Tulip Fever (18 page)

30

Cornelis

Thou hast begot children not only for thy selfe, but also for thy countrie, which should not only bee to thy self a joy and pleasure,but also profitable and commodius afterwardes unto the common wealth.

—BARTHOLOMEW BATTY, The Christian Man’s Closet, 1581

Cornelis is down in his vault. The room is used for storage—wood, peat, old possessions. It is dark down here; he has lit an oil lamp. His whole house is now in shadow, for summer has arrived and the linden tree outside is heavy with foliage. It is July; his wife is five months pregnant and her belly is starting to swell. Yesterday he asked if the baby was kicking yet. He stretched out his hand to touch her but she moved away. “Not yet,” she said. “It is not kicking yet.”

How can she understand his anxiety? She is young. God willing, she will never know what it is like to lose a child. She knows of his loss, of course, but the young cannot imagine the unimaginable; their blind confidence is a kind of solace. He needs to be reassured, however, that a living child lies beneath her gown; he needs kicking proof. For in the past God has offered him happiness, only to snatch it away.

Down in the vault Cornelis unlocks the chest. It is made of teak, imported from the East Indies, and veneered with copper; he hasn’t touched it for years; it belongs to another life. He lifts the lid and gazes at the baby clothes. A scent of sweet woodruff is released; the herb, brittle as dust now, is strewn among the woolen robes. He lifts out tiny vests and jackets. He lifts out Pieter’s velvet doublet and presses it to his nose. His son’s smell has long since gone.

Here is your child
, said the midwife, placing the baby in his arms.
May our Lord grant you much happiness through him,
else may He call him back to Him soon
. . . The smell of spiced wine, the fragrance of his son’s damp head. His wife eating a restorative meal of buttered bread and ewe’s milk cheese.

How blessed he was. A son, an heir. What rejoicing was heard in his house that night. He offered up his prayers of thanksgiving:
we yield Thee hearty thanks, most merciful
Father
. . . He kissed his wife. He put on the feathered cap of fatherhood, made of quilted satin. His whole country was enveloped with his gratitude. Was its birth not miraculous too—wrested from the ocean, blessed by God? Constantijn Huijgens, poet and humanist, Secretary to the Stadholder—a man whom Cornelis holds in the highest esteem—he says of their country:
the Lord’s benevolence shines
from every dune
.

In the corner of the room, dim in the shadows, stands the wheeled chair in which his sons learned to walk—a wooden pyramid, on castors. It is dusty and now simply looks like a piece of apparatus. Within its cage he placed his sons and watched their legs working as they propelled themselves from room to room, stopping at the flights of steps. Cornelis thinks: once again I shall hear the noise of its castors, rattling over the floors.

He sorts out the baby clothes. This is woman’s work, but he wants to do it. He never thought he would open this chest again. Sophia is unaware of its existence. He will get Maria to wash and air the robes and store them in the linen closet in readiness.

Cornelis, carrying the bundle, walks upstairs. He hears voices in the front room and goes in.

A strange sight greets him. Maria lies on the bench beneath the window. A gypsy woman bends over her.

Sophia swings round and stares at Cornelis. “Dearest!” she says. “I had no idea you were in the house.” She catches her breath. “We met this woman in the market. She can predict whether it will be a boy or a girl.”

Meanwhile Maria has jumped up. She looks flushed. “Sorry, sir.” She turns to Sophia. “Go on, miss.”

Sophia settles herself on the bench, lying on her back. The gypsy woman dangles a string above her belly; a ring is tied to it.

“Clockwise it’s a boy; the other way it’s a girl,” Sophia tells him.

“Lie still,” says the gypsy.

A moment passes. The ring starts to rotate, gently. They watch it.

“It’s a boy,” says the gypsy.

Sophia sits up. She stares, wide-eyed, at Maria. Why? Maria’s hand is pressed to her mouth. Cornelis smiles benignly. They are just young girls, having fun. Sophia and her maid seem inseparable nowadays—always whispering behind closed doors. Pregnancy, he has noticed, causes women to close ranks. Still, he wishes that his wife could have a more suitable confidante, somebody of her own class.

Cornelis pays the old woman; she leaves.

It’s a boy
. Despite his suspicion of gypsies Cornelis wants to believe it. He turns to his wife but she has fled; he hears her slippers pattering upstairs. He had no idea that she was superstitious; pregnant women, he decides, can behave in a most peculiar manner. He doesn’t remember dear Hendrijke acting like this.

Clutching the baby clothes, Cornelis smiles indulgently. It’s a boy. He always knew this, in his heart.

“DO YOU REMEMBER, my dear, that I am traveling to Utrecht tomorrow, to visit my mother?”

“I will accompany you,” Cornelis replies.

“No.” Sophia lays her hand on his arm. “I will only be gone for two nights; you have business to attend to. Isn’t it tomorrow that you’re expecting the shipment from England?”

“But in your condition—”

“It is an easy journey. Please, dear husband, this is a women’s matter. My mother and I—we see each other so rarely—we have so much to talk about. And she is too frail for company. I would rather visit her alone.”

Cornelis understands this. However, he feels rebuffed that his wife’s constitution can bear a fifty-mile round trip to Utrecht yet be unable to stand him lying with her in bed. She will not even allow him to gaze at her body. Her modesty in this matter makes him feel excluded. How he longs to touch her swollen breasts!

Sophia strokes his beard. She knows he likes this. “I’ve prepared your favorite
hutspot
,” she murmurs. “Can you smell it cooking?”

“Your sickness has gone?”

She nods. “I feel much improved.” She does indeed look well—flushed cheeks, bright eyes. “Mutton, chicory, artichokes, prunes . . . all your favorites, stewed with lemon juice and ginger . . .”

He still feels hurt. “Why do we never eat fish nowadays?” he asks petulantly. “You know I like fish, but we have had none for weeks.”

“You told me you were tired of it, remember? You said that soon we would be sprouting fins.”

“It was just a joke.”

“Besides, I haven’t wanted to cook it; the smell made me ill.”

She kisses him and leaves, the keys at her waist jangling. He hears her humming as she makes her way to the kitchen. What wayward creatures women are. Who would have thought that a visit to her mother would make her so skittish? Her moods switch so violently. Recently, when he suggested that they engage another servant, she had snapped at him.

“I can manage. Maria is quite enough.”

“This house is too large for one maid,” he had replied, reasonably.

“I don’t want a man in the house, not in my condition. Let us wait until the baby is born.”

She is carrying his child, however. He loves her and he will humor her every whim. It is a beautiful evening. Cornelis fetches his pipe and gazette. He sits on the seat outside his front door. The sunshine, blazing between the leaves of the linden tree, dapples his house with light. His neighbor Mr. Molenaer, sitting on his step, nods and smiles. Cornelis sits in peace, reading about the treacherous policies of Louis XIII. How corrupt is the French court, how venal the Spanish. Here, all is peaceful in the golden evening sun. Families have emerged to sit outside on their front steps. Children play at their parents’ feet. Maria appears and empties a pail of slops into the canal. How bonny she looks nowadays, how fat and flourishing. In other countries servants are treated like slaves; here, in his enlightened city, they are considered one of the family. In the kitchen he can hear Sophia and Maria laughing like sisters. They have their girlish secrets—and why not, if it keeps them happy?

Cornelis’s mind wanders. He thinks of Sophia’s real sisters and the wretched circumstances in which they were living, three years before when he first visited their home. Their father, before he died, had been declared bankrupt. The bailiffs had removed the printing press and other assets from the house; the upper floors had been let to tenants. The girls and their mother were living in two rooms on the ground floor, eking out a living by taking in sewing.

A colleague of Cornelis, with whom he did business in Utrecht, had organized an introduction—for Cornelis was a rich widower looking for a wife and here were three girls of marriageable age. Sophia, the eldest, had served him spiced buns. How beautiful she was—shy and modest but not uneducated. After all, she had been brought up among books. She knew the old masters, and that afternoon they had discussed the relative merits of Titian and Tintoretto.

What a world he could teach her! Sophia was clay, waiting to be molded by his expert hands; she was fertile soil, waiting to be planted with the choicest of blooms. And she had responded to his advances. Demurely, at first, but there was no mistaking the warmth with which she had accepted his invitation of a trip in his carriage. Cornelis remembers that day down to the smallest detail, for the past, even the near past, is more vivid to him than the present.

They had driven into the countryside. Sophia gripped the window ledge. Entranced, she gazed at the fields, the grazing cows, the rows of willow trees as if she were a child seeing them for the first time. He thought: she is the daughter I never had. He gazed at the nape of her neck— the downy skin beneath her coiled-up hair—and longed to stroke it with his finger. Such a wave of desire he felt for her.
Fleshly conversation
—those were his words for sexual congress with his wife. A companionable, mutual comfort. This was different. This young girl—how desperately he wanted to protect her, but how he wanted to possess her too! His heart was thrown into confusion.

The sky, the vast blue sky, was heaped with clouds. Below it lay a field covered with strips of bleaching linen. The strips of cloth, straight as rulers, stretched into the distance. The sun slid out from behind the clouds. The cloth, so blinding white; the cloud shadows moving over it. Far away, figures toiled, unrolling another strip.

She pointed. “Look at them. It’s as if the earth is in pain and they’re wrapping it in bandages to make it well again.”

Beneath his ribs his heart shifted. It was then that he truly fell in love.

THE SUN SLIPS BEHIND the houses opposite. Their stepped gables loom up, as jagged as teeth. Cornelis shivers and gets to his feet. He remembers the field of cloth. Now he thinks of the world as his child, as dear and as precious. The linen strips, they are swaddling bands, ready to wrap around his baby and hold it safe. His faith has been restored to him; God has finally heard his prayers.

This is a comforting thought. Why, then, does he feel so uneasy?