Tulip Fever (6 page)

9

Sophia

I saw the green parrot hanging in the parlour. Although he was caged, he spoke beautifully . . . And he was so cheerful in his prison, as if in a wedding house . . . If I may be your slave, take me, in slavery, Tie my hand to your hand, let the wedding ring be the band.

—VAN DER MINNEN, 1694

I am walking with my maid down the Street of Knives. It is a bright, blustery morning. Outside the shops the blades glint in the sun, as if soldiers are standing to attention.
My little soldier’s dozy tonight
. . . I squeeze my eyes shut.

“You’ve never played Head in Lap?” Maria asks me.

I open my eyes. “What’s that?”

“One boy chooses a girl and buries his head in her lap. The others take turns smacking his bottom and he has to guess who they are.” She chuckles. “And the more they smack, the deeper goes his head.”

It rained in the night; the buildings look rinsed. High above us a maid leans out of a window and shakes a duster. We are going to the market. We walk down the Street of Cakes, sighing at the smell. A man raises his hat and smiles.

“Do you know him?” asks Maria.

“Do you?”

“Smack his bottom and see if he guesses.”

We giggle. Sometimes, when we go shopping together, I feel like a girl again with my sisters. I feel released from that great chilly house. However much you bank up the fires, it is impossible to warm the rooms.

If I may be your slave, take me, in slavery
. The ruination of my family cut short my youth. My girlish dreams evaporated in the cruel climate of our straitened circumstances. Of course I felt affection for Cornelis, and gratitude; I am ashamed to admit, at the time, that I was also glad to escape the miseries of my life at home. But recently I feel that I have exchanged one kind of imprisonment for another.

It is March; spring has arrived. Maria and I walk under a horse-chestnut tree. Its sticky buds have split apart; the packaged leaves spill out. Their tender green stabs my heart. Approaching the square, we hear the murmur of the market. At first it is faint, like the sea. As we walk nearer it grows into a roar—the stall holders shouting out their wares, the clatter of carts. My spirits rise.

A one-legged man swings past us on his crutches. He grins at us and licks his lips. Maria laughs. “Hello, peg leg, missed your dinner?”

“Maria!” I pull her along.

She laughs; she doesn’t care. Today she looks shameless. Her bodice is unlaced, revealing the freckled curve of her breasts. I ought to admonish her. I ought to quote her the proverb about wantonness.
If you peel an onion you produce
tears
. Yet I envy her—how I envy her! She is free, she is young—far younger than I feel. Next to me she seems like a clean blackboard, whereas I am full of crossed-out scribbles that I can no longer decipher.

To tell the truth, I am not sure how to manage a servant. Sometimes we are confidantes; sometimes I draw myself up and impose my authority. Maria takes advantage of my inconsistency, for I am not yet accustomed to being the mistress of a house.

I am not sure of anything. My moods, recently, have been seesawing. I have decided that next week Maria and I will spring-clean the house. I will engage another servant to help us. We will get down on our knees and scrub away my wicked thoughts; we will polish away the grime. Devoting myself to duty, I will punish my body until I am exhausted.

We arrive at the square. My spirits soar again. I am flooded with love for everything—the gulls, blown about in the sky like pieces of paper; the women, fondling fruit under the flapping cloths of the stalls. A dog drags itself along on its bottom; its eyes say
look at me
, as if it is performing a comic turn for my benefit. I smile at the hawkers and the quacks.
“Fresh cabbages, fresh carrots! Fresh cinnamon
water! Fresh aniseed liquor, settle your stomach or your money
back! Fresh plump capons, two for the price of one, hurry while
stocks last!”
A boy plays golf between the women’s skirts, swerving and ducking, whacking his stick against the ball.

The sun slides behind a cloud. I am suddenly overcome by repulsion. The wretched dog is not playing a joke; it has worms. Up in the belfry the bell tolls the hour for me, summoning me to atone for my sins; I am surprised nobody turns to stare. The great Weights and Measures building looms up as threatening as a tidal wave.

“Madam!” Maria nudges me. We are standing at the vegetable stall. “I said—how many parsnips?”

The stall holder is a big, purple-faced man. He has one dead eye; it is closed in a permanent wink. I know him well, but today he seems to be leering at me as if he knows my secret. I suddenly feel naked, as peeled as the onion that will surely cause tears. These people milling around— surely they can see into my wicked heart?

Maria holds out her pail and the man tips in the parsnips. I fumble in my purse.

And then I see him. My heart jolts against my rib cage. It is Jan van Loos, the painter. He is making his way through the crowd toward me. Today he wears a green cloak and black beret. He stops, to let a man roll a barrel past. He holds my gaze. The sounds recede like a wave retreating, hissingly, back into the ocean. For a moment I think: he just happens to be here. We will greet each other politely.

I know this isn’t true. He has come here to find me; he has hunted me down. He pauses behind a poultry stall. The bald bodies dangle in front of his face, their claws clenched in a spasm of recognition. Raising his eyebrows, he indicates my maid.

I tap Maria on the shoulder. “I’m going to the apothecary to buy some snuff.” I shove my purse into her hand. “Finish the shopping.”

“How can you buy snuff, madam, if you have no money?”

“Ah.” I pull out some coins. My fingers feel rubbery; they won’t obey me. Shoving the coins into her hand, I leave swiftly, my purse pressed to my breast as if that will protect me.

I hurry down a side street. My path is blocked by a man pushing an ox carcass on a trolley. I press against the wall to let it pass—billowing yellow fat, the stench of it. Behind me I hear footsteps. I wait, me and my beating heart. And then he is beside me.

“I had to see you,” Jan says, catching his breath. “All yesterday, when you were sitting there—I am quite undone.”

“Please go away.”

“You don’t want me to.”

“I do! Please.”

“Say you don’t want me to.” He stands there, panting. “You want to return to that living tomb?”

“Don’t you dare speak like that.”

“I can’t sleep, I can’t work, all I see is your sweet face—”

“Don’t—please—”

“I have to know if you, too, are feeling—”

“I’m a married woman. I love my husband.”

The words hang in the air. We stand there breathlessly. Above us, somebody closes a window. The alley smells of drains.

Jan gazes at me and says: “You have stolen my heart.” He takes my hand and looks at it, as if it is a thing of wonderment. He lays it against his cheek. “I cannot live without you.” He presses my fingers to his lips.

I snatch my hand away. “You mustn’t talk to me like this. I have to go.”

“Don’t go.”

I pause. “When are you coming again to the house?”

“Next week.”

I hurry away. My skin burns; my ears are roaring. When I reach the end of the alley I look back. With all my heart I will him to be there.

The alley is empty. Washing is strung between the houses. The bedsheets billow in the wind, as if trying to attract people’s attention.
Look what’s happening! Stop it before
it’s too late.

10

Jan

What a loss it was for art that such a master hand Did not use its native strength to better purpose. Who surpassed him in the matter of paintings? But oh! The greater the talent, the more numerous the aberrations When it attaches itself to no principles, no rules, But imagines it knows everything of itself.

—ANDRIES PELS ON REMBRANDT, 1681

Back in his studio Jan sits down heavily on a chair. He gazes at a chicken bone, lying on the floor among a scattering of walnut shells. He cannot remember when he dropped them; the bone, with its tattered flesh, is gray with dust.

Jan sits there, thinking about love. He has had many women—foolish virgins, foolish wives. For a man who devotes his life to beauty he hasn’t been fussy.
There’s no such
thing as an ugly woman, just not enough brandy
. Of course he has loved them, after his fashion. He is a passionate man. He has whispered hot words into their ears and been sensually grateful to their bodies for responding to his. But afterward he wishes they would go home. If they stay there, sleeping, he inches his way out of bed, pulls on his breeches and gets back to work.

It is his habit to paint at night while the city sleeps. In the silence his paintings—involuntary insomniacs—confide in his brush as it brings them to life. To see what he is doing, however, he has to light many expensive candles, and this sometimes wakes up the occupant of his bed. Just knowing that a woman is watching him, of course, breaks his concentration. Sometimes they whisper to him,
come
back here
. Sometimes they chastise themselves for their lapse into sin. Sometimes, worst of all, they urge him to make an honest woman of them. If only women were not so irresistible. How much simpler to suck out the flesh from an oyster and drop the shell on the floor.

Sometimes he works right through the night and falls asleep at dawn. In the morning light his painting surprises him as if it is caught unawares. How exposed it looks, with its crude colors. He has to do some repainting. If a woman stayed the night she will have left by now, in a fluster of remorse. Only his true mistress remains—badly daubed, surprised, but surrendering herself again to his brush.

Jan gets up. For once he has no appetite for work. He paces up and down and leans his head against the chimneypiece. Did Sophia Sandvoort mean it when she pushed him away? Were her protestations sincere? Maybe he has made a terrible mistake. He could not stop himself; he had to see her. It is out of his control.

The first visit it was simply lust. Sophia was a challenge but not an insurmountable one. A young woman married to a pompous old man—they were usually conquered in the end. They are a traded commodity, like a bale of flax, and though they are dutiful they don’t truly love their husbands; how could they? A painter seems a romantic proposition, and though they fear damnation they finally surrender themselves, as long as the rules are observed.

Yesterday, however, during the second sitting, something happened. The old man was droning on . . .
tulip bulbs
. . .
de
Heem
. . . How ponderously Jan’s countrymen hold forth. She sat there, as modest as the Madonna in her blue dress. Suddenly they had looked at each other with such complicity. Her face spoke to him—merriment, exasperation. And something darker, something that pierced his heart.