Rembrandt's Mirror (20 page)

His face was there – a landscape of lines, stigmata of a lifetime. I remained on the threshold, seeing his body, his tenderness and his cruelty.

He looked at me over the rims of his glasses then he took them off and put them down. I closed the door. His eyes were steady. I took a few steps into the room. He rose from his chair, arms by his side. My body mirrored his, learning about him that way. The palms of his hands were slightly turned towards me. I knew the meaning:
This is me
.

Something in me came undone; nothing was more extraordinary than the ordinary. I put my hand on my mouth to try to hold myself together. I really saw him now – just him. And not just him, for I saw every man in him. His eyes were bright, their colour both green and grey like ancient rocks. His chest, his face, his arms and legs,
becoming full and fuller of what it was to be him. I'd never seen the very life in him before.

His arms opened and we embraced. We stood like this for a lifetime. I held him in his maturity, as a baby and as a dying man. I sank deeper into his chest as if into Mother Earth herself. I felt his care for me as I grew younger, and younger still, until I was a newborn and then nothing at all.

This
nothing-me
felt the touch of his lips. Felt them but not the way I'd felt them before, more like the ocean holds the fish that swim in it. I was each wavelet and the stillness at the bottom where no current stirs. His hands worked slowly to free my body from its clothes. I felt sleeves slide down my arms and skirts fall from my waist – the warmth from the stove enveloping my skin.

My hands tugged at his shirt as if I'd never carried out a manual task before. He rid himself of it and of the woollens he was wearing underneath. His chest was white and new and warm. I closed my eyes, touching his chin, his cheeks and the soft skin beneath his eyes, as a blind person sees the immortal face of a dear friend.

I opened my eyes again and he led me by the hand to a place in front of the stove. He spread out his tabard for us to lie on and opened the door to the fire. I lay down on my side, naked but not feeling naked, my head propped up on my arm. He knelt down, his upper body a dark silhouette against the flames. The red glow licking his shoulders and haloing his head.

Then, to my perfect dismay – a knock on the front door. I willed whoever it was away. He frowned, still looking at me, and said,
‘Let them knock – they have no business knocking on a Saturday night.'

‘No,' I said, ‘they don't.'

‘Such bad manners,' said Rembrandt without taking his eyes off me.

Knock, knock, knock
. He bent forward and whispered into my ear, ‘Maybe if I answer, they'll go quickly?'

Before I could reply, a male voice shouted, ‘Remmmm . . . brandt! Are . . . you . . . home? I want to see the
Miracle of our Age
!'

‘Sounds like a drunk,' said Rembrandt, getting up. He opened the window and shouted down, ‘I'm not home. Any further disturbance and the
Miracle
will summon the night watch.'

The man muttered something and Rembrandt closed the window and resumed his place on the tabard. I'd grown aware of my nudity, especially as he was still half-clothed. He smiled at me. Then he reached behind me and pulled the tabard up and around my body, ‘So you don't get cold.'

All was quiet again. His eyes roamed my body beneath the cloth, making a study of me. Then he laid his hand on my stomach as if to assure himself of my existence. I thought of innocence and that I'd be dispossessed of mine, but never by him. He'd not judged a single thing I'd done.

He moved his hand and laid it on my breast, listening with his palm. I watched his hand. So other-looking, on my never-touched skin. Petronella had said I must decide to be a virgin or a whore. I would be neither; I'd live the way he painted and the way he was
looking at me now. I met his eyes and touched his hair, feeling the strands glide between my fingers, gripping them.

‘Ow,' he said.

I laughed and tugged again a little. He swept his hands up behind my neck, causing me to abandon my business with his hair and recline fully and as I did, he went to lean on me with his chest, causing a dizzying, urgent wanting. I pulled at him to lie on me the more.

He shuffled off his breeches, under-breeches and under-drawers too. I had no idea men liked to keep so warm. Then he returned to my side and held me close. I felt something against me, fleshy, solid, searching: his rod. I had to touch this secret part of him. My fingers closed around the soft-skinned thing. He made a noise, a groan, but did not move, as if transfixed by my touch. There was a gathering stillness in him, a readying. I gripped more tightly – an intake of his breath and a twitch of recognition in my belly. How could it be so soft and solid-seeming? A riddle in my hand. I loosened my fingers, weighing its portentous heaviness and noticing the pulse, his heartbeat right there in my grasp.

I looked into his eyes, once more moving my fingers. A shiver ran through him but he kept them open. And then he put his mouth on mine, with all the greed of necessity, quickening an urging in my womb, that he be inside me now. I rolled on to my back, my legs wrapped around him, pulling him with me. He lay on me. Oh, to be new. To die.

His firmness pushed against the place I most wanted him to push
against. I could finally have him all but – my body did not open, as if an obstacle had interposed itself.

My eyelids pressed together in vexation. He whispered, ‘It takes time,' then kissed me again, softly like lapping waves against the shore. And then I felt him pressing again between my legs, small motions, which rolled through me like forgetfulness. The boundary was gone. Wave after wave of more than pleasure – joy. The kind of joy I thought had been reserved for the next life. Far away I registered a stab of pain, but it meant nothing to the ocean.

After a short while he stopped his moving, but remained inside me. We stayed like this for a while, with him on his elbows until he finally removed himself. I grew aware again of my body and my nakedness. We lay on our backs and I thought how I'd never looked at the ceiling in the studio before and then felt an ache.

‘Is there blood?' I said. How harsh my voice sounded.

‘I don't know, there might be,' he said, ‘do you want me to check?'

I shook my head. I wanted to be dressed again. I reached for my shift and put it on. He too sat up, still naked but for his stockings. The part of him that had filled me was almost nothing now. I continued getting dressed. It seemed to be infectious for he did too and now I wished that we'd stayed naked or him at least. As if each piece of clothing charted a step away from where we'd been. He picked me up and carried me all the way downstairs into his bed and said, ‘Lie here and rest. I'll get you something to drink.'

By the time he returned I must have fallen asleep for when I woke
there was beer on the table and I could see the stars through the big window in his room. But where was he?

She was sleeping now, unknowing of his absence, the ice-encrusted ground crunching under his feet. He'd quickly reached the marshes outside the city gates but his thoughts returned to the house. He'd carried her to his bed with the intention of them falling asleep together. When he returned she was already inhaling the gentle breath of sleep so he carefully slipped into bed next to her. Then, he lay there watching her face in the moonlight. Such repose. Was this his doing? Had he made her happy, despite the brevity of their joining? He'd not been able to fully unfetter himself even while inside her. He continued to watch her sleeping face, and at last felt pulled towards the heaviness of slumber. But he could not surrender himself to sleep either. So he lay listening to her breath. It was the softest purr, deep and easy. His breath followed hers. She was teaching him to sleep – what a blessing that would be. He turned on to his other side, bedding down the way he usually slept, facing the window. How bright the stars were, so far away, unaffected by the precious moments of joy they'd just experienced. How many more such moments were in store for them?

He turned once more. Her breath brushed his face, sweet and warm. He sipped it like honeyed milk but he was still wakeful – like overripe fruit, refusing to drop from the tree.

So he got up and went downstairs, not bothering with a candle; he liked the dark. When he'd felt his way into the kitchen he saw the glow of embers in the grate and found the chair. He mused that he and Rika had changed places. She was in his bed and he was by hers. He considered lying in it but that would be the most effective sleep deterrent yet.

He continued to sit by the burned-down fire. Another soul had reached into his heart. With Saskia he'd not felt the need to even think of consequences. That's probably what they meant by innocence, to be ignorant of the fact that joy and love brought pain and sorrow in their wake. He touched his lips to his fingertips and blew a kiss to the dying embers.

The grate was still so very hot. Perhaps the wintry air would cool him down and strip him of whatever humour was riding him. He went to lace up his boots.

It was good to be out. The houses had dwindled away and the marshes held sway. Still the evidence of man was everywhere. The land had been drained, the water corralled into tight canals. They dissected the land, with the occasional bridge allowing passage. He saw an old boat frozen into place alongside a rickety pier and a hut. The mere sliver of a moon made the stars inordinately bright. He liked this kind of night. Starlight was not like ordinary light – it made it possible to see without taking the darkness away. He remembered something else about darkness. It had once meant something to him. Shelter. He wanted to get further away from the
city. The road was straight, the land flat, as if stretched out by a giant's hand in all directions, right to the sea. The flats curved away under him, keeping him perpetually at their apex.

Then there were no more huts, or barges. He was separated from his fellow men. The frozen ground unyielding under foot. He relished it. An unambiguous world. Straight, clear lines.

Marshes and ditches, no sign of any creature. He sighed, his chest relaxed. Alone now, he looked at the firmament. The vastness stripped away the very air around him, his skin and even his heart. Making him empty.

He was glad to be empty. It was better that way. Better than joy. He could stay like this. Never go back.

He sat down by a tree. Ice crystals were glittering on the grasses. He slung his arms around his knees and let himself grow cold. He'd stay and let the frost rise up from the ground and embrace him, until he too became part of its hardened shell.

He leaned back against the tree. It too was in the rigor of winter but its roots were stubbornly dug into the ground, penetrating the earth, intent on staying alive. Something between his stomach and his heart contracted as if from a distant terror.

The tree felt warm against his back. He touched the bark. His fingers noticed something frayed. A hole and in it, soft, rotting wood, a kind of wound. He turned to look. The hole was not frozen but soggy. As a boy he'd picked away at rotten wood like this until no more loose bits came away. He pulled on the bark and innards until a large piece of dead wood came loose. Something was moving in
the hollow. A bed for grubs. They nestled there, deep within the tree. Even now they were trying to burrow deeper with their heads pushing down into the soft wood. He carefully pushed the piece back into place.

His fingers were bestrewn with bits of wood and dark, rich compost, dead wood transformed into soil. It smelled of the possibility of life.

The constriction in his chest returned. He leaned his head against the rotten piece of wood that covered the sleeping bugs, his ear against it, like a pillow. A spasm rose from below his heart and he felt tears filling his eyes. His body shook as his hand went to lie on the piece of wood that sheltered the life beneath. He did not realize he was crying. He could not comprehend the courage of the bugs to stay alive through such a winter. He wanted to stay out here by himself, never to return to the warm hearth.

End of Winter

In the morning I woke in his bed. Why had he not come back? It did not matter; I would see him now. I would go downstairs and he'd be in the kitchen and I could look at his face. Most people had to travel further for a blessing.

I was still in my shift – the rest of my clothes were in the studio. I decided not to fetch them as nobody was in the house yet except him and Titus.

There he was, eating porridge with his elbow propped on the
table, as if he did not have the strength to lift his arm. He must have made it for himself. He looked up at me, dark shadows under his eyes, as if he had not slept at all. I had a wish to kiss his head. I approached the table very slowly, as if he was a bird that might take flight, and seated myself next to him. It seemed difficult to touch him, but I commanded my hand to lie on his. His fingers welcomed it with a soft squeeze. Then he let go of my hand and brushed across his face as if trying to wipe something away, before rubbing his eyes with both hands.