From Black Rooms by Stephen Woodworth Read Free Book Online Page A

his rage at the cruel
    dismissal of Eva Mudocci's insouciant smile, shared the claustrophobic revulsion as Tul a Larsen wrapped him in her desperate, clinging embrace. His lust for the female form he saw in the mirror only incited memories of how such objects of desire had betrayed him in the past.
    Yet beneath Munch's loathing lurked tenderness and longing. The somber cast of Natalie's sculpted, oval face reminded him of both his sister Laura, who went mad and died in a sanitarium, and their sibling Inger--an attractive but severe-looking woman who remained his confidante throughout his life. He also saw in Natalie the ghost of his older sister, Sophie--the almost translucent pal or of her skin, the fragility of her wasting frame as she withered from consumption. Even the specter of a mother Edvard could not remember because she died when he was only five resurfaced in the maternal figure frozen in the glass before him. The pathological y shy and sensitive painter yearned for the love of women--for the completion that femininity could give his crippled psyche--but it remained
    forever unattainable and alien to him.
    Natalie could feel adoration and contempt col iding inside him. Afraid the artist might explode into
    violence, she almost launched into her protective mantra again--when her brow suddenly smoothed to
    newborn blankness. Munch slowly turned her head
    from one profile to the other, waved her hand, undid the bun of her hair, gawping like a monkey in wonder that the reflection mimicked his every movement. For the first time, he viewed the image in the mirror not as an object to be coveted, but as himself. Thinking out loud, he whispered something in Norwegian that Natalie did not understand.
    Pardon me, monsieur--what did you say? she asked in French.
    "There is no difference," he repeated in kind for her benefit, his tone stil dreamy with disbelief. "There never was."
    It took Natalie a moment to comprehend the enormity of his revelation. The gulf that Edvard Munch had always imagined between the sexes had ceased to exist. Stripped of their anatomy and the attendant societal baggage, the souls of men and women were kindred
    spirits, each gender ascribing its own vanities and faults, neediness and selfishness, to the other. Just as dying had cured him of his dread of death, Munch
    needed to become a woman to realize that the creature he'd feared was not a vampire or vixen but a projection of his own insecurities.
    "Quickly...the easel! I must have the easel here, now!" Munch gesticulated as if he could summon the item by wil alone, for he seemed reluctant to tear his gaze from the reflection.
    Natalie hesitated. What time was it? She'd lost track. Seized by obsession, Munch could spend al night
    working on a painting once he'd started. Dad and Cal ie might come back at any minute, and the master
    bedroom did not have a lock to keep them out.
    Why don't we make a sketch today while the picture is fresh in your mind? she suggested, hoping Munch did not take offense. Then we can refine it over the next few days.
    He swept the air with her hand in impatience. "Yes, yes! But we must start now."
    Without waiting for her consent, he hastened back to the garage and lugged the easel up the stairs along with the sketchbook and a rack of pastels. Natalie barely managed to get him to shut the bedroom door before he commenced attacking a blank sheet of paper with
    charcoal slashes of chalk.
    Munch darted her eyes between the mirror's reflection and the image forming on the sketch pad, posing her head and shoulders in three-quarter profile and
    comparing the tonalities and chiaroscuro of the subject and its portrait. Natalie had no choice but to watch in uneasy fascination as the picture darkened with detail, its features rendered with the expressionist's deliberate harshness and surreal distortion. Of al the artists with whom she'd worked, Munch was the only one who'd
    ever drawn her. Except the woman in the picture wasn't her.