Rembrandt's Mirror

by Devereux, Kim

  Six strode straight into the studio and boomed, ‘How are things with you, old hog?’

  ‘Quite satisfactory,’ came the answer, as Rembrandt pulled Six into a rough embrace, thumping his back.

  ‘Not so fast, sailor,’ said Six in a pleading voice, and then the two broke into raucous laughter as I reluctantly closed the door behind me. I envied their boyish high jinks. Between him and me things were always weighted whereas he could talk to Six, perhaps even about what was on his mind. I pressed my ear carefully against the wood of the door. If one of them emerged I would pretend I had come to ask if they wanted beer. I heard Rembrandt’s voice clearly.

  ‘Why don’t you drape your fetching frame over there against the window and I can get on with the drawing while you tell me what you’ve been up to and who you’ve been up to.’

  Six chuckled, ‘Now van Rijn, I should think you’re the one with saucy tales to tell. Rumour has it that you’re keeping a pretty chick right here in your back yard.’

  One look from Geertje at court was all it had taken to mark me out to the gossip-mongers.

  ‘Don’t believe the rumours,’ said Rembrandt. ‘Geertje’s caused enough trouble.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Six, ‘funny that women just don’t understand that it sometimes is necessary to move on.’

  ‘Be quiet, Jan.’

  ‘No, Mijn Rembtje, I’m not poking fun at you, I’m speaking from experience.’

  ‘I’m sure you are. Let’s get you into a suitable position . . .’ And after a pause, ‘Yes, that’s it, keep it like that. I’ll make a start. How about you, have you had much leisure to roam?’

  ‘I have been confined to the stables most of the time. But I have been making approaches to a lady of premier connections. And have been well received, but there are plenty of others who’d like to stick their oar in. So I’m afraid I’m having to be well behaved so as not give those blabberers anything to blab about.’

  ‘What does this lady have to offer that you are willing to wear a gob-string of your own making?’

  ‘Well, she makes a pretty picture but more importantly she will marry up the chairs of power with my handsome arse.’

  ‘No doubt your buttocks will derive great joy from sitting on them.’

  ‘Ah, you don’t approve? No beautiful princess could tempt you into a life of luxury?’

  ‘I like to do as I please. That’s my luxury.’

  ‘Yes, I know, my friend, but even your freedom has limits. It is one thing doing what you do in private but it pays not to be too public about one’s taste for the lower orders. They don’t tell it to your face, but it has not done your reputation much good to have Geertje drag you into court.’

  ‘Are you telling me my clients will flock to commission some piddling paint-pissers because they don’t approve of who warms my bed?’

  ‘No, not exactly, but now no one will risk sending their daughter to you for a sitting. You’ve painted the last young lady for money.’

  ‘A bad smell does not last for ever.’

  ‘That’s true, but you keep on adding to the dung heap.’

  ‘Well, she had me.’

  ‘She certainly did.’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’ I could hear the smirk in Rembrandt’s voice.

  ‘But . . . ?’ asked Six.

  Then there was another pause. ‘Come on,’ said Six, ‘out with it.’

  I too was dying to learn the cause of Rembrandt’s cheer.

  ‘As you probably know,’ said Rembrandt, ‘I was ordered to pay her two hundred a year . . .’ he made a rude retching noise ‘. . . so along comes her brother to collect my hard-earned money. Amiable host as I am, I bid him sit down, cut off a chunk of Maasdam, open a bottle of wine and we get talking.’

  ‘As you would, with the brother of your enemy,’ added Six.

  ‘Investments, cheese-making in Germany not rivalling ours because they cannot keep their cow sheds clean and then suddenly he starts twittering about Geertje and how she’s like a bad case of gout and how even her neighbours in Edam think so. How he always has to sort out her problems and that he is, well, sick to death of it. The poor fellow had to take her in after her husband’s death. So naturally we have plenty to compare and agree upon as regards the rigors of living with her.’

  ‘Naturally?’ Six sounded incredulous. ‘You’re not seriously telling me that her own brother agreed with you? And this is the brother she trusts to conduct her business?’

  ‘You got it lightning fast.’

  ‘Maybe he was merely relieving his ire?’ said Six.

  ‘No, my friend, he had a purpose in mind.’

  ‘All right then. What more?’

  ‘She gave him power of attorney.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Six, ‘so he can collect the funds but . . . You did not? Is it possible?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Stop it,’ said Six, ‘what are you saying?’

  ‘Well, I started throwing looks at the bag of guilders that’s sitting on the table and he took this as his cue to say, that there are places for keeping difficult women – you know, places that take proper care of them.’

  ‘Unbelievable. You mean a Spin House?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  I was sickened. The treachery of the brother was as appalling as Rembrandt’s. He continued in the same gloating tone in which he’d told the entire tale.

  ‘Funny thing was, I was slow to catch on. It was him leading me by the nose. But who minds being led where they want to go?’

  ‘Yes, quite.’

  ‘So then it dawns on me that if she’s in the Spin House I don’t have to pay her maintenance; that’s how the law sees it. So I say to him that I’d much rather the money, or what’s left over after paying the Spin House, went to someone responsible like a caring family member.’

  ‘No doubt he wholeheartedly agreed with you.’

  ‘After that we worked together like two boys planning to relieve a neighbour’s tree of its cherries. He’d get her acquaintances to sign depositions that she is unhinged and then the court would have her sent off for safe-keeping.’

  I felt as outraged as if it were me he’d cheated out of tenure and possessions.

  ‘So what’s the latest?’ said Six.

  ‘That’s it. It’s all been done. She’s in Gouda now, learning how to spin a good yarn, which should play to her strengths. And as she’s signed her rights away to her brother, she’s trapped as trapped can be.’

  ‘If anyone other than you’d told me this story I wouldn’t have believed it,’ said Six.

  ‘Best thing is I no longer have to worry about tripping over her every time I step outside my house. It’s perfect.’

  ‘Sounds like it.’

  I’d been worried for him all these weeks and all he’d been doing was plotting his revenge. How convenient that he could bury his public embarrassment along with her. A tidy business, except she’d have to pay the price. This was the same man who had looked on the limp body of Elsje with so much compassion. Now he had become judge and executioner, locking Geertje away in a pitiless institution full of thieves, criminals, lunatics and whores, condemned to spinning all day and being gawked at by passing visitors. She would have little food but a limitless supply of infectious diseases. I doubted she would last five years. What an open-mouthed fool I’d been to have admired him for his compassion. I wanted to spit the word out; by association with him it had become dirty. Geertje had always seen him for what he was and tried to warn me.

  Days passed. I hardly said a word. He was a stranger to me now. I wondered when he’d mark the change in me. He did not seem to care or notice. At mealtimes Titus’s little face glanced from him to me as we all ate silently.

  After about a week, I felt worn down to the knuckles and went to bed early. Despite my tiredness I could not sleep. I thought again of Samuel’s drawing. It was comforting to think that Samuel had cared enough for me to mak
e it. If only he was here now. I took the drawing from behind my woollens and carefully unrolled it. It was far more detailed than Rembrandt’s work. Even the heads of the tiny screws that held parts of the balance scale together were rendered complete with slots and light reflections. On the left, as I’d remembered, rested the globe of the entire world. The continents, though, were drawn less confidently than the screws. The pan on the right was, of course, empty. But it was lower than the left! Whatever nothing it contained weighed heavier than the entire physical world. I smiled, thinking how Samuel liked to be clever. I wondered what invisible thing it held; one’s eternal soul or perhaps the heavenly Jerusalem? While I studied the drawing I noticed the odd popping and hissing sounds from the fire, the breath of the wind squeezing through the gaps in the windows and the clomp-clomp of distant footsteps on the street. Samuel had said that the ‘empty’ pan contained what was most important. No doubt he’d learned these ideas from Rembrandt.

  If a man like Rembrandt – who could see the deeper truth of things – behaved so unfeelingly, then what hope did the world have? As soon as I let go of the drawing, it curled back into a roll.

  There was a knock on the door to my room. My chest contracted. I quickly rolled up the drawing and pushed it into the gap between my bed and the wall. Rembrandt might decide it was his property if he found out Samuel had drawn it while still employed by him. And I had no intention of parting with it.

  ‘Yes?’ I said, and the door opened. I sat with the covers pulled up under my arms, for I was only wearing a shift. He stood at the door for a long time, still in his paint-spattered tabard.

  At last he said, ‘You’ve not been talking much all week.’

  I did not answer. He came closer and placed his candle on the table beside my bed so he could see my face.

  ‘I don’t want the candle there,’ I said.

  He looked taken aback but picked the candle up and put it on the kitchen table instead. Then he came to the bed again and kneeled on the floor, putting his hand softly on the cover where my shin was. I’d been hoping for such a gesture for I don’t know how long. I slid my leg away from his touch. His hand collapsed into the void. I pulled my legs against my body. He walked to the sink and clasped its edge with both his hands. I swaddled the blanket around me and stood up. His body was black against the dimly illuminated window.

  He turned around. ‘Why are you looking at me as if I’ve infested your flour?’

  ‘Because of what you’ve done.’

  ‘What have I done?’

  ‘I was so wrong about you. You’re nothing but a vindictive scoundrel.’

  He ignored the insult and asked quite calmly, ‘How did you find out?’

  This incensed me further. He was more concerned with the means by which I’d come to know than the wrong he’d committed.

  ‘By accident,’ I said.

  He moved towards me, hands outstretched in a placating gesture. I moved away, keeping the table between us. He moved, I moved. He stopped, I stopped, like children playing a game, but we were not children.

  ‘I had to. You know what she is like, breaking every single agreement. She’ll never change.’

  ‘She could not have broken what the courts decided. That was the end of it.’

  ‘It makes no difference to her whether she’s signed a hundred agreements with a notary or a judge. Not if she gets something into her head. Hendrickje, she attacked you. I had to do it for our protection.’

  Why did he have to bring me into it? And what our was he talking about? As far as I could see, there never had been an our, except when it suited him.

  ‘How very thoughtful of you,’ I said. I wished he’d call his hatred by its proper name instead of trying to pass off his revenge as a good deed. ‘I’ve been such an idiot. She warned me about you.’ Tears amassed behind my eyes. I refused them.

  He was tugging nervously at his tabard. ‘No, it’s not as you think. You probably listened to me speaking to Six, which you shouldn’t have done.’

  ‘Seems we’re conveniently back to master and maid,’ I said.

  He tried to wipe this aside with a wave of his hand. ‘I was just bragging to Jan. Besides, it was the right thing to do. She causes problems everywhere. All her old neighbours say it too.’

  ‘Problems?’ I said. ‘A few pawned jewels, that you gave to her yourself; perhaps she should be garrotted for such a crime. Wouldn’t that wrap things up nicely?’

  He replied, ‘You keep forgetting she was trying to hurt us.’

  ‘She was out of the house. It was over.’

  ‘It was not. It never is with her.’

  ‘So, what if I become a little difficult, will you lock me up too?’

  ‘She was more than a little difficult.’

  ‘No. You’re the one that’s difficult.’

  ‘That’s enough, Hendrickje.’

  ‘It’s not!’ I took a breath. ‘You loved her. How can you not feel for her?’

  ‘Love?’ He made a dismissive grunt. ‘It takes a heart more tarnished than yours to understand these things.’

  I stared at him. ‘Explain it then.’

  He stared back at me and said, ‘You want the truth?’

  I nodded.

  He turned away and said, ‘I don’t care whether she lives or dies. All I care about is that she’s under lock and key and can’t interfere anymore.’ And then so quietly I could barely hear, ‘I never cared for her.’

  At first I received it like a confession, but then my anger rose at his inhumanity. I grabbed the shiny lid of a pan. He stepped back a few paces but I had no intention of hitting him.

  ‘How many times have you produced “noble” pictures of yourself for your clamouring customers . . .’ My voice was turning shrill. ‘They are all failures.’ I held the lid up to his face and stepped towards him. ‘Why don’t you take a good look at yourself?’

  He could not help glancing at his distorted reflection.

  ‘No wonder you don’t depict yourself as you really are. Who’d want such a hideous portrait.’ And then I shouted, ‘Least of all me!’

  With that I dropped the lid. It fell clattering on the stone floor.

  He looked like he needed a chair. The feeling of power temporarily glazed over my pain.

  I noticed my own grotesque reflection staring back at me from the lid and for a moment I feared that things were not as clear as they seemed. I stepped aside to let him leave. He looked like a beaten dog.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled as he went.

  Sorry – what a meaningless word when spoken without insight or regret.

  By the next morning my anger had left and with it my courage. I felt almost as if I’d done something wrong. Titus followed me from room to room, trying to sit on my lap, whether I was peeling shrivelled carrots or sewing. In the early evening he went to the studio to be with his father and I could hear him laughing and screaming for Rembrandt to stop tickling him. Only a month ago he had declared he was too old for such things.

  A few days later we were in the kitchen. Titus hugged his father around the legs and then ran over and hugged me the same way. Then he stood, waiting expectantly, as if relayed hugs might bring grownup people to their senses. For a moment the palms of Rembrandt’s hands seemed to open towards me and I thought his arms might follow. But they did not. If they had, I would have refused him of course. I looked down into Titus’s hopeful little face. If only by magic all could be forgotten.

  An entire week had passed. Night had fallen and I could not think of anything else I could possibly clean without rubbing it into oblivion, so I sat down at the table. I had not felt the true extent of my sadness until now. I allowed my upper body to rest on the table just for a moment. But then my throat tightened until a sob prised it open. The crying that followed was so violent that I felt I was a stranger to myself. Spasm after spasm shook me. The world was flawed in some fundamental way. I didn’t want it. Any of it.

  This was exactly how Titus
had cried when he’d lost Clarence, the wooden horse. He’d taken the toy everywhere. He’d been Clarence’s voice and animation. Then suddenly there was no Clarence. We’d searched the whole house but found no trace of him. Titus had dissolved in a great fit of wailing and tears that lasted for well over an hour. I was mystified how the loss of a wooden horse could provoke so much grief. But now I understood perfectly.

  I wanted the old Rembrandt back but he was gone. You might say that Titus was not upset by the loss of a sculpted piece of wood, but by the loss of the living, breathing Clarence that dwelled in his fancy. And yet I thought I’d lost something more than an imaginary Rembrandt.

  The next day he came down in the late morning and said, ‘Rika, I have to buy materials and I need your help carrying them back to the house. When can you be ready to leave?’

  He usually had one of his assistants help him, but I was in no mood to argue. ‘I can go any time now.’

  He grabbed some baskets and off we went, bypassing the food markets and heading straight for the harbour and the warehouses of the East India Company. The closer we got to the IJ, the narrower, darker and smellier the alleyways became. Whenever we came across a begging leper he would toss him a coin and make sure to put himself between the leper and me. I inwardly scoffed at this show of protectiveness.

  Finally we emerged from one of Amsterdam’s gloomy passages into the open space at the IJ. There were two dozen large ships, most of them anchored, and a handful making their way in or out of the harbour with billowing sails. One massive ship nearby was disgorging goods on to a host of small man-powered barges. They’d ferry its cargo to canal-based warehouses all over the city.

  We stopped to watch. The ship was majestic with its three large masts. Her wooden hull was smooth and elegantly curved, lying quite low in the water. I wondered what was in the crates; spices I’d never tasted, silk from China made by little worms, tea, sugar and all manner of curiosities. A large part of these marvels was only channelled through our city before being sold on to those abroad who could pay for such extraordinary pleasures.

  He said with a smile, ‘If you could buy anything you wanted, what would it be?’