The Tulip Virus

by Danielle Hermans

  “We can’t tell you everything now, but it does seem as if there’s a connection. Still, we’ve no idea how or what, and we were hoping you could point us in the right direction.”

  “What exactly did you want to know about the period? There are so many places I could start. Just to narrow things down a bit, why don’t you tell me what inspired this train of thought?”

  “I see your point, but we’d rather not say too much at this stage.”

  “All right,” Dick said with a sigh. “I respect your decision. There’ll be no more awkward questions from me. But there is one thing I must say, on Frank’s behalf, and as a friend. Please, just leave this to the police. I knew Frank well enough to know that he wouldn’t want to see you involved.” He emphasized his words with a nod. “You’re sure there’s nothing else you could let me in on? It would make things a lot easier for me.”

  When Alec shook his head, Dick patted him on the shoulder and said, “How about letting me tell you what I know about the tulip trade. Maybe that’ll give you something to go on. Okay? Sit down, sit down.”

  They wove their way through the teetering stacks of books, which seemed to grow out of the floor like stalagmites. Crammed bookcases rose to the ceiling, and on top of the books were piles of loose pages, file folders, newspapers, and journals. They sat down on two folding chairs in front of Dick’s desk, which was just as cluttered as the rest of the office. Next to the desk was a small refrigerator, and Dick stationed himself proudly behind it like a cafeteria manager.

  “I ordered us some lunch.”

  On a serving tray on top of the fridge were a few sandwiches wrapped in cellophane. Here and there, a lettuce leaf was trying to escape the sweaty slices of cheese and curling cuts of meat.

  Fantastic, a real Dutch-style working lunch, Damian thought, scanning the tray. All that’s missing is the croquettes.

  “The croquettes are on their way,” Dick said, squeezing behind his desk. His little brown eyes darted over the desktop, and as he reached for his cigarettes, he reminded Damian of a hamster. His neck was so stubby that it seemed as if his head was mounted directly on his shoulders, and his thick mop of russet hair made his head look huge.

  “Frank and the tulip trade,” he muttered, and a deep furrow formed between his bushy eyebrows. He lit a cigarette, inhaled, and pensively blew smoke in the general direction of the fire alarm. The door opened and a girl in an apron stepped into the office.

  “Ah, the croquettes.” Dick balanced his cigarette on the edge of his desk and rubbed his hands together. “Thank you, thank you, put them down right here. Tuck in, gentlemen, tuck in,” he said, as he reached for one himself and took a bite. “Okay,” he said, leaving his mouth half open so the hot ragout filling would cool. “Let’s get started.”

  Alkmaar

  JULY 21, 1636

  The fingers dug deep into his armpits. He felt the heels of his shoes sliding along the floor, catching slightly on the edge of each tile. Through half-closed eyes, he looked down. His hands were tied together over his stomach, rising and falling with each tug as he was dragged across the floor. He could see the fingertips of the person dragging him, the thick, irregular nails caked with blood. His blood. He tried to move his head, and moaned.

  All at once the stabbing pain under his arms stopped. He fell backward, his head slamming into the floor. From his throat came a wailing sound. Slowly, his head slumped to one side, and he felt the cool stone against his cheek. The rag was yanked out of his mouth. He took a deep breath, running his tongue over his cracked lips.

  “Cornelius? Are you still there?”

  “Of course I’m here, Wouter,” Cornelius answered. His voice was muted by the candle wax in Wouter’s ears, but Wouter could feel the hot breath on the side of his face. Cornelius’s words were cold and distant, but there was something in his voice that gave Wouter hope. A faint, barely audible tremor. Did it signal fear? Or compassion?

  “Cornelius,” he panted, “untie me. I’ll . . . I’ll explain everything.”

  He kicked and thrashed, trying to sit up, but fell back to the floor with a groan.

  “It had to be done,” he said. “There was no alternative. We all want to move forward, don’t we? The church is trying to stop us. Are you listening, Cornelius? Do you hear what I’m saying? The church, Cornelius, the institution.”

  He slowly rolled onto his stomach and folded his legs underneath him. Using his fists for leverage, he pushed himself upright and straightened his back.

  “We have to put up a fight. We can’t simply resign ourselves to the situation. That would set us back years and years. Then there’d be no hope of scientific progress. Surely you see why? Once we can explain things for ourselves, we have no reason to believe in God. But they need us to keep believing, so they can keep us under control. Do you understand, Cornelius? Untie me and I’ll explain. Come on.”

  He stretched his arms out in front of him and held up his bound hands.

  “Please, Cornelius, help me. Don’t do this, I beg you.”

  He heard shuffling behind him. Then came a blew to the back of his head, so hard that he heard his skull crack. Everything went dark.

  SIXTEEN

  “Tulips, windmills, cheese, and clogs.” At each word, Dick pounded his desk with his hand. “They’re all as Dutch as it gets, right? Wrong. Tulips have no place on that list. Where do most people think tulips come from?”

  “Turkey,” Alec said hesitantly.

  “Right, that’s what most people think. Well, most people are wrong, wrong, wrong. Santa Claus, now, he comes from Turkey. But the tulip, that symbol of our nation, started out much farther east, in China. That’s its true origin.”

  Dick looked triumphantly at them.

  “Yes, I can see the surprise on your faces. That’s the same reaction I get when I tell this to my students. Isn’t it the funniest thing? Chinese tourists coming all the way here to look at flowers from their own country. Airplanes full of them! Fabulous, isn’t it?”

  A bread crumb flew from his mouth, landing on his computer screen. He brushed it away with his sleeve.

  “So, China. Western China, to be exact, to the north of the Himalayas. Wait.”

  He wriggled out from behind his desk and waddled over to one of the stacks of books. Carefully, he pulled a book from the pile and thumbed through it.

  “Ah, here it is.”

  Resting the open atlas on his stomach, he pointed to a mountain range in China, near the Russian border.

  “This, here, is one of the most inhospitable parts of the world.” He circled it slowly with his finger. “Nothing grows there. No one lives there. Why would you? You’d have to be deranged. The summers are scorching and dry, and the winters last for months, with everything buried in snow. This is where Holland’s pride originally comes from, the Tien Shan Mountains.”

  Dick withdrew his finger, leaving a stain on the map. How ironic, Damian thought. The birthplace of their country’s beloved tulip, immortalized in the grease of a croquette, the quintessential Dutch snack.

  “But,” Dick went on, “even in the most uninhabitable regions, there are always microclimates, ecological niches with just a bit more sun or a bit more water. Yes, even in this forbidding place, there are valleys among the foothills with tracts of fertile land. And wherever there’s fertile land, there is life, and wherever there’s life, there are people.”

  He shut the atlas and slid it back into the stack of books in exactly the same place.

  “It all started with the nomads of the steppes. They put their livestock out to pasture in those valleys, and so they were the first to notice the tulip. And more than just notice it— the flower captured their hearts. Imagine. There you are, trudging along with your herd. Winter is almost over, but it’s still bitterly cold, and you’re chilled to the bone. You clamber up and down the rocky slopes, hoping to find a patch of vegetation for your animals before nightfall. The sun’s rays are still too weak to give any warmth. And the
n, suddenly, you can’t believe your eyes. You rub them with your fists and look again. No mistake; it’s true. Those slopes, there, in the distance, aren’t dull brown or gray, but red, bright red!”

  Dick dropped into his chair, leaning back and spreading his arms theatrically, a look of sheer joy and astonishment on his face.

  “Can you picture it? A sea of color in the middle of that dismal, barren landscape. It must have been breathtaking. Utterly breathtaking.”

  Gazing off into the distance, he said, “Those flowers heralded the end of a cruel winter. As soon as the nomads saw them, they knew that summer was on the way, that the worst was behind them. And those were the flowers we call tulips.”

  He looked at them jubilantly.

  “I had no idea that’s where tulips came from,” Alec said.

  Dick nodded. “You’re not the only one. Step by step, century by century, the tulip spread toward Turkey, along with nomadic tribes who decided to settle down. They came from the east, conquering the cities to the west and founding their own principalities.”

  Resting one elbow on his desk, Dick raised his index finger.

  “These were no barbarians, mind you, but the heirs of an age-old culture and expert botanists, besides. They swept across the Balkans, taking the tulip with them. To them, it was not just beautiful and decorative, but sacred. They called it the lâle, using the same Arabic letters that make up Allah’s name. Hardy yet elegant, the lâle was the symbol of eternity, of power and perfection, a hint of the hereafter, proof of the possibility of paradise on earth. It was also the symbol of beauty’s submission to the Divine, for the flower humbly bows its head to Allah.”

  “A lovely image,” Damian muttered.

  “Lovely indeed. Through the years, the tulip has had a strange and marvelous history. It has brought happiness to many people but harm to others. Very grave harm. The tulip has inspired men to fight . . . and kill.”

  Alkmaar

  JULY 23, 1636

  Esteemed Sir,

  In the early hours of July the 21st our plan went into effect. I am writing to inform you that we have completed the first step. As for Cornelius, you were right about him. He was easy to manipulate and did his job well. To ensure our success, I sent along one of my boys. Everything proceeded according to plan.

  Meanwhile, Cornelius supposes himself innocent of any wrong-doing. He is confident that when he took Winckel’s life he was defending his faith, and he feels certain that God will forgive him. And who can say otherwise? He is entirely ignorant of our plans for the tulip bulbs that will soon— very soon, with any luck— be offered for sale.

  You know that this is just the first step. There is a great deal still to be done. All the signs seem favorable, yet one thing still vexes me. May the Lord in his wisdom provide that Winckel’s children are not taken in by their appointed guardians. For if they are, it will be impossible for us to carry out the plan in its present form. Considering the importance of the task and my ties to the guardians, I shall make sure that all seven children are committed to my care.

  I advise you to start preparing. Inform me when you are ready, and I shall set things in motion here.

  You will receive descriptions of the tulips as soon as I have them in my possession. Then you can instruct the illustrators.

  I believe the man who delivers this letter to be trustworthy. But if the seal has been broken, we shall have to find some other means of communication. Otherwise, this is the best way for us to remain in contact for now.

  A.K.

  SEVENTEEN

  Dick gripped the edge of his desk with both hands, pulled himself upright, and leaned forward.

  “Around fourteen fifty A.D., the Ottomans captured the city of Constantinople and renamed it Istanbul. The young sultan saw Istanbul as the heart of his new empire and embarked on a massive program of construction, building mosques, palaces, and private gardens. The people of the city followed his example, planting gardens of their own. Hanging gardens, kitchen gardens, flower gardens, you name it.” A dreamy look crept over Dick’s face. “A sight to behold. Like a second Eden.”

  “Ornamental gardens?” Damian said. “But the only gardens in Western Europe in those days were herb or vegetable gardens, weren’t they? The only flowers Europeans grew were edible or medicinal.”

  “You’re absolutely right. But our Ottoman friends were different. They planted gardens to enjoy the beauty of nature, the shade of a tree, the quiet of the afternoon, the fragrances. Over the years the tulip became their icon, the logo of the Ottoman Empire. And that’s where Westerners first laid eyes on this magnificent flower.”

  Dick sank back into his seat and folded his hands over his stomach.

  “We went there to forge ties with the greatest power in the Mediterranean world. And what we found in the gardens of Istanbul— their flowers— were unlike anything we’d ever seen before.” He dug a cigarette out of the crumpled pack and lit it. “Dazzled by their shapes and colors, we brought them home with us. The truly mind-boggling thing about tulips was their variety, which was pretty much unequaled in those days. That helped to establish their reputation as superior to all other flowers. It also helped that they were easy to transport, tough as weeds, and suited to our cold, wet climate.”

  Dick swung forward and pitched his half-smoked cigarette into a plastic cup, where it hissed and died out in the last drops of coffee.

  “Tulips were also popular because they conferred status. In the Renaissance, as modern science came into being, there was growing interest in botany. Gardens became status symbols, because they showed you had enough money to throw some away on useless fripperies. Think of how we buy SUVs today just for running errands. What are we, living in the wilderness? Practicing for the Paris– Dakar, maybe? Where are the Dutch mountains? We want to show the world we can afford a car like that. And people in the Renaissance were no different. But here in Holland, there was another side to the story: the rise of the sciences, the thirst for knowledge, and the dream of passing knowledge down to future generations. By cultivating tulips, we created new varieties: large, medium, or small, with rounded leaves or pointed ones, thick stems or thin, three petals, or four, or five . . . Unless we kept notes on how we produced all these varieties, the information would be lost forever. There was only one man equal to the task, and that was the great botanist Carolus Clusius, adviser to European rulers and noblemen and the kingpin of a huge network of plant lovers who shared bulbs, seeds, plants, and information.”

  Damian said, “I’ve read about him. Wasn’t he the director of the botanical garden at Leiden University?”

  “Quite right. He grew tulips from bulbs sent to him from all over the world. Then he studied the flowers and wrote about them. By this time, the tulip had become so popular that thieves kept breaking into Clusius’s garden to raid his tulip beds. Oddly enough, this turned out to be a good thing, in a way. It brought valuable tulip bulbs to many parts of our country— quite illegally, mind you. Those were probably the predecessors of the bulbs that fetched such outrageous prices decades later. Of course, refugees also brought tulip bulbs to Holland.”

  “You mean the people fleeing Spanish rule and the Catholic church?” Alec asked.

  Dick looked at him wryly and said, “So you managed to pick up something during your studies after all. Yes, many people who were persecuted for their religious beliefs headed north, to our free republic, where they were more than welcome. Sometimes cities even fought over them— figuratively speaking, I mean.”

  “Fighting to take in refugees— those were very different times,” Alec mumbled.

  “You can say that again. The thing is, many of those émigrés were wealthy, and more than a few were so grateful for the warm reception that they contributed generously to the construction of churches and city halls.”

  “So it wasn’t just a question of tolerance?” Alec asked.

  “Oh, I think tolerance had very little to do with it. We weren’t that noble
, never have been. But anyway, more and more kinds of tulips ended up here. And then along came something entirely unexpected.”

  Holland

  FEBRUARY 4, 1637

  The northeaster scoured the level landscape, whipping up silver shark fins in the ditches between the pastures and the fields. The rain lashed the ground and hardened into ice.

  A fierce wind buffeted Alkmaar’s city gate and swept the travelers inside. They came from all points of the compass, and some from distant lands. The journey was not without peril, for the icy roads leading to Alkmaar were treacherous. But they paid little notice, for the cold had numbed them and made them reckless.

  The look in their eyes was adamant. What ever happened, they would reach the city in time, because wealth and fortune awaited them on the morrow. Then the most valuable tulips in the world would be auctioned off in Alkmaar. And they would be there, no matter what the cost.

  EIGHTEEN

  Dick got up, pulled open the door of the fridge, and rummaged inside it. With a casual swing of his right leg, he pushed the door shut.

  “How about a cola?” he said, throwing them each a can. He pried up the pull tab with a letter opener and took a long swig.

  “So, tulips became a status symbol. But the Dutch republic wasn’t like France, where tulips became the playthings of the aristocracy. In this country, merchants were the new elite. They had mansions built in the countryside, the bigger, the better. But they wanted even more, something that would really set them apart from their rivals. Their weapon of choice was not simply their gardens, but something much more specific: the size and content of their tulip beds. Of course, they lacked the skill to cultivate their own flowers, so they hired professional growers to do it for them. The demand for these new specialists grew steadily, and many soon opened their own bulb nurseries. They managed to snap up plots of poor, sandy soil at bargain prices, mainly in the region north of Amsterdam. The soil was unsuited to other plants but perfect for tulips, which took hold and even thrived there.”