Girl with a Pearl Earring, The

by Tracy Chevalier

  I turned round, my hands still in my hair. He stood on the threshold, gazing at me.

  I lowered my hands. My hair fell in waves over my shoulders, brown like fields in the autumn. No one ever saw it but me.

  “Your hair,” he said. He was no longer angry.

  At last he let me go with his eyes.

  Now that he had seen my hair, now that he had seen me revealed, I no longer felt I had something precious to hide and keep to myself. I could be freer, if not with him, then with someone else. It no longer mattered what I did and did not do.

  That evening I slipped from the house and found Pieter the son at one of the taverns where the butchers drank, near the Meat Hall. Ignoring the whistles and remarks, I went up to him and asked him to come with me. He set down his beer, his eyes wide, and followed me outside, where I took his hand and led him to a nearby alley. There I pulled up my skirt and let him do as he liked. Clasping my hands around his neck, I held on while he found his way into me and began to push rhythmically. He gave me pain, but when I remembered my hair loose around my shoulders in the studio, I felt something like pleasure too.

  Afterwards, back at Papists’ Corner, I washed myself with vinegar.

  When I next looked at the painting he had added a wisp of hair peeking out from the blue cloth above my left eye.

  The next time I sat for him he did not mention the earring. He did not hand it to me, as I had feared, or change how I sat, or stop painting.

  He did not come into the storeroom again to see my hair either.

  He sat for a long time, mixing colors on his palette with his palette knife. There was red and ocher there, but the paint he was mixing was mostly white, to which he added daubs of black, working them together slowly and carefully, the silver diamond of the knife flashing in the grey paint.

  “Sir?” I began.

  He looked up at me, his knife stilled.

  “I have seen you paint sometimes without the model being here. Could you not paint the earring without me wearing it?”

  The palette knife remained still. “You would like me to imagine you wearing the pearl, and paint what I imagine?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He looked down at the paint, the palette knife moving again. I think he smiled a little. “I want to see you wear the earring.”

  “But you know what will happen then, sir.”

  “I know the painting will be complete.”

  You will ruin me, I thought. Again I could not bring myself to say it. “What will your wife say when she sees the finished painting?” I asked instead, as boldly as I dared.

  “She will not see it. I will give it directly to van Ruijven.” It was the first time he had admitted he was painting me secretly, that Catharina would disapprove.

  “You need only wear it once,” he added, as if to placate me. “The next time I paint you I will bring it. Next week. Catharina will not miss it for an afternoon.”

  “But, sir,” I said, “my ear is not pierced.”

  He frowned slightly. “Well, then, you will need to take care of that.” This was clearly a woman’s detail, not something he felt he need concern himself with. He tapped the knife and wiped it with a rag. “Now, let us begin. Chin down a bit.” He gazed at me. “Lick your lips, Griet.”

  I licked my lips.

  “Leave your mouth open.”

  I was so surprised by this request that my mouth remained open of its own will. I blinked back tears. Virtuous women did not open their mouths in paintings.

  It was as if he had been in the alley with Pieter and me.

  You have ruined me, I thought. I licked my lips again.

  “Good,” he said.

  I did not want to do it to myself. I was not afraid of pain, but I did not want to take a needle to my own ear.

  If I could have chosen someone to do it for me, it would have been my mother. But she would never have understood, nor agreed to it without knowing why. And if she had been told why, she would have been horrified.

  I could not ask Tanneke, or Maertge.

  I considered asking Maria Thins. She may not yet have known about the earring, but she would find out soon enough. I could not bring myself to ask her, though, to have her take part in my humiliation.

  The only person who might do it and understand was Frans. I slipped out the next afternoon, carrying a needlecase Maria Thins had given me. The woman with the sour face at the factory gate smirked when I asked to see him.

  “He’s long gone and good riddance,” she answered, relishing the words.

  “Gone? Gone where?”

  The woman shrugged. “Towards Rotterdam, they say. And then, who knows? Perhaps he’ll make his fortune on the seas, if he doesn’t die between the legs of some Rotterdam whore.” These last bitter words made me look at her more closely. She was with child.

  Cornelia had not known when she broke the tile of Frans and me that she would come to be right—that he would split from me and from the family. Will I ever see him again? I thought. And what will our parents say? I felt more alone than ever.

  The next day I stopped at the apothecary’s on my way back from the fish stalls. The apothecary knew me now, even greeting me by name. “And what is it that he wants today?” he asked. “Canvas? Vermilion? Ocher? Linseed oil?”

  “He does not need anything,” I answered nervously. “Nor my mistress. I have come—” For a moment I considered asking him to pierce my ear. He seemed a discreet man, who might do it without telling anyone or demanding to know why.

  I could not ask a stranger such a thing. “I need something to numb the skin,” I said.

  “Numb the skin?”

  “Yes. As ice does.”

  “Why do you want to numb the skin?”

  I shrugged and did not answer, studying the bottles on the shelves behind him.

  “Clove oil,” he said at last with a sigh. He reached behind him for a flask. “Rub a little on the spot and leave it for a few minutes. It doesn’t last long, though.”

  “I would like some, please.”

  “And who is to pay for this? Your master? It is very dear, you know. It comes from far away.” In his voice was a mixture of disapproval and curiosity.

  “I will pay. I only want a little.” I removed a pouch from my apron and counted the precious stuivers onto the table. A tiny bottle of it cost me two days’ wages. I had borrowed some money from Tanneke, promising to repay her when I was paid on Sunday.

  When I handed over my reduced wages to my mother that Sunday I told her I had broken a hand mirror and had to pay for it.

  “It will cost more than two days’ wages to replace that,” she scolded. “What were you doing, looking at yourself in a mirror? How careless.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “I have been very careless.”

  I waited until late, when I was sure everyone in the house was asleep. Although usually no one came up to the studio after it was locked for the night, I was still fearful of someone catching me, with my needle and mirror and clove oil. I stood by the locked studio door, listening. I could hear Catharina pacing up and down the hallway below. She was having a hard time sleeping now—her body had become too cumbersome to find a position she could lie in comfortably. Then I heard a child’s voice, a girl’s, trying to speak low but unable to hide its bright ring. Cornelia was with her mother. I could not hear what they said, and because I was locked into the studio, I could not creep to the top of the stairs to listen more closely.

  Maria Thins was also moving about in her rooms next to the storeroom. It was a restless house, and it made me restless too. I made myself sit in my lion-head chair to wait. I was not sleepy. I had never felt so awake.

  Finally Catharina and Cornelia went back to bed, and Maria Thins stopped rustling next door. As the house grew still, I remained in my chair. It was easier to sit there than do what I had to do. When I could not delay any longer, I got up and first peeked at the painting. All I could really see now was the great hole where the earring
should go, which I would have to fill.

  I took up my candle, found the mirror in the storeroom, and climbed to the attic. I propped the mirror against the wall on the grinding table and set the candle next to it. I got out my needlecase and, choosing the thinnest needle, set the tip in the flame of the candle. Then I opened the bottle of clove oil, expecting it to smell foul, of mould or rotting leaves, as remedies often do. Instead it was sweet and strange, like honeycakes left out in the sun. It was from far away, from places Frans might get to on his ships. I shook a few drops onto a rag, and swabbed my left earlobe. The apothecary was right—when I touched the lobe a few minutes later it felt as if I had been out in the cold without wrapping a shawl around my ears.

  I took the needle out of the flame and let the glowing red tip change to dull orange and then to black. When I leaned towards the mirror I gazed at myself for a moment. My eyes were full of liquid in the candlelight, glittering with fear.

  Do this quickly, I thought. It will not help to delay.

  I pulled the earlobe taut and in one movement pushed the needle through my flesh.

  Just before I fainted I thought, I have always wanted to wear pearls.

  Every night I swabbed my ear and pushed a slightly larger needle through the hole to keep it open. It did not hurt too much until the lobe became infected and began to swell. Then no matter how much clove oil I dabbed on the ear, my eyes streamed with tears when I drove the needle through. I did not know how I would manage to wear the earring without fainting again.

  I was grateful that I wore my cap over my ears so that no one saw the swollen red lobe. It throbbed as I bent over the steaming laundry, as I ground colors, as I sat in church with Pieter and my parents.

  It throbbed when van Ruijven caught me hanging up sheets in the courtyard one morning and tried to pull my chemise down over my shoulders and expose my bosom.

  “You shouldn’t fight me, my girl,” he murmured as I backed away from him. “You’ll enjoy it more if you don’t fight. And you know, I will have you anyway when I get that painting.” He pushed me against the wall and lowered his lips to my chest, pulling at my breasts to free them from the dress.

  “Tanneke!” I called desperately, hoping in vain that she had returned early from an errand to the baker’s.

  “What are you doing?”

  Cornelia was watching us from the doorway. I had never expected to be glad to see her.

  Van Ruijven raised his head and stepped back. “We’re playing a game, dear girl,” he replied, smiling. “Just a little game. You’ll play it too when you’re older.” He straightened his cloak and stepped past her into the house.

  I could not meet Cornelia’s eye. I tucked in my chemise and smoothed my dress with shaking hands. When finally I looked up she was gone.

  The morning of my eighteenth birthday I got up and cleaned the studio as usual. The concert painting was done—in a few days van Ruijven would come to view it and take it away. Although I did not need to now, I still cleaned the studio scene carefully, dusting the harpsichord, the violin, the bass viol, brushing the table rug with a damp cloth, polishing the chairs, mopping the grey and white floor tiles.

  I did not like the painting as much as his others. Although it was meant to be more valuable with three figures in it, I preferred the pictures he had painted of women alone—they were purer, less complicated. I found I did not want to look at the concert for long, or try to understand what the people in it were thinking.

  I wondered what he would paint next.

  Downstairs I set water on the fire to heat and asked Tanneke what she wanted from the butcher. She was sweeping the steps and tiles in front of the house. “A rack of beef,” she replied, leaning against her broom. “Why not have something nice?” She rubbed her lower back and groaned. “It may take my mind off my aches.”

  “Is it your back again?” I tried to sound sympathetic, but Tanneke’s back always hurt. A maid’s back would always hurt. That was a maid’s life.

  Maertge came with me to the Meat Hall, and I was glad of it—since that night in the alley I was embarrassed to be alone with Pieter the son. I was not sure how he would treat me. If I was with Maertge, however, he would have to be careful of what he said or did.

  Pieter the son was not there—only his father, who grinned at me. “Ah, the birthday maid!” he cried. “An important day for you.”

  Maertge looked at me in surprise. I had not mentioned my birthday to the family—there was no reason to.

  “There’s nothing important about it,” I snapped.

  “That’s not what my son said. He’s off now, on an errand. Someone to see.” Pieter the father winked at me. My blood chilled. He was saying something without saying it, something I was meant to understand.

  “Your finest rack of beef,” I ordered, deciding to ignore him.

  “In celebration, then?” Pieter the father never let things drop, but pushed them as far as he could.

  I did not reply. I simply waited until he served me, then put the beef in my pail and turned away.

  “Is it really your birthday, Griet?” Maertge whispered as we left the Meat Hall.

  “Yes.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “Why is eighteen so important?”

  “It’s not. You mustn’t listen to what he says—he’s a silly man.”

  Maertge didn’t look convinced. Nor was I. His words had tugged at something in my mind.

  I worked all morning rinsing and boiling laundry. My mind turned to many things while I sat over the tub of steaming water. I wondered where Frans was, and if my parents had heard yet that he had left Delft. I wondered what Pieter the father had meant earlier, and where Pieter the son was. I thought of the night in the alley. I thought of the painting of me, and wondered when it would be done and what would happen to me then. All the while my ear throbbed, stabbing with pain whenever I moved my head.

  It was Maria Thins who came to get me.

  “Leave your washing, girl,” I heard her say behind me. “He wants you upstairs.” She was standing in the doorway, shaking something in her hand.

  I got up in confusion. “Now, madam?”

  “Yes, now. Don’t be coy with me, girl. You know why. Catharina has gone out this morning, and she doesn’t do that much these days, now her time is closer. Hold out your hand.”

  I dried a hand on my apron and held it out. Maria Thins dropped a pair of pearl earrings into my palm.

  “Take them up with you now. Quickly.”

  I could not move. I was holding two pearls the size of hazelnuts, shaped like drops of water. They were silvery grey, even in the sunlight, except for a dot of fierce white light. I had touched pearls before, when I brought them upstairs for van Ruijven’s wife and tied them round her neck or laid them on the table. But I had never held them for myself before.

  “Go on, girl,” Maria Thins growled impatiently. “Catharina may come back sooner than she said.”

  I stumbled into the hallway, leaving the laundry unwrung. I climbed the stairs in full view of Tanneke, who was bringing in water from the canal, and Aleydis and Cornelia, who were rolling marbles in the hallway. They all looked up at me.

  “Where are you going?” Aleydis asked, her grey eyes bright with interest.

  “To the attic,” I replied softly.

  “Can we come with you?” Cornelia said in a taunting voice.

  “No.”

  “Girls, you’re blocking my way.” Tanneke pushed past them, her face dark.

  The studio door was ajar. I stepped inside, pressing my lips together, my stomach twisting. I closed the door behind me.

  He was waiting for me. I held my hand out to him and dropped the earrings into his palm.

  He smiled at me. “Go and wrap up your hair.”

  I changed in the storeroom. He did not come to look at my hair. As I returned I glanced at The Procuress on the wall. The man was smiling at the young woman as if he were squeez
ing pears in the market to see if they were ripe. I shivered.

  He was holding up an earring by its wire. It caught the light from the window, capturing it in a tiny panel of bright white.

  “Here you are, Griet.” He held out the pearl to me.

  “Griet! Griet! Someone is here to see you!” Maertge called from the bottom of the stairs.

  I stepped to the window. He came to my side and we looked out.

  Pieter the son was standing in the street below, arms crossed. He glanced up and saw us standing together at the window. “Come down, Griet,” he called. “I want to speak to you.” He looked as if he would never move from his spot.

  I stepped back from the window. “I’m sorry, sir,” I said in a low voice. “I won’t be long.” I hurried to the storeroom, pulled off the headcloths and changed into my cap. He was still standing at the window, his back to me, as I passed through the studio.

  The girls were sitting in a row on the bench, staring openly at Pieter, who stared back at them.

  “Let’s go around the corner,” I whispered, moving towards the Molenpoort. Pieter did not follow, but continued to stand with his arms crossed.

  “What were you wearing up there?” he asked. “On your head.”

  I stopped and turned back. “My cap.”

  “No, it was blue and yellow.”

  Five sets of eyes watched us—the girls on the bench, him at the window. Then Tanneke appeared in the doorway, and that made six.

  “Please, Pieter,” I hissed. “Let’s go along a little way.”

  “What I have to say can be said in front of anyone. I have nothing to hide.” He tossed his head, his blond curls falling around his ears.

  I could see he would not be silenced. He would say what I dreaded he would say in front of them all.