Girl with a Pearl Earring, The

by Tracy Chevalier

  By the end my hands were cracked and bleeding.

  It was very clean for the feast.

  Maria Thins placed special orders for lamb and veal and tongue, for a whole pig, for hare and pheasant and capons, for oysters and lobsters and caviar and herring, for sweet wine and the best ale, for sweet cakes prepared specially by the baker.

  When I placed the meat order for Maria Thins with Pieter the father, he rubbed his hands. “So, yet another mouth to feed,” he proclaimed. “All the better for us!”

  Great wheels of Gouda and Edam arrived, and artichokes and oranges and lemons and grapes and plums, and almonds and hazelnuts. Even a pineapple was sent, gift of a wealthy cousin of Maria Thins. I had never seen one before, and was not tempted by its rough, prickly skin. It was not for me to eat anyway. None of the food was, except for the odd taste Tanneke allowed us. She let me try a tiny bit of caviar, which I liked less than I admitted, for all its luxury, and some of the sweet wine, which was wonderfully spiced with cinnamon.

  Extra peat and wood were piled in the courtyard, and spits borrowed from a neighbor. Barrels of ale were also kept in the courtyard, and the pig was roasted there. Maria Thins hired a young boy to look after all the fires, which were in use all night once we began roasting the pig.

  Throughout the preparations Catharina remained in bed with Franciscus, tended by the nurse, serene as a swan. Like a swan too, though, she had a long neck and sharp beak. I kept away from her.

  “This is how she would like the house to be every day,” Tanneke grumbled to me as she was preparing jugged hare and I was boiling water to wash the windows with. “She wants everything to be in a state around her. Queen of the bedcovers!” I chuckled with her, knowing I shouldn’t encourage her to be disloyal but cheered none the less when she was.

  He stayed away during the preparations, locked in his studio or escaping to the Guild. I saw him only once, three days before the feast. The hired girl and I were polishing candlesticks in the kitchen when Lisbeth came to find me. “Butcher’s asking for you,” she said. “Out front.”

  I dropped the polishing cloth, wiped my hands on my apron and followed her up the hallway. I knew it would be the son. He had never seen me in Papists’ Corner. At least my face was not chapped and red as it normally was from hanging over the steaming laundry.

  Pieter the son had pulled up a cart in front of the house, loaded with the meat Maria Thins had ordered. The girls were peering into it. Only Cornelia looked round. When I appeared in the doorway Pieter smiled at me. I remained calm and did not blush. Cornelia was watching me.

  She was not the only one. I felt his presence at my back—he had come down the hallway behind me. I turned to look at him, and saw that he had seen Pieter’s smile, and the expectation there as well.

  He transferred his grey eyes to me. They were cold. I felt dizzy, as if I had stood up too quickly. I turned back round. Pieter’s smile was not so wide now. He had seen my dizziness.

  I felt caught between the two men. It was not a pleasant feeling.

  I stood aside to let my master pass. He turned into the Molenpoort without a word or glance. Pieter and I watched him go in silence.

  “I have your order,” Pieter said then. “Where would you like it?”

  That Sunday when I went home to my parents I did not want to tell them that another child had been born. I thought it would remind them of losing Agnes. But my mother had heard of it at the market and so I was made to describe to them the birth and praying with the family and all the preparations that had been made so far for the feast. My mother was concerned about the state of my hands, but I promised her the worst was done.

  “And a painting?” my father asked. “Has he begun another painting?” He always hoped that I would describe a new painting to him.

  “Nothing,” I replied. I had spent little time in the studio that week. Nothing there had changed.

  “Perhaps he is idle,” my mother said.

  “He is not that,” I answered quickly.

  “Perhaps he does not want to see,” my father said.

  “I don’t know what he wants,” I said more sharply than I had intended. My mother gazed at me. My father shifted in his seat.

  I said nothing more about him.

  The guests began to arrive around noon on the feast day. By evening there were perhaps a hundred people in and out of the house, spilling into the courtyard and the street. All sorts had been invited—wealthy merchants as well as our baker, tailor, cobbler, apothecary. Neighbors were there, and my master’s mother and sister, and Maria Thins’ cousins. Painters were there, and other Guild members. Van Leeuwenhoek was there, and van Ruijven and his wife.

  Even Pieter the father was there, without his blood-stained apron, nodding and smiling at me as I passed with a jug of spiced wine. “Well, Griet,” he said as I poured him some, “my son will be jealous that I’m spending the evening with you.”

  “I think not,” I murmured, pulling away from him, embarrassed.

  Catharina was the center of attention. She had on a green silk dress altered to accommodate her belly, which had not yet shrunk. Over it she wore the ermine-trimmed yellow mantle van Ruijven’s wife had worn for the painting. It was odd to see it around another woman’s shoulders. I didn’t like her wearing it, though it was of course hers to wear. She also wore a pearl necklace and earrings, and her blond curls were dressed prettily. She had recovered quickly from the birth, and was very merry and graceful, her body relieved of some of the burden it had been carrying over the months. She moved easily through the rooms, drinking and laughing with her guests, lighting candles, calling for food, bringing people together. She stopped only to make a fuss over Franciscus when he was being fed by the nurse.

  My master was much quieter. He spent most of his time in one corner of the great hall, talking to van Leeuwenhoek, though his eyes often followed Catharina around the room as she moved among her guests. He wore a smart black velvet jacket and his paternity cap, and looked comfortable though not much interested in the party. Large crowds did not appeal to him as they did his wife.

  Late in the evening, van Ruijven managed to corner me in the hallway as I was passing along it with a lighted candle and a wine jug. “Ah, the wide-eyed maid,” he cried, leaning into me. “Hello, my girl.” He grabbed my chin in his hand, his other hand pulling the candle up to light my face. I did not like the way he looked at me.

  “You should paint her,” he said over his shoulder.

  My master was there. He was frowning. He looked as if he wanted to say something to his patron but could not.

  “Griet, get me some more wine.” Pieter the father had popped out from the Crucifixion room and was holding a cup towards me.

  “Yes, sir.” I pulled my chin from van Ruijven’s grasp and quickly crossed to Pieter the father. I could feel two pairs of eyes on my back.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, sir, the jug’s empty. I’ll just get some more from the kitchen.” I hurried away, holding the jug close so they would not discover that it was full.

  When I returned a few minutes later only Pieter the father remained, leaning against the wall. “Thank you,” I said in a low voice as I filled his glass.

  He winked at me. “It was worth it just to hear you call me sir. I’ll never hear that again, will I?” He raised his glass in a mock toast and drank.

  After the feast winter descended on us, and the house became cold and flat. Besides a great deal of cleaning up, there was no longer something to look forward to. The girls, even Aleydis, became difficult, demanding attention, rarely helping. Maria Thins spent longer in her own rooms upstairs than she had before. Franciscus, who had remained quiet all the way through the feast, suffered from wind and began to cry almost constantly. He made a piercing sound that could be heard throughout the house—in the courtyard, in the studio, in the cellar. Given her nature, Catharina was surprisingly patient with the baby, but snapped at everyone else, even her husband.

  I had managed to
put Agnes from my mind while preparing for the feast, but memories of her returned even more strongly than before. Now that I had time to think, I thought too much. I was like a dog licking its wounds to clean them but making them worse.

  Worst of all, he was angry with me. Since the night van Ruijven cornered me, perhaps even since Pieter the son smiled at me, he had become more distant. I seemed also to cross paths with him more often than before. Although he went out a great deal—in part to escape Franciscus’ crying—I always seemed to be coming in the front door as he was leaving, or coming down the stairs as he was going up, or sweeping the Crucifixion room when he was looking for Maria Thins there. One day on an errand for Catharina I even met him in Market Square. Each time he nodded politely, then stepped aside to let me pass without looking at me.

  I had offended him, but I did not know how.

  The studio had become cold and flat as well. Before it had felt busy and full of purpose—it was where paintings were being made. Now, though I quickly swept away any dust that settled, it was simply an empty room, waiting for nothing but dust. I did not want it to be a sad place. I wanted to take refuge there, as I had before.

  One morning Maria Thins came to open the door for me and found it already unlocked. We peered into the semidarkness. He was asleep at the table, his head on his arms, his back to the door. Maria Thins backed out. “Must have come up here because of the baby’s cries,” she muttered. I tried to look again but she was blocking the way. She shut the door softly. “Leave him be. You can clean there later.”

  The next morning in the studio I opened all the shutters and looked around the room for something I could do, something I could touch that would not offend him, something I could move that he would not notice. Everything was in its place—the table, the chairs, the desk covered with books and papers, the cupboard with the brushes and knife carefully arranged on top, the easel propped against the wall, the clean palettes next to it. The objects he had painted were packed away in the storeroom or back in use in the house.

  One of the bells of the New Church began to toll the hour. I went to the window to look out. By the time the bell had finished its sixth stroke I knew what I would do.

  I got some water heated on the fire, some soap and clean rags and brought them back to the studio, where I began cleaning the windows. I had to stand on the table to reach the top panes.

  I was washing the last window when I heard him enter the room. I turned to look at him over my left shoulder, my eyes wide. “Sir,” I began nervously. I was not sure how to explain my impulse to clean.

  “Stop.”

  I froze, horrified that I had gone against his wishes.

  “Don’t move.”

  He was staring at me as if a ghost had suddenly appeared in his studio.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” I said, dropping the rag into the bucket of water. “I should have asked you first. But you are not painting anything at the moment and—”

  He looked puzzled, then shook his head. “Oh, the windows. No, you may continue what you were doing.”

  I would rather not have cleaned in front of him, but as he continued to stand there I had no choice. I swished the rag in the water, wrung it out and began wiping the panes again, inside and out.

  I finished the window and stepped back to view the effect. The light that shone in was pure.

  He was still standing behind me. “Does that please you, sir?” I asked.

  “Look over your shoulder at me again.”

  I did as he commanded. He was studying me. He was interested in me again.

  “The light,” I said. “It’s cleaner now.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

  The next morning the table had been moved back to the painting corner and covered with a red, yellow and blue table rug. A chair was set against the back wall, and a map hung over it.

  He had begun again.

  1665

  My father wanted me to describe the painting once more.

  “But nothing has changed since the last time,” I said.

  “I want to hear it again,” he insisted, hunching over in his chair to get nearer to the fire. He sounded like Frans when he was a little boy and had been told there was nothing left to eat in the hotpot. My father was often impatient during March, waiting for winter to end, the cold to ease, the sun to reappear. March was an unpredictable month, when it was never clear what might happen. Warm days raised hopes until ice and grey skies shut over the town again.

  March was the month I was born.

  Being blind seemed to make my father hate winter even more. His other senses strengthened, he felt the cold acutely, smelled the stale air in the house, tasted the blandness of the vegetable stew more than my mother. He suffered when the winter was long.

  I felt sorry for him. When I could I smuggled to him treats from Tanneke’s kitchen—stewed cherries, dried apricots, a cold sausage, once a handful of dried rose petals I had found in Catharina’s cupboard.

  “The baker’s daughter stands in a bright corner by a window,” I began patiently. “She is facing us, but is looking out the window, down to her right. She is wearing a yellow and black fitted bodice of silk and velvet, a dark blue skirt, and a white cap that hangs down in two points below her chin.”

  “As you wear yours?” my father asked. He had never asked this before, though I had described the cap the same way each time.

  “Yes, like mine. When you look at the cap long enough,” I added hurriedly, “you see that he has not really painted it white, but blue, and violet, and yellow.”

  “But it’s a white cap, you said.”

  “Yes, that’s what is so strange. It’s painted many colors, but when you look at it, you think it’s white.”

  “Tile painting is much simpler,” my father grumbled. “You use blue and that’s all. A dark blue for the outlines, a light blue for the shadows. Blue is blue.”

  And a tile is a tile, I thought, and nothing like his paintings. I wanted him to understand that white was not simply white. It was a lesson my master had taught me.

  “What is she doing?” he asked after a moment.

  “She has one hand on a pewter pitcher sitting on a table and one on a window she’s partly opened. She’s about to pick up the pitcher and dump the water from it out the window, but she’s stopped in the middle of what she’s doing and is either dreaming or looking at something in the street.”

  “Which is she doing?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes it seems one thing, sometimes the other.”

  My father sat back in his seat, frowning. “First you say the cap is white but not painted white. Then you say the girl is doing one thing or maybe another. You’re confusing me.” He rubbed his brow as if his head ached.

  “I’m sorry, Father. I’m trying to describe it accurately.”

  “But what is the story in the painting?”

  “His paintings don’t tell stories.”

  He did not respond. He had been difficult all winter. If Agnes had been there she would have been able to cheer him. She had always known how to make him laugh.

  “Mother, shall I light the footwarmers?” I asked, turning from my father to hide my irritation. Now that he was blind, he could easily sense the moods of others, when he wanted to. I did not like him being critical of the painting without having seen it, or comparing it to the tiles he had once painted. I wanted to tell him that if he could only see the painting he would understand that there was nothing confusing about it. It may not have told a story, but it was still a painting you could not stop looking at.

  At the time my father and I talked, my mother had been busy around us, stirring the stew, feeding the fire, setting out plates and mugs, sharpening a knife to cut the bread. Without waiting for her to answer I gathered the footwarmers and took them to the back room where the peat was stored. As I filled them I chided myself for being angry with my father.

  I brought the footwarmers back and lit them from the fire. When I ha
d placed them under our seats at the table I led my father over to his chair while my mother spooned out the stew and poured the beer. My father took a bite and made a face. “Didn’t you bring anything from Papists’ Corner to sweeten this mush?” he muttered.

  “I couldn’t. Tanneke has been difficult with me and I’ve stayed away from her kitchen.” I regretted it the moment the words left my mouth.

  “Why? What did you do?” More and more my father was looking to find fault with me, at times even siding with Tanneke.

  I thought quickly. “I spilled some of their best ale. A whole jug.”

  My mother looked at me reproachfully. She knew when I lied. If my father hadn’t been feeling so miserable he might have noticed from my voice as well.

  I was getting better at it, though.

  When I left to go back my mother insisted on accompanying me part of the way, even though it was raining, a cold, hard rain. As we reached the Rietveld Canal and turned right towards Market Square, she said, “You will be seventeen soon.”

  “Next week,” I agreed.

  “Not long now until you are a woman.”

  “Not long.” I kept my eyes on the raindrops pebbling the canal. I did not like to think about the future.

  “I have heard that the butcher’s son is paying you attention.”

  “Who told you that?”

  In answer she simply brushed raindrops from her cap and shook out her shawl.