“Surely not—”
“You don’t know him,” she says sharply.
“My father had a quick temper too—but surely, in the end, he will forgive you?”
“He will kill me.” There’s a dull finality in her voice. “What else do you suggest, madam? That I have the child aborted? That I drown it at birth? That I take to the streets, a disgraced woman, an outcast, that I die of shame and starvation?” Raising her head, she says: “Please let me stay here.”
“You can’t, Maria, you know that’s impossible.”
“Are you going to throw me out?”
“Of course you can stay on here for a few more weeks, but—”
“Just tell me, are you going to throw me out?”
What does one do in these circumstances? I have no idea. “When my husband hears of it you will have no choice. You simply cannot remain here, Maria, you know that.”
She takes a breath and looks at me. Her eyes narrow to slits. “If you throw me out I’ll tell your husband what you have been up to.”
There is a silence.
“What did you say?” I ask.
“You heard.”
I cannot speak. I’m falling—falling through space.
She says: “I’ll tell him, miss. I’ve got nothing to lose.”
My throat has closed. I cannot meet her eye; I stare into the huge mouth of the hearth: the dead grate, the tarred bricks behind. I will it to swallow me up.
At last I say: “How do you know?”
“I’m not stupid.”
“How?”
“That letter you tore up—I read it. Didn’t even need to read it. I could tell, when he was here, you and him.”
“You could tell?” I whisper.
“And I wasn’t asleep that night. I saw you hanging up my cloak; I put two and two together. I wouldn’t have spoken, I’m not that sort, but if you’re going to be like this . . .” She smooths down her apron, setting herself to rights. “So don’t get all lofty with me.” She gets to her feet. “If we sink, we sink together.”
25
Cornelis
If man is the head, then the woman is the neck upon which it rests.
—17TH-CENTURY HOUSEHOLD MANUAL
On Sundays Cornelis enjoys fetching his wife from her place of worship. Our Lord in the Attic, a private Catholic dwelling near the Oude Kerk. He likes to walk home through the streets of his fair city—such beauty, such prosperity!—with Sophia on his arm. After a week’s hard work, it is his reward. Men gaze at him with envy; he swells with pride. Acquaintances stop to greet him. It is a public display of his miraculous good fortune.
On a sunny day like this the whole population seems to be on the streets—respectable burghers and their wives, tradespeople in their Sunday best. Churchgoing has purified them; they have repented their sins and been made whole; they have been saved from eternal damnation. They move like a black wave through the streets. Their souls are as scrubbed clean as the doorsteps along the way; their faith is as shiny as the door knockers. How clean is his nation, scoured both within and without! Foreigners marvel at the polish.
On Sundays Cornelis feels his past more keenly. This morning, as always, he prayed for the souls of his sons, Frans and Pieter, and his first wife. On weekdays, at home, Sophia kneels at his side; he feels constrained by her presence. On Sundays, however, their faiths separate them; kneeling alone, he feels freer to commune with his lost family. Jesus has gathered up his sons to His bosom; they are in heaven, preserved forever as infants sprouting wings.
This is what he tells himself. Recently, however, he has felt a disturbing sensation. His sons are simply small corpses, senselessly snuffed out. That is all. Beyond that is emptiness. Sometimes, sitting in his hard pew—I believe in God the Father—sometimes, sitting there, Cornelis is gripped by terror. There is no heaven, only a spilled deck of cards. Life is a gamble; it is nothing but a handful of tulip bulbs, a brace of kings. Even the righteous can draw the joker from the pack.
He can tell nobody this—certainly not Sophia. It would disturb her, to voice these demons of doubt. His wife is an innocent young woman, steadfast in her faith. It would be as unthinkable as telling her about Grietje lifting her skirts. For it was God’s will that his sons were taken from him, and to question this is blasphemy.
Cornelis has a new life now and a new young wife. She is younger than his sons would be, had they survived. Their ghosts walk beside him. Their unlived years have made them tall and strong. Their unmet spouses and unborn children are somewhere here, at the edges of his vision. The air echoes, like the silence after bells have ceased tolling—it echoes with stopped possibilities. His sons are speaking to him, their faces sorrowful with pity, and they are telling him the truth although he tries to block his ears. There is nothing there, believe us. Sophia must not hear. All Cornelis’s dreams are packed into her, like flower petals packed into a bud. She is his only hope now, for his future simply lies here, on this temporal earth.
The question is—when will the bud burst into blossom? For despite all his efforts Sophia still does not conceive. The night before, when he returned from the banquet, he labored between her legs. She lay there mutely, holding him as he shuddered. Silently he implored God to make his seed fruitful. Afterward, however, he heard her sobbing— noiseless sobs, deep in the pillow when she had presumed he was sleeping. She, too, wanted a child. My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?
The streets are full of children today, walking home from church. A boy, holding his mother’s hand, turns to gaze at a pigeon. Twin girls, sucking twin thumbs, look down at their feet and try to walk in step. Amsterdam is filled with families—his ghost family within his head and real families in rude health. They taunt him with their happiness.
Cornelis is a man of routine. Every Sunday he buys Sophia a pancake, dusted with sugar, at the stall in the Dam. They stop there; he breathes the aroma of vanilla and almonds. A small boy pulls at his father’s arm, urging him to buy. He has flaxen curls, like a cherub, and ruddy cheeks painted by Rubens. Cornelis’s heart shifts beneath his ribs.
Sophia has not said a word. She has been quiet all day. Maybe she is thinking the same thing. Cornelis passes her a pancake, wrapped in a twist of paper. He gestures round at the sunlit scene. “What a beautiful day. I seek only one thing to make my happiness complete.”
Sophia, the pancake halfway to her mouth, stares at him. She looks as if she has woken from a dream.
She pauses for a moment, then she takes a bite.
26
Sophia
Good pictures are very common here, there being scarce an ordinary tradesman whose house is not adorned with them.
—WILLIAM AGLIONBY, The Present State of the Low Countries, 1669
Gerrit, Jan’s servant, opens the door and lets us in. My husband and I step into the studio. Jan stands beside the finished painting.
I am sweating—my palms, my armpits. I didn’t want to come here but Cornelis insisted, and my refusal might have struck him as curious.
“Would you care for a glass of wine?” asks Jan, addressing my husband.
Cornelis is an intruder into my secret life. Surely he can sense that I have been here? The bed looms up; it seems abnormally large, standing in the corner of the room, its curtains closed. It draws the eye with a magnetic force.
Cornelis looks around. What if I have left something here, something that he will recognize? Even with no evidence the room is filled with my presence. He must surely feel it, that this is my true home now, that my heart is here.
Gerrit brings us roemers of wine on a tray—the best glasses. I sip, looking at Jan over the rim. He has greeted me politely; our eyes have barely met. If he is as nervous as I am he is keeping it well hidden.
“Does the painting meet with your approval, sir?” he asks.
Cornelis steps close to the canvas—he is shortsighted. He nods and murmurs to himself.
The pupil, Jacob, points. “It is finely rendered, is it not? Y
our legs in particular, don’t you think? Regard the brushwork.”
Cornelis nods. “Very fine. My dear, do you like it?”
My hand trembles as I hold the glass. They are all watching me. Jacob has a pale, intelligent face; he misses nothing. Gerrit’s lumpy peasant’s face is like a potato. In their different ways they are both dangerous. Will they betray me? Yet I am also filled with tenderness for them; they belong to this place, they are included in my love.
I start to speak, but Cornelis interrupts me. “Oh, but I look old!” he says. “I am but sixty-one yet I look an old man—is this how the world sees me?” He turns to me with a thin smile. “We should call this painting Winter and Spring.”
“I paint what I see,” says Jan shortly. “Nothing more and nothing less.”
“You have certainly caught her beauty.” Cornelis turns to me. “The bloom on her cheeks, her freshness and youth like the dew on a peach. Who was it—Karel van Mander? Who, on seeing a still life, tried to reach into the canvas and pluck the fruit?” He clears his throat. “Not realizing that this particular peach was not to be eaten.”
There is a silence. Outside, a bell chimes the hour. Does Cornelis suspect something?
“I will have the painting delivered to your house tomorrow,” says Jan, taking our empty roemers. He looks uncomfortable; he is longing for us to leave.
But I must speak to him. I must tell him about Maria’s pregnancy and the idea that has been brewing in my mind—an idea so bold, so breathtaking that I hardly dare put it into words. Now is not the time, for Jan is ushering us to the door. It pains me that I cannot kiss him good-bye.
As I pass him I whisper: “I have a plan.”
“WHAT DID YOU SAY?”
Maria stares at me, her eyes as round as platters. All day she has been dozy but now she is wide awake. We are in the parlor. Above her hangs a canvas of a slaughtered hare; it is my least favorite painting in the house. Hooked up by its bleeding hind leg, the hare hangs upside down. Its eye, glazed by death, rests on us with indifference as I tell her my plan.
Maria claps her hand to her mouth. “But, madam—but you can’t!”
“I can, but what about you?”
“But . . . but . . .” Her voice trails away. My robust, chatty maid—for once she is silent.
Then her face breaks into a grin. She sits there under the sacrificial hare—a pitiful, furry Descent from the Cross—and shakes with appalled laughter.
27
Cornelis
You must cultivate the infertile land so that it can bear fruit,
Dig, uproot, make trenches,
Pull out the weeds, from the very first day,
So that your esteemed husband can sow there afterwards.
—JACOB CATS, Moral Emblems, 1625
“And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth . . . and all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man . . . all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was on the dry land, died . . .”
Cornelis is reading to his wife. This chapter in Genesis always stirs him. His country, too, was once drowned. Floods engulfed the land, but with God’s will the people of Holland reclaimed it from the sea; they redeemed it and created an earthly paradise—fertile soil, fair cities, a peaceful and tolerant country where faiths could mingle, Mennonite and Catholic, Protestant and Jew, the lion lying down beside the lamb. How fortunate they are, and how especially fortunate he is.
Sophia’s head is bent over her sewing; she is darning a bedsheet. The oil lamp shines on her soft brown hair, curly at the temples, coiled at the nape of her neck. Their portrait now hangs on the wall; it was delivered yesterday. The picture seals their union. And his business is flourishing. He has shares in several ships. This month a fleet of two hundred vessels is setting sail for the Baltic; from there they will carry grain to southern Europe. In August a fleet of twenty ships is due to return from the East Indies laden with spices, ivory and two hundred tons of gold apiece. If God grants them a safe passage Cornelis will make a substantial profit.
“And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark; and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged . . . and Noah removedthe covering of the ark, and looked, and behold, the face of the ground was dry.”
Cornelis closes the Bible. It is time for bed. Later, he remembers this evening as one of profound contentment. It is as if he already senses the joy to come.
For in bed, when he lays his hand on Sophia’s breast, she gently removes it.
“My dear,” she says. “I have some news that I know will please you as much as it delights me.” She strokes his fingers. “I visited the physician today and he confirmed what I have suspected. I am carrying your child.”
28
Sophia
Except the Lord built the house, their labour is but lost that built it. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.
—PSALM 127
When I was little there was a picture that gave me nightmares. Back in Utrecht, where I grew up, my father owned a print shop. Our front room served as the shop; it opened onto the street where, under the canopy, more prints were displayed. Below street level, downstairs in the vault, that was where the printing press thrummed and clattered. My father printed pamphlets and leaflets—moral verses, sermons and edifying works recommended by the predicants: The Threshold of Paradise, The Delight of Piety. He also printed etchings and engravings of paintings.
The one that haunted me was pinned to the wall—perhaps it haunted him too, I never asked. It was a print of the great flood of 1421, the St. Elizabeth’s Day flood that drowned whole villages forever. The picture shows an expanse of water. Poking through the surface are tree tops and the spires of churches. The water has swallowed them up.
I gazed at it for hours—the stillness of the water, the tips of the spires, the horrors that lay beneath. God had saved Noah; why did these people deserve to be damned? I heard the bells tolling, calling drowned men to worship. Way below were bloated cattle with sightless eyes; they moved in the current, bumping against the roofs of barns. In one convulsion the world had been turned upside down. Deep in the water the dead moved helplessly. Their arms waved like weeds, but nobody came to their rescue.
JAN STARES AT ME. “The Lord preserve us! You really intend doing this?”
We are sitting on the rim of a water fountain, a few streets from his house. His neighborhood is full of artisans’ workshops—carpenters, goldsmiths, painters. Beside us there is a metalworker’s premises. Hammer blows ring out. We meet in the open because it is less risky than me being seen going into his house. Maria, our lookout, stands at the end of the alley. She is my partner now. If we sink, we sink together.
“Surely he will notice?” asks Jan. “He will notice that Maria’s getting fatter?”
“She’s a big girl. The difference will scarcely be discernible, if she wears her apron higher.”
“But surely—”
“My husband is shortsighted,” I reply breezily. “He never looks at her anyway—she is a servant; she is simply an item of furniture.”
“But what about you? How are you going to grow bigger?” Jan looks shaken. He seems to be more nervous than I am. “He will notice you.”
“I’ll feign the symptoms. After a few months I’ll stuff a pillow down my dress—”
“But he’s your husband, he shares your bed, surely he’ll discover you—”
“Ah, that is the beauty of my plan. You know that I cannot bear him touching me. I cannot bear . . .” I stop. “I told him that from now until my confinement we have been forbidden conjugal relations. The doctor ordered it, for my health. I’m delicate, you understand.”
“Are you?”
“And my husband would do anything not to lose t
he baby. I said we must have separate beds, so I can rest undisturbed, and he agreed. He’s so happy he will agree to anything.”
Jan shakes his head wonderingly. He takes my hand. “You are an extraordinary woman.”
Just desperate. I’m desperate for him. “It means Maria can stay on, in our employment. This device suits both of us—she helps me and I help her. . . .”
What then? I have not yet considered that. I am too thrilled with my plan to think beyond my phantom pregnancy, which is becoming so real that I’m almost feeling sick. After all, my husband believes it; this makes it halfway real already.
“But what happens if you, too, fall pregnant?” he asks.
“Then we have to change the plan.”
Jan starts laughing helplessly. He puts his arms around me and kisses me, in broad daylight. After all, what could be more reckless than what I have set in motion?
Hammer blows ring out, sealing our fate.
I KNOW I SHOULD be angry with Maria, for blackmailing me and forcing this bold plan into action. She, too, is terrified that something should go wrong and we will be found out. But I am also profoundly grateful to her, more grateful than she will ever know. She has released me from my marital bed. I have borne my husband’s lovemaking for three years and would no doubt have borne it until he died, but since I’ve met my lover, Cornelis has become so repulsive to me that I have felt violated—his sour breath; his cold, probing fingers. Worse than that—I have felt like a whore.
Miraculously, a solution has presented itself. It is one that will benefit Maria too, for though she has behaved ruthlessly I am fond of her. She is my only friend and I am glad to save her from poverty and ostracism.
What will happen in the future? Neither of us thinks of that. We are young, we have acted on impulse, we have stepped into a world of deceit, but so far we just feel like schoolchildren who have managed to trick our teacher and get away with it.
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