The Girl Between

by Lisa Strømme

  Tullik crawled around the fire on her hands and knees, unable to get up. Unable to look. Motes from the charred paintings floated up into the air. My eyes followed them, dry and stinging from the intensity of the fire. Up and up they floated, leading me to the back window on the far side of the house. There I saw Caroline, arms folded across her chest. A smug line of satisfaction danced at her mouth.

  When the paintings had gone, Ragna smacked her hands together, a macabre applause. Then she sneakily pulled something from her apron pocket.

  “No!” I screamed. “Not that. That’s mine!”

  She didn’t even look at me. Calmly, she slung the book into the flames. I watched its cover char and the name Goethe blacken on the spine before the hungry fire bit into it, darkening all the colors in its pages and devouring the secret drawings I had cherished for so long.

  “No!” I cried. “How could you?”

  “It’s just silly nonsense,” Fru Berg said. “Come on, Johanne, come away.”

  I ran to Tullik, who was whimpering on the ground, clasping the singed grass in her hands and moving, wounded, around the fire.

  “Get up, Tullik,” I said, throwing my arms around her waist and pulling her to her knees. “Hold on to me.” I placed my hands under her arms. “Come on. I’m taking you away from here.” She looked at me with misty eyes. I lifted her to her feet. “There’s nothing we can do.”

  We were both coughing from the sickening fumes, the choking blend of turpentine and smoke, our hearts wrenched from us, raw and burning. Part of us had burned with the paintings. I glanced back to see Ragna and Fru Berg poking at the blaze with fire irons, as though they were watching leaves burn. To them it was nothing more than a cleansing, part of the disinfecting and laundering process, the end-of-season sanitization. They had to get rid of the dirty paintings and remove every last trace of that vulgar man.

  Tullik and I staggered away, mere fragments of ourselves. I didn’t know where to go or what to do, but found myself heading to the sea. We walked along the shoreline, halting and shaking until we came to the jetty where I had sat in silence with Munch. Now I sat with Tullik in the same spot, voiceless, spiritless, and bewildered. Rounded over, with our legs dangling above the waves, I held her hand in mine but hardly felt it as my body was so numb.

  Ages passed before I found a sense of reality. A wave crashed against a rock, and as the spray tossed up, it spattered my face and told me that I was here, at the jetty, with Tullik, and that we were the survivors of some terrible catastrophe.

  “Are you all right?” I said, turning to her.

  She continued to stare at the water. Her eyes were cold and lifeless. A few strands of her hair blowing about her face in the wind were the only part of her that moved.

  I wrapped my arm around her shoulder. “Tullik, I need to know. Are you all right?”

  “I am sane, if that’s what you’re wondering,” she said, staring blankly at her feet.

  “I didn’t mean that.”

  I took her shoulders and turned her around to face me, searching her eyes for a spark, for the tiniest glimpse of the Tullik I once knew.

  “Did they really send you to Gaustad?” I said.

  She nodded. “They did, but it wasn’t for long. They knew I wasn’t mad, just broken, and the doctors didn’t want me there. Strangely, it was good to be alone. You can think so clearly when you’re locked away.”

  “Even if you’re forced to be there? Against your own will?”

  “As long as you don’t hammer at the door and beg for release. That’s the root of true pain, Johanne; far worse than idleness or imprisonment is the constant screaming, the pleading to be freed from an unavoidable, inescapable situation.” She straightened her dress as though preparing to stand up, but then she threw her arms around me, and we embraced. “My dearest Johanne,” she said. “You have been a true friend. We will stay friends, you and I. Forever.”

  “Forever.”

  “And now Edvard has gone to Germany,” she said, releasing me, “free to wander his path, to follow his art, as he must. What my father told me is true. He did not ask for my hand. I can accept that now. I know he must be free to paint. It is the only way for him. And now all his paintings are gone, and I shall have to accept that too.”

  “They’re not all gone,” I said. “There is one left.”

  She lifted her chin and looked at me with beautiful, hurt, sloping eyes.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Scream,” I said. “The one you hung on your wall.”

  “Mother ordered you to take it away, to burn it.”

  “And I did take it away. But I didn’t burn it. I hid it.”

  “Where is it?”

  “I hid it in my bedroom, under the floorboards of the old fishermen’s hut. It’s still there.”

  “Does anyone else know it’s there?”

  “Only my brother. But he’s sworn to secrecy—he won’t tell anyone.”

  “You hid the painting?” she said as a tiny smile lifted the corners of her lips.

  “I think the huts are still empty,” I said. “I can get it back for you!”

  “No,” she said. “Let’s leave it there. You keep it. It will never be safe with me. If they find it, they’ll burn it, and I won’t be able to hide it forever.”

  “But, Tullik, he painted it for—”

  “It’s too painful, Johanne. Looking at it will only take me back to that place, that loneliness, that terrible anxiety, and I don’t want to think of us as being apart. Edvard and I will always be together. We are together somewhere else, somewhere above this ocean and above this sky, but at the same time we are inside every part of it. There is no separation. He always said that, and I understand it now.”

  I looked up at the clouds and watched the yellow, blue, and gray puffs rush across the sky. I tried to see the light, as he would have done, to find the sun and see where it fell.

  “We are leaving Solbakken in the morning,” Tullik said, “so I will have to say good-bye to you now, Johanne. I should go back.”

  “Tullik,” I said as we stood. “My dear Tullik.”

  We embraced again.

  I wanted to restore her fire, to have the joy returned to her soul, to see her as she was before the summer, with all her vibrance and vitality overflowing in bright waves around her. But the leaves were falling from the trees now. It was the season for endings, and Tullik’s fire had gone out. She held me limply and stroked my cheek.

  “I will write,” she said, “when I get back to Kristiania.”

  “And I will be here,” I said, “waiting for you, until next summer.”

  “Send me your pictures,” she said as we wandered back to the forest.

  We stood with the stream flowing under the bridge beside us. Rusty maple leaves swirled in the water, gathering pace and spinning in russet and ocher circles toward the sea.

  I kissed her on the cheek. “Good-bye, my friend,” I said.

  She walked back to Borre, where Julie and Nils would be waiting. They would sail from Horten, and soon she would be slotted back into her place as a young Kristiania lady: beautiful and privileged, yet wonderfully untamed.

  I wandered to the edge of the forest beneath the vast, arching trees high above my head. The pathway was soft and cushioned with leaves. A dazzle of late-afternoon sun found its way through the branches and lit everything ahead of me in a stunning golden light. It cut amber lines through the shadows of the path and made the leaves around me gleam with a wondrous auburn sparkle.

  I did not go home directly, but first walked along to the pier, passing the fishermen’s huts where the Scream still lay. “Rest now,” I whispered to it as I crossed in front of the window. “She is with you. There is no separation.”

  The gulls crossed the sky, soaring, diving, and gliding in free fall. They cawed from
their perches on boat masts and fence posts, and I imagined they were hailing a queen returning from adventures in far-off lands: the queen of Åsgårdstrand.

  As the queen of Åsgårdstrand, I cut through Munch’s garden without shame or apology. It seemed barren without the paintings, and I found myself looking for them, seeing them in my head still standing in their positions: Jacob, the bathhouse attendant, in his chair; the pregnant lady with her basket of cherries; Inger on the beach; Laura with her shadow. They too had come to the end of a cycle and had moved on to new surroundings.

  The house was empty now, the doors locked. I placed my hand on the mustard wood. It was warm in the sunlight, and I rested there for a moment, listening to the sounds of the birds. Until next time, Munch, I will look for the light.

  And so I brought myself home to the house on the hill where the last of Mother’s late-flowering sweet peas greeted me at the fence. I brushed my fingertips through the light-pink froth and inhaled the unfathomable depths of their gentle, seductive fragrance. With my hand on the gate, I was about to return to the Painting. One more step and I would be the Strawberry Girl again: the child with the blue eyes and the messy cornfield hair. Uncomplicated and simple, I welcomed her back and took on the mantle like a comfortable old coat. I would return to her, for another year perhaps, or until the season changed.

  ÅSGÅRDSTRAND

  1947

  EPILOGUE

  DREAMS

  I walk calmly in my dreams which are my life—only like that can I live.

  —PRIVATE JOURNALS, EDVARD MUNCH

  I sit alone. The seats are hard and uncomfortable, designed not for comfort but for practicality. Inger is on the front row, squashed onto the fold-out chair, and the excesses of her plump body hang over the sides. She doesn’t complain. Her spotted scarf is tight at her throat. Too tight for a day like this. She alters the angle of her dark hat and reveals a bounce of pure-white hair. Twisting in her seat, she notices me and smiles.

  A male choir is gathered beside the studio, two lines of heads at different heights. On the back steps is the mayor, August Christensen, holding the key. He gleams like a bright new button, hopeful and optimistic, as many of us are. The house will be a museum, preserved in time, the way it was when he lived here. Our country’s greatest artist. My friend, Edvard Munch.

  He wouldn’t have liked all this pomp and ceremony. Recluse that he was. But he would have liked the park they have created out of his garden and the surrounding land, and he would be happy that Åsgårdstrand has the house now, not some private owner who could do with it what they would. He left everything else to Oslo. It’s been years, but I still can’t get used to calling it Oslo. It will always be Kristiania to me. Kristiania got his paintings, thousands of them. He kept them all with him at his house at Ekely. His children. Seems fitting that we should get this little cabin, the only house he ever called home. He hadn’t been here for years, though. It was more a home to the ants and the rats than to anyone else. They cleared out anthills from the rafters that were a ton in weight. Munch always let the vermin roam. Left the cupboards open for the rats. Didn’t like to think they’d go hungry while he was away.

  The band plays.

  Behind me sit the Gjermundsen sisters and one of Fru Book’s girls. She used to cook for him in the early days, after he bought the house. For now, I can’t remember her name. It’ll come back to me. There are others: models, cleaners, people who cared. We all knew him in our own way and at our own time. He wrote to us, sent us money when his paintings started selling. Even bought me a new pair of shoes one summer. He didn’t forget us. The little people of Åsgårdstrand.

  The choir is singing. The notes drift up and up and dance on the air. Lilac, purple, blue, blue, blue. Rising to pink. Swelling to red. Scar-let. Red. Crim-son. Red. Scar-let. Red. Crim-son. Red.

  In red I think of her.

  It is five years since she died, but she lives within me, in a dream that never ends. Dear Tullik.

  Even without the proposal, she married him. Even though they never spoke again, she married him. That summer in 1893. She was married to him all her life.

  When the admiral died, Julie and Tullik came to live at Solbakken permanently. Tullik suffered poor health but cared for Julie and her hens and seemed more content with her life in Borre than she ever could be in Kristiania. Fru Ihlen lived to be eighty-two. She was devoted to Tullik, and to animal rights, writing articles for Aftenposten and editing the organization’s magazine right up until her death. With Julie gone and Milly and Caroline married and away, I was the only one left to care for Tullik.

  She often became ill with fever. Eventually someone would come calling, a maid or a girl from the dairy. Thomas was always at sea, and I’d have to leave my boys with a neighbor to go off to nurse her. She always wanted me. Never a doctor. I’d sit by her side through the night, holding her hand, mopping her brow, calming her. I would be her maid again. When it was bad, I’d stay for several days at a time. I couldn’t leave her.

  Some mornings I would see him. Standing in the churchyard. Odd times when the streets were deserted, he would come. Even after many years, when he was over sixty years old, there was never any mistaking it was him: the strong jaw, the sad eyes. Untethered he came. Untethered he went. Like a boat without a sailor.

  I asked Tullik if she saw him too.

  “Occasionally, when I open the window at sunrise.”

  “Do you never want to call to him?”

  “Why would I do that?” she said. “He must be free to walk his path. It’s better if I don’t call. It can’t come from me, can it? You say it yourself, Johanne: you don’t say hello to him. You wait. It must come from him. You see him everywhere: in the forest, at the beach, on the lanes. He closes up for long periods at a time, but when he meets you he lets it all out. You say yourself that it comes flooding from him. That’s because you’ve never tried to capture him. Only he can decide when to stop and when to walk on.”

  I have often wondered if it gave him strength to know that Tullik had given him her faith, with no thought for anything in return. She seemed to emerge and reappear in his paintings over the years like a recurring dream. I always recognized her. It was Tullik, no matter what anyone else said. There was no denying his devotion. But Tullik could not have bound herself to a man like Munch. It would have destroyed them both. Instead, they fought on through space and time, somewhere else, as she always said. They were not together here. They did not live together or see each other, but they were tied with stronger strings than if they had been under the same roof for a lifetime, drinking coffee from the same cup.

  August Christensen clears his throat. He talks about freedom. Yes. The Germans are gone now. Norway is free. My boys risked life and limb in the Resistance, even though they were both in their forties by then, middle-aged men emboldened by patriotism. The freedom we did attain, peacefully, from Sweden in 1905 was proudly won and proudly defended. Strange when I think about it now. Munch’s patrons who had made his works so popular were German, but so too were the Nazis who stole our freedom. Hitler labeled Munch’s work degenerate art and made a mockery of it. Then the Nazis who took control of Norway tried to make a hero of him for their own gain and popularity. They wanted to make their own Honorary Board of Norwegian Artists. Munch wasn’t interested, and without his support, nothing ever came of it. He didn’t live to see our liberation. Inger was incensed that the Nazis turned his funeral into an event to promote their own propaganda. They took control of the proceedings, and she was pushed out, helpless. Despite her fearless protests, his coffin went up Karl Johan draped in swastikas in a procession of guns.

  We join the choir. We sing. We listen to the mayor.

  After, there is a lunch at the Victoria Hotel.

  I look at my hands, pockmarked, paint-flecked. I should have brought my gloves, but it’s too hot for them today. There is applause, then we all mov
e on. The heat intensifies as we climb the hill. Thomas is waiting for me at the Victoria. Up ahead I see Inger shaking his hand. He removes his cap and makes polite conversation. The king of Åsgårdstrand he is not, but a good man he is. He never got to Egypt, but he inherited his father’s boat and had adventures aplenty just by working hard to provide for us. Now the boys have a trawler of their own.

  Thomas never really understood my painting, but he got used to it and eventually realized it was not something I had to do, but rather something I was. It helped when I started selling. He only really saw the good of my art when he could equate it to food on the table or clothes on the boys. Simple things.

  Jens Thiis, the man I met in Munch’s garden all those years ago, was an art dealer. He went on to become the director of the National Gallery in Oslo. Shortly after Thomas and I were married, Jens sold one of my first paintings to a collector in Lillehammer, a simple landscape of the boats in the harbor with Bastøy and the fjord beyond. After that I sold more, and when the little fishermen’s huts came up for sale, it was my painting money that provided our deposit.

  Thomas couldn’t understand why it had to be that hut, precisely that one. But I was stubborn and wouldn’t back down. Upstairs, where the Andersens lived, is our kitchen and living room. Every day I sit in my chair and gaze out into the great blue forever that fills the window. The view may be the same, but nature is always changing. It presents the fjord to me in every imaginable color and texture. Light I cannot describe in words. Sunrises. Sunsets. Stunning. Intense. Through the seasons, within the seasons, no two days are ever really the same here in Åsgårdstrand. The water gives me such joy, such inspiration—still, after all these years.

  Downstairs are our bedrooms.

  At first I worried the boys would hear it, that they might cry in the night or have bad dreams. But the Scream is content. It has remained silent, and neither my children nor my grandchildren have ever mentioned it. I still talk to it, of course, when no one else is home.