by Lynn Cullen
“Oh, yes, my dear, your Neel. He could not keep his eyes off you.”
“If that’s true, it would be only because he had no other place to look.”
“Sister,” she scolds, “you know that’s not true.”
It appears she is not jesting with me. “Neel could not care about me in a romantic way. I have given him no reason whatsoever to have such feelings.”
Now it is Magdalena’s turn to laugh. “Dear sister, since when has that stopped a boy from falling in love with a girl?”
Just then, her little fingers dig into my arm.
“What is it?” I ask.
She stabs her feather at a blue-shuttered house just ahead. The blue of its door has been slashed with a red-painted P.
She tugs me back in the direction in which we came. “I had hoped the contagion would visit only the poor this time. The rest of us now know well enough to keep clean and free of bad vapors. But this is a good street—I have a wine merchant down here. These persons should know better.”
Like a corpse in a canal, a red-painted P floats to the surface of my memory. I remember hands upon my arms, pulling me back. I hear a little girl crying …
“Fortunately,” Magdalena says, “I know a different way to Mijnheer Brower’s establishment.” I hurry after her on pained feet as she retreats to the Dam, then sails down another side street. We dash this way and that down several passageways, arriving at last at a snug brick shopfront.
“Here we are!” she says.
I enter the store, newly aware of my shoddy brown dress as a stout man with a thin smile comes around the counter to greet us.
“Magdalena Jansdochter!” he cries, using Magdalena’s familiar name.
He takes her hand and bows, exposing the gray wisps of hair that escape like smoke from his shiny pate, while equally as cozily, she coos, “Jan Pieterszoon! Johanna says you have some wonderful new stock. My sister-in-law and I wish to look at it.”
As if appraising a milk cow at sale, he surveys my shoes, gown, and collar, pausing a moment on my beads. His blink tells me he would not collar even a dog with such lowly stones.
“Oh, look at this brocade!” Magdalena has seized a bolt of the richest turquoise and gold. “Jan Pieterszoon, this is heavenly. Where is it from?”
“India.” Mijnheer Brower abandons his scrutiny of me to rush to her side. He brings out bolts of velvets and silks and lengths of shimmering satins. Magdalena exclaims over each as I keep watch on the door, praying no fine customers will come.
The clock in the church outside has rung after two rotations and my feet have settled into a low roar of pain when at last Magdalena returns to the brocade that had caught her eye when we first arrived. She lowers her small nose to the heavy bolt of turquoise and gold. “Odd smell.”
Mijnheer Brower rubs his hands. “Silkworms. They have their own odor. It is the mark of quality.”
“Oh, I have smelled silkworms before. This is different. It smells dirty.” Magdalena sniffs. “Like slaves.”
“I can assure you, Magdalena Jansdochter, this cloth was never on a slaver. It was carried on a good clean ship. One of the East India Company boats.”
“That’s what it is!” Magdalena exclaims. “Indian curry! The smell of the brown little men you trade with. It will not wash out, you know.”
I cringe at her cruel words, expecting Mijnheer Brower to protest, but he only sighs. “What price, mevrouw?”
She twirls her feather between her fingers. “One guilder a yard.”
“But it is worth nine!”
“And garlic.” She sniffs. “Is that garlic I detect?”
“Mevrouw, even six guilders a yard would be a loss for me. This is the most precious silk.”
“Very well, mijnheer. I understand.”
“I knew you would, mevrouw. A man must cover his expenses.”
“Yes, of course.” She rubs her pearl earring. “Well, Cornelia and I must be off now. We hear Mijnheer Hogestyn has a new shipment of silks and we’re in a bit of a hurry. But perhaps I should take a quick look at your remnants. Poor Cornelia’s gown was caught out in the rain. We slipped in here incognito, but we must have something made up quickly. Show me what you have in reasonably priced remnants.”
I glance at her, taken in surprise by her story about my tatters. Are all of her words more subject to her fancy than the truth?
Another turn of the clock, and we are leaving with an agreement that Magdalena’s servant will be picking up two lengths of material in the morrow, one of serviceable dark blue bought at one guilder for the lot, the other turquoise and gold, bought at the price of three guilders a yard. Though I slink out of the shop in shame for her meanness, she trips down the porch step, waving her feather in victory.
Dutifully, I say, “Thank you, Magdalena—”
“Sister.”
“—s ister, for the cloth. It has been a lovely day.” I sigh, dreaming of the moment I can release my feet from the torture of my shoes and my head from the agony of listening to her manipulations. Not long now, I tell myself, not long.
“Do you think we are going home?”
“I—I thought you might be tired.”
“Tired? Me?” She flicks her feather in protest. “Not at all! Such a day invigorates me. Oh, no, no, no, we must go to the dressmaker and get you fitted first.”
“But I cannot afford—”
“Hush. Like the cloth, this is my treat.” She wrinkles her little nose in a conspiratory smile. “You must look pretty should Mijnheer Bruyningh come through on his offer for dinner.” She sees me bite my lip in fear. “But do not worry. Frankly, it was probably just talk. Most of what people say is just talk. Have you not found that to be true, sister?”
She does not wait for my answer.
“You cannot imagine the bargains I make with the dressmaker.” Magdalena’s laugh is as sweet as the scent coming from the flowerseller’s stall. “She knows she must deal or she will not get paid, and something is better than nothing, is it not?”
Chapter 20
Hendrickje at an Open Door.
Ca. 1656. Canvas.
The bells of the Westerkerk have long since rung nine o’clock and crickets chirp into the warm May dark as I trot home from Jannetje Zilver’s house. Moeder is in the kitchen when I arrive, peeling away mushy brown layers of rot from an onion by the smoky light of an oil lamp. “I was beginning to worry about you!” she says. “You really should not be out. You avoided any of the streets with P ’s on their houses, didn’t you? Mevrouw Bicker says she’s heard of two new cases on the Bloemgracht today. That is so close.”
“Jannetje Zilver’s street is nice,” I say with a sniff as if it were mine. “Jannetje Zilver’s moeder says people don’t get the plague around there.”
Moeder stops peeling for a moment, then with a sigh, continues again. “Are you hungry? I am just getting dinner—I have been waiting for your vader.”
“I ate at Jannetje’s,” I say, watching her pare the remains of the onion into see-through slices. “We had expensive white bread, mincetart, and asparagus.” I look down my nose at the loaf of coarse rye on the table. “Have you ever had asparagus?”
“No. Will you get me the crock of butter, pretty puss?”
“Do not call me pretty puss.”
She looks up, surprised, then gets the crock herself. “Will you fetch your vader at the tavern in the park? He must be hungry. Anyhow, curfew is coming, and they are more strict now with the contagion afoot. He should not be out after ten. We don’t want any more trouble with the warden.”
I skip out into the dark, gladly exchanging the stink of rotting onions, smoke, and paint for the comforting smell of fishy water and wet stone. As I trot over the bridge, a peacock screams from inside the park; something drops into the canal with a hollow plop. Inside the hedges, a fountain sings its watery tune. If only I could find three stuivers, I could go with Jannetje into the maze and finally see that fountain. Moeder is not going.
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At the tavern, the screech of a fiddle and rough laughter blasts from the open window as I brace myself for what I know will come next when I enter. Old men smoking pipes will stare; women who don’t wear enough over their bosoms will chuck me under my chin; and Vader, in his corner, will drain his tall glass, then rise unsteadily to his feet.
The women will lean against the wall as we pass, giving Vader a look like the one on Moeder’s face in a painting he has done of her where she leans against the wall with her bosom uncovered, a key tucked into her bodice. Jannetje Zilver’s moeder plays the spinet, takes Jannetje’s old clothes to the orphanage, writes letters, tastes the cook’s food, scolds the serving girl for leaving a wrinkle in a collar, but Jannetje Zilver’s moeder does not have time to slouch against the wall.
A wail, terrible in its length and pitch, pierces the night. I whirl around to scan the row of houses behind me.
The tavern door flies open. I shrink against the painted brick wall as men and women spill outside. A man staggers from a doorway in the row of houses and drops to his knees on the street.
“Our daughter,” he groans.
A man steps from the neighboring house. As a crowd gathers, he swings out his lantern, spilling pale light over the man on the ground.
The man with the lantern shrinks back. “Mijnheer Visscher! Get back in your house. Your neck, man!”
The man clamps his hand above his open collar, but not before I have seen the plum-sized swelling in the dim light.
Someone grabs my arm. I look up.
Vader sways in the lamplight. “Don’t tell your moeder you saw this. She worries too damn much.”
Chapter 21
Tijger sleeps in a patch of sunlight as birds sing outside the open window of Vader’s studio. Strains of organ music from the New Maze Park float in on a soft breeze; a woman laughs in the distance. It is a blue-sky day in May, a day for lovers—even the doves are waddling in pairs on the rooftops—and I am stuck inside this musty house, sucking in greasy paint fumes. For twenty-nine days in a row I have been without Carel, a punishment that would be excruciating even without the added misery of having to wear a scratchy old gown the color and weight of a side of fresh-killed beef while Neel Suythof clings to my hand so that Vader can carefully place a tiny dab of paint just right there. I can bear no more. I pull my hand away from Neel and rub it.
“Sorry.” Neel wipes his own hand on his breeches. “I am holding it too hard.”
“It’s not you, Neel. It’s never you.”
Neel casts down his gaze but says nothing. I have hurt him, I am always hurting him, even when I don’t mean to.
“It’s just that we have been standing here since breakfast,” I say, trying to make amends, “and now it’s almost time for de noen. Vader, can we please take a rest?”
Vader stands back, regarding his latest dab, then puts down his brush with a frown. I notice with quiet satisfaction that there is but one tiny nick on his chin and that his bristly gray mustache has mostly filled in—my attempts at shaving him have improved over the weeks. “All right, all right,” he says, “you may stop.”
I stretch my arms as Neel goes to Vader’s easel. After twenty-nine days in close quarters with him, I am starting to fear that Magdalena might be right and that Neel cares for me more than he should. Ignore it as I might, the evidence is mounting. To begin, he comes to the workshop earlier than necessary. He sometimes stammers when addressing me. And he looks me in the eye only when forced to, and then on those occasions he turns an alarming shade of red.
Even if he is perhaps a suitable age for a husband—twenty-one to my almost fourteen—his affections are mislaid. I am not serious or sweet tempered enough for him. Kind Neel deserves a porch-scrubbing, sock-knitting, orphan-dressing minister’s daughter. I am my rogue vader’s coarse spawn—the very reason, evidently, Carel has abandoned me.
“The texture of the skirt is magnificent, mijnheer,” Neel says, over at the easel. “I can almost feel it with my eyes.”
I wade over in my gown to see for myself, trying not to notice as Neel draws in his breath when I stand next to him. “All this morning we sat for you, Vader, and you only put these three new dabs on it?” I point there, there, and there.
“How did you know that?” Neel says with awe.
Together, Vader and I shrug and say, “Wet paint.”
I frown at Vader’s grin to keep myself from smiling.
Neel swallows as if recovering himself. “Well, it may be only three strokes, but they have added depth.”
Vader nods. “Sometimes a single dab can make all the difference.”
“True, mijnheer. A simple reflection of light can bring an eye to life. Light is the key, isn’t it?”
I wince, remembering my discussion about light with Carel. How many times in the past twenty-nine days have I recalled that conversation, wondering what I might have said to repel him.
I shake Carel from my head and sigh. “Vader, you haven’t even started on the heads and the hands, and my bodice is still just a shadow of underpainting, and yet you have been working on this for over a month!”
“I thank you for your patience,” Vader says. “Tintoretto himself could not have asked for a better daughter.”
“Who is Tintoretto again, mijnheer?” Neel asks as if I am not in the room.
I cannot help but speak up when I know the answer. “He was a famous Italian artist from the last century. His paintings are quite huge—the size of palace walls—and full of figures and action. His Paradise is the largest painting in the world.” I tug at the band at the top of my bodice. Hateful thing. My breasts will never blossom forth, smashed like this. I look up and find Vader gazing at me. “What?”
“How did you know about Tintoretto?” Vader says.
I shrug. “I’ve read your books.”
“Which ones?”
“All of them.”
Vader beholds me, hands on hips. I look away, suddenly shy.
“Why do you speak of Tintoretto’s daughter, mijnheer?” Neel asks.
Vader nods at me. “You tell him.”
I smile at the memory of sitting by the front-room window under Vader’s book of painters (for it had been nearly my size). How I pored over the stories of the painters’ lives, wondering if any of their stories was anything like mine. The closest was that of Tintoretto’s daughter—except she was her vader’s favorite.
“It is said she was his most faithful assistant,” I say, “working with him side by side. They say she had the gift herself—”
Just then, as if struck by an idea, Vader jumps up and hobbles to the canvas on his bandy legs. Carefully, he places a single dab, not listening, it seems, to me.
“I wonder why I have never heard of her,” Neel says. “I have been making a study of all the great artists.”
“It is because she was a girl,” I say bitterly.
Vader leans back to look at his mark. “No, it is because she died young, while her vader was working on the Paradise. She became ill as he was finishing his five-hundredth angel, and when she died, he immediately took out his brush and painted her in as the five-hundred-and-first—directly in the center of the piece.” He glances at me. “I am surprised you don’t remember that part of the story.”
I stare at him in astonishment. And he did?
Do not get overexcited about Vader remembering the daughter in the story, I tell myself. He is no Tintoretto. Not only has he not worked with me as Tintoretto worked with his daughter, but he’s not painted me, either. When the time comes, he will fill in the face of this painting with Magdalena’s fair visage. Far from being the five-hundred-and-first angel, I am but a cut above a straw dummy to him.
I slog over to the window in my gown. No Carel. Of course not. Why do I look, just to wound myself once more? His uncle, seeing me in my shabby clothes, must have advised him against further discourse. Magdalena was right. Nicolaes Bruyningh’s invitation was but idle talk, designed to smooth over an
awkward situation. Perhaps mere talk is all that Carel’s conversation was with me. That is how rich boys must treat inferior girls, speaking to them with honeyed tongues to avoid a confrontation, while the poor girl stupidly mistakes it for love.
When I turn away from the window, Neel snatches up a stone pestle as if he has not been watching me. “Would you like me to grind some pigment, mijnheer?”
“Thank you,” Vader says. “I could use some vermilion. Don’t thin it too much with the oil. I like a good thick paste, you know.”
“Yes, mijnheer.”
I could grind and mix pigments just as well as Neel, but would Vader ever let me? “It is a blessing Tintoretto’s daughter did not live to maturity,” I say. “She would have been disappointed to find that she could not find work on her own.”
“Why do you say that?” Neel exclaims, then checks himself. “Perhaps,” he says more quietly, “it is harder for them to find the time to pursue it with managing their households and children, but some have done it. In Delft there is a woman artist of the highest caliber, Judith Leyster. She paints, as does her husband. Both are successful in their own right.”
Vader puts another painstaking dot of paint on his canvas, then stands back. “I have seen Leyster’s work. Family scenes, mostly. Honest work.”
I smooth the stiff cloth of my skirt. What if I did try painting but was no good?
“I need to go outside,” I say.
Vader waves me off. “Go. I need a break myself. These hands joined together—” He points at the canvas with the padded end of his maulstick. “There’s something not true about them.”
I shake my head as I pick my way down the steps in my monstrous dress. Could it be because half of the time I am pulling from Neel’s grasp? Tenderest love, indeed. Then I smile almost fondly. Poor Neel does put up with much ill use. And I cannot help but ponder his point—does he truly believe a woman might paint?
Engrossed by this thought, I let the organ music, distant shouting, and laughter from the New Maze Park pull me to the front of the house, though I know I should hide my ridiculous costumed self in the courtyard. Across the way, on the ramp into the canal, a crane peers into the water, patient as a preacher, as I settle myself on the stoop. I lift my face to the sun, then close my eyes to watch fireworks of blue against the red of my lids. A peacock sounds its strangled call in the distance. The sun’s warmth soothing my cheeks, I listen as water laps against the brick banks of the canal; a moeder duck calls to her young. They answer with endearing peeps as the water laps and laps and laps.