"And we rode the towboat," he added.
"Did you, now." Stijn's hand reached down to ruffle Piet's head.
"Ssh. You're supposed to be asleep," Saskia said.
"What about the painting?"
"I'll tell you later," she whispered, motioning with her head to the children. She couldn't lie in front of them.
She watched Stijn eat the stew. When there was only broth left, he tipped the bowl into his mouth. She ladled out more. When he finished, they both stood up at the same moment, both moved one way, then the other to get between the chests and Katrina who swished her tail at the disturbance. Saskia let out a nervous, twittering laugh. He ques tioned her with his eyes. Earlier than usual, she got into her night shift, blew out the oil lamp, and climbed into the high bed. He showed tremendous patience waiting for an explanation. Only when he lay down next to her did he ask again, "Why didn't you sell the painting?"
"I couldn't," she said, and it was the truth. "I tried," and that, too, was the truth. Let him take it as he would. She rolled away from him. In a mo ment his hand came across her to turn her again to him. Still he waited.
"Stijn, it's like selling the boy's mother. It's making him an orphan." She knew it was foolish, what she was saying, but in the dark, she could ad mit things. All the hardness of life in the bleak northland rushed over her like a flood and she cried, "There's nothing beautiful up here. Oh, I know you love it, love to look out on your rows of potatoes, love the big, bare flatness of buckwheat, buckwheat, buckwheat, but I didn't come here for that. I came here because of you, and if we can get along without selling it . . . I'll sell the spice chest. Or we can borrow from Father. The fields will be drained soon. Already at Woldijk you can see sedges coming up through the water."
They lay a long time in the darkness before he asked, "How much were you offered?"
It was a long time again while she listened for noises from the children. In spite of the quiet, she whispered, "Twenty-five guilders."
He blew air out between his teeth that cooled the back of her neck. She held her breath and didn't move while the enormity of that sum became truth to him. As much as she tried to contain herself, she turned her face into the pillow and cried.
"I would have sold it if I thought that was a fair price."
"Fair? What do we know about such things?"
"I didn't sell it because another woman told me it was worth eighty. In Amsterdam. So you'd best not be treating the painting that way," she said, "hanging your muddy coat in front of it."
"Eighty!" he whispered. After a long, still mo ment, she felt him get out of bed and heard the sound of him dropping his reefer onto the bare floor.
She had, for the first time in their marriage, a lightness, a sense of power in being right. She pressed further. "As I said, Jantje is not the child of some lawless wench, or even the son of a farmer." She heard the bite in the last word and knew he did too. She turned her back to him and they were both very still until she fell into a sound and peace ful sleep.
In the morning, in those few moments of halfsleep before she moved but when she heard Katrina stirring for her milking, she felt Stijn's arm laid across her lovingly. She lay still to feel the reality of his tenderness, and after a time, she slipped her hand in his.
Work on the sea dikes was completed before they'd expected, and so now all the drainage mills were turning. Stijn worked on the Damsterdiep Dike now, and as the team of men worked their way inland, his spirits brightened. She even saw him tickle Jantje's belly once, and he called him "Jantje" instead of "the baby." Jantje was gurgling baby sounds now. She wasn't sure if she should teach him "Mama" and "Papa," so she was working on "cow" and "water."
If only, for one moment, Stijn could feel as she did, if they could be together in the task God as signed them, if he could look at Jantje as he looked at Piet and Marta and know the power of God's intention, then maybe he'd trust enough to let her keep the painting. But of this, there was no indication. The question of the painting hung in the air of their little upper room, and every day she put less and less salt pork in the stew and then fewer and fewer carrots and haricot beans bought from the vegetable seller who occasionally ven tured out to flooded villages in a punt. Eventually the stew became potato broth, day after day, and Saskia thought for sure he'd tell her to sell the painting.
Spring came in small evidences—only a tender ness in the air and some grasses poking the water's surface. Inland, just outside the Woldijk, the land was wet but not flooded, and they were spreading refuse from the city to reconstitute the soil. Farm ers there might get their crop of sugar beets after all, but Stijn just sat brooding by the window, look ing out at his wet fields. With every week, Saskia pointed out a few more branches of trees emerging and another plank of the barn.
Conscription duties lessened so the Water Board permitted each landowner one day free of dike work each week. There was little Stijn could do on the farm, so he said he'd take them on an outing in the skiff.
"And can we go to Woldijk and have races on the dike road?" Piet asked.
"Yes, and maybe even to Groningen."
"And see our horse?" Marta added.
"Of course."
It would be a holiday. Stijn hadn't acted this lighthearted in months. She knew there would be heather beyond Woldijk. The marsh gentian wouldn't be out yet, but there would be yellow pimpernel and bog violet she could pick and bring back that would last a day or two. Already the sun breaking through the clouds made the water glisten in silver patches.
But first Stijn went to the barn.
She stood still and closed her eyes. Katrina's endless chewing filled the room.
Across the water she heard him shout. Not words. Not a curse. Just a deep bellow of anguish.
Through the window she watched him thrash ing the water with the oars. She had no place to put the older children so they wouldn't see what would come next. She put Jantje far back into their cabi net bed.
Stijn was already yelling as he climbed in the window. "Saskia, how could you? The seed pota toes! You've been using the seed potatoes."
Piet flattened himself against the wall.
"I—"
"Every farm wife knows, every farmer's daugh ter knows that you don't touch the seed potatoes. There's only a quarter of a barrel left! Not enough to seed more than a few rows of potato mounds."
Marta crawled deep into her bed.
"I thought there was another barrel behind the bales," Saskia said, though she knew, even as she said it, that it was not the truth. They wouldn't get a planting this year so she thought they might as well eat them. The potatoes wouldn't last a year. Now she knew—he hadn't given up the hope of putting in a late crop.
"Another barrel? You knew there wasn't. And you knew if I knew, we'd have to sell the painting."
He didn't lay a hand on her—that he'd never do—but he glared at her with a look that shriveled her soul. She felt God Himself scowling down at her. "Selfish. Selfish! I never knew you."
"Maybe I should tell you then. It was your idea to come up to this barren place. I haven't been back home for three years. My parents haven't seen Piet since he was a baby, but not once have I com plained. And not once have I regretted it. And not once have I cursed the flood or bad luck or God Himself. Or you."
"But a man's seed potatoes are his future. It's what he is."
"Nothing more? You're nothing more than that? I don't believe it. You're holding a grudge. And you know what? It's not against me, because of the potatoes. Or because I didn't sell the paint ing. Or even against Jantje. It's because of the flood. And you know who it's against? It's against God. All you see in life is the work. Just planting, hauling, shoveling, digging. That's all life is to you. But not to me, Stijn. Not to me. There's got to be some beauty too."
The upper room was too small to contain him. He climbed out the window, taking Piet and Marta with him, still good for his word to take them on an outing, and she was left with Jantje and Katrina. Their first day outdoors together after more than a year. Ruined. Sobbing, she paced the few steps back and forth across the room, picked up a dried dung cake and hurled it out the window after the retreat ing boat. It didn't even reach half the distance.
A fine time Piet and Marta would have with that man today. Good riddance to him. She flung her self on the bed so hard Jantje bounced.
Stijn stayed away all day. For the first time dur ing the flood, she was afraid. She'd had a simple faith that everything would be all right—it always was on her family's farm in Westerbork—but Ol ing wasn't Westerbork. And Stijn wasn't her lov ing father.
It wasn't that Stijn was unloving. It was just that after eight years, she still had trouble telling the dif ference between his love and his worry. She'd been wrong about one thing. Stijn's hope. It was there, stronger than hers, but more deeply buried in the dark soil of his soul.
Late in the afternoon she took a good long look, and put the painting in an empty grain sack and sewed it closed.
At dusk she heard the children's voices singing, and his deep voice coming in on the refrain of a silly children's song, but as the skiff drew nearer, the singing faded and eventually stopped. In a sick ening silence, Stijn left off the oars and let the boat float slowly toward the house.
Through the window Marta handed her a fistful of wilted blue wildflowers. "Why thank you, liefje. These are called lady's smock." She looked at Stijn climbing in after the children. The name meant nothing to him. Piet told her in tumbling sentences all they had done that day, but Stijn was silent. All the anger had gone out of him and only an awk wardness remained.
"I'll go to Amsterdam. The day after tomor row," she said. "Tomorrow I'll bake enough for you, and I'll take the children. Alda can row me to Woldijk." From there she could get a passenger towboat to Groningen, and another and another all the way to Amsterdam. The trip would take two or three days each way, depending on connections.
On the morning they were to leave, she felt Stijn's eyes as well as Katrina's following her as she packed a few things. "If you can get anything close to eighty," he said as they parted, "take five and buy yourself a different painting. Something you like."
Sitting on the uncomfortable benches on board the large passenger barge headed south from Groningen, she felt like a vagabond surrounded by all that was hers. Occasionally the children's delight at what they saw penetrated her gloom. What was it all for? To have excitement about life, about life to gether, about a farm and a new kind of crop that would feed the whole world, and then to see it dis solve into only work, work, and tiny, growing sepa rations. How does it all hold together?
Past Assen they had to wait until a lock was va cated by a larger barge, so she got off to let the children run along the dike road. A small waterway led toward the east. "Is that the Westerborker Stroom?" she asked the locksman.
"Aye, ma'am."
Her heart burned. Westerborker Stroom would take her straight through Beilen to Westerbork.
"Does it have service?"
He motioned with his head to a small flatboat waiting to leave.
Just to float home and have Mother feed her something besides potatoes—the mere thought set her in motion. She called to the children, lifted Jan tje to her hip, gathered her things and said, "Chil dren, come. We're going to see your grandparents."
They switched to the small flatboat towed by a young man, and sat on the deck leaning up against some crates. New tendrils of willow branches dipped down and floated gracefully. The tall leafy meadow rue was already bursting in fluffy yellow sunbursts, and every duckling peeped his birthsong. Along the banks, the apple trees were in blos som. A breeze blew and ivory petals rained down on the boat and the children tried to catch them. Soon she would be in Westerbork where everything was beautiful and everyone was kind.
Beyond Beilen her heart pounded as the land scape became familiar and her peaceful childhood passed before her. On farmhouse doors she recog nized the rustic scenes like she had painted on hers, the only one like it in Oling or Appingedam. Nooteboom's corn mill was painted green now, with a handsome red door. And there was the small stone church she went to as a child, where she and Stijn were married. The sight of it brought a pang of guilt, as if she'd been unfaithful in some way.
At first Mother was delirious with relief and joy, loving the children, Jantje equally with the others, not letting him out of her sight. Saskia thought she knew her mother by heart, but when she showed her the painting and told her everything, her mother's smiles turned hard.
"Seed potatoes! You know better than that."
"I know. I know. May I just stay here for a while, until he gets over it? Long enough so he'll miss me? It's so lovely here. The water violets will be out soon, and the children can run free for a change."
"And let that man worry himself sick over you? No. You leave tomorrow. For Amsterdam. The children can stay with me. Get them on your way back. This isn't a holiday. It's business. And you get down on your knees tonight and thank the Lord you have a man as hardworking as Stijn. Work is love made plain, whether man's or woman's work, and you're a fool if you don't recognize it. The child's the blessing, Saskia, not the painting."
Alone in Amsterdam two days later, she walked along the East Quay past fishwives who shouted in sults at her because she passed without buying. She drew her shoulders back. Their mockeries only amused her. While their oily hands were shaking codfish at her, in her hands she was carrying a Ver meer.
Spice merchants had set out on the canal edge sacks of powders every shade of yellow and orange and red and brown. Their colors blew onto her skirt and she shook them off. She wore her dainty leather boots with the laces, and she glided along the brickway toward the Rokin feeling a sense of grace and power. She was carrying a Vermeer. The day was sunny. There was no need to hurry.