The Girl Between

by Lisa Strømme

  “I beg your pardon,” he said when he arrived at the foot of the stairs. “Your bedroom beats a ship’s bunk by far. That’s the most comfortable bed I have slept in for many months. I slept like a baby.”

  This was such an impressive compliment that when Fru Berg and I overheard him say it from the kitchen door, she prodded me in the back.

  “Listen to that!” she whispered. “I wonder if it’s more comfortable than the palace! That’s my sheets, that is. It’s my sheets that did it,” she said. “My perfectly laundered bed linen.”

  The breakfast ran like clockwork. Even I was impressed with my own serving and waiting skills. I could never have imagined when I first arrived at the Ihlens’ at the beginning of the summer that by the time the season was over I would be serving a royal prince. But I swallowed back my sneezes and managed to conceal my fever as I moved around the table delivering pots of coffee and baskets of eggs in the right place and at the right time.

  Fru Ihlen was kind. She graciously whispered, “Thank you, Johanne,” every time I put down a bowl or replenished a cup. I sensed that her fear for Tullik had subsided as she watched her beautiful daughter chatter politely to the Prince of Sweden with such effortless ease that it could have been the very activity she had been born to do.

  Still no one knew that Munch was waiting.

  When the breakfast was over and I was clearing the table, I noticed a crowd had gathered again outside the house to give the prince a farewell fanfare. Word must have spread because there was at least double, perhaps even triple the amount of people than there had been the day before. The morning sun had burned away the fog and cast a copper tone over the garden, where the grass was twinkling with dew and the rosehip hedge was glowing a luscious green. When the carriage arrived, a wave of excitement passed through the crowd. I could hear them exclaiming with “oohs” and “aahs,” just like Fru Berg, and chattering to one another in eager anticipation.

  The Ihlens bade the prince farewell. He handed the admiral a small box containing a gold tiepin as a gift of thanks, over which they all fawned, Caroline more than any of the others. They followed Prince Carl out to the gate. Fru Berg, Ragna, and I took up our positions on the front porch by the table and chairs and the hoisted flag. The prince waved, and the townsfolk cheered. I saw Isabel and her mother waving white handkerchiefs. A little girl in a yellow dress ran out to the carriage and handed the prince a small bunch of roses. He accepted them obligingly and patted her softly on the head. She leaped back to her mother, who pressed her against her skirts with a gleam of pride.

  The carriage pulled away, and as the prince disappeared down Kirkebakken, the crowd rushed in. A group of children ran to the fence. A black dog skittered after them, barking and wagging its tail, thinking everyone was there to play with him. When the royal carriage was finally out of sight, a voice in the crowd piped up and shouted, “Do you have any souvenirs for us, Fru Ihlen? Something to remember the prince by?”

  Julie looked at the admiral and raised her hands questioningly.

  “I know!” Caroline said to the crowd. “Wait here!”

  She disappeared inside the house and was gone for a few minutes. She returned with her hand outstretched, her index finger and thumb squeezed together. She appeared to be holding nothing at all.

  “What is it?” a woman shouted.

  “I can’t see anything!” said another.

  Caroline was grinning mischievously.

  “Here are three hairs from the prince’s pillow,” she said. “Who wants three hairs from the prince’s pillow?”

  Hands shot up: five, ten, fifteen—too many to count.

  “Very well,” Caroline said. “I shall have to auction them to the highest bidder. Who will give me two kroner? Good. Yes. Two and a half? Three?”

  The prince’s hairs were sold in minutes. Tullik walked away, shaking her head.

  “It’s gone completely to her head,” she said to me.

  “Come, girls,” Fru Ihlen said. “Johanne brought raspberries this morning. Let’s go to the back and eat them.”

  Caroline and Tullik followed their mother to the back of the house, while the admiral went to his office to fetch his robe and cigar box.

  As the crowds dispersed, I caught a glimpse of a figure by the linden tree. Too shy to come near while people still skirted the house, he busily sketched everything he saw.

  “I’ll take a coffee out here on the veranda, Johanne,” the admiral said when he returned.

  “Yes, sir,” I said and hurried to the kitchen.

  I waited for a fresh pot of coffee to brew and laid a tray exactly as the admiral liked it, with a cup and a saucer, a silver teaspoon, a small bowl of sugar, and a folded napkin.

  By the time I took it out to him, the townsfolk had disappeared, and a calm had descended over Solbakken. Nils Ihlen was admiring his new tiepin and smiling to himself at the success of the prince’s visit. He took a fat cigar from his tin and clipped the end of it with his silver cigar cutter, then popped it in his mouth and lit it, sucking hard before he exhaled.

  “What a fine morning,” he said, settling into his chair as I put the tray down on the table beside him. “Thank you, Johanne. That will be all.”

  As I turned to go back into the house, I heard the latch click on the gate, and behind me Admiral Ihlen jumped to his feet. When I looked across the garden, I saw Munch, clutching his sketchbook under his arm. He removed his hat and walked up the path, offering his hand to the admiral, as vulnerable as a mouse. Admiral Ihlen struggled to shout and lower his voice at the same time.

  “You?” he said, grabbing Munch’s arm and leading him back to the gate. “You have the audacity to come here?”

  “I understand you are angry, sir,” Munch said.

  “What do you want?” the admiral said. “What is it about this family? About my daughters in particular? Why are you so fixed on destroying their reputation? They are not like you. They are innocent, honorable young women.”

  “You are right, sir. I came only to say good-bye.”

  The front door was open, and I heard footsteps in the hall.

  “Johanne, could you bring us some coffee?”

  It was Tullik.

  I raced up the front steps and ran into the house, closing the door firmly behind me.

  “What? What is it?” Tullik said, seeing through the yellow sickness in my face and finding the blushing deceit beneath it.

  “Nothing,” I lied. “Your father wishes to be alone, that’s all.” I stepped back and pressed my hand against the door.

  “Johanne,” she said. “What are you hiding?”

  “Nothing.”

  I was trying so hard to block her passage that I didn’t think to guard the dining room. She hurried to the window, then gasped and let out a little yelp.

  “He’s here!” she said. “He has come to propose! Oh, Johanne, this is it! Look at him. Is he not honorable to come? To do the right thing by my family and ask my father’s permission like this? Wait…what is my father doing? He has him by the arm. Johanne? Move. Move!” she cried, fleeing from the dining room and peeling my hand from the door. “I must go to him.”

  “No, Tullik,” I said. “It’s not wise to interrupt them.”

  With a demented strength, she shoved me aside. Her hands sank to the door handle, and she flung the front door open with such force that it smashed against the wall, denting the wood.

  “Edvard!” she shouted.

  Munch was already in the road.

  “Where are you going? Edvard!”

  She flew out after him, but the admiral was too quick for her. He stepped into her path and took her arm.

  “No, Tullik,” he said, throwing the butt of his cigar to the ground.

  “Edvard!” Tullik pleaded.

  Munch turned at the gate and looked at her. He raised
his hand to his head and politely dipped his hat.

  “Edvard!”

  “Inside, Tullik,” the admiral said, wrestling with her. “Johanne, help me get her inside, would you?”

  I took her other arm, but she jerked away from me, writhing and twisting her neck back to look for Munch.

  “You sent him away!” she said. “How could you?”

  “Get inside, Tullik,” the admiral said. “There doesn’t need to be a fuss.”

  “But Edvard—you sent him away! He asked for my hand, didn’t he? But you refused him. You would deny my happiness, just like that!”

  “That’s not what happened, Tullik. Come on, dear, inside.”

  We jostled the wriggling Tullik to the door, where the admiral held her firmly and pushed her inside.

  Before he closed the door, I saw Munch across the road. He lifted a cigarette to his mouth and lit it before he finally turned his head and walked away.

  20

  SHADOW

  Colour itself is shade…and just as it has an affinity with shadow, so too will it merge with it as soon as the right conditions are given.

  —THEORY OF COLOURS, JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

  The door slammed shut. A blackness spread. My brow burned. Lungs clogged. Thick, chewy air.

  “Let him go,” Admiral Ihlen said. “Won’t you just let the idea of it go, Tullik?”

  “But we were to be married!” Tullik said.

  “He did not mention that, I swear,” the admiral said. “He told me he was leaving, for Germany.”

  “You’re lying!”

  “It’s the truth. He is leaving the country.”

  Tullik wrestled against her father’s grasp and tried to pull away.

  “Let me go!” she shrieked. “I must go to him. It’s not too late.”

  “No, you mustn’t,” Admiral Ihlen said. “You must forget all about that painter.”

  “I love him!”

  “Tullik, don’t be silly now,” the admiral said, locking the front door. “Why do you have these silly notions of marriage? You can’t marry him, dear. What kind of life would that be?”

  Tullik did not reply in words but let out a sickening cry and collapsed to the floor grasping her stomach, then her chest, as though she was trying to escape from her clothes, her skin, her flesh, herself. She turned pale, then pure white as the blood drained from her face. With a gurgling eruption, there was a piercing scream.

  It eroded her. Ate her up from the inside. Mouth stretched. Lips taut. Lamenting. Soul ripped clean from her being. Tearing. Snagging on memories on its way out. Gasping and brutal. Her heart was dissected before me. Fragmenting. Splintering. The sound: primal. A force of nature. Unstoppable. Unyielding. Face contorted. Chest concave. Pain searing across her eyes.

  It came from the back of her heart. The power of the blast was as shocking to Tullik as it was to everyone else. I rushed to her side and grabbed her arm, but she tossed me away. The admiral was on his knees trying to placate her. Julie and Caroline came running, Fru Berg and Ragna at their heels.

  Tullik’s grief was stunning. Petrifying. The innate knowing that this life would have to be played out without him. All the woven strings that had bound them together split and frayed as her soul was stolen from her. Her power source—life source—dimmed, and the shine blotted out, leaving her blank, bereft. The pain in her eyes, the agony that clamped tears. The dry, arid, empty cry of loss.

  Julie and Caroline gripped her arms and waist as her body sank beneath her. Frightened, they looked at each other, not knowing what to say or do while Tullik screamed on. Throat rasping. Convulsing. Tiny, whimpering pleas repeating his name: Edvard, Edvard, Edvard. The brutality of it repulsed me. Like an animal at the slaughter. She raged forward, charging at some imaginary evil, the beast that had stolen her soul. Then howling. Clawing at the air. Vicious revenge.

  The admiral picked her up, but she thrust her arms out against him. Scraping and slashing. Scratching his face as the bloodcurdling scream raged on. He used all his strength to press her arms into submission, but she fought back. Demonic and demented. Lashing out at him, tearing at her own hair. Seeking escape from herself.

  I thought it would never end. She shook and writhed with wretched desperation. All the fire of her soul blazed livid as the scream that possessed her, tortured her, erupted into being. Waves of sound. Piercing and sick. Jagged blades and serrated edges. Savage. Ferocious. Barbarous and insane.

  When it finally began to recede, Tullik slumped to her knees, devoid of energy. Wasted, she crouched on the floor. Hands and knees. High-pitched cries continued to rip through her like the aftershock of an earthquake. Then his name again in a panicked race: Edvard, Edvard, Edvard. Crazed and slurring. Saliva building in the corners of her mouth. Mucus dripping from her nose. Cheeks flushed red. Sweat beading at her brow.

  Julie was shouting at me. Terror in her eyes. I could see her face and her mouth changing shape but could not hear what she was saying. Then the admiral was holding my arms. He ordered me to fetch the doctor. Horten. Horten. Doctor in Horten. Caroline was crying. Fru Berg blubbering. And Ragna staring. Staring. Black eyes staring.

  Horten. Horten. Doctor in Horten. “Go, Johanne. Go now!”

  I staggered to my feet and threw myself at the door. In horror, I fled.

  I ran so fast I couldn’t feel my legs. Running without purpose. Just running. My chest tight. My sight blurred. And still there was the terrible deafening screech of Tullik’s cries in my ears, in my head. The taste of blood in my mouth. The taste of screaming, of Tullik’s Scream.

  I stopped before the rectory and bent over, stooped, shaking. Threw my hands to my knees. Nausea pulsating in my stomach, in my blood. My skin perspiring but shivering with a feverish chill. I had to find Isabel. Horten. Horten. Doctor in Horten. I lifted my head and wiped my brow with my sleeve. Sweat trickled down the backs of my knees. The sound still swirled in my head, on and on like the drone of bees.

  The sun lit the front of the rectory. It glinted white, too harsh and blinding to look at. I turned my head and searched the distance. With the sun behind me, I caught sight of Munch walking down the path to the forest. He followed the curve of the track, then cut across the field and headed toward the shore. He wasn’t smoking now. Just walking. Hands in pockets. Sketchbook under his arm. Forcing one foot out in front of the other. One at a time. Purposeful. He stopped at the edge of the field where the land dipped down to greet the water. Staring out to sea, he stood. Solitary. Haunted. Alone.

  I cleared my throat and sprang forward, racing to the back of the rectory and into the dairy without a thought for the customers milling at the counter or the little girl beside them holding a basket of eggs.

  From behind the cash register, Isabel was staring at me fearfully, as though a wild animal had come crashing in.

  “Johanne?” she said.

  “Horten!” I shouted. “Horten! Doctor in Horten!”

  “You want Doctor Karlsen, dear?” Isabel’s mother said, coming around to steady me. “Get her into the wagon, Isabel,” she said as the customers covered their mouths and pinned themselves to the walls.

  They propped me in the back of the milk wagon, where Isabel sat beside me holding my arm. I tried to explain what had happened but found myself unable to say anything but Scream, Scream, Tullik’s scream.

  “I don’t understand, dear,” Isabel’s mother said. “Has Miss Tullik’s influenza worsened? Are we fetching Doctor Karlsen for Tullik Ihlen?”

  I nodded my head as the cart pulled away, then slumped back against the side. Isabel backed away from me and leaned across to her mother, who cracked the whip hard, as if we were being chased by an army.

  “Mother, I think Johanne is sick,” she said. “We should get the doctor to see her too.”

  I did not hear Fru Ellefsen answer. I was slipping in and
out of a delirium. Tullik’s sickening cries circled my head. The movement of the wagon shook my bones, and I shivered with cold. By the time we reached Horten, my fever had pulled me under, into a world of terrifying hallucination. Screams, bloodred skies, whirlpools, and hollow, empty eyes.

  • • •

  I woke up in the bottom bunk at the fishermen’s hut. Two days had passed. Father was sitting at the end of the bed reading a newspaper, leaning forward to catch the weak light from the window. I guessed it was late afternoon. The gulls squawked in the distance.

  I looked at Father for a moment, waiting for a skeletal figure to pounce at me from over his shoulder, mouth gaping, throat rasping, pulling on a sickness deep inside that refused to come out. I listened for the wailing that would rise to hysterical screeching and then recede back to a long, mournful moan. I studied his face, afraid it would turn crimson and his eyes would flare scarlet until his entire head started boiling and bubbling like molten lava, until his features had melted away and he was nothing but a volcanic fire. Such were the horrors of my dreams.

  When he turned to find me awake, he threw the newspaper to the floor and moved up the bed, gently gathering my hands into his.

  “There you are, my dear girl,” he said. “You gave us all a terrible fright. I’ll fetch your mother. Get you some tea.”

  “No, Father,” I said. “Stay here with me a while.”

  I drifted away from the nightmares slowly, checking Father’s pockets for bony fingers as he came nearer and searching my bedclothes for streaks of blood, stains left over from the violent flow of red-and-orange fire. I sniffed the air for the suffocating mix of thick oil paint and turpentine, the fumes that had laced my delusions. But the air was clear, and my father was perfectly normal. The only screams were the calls of the seagulls.

  I glanced down at the floor.

  “Do you hear anything, Father?” I said, lifting my head from the pillow.

  “No, dear,” he said, craning his neck. “Just the gulls at the pier.”