He went off to find one. I was both pleased and put out by his compliance.
‘Is it because I can’t marry you?’
‘Oh,’ I said straightening my back, ‘I did not realize that such a notion existed, even if only as a rejected notion.’
‘What?’
‘Marriage,’ I said.
‘Well,’ he said as if we were talking about buying runner beans, ‘I did consider it but I’d have to pay Titus’s share of Saskia’s inheritance to her family. It says so in her will. And I don’t have the money.’
I shrugged my shoulders. Nothing had ever prevented him from doing what he wanted. I thought of the stacks of prints he’d chosen to collect instead of dealing with this ‘small’ impediment to his personal freedom. There was only one explanation: not-being-married was exactly how he liked to be.
I went upstairs to the linen room where I kept some sheets that were mine. He followed me.
‘It is about marriage then? A piece of paper is meaningless.’
‘Not to Geertje, it wasn’t,’ I said, ‘and not to most men and women either. Only to you.’
I regretted having given away how I felt, for now he’d answer back and I wanted to get out as quickly as possible.
‘It made no difference to Geertje’s rights,’ he said. ‘As you were privileged to witness, she got what she wanted, married to me or not.’
‘It was a privilege I could have done without, and I don’t think being locked up in a Spin House was what she had in mind.’
‘Why are you dragging that up again?’
‘So inconvenient, I know.’
He swished his hand through the air as if to cleanse it of what I’d said. ‘Anyway, Rika, Geertje’s got nothing to do with any of this . . . and I love you.’
The words had slipped out, which made them harder to ignore. I stared at the pile of folded sheets in the cupboard, trying to remember what I was doing. My sheets were hard to tell apart from his. Had he really said he loved me? I pulled out the whole stack of linen and looked through the packets of white.
‘When you arrived in the house; it was only the second day and you were sitting right there on the floor. I nearly fell over you coming in and there you were with glowing hair.’ He gestured with his hand as if this was the self-evident explanation for everything that had occurred between us.
I’d finally found the two worn sheets that were mine. Perhaps love and truth did dwell in those junctures, but there’d been precious few of them. I bagged the linen and descended the narrow stairs again, with him still following. When we reached the kitchen I put the linen bag next to the other bag and rummaged for some candles in the cupboard. I’d never wake in a new place in the dark again.
When I got my head out of the cupboard, he was standing there holding my two bags and then he made off with them. I followed him down the corridor into his bedroom.
When I caught up with him, the bags were on the floor and he stood next to them, chest puffed out like a town crier.
‘I want you to stay with me,’ he said, taking my hand. ‘Will you always share this room, my bed and my life as my wife, not in the eyes of the Church but in my eyes and the eyes of the world? I know I’ve been . . . obtuse, obstructive, obstreperous. Whatever you want to call it. Not very helpful and forthcoming, anyway.’
I stared at him, feeling like the participant in a piece of theatre, but I was moved. In fact I had to take my eyes off him to gather myself. The swirling fog was blanketing the high windows of his bedroom. He wanted me to stay as his wife, but not his wife. Was there a difference between the non-wife I had been and the non-wife he proposed I could become? I thought of Daniel amongst the lions, of his hands that met so tenderly as he communed with his Maker. Could I trust and have faith, that very way that he himself could not? I’d have to live without the certainty that resided in the habits, morals and beliefs I’d relied on all my life. And he did not seem to understand the vulnerability of unmarried women.
‘I’m not the fool you think I am,’ he said, as if he’d been privy to my thoughts. ‘I will look after you and any children we might have.’ He raised his right hand. ‘I vow to that. Please.’
Before I could say anything, he opened the big wardrobe. ‘Will you help me choose some old things to throw away to make space for yours?’
He stood back, pointing at the five or six doublets he possessed.
I knew at once; the badly cut doublet I’d detested ever since I’d known him. It was the colour of pus and completely threadbare under the arms, because he wore it virtually every day. I pulled it from its shelf and held it up. His face was a picture of injury before he made an effort to conceal it.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘I can see you love the thing.’
We both stood there for a moment then I held it to my nose.
‘Hmmm, it smells better than it looks. Perhaps we ought to keep it.’
He grinned.
‘There is no need for you to part with anything. I can continue to keep my things in the kitchen. I’ll only want to put my nightdress somewhere.’
He nodded and opened one of the packed bags, knowing exactly where the nightdress was. He took it out and then, carefully refolding it, placed it in the cupboard on top of one of his nightshirts.
Then we carried my things back to the kitchen and I unpacked again.
When they retired for the night, he let Rika go up the stairs ahead of him. She hesitated at the door and looked at him over her shoulder. He smiled encouragement and she lifted the latch. It did not escape him that she glanced up at the peep-hole as she walked in. An unwelcome reminder of the past. Then she opened the wardrobe and took out her nightdress.
‘I’ll let you change,’ he said and went into the studio to put on his nightshirt. He’d have to live by his promise now. When he returned, she was in bed, lifting the cover for him to get in. He felt happier now that he could feel her. She was lying on her back. He put his arm under her neck and she turned towards him and they embraced. Her face lifted to him and soon they kissed and he was lost. It was so instant. No doors between them now. But his mind took him away again: the canting floor, the dream. The box bed sliding towards the wall. And Saskia in it. Trapped.
‘She was in the bed.’
‘Who?’ Rika looked at him, confused.
‘Saskia. I should have saved her.’
‘You couldn’t have, she was too ill.’
‘No, in the dream, I mean she could not get out. She called for me to help her, but I just ran away, trying to save myself.’
Rika was nodding, but how could anyone comprehend his sin.
Her hands were on his back, brushing in little circles, like his mother used to do. But he hardly felt them – as if he was clad in thickest leather. And then, suddenly, he was bare. Her fingers vivid on his skin. And not just on his skin, but reaching deep inside, infusing blessings into his secret sorrow.
He did not deserve this. And now she whispered, ‘Have some heart for yourself. I love you so.’
Then, to his embarrassment, he sobbed. He tried to stop but couldn’t. Wretched sounds, unabating, from his throat, while her hands held his heart in perfect grace. As if he’d been forgiven.
And then he cried like a madman. She stroked his hair, and he felt perfectly safe – as if death was just another tomorrow.
He let his head fall in her lap, abandoning himself. His arms around her hips, his mooring. He looked up at her – she was so pristine, so new. He brushed his palms up and down her back to welcome breath into her lungs. She sighed and then she smiled at him.
I’d never seen anyone weep like this. I held him until it stopped and then I lay with him, our heads touching. We’d entered the heart of stillness, the currents of life diverting around us. We were beyond time’s reach.
And yet it flowed close by, licking at our sides, coaxing us into the stream once more.
His lips roused me. And then our breath kindled the fire that breathes God into all thing
s. I unbuttoned his shirt and emerged from mine. I sat in his lap, folding my legs around his waist. I felt his hardness. I could have him now, in his fullness. I lifted myself up and brought him inside me. He made a sound – a groan – but let me rule him until I found my pleasure.
After a while I slowed our doing, breathing quietude, always with him alive in me. Then a cusping from the stillness, rousing us again. A spreading of sensation, of him, far beyond his cock, into my breath, my blood, my heart. He rocked us vigorously, back and forth, back and forth.
The sun burning behind white wings, setting them on fire. Gone in an instant, leaving me – the sky.
PART III
Fifteen years later
Self-Portrait
Rozengracht, Jordaan, July 1663
I sat in the plush chair, staring at the back of the half-finished canvas on the easel. An incongruous thing without him. When would he be back?
Cornelia was still playing in the kitchen, judging by the clattering sounds. She could not understand why I wouldn’t allow her to be with her friends, no matter how carefully I explained the danger. She was eight years old, but in the absence of playmates had resorted once more to stacking pots into precarious towers or making a ‘soup’ from onion peelings, bits of peat and scrapings of dried oil paint that her father had given her. There were more hours in the day than any of us knew how to fill, except for Rembrandt who always had his work. I got up and looked out of the window. A few moored boats were bobbing on the canal. The trees were beginning to look a little tatty even though it was still the midst of summer. The world looked as if it was obscured by layers of darkened varnish and yet I’d only cleaned the windows two weeks ago.
I heard the rattling of wheels and the tolling of the bell, by now a daily occurrence, warning people not to come near. On the other side of the canal was the death cart piled with bodies, some of them naked. Lately the heap was so high that I feared the bodies would fall off. One of the men walked in front of the cart, swinging his arm, clanging the bell; the other led the horse.
They came to a halt at the house opposite. The letter ‘P’ gleamed white on the door. It did not stop them. They entered the house and emerged only moments later with a body, one man holding the wrists, the other the ankles. The corpse looked very thin; they all did. It looked to be a young man. He was clad in nothing but a nightshirt. They swung him back and forth and then, with a big heave, threw him on the cart, on top of the other bodies. He landed haphazardly, one arm under his torso, the other to the side, like a doll cast aside by a child. My eyes returned to the house. There was the ghost of a woman’s face behind a first-floor window. Had it been her son, her husband? She pressed her palm flat against the glass as the cart carried on, jostling its cargo of loved ones towards the pits.
The weather had been very hot, causing the distemper to thrive, sending the weekly death count into the hundreds. Cornelia and I had stayed in the house at all times, but Rembrandt and Titus, now twenty-one, had to go out for supplies. The black market flourished as food was scarce; farmers did not like to come into town for fear of infection and they could easily sell their wares to those of means who had fled to the country. We had not. In order to eat we had to carry on with our business of buying and selling art. After Rembrandt’s bankruptcy, Titus and I had set up an art dealership which employed Rembrandt in order to prevent income from his work being claimed by creditors. Thankfully, demand for his art had never dried up entirely.
Despite the risks, a few brave and wealthy souls had remained in the city. They’d either chosen to stay because their livelihood, like ours, depended on the city or because they trusted the Almighty to preserve them. Or perhaps they simply did not object to joining the Lord sooner rather than later. I was surprised we still managed to sell art. Why would anyone, in times like this, be interested in luxuries? Perhaps there was no better way for the wealthy to reassure themselves of their longevity than to purchase an expensive painting to be enjoyed in the years to come.
Most of those who’d stayed had taken the precaution of barricading themselves in with months’ worth of supplies, believing that the illness could be kept out by closed doors. I touched the glass with my hand and looked down at the street and the canal below. Different realms. Life inside, death outside.
A small boy, carrying a white stick, came out of one of the houses opposite, looking for playmates. It was Frank. Cornelia used to play with him. The stick signalled that he was living with someone who was stricken. I wondered if any other child would come to join him. No one did.
Rembrandt had experienced it all before in the thirties and told me that things would get better when the weather cooled. I fetched a bucket and cloth, rubbing away at the soot. It was satisfying to see it come off, as if I was removing impurities from the world. I longed to taste some fresh air. As the cart had gone, I considered it safe to open the window. Instantly I was caressed by a warm breeze, although it did carry the fetid whiff from the canal. I leaned out over the windowsill, looking down at the water lapping at the foot of the building. The wet cloth was still in my hand and a big droplet of water slipped from it and sped towards the canal. It would hit the surface in an instant and be subsumed, gone but not gone. I smiled, and as I smiled I felt as if someone was watching me but the face behind the window opposite was gone. There was a slight pain in my head. I probably needed a rest as I’d been up since five. No doubt as soon as I drifted off to sleep Cornelia would come and wake me. I closed the window, went to the adjoining room and lay down on the bed. How sleepy I felt.
But pain barred my sleep. My thoughts started wandering. It was strange to think that we’d been in the Jordaan for five years already. Cornelia had not even been two when we were forced to leave the old house as a result of the bankruptcy. The Jordaan was a poor quarter, crowded and noisy, and the four of us were cramped into only four rooms, with the studio doubling as living quarters. And yet he painted, if anything, more prodigiously than before. If nothing else, our financial affairs had been simplified by losing everything. Although I wished Rembrandt would not waste so much time trying to find a way of getting some of Titus’s inheritance back. Sometimes I thought that he and Geertje had more in common than they liked to think. But Geertje had fought her battles with virtually no means. She made up for it in determination. After her release, even though she was seriously ill, she’d managed to have her name added to the list of his creditors. And it may well have been her comparatively modest claim that had caused his fragile edifice of loans and credit notes to collapse like one of Cornelia’s badly constructed towers. Or perhaps he just could not stand the thought of this particular creditor holding him to account and so he decided to give the tower a good kick by filing for voluntary bankruptcy. That way he’d eluded his responsibilities – at least that’s how his creditors saw it. Poor Geertje died before she could receive a stuiver from the auctions of his possessions.
The pain was getting worse and thoughts about the troubled past were not helping. I’d direct my thoughts to something pleasing: him painting. A few days after moving here he’d gone out and bought a mirror and a large canvas from money we’d hidden. And soon we’d settled into a daily routine. I spent many hours each afternoon with him in the studio, doing the accounts at the desk. He started a new portrait bigger than any I’d seen him do before. It was almost eleven foot by three. The mirror was propped up a few feet away from him so he could use himself as a model. He began by applying the grey-coloured ground. His arm and hand flowed from canvas to palette and back like the water brought in and out of the harbour by the tides. Over the next few weeks a formidable presence emerged: a man in golden robes, with a staff like a sceptre and the bearing of a king. However, on his head he wore no crown but a simple brown beret. His face and stature were Rembrandt’s and yet his golden attire made him look so unlike the grey-haired man in painter’s garb that served as a model.
For a few weeks I watched the enormous portrait come into being from a distanc
e. Then one afternoon I got up and looked over Rembrandt’s shoulder to see what he saw in the mirror. There was his dear familiar face in deep concentration. It was then that I noticed – I think for the first time – that he had the face of an old man.
I looked at the canvas. He’d used his face most honestly; there was the slack skin around his eyes and cheek, and the pallid flesh tones were rendered with cruel accuracy. And yet the impression conveyed by the king was one of absolute triumph. Yes, the body was growing old, but the paint told a different story, as if the entire figure was imbued with the vigour of each brushstroke; the clothes were not merely ostentatious but almost alive, the large hands chiselled, sharp. As if to say, there’s more that animates a man than the youth of his flesh. The paint had been placed with supreme self-belief. As if he’d felt the need to put his brush against the Reaper’s scythe and won.
I watched his hand at work; and it seemed to me, as it dragged lead white across the sleeve of the robe, that not only was it investing the canvas with a life of its own but making it into something more than a portrait of himself: a mirror to each and every soul who cared to look at it.
We’ll be fine, I thought, there’ll always be buyers for this.
*
The pain in the end forced me to abandon these memories. Titus and Rembrandt were both still out. Cornelia was downstairs but I did not want to call her in case this was the sickness. It could be something else of course. I’d had headaches before, but not like this. If only he’d come back soon. I’d ask him if headaches were a symptom of the distemper. He’d know.
I adjusted my position, but the slightest movement caused a stabbing pain in my head. I wanted a drink but could barely move. I decided to cool my forehead with the cloth from the bucket. I kept low, crawling on all fours, dragging the bucket and cloth back to the bed, and then put the filthy wet cloth on my forehead. It helped a little.
Finally I heard the front door open and called for him. His step paused and then quickened up the stairs.
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