Tulip Fever (2 page)

—JACOB CATS, Moral Emblems, 1632

We are eating dinner, my husband and I. A shred of leek is caught in his beard. I watch it move up and down as he chews; it is like an insect caught in the grass. I watch it idly, for I am a young woman and live simply, in the present. I have not yet died and been reborn. I have not yet died a second time—for in the eyes of the world this will be considered a second death. In my end is my beginning; the eel curls round and swallows its own tail. And in the beginning I am still alive, and young, though my husband is old. We lift our wine flutes and drink. Words are etched on my glass:
Mankind’s hopes are fragile glass and life is therefore also
short
, a scratched homily through the sinking liquid.

Cornelis tears off a piece of bread and dips it into his soup. He chews for a moment. “My dear, I have something to discuss.” He wipes his lips with his napkin. “In this transitory life do we not all crave immortality?”

I freeze, knowing what is coming. I gaze at my roll, lying on the tablecloth. It has split, during baking, and parted like lips. For three years we have been married and I have not produced a child. This is not through lack of trying. My husband is still a vigorous man in this respect. At night he mounts me; he spreads my legs and I lie there like an upturned beetle pressed down by a shoe. With all his heart he longs for a son—an heir to skip across these marble floors and give a future to this large, echoing house on the Herengracht.

So far I have failed him. I submit to his embraces, of course, for I am a dutiful wife and shall always be grateful to him. The world is treacherous and he reclaimed me, as we reclaimed our country from the sea, draining her and ringing her with dykes to keep her safe, to keep her from going under. I love him for this.

And then he surprises me. “To this effect I have engaged the services of a painter. His name is Jan van Loos and he is one of the most promising artists in Amsterdam—still lifes, landscapes, but most especially portraiture. He comes on the recommendation of Hendrick Uylenburgh, who as you know is a discerning dealer—Rembrandt van Rijn, newly arrived from Leiden, is one of his protégés.”

My husband lectures me like this. He tells me more than I want to know but tonight his words land noiselessly around me.

Our portrait is going to be painted! “He is thirty-six, the same age as our brave new century.” Cornelis drains his glass and pours another. He is drunk with the vision of ourselves, immortalized on canvas. Drinking beer sends him to sleep, but drinking wine makes him patriotic. “Ourselves, living in the greatest city, home to the greatest nation on the globe.” It is only me sitting opposite him but he addresses a larger audience. Above his yellowed beard his cheeks are flushed. “For doesn’t Vondel describe Amsterdam thus?
What waters are not shadowed by her sails? On which mart does
she not sell her wares? What peoples does she not see lit by the
moon, she who herself sets the laws of the whole ocean?”

He does not expect an answer for I am just a young wife, with little life beyond these walls. Around my waist hang keys to nothing but our linen chests, for I have yet to unlock anything of more significance. In fact, I am wondering what clothes I shall wear for my portrait. That is the size of my world so far. Forget oceans and empires.

Maria brings in a plate of herrings and retreats, sniffing. Fog rolls in off the sea and she has been coughing all day. This hasn’t dampened her spirits. I am sure she has a secret lover; she hums in the kitchen and sometimes I catch her standing in front of a mirror rearranging her hair under her cap. I shall find out. We are confidantes, or as much confidantes as our circumstances allow. Since I left my sisters she is the only one I have.

Next week the painter will arrive. My husband is a connoisseur of paintings; our house is filled with them. Behind him, on the wall, hangs a canvas of
Susannah and the Elders
. The old men peer at the naked girl as she bathes. By daylight I can see their greedy faces, but now, in the candlelight, they have retreated back into the shadows; all I can see is her plump, pale flesh above my husband’s head. He lifts a fish onto his plate. He is a collector of beautiful things.

I see us as a painting. Cornelis, his white lace collar against black, his beard moving as he eats. The herring lying on my plate, its glistening, scored skin split open to reveal the flesh within; the parted lips of my roll. Grapes, plump and opaque in the candlelight; the pewter goblet glowing dully.

I see us there, sitting at our dining table, motionless— our own frozen moment before everything changes.

After dinner he reads to me from the Bible.
“All flesh is
grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field;
the grass withereth, the flower fadeth, because the spirit of the
Lord bloweth upon it; surely the people is grass . . .”

But I am already hanging on the wall, watching us.

2

Maria

She must have a diligent eye to the behaviour of her servants,
what meetings and greetings, what ticklings and toyings, and
what words and countenances there be betweene men and
maides, lest such matters being neglected, there follow wantonness, yea folly, within their houses, which is a great blemish to
the governours.

—J. DOD AND R. CLEAVER, A Godly Forme of Household Government, 1612

Maria the maid, dozy with love, polishes the copper warming pan. She is heavy with desire; she feels sluggish, as if she is moving around underwater. Her face, distorted by the curved metal, smiles back at herself. She is a big, ruddy country girl with a healthy appetite. Her conscience, too, is a healthily adaptable organ. When she takes Willem into her bed, deep in the wall behind the kitchen fire, she pulls the curtain to shut out God’s disapproval. Out of sight, out of mind. After all, she and Willem will someday be married.

She dreams about this. She dreams that the master and mistress have died—shipwrecked at sea—and that she and Willem live in this house with their six sweet children. When she is cleaning, she cleans for his homecoming. When her mistress is out she closes the bottom half of the window shutters so that she cannot be seen from the street. The parlor is thrown into shadow, as if she is walking on the seabed. She puts on her mistress’s blue velvet jacket, trimmed with fur collar and cuffs, and she walks around the house casually catching sight of herself in the mirrors. It is a simple dream; where is the harm in it?

Maria is in the parlor now, on her knees. She is scrubbing the blue-and-white tiles around the skirting. Each tile shows a child playing—one with a hoop, one with a ball. One, her favorite, rides a hobbyhorse. The room is lined with her imaginary children. She wipes them tenderly with a cloth.

Through the wall she hears the noises in the street— footsteps, voices. Bred in the country, she is still surprised by the bustle of the Herengracht, by how close the street presses in against her secret world indoors. The flower seller cries out, his voice as eerie as a peewit. The man from the pewter foundry rattles his tin, calling vessels out to be repaired as if he were summoning sinners. Somebody, startlingly close, hawks and spits.

And then she hears his bell. “Fish, fresh fish!” Willem sings tunelessly; he has a terrible voice. “Roach—bream— herrings—cod!” Then he rings his bell. She is as alert as a shepherdess to the ding-dong of her darling in the midst of the flock.

Maria jumps up. She wipes her nose on her apron, smooths down her skirt and pulls open the door. It is a foggy morning; she can barely see the canal beyond the pavement. Willem looms out of the mist. “Hello, my lovely.” His face splits into a smile.

“What’ve you got there?” she says. “Give us a look.”

“What do you want, Maria my duck?” He shifts the basket onto his hip.

“How about a nice fat eel?”

“How do you like it?”

“You know how I like it,” she chuckles.

“How about stewed with apricots and sweet vinegar?”

“Mm.” She sighs. Down the road she hears barrels being unloaded from a barge. They fall onto the street,
thump-thump
, the thump of her heart.

“How about a herring?” he asks. “How about a kiss?”

He moves up the step, closer to her.
Thump-thump
.

“Ssh!” She backs away. People are passing. Willem hangs his head dolefully. He is a plain man—long, lugubrious, rubbery face, the sort of face that causes merriment in others. She loves it when it breaks into a smile. He is a darling, innocent man and he makes her feel worldly-wise. Her! That is how innocent he is.

Willem cannot believe she loves him. “I came by yesterday. Why didn’t you open the door?”

“Oh, the vegetable man was showing me his carrots.”

“You teasing me?”

“I was at the market.” She smiles at him. “It’s you I love. I’m like a mussel, closed in my shell. It’s only you who can open me.”

She steps back and lets him into the house. He dumps down his basket and flings his arms around her.

“Ugh! Your fingers!” She leads him through the
voorhuis
, along the passageway, down the steps into the kitchen. He pinches her bottom as they stumble across to the sink.

She yanks the lever. Water gushes out of the tap, onto his outstretched hands. He stands there, as obedient as a child with its mother. She rubs his fingers dry and then she sniffs them. He presses his body against hers; he presses his knee between her thighs—she nearly swoons—and kisses her.

“You can’t stay long,” she whispers. “They’re both at home.”

She pulls him with her, into her bed in the wall. They fall over the wooden rim and collapse, laughing, on the mattress. How warm it is in here; the warmest bed in the place. When they own the house they will still sleep down here because it is her burrow, the hub of her existence.

He breathes sweet words into her ear. She tickles him. He yelps. She shushes him. She takes his hand and pushes it up between her legs; they’ve no time to lose. They giggle like children, for they have both grown up sleeping squashed against their brothers and sisters, snuggling and squirming and knocking knees.

“Now, what’s down here?” she whispers. “Anything interesting?”

Far off there’s a
rat-a-tat-tat
on the front door.

Maria jerks upright. She pushes Willem off and struggles out of bed.

A moment later, flushed and breathless, she unlatches the front door.

A man stands there. He is short and dark—shiny black curls, blue eyes and a velvet beret on his head. “I have an appointment,” he says. “I have come to paint a portrait.”

3