Tulip Fever (23 page)

The house has changed too. I have become familiar with it now—back-achingly familiar: the Delft tiles along the skirting, each playful child; the marble floors that seem to stretch for miles. Upstairs I polish and repolish the wide floorboards. Sleeves rolled up, I scrub and wipe and rise to my feet groaningly. The embossed walls of the Leather Room catch the dust; pain jabs my shoulders as I stand on a chair, wielding my broom. Down in the kitchen I rub the brick floor with a sodden cloth. Before, the house consisted of rooms in whose chairs I sat, whose floor I crossed and whose windows I opened when I gazed into the street. It was the painted background to my life. Now I am intimate with every chipped brick, every knot of wood. If only we could employ another servant. But that, of course, is impossible. We cannot risk a stranger among us during this crucial time and I have resisted my husband’s attempts to hire one.

I am now in my final month and wear a bulky pillow strapped around my waist. Mrs. Molenaer, my next-door neighbor, has lent me several of her maternity gowns. Maria has simply sewn extra panels into her dresses. Bending down is difficult—how do pregnant women do it? I am tempted to pull out the pillow, but what happens if Cornelis returns unexpectedly? He has become increasingly solicitous, popping in during a working day to check that I have not suddenly gone into labor.

Doctor Sorgh has visited. Upstairs he examined Maria and pronounced her in fine health. He washed his hands, came downstairs and told Cornelis I was as fit as a fiddle. He has a narrow face, like a greyhound; I have never trusted a man with ginger hair. I must admit, however, that he played the charade to perfection. When he left he whispered: “Your friend is right. You are a bold and singular woman.” Maria told me that his hands smelled of violets.

Maria has changed in another way. Over the past weeks she has retreated into herself. She sits alone in front of a dead fire. She sits for hours at the front window, remaining there until the light fades, as if waiting for a visitor who never arrives. Worse than this, she has grown apart from me; our old sisterliness has vanished.

“You and your sums!” she says one day. “All you think about is money. What about
me
?”

“I’m doing this for you! You will benefit as much as me. Soon it will be over and we’ll both be free.”

“It’s easy for you,” she snaps. “You’ve changed, Sophia.”

She calls me
Sophia
now, not
miss
or
madam
. I do not mind. I know her anger is caused by fear. She is facing childbirth; she is about to embark on a voyage through the most perilous waters—a voyage she must take alone, for nobody can accompany her.

YESTERDAY JAN MADE sixty-five florins profit.
Sixty-five
florins
. The blacksmith who mended our linen cupboard pays that for a year’s rent; he grumbled about it.

“Gamble on tulips,” I said. “It’s easy.”

“Pride comes before a fall,” he replied. “Mark my words, they’re fools, the lot of them.” He was a miserable old soak.

I meet Jan in our trysting place beside the water fountain. He has lost weight, his cheeks are sunken. His hair, so shiny and curly when he first came to my house, is matted. He doesn’t greet me; eyes glittering, he grabs my wrist.

“Tell me we should do it! Do you have the nerve?” His grip tightens. “Luck’s been on our side, all these weeks. Tell me we should put all our eggs into one basket!”

He means, of course, the risk beyond all risks: the most dangerous risk of all. The king of kings, the Semper Augustus. Claes van Hooghelande has one bulb left.

It will take all our money, every stiver, and a great deal more. More huge loans. The price has been fluctuating wildly. It is all or nothing. But if we succeed we can wipe out all our debts, when the baby is born, and be set up for our new life.

“I think we should do it,” I say.

“My darling, my petal,” he replies.

We sit there in silence, stunned by our decision.
My petal
is what Jan calls me, nowadays.

THE BABY IS DUE ANY DAY. As luck would have it, Maria’s belly is small—a neat bulge carried low. To a casual observer she is simply a large girl, bulky under her layers of winter clothing. She seldom goes out now, and when we do walk to the market eyes are focused on me, a ship in full sail. Pregnant women soak up attention. Besides, Maria is a servant, and even in our enlightened country servants are on the periphery of our vision.

When we are alone together, however, we can relax. Though this is hardly the word to describe our state of heightened tension. Maria’s womb has assumed enormous importance to us; its magnetism is more powerful than the moon pulling the tides. The old lighthearted days have long gone (Maria giggling to me: “Wouldn’t it be comical if
you
fell pregnant too!”). Now we have entered the last phase; we are in deadly earnest.

My bedchamber has been prepared in readiness for the birth. Our neighbors have rallied round. A wooden linen warmer has been installed behind the fire screen. Our neighbor Mrs. Molenaer has lent us her wickerwork cradle, shaped like a boat. My husband has laid out the birthing robe in readiness. On the shelf sits a gruel cup and spoon, to help me through the labor, and a bowl for spiced wine to drink after the happy event. Another neighbor, who has a groom, has offered his services to fetch my mother when the labor pains begin, but I have told him that she is too frail to undertake the journey. In fact, I have lied to my family about the delivery date; they expect the baby to be born several weeks hence.

The real delivery, of course, will not take place in this room. When Cornelis is at work I take Maria up to the attic. She huffs and puffs on the narrow stairs—they are scarcely more than a ladder—and stops halfway to catch her breath.

It is a small, dark room, its ceiling crisscrossed with heavy black beams. Cornelis has not come up here for years; nobody comes up here. I have cleaned the room, swept away the cobwebs and strewn lavender on the floor. I have made up a birthing couch; it is a simple bed that must have been used by a servant long ago.

In the corner leans my picture,
The Love Letter
. There is my painted self, alone with her dreams, poised at her own moment of decision. She looks so virginal, so untried. That decision has long been taken; I can hardly recognize that maidenly creature now.

Maria sits down on the bed, groaning. Her back aches. I sit down next to her and rub it.

“He’s a good doctor,” I tell her. “And she is a highly experienced midwife. Over a thousand successful deliveries, she says. You will be in safe hands.”

Suddenly Maria bursts into tears. “I want my Willem,” she wails.

“They will look after you, my darling.”

“I want him with me.”

“He’s not coming back.”

“I want my Willem!” She’s sobbing uncontrollably now. Her face streams with tears and snot. “How could he leave me
now
?”

“He doesn’t even know. You’ve got to forget him.” I wipe her nose with my handkerchief. “Soon you will have a lovely baby—”

“I want him!”

I try to cradle her in my arms. This is difficult, with two great bulges blocking the way. Unable to reach her, I stroke her instead—her hair, her belly.

Beneath her apron I feel movement. The baby is kicking. He kicks with such force that my hand jolts. He is pushing against me fiercely.

“Feel him,” I say. “He’s trying to get out. And when that happens, he will set us all free.”

37

Jacob

I am sending you a human figure for your studies to become a painter . . . Use this figure, don’t allow it to stand idle as it was here but draw assiduously, especially those large, animated human groups for which Pieter Molijn liked your work so much. If you paint, paint contemporary things, scenes from life, they can be done the most quickly. Be tenacious so you complete the paintings you have started; you will be loved for them, with God’s help, just as you were loved in Haarlem and Amsterdam . . . Serve God above all, be modest and polite towards every man, in this way you will assure your success. I am enclosing also clothes, long brushes, paper, chalk, and all the beautiful paints . . .

—LETTER TO GERARD TERBORCH FROM HIS FATHER, 1635

Jacob is an ambitious young man. He knows that he is going to go far. Though he is only sixteen he has his life mapped out. By the age of twenty-five he plans to be an established painter, with his own studio. He will specialize in portraits, for here in Amsterdam there is an unlimited supply of potential clients who wish to see themselves immortalized on canvas. By the age of thirty he will have made his name with a major commission—a militia painting, a guild group, a Civic Guard banquet. Not only is one paid by the individual portrait—head-and-shoulders so much, full-length more—but the picture then hangs in a public place and ensures that one’s fame spreads abroad.

His role model is not Jan, about whom he has mixed feelings. Those he admires are Nicholaes Eliasz and Thomas de Keyser, successful portraitists at the height of their fame. They are commissioned, paint to a reliable standard and deliver their canvases on time. After all, painting is a trade, like any other; those who succeed are those who give good value for money. His other idol is Gerrit Dou, a past pupil of Rembrandt van Rijn. How different is Dou from his erratic and temperamental master! Dou’s fine detailing means that his paintings are in high demand. The collector Johan de Bye owns twenty-seven of them; the Swedish ambassador in The Hague pays a thousand florins a year—
a thousand
—simply for the promise of first refusal. Dou’s is the style to which Jacob aspires. Neatness and order, not the baffling self-indulgence of Rembrandt or the florid brushwork of the Antwerp phenomenon, Peter Paul Rubens. Jacob likes to be in control.

Painting is a job, not a gamble. Jacob distrusts excess. This tulip craze that has enslaved his countrymen leaves him cold. He feels nothing for it but contempt. Unlike his master, he is not a dreamer. The only indulgence he allows himself is a Saturday stroll through Amsterdam’s most prestigious residential streets where the new mansions are being erected; as he passes, he speculates on which house he will buy when he makes his fortune. When the time is right—when he has established himself—he will find a suitable girl from a good family and settle down. But not yet. Not now.