Girl in Hyacinth Blue (7 page)

"What's that?"

"I stopped sewing." She smiled a tiny, wan smile. "I looked it up. Memineris. Erasmus says that after liberating Athens from the cruelties of the Thirty Tyrants, Thrasybulus made a decree pro hibiting all mention of the past. They called the de cree amnestia."

Digna. Oh, Digna.

His eyes welled up and she appeared wavy as though through a glass, then only a blur of laven der, and he did not want even that transparency to be between them. He looked away so she would not see, at Dirk, curled and sighing at Digna's feet, so as not to look at the painting. Soon he'd have to travel half a day over rutted dike roads to see it. And he'd be watched. He imagined with horror the newly framed embroidery sampler declaring in careful stitches its decree of silence and amnesty, hanging within the discolored rectangle on the cream-colored wall. No, Digna wouldn't do that. She wouldn't put it there.

Involuntarily, he looked up to check if the painting was still hanging in its place.

After a time, he said, "If instead of looking out the window, the girl were looking in, at us, she would surely think we were enviable creatures."

That near-smile flicked across her face. "Look long enough," she said softly, "out or in, and you'll be glad you are who you are."

Whether she meant it as observation or exhorta tion, he would not ask, or imagine.

Hyacinth Blues

I have forgotten, I am ashamed to say, his face. No, not Gerard's. His.

Now, it's not wise to be shocked. It makes one's face blotchy and you don't want that. I wouldn't tell just anybody, because there are parts, there are parts—but since you asked for counsel in such mat ters, I will tell you. The truth, that I did not love the husband my father chose for me, I had con cealed more carefully than a breast.

That is to say, until I first saw him. He was play ing in a small orchestra at that somber brick Mau ritshuis—the new Eroica Symphony which we fi nally heard in The Hague two years after my sister heard it at the Beauvais—and he was wearing an el egant puce frock coat and red moire waistcoat with thin violet stripes. His breeches were not the same old black silk that Gerard wore day in and day out, but suede, fastened with bows and reaching farther down the leg. Surely he wasn't Dutch.

I have a thing or two to tell you about the Dutch, so I'm glad we have all afternoon. At that Mauritshuis concert, for example, Louis XVI fash ions, ten years out of date, were still in evidence, too blatant not to humiliate them, but miracu lously, they carried on without even seeming to no tice. That woman loosely connected to the House of Orange, the former Baroness Agatha van Solms whom my husband thought charming, was still wearing side hoops. And her headdresses! She thought it clever to suggest her family's contribu tions to Dutch naval history by building a ship, a man-of-war I think it was, atop horizontal rows of cadogan curls—no one wore cadogan curls any more—as if the vessel were bravely battling those ferocious blonde waves. On its stern she flew a tiny flag. Prudently, it was the flag of the Batavian Re public. A cheap way to advertise the role of the House of Orange in sea conquests, if you ask me. Add to this that she still followed that odious prac tice of tying a red velvet ribbon about her neck as an expression of sympathy for those caught by Madame Guillotine. Not a dram of taste.

Now, don't label me derisive or faultfinding. You didn't have to live there. Besides, there was one Dutch thing I loved. It was a small painting Gerard bought me of a young girl whose skin had the sheen of transparent peaches. She was looking out an open window with such a sweet, naive ex pression on her face, though at first I thought it a bit vacant. You see, the villagers are cut off from each other by water, always water. Such inbreeding that more than a few of the ladies are half-witted or decidedly curious in a bovine sort of way. Still, this child must have had parents who loved her, and that generated in me both tenderness and melan choly. Envy, I suppose it was, due to my own bar renness, awareness of which had begun to make Gerard irritable even earlier when we were in Lux embourg.

I placed the painting in the small drawing room, above a blue velvet chaise that intensified the blue in the girl's smock, which hung in graceful folds of that luscious deep blue of the early hyacinths when the blooms are just beginning to open, not the paler blue after they've waned. If I had a daughter, I would dress her in the colors of only the freshest hyacinths and tulips. And just as my sister Charlotte does with her Cherise, I would parade her every spring at the Promenade de Longchamp. And she'd have pearls. So I made inquiries at the artists' guild to have a string of pearls painted in around the poor girl's naked neck.

Gerard said the painting was by a minor artist, some Johannes van der Meer. It didn't matter to me. The girl was lovely, and I claimed her with all my heart.

At first I thought the gift was a placating meas ure given so I would be content another year or two, until he could secure an appointment back in France. It was after Gerard had a solid month of conferences with the former Countess Maurits van Nassau at the Mauritshuis about some revenue waiver, or so he said, though I know different now. And that, my dear, is the real reason for such propi tiatory gifts, so be wary.

Since the Countess Maurits was the concert hostess and a gracious lady in all respects, I called upon her the day after the concert in that mau soleum of a Mauritshuis where she lived, I can't imagine how. She received me in a room decorated with blue and white tiles on the fireplace and blue Delftware plates standing by the dozen upon shelves and sideboards. And on those plates, al ways bridges arching up in the air over rivers, and spineless weeping willow trees. Who would want that symbol of melancholia staring at you? I had enough of the real thing, thank you. Poor woman, she couldn't get a decent Ishfahan, or even a Hamadan. Just a Flemish, and chintz everywhere, and two Frisian cuckoo clocks quacking every few minutes—enough to give you the vapors.

Though denuded of her title by The Emperor, she still displayed her wealth upon her ample bosom, somewhat like deflated meringues sad to say, the left one marked by a small mole, but I couldn't be sure; it may have been painted on. She informed me that the violinist was Monsieur le C—, fresh from Paris, and that he was to appear in a mat ter of weeks as guest performer playing Mozart's Symphony no. 40 in G Minor with the state orches tra, formerly the Royal Orchestra, at the Binnenhof.

"Oh, I do so love minor keys," I whispered. "His bowing technique, of which I am obviously not entitled to speak, certainly had me enrap tured." I gave her a beseeching look on the final word.

With the intuition of the subtlest of women, surely a vestige of her lost title, she smiled under standingly. "He is staying for the summer at the Oude Doelen."

That was all I needed.

The Hague was small, only the size of three or four of the grand squares of Paris and their neigh borhoods. I knew the Oude Doelen. Gerard and I had stayed there while our home for the duration of his commission was being prepared for us. But first, I had to secure an invitation to the Binnen hof concert. And, second, I had to have a new gown.

There was not a day to waste. Not a dressmaker on van Diemensstraat knew the styles in Paris. Nor did I, exiled as it were, first to Luxembourg and then to The Hague, while Josephine's salons ex ploded with new styles. And the tiny Dutch shops were no help. As empty as cells, those shops. Why they couldn't smuggle bolts of silk as well as casks of saltpeter is owed entirely to the dullness of the Dutch.

And another thing: You should thank the blessed Virgin, my dear, that God has spared you the uncharitable corset makers in The Hague. I tell you they have not an ounce of mercy—the resent ment of the conquered toward his conqueror—no tender little words of understanding when they fit you, unlike Madame Adèle, my own corsetière, who says, I can hear her now, "It's only a question of rearranging the skin, madame." You really ought to try her. She does wonders in lifting the fallen. Rue St. Honoré just off the Place Vêndome.

Nevertheless I set out to clothe myself anew, not just top to toe but air to skin, just in case. My sister Charlotte had written to me that women were beginning to wear pantalets, and then she de scribed them. Even if they were made of sheer lawn, oh, the discomfort of having rasping cloth there. Discreetly, I asked at a few shops. Not having heard of such a thing, they looked at me askance, so I had to content myself without, even though that distressed me somewhat. Surely Monsieur le C— knew more of what was being worn in Paris than I did, and I hated to be found wanting.

Now where did I leave off? Oh, yes. The Bin nenhof. A plain palace from the outside that stretched along the south bank of the Vijver. It re deemed itself, though, once one entered the Trêves Zaal, where the concert would take place, a splen did white and gold reception hall imitating Louis XIV style, quite like the Galerie Dorée of the Hotel de Toulouse. The painted ceiling was dreamlike with clouds and cherubs, and so I was prepared to think the violinists, Monsieur le C— especially, were descending to us from Heaven.

I worked my way toward the first few rows of seats and Gerard followed. The musicians were al ready seated, and there he was, first violinist, concen trating on tuning the orchestra. His white lace jabot frothed under his dear chin like a whipped dessert. The first movement, molte allegro, was a sprightly melody—tra-la-la, tra-la-la, tra-la-lalá it went, and his hands flitting about cast a spell on me. Hardly able to breathe in the sudden heat, I batted the air with my fan. By the happiest of chances, the gesture seemed to attract Monsieur le C—'s eye.

He noticed me. Yes, I was sure of it.

During the long andante his eyelids drooped provocatively over his instrument, and his bowing arm caressed the strings as if they were the heart strings of his beloved. He played the andante with such tenderness I nearly fainted. He must have been a child prodigy, some doting mother's dar ling. By the fourth movement I was dizzy to the point of rapture. You know the feeling or you wouldn't have asked me.

As for Gerard during all of this, I couldn't say. He busied himself more and more with his columns of figures, with dispatches, and especially with the disenfranchised Dutch nobility. He bought a paint ing by a Dutch artist and began to smoke a long porcelain pipe. My husband, I am sorry to say, was becoming Dutch.

I can't be sure but his defection may have started a year earlier. I remember it was late spring because the hyacinth on my dressing table had reached that stage of sadder, paler blue when its fragrance was most poignant because it was offer ing up the last of its zest. I had not yet executed my morning glories, that is to say, my morning rites at the dressing table. I had no plaster or powder on yet, and had not put on my ringlets. I was plucking when Gerard said something to me that I didn't hear; truth to say, though I rue it now, I ignored him because I cannot think, much less actually speak, when I am doing my face.

"Claudine!" he said, so loud it startled me and I dropped my tweezers.

The notion of lovers living together is alto gether too demanding. One can be caught so un ready. When you get to be my age, you'll under stand.

In the mirror I saw him looking at me, sitting on the edge of the bed without his breeches and without his stockings too, so his thin hairy legs dangled off the end of the bed like a spider.

I turned to him and said sweetly, "What is it, mon cher?" Always be sweet, no matter what. You never know what's on their minds.

He didn't say what he'd intended to, the words must have flown away like moths, but he had the look of a man to whom something had happened. His eyes were distressed, as though he saw for the first time that our possibilities had been checked, that the son he had imagined would never be. I think it suddenly occurred to him that we had stopped trying to have a child. At that moment I suspected that whatever hold I had on him was slip ping. Afterward, a heaviness sat on my heart.

I was brought up to believe that when one mar ries according to family wishes, with time and pa tience, love will come, so I had made an effort at love even though I didn't quite know what I was striving for. Oh, there had been occasions of pas sion, but was that love? I had a sentimental notion, to answer your question, that love meant one would risk all, sacrifice all, overlook and endure all in order to be one with the beloved. I used to hold dear the doctrine—borrowed from my aunt in Provence—that if one acts with sufficient passion in all things, then that passion will correct whatever might be unfortunate in one's circumstances. But after that look—Gerard's eyes so full of disappoint ment, as if the world had changed and he recog nized it finally for what it was, and would never call it beautiful again—after that look, I was no longer certain of my aunt's doctrine.

I tried to make the best of things, for he was good enough to me after a fashion—gave me a painting of a girl, my wish, not a boy, his, you see— though he was good enough to others too. It was no secret that he'd been well occupied during his period as ministre d'impôt, collecting for The Emperor 100 million guilders a year, but exacting less tangible taxes from some privately chosen devalued Dutch nobility, chiefly amongst them that former Baroness of the House of Orange flying the flag on a curl. I resolved to ignore that and not to think, and for the next year I occupied myself with pleasant things, like organizing excursions to the tulip fields of Haarlem in the spring, and in summer braving the wicked sea wind at Scheveningen to shiver in those funny wicker tub chairs on the strand, and in the winter having skating parties at the Huis ten Bosch. On the ice once, Gerard, nearly falling, let out a little whoop of terror and laughed at himself and reached impul sively for my hand, and I was overwhelmed with ten derness for him, though I wouldn't call it love. He would have reached for any hand to right himself.