit,” I said. “I’ll kill you if you breathe a word about this.”

  “All right, all right,” he said. “So what are we doing?”

  “Come with me.”

  I led him off the path and through the thick of the trees.

  “Lay the sail down,” I said, helping him spread it out.

  “It’s not a proper sail,” Andreas said, “just what he had left over. I told him I was making a raft.”

  “Very good,” I said. “Now, we need to wrap this painting in it.”

  I lifted Scream from behind the bushes and laid it down on top of the sail.

  “Almighty God!” Andreas said, covering his mouth. “It’s the crazy man, isn’t it?”

  “It’s Munch’s painting, yes,” I said, underplaying the shock of the screaming skeletal figure and the unsettling landscape, “but I need to hide it.”

  “Why? Where did you get it?”

  “Don’t ask any questions. Just help me wrap it up.”

  We eased Scream into the tightly woven hemp sailcloth, folding the cloth neatly along the edges.

  “We’ll take it back to the hut,” I said, stretching my arms around it and holding it to my hip. “If anyone asks, we tell them it’s a sail, for Father. You’d believe that, wouldn’t you?”

  “I suppose so,” he said.

  Andreas walked beside me and shielded as much of the folded sailcloth as he could as I carried the painting back to our hut.

  “Good, she’s still out,” I said when we got back. “Let’s get it into our room.”

  We laid the painting down on the bottom bunk.

  “Now what?” Andreas said. “It’s not exactly hidden there, is it?”


  “We’re going to fix this floor,” I said. “Did you get the hammer and nails?”

  Andreas reached up onto the top bunk, pulled down the tools, and laid them out on the floor.

  “Right,” I said, lifting the mat and tossing it aside. “Help me lift these loose boards.”

  It was heavy, dirty work. The floorboards were old and thick, and we had to lift one at a time and stack them on a small oblong of floor by our beds. Below them was a shallow pit, dusty and soiled by rats and vermin.

  “That’s five,” Andreas said when we approached the opposite wall. “There’s only one more. Do we have enough room yet?”

  I ran my hand between the joists.

  “Maybe if we turn it around this way,” I said, waving my arm up and down the wall end.

  We lifted the painting from the bed and gently lowered it into the floor. The sailcloth gathered and ruffled as we squeezed it under the crossing joist. I bent over and pulled it tight as Andreas carefully slid the corners of Scream into place.

  “There! It’s in!” he said. Then he looked at me with a puzzled expression. “What’s the matter?” he said.

  I was crying again. Streaks of blue rushed down my face.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s just so sad. It doesn’t want to be covered up like this. I can tell. It’s like I’m burying something that’s not dead.”

  “Johanne, it’s a painting,” Andreas said. “A crazy, stupid painting. Come on now, we need to put all this back.”

  One by one we lifted the boards and lowered them into place, this time hammering them with new nails to hold them securely in position. We were just about to pick up the last one when our mother returned. She came flying into the house and started screeching when she saw it was occupied.

  “What’s going on here?” she said, staring at the two of us kneeling on the floor.

  “We’re fixing the floorboards,” I said. “They were loose, and we kept tripping on them.”

  “Why aren’t you at the Ihlens’?” she said.

  “I’m out on an errand for Fru Ihlen.”

  She glowered. “Well, you’d better get on with it then, instead of wasting the woman’s precious time on your bedroom floor. Honestly, Johanne.”

  “It’s my fault. I asked her to help me,” Andreas said, rescuing me. “I can manage the last one on my own. You should be getting back to work.”

  “But while you’re here,” Mother said, her mouth tightening as though her lips were being sewn together, “you might want to pick some fruit for the Heyerdahls. Didn’t I tell you they were leaving this week?”

  “Yes, Mother,” I said, walking past her. “Hammer that board hard into the joist, Andreas, nice and tight. It won’t be bothering us anymore.”

  “Did you hear me, Johanne? The cherries for Herr Heyerdahl?”

  “I’ll be back tomorrow. I’ll do it then.”

  If I had not been required by the Ihlens, Mother would have beaten me for my insolence. Instead, she snarled and gave me a dig between my shoulders as I left.

  “Clean up all this mess, Andreas,” she said. “Look at the dust.”

  I left Andreas to finish the job under the suspicious eye of my mother. My brother and I rarely chose to spend time together, and I knew she would question our cooperation, but I imagined she would only be interested in the floorboards with a view to cleaning them, not to finding out what lay below them.

  • • •

  On Saturday Fru Ihlen allowed me to go home early. I returned to Åsgårdstrand, and true to my word, I picked cherries for the Heyerdahls. A dance was to be held at the Grand Hotel in the evening. It was the last one of the season, but I would not be going, not without Tullik. Herr Heyerdahl was talking about it as he invited me into my own home.

  “How delightful! Cherries! Christine, come see what Johanne’s brought. Come in, Johanne,” he said. “Christine’s just looking for a dress in the trunk. There’s a dance tonight, at the Grand. Are you going?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” I said, stepping through the deluge that had been created by the Heyerdahls: an avalanche of canvases, easels, palettes, spots of paint, rags, and dust sheets. Mother would relish cleaning up the debris after they had gone.

  “Oh, but it’s the last of the season,” Herr Heyerdahl said.

  “I’ll put the cherries on the bench here,” I said, ignoring him. “They’ll be good for a day or two, but no longer.”

  “Then we’ll eat them tonight, before the dance,” he said. “Are you quite sure you won’t come?”

  “Not without Tullik.” The words were out with my breath, and I couldn’t pull them back in again.

  “Miss Ihlen? Yes, Edvard said she’d disappeared. Is she all right?”

  “They won’t let her see him,” I said, no longer caring who knew what, or where my talk might lead.

  “You must tell her to forget him,” he said.

  “That’s impossible. She cannot be Tullik without him.”

  “Edvard’s not a man for love, Johanne. Not with a woman. He loves his art. He is married to his art.”

  “She knows that.”

  “He’s so intensely wrapped up in it. It engulfs him, takes up his whole soul.”

  “I think she knows that too,” I said with a heavy sadness.

  “Then she will know that the only way to truly love him is to let him go. You know he’s planning a trip to Germany? He’ll be leaving soon, with all the rest of us. We’ll leave you in peace to get on with your lives again.”

  I wondered how there could ever be any peace for Tullik, or how she would be able to get on with her life, now that it seemed to be over.

  “When will he go?” I said.

  “I don’t know. Soon. He received an invitation from an admirer of his who wants him to exhibit in Berlin. He’s lucky to get the opportunity—can’t sell a sketch in Kristiania.”

  “He doesn’t like to sell them. Tullik said he calls them his children.”

  Herr Heyerdahl laughed raucously, clutching the side of his substantial paunch.

  “I suppose they are,” he said, looking through the window at his own children playing outside. “Poor Edvard.”

  “I must be going,” I said, feeling somehow offended. “Mother needs my help.”

  “I expect you’ll all be glad to get back into your own house next week,” he said.

  I masked my disagreement with a smile and left him, relieved that the cherries had not sparked the inspiration that my mother so desperately craved. Relieved there would be no more paintings of me, no picture portraits to freeze me in time.

  • • •

  In the evening, after dinner, when the plates were cleared and the leftovers stored, I felt my father’s hand come to rest on my shoulder.

  “I hear there’s a dance tonight, Johanne,” he whispered. “Last one of the season. Why don’t you go? Enjoy yourself.”

  I was empty, not in the mood for dancing.

  “I don’t need to go, Father,” I said.

  “Who in the world ever needs to go to a dance?” he said. “You go because you want to. Don’t you want to get out of here?” He gave me a wink and tipped his head toward Mother, who was dozing in a chair by the stove.

  “I suppose I could do with some air,” I said.

  “Then off you go, dear.” He stood back and raised his arm toward the door as if I didn’t know where to find it.

  I untied my pinafore and draped it over the chair.

  “Thank you, Father,” I said, kissing him on the cheek before I left.

  Across the road, Thomas was sitting on an upturned fishing boat, waiting for me. I didn’t know how long he had been there. He held a striped terra-cotta stone in his hands and rubbed at its surface with his thumbs. He knew I liked those stones, the ones that were hard to find.

&nbs
p; “There’s a dance tonight,” he said, smiling. “Remember? I was hoping you’d come.”

  He stood up and walked toward me, reaching out his arms.

  “I don’t feel like dancing tonight,” I said, brushing him away. “Not without Tullik.”

  “It would do you good to be without her,” he said. “Isn’t it enough to be with me?”

  His question brought a lump to my throat that words could not shift.

  “Isn’t it?” he said, his eyes dimming.

  And then there was Tullik in my head and her arms around me and her hair like fire and her voice as seductive as roses. Red and ruby, reeling and flowing and breathing with life. The exhilaration of scarlet, the indulgence of deep burgundy. The freedom that color brought. And then Thomas again, before me. Was it enough? Was he enough? Would he take my colors away?

  “You don’t have to answer,” he said. “I can’t give you what Munch gives you, or Miss Ihlen, or any of those Kristiania guests. I’m just a fisherman.”

  He turned away from me and cast the rock out to the beach, throwing it so hard and so far that I didn’t hear it land. Then he sniffed and shook his head and began to walk away.

  “Thomas, please,” I said. “I…” The sentence stopped, losing conviction on its way out. I wanted him to come back, but on what terms? I couldn’t say. A burst of magenta chased after him. Swirls of scarlet spun about his chest and surrounded him in a halo of reddish light. But he held his hand up, without looking back, and at once it all faded to gray. His big, strong hand that used to hold me. Now it was a wall, a stop sign. It told me not to follow, but to turn around.

  To leave.

  • • •

  The summer days were dwindling, and the moon had grown impatient. It paraded out early, claiming ownership of the sky the second the sun had faded. In its yellow glare, I crossed the grassy mounds and found myself drawn, as always, to the sea.

  I followed the stones, picking my way over them without looking down. The tide rushed in and out with a rhythmic whoosh, making the mix of seaweed and salt bloom and then fade in the cool night air. I matched my breathing to the flow of the waves, inhaling and exhaling with the water. Some nights I thought I could walk forever along the Åsgårdstrand shoreline. I could follow the coast through Borre and Horten and keep walking up to Holmestrand. If I stayed by the shore I would curve around to Svelvik and even get to Drammen. Eventually I would reach Kristiania. With the waves lapping gently by my side, I was sure I could walk all the way to Sweden and never tire.