Midnight Blue

by Simone van der Vlugt

  His smell lingers in the air around me for a long time and I can still feel the warmth of his mouth. One brief conversation, one kiss and my defences are blown away. I lean on the table for support and suppress the urge to go after Matthias. Fighting back tears, I stare at the floor and take a couple of deep breaths. When I look up, Evert is in the doorway. He doesn’t say anything.

  Just as the silence becomes unbearable, he says, ‘I wouldn’t take him too seriously.’

  ‘No,’ I say, my voice hoarse. ‘I won’t.’

  In the days that follow, I try to think about Matthias as little as possible. Once I hear that the VOC ship Delft has left Delfshaven, I throw myself into my work. Firing pottery is a time-consuming process. It takes forty hours of stoking before the kiln is hot enough to fire clay and then another three days before it’s cool enough to take out again.

  Evert tells me that it was his father who started producing majolica, rough earthenware with an ornamental glaze that originated in Italy, and that he himself made the shift to faience when he inherited the pottery.

  ‘Faience is a finer type of earthenware. It has something of porcelain about it, but it isn’t so delicate. It’s made a lot nowadays, we call it Dutch Porcelain,’ he says.

  ‘It’s magnificent.’ I carefully turn a blue-and-white-painted dish over in my hands.

  ‘And extremely expensive,’ says Quentin, coming to stand beside us. ‘It costs three times as much as majolica. And there’s less and less demand for it.’

  I look up at him. ‘And that’s why you mainly make red earthenware?’

  ‘Yes, it always sells well, even though it doesn’t pay much. I’ve had to let some good painters go over the last few years because they were stuck painting little white flowers. Any apprentice can do that,’ says Evert.

  ‘And me.’

  ‘You can do much more, and you cost less.’

  ‘Are things really going that badly for the potteries? There are a good number of people working here.’

  ‘Yes, but there aren’t enough orders coming in for everyone to make a living. Chinese porcelain is in vogue and there’s almost no way to compete with it.’

  ‘Matthias told me the supply of porcelain has been interrupted by a civil war in China,’ I say.

  ‘That’s true, but that doesn’t mean people are going to go back to buying majolica or faience. The demand for oriental porcelain is still high.’ Evert sounds troubled. ‘If only we knew how to make it for ourselves. True porcelain is paper-thin but still strong, and it’s white through and through. Dutchware has a white layer on top of a red background and is much heavier. We don’t know how the Chinese manage to make it so fine.’

  ‘But if they can no longer obtain porcelain, people will have to buy something else. Something that looks similar,’ I say.

  ‘Faience comes the closest to it, but it will never work. Rich people want the real thing, not an imitation.’

  ‘What exactly is it about Chinese porcelain that they find so beautiful?’

  ‘Have you ever seen it?’

  I picture the vases in his brother’s parlour. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you think it was beautiful?’

  ‘Yes, magnificent.’

  ‘Can you say why?’

  ‘The colours. That deep blue on that gleaming white. And the designs. They were so … different.’

  ‘Exotic,’ says Evert.

  ‘Yes. When I looked at them I felt like I’d stepped into another world. A world so far away from here you’d have to travel six months to get there. A world I’ll never see.’

  ‘Apart from when you look at a dish or vase like that.’

  ‘I think that’s what fascinates people so much: dragons, waterfalls, exotic flowers and the appearance of people on the other side of the globe. They’re familiar with pictures of windmills and cows.’

  ‘You might be right there.’

  ‘That’s how it is with me, anyway.’ I turn to Evert. ‘We could paint a couple of those decorative plates with Chinese subjects and see what happens.’

  Thus far Quentin has been standing and listening in silence; now he enters the discussion. ‘Waste of time. It would still be faience; an imitation.’

  ‘But maybe people don’t care that much about the type of pottery. Maybe they want something to look at. Let me paint something like that,’ I insist.

  For a long moment Evert stands looking at me, weighing it up in his mind. ‘Fine,’ he says eventually. ‘Give it a try.’

  20

  At the end of the day when all the other workers go home, I stay on in the paint studio. It’s July, so it’s light long enough in the evening to keep on working. I lay down the painting I did in Brigitta’s studio and practise on a misfire before risking a good piece of earthenware.

  To my surprise, Evert comes to keep me company. He’s brought bread and roast chicken with him and sets this on the table as he eyes the painting.

  ‘So that’s what gave you the idea,’ he says. ‘You’ve painted something like that before. That’s very good, Catrin.’

  ‘Thank you. The only thing is, this is totally different from working on canvas.’

  ‘Yes, I said as much. Earthenware is porous and doesn’t take the paint so well.’ He glances at the little pot of paint standing before me. ‘I understand why you chose blue paint, but you should use black. Black paint with cobalt oxide dries to a beautiful light blue in the kiln.’ He laughs when he sees my face. ‘That blue paint gets too dark during firing. People prefer a lighter shade.’ He sits down next to me, takes his own plate and dips a brush into the paint. ‘Painting is not my strong suit, but I can manage those little roses along the edge. Then if you take care of the more difficult motifs …’

  In a comfortable silence, we set to work. The complicated figures demand my full attention. After a couple of hours, when the sun has stopped streaming in and the daylight has faded, we have decorated two plates.

  We tidy up together and leave our work on the table. You can only fire pots if someone is there to watch the kilns overnight; the city watch comes round hourly to check. Since the kiln is no longer lit and the stoker has gone home, the firing will have to wait.

  Even though I live nearby, Evert insists on walking me home. As I open the front door he says, ‘I won’t regret taking you on, Catrin. I’m already sure of it.’

  I laugh. ‘Just wait until I ruin my first pot.’

  ‘Even then. Sleep well.’ He raises his hand and walks away.

  I watch him go. It’s not until he disappears around the corner that I go inside and shut the door.

  ‘What’s this?’ Frans asks in consternation the next day. He’s staring at the black-painted plates with oriental motifs waiting next to the kiln. Quentin is standing at the table too, also eyeing the new pottery.

  ‘An experiment,’ I say. ‘All the potters are making the same thing, so I thought why not try something else.’

  ‘Did you stay yesterday evening to do this? Does the boss approve?’

  ‘Evert helped me with it.’

  ‘Oh, so you’re already on first-name terms. You don’t waste time! It must have been a late night.’ He examines the plates without looking at me.

  I glare at his back in annoyance. I have no intention of responding to the veiled insult. ‘I don’t care for your insinuations, Frans. If you’ve something to say to me, then say it.’

  Frans puts down the plate and turns to me. ‘You can paint well, but not so well that I can understand why you were taken on so easily. It took years of training before I was allowed to do this work and you just swanned in here, easy as you like.’

  ‘Now, now,’ Quentin fusses.

  ‘Maybe because I make half what a man would, as you so immediately informed me,’ I retort.

  ‘Perhaps. But if you hadn’t had a tooth in your head and were twice as fat or old, you wouldn’t have managed it.’

  ‘Then lucky for me that isn’t the case,’ I say in a frosty tone. ‘I
f you don’t mind, I’ll be getting to work now. I don’t have time for this sort of nonsense.’

  Frans shrugs and walks off. It takes a while for me to recover my self-control.

  ‘Don’t pay any attention to him,’ says Quentin. ‘He can’t stand having to work with a woman, let alone a woman who can produce work as good as his. If you have any problems with him, let me know.’

  ‘Thank you, I can take care of myself. I’ve known worse men.’

  ‘Yes, I think you are someone who can take care of herself. You remind me of my wife, Angelika. She looks like she’s made of porcelain but you’d better watch out. When she’s angry, I run away.’

  I burst out laughing. ‘I’d like to meet this wife of yours.’

  ‘No doubt you will,’ he says, opening the door of the second kiln, which we seldom use. ‘It’s a good job we’ve got another one. You have to maintain a different temperature for cobalt oxide.’ Quentin gives orders to stoke up the kiln and turns to me. ‘It’ll be a while before it’s hot enough.’

  I nod and get to work. At the end of the day I watch as the setters place my plates on the slatted shelves. I can’t wait to see how they’ll turn out. Unfortunately, the firing process takes a long time. Hard though it is, I need to be patient.

  Three days later I’m craning to see in as the door is opened. The kiln is a large construction with thick walls and a furnace at the bottom. The furnace is separated from the upper oven, which consists of three layers, by a cover.

  Normally, Evert lets Klaas, one of the apprentices, empty the kiln, but this time he does it himself. As soon as the door is open we huddle in closer. I peer inside, filled with curiosity. The man-sized kiln may be cool enough to be opened, but a wave of heat rushes over me even so.

  It doesn’t seem to bother Evert. He reaches inside again and again to remove the pottery. I look on in excitement. With tender care he sets the plates on the workbench and we crowd around them. It’s quiet for the first few seconds but then everyone starts talking enthusiastically. We gaze at the results in amazement.

  ‘Magnificent!’ says Quentin, almost in awe.

  And they are magnificent: the light blue on the perfect white background, the mysterious dragons and Chinese figures, the flowers and angels. Seen through the sheen of the extra layer of glaze they seem to come to life. I almost can’t believe that I painted them. My face glows with pride and happiness.

  With a big smile, I look over at Evert, who is bent almost deferentially over the pottery. He straightens and smiles at me.

  A smile has even appeared on Frans’s face. When our eyes meet, I see a glimmer of respect in them for the first time.

  The plates go straight into the shop, on an expensive table of carved wood right in the window. Displayed like that, gleaming in the sun, they look their absolute best. They attract attention straightaway. That same morning Evert receives an order from a German merchant, Herman Fischer, whom he regularly does business with.

  ‘Thirty decorative plates and twenty vases,’ he tells me and Frans. ‘With exactly the same motifs. They have to be shipped next week.’

  We get to work at once and when another order is placed the following day, Evert tells us to leave our old work. ‘Lambert can do those simple decorations. You concentrate on the new style,’ he says. ‘Frans, I have a load of clay coming from the Westerwald. Fischer says you can make thinner pottery with it and it dries to a lovely white. We’re going to test it out.’

  From that moment on I do nothing except paint oriental motifs. Evert has some Chinese porcelain that serves as an example.

  He increases my wages, which is very welcome, but the most important thing is that I like it at the pottery. Frans seems to have come around. At any rate, he hasn’t made any more disparaging remarks.

  One afternoon I leave the workshop to get something to drink from the kitchen. I hear voices in the shop and look round the corner. Evert is standing talking to a man and a woman with two children of around ten. When he sees me, he waves me over.

  I wipe my hands on a rag and go into the shop.

  ‘This is my newest business acquisition, a true artist. Give her a brush and she will work wonders with it.’ Evert sounds proud. ‘These are friends of mine, Catrin. You already know Isaac, you’re renting your house from him. This is his wife Adelaide and their children, Janneke and Michael.’

  We nod to each other. With her dark hair and old-fashioned cap, Adelaide appears older than she could possibly be, since her face shows only a few wrinkles. Her husband towers over her, over all three of us. The children say good day politely. They are exactly the same size and are so alike that I suspect they must be twins.

  Adelaide van Palland turns to me. ‘Evert tells me you’re from Alkmaar, like my husband. What a coincidence.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ I say, instantly on my guard. I don’t know for a fact that lawmen from different towns keep in touch with each other, and the chances that the bailiff of Alkmaar could track me down that way seem slim, but I feel uneasy all the same.

  ‘It can’t be easy for you, living alone in a strange town.’

  ‘So far I’ve not had much time to miss my family, but you’re right, it isn’t ideal. It’s such a long way away.’

  ‘But your family will come to visit you, surely?’

  ‘They’re busy. The journey takes days and work needs to be done at home.’

  ‘Your surname is Barents, right, Catrin?’ Isaac asks. ‘Did you keep your husband’s name or is that your maiden name?’

  ‘It’s my maiden name. I don’t think you’ll know my husband’s. We lived in De Rijp, not in Alkmaar.’ I break out in a cold sweat at the thought that he might well know Govert’s name, that he might have heard from relatives in Alkmaar about his death under suspicious circumstances. Rumours spread so quickly.

  ‘I’m in Alkmaar fairly often, but you’re right, never in De Rijp.’ Isaac gives me a searching look, as if he has noticed my reserve.

  ‘Drop in, if you have time. I’d love to get to know you better,’ says Adelaide warmly.

  ‘That would be nice.’ I thank her with a weak smile. ‘I need to get back to work, if you’ll excuse me …’ I curtsy and bustle back to the studio.

  ‘We’ll see you in church on Sunday,’ Adelaide calls after me.

  21

  I’d much rather stay out of Isaac and Adelaide’s way but of course I can hardly avoid going to church. It also wouldn’t be sensible to stay home, not when I’ve got so much to make up for with God. On the other hand, I see my breaking the bond with my family and giving up Matthias as a kind of penance. A new start in Delft, where I can spend my days painting, is more than I ever thought I’d have.

  Meanwhile, the orders are flooding in. Evert has hired extra labour but the workload stays high. Inspiration and creativity no longer come into it. We need to deliver, and quickly.

  Frans and I make drawings on paper, perforate the outlines of the design and lay them on top of the earthenware like a blueprint. We then fill in the perforations with charcoal, so the drawings become visible. After that, we only need to colour in the figures. The newcomers to the workshop use our stencils, driving up productivity.

  The pottery grows exponentially. Over the course of the summer, sales double and then triple.

  ‘The Delft has reached the Cape,’ says Evert one day, after work is over. ‘The Cape of Good Hope, the most southerly point of Africa,’ he adds when I look at him blankly. He beckons me to follow and leads me to his office, where a world map has been hanging ever since Matthias’s departure. ‘This is the Republic, this is France and Spain. Below that is Africa. Matthias is here now.’

  I stand next to him and look at the dot he’s pointing at. It’s strange to think that Matthias is so far away. We never speak about him; Evert most likely because he wants to spare my feelings and me for the self-same reason.

  What is he doing at this moment? Does he ever think of me? To my annoyance, I think about him all
too often, even if the feeling of missing him has grown less raw.

  ‘Where is he going?’ I ask.

  Evert’s finger glides to a dot on the other half of the map. ‘You see how far away it is. Almost unimaginable. I wouldn’t even think of going, but it’s all he’s ever wanted.’

  ‘Yes, he told me that.’

  Evert gives me a sidelong glance. ‘Catrin, there’s something you need to know about Matthias.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘I told you a while ago not to count on him too much. Matthias has always had a problem with commitment. He loves variety. He has no interest in a settled life. I know he’s very charming, but I hate to think how many women’s hearts he’s broken.’

  ‘He hasn’t broken my heart.’

  ‘He nearly did. I saw the way you looked after he came in to say goodbye.’

  ‘He asked me whether I’d wait for him.’

  ‘Yes, I heard. And are you waiting for him?’

  I stare at the map, at the dot where Matthias is now. ‘No. I don’t think there’s much point.’ But saying those words fills me with fresh misery.

  To my surprise, Evert says, ‘I think he meant what he said.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Matthias isn’t a liar. If he says something like that, then he’s being genuine. The problem is, he can’t keep his promises. Not because he doesn’t want to, but because he’s not made the same way as other people. He needs the freedom to do or not do whatever he wants. He’ll come back to you, but then he’ll leave you again.’

  I listen to him in total silence. The tentative hope I’ve held onto despite everything is crushed. I know intuitively that Evert is right and his intentions in warning me are good. But there is something else at play too. I realise I would only have to take one step in his direction to relieve both our loneliness.

  ‘Do you want to come to the fair?’ asks Angelika, coming into the shop. She’s got her two little daughters, Katherine and Gertrude, on each hand and her swollen stomach is clearly visible under her jacket.