Rembrandt's Mirror (18 page)

The honourable gentlemen had their work cut out in stifling
a laugh. But the spectators on the public benches showed no such restraint and chuckled to their hearts' content. After a brief deliberation, one of the commissioners got up.

‘We have studied the paperwork and much of the case depends on whose word we can trust. Does either party have anything else to add about the conduct of the other?'

Geertje immediately raised her hand and took the floor. Rembrandt was stone-faced.

‘I was first employed by Rembrandt's late wife, born Saskia van Uylenburgh. I nursed her to her final hour and then cared for their son Titus for almost six years. The master never found fault with my work or with us living as common-law man and wife until,' she paused for effect, ‘there was another change in the circumstances.'

She looked at me and kept on looking until every head in the room had turned in my direction, including Rembrandt's.

‘Not long after enlisting the services of a new maid, Rembrandt and two of his assistants threw me out of the house, leaving me entirely without means and poor Titus without a mother.' She walked back to her seat like a broken woman.

I supposed in a way it was true. I wondered if he had actually physically thrown her out. The room was awash with whispers and chatter. Finally the head commissioner told the crowd that if they wanted entertainment they should go to the theatre and threatened to have the room cleared.

It was Rembrandt's turn to respond.

‘As I have demonstrated to the court, I have made numerous
attempts to settle the matter to Mevrouw Dircx's satisfaction, but there is no pleasing her.'

The commissioners withdrew for a brief deliberation while we all remained where we were. Geertje had branded me publicly as Rembrandt's whore, which was ironic considering that she had been and I had not. She'd not said so, but, as Rembrandt taught his students, what you don't paint has more power to move than what you depict in great detail.

When the commissioners returned they announced that Rembrandt must pay Geertje 200 guilders and act in accordance with the draft of the most recent contract.

Rembrandt grew red in the face and Geertje spat into her hands in delight. True to her word, she had more than tripled Rembrandt's initial offer of sixty guilders. I felt Rembrandt's humiliation as if it was my own but I also marvelled at a legal system that made it possible for a woman like Geertje to get justice. Still, not everyone did. Petronella had not been so lucky.

As soon as we'd left the court building, he hailed a carriage. The cobbles were black, wet and shiny. The sky was covered in dense clouds, bathing the world in a muted twilight that barely reached inside the carriage. He was opposite me, his hat in his lap, his mood as heavy as the sky. I said into the gloom, ‘Are we going home?'

‘Yes,' came the toneless reply.

Only more shadows would be waiting for us at the house.

‘Can we go somewhere else?'

He looked at me, his eyes two dark hollows. ‘For what purpose?'

‘To forget about what happened. It's finished now.'

The sockets turned away from me and looked blindly out of the window.

‘We might have a walk in the forest. You know the one,' I said. I could not believe I'd been bold enough to ask.

He replied, with strained forbearance, ‘Hendrikje, it's not a day for outings, not the weather for it.'

‘We don't need sun to get air.'

He continued to stare at his nothing world outside. He would not be moved.

The carriage continued its journey, bumping me along with it, the rhythmic clanking of the wheels as inevitable as the drab days that lay ahead. I had to do something to get his attention. I leaned across, and touched the thickest part of his sleeve. I felt that his eyes, though hidden, were on me now.

I told him, ‘You know, the forest will look quite different in this weather. It will be dark but cast in this eerie light.'

He laughed. ‘Dark but light?' I took my hand away. ‘I am not three years old; next you'll be telling me if I come with you to the forest, I'll get a sweet.'

He told the driver to take us to the forest.

To the left of the track, fields stretched all the way to the horizon; on the right was the bristly woodland that I was so keen to enter again, today of all days.

‘Come,' I said, ‘let's hide the satchel in a bush. We'll pick it up later.'

He threw it behind a shrub. I picked a path for us through the low-growing willow and hazel shrubs. Once we'd passed through this curtain, we stopped. This was an entirely different scene.

Trees stood like sentinels, dark, slick and unapproachable. If I touched them my hand would not find hold. There was a lifeless quality about the trunks, affirmed by the absence of birdsong. The ground was in its perpetual state of rot; the odour of decomposition climbed into my nostrils. What had possessed me to bring us here, as if a dark mood required an even darker setting?

He started walking, stomping his feet as he went, kicking at leaves and earth. I followed behind. As we penetrated deeper, less and less light reached us. I did not know where we were. There was no sight or sound of the stream. He picked up a rotten branch, thick as an arm, and smashed it against a tree; with a loud crack it splintered into fragments.

‘How dare she use me like this,' he muttered, more to himself than to me. ‘Could they not see that she was out to bleed me dry?'

He pushed against an oak as if he wanted to shift it. Then he walked on, still treading the ground heavily. ‘You can't get justice in Holland anymore.'

‘I suppose she'd see it differently,' I said. He turned and glared at me but I had to say it. ‘Does she not deserve a decent living after everything that she's done, after what both of you did?'

‘You're still carping about that?'

First her, now I was the carp. His steps quickened away from me. I ran after him, barely able to keep up in my dress. Grabbing his sleeve I said, ‘Wait!'

He tore it away from me but stopped. As he stood in front of me I realized how tall he was. I avoided looking at his face and instead my eyes settled on his black hat and then on the black doublet. A fine satin thread ran through its fabric, glistening like a lure. I looked at his face. His stormy features were cast in the reflected light from his collar. That's when it struck me. He was handsome. I'd never thought him so before. His arms hung loose, the sleeves unmoving for the air did not stir and neither did we. His breath came in short shallow bursts and his hand was at the top of his shirt, loosening a button and another on his doublet. He said, ‘We should not have come here, I need to get back to work.'

‘If you wish, Master,' I said.

‘Don't now call me Master after having been quite the mistress about how I should handle my business.'

‘I was not,' I protested.

‘By God's teeth, you told me what I should do.' Then, aping me, ‘
Give her what she wants and she'll go away
. I thought that you understood her, having worked with her and being a woman and all that. Turns out you did have a special understanding but it was all about what was good for her, not me.' And then in a whining voice, ‘
Sixty guilders is hardly a sum to survive on
.'

He'd never mocked me before. Something in me felt loose, like it
had slipped out of place. He walked off again, this time in the direction we'd come from. I staggered after him, feeling as I did as a child when Mother was angry with me. I reached for the bottom edge of his doublet and held on with both hands.

He stopped and turned to face me. I let go. His eyes focused on mine. There was nothing soft about them now. My father told me never to corner a bull in the edge of the pasture. He continued to glower at me. I swallowed.

‘By the heavens,' he swore, then clenched his jaws tightly. His eyes darted about between me and the trees but I caught and held them – grey and archaic. His arms shot forward, grabbing me and pushing me backwards. He'd loosed off his bridle. I stumbled but felt no fear. He stopped, his fingers still pressing into my arms.

Then he pulled me towards him, his face only inches from mine. He forced out the words, ‘What do you want?'

In answer, I closed my eyes. Instantly his lips were on mine – salvation. My hand between our bodies, feeling his shirt and warm flesh beneath. Then I withdrew my hand, his chest now fully against mine. My body drawing him further in.

For a moment, the forest seemed to pause and he paused too, resting his cheek against mine and then, with his warm breath against my ear, he whispered, ‘Rika.'

His pausing did not still me. Leaves were falling all around. I kept my face by the nook of his neck, trying to calm my breath. I wanted more of him, but he continued to hold me in his quiet.

Breath after breath, I felt a surge of life within. My fingers
pressed into his back. Oh to fall, and be borne away by the wind. I'm a natural whore, I thought, taking to lust like this.

He took my head between his hands and lifted it so I would look at him. And there was something in his gaze which I trusted beyond belief, beyond experience and even beyond my shame.

‘More,' I said. ‘More,' and closed my eyes again. His lips became like butterflies' wings, brushing my mouth, my cheeks and forehead. My body gave itself away and then I felt the touch of his leg edging between mine. I tried to pull him closer but he responded by touching the skin inside my collar like a reverent pilgrim – his breath quickening as he did. And then he leaned away to look at me again. And upon that touch of our eyes, I slipped my moorings. His mouth found mine. His leg now pressing full between my skirts and thighs. The earth had dropped away. I fell so fast no thought could follow.

When our mouths finally parted, my head dropped down against his chest and his chin touched my hair. I breathed out – still from the deep. And slowly, slowly the world returned, lighter on this, the dullest day, than I had ever known it.

The Return of the Prodigal Son

I was still fearless, the day after and even the next. I was not used to bliss. I neglected my duties and coaxed Titus into going to his friends after school. All so I could wander the fields, marvelling that there was not a blade of grass, a cow, a tree, a man or a drop of water that was separate from anything else.

When back inside the house, I was like an actor who had lost interest in the part she plays. I was in one of the storage vaults using a shovel to transfer uncooperative lumps of coal into a bucket. It was not the coal, of course, that was at fault but my indifference to the task. I wanted to think incessantly about what had happened, to make it last as long as I could. But after a day or two the memory of his touch had lost its potency and the dusty coals became real once again.

We were back to kindness and respect, back to ordinary life. But not quite, because he flinched every time there was a knock at the door. He was so distracted that I had to repeat things when I spoke to him.

Then one afternoon Jan Six came for a sitting and I remembered
the lavish dinner we were meant to be having. Maybe he'd been too busy to pursue it.

Six strode straight into the studio and boomed, ‘How are things with you, old hog?'

‘Quite satisfactory,' came the answer, as Rembrandt pulled Six into a rough embrace, thumping his back.

‘Not so fast, sailor,' said Six in a pleading voice, and then the two broke into raucous laughter as I reluctantly closed the door behind me. I envied their boyish high jinks. Between him and me things were always weighted whereas he could talk to Six, perhaps even about what was on his mind. I pressed my ear carefully against the wood of the door. If one of them emerged I would pretend I had come to ask if they wanted beer. I heard Rembrandt's voice clearly.

‘Why don't you drape your fetching frame over there against the window and I can get on with the drawing while you tell me what you've been up to and who you've been up to.'

Six chuckled, ‘Now van Rijn, I should think you're the one with saucy tales to tell. Rumour has it that you're keeping a pretty chick right here in your back yard.'

One look from Geertje at court was all it had taken to mark me out to the gossip-mongers.

‘Don't believe the rumours,' said Rembrandt. ‘Geertje's caused enough trouble.'

‘Yes,' said Six, ‘funny that women just don't understand that it sometimes is necessary to move on.'

‘Be quiet, Jan.'

‘No,
Mijn Rembtje
, I'm not poking fun at you, I'm speaking from experience.'

‘I'm sure you are. Let's get you into a suitable position . . .' And after a pause, ‘Yes, that's it, keep it like that. I'll make a start. How about you, have you had much leisure to roam?'

‘I have been confined to the stables most of the time. But I have been making approaches to a lady of premier connections. And have been well received, but there are plenty of others who'd like to stick their oar in. So I'm afraid I'm having to be well behaved so as not give those blabberers anything to blab about.'

‘What does this lady have to offer that you are willing to wear a gob-string of your own making?'

‘Well, she makes a pretty picture but more importantly she will marry up the chairs of power with my handsome arse.'

‘No doubt your buttocks will derive great joy from sitting on them.'

‘Ah, you don't approve? No beautiful princess could tempt you into a life of luxury?'

‘I like to do as I please. That's my luxury.'

‘Yes, I know, my friend, but even your freedom has limits. It is one thing doing what you do in private but it pays not to be too public about one's taste for the lower orders. They don't tell it to your face, but it has not done your reputation much good to have Geertje drag you into court.'

‘Are you telling me my clients will flock to commission some piddling paint-pissers because they don't approve of who warms my bed?'

‘No, not exactly, but now no one will risk sending their daughter to you for a sitting. You've painted the last young lady for money.'

‘A bad smell does not last for ever.'

‘That's true, but you keep on adding to the dung heap.'

‘Well, she had me.'

‘She certainly did.'

‘Yes, but . . .' I could hear the smirk in Rembrandt's voice.

‘But . . . ?' asked Six.

Then there was another pause. ‘Come on,' said Six, ‘out with it.'

I too was dying to learn the cause of Rembrandt's cheer.

‘As you probably know,' said Rembrandt, ‘I was ordered to pay her two hundred a year . . .' he made a rude retching noise ‘. . . so along comes her brother to collect my hard-earned money. Amiable host as I am, I bid him sit down, cut off a chunk of Maasdam, open a bottle of wine and we get talking.'

‘As you would, with the brother of your enemy,' added Six.

‘Investments, cheese-making in Germany not rivalling ours because they cannot keep their cow sheds clean and then suddenly he starts twittering about Geertje and how she's like a bad case of gout and how even her neighbours in Edam think so. How he always has to sort out her problems and that he is, well, sick to death of it. The poor fellow had to take her in after her husband's death. So naturally we have plenty to compare and agree upon as regards the rigors of living with her.'

‘Naturally?' Six sounded incredulous. ‘You're not seriously
telling me that her own brother agreed with you? And this is the brother she trusts to conduct her business?'

‘You got it lightning fast.'

‘Maybe he was merely relieving his ire?' said Six.

‘No, my friend, he had a purpose in mind.'

‘All right then. What more?'

‘She gave him power of attorney.'

‘Of course,' said Six, ‘so he can collect the funds but . . . You did not? Is it possible?'

‘Yes.'

‘No.'

‘Yes.'

‘Stop it,' said Six, ‘what are you saying?'

‘Well, I started throwing looks at the bag of guilders that's sitting on the table and he took this as his cue to say, that there are places for keeping difficult women – you know, places that take proper care of them.'

‘Unbelievable. You mean a Spin House?'

‘Precisely.'

I was sickened. The treachery of the brother was as appalling as Rembrandt's. He continued in the same gloating tone in which he'd told the entire tale.

‘Funny thing was, I was slow to catch on. It was him leading me by the nose. But who minds being led where they want to go?'

‘Yes, quite.'

‘So then it dawns on me that if she's in the Spin House I don't
have to pay her maintenance; that's how the law sees it. So I say to him that I'd much rather the money, or what's left over after paying the Spin House, went to someone responsible like a caring family member.'

‘No doubt he wholeheartedly agreed with you.'

‘After that we worked together like two boys planning to relieve a neighbour's tree of its cherries. He'd get her acquaintances to sign depositions that she is unhinged and then the court would have her sent off for safe-keeping.'

I felt as outraged as if it were me he'd cheated out of tenure and possessions.

‘So what's the latest?' said Six.

‘That's it. It's all been done. She's in Gouda now, learning how to spin a good yarn, which should play to her strengths. And as she's signed her rights away to her brother, she's trapped as trapped can be.'

‘If anyone other than you'd told me this story I wouldn't have believed it,' said Six.

‘Best thing is I no longer have to worry about tripping over her every time I step outside my house. It's perfect.'

‘Sounds like it.'

I'd been worried for him all these weeks and all he'd been doing was plotting his revenge. How convenient that he could bury his public embarrassment along with her. A tidy business, except she'd have to pay the price. This was the same man who had looked on the limp body of Elsje with so much compassion. Now he had become
judge and executioner, locking Geertje away in a pitiless institution full of thieves, criminals, lunatics and whores, condemned to spinning all day and being gawked at by passing visitors. She would have little food but a limitless supply of infectious diseases. I doubted she would last five years. What an open-mouthed fool I'd been to have admired him for his compassion. I wanted to spit the word out; by association with him it had become dirty. Geertje had always seen him for what he was and tried to warn me.

Days passed. I hardly said a word. He was a stranger to me now. I wondered when he'd mark the change in me. He did not seem to care or notice. At mealtimes Titus's little face glanced from him to me as we all ate silently.

After about a week, I felt worn down to the knuckles and went to bed early. Despite my tiredness I could not sleep. I thought again of Samuel's drawing. It was comforting to think that Samuel had cared enough for me to make it. If only he was here now. I took the drawing from behind my woollens and carefully unrolled it. It was far more detailed than Rembrandt's work. Even the heads of the tiny screws that held parts of the balance scale together were rendered complete with slots and light reflections. On the left, as I'd remembered, rested the globe of the entire world. The continents, though, were drawn less confidently than the screws. The pan on the right was, of course, empty. But it was lower than the left! Whatever
nothing
it contained weighed heavier than the entire physical world. I smiled, thinking how Samuel liked to be clever. I wondered what invisible thing it
held; one's eternal soul or perhaps the heavenly Jerusalem? While I studied the drawing I noticed the odd popping and hissing sounds from the fire, the breath of the wind squeezing through the gaps in the windows and the clomp-clomp of distant footsteps on the street. Samuel had said that the ‘empty' pan contained what was most important. No doubt he'd learned these ideas from Rembrandt.

If a man like Rembrandt – who could see the deeper truth of things – behaved so unfeelingly, then what hope did the world have? As soon as I let go of the drawing, it curled back into a roll.

There was a knock on the door to my room. My chest contracted. I quickly rolled up the drawing and pushed it into the gap between my bed and the wall. Rembrandt might decide it was his property if he found out Samuel had drawn it while still employed by him. And I had no intention of parting with it.

‘Yes?' I said, and the door opened. I sat with the covers pulled up under my arms, for I was only wearing a shift. He stood at the door for a long time, still in his paint-spattered tabard.

At last he said, ‘You've not been talking much all week.'

I did not answer. He came closer and placed his candle on the table beside my bed so he could see my face.

‘I don't want the candle there,' I said.

He looked taken aback but picked the candle up and put it on the kitchen table instead. Then he came to the bed again and kneeled on the floor, putting his hand softly on the cover where my shin was. I'd been hoping for such a gesture for I don't know how long. I slid my leg away from his touch. His hand collapsed into the void. I pulled
my legs against my body. He walked to the sink and clasped its edge with both his hands. I swaddled the blanket around me and stood up. His body was black against the dimly illuminated window.

He turned around. ‘Why are you looking at me as if I've infested your flour?'

‘Because of what you've done.'

‘What have I done?'

‘I was so wrong about you. You're nothing but a vindictive scoundrel.'

He ignored the insult and asked quite calmly, ‘How did you find out?'

This incensed me further. He was more concerned with the means by which I'd come to know than the wrong he'd committed.

‘By accident,' I said.

He moved towards me, hands outstretched in a placating gesture. I moved away, keeping the table between us. He moved, I moved. He stopped, I stopped, like children playing a game, but we were not children.

‘I had to. You know what she is like, breaking every single agreement. She'll never change.'

‘She could not have broken what the courts decided. That was the end of it.'

‘It makes no difference to her whether she's signed a hundred agreements with a notary or a judge. Not if she gets something into her head. Hendrickje, she attacked you. I had to do it for our protection.'

Why did he have to bring me into it? And what
our
was he talking about? As far as I could see, there never had been an
our
, except when it suited him.

‘How very thoughtful of you,' I said. I wished he'd call his hatred by its proper name instead of trying to pass off his revenge as a good deed. ‘I've been such an idiot. She warned me about you.' Tears amassed behind my eyes. I refused them.

He was tugging nervously at his tabard. ‘No, it's not as you think. You probably listened to me speaking to Six, which you shouldn't have done.'

‘Seems we're conveniently back to master and maid,' I said.

He tried to wipe this aside with a wave of his hand. ‘I was just bragging to Jan. Besides, it was the right thing to do. She causes problems everywhere. All her old neighbours say it too.'

‘Problems?' I said. ‘A few pawned jewels, that you gave to her yourself; perhaps she should be garrotted for such a crime. Wouldn't that wrap things up nicely?'

He replied, ‘You keep forgetting she was trying to hurt us.'

‘She was out of the house. It was over.'

‘It was not. It never is with her.'

‘So, what if I become a little difficult, will you lock me up too?'

‘She was more than a little difficult.'