I Am Rembrandt's Daughter

by Lynn Cullen

  How can he ask? The reason is so clear. “Because he loves me. And because I love him.”

  He lays his hand to my wrist with fingers hard as stone. “As your vader, I am afraid I cannot stand for this foolish reasoning.”

  I draw back. “For going to my brother?”

  “For fighting for a lost cause.”

  I stare at his hand, then up at his face. What gives him the right to stop me now when he abandoned me all these years? “You never came for me.”

  “I couldn’t. Did you want me to lose everything? What good would I be to you without my money?”

  I try to picture myself as his well-dressed daughter, living in luxury, drowning in guilders.

  “We can start fresh, Cornelia. You’ve been given this chance. Take it.”

  I see the face of my dear brother, his jaw clenched in quiet agony, and of Vader, unshaven and frightened, fretting over him and growling to his God. Blood kin or not, for richer or poorer, through bad times and good, I find that I love Rembrandt van Rijn in spite of all of his imperfections. Perhaps, I think with wonder, because of his imperfections. I pull my arm free.

  My footsteps ring from the polished tiles as I run. “Do you know what you are doing?” he shouts after me.

  I do not, not entirely, as I wrestle open the door. But of one thing I am certain: Though I may have the Bruyningh blood, I do not have the Bruyningh heart.

  Chapter 34

  Vader is sponging Titus’s brow when I return to the House of the Gilded Scales. Though it has been but an hour or two, it seems as if time has stopped. Perhaps it has, between Vader and me. I stare at him as he tenderly ministers to Titus, touching his son’s brow as if it could break, and wait for him to shout me out of the house.

  Vader frowns when he sees me watching. “You’re back,” he says in his guttural growl.

  I go to my brother, expecting Vader’s protests. I can feel Titus’s heat when I lean over him. He does not open his eyes.

  I swallow back the burning coal that chokes me. “Where is the physician?” I whisper hoarsely to Vader.

  “Gone.” Vader looks down at his son, then lovingly touches his cheek. “He sleeps now like a baby.”

  My chest is painfully tight. “Where is Magdalena?”

  “She and her moeder have left for relatives in St. Anna-parochie.”

  How like Magdalena to think only of herself when her husband is in such danger! “How can she leave him like this?” I cry, expecting Vader to rebuke both Magdalena and me.

  Vader shakes his head. “Do not judge her ill. She is with child. It was the right thing to do.”

  “Right thing.” I kick my heel against the floor. So he does not throw me out. Yet. Maybe I wish he would.

  Vader turns to look at me, then draws in a breath. “What is the matter, Cornelia?”

  I break free from his gaze and glance at Titus. “Not now, not with Titus—”

  “He’s exhausted. He will sleep.” Vader sinks wearily onto a stool, the sponge still in his hand. “So out with it. You have the look of a cat ready to pounce.”

  I straighten myself. All these years he let me live a lie. I try to swallow but my mouth has gone dry. “I know who my real vader is.”

  He inhales sharply, then slowly lets it out. “So you talked to Bruyningh.”

  “Yes.”

  He sighs heavily. “Did he tell you everything?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you shall hear everything from me as well.” He dumps the sponge on the table next to him. “I wonder how well our stories will match.”

  “Go ahead,” I say grimly.

  He rakes his fingers through his sparse hair, leaving it sticking up. “I don’t know where to start.”

  “What about the picture?” I demand.

  “What picture?”

  “The one in our attic. Of Moeder in her …nakedness.”

  “Oh. That one.” He touches Titus’s cheek.

  “Why did you make Moeder model naked for it?” I whisper harshly. “She didn’t model before then. He said so.”

  Vader sits up sharply. “Nicolaes Bruyningh” he snarls, pronouncing the name as if it were poison, “does not know everything that goes on around here. But yes, he is right. She did not model naked for me before then. Nor did she after.”

  “So why did you make her? Did you not know that if anyone ever saw the picture she would be reviled?”

  “I never intended for anyone to see it.”

  “Then why would you paint it?”

  “It was an act of love.”

  “An act of love!”

  “Yes, if you can believe that.”

  “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

  He smiles bitterly. “You have no idea how much I loved your mother.”

  “You had some fine way of showing it.”

  “I ask you to listen.”

  I fold my arms and wait.

  He shakes his head. “You don’t know. From the moment she stepped foot in the house as a sixteen-year-old, I was drawn to her.”

  “You were an old man!”

  “Don’t you think I knew that? A ridiculous old widower. I kept my distance from her. Still, I couldn’t keep my mind from her. Just being in the same room with her made me giddy. When I wasn’t painting, when I was painting, she was all I could think about.”

  I think of my yearnings for Carel, how such an attraction can drive all sense from one’s head. But this is not about Carel and me. “Why did you not just marry her, then? It was because she was your maid, wasn’t it?”

  “That did not help matters, but no, it wasn’t because she was my maid. I was still getting over my loss of Saskia, and Hendrickje was twenty years my junior—I felt repulsive to her. So I kept my distance. I hardly spoke to the girl.”

  This rings true. Nicolas Bruyningh had said there had been no improprieties.

  “Then why didn’t you just let Nicolaes Bruyningh have her?” I demand. “He was more her age. He was rich, too.”

  “Bruyningh. I didn’t like him chasing after Hendrickje, but I let him have his chance. Looked the other way for three whole years. Gad, the boy was slow.”

  Titus stirs. I take up the sponge and wipe his face with it. “Titus?” I whisper.

  He does not open his eyes. I lay my hand on his burning cheek.

  “Bruyningh was not so slow, however,” Vader says, his lips curled with disgust, “that he did not eventually get her with child.”

  I glare at Vader as I sponge Titus. “You knew this when you painted her?” I whisper angrily. “How could you have taken advantage of her like that?”

  “Just listen, would you? I’d seen her crying. So I asked what was wrong. When she told me the cad had left her in a state, I told her I would take care of her.” A young man’s fire smolders in Vader’s watery eyes. “I wanted to kill him.”

  I cannot keep the bitterness from my voice. “So you take care of her by making her model naked.”

  “You make it sound evil, but it was not. When she turned to me in her grief, I could no longer hide my feelings. I was ready to shout from every bridge in town of my love for Hendrickje Stoffels. I promised her I’d care for her …” He gazes at me with a tenderness that confuses me. “And you.”

  “If you loved her so much, why did you not marry her then? Make me your legal child? Did you not think how much not doing so would hurt me?”

  “I haven’t finished telling the story! I was going to marry her. We planned to publish our first banns that Sunday. I was so in love, Cornelia. I wanted to breathe your moeder in, meld her soul to mine—oh, she was a wondrous girl!” He closes his eyes, his old man’s face wreathed in a smile.

  He opens his eyes. “It was her idea for me to paint her. Her gift to me, and mine to her. A sacred act. She knew how much I worshipped her, and she loved my painting. Back then, like you, she seemed to understand it. So that Saturday morning, a day I had no pupils, and after Titus left for his uncle’s, I shut the stu
dio door behind us and bade her to sit. She placed herself upon a drape and, turning her head away, gave up her body to my artist’s brush.

  “I had prepared the background in advance, so I was able to begin painting her figure at once. The work went quickly, spurred by both passion and the tenderness of her sacrifice. Do not judge me—I am speaking the truth about the woman I loved! The moment I laid brush to canvas I knew it would be a masterpiece, yet I planned to never show a soul. It was between her and me. All morning long I painted in our private ecstasy, until—he burst in.”

  “Nicolaes Bruyningh.”

  “I’m sick of that name! Yes. It was an ugly scene. He shouted at Hendrickje. She wrapped herself in a drape and cried. I threatened him with a paint trowel. He went away, but not before he shattered Hendrickje’s world with a threat.”

  We stare at each other.

  “What?” I ask.

  “He said he was taking away his child because its mother was a whore. He said the courts would be on his side—the picture would be his proof.”

  “He was taking me?”

  “I told him I would destroy the painting. He said it did not matter, the Bruyninghs had the power to sway the judges, and mark his words, he would do it. He would take away his child. And then he left.”

  “But he said he would take me?”

  “Yes. But not your moeder. It would have killed her.”

  “Why did you not marry her then, make your own claim and become my legal vader? It was Saskia’s will that stopped you, wasn’t it? You would have lost Saskia’s money if you married.”

  He blew air between his lips. “I could have cared less about the money! I thought I could always make more of it painting. I’d been successful before; I thought the wheel would turn back for me. No, it was Hendrickje’s wish that we did not marry. She didn’t want to do anything to inflame Bruyningh into taking you.”

  “She didn’t marry you … because of me?”

  He shakes his head slowly. “She didn’t want to lose you, Cornelia. Neither of us did.”

  I bow my head, unable to comprehend.

  “What that woman had to endure,” Vader says. “She was called to the church court three times and made to confess her sin of living with me outside of marriage. My patrons treated her like dirt. ‘The painter’s whore,’ they called her. How they smirked. I lost all my wealthiest patrons, but I didn’t care. Not if they insulted her.”

  “Why didn’t he—?”

  “Take you? I don’t know. We saw him roaming by our house. The threat was always there. I think he was holding out hope that she would return to him.”

  I open my mouth, then shut it. He wasn’t holding out hope. He would have never risked being cut off from his money. If he couldn’t be happy, he wanted to be certain my moeder wasn’t, either.

  Vader rubs his forehead. “Later, much later, by memory, I finished her face in the picture. I painted the look of resignation she had worn the day he’d left. Her sadness burned itself on my soul. It haunts me still. I think, Cornelia, that she loved your vader more than me.”

  I draw in a breath as if stung. My vader. Who is my vader? Bruyningh, the man who gave me life? Or Rembrandt, the one with whom I’d lived it?

  There is a light knock on the door frame. Vader looks up.

  Neel stands in the doorway, his hat in his hands. “How does he fare, mijnheer?”

  I gaze at Neel’s face. His true concern for Titus, for our family, is writ all over it. All these months I have turned him away, ignoring his friendship, while pining for a boy who shut me out when he heard my brother was ill. How could I not see what a treasure Neel’s goodness and honesty have been? But it is too late for me to tell him this, to ask for his friendship. The best I can do is to lessen his chances of getting ill.

  “Neel, please, you must go,” I say. “You will get the contagion.”

  His face, always an open book, becomes a study of hurt and concern. “But I have been with him, same as you. If I have got the sickness, it is already upon me. Why will you not take my help when you so need it?”

  Next to me, Vader gets up wearily, an old soldier rising to yet another battle. “Let him help, Cornelia. Don’t you know? God protects saints and madmen.” He smiles sadly. “Perhaps they are the same.”

  Chapter 35

  The groans of the four ragged men manning the ropes are lost in the sounds of the city around us. Over the cries of peddlers and the clopping of horses, I barely hear the thud of the wooden casket bumping against the dirt walls as it is lowered into the grave. There is a final thud, one last murmured prayer. The preacher turns to shake our hands, just Vader, me, and Neel. No one comes to the funeral of a plague victim, not even, it seems—as Magdalena remains with her kin—one’s wife.

  Now Vader and I trudge through the Westermarkt, having parted with Neel in front of the church. Even with Vader at my side, I am completely alone; the everyday sounds of people shopping and selling exist in a separate sphere. They have nothing to do with me. It is as if I have died with Titus. If only I had.

  “Do you hear them?” Vader says.

  I fight my way through invisible walls of sorrow to look at him. I notice his cheeks and chin are bristly with stubble—I’d not thought to shave him since Titus fell ill. Ah, well, what does it matter now.

  “The bells,” Vader says.

  I close my eyes, willing myself to go back into the world around us, if only for a moment. I hear the death bells of the Westerkerk.

  “The bells must be for Titus,” Vader says wonderingly. “Though I don’t know how.”

  They cannot be for Titus. Vader has no loose stuivers, not even for Titus’s grave. Magdalena’s family had to rent it. They say later they will move the body to their tomb in the church, when the plague has passed.

  My gut tightens. Could Nicolaes Bruyningh have paid for them? Could he have heard about Titus’s death and made this gesture of claim upon me?

  Vader plods on, the bells tolling, tolling behind us. I move to catch up, when I think, He is not blood. With Titus gone, Rembrandt and I have no connection. Will he want me to remain? Do I want to remain with him?

  I gasp when Neel jogs up behind me. Vader moves on as I stop to catch my breath now that even breathing is a chore.

  “Sorry to frighten you,” Neel says, his plain face drawn with concern. “May I accompany you home?”

  I gaze at him, the bells still bellowing overhead. “I don’t know where home is.”

  His expression is so full of pity and sorrow that it makes me almost laugh in spite of my misery. Oh, Neel. You are the true Worry Bird. I know, now, I would cherish even the slenderest of friendships with you, should I remain in Rembrandt’s house.

  Rembrandt is already shut up in his studio when we arrive at the house on the Rozengracht. I go to the kitchen though I don’t know what to do there. The stacks of dirty pots, the pile of soiled linen—all look strange. I hear Neel upstairs, knocking on the studio door.

  “Mijnheer? May I come in?”

  I look out the kitchen window to the courtyard, where the rose vine climbs, fragrant in its second bloom. The roses Moeder planted for Nicolaes Bruyningh. Had she ever stopped loving him? I shall never know.

  The death bells stop. Over on their step, the van Roop girls play with dolls. The youngest one hugs her doll to her chest and rocks it back and forth. When I turn away from the window, I hear Neel’s muffled voice upstairs. I am so overcome by loneliness that I trudge upstairs to join them.

  “Please, mijnheer,” Neel says as I enter the studio. “You must paint. That will be your cure.”

  Vader sags on his stool, his hands in his lap. “I just do not feel like it.”

  Neel nods, then turns his hand to grinding a chunk of pigment. I sink onto the stool next to Vader’s abandoned canvas of Tenderest Love. Six days of watching Titus slip away has left me as empty as a bell. I rest, thinking of nothing in particular, until I begin to notice the scraping sound of Neel’s paint trowel as
he mixes the light ochre pigment with linseed oil. I hear the cooing of doves on the windowsill. The ridiculous tootling of the organ in the New Maze Park. Tijger strolls in, climbs onto a pile of canvas, and begins to take a bath, his tongue lapping noisily.

  Neel glances from Vader to me, then loads a dab of yellow onto his palette. He mixes some of it with other small dabs he has placed beside it, then lifts a canvas to an empty easel. It is the picture of the Prodigal Son.

  The painting has been worked on since I noticed it last. Most of the figures have been fleshed out, especially the vader and the son. Neel once said he painted The Prodigal Son because he was interested in forgiveness, in its healing power. If only forgiveness could heal wounds like mine. If only simple forgiveness could make me know who I am and what I should be.

  Now Neel adds a stroke to the picture, to the hands the vader has placed on his kneeling son’s shoulders. He adds another one, then stands back. “I cannot get it, mijnheer. It needs your eye.”

  Vader gets up with a heavy sigh. With dragging steps, he comes to Neel’s side and wordlessly takes the brush. Silent tears flow down his bristly cheeks as he paints the penitent kneeler.

  Suddenly, he stops. He gives Neel the brush. “I cannot do this anymore.”

  “Mijnheer.”

  “My art—what good has come from it? All my time, all my love, everything I have poured into it while my dear ones pass through their lives. Then they’re gone, and I have nothing. Nothing.”

  I turn away from the sounds of whirring duck wings as they land upon the canal. “Vader,” I say, surprising even myself. “What about me? Will you care when I am gone?”

  Neel puts down his palette and comes to me. He puts a protective hand to my shoulder, then bends over me. “Shh, Cornelia,” he whispers in my ear. “Do you not know? He values you above all else, but he does not know how to tell you. He’s a man of paint, not words.”

  A lump swells in my throat. Could it be true? Could Rembrandt really love me? Could he think of me as his own, even though I am not? Even though I am Bruyningh’s? I glance away with stinging eyes. Neel squeezes my hand.