Slipper

by Hester Velmans

  “The pot criticizes the kettle,” retorted Lucinda, “for being black.”

  She congratulated herself on having enough Dutch to parry and thrust with her fault-finding servant.

  Once the baby was weaned, Lucinda began spending more time in the studio. Arent had an apprentice, one Karel Klek, a chubby youth whose singular lack of talent would not be tolerated in a more successful artist’s studio. But Karel managed to make himself useful mixing paints, cleaning brushes and priming panels, and his cheery disposition made his artistic shortcomings forgivable.

  “Oh, Missus!” Karel said admiringly one morning, watching Lucinda put the finishing touches to a canvas, a still life of flowers and butterflies, “It’s good! It’s pretty good!”

  “You think so, Kareltje?” Lucinda said, smiling. She stretched, reaching out to the vase in front of her and running the tips of her fingers apologetically along the drooping petals. Just a week ago the flowers had been fresh and glorious; now that she was done with them, they were sad and wilted.

  “I bet even a picture dealer couldn’t tell that was painted by a woman,” Karel said proudly.

  “Really!” she scoffed.

  “I believe it, Missus, I do!” said Karel.

  “What do you believe, knave?” asked Arent, who had just come in.

  “I was just telling Missus that you couldn’t tell that painting was done by a woman,” Karel told him.

  “Ho! Speak for yourself, boy!” Arent guffawed. He stood before Lucinda’s painting, tilted his head sideways, and took two steps back. “But that’s not bad, not bad at all!” he puffed. “Good so, Sienneke, my girl! Very good! I see that buying the flowers wasn’t such a waste of money after all! I still say you should have done some studies first.” Turning to Karel, he said, “Haven’t I told you a hundred times you should never begin a picture without working it out first? But I’ll grant it, this one hasn’t turned out bad! I can get at least eight florins for that!”

  Lucinda bowed her head, to hide a pleased grin. She felt Arent’s hand on her shoulder. “Soon we’ll have her working on some of my commissions!” Arent speculated. He began nuzzling her neck, and she had to slap a probing hand away from her lap.

  He stood up straight. “I am a lucky man, Karel,” he boasted. “Why, who else do we know who has such a pretty vrouwtje who breeds him a healthy son, keeps a clean house, and is even starting to bring home some of the bacon as well?”

  Lucinda had no idea how her paintings happened. She did not have a plan; she did not work the composition out beforehand, as Arent was telling her to do. What she did was stare at the empty canvas before her and just drink it in, filling her mind to the top with that blankness, while allowing everything else in her head to trickle out like sand in an hourglass. Only when her mind was properly empty of reason did she reach for her brush. Then she would start painting, her unblinking eyes riveted on the subject like a boat tied up to the dock, the fumes of the paints lapping at her nose, the whole spectrum of possibilities dancing like motes of light around her head. Blindly, the brush reached out to touch a glistening mound of umber on the palette. Oops—it had picked up a smudge of white on the side by mistake! No matter: the resulting smear lit up the edge of the tankard with what was probably just the right glint of light. She could not stop to correct it anyway: she had to paint on, on, driven by the overwhelming urge to see the picture emerge in front of her; to give it life.

  Weariness finally overtook her, and she had to close her burning eyes. When she opened them again, it was like waking from a trance. She gaped at the painting in front of her. Who had done that? Had she? Really? But how?

  She kept staring at the picture she had just completed until the colors bled into one another in the greying light. All it needed now was the flourish of Arent’s signature, in the lower right-hand corner. She gave a happy sigh. In her imagination, John Prynce was standing behind her, thunderstruck. “I never knew you were so talented,” he whispered, awed…

  “What in damnation are you doing, wife? It’s already past suppertime! Dieneke is all in a stew, she says you didn’t buy any cabbage, you know I can’t bear my stamppot without cabbage…”

  “Sorry, Arent! I was just coming…”

  “Too late, woman, too late. I won’t eat that shit, you know I won’t. I’m off to the Hound. At least there I’ll get something decent to eat.”

  Lucinda ran after him. “I’m sorry! But why didn’t Dieneke tell me? She went to market herself this morning!”

  “You know not to bother me with your women’s problems,” barked Arent. “Your quarrels with your servant are no concern of mine.”

  “Wait! I finished another painting! You know, the grapes and the tankard!”

  “I told you,” came his voice from the stairs, “I like to be lenient. I like to see you do what makes you happy. But enough is enough. A wife who neglects her husband is the devil’s dam!”

  51

  PUSS IN BOOTS

  Some say that a woman is very like a cat. On the surface she may appear most tractable and domesticated, but deep down she is the most fiercely independent and ornery of beings. Such a woman, if she is resolved to make something of herself, is well advised to pull on some leather boots or other alluring footgear, and stride boldly into the world to find herself a master. Depending on her wit and determination, it is not impossible for such a woman to capture all that her heart desires, while remaining, in the eyes of the world, the most docile of pussycats.

  It is true that this scheme usually means that her master reaps all the credit for her hard work.

  But is this not a small price to pay for half a kingdom?

  Lucinda was now spending more time in the studio than her spouse, for Arent was able to sell her paintings almost as fast as she turned them out, leaving him at liberty to spend his waking hours in the Hound.

  He had begun coaching Lucinda in the art of the tavern scene, a genre popular with Amsterdam’s well-to-do merchants. The trick to these was to cram them with entertaining details—lewd old men pawing buxom maidens, bawds counting money, drunkards, dogs, naughty children, and oodles of glistening oysters. Lucinda had turned out half a dozen of these, and they were proving to be even more profitable than the careful still lifes of her early apprenticeship.

  “What’s this?” Arent grumbled one morning, returning from a lengthy session out back, in the privy. He scratched his head and yawned. “I didn’t tell you to do a portrait, did I?”

  “Oh, it’s not really a portrait,” said Lucinda quickly. “It’s just that I had been sketching Liesbet, and I thought it would make such a pretty picture…”

  “There’s not much of a market for children these days,” Arent said sourly.

  “No, it’s something to keep…”

  “And I see you’ve used some of the good linen too. I wish you’d think of the cost, you could have used the burlap, couldn’t you? I wish you had asked me first.”

  “I’m sorry. I wanted to practice painting faces, you know I rarely have the chance—”

  “Wifey. We have been over that a hundred times. Haven’t we? I can’t let you do faces because the customers wouldn’t like it. Whoever heard of having his likeness painted by a woman? I let you do the backgrounds and the clothes. Isn’t that enough?”

  “Of course it is, Arent,” she said. “I just…”

  “Oh, come here and give your old hubby a kiss. Liesbetje, run along and play.”

  After a short conjugal interlude, Arent left her to her painting, and to her reveries.

  Lucinda had given the matter much thought, and she had almost made up her mind. Sooner or later, she would—possibly—no, probably—have to tell Liesbet who her real father was. It would be a terrible thing to do to Arent, of course, Arent who had been so generous with them, who had never shown Liesbet the slightest prejudice. But there it was: Arent was not the real father, and Lucinda felt she owed her daughter the truth. Not now, perhaps, but when she was a little older. She
bit her lip. How thrilled Liesbet would be, to know she was the offspring not of an artistic commoner, but of an aristocratic man of science! Not that Arent wasn’t a wonderful, kindhearted man; but there was his drinking, and his gluttony, and his oafishness to consider. Lucinda knew that any maiden, given a choice, prefers to have a gentleman for a sire.

  And did she not owe the truth to John Prynce? Somewhere on earth there lived a child of his flesh and blood, and he did not know it! It was too bad that Liesbet was a girl, not a boy, but Lucinda trusted that John was broadminded enough not to let the child’s gender detract from his joy in knowing himself to be a father.

  Yes, it was right to imperil her own position—think of the scandal! Arent might throw her out!—for her child. As a mother, she had no other option.

  “Go, my daughter,” she imagined herself whispering to Liesbet. “That gentleman there is your father. Go to him, and kiss his hand.”

  The girl went softly to him, and did as she was told. He looked up, startled. “Why—what is this?” he began. Then he spotted Lucinda standing just inside the doorway. “You!” he exclaimed sternly. “What are you doing here?”

  “What is it, John?” asked an elegant lady stepping out of the shadows. “Who are these women?”

  Lucinda stammered, “Forgive me, my lady. But please do not send away this maiden. She is your husband’s child. I humbly implore you to accept her as your own.”

  “But…” he said. “But I had no idea! If I had known…if only you had let me know…”

  She bowed her head. “Please,” she whispered, “Please! Do not make it harder for all of us. I will leave you now…”

  Liesbet dropped her father’s hand and stretched both arms imploringly toward Lucinda. “No, Mama! Don’t go!” she cried. Turning back to her father, she entreated, “The cruel Dutchman has turned her out! She has not a penny to her name! She has sacrificed everything! She’ll wind up in the poorhouse! She’ll be buried in a pauper’s grave!”

  But already Lucinda was running, already she was fleeing that house, down a long, polished marble staircase, slipping, tripping, losing a slipper in her headlong flight—

  She heard Dieneke clumping up the stairs. Hastily she wiped away a tear.

  “What is it, Dieneke?” she exclaimed when she saw the maid’s glum, reddened face.

  “Miep Stol next door’s been taken with the pox,” said Dieneke, “and they say there’s a dozen people dead of it already, in Haarlem.”

  “Come, Dieneke! Every time there’s bad news, you act as if it’s the end of the world! Come, cheer up, silly! Nothing’s going to happen!”

  But of all contagions, the worst by far is fear, and Dieneke’s fear reached out and caught Lucinda by the throat.

  If it was your fate to live in the seventeenth century and no member of your family had ever succumbed to the plague or the smallpox, you would consider yourself fortunate indeed. The reality was that gross, unnatural, horrific death lurked around every corner, and if it did not pounce this time, it would surely get you on the next round.

  The smallpox epidemic in question took Liesbet, Karel Klek, and Arent Prul.

  When it was all over, only the baby, Dieneke and Lucinda were left.

  52

  PENELOPE

  Trudging home one afternoon along a towpath with her son, Lucinda stopped when she reached the outlying hovels of the city. She turned around to drink in one last time the open landscape she had been sketching.

  A flock of birds silhouetted against the twilit sky came wavering towards them. Seconds later the air above them was filled with a flapping, squealing ferment. Arentje whooped with delight and waved his little arms in the air. For a few moments he and his mother watched the birds swooping and gliding, now almost standing still, then, as if of one mind, skimming up and away again.

  Lucinda envied them their sense of purpose, the aggressive certainty of their dance. She tried to make out if it was one bird that set the pace while the rest followed; but singling out a leader was impossible. A bird that was out in front on one round was just as likely to fall back and bring up the rear the next. Then how to explain this supernatural precision? Were the birds able to read each other’s minds, or were they dancing to some celestial rhythm she would never be able to hear?

  She sighed. “Come,” she said to her son, and took his hand. “Dieneke will have supper waiting. Bacon pancakes tonight!”

  She turned and slowly picked her way along the bewildering road.

  Lying in bed awake, listening to Arentje and Dieneke’s breathing—the three of them now shared the parlor’s cupboard-bed—Lucinda tried to shake off the demons that visited her every night, smothering her like the hot featherbed. Her throat was tight; her tears were gone. What now? What should she do? What was the right thing to do? What did God wish her to do?

  Surely, in taking her daughter and her husband from her, God had sent one last message. But what did it mean? Did it mean that she was being punished for having had disloyal thoughts about Arent? Or for having used Liesbet’s parentage as an excuse for those disloyal thoughts? Or was it that she had yearned for freedom, and this was the price one paid for freedom? It was like the fable of the woodcutter wife’s foolish three wishes: no matter what you wished for, you were worse off, in the end, than before. It was a lesson in humility. A lesson in accepting one’s fate.

  She got out of bed, moving slowly, like an old woman. She lit a candle, tiptoed out of the room and into the studio. There she sat down heavily before the canvas she had been working on since Easter. It was a lavish still life, for the French ambassador. He had sent her the props for it—a silver charger, a damask cloth, outrageously expensive flowers, including two exquisitely striped tulips. He had told her it was all hers to keep. She was supposed to be impressed. She frowned at the painting. She did not like it. It was too safe, too rich, too removed from real life. What it needed was something to remind her client of the vanity of earthly possessions. A common, tousled dandelion. No—an ant, a worm, some…vermin. A cockroach! Yes! She had just the place for it, too: slithering sideways up the slick, shiny silver. Her face broke into a wicked grin.

  In the two years since Arent’ Prul’s death, her reputation had grown. She had even begun to sign her paintings with her own name, and, to her surprise, no one had objected. On the contrary, people seemed to enjoy the novelty. There was far more interest in her paintings now that it was known that they were the work of a pretty, exotic young widow, and not her deceased husband.

  The French ambassador was quite taken with her, and was trying to persuade her to move to Paris, where he said she would be a sensation. She didn’t know if she wanted to be a sensation. What she wanted was to have her Liesbet back, that was what she wanted!

  But the idea of leaving Amsterdam had begun to appeal to her. After all, what was there for her here? What was she doing here? Years of grief, of loneliness, of longing, of waiting—but for what? Even with all the debts paid, there was plenty of money left, enough to send some of her neighbors sniffing around with unwelcome offers of marriage. She had been fending them off with the plea that she was still in mourning, but time was running out for that excuse.

  She walked to the back of the room, and pulled out a large painting that she kept hidden under a sheet. Something fell off a shelf and onto the floor. She picked it up and stared at it. That old thing! She had forgotten all about it. It was Liesbetje’s half-finished portrait. It was a good likeness, especially around the eyes. Arent had caught her working on it one day, and she had guiltily put it aside. For what Arent hadn’t known then, was that she had begun the portrait with the foolish notion that she might some day send it to John Prynce…

  Liesbet’s likeness stared at her solemnly. With an unsteady finger Lucinda traced the outline of the unresponsive little cheek.

  Trembling, she turned to the other painting. It was large—larger than anything she had ever done. She propped the stretcher up on the table, where the moonlight c
aught it so that she could make out the familiar shapes.

  It was a history painting, a painting that told a classical tale. It gave her a thrill every time she looked at it. How shocked Arent would have been! It was of a scope far beyond what he would ever have allowed her to tackle. Poor Arent had not had much success with his own mythological paintings. One hung, ignored, on the back wall of the Hound. Another had been cut into quarters, the canvas reused for more profitable vignettes. Paintings with classical subjects were expensive to produce because they took up a great deal of time, and Arent’s sort of client would never dream of commissioning one. To paint one without any money down was tantamount to tossing florins out the window. But Lucinda was now free to do as she liked.

  The painting showed a woman at a loom, one arm leaning on the frame, the other stretched out behind her, as if she had just completed a pass with the shuttle. In her lap lay a loose coil of yarn of the same flaxen color as the hair cascading down her back. To the left was an open doorway through which you could see some male faces spying on the woman. In the background, over her other shoulder, was a portico leading to a dark and turbulent sea breaking on jagged cliffs, and, very faintly, a tattered ship struggling along on the horizon. It was her favorite story, the story of Penelope, that paragon of domesticity, waiting for her husband Odysseus to return home from the wars; outwitting her suitors, never giving up hope, clinging to the belief that patience and constancy would some day be rewarded.

  For a long time she stood there, drinking it in. She remembered the desperation with which she had begun it, just days after Liesbet, Arent and Karel were laid to rest.

  She had wanted to smother the entire canvas in the thick paint, the way a mother needs to wrap a crying child in the soft warm body of her consolation.