Tulip Fever (24 page)

In several respects Jan van Loos has been a disappointment to him. For a start, he keeps a disorderly studio. When Jacob arrived it was a pigsty. The brushes looked as if they had been chewed by rats. When customers arrived Jan greeted them in his bespattered old painting clothes— were they not due some respect? Then there is that ramshackle servant wandering in at all hours—where does the man sleep? The gutter?

Worse than that, Jan is clearly dissolute—Mattheus was right to warn Jacob about this. Jan has plainly been fornicating with that married woman. When Jacob returns home each night he does not confide this to his parents. They would be horrified and take him away.

It is this sexual excess, no doubt, that has caused Jan to neglect his work. Loss of spermatozoa enfeebles a man and thins his blood. Then there is this tulip business. Nowadays, Jan is looking even more disreputable—wild eyes, ragged beard. The man has not had a haircut for months. Where is his professionalism? Some days he doesn’t go near his easel at all.

Of course, this is a disappointment. Jacob was expecting more instruction. But it has also worked to Jacob’s advantage. He had expected his first year to be taken up with mundane tasks—binding brushes, lacing canvases onto stretchers, sharpening metalpoints and preparing the white ground on the panels. If he were lucky, he would get to copy some of the master’s works.

Nowadays, however, Jan is often out. Even when he is in the studio he is distracted. He is late in fulfilling his commissions and has started relying on Jacob to help him. In the past few months, in fact, Jacob has become more his master’s partner than his pupil. During the summer Jan began three paintings to sell on the open market: a
Landscape with Shepherds,
a
Rape of Europa
and a canvas depicting—most appropriately, in Jacob’s opinion—
The
Effects of Intemperance
. He has also embarked on a portrait commissioned by a prominent official in the Stadholder’s court. But he never has time to paint them and has told Jacob to complete the canvases. Not just backgrounds, not just clothing—the entire painting.

Jacob is only too delighted to do this. He knows that his talent is equal to that of his master. This, combined with his single-minded industry, will make him ultimately the more successful of the two. Sometimes Jacob considers that it is
he
who should be giving lessons to his master.

And then comes the bolt from the blue. It is the first week of November. Jan has been offered an important commission: a group portrait depicting the Regents of the Leper Hospital. And he has turned it down.

“Why?” asks Jacob, his brush poised.

“Because I have to go away.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Jan pauses. “I must apologize, Jacob. I have been meaning to tell you.” He sits down heavily on the bed. “Things have been—well, in a state of some confusion recently. I have to go overseas.”

“When?”

“In two weeks. On urgent business.”

“When are you returning?”

Jan shakes his head. “I am not returning. I shall be gone for good.” He looks up at Jacob as if seeing him for the first time. “I’m so sorry.”

Trembling with anger, Jacob lays down his brush. “You cannot do this, sir. You contracted to teach me for two years—”

“If you knew the circumstances—”

“You gave your word!”

“—maybe you would understand—”

“My parents pay you fifty florins a year—”

“I will reimburse them—”

“What about my examination? What about my membership of the guild—”

“I will find you another master. Mattheus can take you; I’m sure he will find room for you—I’ll insist—”

“You—you—” Jacob splutters for a word. He is not used to swearing. “You
wretch
!”

Jan gets up and puts his hand on his arm. “Jacob, believe me. It is a matter of great importance.”

“To
you
,” Jacob spits, shaking off his hand. Just then there is a knock at the door. Jan answers it.

A boy steps into the room. For a moment Jacob thinks: it is all a lie. Jan is getting rid of me so that he can take on another pupil. I am too talented—that is the answer—he’s jealous that I will show him up.

Jacob is wrong. The boy passes Jan an envelope.

Jan opens it and looks at the contents. Then he goes to his strongbox and scrabbles among his papers. He brings out a purse of money and gives it to the boy. “This is the deposit. Tell him I will make up the full amount on the day—it’s all right, it is all agreed.” He scribbles something on a piece of paper. “Here is my bond.”

LATER, JAN GOES OUT. He never bothers to lock his strongbox; he is the most careless of men.

Jacob opens the box and takes out the envelope. He opens it. Inside lie two tickets of passage on the
Empress of
the East,
sailing on the fifteenth of November to Batavia, East Indies.

38

Maria

Though the bird’s in the net, it may get away yet.

—JACOB CATS, Moral Emblems, 1632

The baby is overdue. He was due in the first week of November and already it is the twelfth. Maria is pulled two ways. She wants him to hurry up and be born; she wants to get it over with. She even feels a sense of obligation to the others—the sooner she performs her part of the bargain, the sooner they can leave. Sophia told her that their passage is booked for the fifteenth of the month. Time is running out. If this baby is not born by then they will have to cancel it and book a later date, but that might be weeks or even months hence. Maria is still enough of a servant to feel this obligation.

On the other hand, she is terrified.
It’s like being torn
apart
, said her butter-churning grandmother.
It’s like all
your guts they’re being pulled out. Thump-thump
went her pole.
It’s like being slit open with a red-hot knife
.

Maria misses her grandmother; she misses her mamma. Now that her time is near she aches for them even more strongly than for Willem. Who is going to take care of her? Not her mistress, that’s for sure. She will be occupied elsewhere. Maria feels utterly alone.

That night she sleeps fitfully. The baby is kicking. Her belly is a rock; she cannot turn over in bed. She prays to the baby: don’t be born tomorrow, not on the unlucky thirteenth. Please wait until the next day.

She dreams her dream again. How painlessly her babies slip out, shoals of them . . . She floats through the submerged rooms, swimming in her underwater palace, her babies flicking behind her.

The next morning she is chopping the heads off sprats when the pains begin.

39

Sophia

As you sow, so shall you reap.

—JACOB CATS, Moral Emblems, 1632

I hear a cry and I hurry into the kitchen.

Maria is doubled up. “It’s started,” she mutters.

I help her up to the attic room—one flight of stairs, then another, then another. It seems to take forever. At the top Maria has another contraction and has to sit down.

I have laid a fire in the little room. I light it and settle Maria on the bed.

“I want my mamma,” wails Maria. “Don’t go.”

“I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Don’t go!”

I hurtle down the stairs and out of the house.

40