Tulip Fever (16 page)

JAN STARES AT ME. “The Lord preserve us! You really intend doing this?”

We are sitting on the rim of a water fountain, a few streets from his house. His neighborhood is full of artisans’ workshops—carpenters, goldsmiths, painters. Beside us there is a metalworker’s premises. Hammer blows ring out. We meet in the open because it is less risky than me being seen going into his house. Maria, our lookout, stands at the end of the alley. She is my partner now.
If we sink, we sink
together
.

“Surely he will notice?” asks Jan. “He will notice that Maria’s getting fatter?”

“She’s a big girl. The difference will scarcely be discernible, if she wears her apron higher.”

“But surely—”

“My husband is shortsighted,” I reply breezily. “He never looks at her anyway—she is a servant; she is simply an item of furniture.”

“But what about you? How are
you
going to grow bigger?” Jan looks shaken. He seems to be more nervous than I am. “He will notice
you
.”

“I’ll feign the symptoms. After a few months I’ll stuff a pillow down my dress—”

“But he’s your husband, he shares your bed, surely he’ll discover you—”

“Ah, that is the beauty of my plan. You know that I cannot bear him touching me. I cannot bear . . .” I stop. “I told him that from now until my confinement we have been forbidden conjugal relations. The doctor ordered it, for my health. I’m delicate, you understand.”

“Are you?”

“And my husband would do anything not to lose the baby. I said we must have separate beds, so I can rest undisturbed, and he agreed. He’s so happy he will agree to anything.”

Jan shakes his head wonderingly. He takes my hand. “You are an extraordinary woman.”

Just desperate. I’m desperate for him. “It means Maria can stay on, in our employment. This device suits both of us—she helps me and I help her. . . .”

What then? I have not yet considered that. I am too thrilled with my plan to think beyond my phantom pregnancy, which is becoming so real that I’m almost feeling sick. After all, my husband believes it; this makes it halfway real already.

“But what happens if you, too, fall pregnant?” he asks.

“Then we have to change the plan.”

Jan starts laughing helplessly. He puts his arms around me and kisses me, in broad daylight. After all, what could be more reckless than what I have set in motion?

Hammer blows ring out, sealing our fate.

I KNOW I SHOULD be angry with Maria, for blackmailing me and forcing this bold plan into action. She, too, is terrified that something should go wrong and we will be found out. But I am also profoundly grateful to her, more grateful than she will ever know. She has released me from my marital bed. I have borne my husband’s lovemaking for three years and would no doubt have borne it until he died, but since I’ve met my lover, Cornelis has become so repulsive to me that I have felt violated—his sour breath; his cold, probing fingers. Worse than that—I have felt like a whore.

Miraculously, a solution has presented itself. It is one that will benefit Maria too, for though she has behaved ruthlessly I am fond of her. She is my only friend and I am glad to save her from poverty and ostracism.

What will happen in the future? Neither of us thinks of that. We are young, we have acted on impulse, we have stepped into a world of deceit, but so far we just feel like schoolchildren who have managed to trick our teacher and get away with it.

Are we not blind? Are we not reckless? We are two desperate young women; we are in love. And love, as we know, is a form of madness.

MARIA AND I ARE MAKING up a bed for Cornelis in the room opposite mine. It is called the Leather Room; he sometimes uses it as a study. It is chilly in here, but then all our rooms are chilly. The walls are lined with stamped leather; dark landscapes hang there, views by Hans Bols and Gillis van Coninxloo. There is a heavy cupboard crammed with porcelain jars from China.

As we plump up the pillows Cornelis comes in. He strokes his beard. “It is a small price to pay,” he says. He is so happy, it should break my heart. “Let Maria do that,” he says. “You must look after yourself.”

Suddenly Maria clutches her stomach. With a heaving grunt she rushes out. She is going to vomit. She has been vomiting all week.

I hastily follow her into what is now my bedchamber and close the door. Maria grabs the nightpot, just in time, and vomits noisily into it. I stand behind her, supporting her head in my hands and stroking her forehead.

When she is finished we hear a tap at the door. “Are you all right, my dear?” calls Cornelis.

Maria and I look at each other. Quick as a flash she shoves the pot into my hands.

Cornelis comes in. He takes one look at the vessel— there is a foul smell—and says: “My poor dearest.”

“It is only natural, in the first months,” I reply. “It is a small price to pay.”

I carry the pot to the door. He stops me. “Let the maid do that.” He glares at Maria. “Maria!”

I hand Maria the pot. Eyes lowered, she takes it from me and carries it downstairs.

AND SO BEGIN the strangest months of my life. Looking back, from beyond my death, I see a woman hurtling downstream on the current, as helpless as a twig. She is too young to think where she is going; she is too blind with passion to think about tomorrow. Someone might betray her; she knows this is only too possible. She might even betray herself. God waits in judgment. He is the one she has most profoundly betrayed. But she locks that muscle in her heart. Not now, she thinks. Not yet.

I HAVE INVENTED a doctor—a man recommended by my singing teacher, whom Cornelis has never met. My husband is anxious about my condition; he wants his own physician to attend me but I’ve persuaded him otherwise. He bends to my every wish. He humors me; he treats me like a precious piece of Wan-Li porcelain.

In these early weeks Maria craves cloves. I tell Cornelis of my craving. He brings home marzipan pastries, flavored with cloves. Maria devours them in the kitchen. He orders Maria to prepare
hippocras
—spiced wine made with cloves—and watches me fondly as I drink. Alone in the kitchen Maria drinks the dregs.

For I do, in fact, almost believe it myself. After all, I am a woman; I have been created for motherhood. Since girlhood I have been brought up with this in mind and my condition seems so natural, after three years of marriage, that I can almost convince myself it is real. As the weeks pass I am discovering in myself a capacity for self-deception. This in itself is not surprising; since I have become an adulteress I have learned how to dissemble. I have become an actress in the most dangerous theater of all—my home. And I have not yet reached the stage of all-too-solid deceit—strapping a pillow around my waist—I have not yet faced that. This phantom pregnancy, so far, is an abstraction—nausea and a craving for cloves.

Maria and I are close—closer than I have been to my sisters, close in a way nobody else could comprehend. Only Jan knows our secret. Maria suffers from sickness—not in the mornings but later in the day. I hear her retching in the kitchen and run in to hold her clammy forehead. I feel responsible for her convulsions, as if I have caused them; I feel it should be me who suffers. In fact, I do feel nauseous too.

She is carrying my child and our complicity binds us together. We are locked in this house with our secret. These silent rooms, bathed in light through the colored glass— they guard our treachery. Our only witnesses are the faces that gaze from the paintings—King David; a peasant raising a tankard; our own selves, Cornelis and me, posed in our former life. These are our mute collaborators.

When we’re alone, our positions are reversed. I look after Maria; I am
her
servant. If she is tired I put her to bed in the wall; I scour the cooking pots and sweep the floor before my husband returns. “Polish the candle sticks,” she bosses, “he always notices.”

To the outside world, however, she is my servant and I am a pregnant wife. Cornelis, the proud father-to-be, has told the news to our friends and acquaintances. Blushing, I have accepted their congratulations. Our neighbor Mrs. Molenaer has sent around an herbal infusion to ease my sickness. “It will disappear after three months,” she says. “It always does.”

I give it to Maria, who drinks it. She says it makes her feel even worse. Later Mrs. Molenaer visits and asks if I am feeling better. “Oh, yes,” I reply as Maria, her face gray, serves us pastries. But who notices a servant?

“When is the confinement?” asks Mrs. Molenaer. “When is the happy day?”

“In November.”

“Your family lives in Utrecht, am I right? They must be very happy at the news.”

“Oh, they are.”

“Will your mother attend the birth?”

“My mother is unwell. I doubt that she could undertake the journey.”

Why so many questions? They make me nervous. A woman in my condition is the focus of attention; I hope it will not last. I feel a cheat, of course, as if I have copied out someone else’s verse and been praised for writing it myself. I need all my energies to keep my wits. My family, for instance. Cornelis believes that I have sent a letter to my mother and sisters, telling them the happy news. Out of cowardice I have put this off. I will have to pretend, at some point, that I have received a reply. And soon he will be expecting at least one of my sisters to visit—after all, Utrecht is but twenty-five miles distant. Luckily he is out most of the day, at his warehouse in the harbor. I shall have to concoct a visit while he is at work.