The Other Adonis

by Frank Deford

  And then, when Constance came round the corner on little Burchtgracht, it all mixed together, the past and the present, that old Antwerpen and this Antwerp, Ollie and Constance, man and woman, and she really couldn’t fathom anything anymore. But wait…yes, surely this was Burchtgracht. There was the butcher’s hall, the tower. And here was Bloed Berg. But then, where is the cattle market? That’s always been here. And the smell. There is no smell. How can that be? And the vliet—the canal? Where has that gone? A canal cannot just disappear.

  Constance kept looking around in confusion. And now the bells were ringing. Yes, yes. That helped. And now: I do smell it. As always here: the odor of carnage, of hides and bowels and blood. And yes, this time when she peered back to the Burchtgracht, it was the canal and she could see Elsa in it, flowing away under Blood Hill, out to the Schelde.

  Well, that was as it should be. But suddenly, that memory reminded Constance that she better leave. The scutters were surely on the alert. Hadn’t Mr. Rubens posted a reward? Damn him. Who would have ever imagined he would have done that for a common whore? And hadn’t too many people seen Ollie with Elsa? Yes, it would be wise to get away from here, from where Elsa had been strangled. So, quickly now, Constance stepped off, toward the bank of the Schelde.

  There in the river was a massive, spanking clean white cruise ship that had just disgorged its tourists. But Constance didn’t even notice this leviathan. What Constance did see, though, was the dull, redbrick old Steen. There, by the river, was the jail where the prisoners were kept. She’d heard plenty about the Steen. And Ollie certainly didn’t want to end up there. Yes, maybe better to take off for Dunkirk right now, find a privateer to sign on with and be gone for good from Antwerpen.

  But leave Margareta? Her stupid husband is off to Liege tomorrow, and we’ll have a whole week together at the house on Hopland. I want that. I must stay. But how strange. It is not just to poke this woman. There are others far prettier than Margareta. Bess was simply gorgeous. And others more sumptuous, more alluring. But Margareta is the one I want.

  So, yes, I’ll risk staying just to be with her. Even if I may be caught, imprisoned in the Steen, put to my death. Because: I…love… her. At last, I really do love a woman.

  So Ollie would not leave Antwerp. But now, when he looked out toward the Schelde, not only was there no cruise ship, but no Steen, either. In fact, no river. No city. All that was there, in Ollie’s vision, was that pattern of red and black. Ever since he’d arrived back in Antwerp, it was brighter, sharper, the red and the black, tracing away for as far as his eyes could see, out into space, out into time.

  32

  Nina held up the transcript that Paulette had just sent over from the Belgian Tourist Office. “It’s all here,” she said. “We’ll go through it together.” Nervously, Bucky took a seat across her desk. First though, for a few seconds, she turned on the tape recorder. “I just want to remind us how you sounded,” she said. “Margareta, in 1635, in the Antwerp of Peter Paul Rubens.”

  He only nodded. Bucky was, in fact, terribly subdued. His reaction to hearing himself on the tape had been different, an even more bewildered amazement than when he had first encountered Constance or Venus and Adonis. Those, after all, were external incidents—bizarre and inexplicable, to be sure—but this was more confounding because it was just Bucky all by himself astonishing Bucky. He was still sitting there, in something approaching numbness, as Nina flipped off the tape and started reading from the transcript.

  “I began by just saying, ‘Hallo, Margareta,’” Nina said, “and you replied ‘Hallo.’ It was instantly clear to me that you were speaking in a different voice.” Bucky nodded. “Then I tried to make you comfortable. Paulette had written out: ‘I am a friend of Ollie’s,’ in Flemish. And when I said that, boy, did that get your attention. You gave me a big smile and said, ‘It’s nice to meet you.’

  “Of course, I didn’t understand what you said, but I gathered it was just something polite and conventional, so I told you: ‘I knew Ollie in England,’ and you smiled again—but somewhat sheepishly.”

  “Why?” Bucky asked.

  Nina leaned back. “There was something I learned from Constance when she was hypnotized that I never told either of you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You—Margareta—were married. Your love affair with Ollie was extramarital.”

  Bucky was a little annoyed. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “I just thought there was enough on your plate at that time. Okay?”

  Bucky said, “Okay,” but in a cursory fashion.

  Nina went on. “Anyway, I assumed that you—that Margareta—might be a little troubled that I knew she was cheating on her husband, so, quickly, I added”—Nina looked down at the transcript—“something to gain her confidence, just-us-girls stuff. I said: ‘Once, I was unfaithful to my husband, too.’

  Nina kept her eyes on the paper when she said that. And she didn’t raise it, either, when she went on: “And so you asked me: ‘Oh, why did you take your lover?’” Only now, and tentatively, did Nina glance up to see Bucky looking at her. He arched his eyebrows, as if to say Well, did you? Nina ignored him. “Of course, since I don’t understand Flemish, I had no idea what Margareta had asked me, so I just replied: ‘I’m sorry. I do not understand.’ I’d had Paulette write that phrase out for me, too.” And quickly, then: “So next I asked—”

  But not quickly enough. “Wait a minute. Why did you take a lover, Nina?”

  “That was for Margareta’s consumption,” she snapped.

  Bucky smirked. “Okay, Doctor. And your secret is safe with Margareta.”

  “Thank you. May we go on?”

  “Please.”

  “So then I asked Margareta: ‘Why do you love Ollie?’ And she answered: ‘He is so gentle, so sweet to me. And so handsome. Since first I saw him at Rubenshuis, posing as Adonis, I couldn’t take my eyes from him.’

  “And so then I asked: ‘And do you love your husband…at all?’

  “‘Once I did. I loved Jan greatly when first we met. But after the children came, he didn’t seem to care for me much anymore. And I’m sure now there are other women. He finds them when he travels, or he pays for the whores on the Burchtgracht. Do you know the Burchtgracht, by Blood Hill?’”

  Nina annotated the text for Bucky again. “I knew Margareta was asking me another question,” she explained, “so once more, I had to say: ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand Flemish well.’ But quickly, then, to keep her interest, I asked: ‘Do you like being a model for Rubens?’

  “And Margareta answered me: ‘Oh yes, it is wonderful, for now I have new friends and a job where I can earn a few guilders for myself. And, best of all, that was where I met Ollie, when Mr. Rubens chose him to be Adonis.’”

  Nina looked up again. “I remember that well. I heard Margareta say ‘Adonis’ again, so I took a chance and I pointed at you—at Margareta—and I said, ‘Venus?’

  “And you laughed a little, and”—Nina looked back down—“and you said: ‘Oh no, not me. I haven’t enough—”

  Nina laughed herself. “Of course, Paulette only had the tape. She had no idea what was transpiring, so there’s nothing descriptive in the transcript. But what happened was that you’d gestured to your chest then and shook your head. And that’s what you meant when you said you didn’t have enough to be Venus.”

  Bucky shook his head sadly. “I wasn’t stacked, huh?”

  “Well, not enough for Rubens. But don’t take it too hard, Bucky. Remember, Rubens was pretty demanding in that category. In fact, since I was pretty sure what Margareta was gesturing about, I pointed to my own chest, like this, and said, ‘No, me too’—you know, in English, but Margareta understood and we laughed together.”

  Bucky shook his head. “We laughed together. You and me. Our little hen party—ou
r affairs, our boobs.”

  Nina didn’t take the bait. She only said, “But you must understand, Bucky. You were a woman—completely. The way you spoke. Your manner. The way you held yourself. It was every bit as disconcerting as when Constance became Ollie. You have to believe me: she was totally masculine. And you: feminine.”

  Bucky only sighed and mimicked a woman’s wave. “Go on, dearie.”

  Nina continued reading the translation. “So Margareta told me: ‘Helena, Mrs. Rubens—she is Venus. I am the Madonna, but in another painting. You see, the master thinks I have such a sweet face. All my life, in fact, everyone has said: Margareta, such a sweet face you have. Ollie is the first to tell me how beautiful I am…as a woman. I know I am not beautiful, not really, but to hear such a little lie from him makes me happy. But you know? Ollie is prettier than I. He’s the prettiest man I’ve ever seen.’”

  Nina stopped. “I remember that, Bucky. You kinda hugged yourself then. Just thinking of Ollie.”

  Bucky said, “Doesn’t my husband suspect at all?”

  “I asked her that. Margareta said: ‘Jan pays so little attention to me. He is in the cloth business. And he is often away to buy or to sell—and that is when he is with his other women, with his whores. So, after Mr. Rubens asked me to pose, I hired a woman to take care of the children while I am at Rubenshuis. Now Clarissa stays the night, too, when I am with Ollie.’

  “So then I asked, ‘Where do you stay with Ollie?’”

  Bucky interrupted. “But you already know that. You told Constance and me that they met in that house that Rubens let Ollie stay in.”

  “Yes, on Hopland Street. But you see, I wanted Margareta to tell me. I wanted validation. And not just the house, Bucky. There was a lot of stuff that I’d already been told by Constance—you know, as Ollie. But that’s exactly why this is so extraordinary. It matches! Exactly. What Ollie said and what Margareta said is all the same—different viewpoints maybe, but same facts.”

  Softly, Bucky whispered, “Double Ones.”

  “Nothing else makes any sense to me. Look,” Nina said, “here it is. Here’s Margareta’s answer: ‘Oh, Mr. Rubens is so anxious to keep Ollie here as his model that he’s given him the use of another house he owns, around the corner from Rubenshuis, on Hopland Street. We have it all to ourselves—our love house.’

  “And then I asked Margareta: ‘Does Ollie ever get mad at you?’”

  Bucky broke in again. “Why would you ask that?’

  Nina had to think quickly. She’d revealed to Bucky that Margareta was married, cheating on her husband with Ollie, but even now she still wanted to keep it to herself that Ollie was a murderer—and probably would be Margareta’s murderer. “Well,” she ventured, “Ollie’s a tough guy, a sailor. He’s made it plenty plain to me that he’s no warm and fuzzy millennium kinda guy with the ladies. But he’s also sworn to me that he’s a pussycat with Margareta, that he truly loves her in a way he’s never loved anyone else.”

  “Double Ones,” Bucky said again.

  “Yes, and sure enough, Margareta goes on and on about how sweet he is to her.” Nina ran her fingers through the words on the page, the loving response—all the time, in her own mind, remembering the beautiful Bess back in Norfolk, the unsuspecting Caterina in Amsterdam, and all the other flashy dolls he took advantage of—one way or another. Could it really be possible that Ollie had truly fallen for the soft, sweet, Madonna-ish Margareta? Now Nina resumed reading out loud again. “‘I swear by his love. Why, even as I go to Saint James to confess my terrible carnal sins, I will not allow the priest to admonish me, for I know our love is pure and that I will love Ollie—’”

  “Altijd,” Bucky suddenly said.

  To Nina, it sounded like “al-tied.” “What’d you say?” she asked.

  “Altijd. I’m sure it means ‘always.’ You know: ‘I will love Ollie, always.’”

  “But what in the world made you say it—that word, in old Flemish?”

  Bucky shrugged hopelessly. “I don’t know. I was just listening to you, and it just…came to me. From somewhere. Just listening to Margareta’s words, and suddenly, it was there. Altijd.”

  “Like you said the name Ollie once without even knowing.”

  “I guess.” He waved at the transcript. “Well, look. Is the word there?”

  Nina looked down at the translation. Yes, there it was. The next word: always. She nodded and sighed. “Okay,” she said then. “This is where I started asking Margareta about herself.”

  “So now I find out who I was?”

  “Yes,” she answered, looking back at the transcript, introducing Bucky to the woman he had been.

  33

  “‘Are you from Antwerp, Margareta?’”

  “‘I think, but I cannot be sure. I may have come from nearby, but outside the Spanish fortifications. You see, I never knew my parents, because when I was a baby, someone—my mother, I suppose—left me in the wall at the Maidens’ House on Lange Gasthuisstraat. Do you know that?’

  Nina shrugged, so Margareta had gone ahead and explained. Nina read to Bucky. “‘Well, there in the middle of the wall, the sisters had made a hole so that babies who are not wanted could be left there at night. Only my Christian name was pinned to me. That and half a playing card.

  “‘It was the eight of diamonds—although I don’t know why my mother chose that card. Anyway, she left the top half of it pinned to me. Then the sisters chose a last name for me. Engelgraef. They chose names for the orphans by the alphabet. The baby before me had been given a name that started with a D, the one after would be an F, and so on. So, I was Margareta Engelgraef thereafter, and my only home was the Maidens’ House.’”

  “Poor kid,” said Bucky.

  Nina read on. “‘My favorite nun was Sister Magdalena, and she wanted me to stay there, to be a nun myself when I grew up. But I was sure my mother would return for me. I was so certain. That was, after all, so often the case. When the child was old enough to work, to help the family, the mother would come back to the Maidens’ House, show the other half of the card, and take her child home with her.

  “‘Perhaps, since you are not from here, you cannot imagine how difficult it was just a few years ago. Always war, all the time. So many of the Protestants had left Antwerp, gone north to the Netherlands, and although, of course, they are heathens, they had so much money, and they took that with them. And then the Schelde was closed, and the great trading ships could come here no more. The sisters would tell us of the glorious times past, when Antwerp was as rich as any city in the world, but now it was hard, and we needed the scutters, or otherwise there would be so much crime and murder that no one could be safe.’”

  Bucky asked, “What’s that—scooters?”

  “Well, Paulette didn’t translate it, so obviously she didn’t know what it was. But it was a guild, and since there weren’t any police forces back in the seventeenth century, I guess the scutters were sort of a private security force you could hire.”

  “Okay, I got it.”

  Nina resumed reading Margareta’s account of her life: “‘Often, at the Maidens’ House we were hungry. I remember how rare was a smoked fish or a meat pie. Usually, it was just the same old porridge, made of bread and beer. Over and over. Well, maybe some dried figs.

  “‘Why, I remember once, not long ago, when I was sitting on the floor of Mr. Rubens’s private studio talking to Ollie while the master sketched him. Ollie asked Mr. Rubens why he preferred painting such chunky women. Mr. Rubens had replied, “Why, my English friend, those are the ones you are wisest to love, for they are most likely to survive.” And then he said, “My first wife, Isabella, was not so stout, and alas, the plague took her.”

  “‘Then he looked down to me and he told me in Vlaamach what he had said to Ollie in English, and then he added: “But I do not worry
about you, dear Margareta, for even though you are not so stout, I know you lived through all those hard years at the Maidens’ House, so you must be very healthy.’”

  Nina paused, smiling. “Now,” she said to Bucky, “I know why Margareta pointed at me then.”

  “Why?”

  “Because here’s what she said: ‘You should eat more yourself.’” Nina laughed. “I guess I look downright starved to some healthy person from the seventeenth century.”

  Then, once again, she resumed reading the translation of Margareta’s narrative. “‘Anyway, I awaited my mother, every day. My best friends had their mothers come for them, showing the other half of their card. Anna—the four of clubs. Her mother came. Cornelia—the ten of spades. Only then did I begin to realize that my mother was never coming. No one had the lower half of my eight of diamonds anymore. I believed my mother must have died. For otherwise, she surely would have come for me, would she have not?’”

  Nina, guessing it was something of a rhetorical question, had nodded, “Ja.” She glanced up now and saw that Bucky appeared very somber. “You okay?” Nina asked.

  “Well, it’s sad. Hey, that’s me. That was my life.”

  Sweetly, Nina reached cross the desk and patted Bucky’s hand. Then she read on: “‘So, Sister Magdalena pleaded with me to take up the vows myself, but even then, even though I knew now that the sisters were my only family, I feared that I could never give myself to Christ. Already, I had allowed Pieter, a boy I liked, to kiss me and to touch me where he should not, but I had enjoyed that, and so I understood that I was possessed of too much lust ever to be a bride of Christ.

  “‘But then one day, at last, I was granted a measure of good fortune. It was on Assumption Day, the fifteenth of August, when we celebrate Our Lady’s return to heaven. Some of the older girls at the Maidens’ House were taken to Saint James Church. There we were seen by the prominent members of the parish who were gracious enough to allow us orphans to worship there. That was, in fact, the first time I had ever seen the great Mr. Rubens. But it was Mrs. Gansacker who noticed me. She would tell me later that it was so much because of the sweetness of my face. You see? And so, she asked the sisters if she and Mr. Gansacker might not take me home to their great house on Keizerstraat, where I could be a servant.