Rembrandt's Mirror

by Devereux, Kim

  ‘Who would have thought the great Rembrandt would make instalments befitting a flea?’

  ‘You’ve had a fair lot from me!’

  ‘About a third of the purchase price, after a decade and a half. I suppose I should be grateful. At this rate, I’ll have been in the ground a trifling twenty years by the time I get the rest. Mind you, even the trickle has all but dried up lately.’

  Then all of a sudden he looked like a little boy about to cry – I felt for him. And his voice was almost a whisper as he said, ‘I even paid your taxes for you all this time. I regarded you as a friend and you played me for a fool.’

  Rembrandt stepped back, giving Thijs some breathing space. ‘Christoffel, I’m sorry, it’s with the recent losses at sea . . . shipments of commissioned works to Italy.’ He touched Thijs’s arm. ‘You are right, you have been a good friend and I’ve been at fault. The payments will resume promptly, you have my word.’

  It was as if Thijs had not heard any of it, or maybe he had as his face hardened. ‘I’ve come here to see what Pinto is on about.’

  ‘Go on then, have a look. It’s nothing. Pinto prefers someone else to pay for his decorative urges. He must have thought who better to foot the bill than my famous neighbour who – he thinks – is shitting guilders.’

  Rembrandt pulled away the table and pointed at the crack in the wall. I could see even from ten feet away that it had grown much bigger in the short time since I’d noticed it. It was shaped like a wedge, widening towards the rear of the house. Thijs went down on his knees to inspect it. Rembrandt stood, hands on hips, and said, ‘It hasn’t changed in a decade.’

  ‘It looks fresh,’ Thijs said and turned to me. ‘You must have noticed it before?’

  They were both looking at me. I felt for Thijs. It was obvious that he was more affronted by Rembrandt’s treatment of him than the money. I did not want to tell an outright lie, so I finally said, ‘There are so many cracks in the walls. I never pay them any attention.’

  Thijs looked at me like a lost cause and then turned to Rembrandt and inhaled as if in preparation for a big speech. ‘You’ll be hearing from me. I cannot afford to go on being charitable. I too have financial commitments that I need to honour and you need to honour yours both to myself and Pinto.’

  ‘You tell me what you need and it will be dealt with,’ said Rembrandt.

  ‘It’s not what I need. It’s what you owe me. You are not doing me a favour. I have been doing you a favour for the past fourteen years and it is about time you learned the difference. I’m not the only one who feels this way. You will pay the full amount of what you owe me forthwith. You will receive a summons.’ Then he walked out.

  In answer to my questioning look, Rembrandt said, ‘I’ll pay him and that will be that.’

  ‘How much?’ I asked.

  ‘Eight thousand or thereabouts.’

  An incomprehensible amount. I knew from doing the accounts that he did not have the money. Could he possibly earn enough in time to pay it? I knew that he sometimes charged as much as five hundred guilders for a commission but if he could earn that why had he not paid it back in all those years? I knew the answer. He’d spent the money on other things. I glanced at the crack. I doubted that as things stood the house was still worth the unthinkable amount he’d paid for it. Our quarter was no longer popular and the house itself was probably in the process of slowly sinking back into the boggy soil.

  In the evening we were sitting by the fire in the kitchen. I wanted to question him about what he was planning to do about Thijs but wasn’t sure if it was my place. I unwound a length of thread and cut it with my teeth. The doublet and the loose button were in my lap. He was still idle as if preoccupied with something in his mind. I held the needle up to the window in order to guide the thread through the eye. How the wind howled and whispered around the house. My thread missed the eye every time. I looked around. We might not only lose the house but also the furniture, the beautiful copper pots and everything . . . I’d seen it happen in our neighbourhood, especially with trade currently being at a low ebb. It was ironic that just when I’d felt myself in reach of a secure life and marriage it was more likely than ever that I might be without means.

  I was about to ask about his finances when the wind pushed a plume of smoke into the kitchen. He put more peat on the fire in the hope that it would increase the draw. I knew it wouldn’t work. When the wind came from the north-east, the air sat about the house and no joy was to be had with fires. In fact, he was making it worse by smothering the flames. Why had he not told me about the loan? You’d think it was the kind of information you’d volunteer to your accountant. Smoke was now hanging in the air like banks of fog. Another gust delivered a cloud of ashes into the room, making it difficult to breathe. I’d been thinking everything was balanced, even if only precariously. Geertje had told me that he’d only paid off a third of the house. How could I have been so stupid as to forget? The smoke made me cough so hard I went into the hallway. Back in the kitchen the air was thick with it and yet he was still trying to relight the fire.

  I went into the adjacent storage room and opened the delivery door, watching as the smoke was whisked away by the wind.

  He came up behind me. ‘Why have you opened the door? We’ll turn into icicles.’

  ‘Better than being smoked like eels, look!’ I pointed at the plumes.

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘All right, what shall we do?’

  ‘Put out the fire and go to the anteroom,’ I said brusquely.

  He nodded.

  We settled ourselves in the anteroom. Me cocooned in several shawls and him with a blanket on his legs. He’d fetched his drawing things and was working now. I stared at the empty fireplace and felt even colder for watching it. My teeth started chattering. He looked across at me. ‘You’re really cold. Come and get into the guest bed – you’ll catch your death otherwise.’

  He lifted the blanket up for me. I crept in and he tugged it tightly around my body. ‘There,’ he said smiling at me, ‘you’ll warm up soon.’

  In an instant my annoyance was gone and I found myself holding on to his sleeve. He looked at me, an expression on his face almost of fear. I did not let go. He remained where he was, neither pulling away nor coming closer.

  ‘Just help me get warm,’ I said.

  His elbow softened and he came under the covers with me, lying on his back. He smelled of smoke. I looked at his pale face. It seemed to me that by entering this guest box bed we had entered a different world. He opened his right arm, an invitation. I lay within it and moved closer against him, putting my head on his shoulder. I felt almost at peace now. We lay like this for a long time. Then I grew restless; why did he have to lie there like a dropped acorn? I gave up waiting and closed my eyes. Then I felt his head incline towards mine and come to rest against my forehead. I put my hand on his heart. I felt it beating – so fast as if he was fretful. I propped myself up on my elbow and kissed his temple. I thought of my older brother Harmen and how he’d sung a song to help me go to sleep when I was a child. So I started humming the tune and then the words came and I sang as softly as I could:

  When our ship sails the sea to a faraway land

  We lie there sleeping, love holding our hand,

  The waves come so softly, rocking to, rocking fro,

  Now sleep little baby, for there’s marvels to come.

  I’ve watched the horizon all day for your sails

  I know it is coming for the wind blows so sweet.

  His eyes remained open, blank, staring at the black ceiling of the box bed, but then his lids sank lower and closed. I wanted my voice to carry what calm I had so he could rest.

  I pray you may sleep until you are home.

  I pray you not suffer the tiniest storm.

  When we’re together we’ll sail once again

  The waves gently rocking, our two hearts to one,

  As vast as the ocean, till all else is gone.

  When
I reached the end of the song, I started again but singing ever more softly, as if the air itself could be lulled to sleep. He turned on his side, his back to me, his body relaxing and then his breathing changed to the slow, deep breaths of sleep. I lay down beside him and soon fell asleep too.

  Spring

  The carriage took us ever closer to Bredevoort. I had written to my mother, unsure what to say about Rembrandt. In the end I’d told her that we’d got to know one another and it was his heartfelt wish to visit my home and meet my family. It was the truth as far as I knew.

  He had hired a coach and man for the journey. We were sitting side by side on the leather seat being jolted against one another. If he intended to ask for my hand in marriage surely he would have said something to me by now. Or perhaps out of decorum he wanted to meet my mother first. Given the debt he was in, it was hard to see how he could provide for a family, but then again he’d lived with the same debt for over a decade and was paying me wages nonetheless. At least I’d be seeing Harmen.

  I kept looking out of the window. The entire land was dissected by small dykes which bordered the newly drained polders. Without the dykes the land would be flooded again. So much audacious effort for so little earth. Most of the Low Countries were below sea level and yet we thought we could wrest every ounce of it from the waters.

  I’d grown up amongst the waterlogged plains and was sad to see them changed. Water always found the lowest point – it would win back the land one day. I wondered about seeing my mother. My memory of her was like a faded drawing.

  There were the fortifications of Bredevoort already, clawing the air. We thundered over the wooden bridge across the moat and through the city gate and we were amongst the tall, narrow houses which huddled together within the confines of the city walls. We passed the soot-blackened church tower which stared down on everything with its clock-face. The wheels rattled over the cobbles. Not far now. I clasped my hands together.

  He continued to look out of the window, his usual unbothered self. I tried to do the same. My stomach started to gurgle. The wheels continued on.

  After some final directions from me, we arrived outside the small timber-framed house of my birth. It looked old and weathered and the trees in the garden had grown huge. The thatched roof needed renewing. He offered me his arm as I climbed out of the carriage. The fur-trimmed collar made him look rich as a merchant. I’d never seen him wear this particular garment before. I wanted to feel pride in him, as I would be entitled to if we were married. For my own dress I had vacillated between wearing modest black from head to toe or a loose-fitting burgundy jacket with a white shift underneath and black skirt. In the end I’d chosen the more colourful attire. It was a special day after all – at least I hoped it would be.

  We walked towards the door, which had been repainted the colour of green bile. An ill-judged choice, unless van Dorsten meant to induce nausea in his visitors. Rembrandt knocked. The bilious door receded and there was my mother, smiling. I’d been prepared to see some grey in her hair but not the stoop that bent her back. Her eyes wandered from me to Rembrandt and he bowed saying, ‘Mevrouw van Dorsten?’

  ‘Yes, and you must be Mijnheer van Rijn. Please come in, be heartily welcomed.’

  We stepped inside. She kissed me briefly and then Harmen’s arms were around me. Before I knew it, he’d lifted me up but stopped short of swinging me around in a circle as he had done when I was a little girl. When he put me down I noticed how low the ceiling seemed and how small the windows were compared to Rembrandt’s.

  Then I was formally introduced to the children even though I of course knew them all, having lived next door to them less than a year ago. There were the two boys of four and six and a girl of seven. While saying their names my mother touched their heads, stroking their hair. They all had an unfortunate likeness with their father. Even the girl had his bony chin and pokey blue eyes.

  Van Dorsten signalled to the children by a wave of his hand that they were to return to their play. They ran to a corner of the room which was full of playthings: a horse without a head and some wooden farm animals.

  We seated ourselves on chairs, except van Dorsten and my mother who took to the settle in a way that made me think it was their accustomed seat. How frail he looked, like a starving pigeon, well into old age. My mother appeared less old now that she was sitting next to him.

  A maid entered the room and started furnishing everyone with cakes and boiled apple water. Rembrandt turned to van Dorsten. ‘Thank you for your kind welcome. If I may ask, now that the war has ended, has there been an impact on the garrisons of Bredevoort?’

  Van Dorsten launched into a long description of the decline of the local garrisons. My father’s clock was still there, ticking, and there was the chair I’d sat in for so many hours doing lacework. I could not understand why my mother was sitting so close to van Dorsten – there was plenty of space on the settle. At one point their hands were even resting against one another. I was getting impatient with Rembrandt, who was holding forth about his investments, the art trade and how prices failed to take into account the true value of art.

  My mother’s eyes met mine, a question in them.

  Then Harmen asked, ‘So how have you been? How is life for the two of you in Amsterdam?’

  ‘Good,’ I said, feeling awkward. ‘There’s much to do. The workshop is busy.’

  They’d start asking further questions now. We should never have come. If there was a time to announce his intentions, surely this was it.

  ‘I must see the garden,’ I said, already on my way out.

  Everyone looked surprised, but Harmen got up and offered to accompany me.

  The yew tree had been my refuge as a child. I climbed it and Harmen followed wordlessly. Despite my cumbersome skirts I managed. Soon we were many feet up, sitting comfortably on thick branches in the dark green cave, sunlight sparkling through the gaps between leaves.

  ‘I missed you,’ I said.

  ‘I missed you too. Why did you not visit sooner?’

  ‘I did not want to see our mother with that man.’

  Harmen nodded. ‘It was all too soon after Father’s death but you must not be too hard on Mother. It’s better she’s with someone than on her own.’

  ‘Hm,’ I said, ‘I suppose it is.’

  ‘She needed something to do,’ said Harmen.

  ‘Marriage is an excellent remedy for idleness,’ I said.

  He looked at me and shrugged his shoulders. And then he said, ‘I’ve seen how he looks at you, he cares.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Rembrandt.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘do you think so?’

  ‘Yes, it’s obvious,’ said Harmen. ‘And do you care for him?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘yes.’

  ‘I thought he was about to announce your engagement when you got up.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Well, yes.’ He studied me. ‘That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?’

  I hesitated. ‘I don’t know.’

  Harmen looked first puzzled and then worried.

  ‘Be careful, won’t you?’ he said.

  I nodded. Thinking that careful was probably not the best way to describe my conduct.

  We sat in silence for a while, the wind fanning the branches. I remembered seeing caterpillars once in another tree in the garden and having a little reverie about a metamorphosis so complete that one remembered nothing at all of one’s former life. Perhaps complete and utter change was best. I should have stayed in Amsterdam.

  Harmen was the brother I was closest to and even to him I could not be truthful. We sat in silence for a little longer and then returned.

  On a whim I went upstairs and slipped into the room where my father and my mother used to sleep. There was the old box bed and the large cupboard. I could hear laughter from downstairs. I opened the cupboard. It was filled with van Dorsten’s clothing but at the bottom stood my father’s leather boots. When I was a child, u
pon coming home, he would pretend he could not get them off until I helped him pull at them. The leather was dry and brittle now – it was surprising that my mother had bothered to keep them.

  I heard footsteps so I quickly closed the cupboard. It was my mother.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she said.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I’ve been looking for you. Amsterdam has done nothing for your manners, just running off like that.’

  ‘Let us go back downstairs then,’ I said.

  ‘What’s he come here for?’

  I shrugged my shoulders, trying hard not to say, Why don’t you ask him?

  ‘I thought you’d come to announce your engagement?’

  I wondered whether I was the most angry with her, with Rembrandt or with myself.

  ‘Hendrickje, have you become his whore?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Of course you have. Look at you. Those colours.’

  ‘I choose my own wardrobe these days.’ I had not come to fight with her but it was inevitable.

  ‘How hard I tried to instil God’s tenets in you . . .’ She raised her hands as if to heaven.

  I had the strange urge to run to my father as I’d often done in moments like this. But there was no one to redeem me now. If only I could take the boots with me, I thought. But if I asked for them she’d know something of how I felt.

  When we returned to the drawing room van Dorsten and Harmen were smiling at an impromptu sketch Rembrandt had made of the big-bellied widow who lived opposite. He rose, offering me once again his arm and we stood there framed by the window with all eyes on us. My hope rekindled that this might be the time. But Rembrandt just stood smiling, patting my arm. Then we took our leave. As my mother came closer to bid me goodbye, it was as if the lines in her face prefigured the ones that were to come in mine.

  She was tired, yes. She’d lost a husband. At least she’d cared enough about him to keep his boots. Harmen was right; it was good she had van Dorsten.

  I reached out and held her hand in mine – but when I sensed her discomfort I let it go again.