The Girl Between

by Lisa Strømme

  From time to time I had to remind myself to stop before I went too far. The first of these self-notifications came at the edge of the forest, where the coast rounded inward and made a horseshoe shape, which was lined in trees. My boots sank gently into the sand and pebbles, and although it was dark, I still knew my way.

  I looked back and saw the lights of Åsgårdstrand twinkling behind me: the lanterns strung along the back of the Grand Hotel and the light from the windows where the guests would be dancing and where Kristian and his friends would be charging their fiddles. I remembered how Thomas had spun me until I was dizzy when we danced on the night I first saw Tullik. It seemed like years ago now.

  A small stone jetty stretched out into the fjord at the far end of the horseshoe. An invisible hand moved around my shoulders and directed me to it. Without question, I followed the force. It was only when I was halfway out that I saw Munch. He was sitting at the end of the jetty, facing toward Borre with his knees up. I did not need to see his face to know it was him.

  When I was close enough, I sat down beside him without saying a word. He knew I was there. He knew it was me. It was just as it had been before, when I was younger, sitting with him, although being apart. The moonlight caught the wave of his hair tossing about his face in the breeze. He looked longingly toward Borre with a yearning so palpable it pierced my chest.

  We sat there consumed by nature: the water that sloshed around us, the wind that picked at our hair and clothes, the great pine trees whose branches reached out to us but could not bridge the divide. Time passed unchecked. He was less of a mystery in the silence, and I began to understand him, the way a bud understands how to ripen. In the arms of the atmosphere we were not separate individuals but two elements of nature, conversing through feelings that required no words. His sadness and restlessness coursed between us like colors squeezed from a tube. I can’t help you, Munch, I thought, beginning to sense that no one, not even Tullik, ever could.

  It was cold, and the stone pier was starting to numb my legs.

  “I’m leaving,” he said, breaking our silence. “I’m going back to Germany to exhibit.”

  “When will you go?”

  “Soon. Maybe next week.”

  “Will you tell her?”

  He dipped his chin and ran a hand through his hair. “I will say good-bye.”

  A sharp breeze froze my neck, and I pulled my shawl tight.

  “What do you think is best, Johanne? The dream of happiness or the dream of imagined happiness? I have my art and capacity for nothing else. And then there’s my disposition, this sickness I’ve inherited from my parents—the physical weakness of my mother and the nervousness and anxiety of my father. Would Tullik really be able to cope with that? Because I cannot get rid of it. If I were to be rid of my sickness, then what would happen to my art? And my sister Inger says that work is the best thing for us. It gives us strength. I’ve always put my work before everything—a woman would only stand in the way, wouldn’t she? And could I live among them? They read their silly romance novels and gossip and go to birthday parties. Don’t they ever dare to be alone? The women go parading arm in arm down Karl Johan, the men have their clubs. They are always so busy. But busy with what? What will they have to show for it all when their time comes? For we all know that when we go on through the valley of death, we must wander alone. We must wander alone in the dark if we don’t have the light with us. So we should follow those who are the light, those who bring the light. But what do we do? We persecute them. People don’t see the light that is there; they see only darkness.”

  I could not respond to his cascading thoughts, but I could see that, for him, loving another would always be secondary to his work. His life would be his art.

  “I came close to death several times as a child,” he continued, “so close I felt his cold fingers about my shoulders and the shudder that prickled down in my bones. There were times I thought I would not recover and times I did not even want to. But then, when I was well, I understood that death would call again, and that I would have to face him one day and have something to show for the life he allowed me to lead.”

  “And that is your art,” I said.

  “Precisely.”

  The wind picked up again and whipped at his body as though he and the breeze were shaking hands. My legs were bitterly cold, and I stood to bring them back to life.

  “I should be getting back,” I said. “It’s late.”

  “I will go with you,” he said, turning.

  “No. There’s no need. I know the way.”

  “I know it too,” he said. “We all know the way back.” His eyes were dark and his voice as weak as the chirp of a thrush. “It’s the way forward that is less certain.”

  I left him sitting on the jetty and returned home chilled, my nose and cheeks red with cold. Mother was sleeping, and Father murmured something incoherent from his bed when he heard the door. I whispered a lie: I’d been to the dance, yes. I’d enjoyed myself, yes. I sneaked into the bedroom where Andreas was sound asleep. The floorboards no longer creaked. I walked over them as I undressed, feeling the smooth, old planks under my feet. When I lay down in my bed, I closed my eyes and prayed that sleep would come quickly. But all I could hear were the haunting cries of the Scream howling at me from beneath the bedroom floor.

  17

  BLACK

  In darkness we can, by an effort of imagination, call up the brightest images.

  —THEORY OF COLOURS, JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

  The storm began on Monday evening after dinner. At first we didn’t think it would ever break. The air was alive with tension, flickering with lightning and rumbling periodically like chronic indigestion. Fru Berg was rushing about the house carrying baskets of linen, unable to decide what to do with them.

  “There’s a badness brewing,” she said, passing me on the stairs as I went up to check on Tullik. “You can feel it scheming. It’s conspiring against us. God is angry.” I leaned back against the railings where Henriette was circling and sucked my breath in to make way for Fru Berg. She shoved Henriette with her foot. “Out of my way, cat,” she said, tramping off to the kitchen in her own puffed-up bubble of fear.

  Tullik had been sleeping all afternoon. After her brief moment of lucidity at the sight of Scream, she had sunk again into her darkness, her tangled world of panic and confusion. She had withdrawn so fiercely from the ritual of the Ihlens’ daily lives that I feared it would not be long before her parents yielded to the call of Gaustad.

  No one was more concerned than me. Watching Tullik sink into this dreary existence, this half-life, with her torturous wailing by night and her lethargic drowsing by day, was like watching her wade through clay. For one who had been so vital, she had become her own shadow, dark and indistinct like the specter that loomed over Laura Munch in the painting. Like Laura, Tullik could not escape it.

  The air was stuffy when I entered the room. I opened the window to the growling skies. Small snakes’ tongues of lightning flashed from the slate-gray clouds, chased by the menacing snarl of thunder.

  “What’s that?” Tullik said from her semiconscious daze.

  “A storm’s coming,” I said. “Fru Berg’s terrified. She thinks God is angry. But I think it’ll be good to clear the air. Won’t you come down and eat some supper?” I said, spying the bread I had brought up earlier curling and drying on the tray.

  “I’m not hungry,” she said.

  “Then what can I get you?” I gathered up her hand in mine.

  “Open the wardrobe,” she whispered. “Bring him to me, Johanne.”

  “What about—”

  “Bring him,” she said, climbing out of bed.

  I checked the upper landing to make sure we were alone, then silently closed the bedroom door. At the wardrobe I carefully unpinned the false back: the dark sheet that covered the paintings. I
dug my fingers into the drawing pins and wrenched them out until the fabric gave and a rush of paintings flopped toward me through Tullik’s clothes. I lifted them out one by one and held them up to her like dresses.

  “He’s here,” I said. “Edvard’s here, in every one.”

  Her eyes popped open like two bright moons in the dusky room as I held up first Mermaid, then the heartbreakingly poignant painting of the encounter of the man and woman on the beach. Tullik made me put them on the floor. She began to dance around them, as though bewitched by the storm’s dark energy. As the mermaid she was enchanting, emerging from the indigo water by the light of the moon that shone from a towering column and rippled across the water. She was moving like a mermaid, kicking up her legs like a tail fanning the waves.

  I looked at her glorious hair in the painting, hanging forward over one shoulder, pouring into the water, becoming the pools around her. It was pushed back over the other shoulder, exposing her breasts, her hips, and her thighs, exactly as it had been on that day when she felt so daring, when she was so full of fire and reckless abandon.

  I showed her The Voice, the moment when she stood before him that night in Fjugstad forest with her hands clasped behind her back and her face lifted toward him. I remembered how fascinated I had been by the passion of their kisses, how they had consumed each other like starving animals.

  “He loves me,” she said suddenly, still dancing around the pictures and waving her arms.

  “Of course he does.”

  “And I must go to him.” Her eyes were alive again. I sensed their danger but could not say I was sorry for it.

  • • •

  The Ihlens had long retired to bed before the first of the rains came. Perhaps they were even sleeping. I was standing in my nightgown at the window, curiously attracted to the storm, to the strength of nature and all its mightiness, which reminded us we were forever at its mercy. The heavens opened in a thunderous downpour, and the rain battered at the windows like an invasion. Hard droplets pelted the glass like stones while water accumulated in the gutters, sending small waterfalls spewing to the ground.

  The sky was ripped apart by thunder, and the house shuddered helplessly with every blast. I imagined Fru Berg quivering in her home, convinced that God must be furious with us all. A flash of lightning lit the church, and for a second I could see the beams of the gable end and the thick door bracing itself against the onslaught. I wondered how many times the church had weathered such storms in all its hundreds of years. It seemed unflinchingly resilient, as though it knew God would not attack the very place where He was worshipped.

  The blasts continued, rocking the foundations of Solbakken with violent determination. An unclosed window somewhere rattled in fear. A door downstairs slammed shut. Open and shut. Open and shut. Tullik’s hens were unsettled and clucked feverishly in their coop. To them the thunder must have seemed like a thousand Fru Bergs threatening to roast them for the admiral’s dinner. Each boom was more ferocious than the last as the storm built to a never-ending crescendo. I felt the sea levels rising. My inexplicable connection to the water sent uneasy ripples through my chest, and I retreated to my bed for some stability.

  Between the cracks and flashes, I listened for Tullik but could not hear her. There wasn’t a whimper from her room, but for some reason that did not console me. The silence was sinister, as though some other threat was lingering in the troubled air. I tried to put it out of my mind while the storm raged on, breathing deep and slow to subdue my agitation. An hour passed, maybe two, as I napped fitfully to the changing moods of the storm.

  An explosion of thunder woke me, and I sat up in bed, my heart beating fast, my neck and head pulsating with urgency. The rain was still lashing against the windows. Its impatience dragged me from my bed, and I stood there in the middle of the room, confused, wondering why I was on my feet, cold and afraid. Then the frenzied pattering on the glass seemed to divide itself into two syllables, two repetitive syllables that said Tull-ik, Tull-ik, Tull-ik.

  I ran to her room.

  “Tullik,” I whispered. “Are you awake?”

  The room was in shadow. The window was still open, and rain was pooling on the windowsill and spilling down the wall.

  “Tullik!”

  I went over to her bed but couldn’t see her. Feeling blindly for her body in the dark, I stretched my hands out and patted them down on the bed, but the sheets sank below my fingers. I tore at the bedclothes, pulling them aside, ripping them off, and throwing them on the floor. I spun around, checking the floor, the chair by the window, and the bed again, but Tullik had vanished.

  I came back out into the hall and listened at the top of the stairs, hanging my head over the banister. Perhaps, unable to sleep, she had ventured down to the kitchen? My ears strained for a moment, filtering out the sound of the driving rain and the crashing thunder, but downstairs nothing stirred.

  “No!” I whispered. “No, Tullik. What have you done?”

  I rushed back to my room and dressed in a hurry, racing through my hooks and laces, missing the loops and buttonholes that held me in place. Grabbing my shawl and tying a scarf around my head, I slipped out and prepared myself to face the storm.

  The night was blacker than tar. I found the lantern in the shed, but it was of little use in the rain and only created more shadows ahead of me. The fallen rain made tides across the submerged ground. The road was a sea, the fields a swamp. By the time I reached the forest, my boots were already wet right through. Water was running down through the trees, and the leaves and branches provided no shelter. The lantern swung back and forth as I hurried along the path, a boggy sump of mud and mush.

  Another barrage of thunder broke above my head. It was so loud and angry that I cried out, jolting back and cowering behind a tree. The branches were arching under the weight of the rain, pointing at me with slippery black fingers. They brushed my face eerily as I passed and moaned as though they might snap in the howl of the wind. I remembered Tullik talking of trolls and huldrefolk, how she’d walked these woods at dusk and seen shapes and shadows, moving like ghosts among the trees. I had dismissed her fantasies then, but now I believed them. A troll or a tribe of huldrefolk would not have been out of place in this storm, and as the thunder and lightning tore at the trees, my head began to picture frightening images of ghosts and monsters lurking behind every branch.

  Even the soothing rush of the sea had disappeared, subsumed by the omnipresent flow of water. I lifted my ear toward the shore, but the waves had abandoned their rhythmic surge and were now churning angrily in all directions, crashing against rocks, clapping together with a loud smack, then rumbling in a threatening gurgle.

  I slipped and stumbled along the soggy pathway, pummeled by the vicious rain that showed no sign of abating. Water was running down my nose and cheeks, trickling into my open mouth and dripping from my chin. It was as though I was swimming in the sea. I shook my head and tried to blink away the rain, but every time I cleared my eyes a fresh onslaught would fill them.

  When I finally reached the Nielsens’ farm, I was exhausted. Flopping against the wall, I removed my headscarf and wiped the mud speckles from my face. My hair was soaking. I wrung it out tight like a rag and repinned it in the darkness, scraping the straggly wet strands into a knot at the back of my neck.

  In the middle of the stormy night, Åsgårdstrand was deserted. The streets were abandoned and left to the ghosts. Windows were dark and empty. I heard the sounds of gates swinging and clanging at the latch. Trees bent powerlessly over fences, hanging, as if in shame. Nygårdsgaten was a waterlogged cesspool flowing with twigs and stones and pulpy horse dung. I hopped through the filthy pools, sticking to the middle of the road to avoid the brimming cart tracks. I heard the Andersens’ baby crying as I passed our hut and thought about all the children who would be unable to sleep tonight, shaking and frightened, seeking refuge in their parents’
beds, consumed, as I was, by tales of trolls and huldrefolk who come in the night. And then I thought of Andreas and wondered if he could hear the cries of the Scream above the raucous bellow of thunder.

  At Munch’s house, the gate was already open, leaning pathetically against the house as though it had been wrenched from its hinges. The shutters were closed at the side window, and I couldn’t see in. I noticed that all his paintings were still outside, even in the beating rain. Perhaps he was glad of it? Perhaps he thought they needed rain just as much as the fruit and vegetables did? In the darkness, all I could see was the effervescent glow of Inger’s dress in the painting where she was sitting on the rocks at the beach.

  I hurried up the stairs at the back as the thunder crashed on in angry condemnation. I banged at the door with my fist and waited, but no one came. A candle in the neck of a wine bottle was flickering at the window behind a stream of raindrops that gave a liquid veneer to each pane.

  I returned to the bottom of the steps and patted my hand against the glass.

  “Tullik!” I shouted. “It’s Johanne! Let me in!”

  From the ground, the base of the window was at my shoulder. Standing on tiptoes I could just see into the house, but everything was obscured by the rain, and apart from the flickering candle, most of the hut was in darkness.

  “Tullik!” I continued. “Are you in there?”

  With no response, I started to panic. If Tullik was not here, then where could she be? I had to get in, or at least be able to look inside. I searched the garden for something to stand on and found a few large rocks, but my hands kept slipping on their wet surfaces, and none of them were sturdy enough to hold my weight. Then I saw the garden bench that Tullik and Munch had been sitting on the night I found her here, drinking with him. At the first heave the bench hardly moved, and I had to push it with my back and rock it with my knees until there was enough purchase to drag it to the window. The sodden grass churned beneath the legs of the bench and left two muddy lines in the earth. I managed to pull it up to the house and positioned it with its back toward the wall.