Rembrandt's Mirror

by Devereux, Kim

  ‘Chocolate,’ I said without hesitation.

  He laughed. ‘Yes, I’ve heard of it, both good and bad.’

  We’d reached the warehouses. He bought reams of the cheapest cartridge paper. With pigments he was more choosy, taking a long time examining various chunks of lapis lazuli until settling on a particularly vibrant blue. Then he purchased some small quantities of Chinese paper. By that stage we had so many parcels that he asked me to wait in one of the offices while he went off to buy some brushes.

  *

  When we got home I carried everything up into the studio. He remained in the kitchen, which was odd as he normally liked to put materials away himself. I piled the items at the entrance to the small storeroom. When I returned to the kitchen he held up a steaming cup and said, ‘Chocolate.’

  Before him was the pestle and mortar he had used to grind the cocoa and the room was filled with the unfamiliar aroma. He pulled out a chair and placed the cup on the table. I hesitated but the cup steamed so invitingly. I sat down and took a sip. What an awful bitter taste! I must have grimaced as he quickly took the cup and tried it himself and gave a shiver. Then he got the jar of sugar that was reserved for special guests and lopped several spoonfuls into the mug.

  ‘Try now,’ he said.

  I could not believe the difference. The bitterness had been transformed into something utterly delicious. I pushed the cup towards him so he could have a taste but he pushed it back.

  ‘No, you have it. I’ll enjoy seeing you drink it.’

  It was almost midnight. I lay awake, listening for his footsteps from the studio to his bedroom. For some reason I still could not sleep until he was resting too. But lately he had taken to working late into the night. At last I heard the creak of his body sinking into the bed above. But still I could not sleep.

  *

  Day followed day, much as before. I occupied whichever rooms he did not and gulped food down at mealtimes. One morning, after a week or so of avoiding him, I heard him go out. So I rushed up to the studio with a bucket and cloth, out of guilt that I had not cleaned there for so long. Not that he had complained. I ran my finger over the surface of the table, raking up a clump of ash. It had settled on everything like a veil. I smoothed it between my index finger and thumb. It was impossibly soft, softer than anything I’d ever felt. Without thinking I put my ash-covered finger on my tongue, perhaps wanting to know what annihilation tastes like. It was harsh and metallic. I spat it out repeatedly but the acrid sensation remained. I rinsed my mouth with clean water from the bucket, but it would not wash away.

  The table top needed wiping. I moistened my cloth. The wood was covered in a film of grey, on top of which lay a new drawing. I sat down to have a closer look. It depicted an older man embracing a younger man. The younger man seemed to have no strength left to hold himself up so he had his arms around the neck and shoulders of the older man, whom I took to be his father.

  The father was leaning on a cane, so he could embrace his son with only one arm and yet he held him unreservedly. His head was tilted as if listening to his son’s very breath, his shoulders curved to meet him, his chest soft to receive the young man’s weary body. It had to be The Return of the Prodigal Son.

  I knew this Bible story well. The youngest son had asked for his inheritance, left home, gambled and whored. Having lost everything he’d returned home to ask for charity. He did not even have to seek forgiveness, for as soon as his father spotted him coming over the hill, he ran towards him and ordered the best calf to be slaughtered in celebration of his homecoming. The father must already have forgiven him, I thought, but when was the moment of forgiveness? When he was in his arms? When he saw him coming over the hill? Or even long before that? Did he think to himself, I won’t hold a grudge anymore or was the meaning of true forgiveness that there was simply nothing to forgive? I looked at the embrace again. There was no space between them. None.

  My heart fluttered open just for a moment, and then closed again when I heard the sound of Rembrandt’s feet strumming the stairs. And there he was, walking in. I felt myself a dead weight. He sat down on a footstool on the other side of the desk. Neither of us said a word. I had lost the sentences I had composed night after night with which to hold up his wickedness to him. We remained sitting, me chair-locked, him elbows on knees, head in the heels of his hands. Seconds turning to minutes. I stopped searching for words. I looked at him, the shape of his sunken shoulders. He scratched his beard briefly. The damp cloth still in my hand, the water slowly draining out of it, making a puddle on the floor.

  How small he looked, hunched like that. My hand opened, dropping the cloth. His eyes glanced up at me. I looked at the drawing, avoiding his eyes. It was nothing more really than a piece of paper. I touched it, letting my fingertips rest on it, as if it could take me back to him across the sea of ashes.

  I withdrew my hand, noticing too late that his was, just then, reaching out to touch mine. He placed his fingertips where mine had been, the paper still warm from my touch.

  After this, meals became embroidered with words once more, mostly for Titus’s sake. But I continued to be haunted by the drawing of the prodigal son. The father’s embrace was a riddle I could not solve. It hovered at the bottom of the dirty dishwater, it appeared at night as a reflection in the window. I walked through the house with my right arm gathering empty space in imitation of the father’s gesture.

  How inevitable suffering seemed, like a great sea tide, which could even reverse the direction of the IJ. No compassion was vast enough to make the smallest difference. Certainly not mine. I could not forgive, least of all the unrepentant.

  And anyone who dared love in this flawed world would surely suffer.

  Then one afternoon, a few days later, I passed by the studio. The door was ajar. He was at the easel in deep concentration. His brush hopped from palette to canvas, like a songbird after a worm, applying paint to a golden sleeve. Then he did something I’d never seen him do before – he turned the brush on its end and stabbed the wooden handle deftly into a bowl of discarded, dried-up paint, scooping some up and mixing the paint crumbs with some yellow and ochre. Then he took the palette knife and applied the thick mixture to the canvas, sculpting the sleeve more than painting it. Even from the doorway I could see it rise into being. A miracle; not that he had rendered gold brocade from oil paint, but that he’d invented something new with the same casualness with which I drank from a glass of water.

  It was the essence of how he worked. The hundreds of thousands of strokes he’d made before had no bearing on this stroke, other than his manual skill. He was guided only by what was to be achieved in painting the sleeve – for this crest of paint to catch the light. He was perfectly free in this. If only I could be too.

  I continued to watch him paint. It was like a tonic.

  The sleeve was all there now. He’d turned waste into gold.

  That night I woke from dreams of burning effigies and urns bursting with ashes. I tried to get back to sleep but rolled around until my bedding slipped off the bed. How to forgive? I could and would not forget nor could I un-love him. Round and round I went like a mouse trapped in a glass bowl. And there was something else; my not forgiving kept me safe from him – an iron breastplate, weighing me down day and night.

  In my despair I clung to the hope that one day he’d change into a man I could safely love. I kept on going round and round. Until I saw; my hope was my prison now. Better to let hope die, than to die hoping.

  I lay defeated. The black waters of the IJ slowly moving through me. Ripples dancing prettily on the surface but below – in those crypts of our soul we reach only in dreams – I felt its deepest current, a great sorrow, making and unmaking me. The sorrow of all men.

  And then I was the father. I was the son. And I was God. A tiny bird soared high up into the sky, singing as it went. I watched the little creature in the boundless blue. Yes, I would love. Love did not require knowing. It thrived brilliantly beyond th
e edge of the known.

  I got out of bed, feeling perfectly awake. He was upstairs. I must see his face.

  I opened the kitchen door, placed my hand on the banister and slowly pulled myself up, step by step, on the winding staircase. The latch of the door into the studio lifted easily. He was behind his desk, wearing his golden reading glasses.

  His face was there – a landscape of lines, stigmata of a lifetime. I remained on the threshold, seeing his body, his tenderness and his cruelty.

  He looked at me over the rims of his glasses then he took them off and put them down. I closed the door. His eyes were steady. I took a few steps into the room. He rose from his chair, arms by his side. My body mirrored his, learning about him that way. The palms of his hands were slightly turned towards me. I knew the meaning: This is me.

  Something in me came undone; nothing was more extraordinary than the ordinary. I put my hand on my mouth to try to hold myself together. I really saw him now – just him. And not just him, for I saw every man in him. His eyes were bright, their colour both green and grey like ancient rocks. His chest, his face, his arms and legs, becoming full and fuller of what it was to be him. I’d never seen the very life in him before.

  His arms opened and we embraced. We stood like this for a lifetime. I held him in his maturity, as a baby and as a dying man. I sank deeper into his chest as if into Mother Earth herself. I felt his care for me as I grew younger, and younger still, until I was a newborn and then nothing at all.

  This nothing-me felt the touch of his lips. Felt them but not the way I’d felt them before, more like the ocean holds the fish that swim in it. I was each wavelet and the stillness at the bottom where no current stirs. His hands worked slowly to free my body from its clothes. I felt sleeves slide down my arms and skirts fall from my waist – the warmth from the stove enveloping my skin.

  My hands tugged at his shirt as if I’d never carried out a manual task before. He rid himself of it and of the woollens he was wearing underneath. His chest was white and new and warm. I closed my eyes, touching his chin, his cheeks and the soft skin beneath his eyes, as a blind person sees the immortal face of a dear friend.

  I opened my eyes again and he led me by the hand to a place in front of the stove. He spread out his tabard for us to lie on and opened the door to the fire. I lay down on my side, naked but not feeling naked, my head propped up on my arm. He knelt down, his upper body a dark silhouette against the flames. The red glow licking his shoulders and haloing his head.

  Then, to my perfect dismay – a knock on the front door. I willed whoever it was away. He frowned, still looking at me, and said, ‘Let them knock – they have no business knocking on a Saturday night.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘they don’t.’

  ‘Such bad manners,’ said Rembrandt without taking his eyes off me.

  Knock, knock, knock. He bent forward and whispered into my ear, ‘Maybe if I answer, they’ll go quickly?’

  Before I could reply, a male voice shouted, ‘Remmmm . . . brandt! Are . . . you . . . home? I want to see the Miracle of our Age!’

  ‘Sounds like a drunk,’ said Rembrandt, getting up. He opened the window and shouted down, ‘I’m not home. Any further disturbance and the Miracle will summon the night watch.’

  The man muttered something and Rembrandt closed the window and resumed his place on the tabard. I’d grown aware of my nudity, especially as he was still half-clothed. He smiled at me. Then he reached behind me and pulled the tabard up and around my body, ‘So you don’t get cold.’

  All was quiet again. His eyes roamed my body beneath the cloth, making a study of me. Then he laid his hand on my stomach as if to assure himself of my existence. I thought of innocence and that I’d be dispossessed of mine, but never by him. He’d not judged a single thing I’d done.

  He moved his hand and laid it on my breast, listening with his palm. I watched his hand. So other-looking, on my never-touched skin. Petronella had said I must decide to be a virgin or a whore. I would be neither; I’d live the way he painted and the way he was looking at me now. I met his eyes and touched his hair, feeling the strands glide between my fingers, gripping them.

  ‘Ow,’ he said.

  I laughed and tugged again a little. He swept his hands up behind my neck, causing me to abandon my business with his hair and recline fully and as I did, he went to lean on me with his chest, causing a dizzying, urgent wanting. I pulled at him to lie on me the more.

  He shuffled off his breeches, under-breeches and under-drawers too. I had no idea men liked to keep so warm. Then he returned to my side and held me close. I felt something against me, fleshy, solid, searching: his rod. I had to touch this secret part of him. My fingers closed around the soft-skinned thing. He made a noise, a groan, but did not move, as if transfixed by my touch. There was a gathering stillness in him, a readying. I gripped more tightly – an intake of his breath and a twitch of recognition in my belly. How could it be so soft and solid-seeming? A riddle in my hand. I loosened my fingers, weighing its portentous heaviness and noticing the pulse, his heartbeat right there in my grasp.

  I looked into his eyes, once more moving my fingers. A shiver ran through him but he kept them open. And then he put his mouth on mine, with all the greed of necessity, quickening an urging in my womb, that he be inside me now. I rolled on to my back, my legs wrapped around him, pulling him with me. He lay on me. Oh, to be new. To die.

  His firmness pushed against the place I most wanted him to push against. I could finally have him all but – my body did not open, as if an obstacle had interposed itself.

  My eyelids pressed together in vexation. He whispered, ‘It takes time,’ then kissed me again, softly like lapping waves against the shore. And then I felt him pressing again between my legs, small motions, which rolled through me like forgetfulness. The boundary was gone. Wave after wave of more than pleasure – joy. The kind of joy I thought had been reserved for the next life. Far away I registered a stab of pain, but it meant nothing to the ocean.

  After a short while he stopped his moving, but remained inside me. We stayed like this for a while, with him on his elbows until he finally removed himself. I grew aware again of my body and my nakedness. We lay on our backs and I thought how I’d never looked at the ceiling in the studio before and then felt an ache.

  ‘Is there blood?’ I said. How harsh my voice sounded.

  ‘I don’t know, there might be,’ he said, ‘do you want me to check?’

  I shook my head. I wanted to be dressed again. I reached for my shift and put it on. He too sat up, still naked but for his stockings. The part of him that had filled me was almost nothing now. I continued getting dressed. It seemed to be infectious for he did too and now I wished that we’d stayed naked or him at least. As if each piece of clothing charted a step away from where we’d been. He picked me up and carried me all the way downstairs into his bed and said, ‘Lie here and rest. I’ll get you something to drink.’

  By the time he returned I must have fallen asleep for when I woke there was beer on the table and I could see the stars through the big window in his room. But where was he?

  She was sleeping now, unknowing of his absence, the ice-encrusted ground crunching under his feet. He’d quickly reached the marshes outside the city gates but his thoughts returned to the house. He’d carried her to his bed with the intention of them falling asleep together. When he returned she was already inhaling the gentle breath of sleep so he carefully slipped into bed next to her. Then, he lay there watching her face in the moonlight. Such repose. Was this his doing? Had he made her happy, despite the brevity of their joining? He’d not been able to fully unfetter himself even while inside her. He continued to watch her sleeping face, and at last felt pulled towards the heaviness of slumber. But he could not surrender himself to sleep either. So he lay listening to her breath. It was the softest purr, deep and easy. His breath followed hers. She was teaching him to sleep – what a blessing that would be. He turned on to
his other side, bedding down the way he usually slept, facing the window. How bright the stars were, so far away, unaffected by the precious moments of joy they’d just experienced. How many more such moments were in store for them?

  He turned once more. Her breath brushed his face, sweet and warm. He sipped it like honeyed milk but he was still wakeful – like overripe fruit, refusing to drop from the tree.

  So he got up and went downstairs, not bothering with a candle; he liked the dark. When he’d felt his way into the kitchen he saw the glow of embers in the grate and found the chair. He mused that he and Rika had changed places. She was in his bed and he was by hers. He considered lying in it but that would be the most effective sleep deterrent yet.

  He continued to sit by the burned-down fire. Another soul had reached into his heart. With Saskia he’d not felt the need to even think of consequences. That’s probably what they meant by innocence, to be ignorant of the fact that joy and love brought pain and sorrow in their wake. He touched his lips to his fingertips and blew a kiss to the dying embers.

  The grate was still so very hot. Perhaps the wintry air would cool him down and strip him of whatever humour was riding him. He went to lace up his boots.

  It was good to be out. The houses had dwindled away and the marshes held sway. Still the evidence of man was everywhere. The land had been drained, the water corralled into tight canals. They dissected the land, with the occasional bridge allowing passage. He saw an old boat frozen into place alongside a rickety pier and a hut. The mere sliver of a moon made the stars inordinately bright. He liked this kind of night. Starlight was not like ordinary light – it made it possible to see without taking the darkness away. He remembered something else about darkness. It had once meant something to him. Shelter. He wanted to get further away from the city. The road was straight, the land flat, as if stretched out by a giant’s hand in all directions, right to the sea. The flats curved away under him, keeping him perpetually at their apex.