Girl With a Pearl Earring

  One April morning when the cold at last had gone, I was walking along the Koornmarkt to the apothecary when Pieter the son appeared at my side and wished me good day. I had not seen him earlier. He wore a clean apron and carried a bundle, which he said he was delivering further along the Koornmarkt. He was going the same way as me and asked if he could walk with me. I nodded—I did not feel I could say no. Through the winter I had seen him once or twice a week at the Meat Hall. I always found it hard to meet his gaze—his eyes felt like needles pricking my skin. His attention worried me.

  “You look tired,” he said now. “Your eyes are red. They are working you too hard.”

  Indeed, they were working me hard. My master had given me so much bone to grind that I had to get up very early to finish it. And the night before Tanneke had made me stay up late to rewash the kitchen floor after she spilled a pan of grease all over it.

  I did not want to blame my master. “Tanneke has taken against me,” I said instead, “and gives me more to do. Then, of course, it’s getting warmer as well and we are cleaning the winter out of the house.” I added this so that he would not think I was complaining about her.

  “Tanneke is an odd one,” he said, “but loyal.”

  “To Maria Thins, yes.”

  “To the family as well. Remember how she defended Catharina from her mad brother?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Pieter looked surprised. “It was the talk of the Meat Hall for days. Ah, but you don’t gossip, do you? You keep your eyes open but you don’t tell tales, or listen to them.” He seemed to approve. “Me, I hear it all day from the old ones waiting for meat. Can’t help but some of it sticks.”

  “What did Tanneke do?” I asked despite myself.

  Pieter smiled. “When your mistress was carrying the last child but one—what’s its name?”

  “Johannes. Like his father.”

  Pieter’s smile dimmed like a cloud crossing the sun. “Yes, like his father.” He took up the tale again. “One day Catharina’s brother, Willem, came around to the Oude Langendijck, when she was big with child, and began to beat her, right in the street.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s missing a brick or two, they say. He’s always been violent. His father as well. You know the father and Maria Thins separated many years ago? He used to beat her.”

  “Beat Maria Thins?” I repeated in wonder. I would never have guessed that anyone could beat Maria Thins.

  “So when Willem began hitting Catharina it seems Tanneke got in between them to protect her. Even thumped him soundly.”

  Where was my master when this happened? I thought. He could not have remained in his studio. He could not have. He must have been out at the Guild, or with van Leeuwenhoek, or at Mechelen, his mother’s inn.

  “Maria Thins and Catharina managed to have Willem confined last year,” Pieter continued. “Can’t leave the house he’s lodged in. That’s why you haven’t seen him. Have you really heard nothing of this? Don’t they talk in your house?”

  “Not to me.” I thought of all the times Catharina and her mother put their heads together in the Crucifixion room, falling silent when I entered. “And I don’t listen behind doorways.”

  “Of course you don’t.” Pieter was smiling again as if I had told a joke. Like everyone else, he thought all maids eavesdropped. There were many assumptions about maids that people made about me.

  I was silent the rest of the way. I had not known that Tanneke could be so loyal and brave, despite all she said behind Catharina’s back, or that Catharina had suffered such blows, or that Maria Thins could have such a son. I tried to imagine my own brother beating me in the street but could not.

  Pieter said no more—he could see my confusion. When he left me in front of the apothecary he simply touched my elbow and continued on his way. I had to stand for a moment looking into the dark green water of the canal before I shook my head to clear it and turned to the apothecary’s door.

  I was shaking from my thoughts a picture of the knife spinning on my mother’s kitchen floor.

  One Sunday Pieter the son came to services at our church. He must have slipped in after my parents and me, and sat in the back, for I did not see him until afterward when we were outside speaking to our neighbors. He was standing off to one side, watching me. When I caught sight of him I drew in my breath sharply. At least, I thought, he is Protestant. I had not been certain before. Since working in the house at Papists’ Corner I was no longer certain of many things.

  My mother followed my gaze. “Who is that?”

  “The butcher’s son.”

  She gave me a curious look, part surprise, part fear. “Go to him,” she whispered, “and bring him to us.”

  I obeyed her and went up to Pieter. “Why are you here?” I asked, knowing I should be more polite.

  He smiled. “Hello, Griet. No pleasant words for me?”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I’m going to services in every church in Delft, to see which I like best. It may take some time.” When he saw my face he dropped his tone—joking was not the way with me. “I came to see you, and to meet your parents.”

  I blushed so hot I felt feverish. “I would rather you did not,” I said softly.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m only seventeen. I don’t—I’m not thinking of such things yet.”

  “There’s no rush,” Pieter said.

  I looked down at his hands—they were clean, but there were still traces of blood around his nails. I thought of my master’s hand over mine as he showed me how to grind bone, and shivered.

  People were staring at us, for he was a stranger to the church. And he was a handsome man—even I could see that, with his long blond curls, bright eyes and ready smile. Several young women were trying to catch his eye.

  “Will you introduce me to your parents?”

  Reluctantly I led him to them. Pieter nodded to my mother and grasped my father’s hand, who stepped back nervously. Since he had lost his eyes he was shy of meeting strangers. And he had never before met a man who showed interest in me.

  “Don’t worry, Father,” I whispered to him while my mother was introducing Pieter to a neighbor, “you aren’t losing me.”

  “We’ve already lost you, Griet. We lost you the moment you became a maid.”

  I was glad he could not see the tears that pricked my eyes.

  Pieter the son did not come every week to our church, but he came often enough that each Sunday I grew nervous, smoothing my skirt more than it needed, pressing my lips together as we sat in our pew.

  “Has he come? Is he here?” my father would ask each Sunday, turning his head this way and that.

  I let my mother answer. “Yes,” she would say, “he is here,” or “No, he has not come.”

  Pieter always said hello to my parents before greeting me. At first they were uneasy with him. However, Pieter chatted easily to them, ignoring their awkward responses and long silences. He knew how to talk to people, meeting so many at his father’s stall. After several Sundays my parents became used to him. The first time my father laughed at something Pieter said he was so surprised at himself that he immediately frowned, until Pieter said something else to make him laugh again.

  There was always a moment after they had been speaking when my parents stepped back and left us alone. Pieter wisely let them decide when. The first few times it did not happen at all. Then one Sunday my mother pointedly took my father’s arm and said, “Let us go and speak to the minister.”

  For several Sundays I dreaded that moment until I too became used to being on my own with him in front of so many watchful eyes. Pieter sometimes teased me gently, but more often he asked me what I had been doing during the week, or told me stories he had heard in the Meat Hall, or described auctions at the Beast Market. He was patient with me when I became tongue-tied or sharp or dismissive.

  He never asked me about my master. I never told h
im I was working with the colors. I was glad he did not ask me.

  On those Sundays I felt very confused. When I should be listening to Pieter I found myself thinking about my master.

  One Sunday in May, when I had been working at the house on the Oude Langendijck for almost a year, my mother said to Pieter just before she and my father left us alone, “Will you come back to eat with us after next Sunday’s service?”

  Pieter smiled as I gaped at her. “I’ll come.”

  I barely heard what he said after that. When he finally left and my parents and I went home I had to bite my lips so that I would not shout. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to invite Pieter?” I muttered.

  My mother glanced at me sideways. “It’s time we asked him,” was all she said.

  She was right—it would be rude of us not to invite him to our house. I had not played this game with a man before, but I had seen what went on with others. If Pieter was serious, then my parents would have to treat him seriously.

  I also knew what a hardship it would be to them to have him come. My parents had very little now. Despite my wages and what my mother made from spinning wool for others, they could barely feed themselves, much less another mouth—and a butcher’s mouth at that. I could do little to help them—take what I could from Tanneke’s kitchen, a bit of wood, perhaps, some onions, some bread. They would eat less that week and light the fire less, just so that they could feed him properly.

  But they insisted that he come. They would not say so to me, but they must have seen feeding him as a way of filling our own stomachs in the future. A butcher’s wife—and her parents—would always eat well. A little hunger now would bring a heavy stomach eventually.

  Later, when he began coming regularly, Pieter sent them gifts of meat which my mother would cook for the Sunday. At that first Sunday dinner, however, she sensibly did not serve meat to a butcher’s son. He would have been able to judge exactly how poor they were by the cut of the joint. Instead she made a fish stew, even adding shrimps and lobster, never telling me how she managed to pay for them.

  The house, though shabby, gleamed from her attentions. She had got out some of my father’s best tiles, those she had not had to sell, and polished and lined them up along the wall so Peter could look at them as he ate. He praised my mother’s stew, and his words were genuine. She was pleased, and blushed and smiled and gave him more. Afterwards he asked my father about the tiles, describing each one until my father recognized it and could complete the description.

  “Griet has the best one,” he said after they had gone through all those in the room. “It’s of her and her brother.”

  “I’d like to see it,” Pieter murmured.

  I studied my chapped hands in my lap and swallowed. I had not told them what Cornelia had done to my tile.

  As Pieter was leaving my mother whispered to me to see him to the end of the street. I walked beside him, sure that our neighbors were staring, though in truth it was a rainy day and there were few people out. I felt as if my parents had pushed me into the street, that a deal had been made and I was being passed into the hands of a man. At least he is a good man, I thought, even if his hands are not as clean as they could be.

  Close to the Rietveld Canal there was an alley that Pieter guided me to, his hand at the small of my back. Agnes used to hide there during our games as children. I stood against the wall and let Pieter kiss me. He was so eager that he bit my lips. I did not cry out—I licked away the salty blood and looked over his shoulder at the wet brick wall opposite as he pushed himself against me. A raindrop fell into my eye.

  I would not let him do all he wanted. After a time Pieter stepped back. He reached a hand towards my head. I moved away.

  “You favor your caps, don’t you?” he said.

  “I’m not rich enough to dress my hair and go without a cap,” I snapped. “Nor am I a—” I did not finish. I did not need to tell him what other kind of woman left her head bare.

  “But your cap covers all your hair. Why is that? Most women show some of their hair.”

  I did not answer.

  “What color is your hair?”

  “Brown.”

  “Light or dark?”

  “Dark.”

  Pieter smiled as if he were indulging a child in a game. “Straight or curly?”

  “Neither. Both.” I winced at my confusion.

  “Long or short?”

  I hesitated. “Below my shoulders.”

  He continued to smile at me, then kissed me once more and turned back toward Market Square.

  I had hesitated because I did not want to lie but did not want him to know. My hair was long and could not be tamed. When it was uncovered it seemed to belong to another Griet—a Griet who would stand in an alley alone with a man, who was not so calm and quiet and clean. A Griet like the women who dared to bare their heads. That was why I kept my hair completely hidden—so that there would be no trace of that Griet.

  He finished the painting of the baker’s daughter. This time I had warning, for he stopped asking me to grind and wash colors. He did not use much paint now, nor did he make sudden changes at the end as he had with the woman with the pearl necklace. He had made changes earlier, removing one of the chairs from the painting, and moving the map along the wall. I was less surprised by such changes, for I’d had the chance to think of them myself, and knew that what he did made the painting better.

  He borrowed van Leeuwenhoek’s camera obscura again to look at the scene one last time. When he had set it up he allowed me to look through it as well. Although I still did not understand how it worked, I came to admire the scenes the camera painted inside itself, the miniature, reversed pictures of things in the room. The colors of ordinary objects became more intense—the table rug a deeper red, the wall map a glowing brown like a glass of ale held up to the sun. I was not sure how the camera helped him to paint, but I was becoming more like Maria Thins—if it made him paint better, I did not question it.

  He was not painting faster, however. He spent five months on the girl with the water pitcher. I often worried that Maria Thins would remind me that I had not helped him to work faster, and tell me to pack my things and leave.

  She did not. She knew that he had been very busy at the Guild that winter, as well as at Mechelen. Perhaps she had decided to wait and see if things would change in the summer. Or perhaps she found it hard to chide him since she liked the painting so much.

  “It’s a shame such a fine painting is to go only to the baker,” she said one day. “We could have charged more if it were for van Ruijven.” It was clear that while he painted the works, it was she who struck the deals.

  The baker liked the painting too. The day he came to see it was very different from the formal visit van Ruijven and his wife had made several months before to view their painting. The baker brought his whole family, including several children and a sister or two. He was a merry man, with a face permanently flushed from the heat of his ovens and hair that looked as if it had been dipped in flour. He refused the wine Maria Thins offered, preferring a mug of beer. He loved children, and insisted that the four girls and Johannes be allowed into the studio. They loved him as well—each time he visited he brought them another shell for their collection. This time it was a conch as big as my hand, rough and spiky and white with pale yellow marks on the outside, a polished pink and orange on the inside. The girls were delighted, and ran to get their other shells. They brought them upstairs and they and the baker’s children played together in the storeroom while Tanneke and I served the guests in the studio.

  The baker announced he was satisfied with the painting. “My daughter looks well, and that’s enough for me,” he said.

  Afterwards, Maria Thins lamented that he had not looked at it as closely as van Ruijven would have, that his senses were dulled by the beer he drank and the disorder he surrounded himself with. I did not agree, though I did not say so. It seemed to me that the baker had an honest response to
the painting. Van Ruijven tried too hard when he looked at paintings, with his honeyed words and studied expressions. He was too aware of having an audience to perform for, whereas the baker merely said what he thought.

  I checked on the children in the storeroom. They had spread across the floor, sorting shells and getting sand everywhere. The chests and books and dishes and cushions kept there did not interest them.

  Cornelia was climbing down the ladder from the attic. She jumped from three rungs up and shouted triumphantly as she crashed to the floor. When she looked at me briefly, her eyes were a challenge. One of the baker’s sons, about Aleydis’ age, climbed partway up the ladder and jumped to the floor. Then Aleydis tried it, and another child, and another.

  I had never known how Cornelia managed to get to the attic to steal the madder that stained my apron red. It was in her nature to be sly, to slip away when no one was looking. I had said nothing to Maria Thins or him about her pilfering. I was not sure they would believe me. Instead I had made sure the colors were locked away whenever he and I were not there.

  I said nothing to her now as she sprawled on the floor next to Maertge. But that night I checked my things. Everything was there—my broken tile, my tortoiseshell comb, my prayer book, my embroidered handkerchiefs, my collars, my chemises, my aprons and caps. I counted and sorted and refolded them.

  Then I checked the colors, just to be sure. They too were in order, and the cupboard did not look as if it had been tampered with.

  Perhaps she was just being a child after all, climbing a ladder to jump from it, looking for a game rather than mischief.

  The baker took away his painting in May, but my master did not begin setting up the next painting until July. I grew anxious about this delay, expecting Maria Thins to blame me, even though we both knew that it was not my fault. Then one day I overheard her tell Catharina that a friend of van Ruijven’s saw the painting of his wife with the pearl necklace and thought she should be looking out rather than at a mirror. Van Ruijven had thus decided that he wanted a painting with his wife’s face turned towards the painter. “He doesn’t paint that pose often,” she remarked.