Tulip Fever (10 page)

Cornelis fetches his cloak and goes to the door. Suddenly I run after him and fling my arms around his neck. Surprised, he turns; our noses bump. This awkwardness throws us off balance.

“I’m so sorry,” I mutter into his beard.

“Sorry? To show me such affection?” He holds me tightly.

Just for a moment I wish none of this had happened. If only we could turn back the clock and be as we were—contented, safe within these rooms. I cannot recognize this new woman whose heart beats within me—an impostor, who should be thrown out of this house in disgrace.

“I am unworthy of you,” I whisper.

“How can you say that?” He smooths my hair. “You are my joy, my life.”

We embrace, again, and then he is gone.

18

Willem

Every man is the architect of his own fortune.

—JACOB CATS, Moral Emblems, 1632

Dusk is falling. Willem makes his way toward the Herengracht. The wind has died down. It has been a wild day with a gale blowing from the Baltic. No fishing boats could put to sea. Another whale has been washed up a few miles along the coast. Unlike Maria, he knows that this is a good omen. He has made his living from fish, and look! Today of all days the ocean has belched up the most magnificent catch. God is on his side.

Willem walks briskly, a spring to his step. Countless times, bowed by his basket, he has plodded these streets. This evening the only weight he feels is the purse in his jerkin. He cannot wait to see Maria’s face. She didn’t believe him when they sat in the garden.
Let’s just call it a businessventure
.

He is still numb with shock. Normally he is not a gambling man but these are not normal times. Before today, before everything changed, he had considered them
kappisten
—hooded ones, madmen. But he has joined the tulip speculators now and who is he to consider it lunacy?

Money can multiply, just like that. How truly miraculous! . . . A few meetings, his new friends huddled in a cloud of tobacco smoke; numbers, senseless to him, chalked on a board. Packages passed from hand to hand.... How astoundingly easy it has been, for he has gambled at random and struck lucky each time. Until recently money has been doggedly earned—a florin here, some stivers there, a handful of coins. He has worked himself to exhaustion, rising at dawn to tramp down to the fish market, hail and sleet, all weathers. He never complained because he is not that sort, but truly he was a
kappisten
then. Icy fish, icy fingers pulling out slobbery strings of guts. Bent with his basket, he has tramped the streets in blistering wind, knocking on doors and trying to smile though his face is frozen. Only the thought of Maria has kept him warm.

Maria! Forget whales; she is his prize catch. She says she loves him and he still cannot believe it. He has had little experience of women. They don’t take him seriously. It is something about his face; it makes them giggle. They have been affectionate enough, but when he has tried to make love to them they have burst into laughter. They call him “clown-face,” and when he looks doleful they laugh louder, saying he looks even funnier. It hurts his feelings.

Now he has Maria. But has he? Can she really love him? She is so pretty—plump and ripe like a fruit. And she is such a flirt.
The vegetable man was showing me his carrots
. Men look at her in the street; she challenges them with her bold stare. Can he trust her?
Of course I love you. I feel all
shivery when I see you
. She refuses to marry him until he has some money. That is understandable; she is a practical woman. Well, wait until he opens his purse; see her face then.

Maria is not expecting him; he will surprise her. Tonight her master and mistress have gone out to play cards; she will be alone. Even so, Willem approaches the side door, down the alleyway, the one he uses when he steals in after dark.

Willem stops dead. A figure emerges from the door. She closes it behind her and hurries off, away down the alley. It is Maria. She slips like a shadow between the buildings.

Willem is going to call out but something stops him. Maria looks so purposeful, so intent. He follows her down the alley, keeping his distance. There is something odd about her. She emerges into the Keisergracht and glances to the right and the left. He can glimpse her more clearly now. Under her shawl she wears her white cap, the one with long flaps that conceal her face.

She turns right and hurries along, keeping close to the houses. How furtive she looks! She moves fast; he has to break into a trot to keep her in sight. This, too, is unlike Maria. She usually ambles, swaying her hips, taking her time.

For a moment he loses her. She has darted left, down the Berenstraat. A dog barks, flinging itself against a closed door. Where is she going, and why so fast? It is dark now. She avoids the main thoroughfares; she darts down side alleys, flitting like a ghost. Behind shutters, men roar with laughter. Light briefly illuminates her, as she passes a window. Then she is gone, swallowed up by the night.

She is running now. How light she is; she is almost flying! Willem pants behind her, keeping his distance. But she never turns; she seems oblivious. Pots clatter in kitchens; roasting meat mingles with the smell of drains.

Behind doors people are eating their dinners but Willem feels oddly sealed off. It is as if he and this flitting figure have become detached from the normal life of the city. It is just him and her, drawn by some powerful tide. His lungs burn; his purse bumps against his thigh.

They are in the Bloemgracht now. Maria taps at a door. Willem hides behind one of the trees that line the street. He hears a tiny, wet sneeze, strangely human. It is a puppy, playing in the dust. It darts at his leg; he nudges it away with his foot.

The door opens. Candlelight flickers on Maria, briefly, and she steps in.

Willem’s heart is hammering. He crosses the street and approaches the window. The lower half is closed by shutters. The upper glass, however, is illuminated from within. Willem thinks: perhaps it is a doctor’s house. Somebody is ill and Maria has run here for help. He thinks: maybe she is friends with a servant here, to whom she has lent some household item. She needs to retrieve it before her master and mistress return.

Why then is his heart beating so fast? There is a bench beside the front door. Willem climbs onto it.

He looks down, into the room. He sees bare floorboards, an easel and a chair. For a moment he thinks that the room is empty but he hears faint voices. Then they move into view.

It is Maria and a man. He cannot see Maria’s face; she is below him, her back to the window. The man is laughing. He rests his forehead against hers, shaking with laughter. His black curly hair presses against her cap. Then she takes his head in her hands. It is a gesture of the utmost tenderness. She raises his face to hers, her hands threaded through his hair. She holds his face in her hands as if it is the most precious object she has ever held. And then she kisses him.

Willem’s legs buckle beneath him. He slides down to a sitting position. Then he gets up and stumbles away, blindly.

19

Sophia

Fresh mussels can be compared to
The blessed women-folk
Who speak modestly and virtuously
And always look after their household;
All wives must regularly bear
The burden of their mussel-house.

—ADRIAEN VAN DE VENNE, Tableau of Foolish Senses, 1623

Jan has already turned the sandglass upside down again. Time is running out, for when this hour has trickled through I must go. How strange, that a heap of sand has contained so much joy! Jan’s past is in there too, measured in grains, but these two hours belong to us.

“If you were a truly great painter—”

“If?” he snorts.
“If?”

“Could you paint an hourglass and fill the painting with such joy that everyone who sees it can understand what has happened?”

He gazes at me tenderly. “Has it ever happened to anyone else like this?”

We are lying on his bed. Jan drinks from his glass. Then he turns my face to his, opens my lips and spills the sweet wine into my mouth. “It’s you I want to paint—now—just as you are.”

“No, don’t leave me.”

He strokes my cheek with his thumb. “How could I possibly?”

Maria’s clothes, my spent disguise, lie on the floor. They look somehow emptier than normal clothes, as if exhausted by the role they have had to play. They are my chrysalis; I split them and emerged, a creature transformed. I am a butterfly whose life span is just one hour.

Jan slices a piece of ham. I watch the muscles of his back shift under his skin. “You like the fat?”

I nod greedily. He slides the slice of ham into my mouth. It is the most corrupt of sacraments. Ah, but it is delicious!

“I’m committing a mortal sin,” I say, my mouth full. “Has God put His hands over His face and turned the other way?”

Jan shakes his head. “God’s watching us. If He truly loves us, if He’s a generous God, won’t He want us to be happy?”

I swallow the ham. “Your faith is like putty. How easily you mold it to your own desires.”

He spills more wine into my mouth. “Drink His blood then; see if it makes you feel better.”

“That’s wicked!” I splutter.

Suddenly the mood is broken. “You know what’s wicked? You know what’s a sin?” Jan’s voice rises. “That you’re locked up in that great tomb with somebody you don’t love—”

“No—”

“Who’s caged you up, who’s sucking the life out of you to warm his old bones—”

“That’s not true!”

“Who’s bought you like one of his precious paintings and you’ve let yourself be bought!”

“I’ve not! You don’t know anything. He’s a kind man. You mustn’t talk about him like this. He supports my mother and my sisters, he’s saved my family, without him they’d be destitute—”