Strega: A Novel

by Johanne Lykke Holm, Saskia Vogel

Genres: Literary Fiction; Gothic

Synopsis

Powerfully inventive and atmospheric, a modern gothic story of nine young women sent to work at a remote Alpine hotel and what happens when one of them goes missing

With toiletries, hairbands, and notebooks in her bag, and at her mother’s instruction, a nineteen-year-old girl leaves her parents’ home and the seaside town she grew up in. Out the train window, Rafa sees the lit-up mountains and perfect trees—and the Olympic Hotel waiting for her perched above the small village of Strega. There, she and eight other girls receive the stiff black uniforms of seasonal workers and move into their shared dorm. But while they toil constantly to perform their role and prepare the hotel for guests, none arrive. Instead, they contort themselves daily to the expectations of their strict, matronly bosses without clear purpose and, in their spare moments, escape to the herb garden, confide in each other, and quickly find solace together. Finally, the hotel is filled with people for a wild and raucous party, only for one of the girls to disappear. What follows are deeper revelations about the myths we teach young women, what we raise them to expect from the world, and whether a gentler, more beautiful life is possible.
 
In stimulating and uninhibited imagery, Johanne Lykke Holm builds a world laced with the supernatural, filled with the secrecy and potential energy of girls on the cusp of womanhood. An allegory for the societal rites, expectations of women, and violence we too easily allow, Strega builds like a spell that keeps exerting its powers long after reading.

 

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Release date: November 15, 2022

Publisher: Riverhead Books

Print pages: 206

Sample

 

I studied my reflection in the mirror. I recognized the image of a young but fallen woman. I leaned forward and pressed my mouth to it. Fog spread across the glass like condensation in a room where someone has been sleeping deeply, like the dead. Behind me I saw the room reflected. On the bed lay hairpins, sleeping pills, and cotton panties. The sheets were stained with milk and blood. I thought: If someone took a picture of this bed, any decent person would think it was a reproduction of a young girl’s murder or an especially brutal kidnapping. I knew a woman’s life could at any point be turned into a crime scene. I had yet to understand that I was already living inside the crime scene, that the crime scene was not the bed but the body, that the crime had already taken place.

The bedroom window was open. The air smelled like water, bread, and citrus. I walked over and leaned out. Though the day had only just begun, the streets were steaming with late-summer rain, heat. At the intersection below, the traffic was already dense. Beyond the city, the mountains stood sharp against the sky, which was rumbling. On the horizon lay the large, glittering sea, cargo ships surging and sinking with the waves. The sounds carried far and freely, metallic and dulled. I heard a hammer strike concrete. I heard airplanes in the sky. Down on the square, a ball rolled across the flagstones. I saw a boy in a school uniform set fire to a piece of paper. I saw a girl dragging her dolly behind her. Above me hung the shining sun. I reached for the plane tree growing outside my window. I caught hold of a shoot and stuck it in my mouth. It tasted sweet and rough, like sunbaked resin.

I walked naked through the flat. The living room was all in beige and yellow. A thick dust rose from the wall-to-wall carpet. In the bathroom, the tap was dripping in the dark. I reached for the switch and the strip light crackled overhead. I twisted open the taps and filled the tub, poured in baby oil and bath salts I’d bought with my own money. I lowered myself into the water and leaned my head back. I reached for the hotel brochure, which I kept in the gap between the bathtub and the brown-tiled wall. Each spread showed a slice of life at the hotel. There were high-contrast photos in crisp jewel tones. Girls in pearl-white aprons, girls eating ruby-red apples straight from the tree, girls setting out coral-pink charcuterie on an excursion to a jade-green lake. I had already examined each spread many times. I knew there were tennis courts, a park, a ballroom. Mountains encircling a swimming pool, endless recreational options. I let the brochure sink through the bathwater and come to rest on my stomach, like a shroud. I reached for the shampoo, washed my hair until it squeaked. I scrubbed my cheeks and knees with a brush made of horsehair. I rubbed a small pale blue soap between my hands, and it lathered.

I climbed out of the bath and let the water drip from my body, wound my hair in a terrycloth towel, and walked through the flat, where the air was vibrating. I took out my traveling clothes. A pair of jeans and a shirt I’d stolen. Sneakers made of cotton. I put on jewelry and ran my fingers through my hair, let it rest heavy against my back. I dabbed perfume on the dip of my neck and wrists. I applied lipstick. I sat down at my desk and wrote a farewell note to my parents. Finding the words was easy, because I had repeated them to myself all summer. I pressed my mouth to the paper.

On the windowsill in front of me, books were arranged in symmetrical piles, alongside incense and matches. Opposite, on the other side of the street, was an open window. I saw a child dressing another child. I saw a woman bending over a bed. I saw a man reaching out his hand and grabbing hold. Everything was as it usually was, for now. I reached for the ashtray and lit a cigarette, opened the window, and leaned out. The tar burned in my lungs and spread into my fingertips. If you can’t give your body the good stuff, give it the bad stuff. It started raining, the heat eased. I thought for a moment that my hands were giving off the scent of eucalyptus. I stubbed my cigarette out on the windowpane, let the rain wash over my hands for a while.

I folded up the note and walked through the living room for the third time. I always give a thought to when I do something for the third time. I’d advise all people to do the same. It’s important to be suspicious of that sort of repetition. I pinned the note to the noticeboard in the hall and turned in toward the flat, nodded to my parents’ wedding picture, which was hanging by the hall mirror, and picked up my suitcase, which was sitting by the door. I walked down the stairs and the stairs echoed. I took in the hallway’s smell of infants, cigarette smoke, boiled potatoes. I had with me a piece of bread and a pyramid-shaped carton of orange juice that I’d put in the freezer overnight. I had with me toiletries and hairbands and notebooks. I had with me a winter coat that I’d inherited. I had with me a silver-inlaid moonstone, which I took to be holy. Once on the street, I turned around and lifted my gaze. For a moment, I thought that my mother was waving from the kitchen window, like something out of a melodrama. What mother waves to her child from a window. I bit my tongue until it bled. Who are you when you leave your parental home? A young and lonely person en route to life.

The street was slick and smelled of rain, heat. I took it all in. Storing images as if in the face of death. I was a murder victim opening her eyes wide, as though to suck life in. There was the milk bar, where I had worked for many hours, letting my hands stack glasses and cups, wetting my lips with lukewarm milk from the cans. There was the swimming hall, where I had swum my laps. The fountain and the department store. The fruit shop glowing in every color. Ample piles of grapefruit and grapes. Water in plastic drums. The smell of dried figs and wet sand that washed over me as I neared the sea.

The station was deserted. People traveled later in the day or not at all. I held my ticket in my hand and the paper disintegrated against my skin. I got on the train. Outside the window, the mountains rose higher and higher and the greenery paled. I traveled through depopulated villages. I read, I wrote postcards, passing orchards, forests, watercourses. A young boy came by with a coffee cart. Chocolate and biscuits were on offer. I reached for a tin of mints but changed my mind. The carriage slowly emptied of people. With every station, someone disappeared. Women in black waved at children in black. A soldier was waving a pennant. People were embracing each other everywhere. In the end, I was there alone.

I rested my forehead against the window and opened my eyes wide. Suddenly everything out there seemed artificial. The mountains appeared to be lit up from below by a bright spotlight. At the foot of the mountain, the trees stood in perfect rows, as though dipped in wax and coated in glitter. On the rhododendrons hung dewdrops of silicone. A roaring waterfall, which seemed frozen in time. I looked at the mountains and the mountains looked back. Without a doubt an evil place in costume. Above the door, a neon sign started blinking—terminus in fluorescent green. I took the pocket mirror from my summer jacket’s inside pocket. My face was blank. My mouth was still bright red, but I touched up my lipstick anyway. I put the mirror away and gathered my things.

I stood up and got off the train. Here too the station was deserted. In the transit hall hung a clock. I noticed it was an hour off. The clock struck and a mechanical bird emerged from a hatch, as though guided by an invisible hand. Under the clock was a pool of water, which was expanding. The village was called Strega and it was in the mountains. Later I learned that Strega was a chamber of horrors, where everything had frozen into a beastly shape. I learned that Strega was deep forests bathed in red light. Strega was girls plaiting each other’s hair just so. Girls who carried large stones through the mountains. Girls who bent their necks and stood that way. Strega was a lake and the foliage enclosing it. Strega was a night-light illuminating what was ugliest in the world. Strega was a murdered woman and her belongings. Her suitcase, her hair, her little boxes of licorice and chocolate.

I walked through the streets. There were no people. There was a post office and a bar, but no vegetables or bread, no living things. On a stone balustrade was a plastic bowl. Steam rose from it, like the steam in a laboratory. I walked on, seeing eyes everywhere. An unsightly child was sitting on some steps and making faces. Drapes welled out of an open window, like ectoplasm. I walked through Strega and arrived at the water, which gave off a familiar smell. Something moldering and somehow tepid, like the night air in a church. On the dock, a semaphore was beating in the wind. From a crevice in the mountains, a ferry came gliding. It was a polished steel vessel with the name Skipper hand-lettered in yellow on its side.

I turned my face to the sky. The air tasted like iron, and I licked my lips. Everything was iridescent pink, except for the lake, which was black and gorgeous. The range gleamed and gleamed and the sky was clear. I sat on the ground and lit a cigarette. A young mother and her child were standing nearby. The boy lifted his hand to his face, as though to bat away an insect. The mother grabbed hold of his wrist. I took out the juice carton and drank it down in a single gulp. Then I ate of the stale bread. I tried to find the horizon, but it was hidden behind the mountains. I grew up by the sea, where everything was open planes. I took out my notebook and wrote down my home address, watched my name glow strangely on the page. I had always imagined the future otherwise. I was to work the perfume counter at the department store. I was to save my money and keep it in the bank under my own name. I was to move into a flat where other women were also living, free souls with jobs and love lives. But I did as they had asked of me. I liked being an obedient daughter. It felt like being held by a beautiful patent leather collar.

I let the notebook drop to my lap. The smell of the water was numbing me. I shut my eyes. For a moment the sound of the waves was crystal clear, as though they had washed into my head. Behind my eyelids something surfaced, a sequence from a film I’d seen. A taxi driving through a storm toward a red building. Cobblestones glinting in the rain. In a large hall, patterned textiles hung from the ceiling. A girl walked across the floor with a glass of water in her hand. She had a very anonymous face. Her hair was black and seemed to have been dipped in holy water. I addressed her, but she turned away.

When I opened my eyes, other girls my age were standing around and watching me. I blinked and blinked. The sun disappeared behind a cloud, then reappeared. Around me, the mountains suddenly seemed to rise up like walls. I looked at my hands, which were shaking. With one quick movement, I reached into my pocket and grabbed hold of the moonstone. I gathered my things and stood up. I nodded to the others. They nodded back. We walked to the cable car.