There were the shadows of two leaves. With each little gust they moved closer together and at the nearest points their shadows formed tongues, then leaped into a bridge; touching for the blink of an eye. How strange, I thought – it’s as if being so close, they need to be conjoined. I too wanted to leap – to him.
I was by a pool. Looking up, I was blinded by the blazing light, which slipped through the swaying branches. I closed my eyes, feeling the sun on my face and his eye, his hand, his brush and his attention all about me like a warm nest. He was painting me. I wished I could wear nothing at all, to better feel his gaze. Water lapped at my calves and soft wind blew over my arms and legs, making me giggle.
He was standing with his easel by the pool, stepping from one foot to the other, painting with his whole body in broad movements, singing his song about me. I was no different from the sparkling water, the oaks and the tall firs. He was so concentrated; both his face and his hands. What miracle his brush had performed – dissolving my solid body, making me the air.
And then I was awake and I could speak.
‘My love,’ I said.
‘I’m here,’ he answered.
And then he came and knelt by my bed to be closer and I felt him as if someone had lit a light inside my heart.
The Shell
He’d sat with her for a long time. They didn’t speak much but he kept looking at her eyes, which were there for him, so steady, despite the illness, feeling unaccountably happy. Then he watched her eyelids grow heavy as she drifted off again.
He continued to watch her sleeping face and wondered how long it would be until she was well again. Then he felt the need to do something. He stood up and walked the few steps across to the studio. The easel was there, waiting, but work was not what he wanted. He wanted to feel something in his hands, that’s what it was. There on the shelf was a shell, a conus marmoreus. He took it. It had a beautifully marbled surface of white dots on black, perfectly placed to make a satisfying pattern and yet no two white dots were shaped the same. He’d stood holding it just like this many years ago on the day they’d been forced to start selling his collection to ward off bankruptcy. He’d walked into the kunstkammer and stood gazing at the shelves, unable to choose what to put into the crates for auction. He needed the costumes for his work. His collection of etchings would potentially fetch a high price but only if he sold them at the right time and he needed them for reference. As for the shell in his hand, there really had been no good reason to keep it.
How could nature sculpt something so perfect? The creature who dwelled in it wasn’t capable of appreciating the splendour of its house. And the only interest any other beast might have in it was to devour its occupant. Eventually the shell would be tossed about by the waves, first losing its sheen, then its edges. In the end nothing would remain but grains of sand. Only because a man had stumbled across it had it been transformed into an objet d’art.
Back then he’d concluded that it was of no real value, and placed it in the crate. He’d added feathers, nuts and precious stones and works of art, including Lucas van Leyden’s prints for which he’d paid an astronomical amount just to make a point to the market about the true value of art.
Rika had walked in, holding a vest she’d knitted for the baby, letting him feel how soft the wool was. Then, understanding his struggle to part with things, she’d said, ‘The babe will come into this world with nothing at all and it won’t care as long as it’s fed, warm and loved.’
She put her arms around him for a moment before she left. The idea of the unencumbered babe made him smile, a special freedom shared by babies, birds and fish. What would it be like to walk out of this house, with light shoulders and nothing in his hands? After all, one day he’d have no choice in the matter. That was not only how we entered the world but also how we left it. All these objects, the shelves thick with them, they were merely borrowed. And when he made his exit they’d pass into the hands of another borrower, another fool who thought they were his for ever.
He’d riffled through the crate until he’d retrieved his shell and rescued it. With the conus still in his hand, he went back to her room.
She was still sleeping of course. He tried and failed to get comfortable on the rickety chair and his fingers felt sweaty clutching the shell. He placed it on the chest of drawers by the window. It was dusk, the sun low in the sky, throwing the shadow of the window’s central partition on the top of the chest; a crisp beam of black. He placed his thumb into the light, his nail lining up with the edge of the shadow. How fast the shadow moved. It had but kissed the crest of his thumbnail and was already advancing to the middle of his nail. Nothing could stop the shadow’s progress, nothing. He lined his thumb up again and again, retreating until the sun had finally set. Nightfall a matter of minutes. It sickened him. He looked at her – she was breathing, steadily. How many breaths until she woke?
I woke up to a knock at the door. Rembrandt was sitting by my bed. Titus came in and told us that Anna had left because her own daughter had been taken ill and that we must assume her gone for good.
Rembrandt looked at me and all I could think was that I did not want him to rush out to find another nurse. ‘Draw me, please,’ I said.
He looked surprised but got up and returned with paper. Then he lit some candles because it had grown dark by now. By some miracle the weight of the distemper had lifted a little. I gave up worrying about him touching me. He’d tend to me now that Anna was gone. I asked him to help me sit up.
He put his arms around my back and pulled me into a sitting position. I must smell awful, I thought. He held me for a long time. I was surprised that even a body as ill as mine could feel longing: desperate, urgent, headless desire. And then fright that we might never meet again in flesh and soul at once. I calmed myself; perhaps we could still meet in each and every part – by passing through the gate to the visible.
He let go of me and started drawing. I closed my eyes, listening to the familiar sound of his pencil, feeling his eyes on me, thinking of how his pen had made me once and was now unmaking me. He drew the ridge of my nose, and it became transparent like glass. Having been recorded, it consigned itself to oblivion. Then my cheeks went; my sunken eyes were no more, my ears, my hair, my mouth – all gone to nothing. Where my head had been there was an empty space, a window through which I looked, seeing his face, the lines of concentration on his forehead, his hand and eye in closest kinship; drawing as one.
Her brow so soft. Her eyes bright. Impossible to render. Her face; so much more than the lines and shadings his pencil can produce. The eyes again. Looking at him so constantly – even from the shadows. Abjure that thought. But it’s there; the hollowness of the cheeks, the shape of the ‘skull’ beneath the all-too-thin flesh. He can see it all and more. She’s soft like cherry blossom borne skywards by a breeze.
Her pupil, an opening that lets the light in. His pencil follows it, round and round until the paper too becomes a hole, a black dot, threatening to suck in everything: the wisps of hair that have escaped the cap, the shadows under her eyes, the sweat that glistens on the tip of the nose. So bright. The skin, green, grey, but in a few places still with a hue of pink. The bones of the cheek, protruding, requiring the sharp end of the coal. He must return to the aperture, the black emptiness that demands something more to do it justice, more black, more coal and round and round it goes, abrading its cremated wood and still the black reflects the light, not dark enough – press, press – the charcoal pencil snaps.
He looks at what he’s drawn. More death-mask than face. Then he looks at her living face, dismayed by the accuracy of his record. She looks like a corpse, so much so that it’s surprising to see her chest rise with another breath. He must not think like this, but can anyone look that ill and live? Her eyes are still her eyes, though. She’s reading him. She has known this was the way to get him to see. He has at last arrived in time with her. Now and here. Her breath is putrid as if something is eating her body
from the inside. He turns away. It’s getting late. He should go out and find another nurse. He’s been sitting on this chair for too long – his legs need movement, his lungs air. There is a world outside this room. But he stays. Stays.
He picks up the empty glass from the table by her bed. Searches the rim until he finds the ghostly print of her lips from the last time she took a sip. How long ago was that? His finger traces life’s echo, the glass cold in his hand. He searches his own heart for marks she might have left there – indelible ones. They will have to last him for ever.
It is now perfectly dark outside. She starts to sing – a lullaby from long ago, when his world was still tolerable. Her voice soars above his silent world, clear and untouchable:
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.
Even against his will he feels comfort seeping through him. He closes his lids. Her fingers stroke his hand, their very gentleness uncorking his emotion. His body doubles over, somehow producing sobs despite his efforts to prevent them. Suffering – how inadequate a word for his apocalypse.
He tries to roll in on himself, as if that could prevent anything. His hand is pressed against his heart. It’s empty. A violent kind of empty. He hears a sound, a knock, knock, knock, then realizes he is banging his own head against the wooden bed post. But it’s the only thing to do. Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock.
‘Oh love,’ she says from far away.
He slips off the chair, down on his knees, his arms and head lying on the bed and on her. Her hand on his shoulder. He is mouthing her name. Soundlessly, over and over again. She cannot help him. No one can. For soon he will be all alone.
I don’t know how to comfort him. He is silent now but his body is trembling under my hand. I find his hand and hold on to it.
‘I can’t, Rika,’ he says.
‘Can’t what?’
‘Watch you die.’
He feels her fingers in his hair, her touch burning right through him. She tells him, ‘One hour at a time. A minute even.’
He squeezes her hand, agreeing, straightening himself. One minute at a time. He wants to look at her but fears what he will see; still he focuses his vision, sees her wan face yet glowing eyes and feels an unexpected warmth in his chest. He is lucky in a way. But he doesn’t know it. He leans towards her so he can whisper in her ear, ‘I love you.’
She smiles, her soft fingers touching his cheek. ‘I love you too.’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Now what is next?’
‘Finding another nurse?’
‘I’m the nurse,’ he says, pointing at himself, grinning to further lift the mood. ‘But we could use an expert physician.’
He shows her the bundled-up note. ‘See, Jan gave this to me. An introduction to the great Dr Tulp no less.’
She looks relieved. As he unfolds the note, he sees Six has used a valuable silver coin as weight.
The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp
He’d first met Dr Tulp over thirty years ago when he painted his anatomy lesson, but he remembered it clearly. The doctor had been in his late thirties and he in his mid twenties. After months of waiting Tulp had sent word that an executed murderer’s body had finally become available. As he made his way to his home, he thought back to the occasion, and it had been an occasion! He’d never been inside the Waag before. It was a bulwark of a building as befitted a former city gate built two centuries ago. He had to make his way all around to find the entrance because each of the four guild rooms was accessed through one of the round towers. When he finally got to the surgeons’ room on the first floor, he was pleased that it had large windows which cast an even light. There were about two dozen men, mostly dressed in black, milling around the pallid body on the table. The small room was replete with noisy chatter. They pointed at and even poked the corpse – curious as boys.
Tulp clapped his hands and his students and colleagues arranged themselves off to one side to allow him to commence his lesson. The doctor picked up his scalpel and without hesitation cut into the skin along the length of the forearm. Rembrandt half expected the dead man to cry out in pain. He also expected blood to spurt out, but of course it didn’t. His heart was for ever idle now. Tulp started to peel back the skin with his fingers and the scalpel, revealing a layer of fatty tissue and Rembrandt had to look away as a sick feeling rapidly gathered in his stomach. So he studied the men, none of whom seemed to be affected by the butchering. But it was not butchering, for when he looked again, he could appreciate that Tulp had shaved away layers of tissue with the most delicate and precise motions of his scalpel, like a sculptor working on human flesh. After a while he had laid bare the mechanism that animates the hand, the flexing tendons and ligaments. They had been picked perfectly clean, yellow strands against the red meat of the hand. Tulp used his pincers to grab at tendons on the back of the hand and pull at them as if they were the strings of a marionette. Rembrandt was not sure what came first – the dead man’s fingers straightening or the collective gasp of the audience.
This was the moment to depict. He sketched the dissected arm as fast as he could. This sitter would not return for another session.
The painting had made his reputation and Tulp had been extremely pleased with the work. But that was a long time ago, and the doctor must now be near seventy and he would know of Rembrandt’s dishonourable bankruptcy. He did not rate his chances of wringing much help out of him.
The manservant showed him straight into Tulp’s study, a surprise given how cautious everyone had become. The room was dominated by a huge oak desk that looked seaworthy enough to sail to the Americas. The walls were hung with detailed anatomical drawings. One of them showed a valve that operated at the junction of the small and large intestines. He remembered hearing about it. Tulp’s valve it was called, for he had discovered it.
‘Rembrandt, it is good to see you,’ said Tulp, walking in with the stride of a busy and important man. ‘Are you well? What is your business?’
He’d often seen Tulp from a distance at public gatherings with his snow-white hair but now that he was shaking his hand, he felt the full force of the man; sprightly and as sturdy as his desk.
‘My wife is taken ill and I am in desperate need of a good physician. Jan Six sent me here and kindly wrote this letter.’
Tulp perused it. ‘A letter of introduction was not necessary – we know each other, don’t we? Of course I’ll try to help. Do you suspect it is the plague?’
‘She’s got a fever, dizziness and sometimes vomiting and headaches.’
Tulp nodded. ‘It is very difficult to summon a good doctor at this time – most are in the country tending to the wealthy.’
‘How come you haven’t fled?’
‘At my age you either fret all the time or not at all. I’ve chosen the latter.’
Rembrandt had a feeling he was about to find out if this was really true.
Tulp walked to the window, looked out and then turned back to him. ‘You know it’s strange, but I think your painting did a great deal for my rise in the profession. People started treating me as if I was important.’
Rembrandt laughed. ‘If that’s how you were regarded, then you earned it.’
Tulp smiled. ‘Perhaps, but regard and reputation depend on people’s memories and memory is a fickle entity. Your picture did the trick of making me and my work unforgettable.’
Tulp felt indebted to him, good.
The physician stood scratching his chin. ‘But I am sorry, Rembrandt, I cannot think of anyone.’
Rembrandt held his eyes. Tulp must have something.
‘Well, there’s me,’ said Tulp. ‘I’m a doctor, of course.’
‘You are most kind,’ said Rembrandt.
Tulp waved his hand to silence him. ‘
I’m fed up with being holed up in here anyway. Let’s go.’
Back at the house, Tulp’s demeanour changed. Gone was the commanding voice. He was more like a grandfather seeing his favourite grandchild. He pulled a footstool right next to the bed and said softly, ‘How are you feeling, my dear?’
‘The worst is the pain in my head and legs,’ she answered.
He nodded understanding. ‘Shall we have a look at you? Rembrandt, can you lend a hand?’
Rembrandt only gently pulled up the shift but even that slight movement caused her to cry out in pain. There were red splotches all over her body.
Tulp said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m going to have to prod around a bit.’
He felt in her armpits and groin. ‘I cannot feel any swelling. Here, Rembrandt, you have a try so you know how to check over the coming days.’
Rembrandt put his hand where Tulp’s was and then Tulp put his fingers on Rembrandt’s. ‘You press down a little to see if you can feel anything hard.’
After she was covered up again she said, ‘Is it the distemper, Dr Tulp?’
He looked at her as if to get her measure. ‘When I’m asked a direct question I must give a direct answer.’
She nodded.
‘Sometimes it helps to know your enemy so you can focus your resolve. I fear it is the distemper. All the signs point to it: the vomiting, headache and most of all the rubescent areas. There are many rumours about the plague, making it seem more terrible than it is. It is a serious disease but it is also a disease that a great many survive. You are not too old or too young – you can get through it.’
Rembrandt saw him to the door and tried to pay him with Six’s silver coin but Tulp refused. ‘You’ll have more need of it than I.’
He gave him a long list of instructions, herbal brews and poultices.
Rembrandt's Mirror Page 25