Rembrandt's Mirror (19 page)

‘No. You're the one that's difficult.'

‘That's enough, Hendrickje.'

‘It's not!' I took a breath. ‘You loved her. How can you not feel for her?'

‘Love?' He made a dismissive grunt. ‘It takes a heart more tarnished than yours to understand these things.'

I stared at him. ‘Explain it then.'

He stared back at me and said, ‘You want the truth?'

I nodded.

He turned away and said, ‘I don't care whether she lives or dies. All I care about is that she's under lock and key and can't interfere anymore.' And then so quietly I could barely hear, ‘I never cared for her.'

At first I received it like a confession, but then my anger rose at his inhumanity. I grabbed the shiny lid of a pan. He stepped back a few paces but I had no intention of hitting him.

‘How many times have you produced “noble” pictures of yourself for your clamouring customers . . .' My voice was turning shrill. ‘They are all failures.' I held the lid up to his face and stepped towards him. ‘Why don't you take a good look at yourself?'

He could not help glancing at his distorted reflection.

‘No wonder you don't depict yourself as you really are. Who'd want such a hideous portrait.' And then I shouted, ‘Least of all me!'

With that I dropped the lid. It fell clattering on the stone floor.

He looked like he needed a chair. The feeling of power temporarily glazed over my pain.

I noticed my own grotesque reflection staring back at me from the lid and for a moment I feared that things were not as clear as they seemed. I stepped aside to let him leave. He looked like a beaten dog.

‘I'm sorry,' he mumbled as he went.

Sorry
– what a meaningless word when spoken without insight or regret.

By the next morning my anger had left and with it my courage. I felt almost as if
I'd
done something wrong. Titus followed me from room to room, trying to sit on my lap, whether I was peeling shrivelled carrots or sewing. In the early evening he went to the studio to be with his father and I could hear him laughing and screaming for Rembrandt to stop tickling him. Only a month ago he had declared he was too old for such things.

A few days later we were in the kitchen. Titus hugged his father around the legs and then ran over and hugged me the same way. Then he stood, waiting expectantly, as if relayed hugs might bring grownup people to their senses. For a moment the palms of Rembrandt's hands seemed to open towards me and I thought his arms might follow. But they did not. If they had, I would have refused him of course. I looked down into Titus's hopeful little face. If only by magic all could be forgotten.

An entire week had passed. Night had fallen and I could not think of anything else I could possibly clean without rubbing it into oblivion, so I sat down at the table. I had not felt the true extent of my sadness until now. I allowed my upper body to rest on the table just for a moment. But then my throat tightened until a sob prised it open.
The crying that followed was so violent that I felt I was a stranger to myself. Spasm after spasm shook me. The world was flawed in some fundamental way. I didn't want it. Any of it.

This was exactly how Titus had cried when he'd lost Clarence, the wooden horse. He'd taken the toy everywhere. He'd been Clarence's voice and animation. Then suddenly there was no Clarence. We'd searched the whole house but found no trace of him. Titus had dissolved in a great fit of wailing and tears that lasted for well over an hour. I was mystified how the loss of a wooden horse could provoke so much grief. But now I understood perfectly.

I wanted the old Rembrandt back but he was gone. You might say that Titus was not upset by the loss of a sculpted piece of wood, but by the loss of the living, breathing Clarence that dwelled in his fancy. And yet I thought I'd lost something more than an imaginary Rembrandt.

The next day he came down in the late morning and said, ‘Rika, I have to buy materials and I need your help carrying them back to the house. When can you be ready to leave?'

He usually had one of his assistants help him, but I was in no mood to argue. ‘I can go any time now.'

He grabbed some baskets and off we went, bypassing the food markets and heading straight for the harbour and the warehouses of the East India Company. The closer we got to the IJ, the narrower, darker and smellier the alleyways became. Whenever we came across a begging leper he would toss him a coin and make sure to put himself
between the leper and me. I inwardly scoffed at this show of protectiveness.

Finally we emerged from one of Amsterdam's gloomy passages into the open space at the IJ. There were two dozen large ships, most of them anchored, and a handful making their way in or out of the harbour with billowing sails. One massive ship nearby was disgorging goods on to a host of small man-powered barges. They'd ferry its cargo to canal-based warehouses all over the city.

We stopped to watch. The ship was majestic with its three large masts. Her wooden hull was smooth and elegantly curved, lying quite low in the water. I wondered what was in the crates; spices I'd never tasted, silk from China made by little worms, tea, sugar and all manner of curiosities. A large part of these marvels was only channelled through our city before being sold on to those abroad who could pay for such extraordinary pleasures.

He said with a smile, ‘If you could buy anything you wanted, what would it be?'

‘Chocolate,' I said without hesitation.

He laughed. ‘Yes, I've heard of it, both good and bad.'

We'd reached the warehouses. He bought reams of the cheapest cartridge paper. With pigments he was more choosy, taking a long time examining various chunks of lapis lazuli until settling on a particularly vibrant blue. Then he purchased some small quantities of Chinese paper. By that stage we had so many parcels that he asked me to wait in one of the offices while he went off to buy some brushes.

*

When we got home I carried everything up into the studio. He remained in the kitchen, which was odd as he normally liked to put materials away himself. I piled the items at the entrance to the small storeroom. When I returned to the kitchen he held up a steaming cup and said, ‘Chocolate.'

Before him was the pestle and mortar he had used to grind the cocoa and the room was filled with the unfamiliar aroma. He pulled out a chair and placed the cup on the table. I hesitated but the cup steamed so invitingly. I sat down and took a sip. What an awful bitter taste! I must have grimaced as he quickly took the cup and tried it himself and gave a shiver. Then he got the jar of sugar that was reserved for special guests and lopped several spoonfuls into the mug.

‘Try now,' he said.

I could not believe the difference. The bitterness had been transformed into something utterly delicious. I pushed the cup towards him so he could have a taste but he pushed it back.

‘No, you have it. I'll enjoy seeing you drink it.'

It was almost midnight. I lay awake, listening for his footsteps from the studio to his bedroom. For some reason I still could not sleep until he was resting too. But lately he had taken to working late into the night. At last I heard the creak of his body sinking into the bed above. But still I could not sleep.

*

Day followed day, much as before. I occupied whichever rooms he did not and gulped food down at mealtimes. One morning, after a week or so of avoiding him, I heard him go out. So I rushed up to the studio with a bucket and cloth, out of guilt that I had not cleaned there for so long. Not that he had complained. I ran my finger over the surface of the table, raking up a clump of ash. It had settled on everything like a veil. I smoothed it between my index finger and thumb. It was impossibly soft, softer than anything I'd ever felt. Without thinking I put my ash-covered finger on my tongue, perhaps wanting to know what annihilation tastes like. It was harsh and metallic. I spat it out repeatedly but the acrid sensation remained. I rinsed my mouth with clean water from the bucket, but it would not wash away.

The table top needed wiping. I moistened my cloth. The wood was covered in a film of grey, on top of which lay a new drawing. I sat down to have a closer look. It depicted an older man embracing a younger man. The younger man seemed to have no strength left to hold himself up so he had his arms around the neck and shoulders of the older man, whom I took to be his father.

The father was leaning on a cane, so he could embrace his son with only one arm and yet he held him unreservedly. His head was tilted as if listening to his son's very breath, his shoulders curved to meet him, his chest soft to receive the young man's weary body. It had to be
The Return of the Prodigal Son
.

I knew this Bible story well. The youngest son had asked for his inheritance, left home, gambled and whored. Having lost everything
he'd returned home to ask for charity. He did not even have to seek forgiveness, for as soon as his father spotted him coming over the hill, he ran towards him and ordered the best calf to be slaughtered in celebration of his homecoming. The father must already have forgiven him, I thought, but when was the moment of forgiveness? When he was in his arms? When he saw him coming over the hill? Or even long before that? Did he think to himself,
I won't hold a grudge anymore
or was the meaning of true forgiveness that there was simply nothing to forgive? I looked at the embrace again. There was no space between them. None.

My heart fluttered open just for a moment, and then closed again when I heard the sound of Rembrandt's feet strumming the stairs. And there he was, walking in. I felt myself a dead weight. He sat down on a footstool on the other side of the desk. Neither of us said a word. I had lost the sentences I had composed night after night with which to hold up his wickedness to him. We remained sitting, me chair-locked, him elbows on knees, head in the heels of his hands. Seconds turning to minutes. I stopped searching for words. I looked at him, the shape of his sunken shoulders. He scratched his beard briefly. The damp cloth still in my hand, the water slowly draining out of it, making a puddle on the floor.

How small he looked, hunched like that. My hand opened, dropping the cloth. His eyes glanced up at me. I looked at the drawing, avoiding his eyes. It was nothing more really than a piece of paper. I touched it, letting my fingertips rest on it, as if it could take me back to him across the sea of ashes.

I withdrew my hand, noticing too late that his was, just then, reaching out to touch mine. He placed his fingertips where mine had been, the paper still warm from my touch.

After this, meals became embroidered with words once more, mostly for Titus's sake. But I continued to be haunted by the drawing of the prodigal son. The father's embrace was a riddle I could not solve. It hovered at the bottom of the dirty dishwater, it appeared at night as a reflection in the window. I walked through the house with my right arm gathering empty space in imitation of the father's gesture.

How inevitable suffering seemed, like a great sea tide, which could even reverse the direction of the IJ. No compassion was vast enough to make the smallest difference. Certainly not mine. I could not forgive, least of all the unrepentant.

And anyone who dared love in this flawed world would surely suffer.

Then one afternoon, a few days later, I passed by the studio. The door was ajar. He was at the easel in deep concentration. His brush hopped from palette to canvas, like a songbird after a worm, applying paint to a golden sleeve. Then he did something I'd never seen him do before – he turned the brush on its end and stabbed the wooden handle deftly into a bowl of discarded, dried-up paint, scooping some up and mixing the paint crumbs with some yellow and ochre. Then he took the palette knife and applied the thick mixture to the canvas, sculpting the sleeve more than painting it. Even from the doorway I
could see it rise into being. A miracle; not that he had rendered gold brocade from oil paint, but that he'd invented something new with the same casualness with which I drank from a glass of water.

It was the essence of how he worked. The hundreds of thousands of strokes he'd made before had no bearing on this stroke, other than his manual skill. He was guided only by what was to be achieved in painting the sleeve – for this crest of paint to catch the light. He was perfectly free in this. If only I could be too.

I continued to watch him paint. It was like a tonic.

The sleeve was all there now. He'd turned waste into gold.

That night I woke from dreams of burning effigies and urns bursting with ashes. I tried to get back to sleep but rolled around until my bedding slipped off the bed. How to forgive? I could and would not forget nor could I un-love him. Round and round I went like a mouse trapped in a glass bowl. And there was something else; my not forgiving kept me safe from him – an iron breastplate, weighing me down day and night.

In my despair I clung to the hope that one day he'd change into a man I could safely love. I kept on going round and round. Until I saw; my hope was my prison now. Better to let hope die, than to die hoping.

I lay defeated. The black waters of the IJ slowly moving through me. Ripples dancing prettily on the surface but below – in those crypts of our soul we reach only in dreams – I felt its deepest current, a great sorrow, making and unmaking me. The sorrow of all men.

And then I was the father. I was the son. And I was God. A tiny bird soared high up into the sky, singing as it went. I watched the little creature in the boundless blue. Yes, I would love. Love did not require knowing. It thrived brilliantly beyond the edge of the known.

I got out of bed, feeling perfectly awake. He was upstairs. I must see his face.

I opened the kitchen door, placed my hand on the banister and slowly pulled myself up, step by step, on the winding staircase. The latch of the door into the studio lifted easily. He was behind his desk, wearing his golden reading glasses.