Girl With a Pearl Earring

  Pieter did not raise his voice, but we all heard his words. “I’ve spoken to your father this morning, and he has agreed that we may marry now you are eighteen. You can leave here and come to me. Today.”

  I felt my face go hot, whether from anger or shame I was not sure. Everyone was waiting for me to speak.

  I drew in a deep breath. “This is not the place to talk about such things,” I replied severely. “Not in the street like this. You were wrong to come here.” I did not wait for his response, though as I turned to go back inside he looked stricken.

  “Griet!” he cried.

  I pushed past Tanneke, who spoke so softly that I was not sure I heard her right. “Whore.”

  I ran up the stairs to the studio. He was still standing at the window as I shut the door. “I am sorry, sir,” I said. “I’ll just change my cap.”

  He did not turn round. “He is still there,” he said.

  When I returned, I crossed to the window, though I did not stand too close in case Pieter could see me again with my head wrapped in blue and yellow.

  My master was not looking down at the street any longer, but at the New Church tower. I peeked—Pieter was gone.

  I took my place in the lion-head chair and waited.

  When he turned at last to face me, his eyes were masked. More than ever, I did not know what he was thinking.

  “So you will leave us,” he said.

  “Oh, sir, I do not know. Do not pay attention to words said in the street like that.”

  “Will you marry him?”

  “Please do not ask me about him.”

  “No, perhaps I should not. Now, let us begin again.” He reached around to the cupboard behind him, picked up an earring, and held it out to me.

  “I want you to do it.” I had not thought I could ever be so bold.

  Nor had he. He raised his eyebrows and opened his mouth to speak, but did not say anything.

  He stepped up to my chair. My jaw tightened but I managed to hold my head steady. He reached over and gently touched my earlobe.

  I gasped as if I had been holding my breath under water.

  He rubbed the swollen lobe between his thumb and finger, then pulled it taut. With his other hand he inserted the earring wire in the hole and pushed it through. A pain like fire jolted through me and brought tears to my eyes.

  He did not remove his hand. His fingers brushed against my neck and along my jaw. He traced the side of my face up to my cheek, then blotted the tears that spilled from my eyes with his thumb. He ran his thumb over my lower lip. I licked it and tasted salt.

  I closed my eyes then and he removed his fingers. When I opened them again he had gone back to his easel and taken up his palette.

  I sat in my chair and gazed at him over my shoulder. My ear was burning, the weight of the pearl pulling at the lobe. I could not think of anything but his fingers on my neck, his thumb on my lips.

  He looked at me but did not begin to paint. I wondered what he was thinking.

  Finally he reached behind him again. “You must wear the other one as well,” he declared, picking up the second earring and holding it out to me.

  For a moment I could not speak. I wanted him to think of me, not of the painting.

  “Why?” I finally answered. “It can’t be seen in the painting.”

  “You must wear both,” he insisted. “It is a farce to wear only one.”

  “But—my other ear is not pierced,” I faltered.

  “Then you must tend to it.” He continued to hold it out.

  I reached over and took it. I did it for him. I got out my needle and clove oil and pierced my other ear. I did not cry, or faint, or make a sound. Then I sat all morning and he painted the earring he could see, and I felt, stinging like fire in my other ear, the pearl he could not see.

  The clothes soaking in the kitchen went cold, the water grey. Tanneke clattered in the kitchen, the girls shouted outside, and we behind our closed door sat and looked at each other. And he painted.

  When at last he set down his brush and palette, I did not change position, though my eyes ached from looking sideways. I did not want to move.

  “It is done,” he said, his voice muffled. He turned away and began wiping his palette knife with a rag. I gazed at the knife—it had white paint on it.

  “Take off the earrings and give them back to Maria Thins when you go down,” he added.

  I began to cry silently. Without looking at him, I got up and went into the storeroom, where I removed the blue and yellow cloth from my head. I waited for a moment, my hair out over my shoulders, but he did not come. Now that the painting was finished he no longer wanted me.

  I looked at myself in the little mirror, and then I removed the earrings. Both holes in my lobes were bleeding. I blotted them with a bit of cloth, then tied up my hair and covered it and my ears with my cap, leaving the tips to dangle below my chin.

  When I came out again he was gone. He had left the studio door open for me. For a moment I thought about looking at the painting to see what he had done, to see it finished, the earring in place. I decided to wait until night, when I could study it without worrying that someone might come in.

  I crossed the studio and shut the door behind me.

  I always regretted that decision. I never got to have a proper look at the finished painting.

  Catharina arrived back only a few minutes after I had handed the earrings to Maria Thins, who immediately replaced them in the jewelry box. I hurried to the cooking kitchen to help Tanneke with dinner. She would not look at me straight, but gave me sideways glances, occasionally shaking her head.

  He was not at dinner—he had gone out. After we had cleared up I went back to the courtyard to finish rinsing the laundry. I had to haul in new water and reheat it. While I worked Catharina slept in the great hall. Maria Thins smoked and wrote letters in the Crucifixion room. Tanneke sat in the front doorway and sewed. Maertge perched on the bench and made lace. Next to her Aleydis and Lisbeth sorted their shell collection.

  I did not see Cornelia.

  I was hanging up an apron when I heard Maria Thins say, “Where are you going?” It was the tone of her voice rather than what she said that made me pause in my work. She sounded anxious.

  I crept inside and along the hallway. Maria Thins was at the foot of the stairs, gazing up. Tanneke had come to stand in the front doorway, as she had earlier that day, but facing in and following the look of her mistress. I heard the stairs creak, and the sound of heavy breathing. Catharina was pulling herself up the stairs.

  In that moment I knew what was going to happen—to her, to him, to me.

  Cornelia is there, I thought. She is leading her mother to the painting.

  I could have cut short the misery of waiting. I could have left then, walked out the door with the laundry not done, and not looked back. But I could not move. I stood frozen, as Maria Thins stood frozen at the bottom of the stairs. She too knew what would happen, and she could not stop it.

  I sank to the floor. Maria Thins saw me but did not speak. She continued to gaze up uncertainly. Then the noise on the stairs stopped and we heard Catharina’s heavy tread over to the studio door. Maria Thins darted up the stairs. I remained on my knees, too weary to rise. Tanneke stood blocking the light from the front door. She watched me, her arms crossed, her face expressionless.

  Soon after there was a shout of rage, then raised voices which were quickly lowered.

  Cornelia came down the stairs. “Mama wants Papa to come home,” she announced to Tanneke.

  Tanneke stepped backwards outside and turned towards the bench. “Maertge, go and find your father at the Guild,” she ordered. “Quickly. Tell him it’s important.”

  Cornelia look around. When she saw me her face lit up. I got up from my knees and walked stiffly back to the courtyard. There was nothing I could do but hang up laundry and wait.

  When he returned I thought for a moment that he might come and find me in the courtyard, hid
den among the hanging sheets. He did not—I heard him on the stairs, then nothing.

  I leaned against the warm brick wall and gazed up. It was a bright, cloudless day, the sky a mocking blue. It was the kind of day when children ran up and down the streets and shouted, when couples walked out through the town gates, past the windmills and along the canals, when old women sat in the sun and closed their eyes. My father was probably sitting on the bench in front of his house, his face turned towards the warmth. Tomorrow might be bitterly cold, but today it was spring.

  They sent Cornelia to get me. When she appeared between the hanging clothes and looked down at me with a cruel smirk on her face, I wanted to slap her as I had that first day I had come to work at the house. I did not, though—I simply sat, hands in my lap, shoulders slumped, and watched her show off her glee. The sun caught glints of gold—traces of her mother—in her red hair.

  “You are wanted upstairs,” she said in a formal voice. “They want to see you.” She turned and skipped back into the house.

  I leaned over and brushed a bit of dust from my shoe. Then I stood, straightened my skirt, smoothed my apron, pulled the tips of my cap tight, and checked for loose strands of hair. I licked my lips and pressed them together, took a deep breath and followed Cornelia.

  Catharina had been crying—her nose was red, her eyes puffy. She was sitting in the chair he normally pulled up to his easel—it had been pushed towards the wall and the cupboard that held his brushes and palette knife. When I appeared she heaved herself up so that she was standing, tall and broad. Although she glared at me, she did not speak. She squeezed her arms over her belly and winced.

  Maria Thins was standing next to the easel, looking sober but also impatient, as if she had other, more important things to attend to.

  He stood next to his wife, his face without expression, hands at his sides, eyes on the painting. He was waiting for someone, for Catharina, or Maria Thins, or me, to begin.

  I came to stand just inside the door. Cornelia hovered behind me. I could not see the painting from where I stood.

  It was Maria Thins who finally spoke.

  “Well, girl, my daughter wants to know how you came to be wearing her earrings.” She said it as if she did not expect me to answer.

  I studied her old face. She was not going to admit to helping me get the earrings. Nor would he, I knew. I did not know what to say. So I did not say anything.

  “Did you steal the key to my jewelry box and take my earrings?” Catharina spoke as if she were trying to convince herself of what she said. Her voice was shaky.

  “No, madam.” Although I knew it would be easier for everyone if I said I had stolen them, I could not lie about myself.

  “Don’t lie to me. Maids steal all the time. You took my earrings!”

  “Are they missing now, madam?”

  For a moment Catharina looked confused, as much by my asking a question as by the question itself. She had obviously not checked her jewelry box since seeing the painting. She had no idea if the earrings were gone or not. But she did not like me asking the questions. “Quiet, thief. They’ll throw you in prison,” she hissed, “and you won’t see sunlight for years.” She winced again. Something was wrong with her.

  “But, madam—”

  “Catharina, you must not get yourself into a state,” he interrupted me. “Van Ruijven will take the painting away as soon as it is dry and you can put it from your mind.”

  He did not want me to speak either. It seemed no one did. I wondered why they had asked me upstairs at all when they were so afraid of what I might say.

  I might say, “What about the way he looked at me for so many hours while he painted this painting?” I might say, “What about your mother and your husband, who have gone behind your back and deceived you?”

  Or I might simply say, “Your husband touched me, here, in this room.”

  They did not know what I might say.

  Catharina was no fool. She knew the real matter was not the earrings. She wanted them to be, she tried to make them be so, but she could not help herself. She turned to her husband. “Why,” she asked, “have you never painted me?”

  As they gazed at each other it struck me that she was taller than he, and, in a way, more solid.

  “You and the children are not a part of this world,” he said. “You are not meant to be.”

  “And she is?” Catharina cried shrilly, jerking her head at me.

  He did not answer. I wished that Maria Thins and Cornelia and I were in the kitchen or the Crucifixion room, or out in the market. It was an affair for a man and his wife to discuss alone.

  “And with my earrings?”

  Again he was silent, which stirred Catharina even more than his words had. She began to shake her head so that her blond curls bounced around her ears. “I will not have this in my own house,” she declared. “I will not have it!” She looked around wildly. When her eyes fell on the palette knife a shiver ran through me. I took a step forward at the same time as she moved to the cupboard and grabbed the knife. I stopped, unsure of what she would do next.

  He knew, though. He knew his own wife. He moved with Catharina as she stepped up to the painting. She was quick but he was quicker—he caught her by the wrist as she plunged the diamond blade of the knife towards the painting. He stopped it just before the blade touched my eye. From where I stood I could see the wide eye, a flicker of earring he had just added, and the winking of the blade as it hovered before the painting. Catharina struggled but he held her wrist firmly, waiting for her to drop the knife. Suddenly she groaned. Flinging the knife away, she clutched her belly. The knife skidded across the tiles to my feet, then spun and spun, slower and slower, as we all stared at it. It came to a stop with the blade pointed at me.

  I was meant to pick it up. That was what maids were meant to do—pick up their master’s and mistress’s things and put them back in their place.

  I looked up and met his eye, holding his grey gaze for a long moment. I knew it was for the last time. I did not look at anyone else.

  In his eyes I thought I could see regret.

  I did not pick up the knife. I turned and walked from the room, down the stairs and through the doorway, pushing aside Tanneke. When I reached the street I did not look back at the children I knew must be sitting on the bench, nor at Tanneke, who would be frowning because I had pushed her, nor up at the windows, where he might be standing. I got to the street and I began to run. I ran down the Oude Langendijck and across the bridge into Market Square.

  Only thieves and children run.

  I reached the center of the square and stopped in the circle of tiles with the eight-pointed star in the middle. Each point indicated a direction I could take.

  I could go back to my parents.

  I could find Pieter at the Meat Hall and agree to marry him.

  I could go to van Ruijven’s house—he would take me in with a smile.

  I could go to van Leeuwenhoek and ask him to take pity on me.

  I could go to Rotterdam and search for Frans.

  I could go off on my own somewhere far away.

  I could go back to Papists’ Corner.

  I could go into the New Church and pray to God for guidance.

  I stood in the circle, turning round and round as I thought.

  When I made my choice, the choice I knew I had to make, I set my feet carefully along the edge of the point and went the way it told me, walking steadily.

  1676

  When I looked up and saw her I almost dropped my knife. I had not set eyes on her in ten years. She looked almost the same, though she had grown a little broader, and as well as the old pockmarks, her face now carried scars up one side—Maertge, who still came to see me from time to time, had told me of the accident, the mutton joint that spat hot oil.

  She had never been good at roasting meat.

  She was standing far enough away that it was not clear she had indeed come to see me. I knew, though, that this cou
ld be no chance. For ten years she had managed to avoid me in what was not a big town. I had not once run into her in the market or the Meat Hall, or along any of the main canals. But then, I did not walk along the Oude Langendijck.

  She approached the stall reluctantly. I set down my knife and wiped my bloody hands on my apron. “Hello, Tanneke,” I said calmly, as if I had only seen her a few days before. “How have you been keeping?”

  “Mistress wants to see you,” Tanneke said bluntly, frowning. “You’re to come to the house this afternoon.”

  It had been many years since someone had ordered me about in that tone. Customers asked for things, but that was different. I could refuse them if I didn’t like what I heard.

  “How is Maria Thins?” I asked, trying to remain polite. “And how is Catharina?”

  “As well as can be expected, given what’s happened.”

  “I expect they will manage.”

  “My mistress has had to sell some property, but she’s being clever with the arrangements. The children will be all right.” As in the past, Tanneke could not resist praising Maria Thins to anyone who would listen, even if it meant being too eager with details.

  Two women had come up and were standing behind Tanneke, waiting to be served. Part of me wished they were not there so that I could ask her more questions, lead her to give away other details, to tell me much more about so many things. But another part of me—the sensible part that I had held to now for many years—did not want to have anything to do with her. I did not want to hear.

  The women shifted from side to side as Tanneke stood solidly in front of the stall, still frowning but with a softer face. She pondered the cuts of meat laid out before her.

  “Would you like to buy something?” I asked.

  My question snapped her out of her stupor. “No,” she muttered.

  They bought their meat now from a stall at the far end of the Meat Hall. As soon as I began working alongside Pieter they had switched butchers—so abruptly that they did not even pay their bill. They still owed us fifteen guilders. Pieter never asked them for it. “It’s the price I have paid for you,” he sometimes teased. “Now I know what a maid is worth.”