Girl With a Pearl Earring

  I did not laugh when he said this.

  I felt a tiny hand tugging at my dress and looked down. Little Frans had found me and was clinging to my skirt. I touched the top of his head, full of blond curls like his father’s. “There you are,” I said. “Where’s Jan and your grandmother?”

  He was too young to be able to tell me, but I then saw my mother and elder son coming through the stalls towards me.

  Tanneke looked back and forth between my sons and her face hardened. She darted a look at me full of blame, but she did not say what she was thinking. She stepped back, treading on the foot of the woman directly behind her. “Mind you come this afternoon,” she said, then turned away before I could reply.

  They had eleven children now—Maertge and market gossip had kept count for me. Yet Catharina had lost the baby she delivered that day of the painting and the palette knife. She gave birth in the studio itself—she could not get down the stairs to her own bed. The baby had come a month early and was small and sickly. It died not long after its birth feast. I knew that Tanneke blamed me for the death.

  Sometimes I pictured his studio with Catharina’s blood on the floor and wondered how he was able still to work there.

  Jan ran to his little brother and pulled him into a corner, where they began to kick a bone back and forth between them.

  “Who was that?” my mother asked. She had never seen Tanneke.

  “A customer,” I replied. I often shielded her from things I knew would disturb her. Since my father’s death she had become skittish as a wild dog about the new, the different, the changed.

  “She didn’t buy anything,” my mother remarked.

  “No. We didn’t have what she wanted.” I turned to wait on the next customer before my mother could ask more questions.

  Pieter and his father appeared, carrying a side of beef between them. They flung it onto the table behind their stall and took up their knives. Jan and little Frans left their bone and ran over to watch. My mother stepped back—she had never grown used to the sight of so much meat. “I’ll be getting along,” she said, picking up her shopping pail.

  “Can you watch the boys this afternoon? I have some errands to run.”

  “Where are you going?”

  I raised my eyebrows. I had complained before to my mother that she asked too many questions. She had grown old and suspicious when there was usually nothing to be suspicious of. Now, though, when there was something to hide from her, I found myself strangely calm. I did not answer her question.

  It was easier with Pieter. He simply glanced up at me from his work. I nodded at him. He had decided long ago not to ask questions, even though he knew I had thoughts sometimes that I did not speak of. When he removed my cap on our wedding night and saw the holes in my ears he did not ask.

  The holes were long healed now. All that was left of them were tiny buds of hard flesh I could feel only if I pressed the lobes hard between my fingers.

  It had been two months since I had heard the news. For two months now I could walk around Delft without wondering if I would see him. Over the years I had occasionally spotted him in the distance, on his way to or from the Guild, or near his mother’s inn, or going to van Leeuwenhoek’s house, which was not far from the Meat Hall. I never went near him, and I was not sure if he ever saw me. He strode along the streets or across the square with his eyes fixed on a distant point—not rudely or deliberately, but as if he were in a different world.

  At first it was very hard for me. When I saw him I froze wherever I was, my chest tightened, and I could not get my breath. I had to hide my response from Pieter the father and son, from my mother, from the curious market gossips.

  For a long time I thought I might still matter to him.

  After a while, though, I admitted to myself that he had always cared more for the painting of me than for me.

  It grew easier to accept this when Jan was born. My son made me turn inward to my family, as I had done when I was a child, before I became a maid. I was so busy with him that I did not have time to look out and around me. With a baby in my arms I stopped walking round the eight-pointed star in the square and wondering what was at the end of each of its points. When I saw my old master across the square my heart no longer squeezed itself like a fist. I no longer thought of pearls and fur, nor longed to see one of his paintings.

  Sometimes on the streets I ran into the others—Catharina, the children, Maria Thins. Catharina and I turned our faces from each other. It was easier that way. Cornelia looked through me with disappointed eyes. I think she had hoped to destroy me completely. Lisbeth was kept busy looking after the boys, who were too young to remember me. And Aleydis was like her father—her grey eyes looked about her without settling on anything near to her. After a time there were other children I did not know, or knew only by their father’s eyes or their mother’s hair.

  Of all of them, only Maria Thins and Maertge acknowledged me, Maria Thins nodding briefly when she saw me, Maertge sneaking away to the Meat Hall to speak with me. It was Maertge who brought me my things from the house—the broken tile, my prayer book, my collars and caps. It was Maertge who told me over the years of his mother’s death and of how he had to take over the running of her inn, of their growing debt, of Tanneke’s accident with the oil.

  It was Maertge who announced gleefully one day, “Papa has been painting me in the manner in which he painted you. Just me, looking over my shoulder. They are the only paintings he has done like that, you know.”

  Not exactly in the manner, I thought. Not exactly. I was surprised, though, that she knew of the painting. I wondered if she had seen it.

  I had to be careful with her. For a long time she was but a girl, and I did not feel it right to ask too much about her family. I had to wait patiently for her to pass me tidbits of news. By the time she was old enough to be more frank with me, I was not so interested in her family now that I had my own.

  Pieter tolerated her visits but I knew she made him uneasy. He was relieved when Maertge married a silk merchant’s son and began to see less of me, and bought her meat from another butcher.

  Now after ten years I was being called back to the house I had run from so abruptly.

  Two months before, I had been slicing tongue at the stall when I heard a woman waiting her turn say to another, “Yes, to think of dying and leaving eleven children and the widow in such debt.”

  I looked up and the knife cut deep into my palm. I did not feel the pain of it until I had asked, “Who are you speaking of?” and the woman replied, “The painter Vermeer is dead.”

  I scrubbed my fingernails especially hard when I finished at the stall. I had long ago given up always scrubbing them thoroughly, much to Pieter the father’s amusement. “You see, you’ve grown used to stained fingers as you got used to the flies,” he liked to say. “Now you know the world a little better you can see there’s no reason always to keep your hands clean. They just get dirty again. Cleanliness is not as important as you thought back when you were a maid, eh?” Sometimes, though, I crushed lavender and hid it under my chemise to mask the smell of meat that seemed to hang about me even when I was far from the Meat Hall.

  There were many things I’d had to get used to.

  I changed into another dress, a clean apron, and a newly starched cap. I still wore my cap in the same way, and I probably looked much as I had the day I first set out to work as a maid. Only now my eyes were not so wide and innocent.

  Although it was February, it was not bitterly cold. Many people were out in Market Square—our customers, our neighbors, people who knew us and would note my first step onto the Oude Langendijck in ten years. I would have to tell Pieter eventually that I had gone there. I did not know yet if I would need to lie to him about why.

  I crossed the square, then the bridge leading from it over the canal to the Oude Langendijck. I did not hesitate, for I did not want to bring more attention to myself. I turned briskly and walked up the street. It was not far??
?in half a minute I was at the house—but it felt long to me, as if I were travelling to a strange city I had not visited for many years.

  Because it was a mild day, the door was open and there were children sitting on the bench—four of them, two boys and two girls, lined up as their older sisters had been ten years before when I first arrived. The eldest was blowing bubbles, as Maertge had, though he laid down his pipe the moment he saw me. He looked to be ten or eleven years old. After a moment I realized he must be Franciscus, though I did not see much of the baby in him that I had known. But then, I had not thought much of babies when I was young. The others I did not recognize, except for seeing them occasionally in town with the older girls. They all stared at me.

  I addressed myself to Franciscus. “Please tell your grandmother that Griet is here to see her.”

  Franciscus turned to the older of the two girls. “Beatrix, go and find Maria Thins.”

  The girl jumped up obediently and went inside. I thought of Maertge and Cornelia’s scramble to announce me so long ago and smiled to myself.

  The children continued to stare at me. “I know who you are,” Franciscus declared.

  “I doubt you can remember me, Franciscus. You were but a baby when I knew you.”

  He ignored my remark—he was following his own thought. “You’re the lady in the painting.”

  I started, and Franciscus smiled in triumph. “Yes, you are, though in the painting you’re not wearing a cap, but a fancy blue and yellow headcloth.”

  “Where is this painting?”

  He seemed surprised that I should ask. “With van Ruijven’s daughter, of course. He died last year, you know.”

  I had heard this news at the Meat Hall with secret relief. Van Ruijven had never sought me out once I’d left, but I had always feared that he would appear again one day with his oily smile and groping hands.

  “How did you see the painting if it is at van Ruijven’s?”

  “Papa asked to have the painting on a short loan,” Franciscus explained. “The day after Papa died Mama sent it back to van Ruijven’s daughter.”

  I rearranged my mantle with shaking hands. “He wanted to see the painting again?” I managed to say in a small voice.

  “Yes, girl.” Maria Thins had come to stand in the doorway. “It didn’t help matters here, I can tell you. But by that time he was in such a state that we didn’t dare say no, not even Catharina.” She looked exactly the same—she would never age. One day she would simply go to sleep and not wake up.

  I nodded to her. “I’m sorry for your loss and your troubles, madam.”

  “Yes, well, life is a folly. If you live long enough, nothing is surprising.”

  I did not know how to respond to such words, so I simply said what I knew to be true. “You wanted to see me, madam.”

  “No, it’s Catharina who is to see you.”

  “Catharina?” I could not keep the surprise from my voice.

  Maria Thins smiled sourly. “You never did learn to keep your thoughts to yourself, did you, girl? Never mind, I expect you get by well enough with your butcher, if he doesn’t ask too much of you.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, then shut it.

  “That’s right. You’re learning. Now, Catharina and van Leeuwenhoek are in the great hall. He is the executor of the will, you see.”

  I did not see. I wanted to ask her what she meant, and why van Leeuwenhoek was there, but I did not dare. “Yes, madam,” I said simply.

  Maria Thins chuckled briefly. “The most trouble we’ve ever had with a maid,” she muttered, shaking her head before disappearing inside.

  I stepped into the front hallway. There were still paintings hanging everywhere on the walls, some I recognized, others I did not. I half expected to see myself among the still lifes and seascapes, but of course I was not there.

  I glanced at the stairs leading up to his studio and stopped, my chest tightening. To stand in the house again, his room above me, was more than I thought I could bear, even though I knew he was not there. For so many years I had not let myself think of the hours I spent grinding colors at his side, sitting in the light of the windows, watching him look at me. For the first time in two months I became fully aware that he was dead. He was dead and he would paint no more paintings. There were so few—I had heard that he never did paint faster, as Maria Thins and Catharina had wanted him to.

  It was only when a girl poked her head out from the Crucifixion room that I forced myself to take a deep breath and walk down the hallway towards her. Cornelia was now about the age I had been when I first became a maid. Her red hair had darkened over the ten years and was simply dressed, without ribbons or braids. She had grown less menacing to me over time. In fact I almost pitied her—her face was twisted by a cunning that gave a girl her age an ugly look.

  I wondered what would happen to her, what would happen to them all. Despite Tanneke’s confidence in her mistress’s ability to arrange things, it was a big family, with a big debt. I had heard in the market that they had not paid their bill to the baker in three years, and after my master’s death the baker had taken pity on Catharina and accepted a painting to settle the debt. For a brief moment I wondered if Catharina was going to give me a painting too, to settle her debt with Pieter.

  Cornelia pulled her head back into the room and I stepped into the great hall. It had not changed much since I had worked there. The bed still had its green silk curtains, now faded. The ivory-inlaid cupboard was there, and the table and Spanish leather chairs, and the paintings of his family and hers. Everything appeared older, dustier, more battered. The red and brown floor tiles were cracked or missing in places.

  Van Leeuwenhoek was standing with his back to the door, his hands clasped behind him, studying a painting of soldiers drinking in a tavern. He turned around and bowed to me, still the kind gentleman.

  Catharina was seated at the table. She was not wearing black as I had expected. I did not know if she meant to taunt me, but she wore the yellow mantle trimmed with ermine. It too had a faded look about it, as if it had been worn too many times. There were badly repaired rents in the sleeves, and the fur had been eaten away in places by moths. Nonetheless, she was playing her part as the elegant lady of the house. She had dressed her hair carefully and was wearing powder and her pearl necklace.

  She was not wearing the earrings.

  Her face did not match her elegance. No amount of powder could mask her rigid anger, her reluctance, her fear. She did not want to meet with me, but she had to.

  “Madam, you wished to see me.” I thought it best to address myself to her, though I looked at van Leeuwenhoek as I spoke.

  “Yes.” Catharina did not gesture to a chair, as she would have to another lady. She let me stand.

  There was an awkward silence as she sat and I stood, waiting for her to begin. She was clearly struggling to speak. Van Leeuwenhoek shifted from one foot to the other.

  I did not try to help her. There seemed to be no way that I could. I watched her hands shuffle some papers on the table, run along the edges of the jewelry box at her elbow, pick up the powder-brush and set it down again. She wiped her hands on a white cloth.

  “You know that my husband died two months ago?” she began at last.

  “I had heard, madam, yes. I was very sorry to hear of it. May God keep him.”

  Catharina did not seem to take in my feeble words. Her mind was elsewhere. She picked up the brush again and ran her fingers through its bristles.

  “It was the war with France, you see, that brought us to this state. Not even van Ruijven wanted to buy paintings then. And my mother had problems collecting her rents. And he had to take over the mortgage on his mother’s inn. So it is no wonder things grew so difficult.”

  The last thing I had expected from Catharina was an explanation of why they ran into debt. Fifteen guilders after all this time is not so very much, I wanted to say. Pieter has let it go. Think no more of it. But I dared not interrupt her.

>   “And then there were the children. Do you know how much bread eleven children eat?” She looked up at me briefly, then back down at the powder-brush.

  One painting’s worth over three years, I answered silently. One very fine painting, to a sympathetic baker.

  I heard the click of a tile in the hallway, and the rustle of a dress being stilled by a hand. Cornelia, I thought, still spying. She too is taking her place in the drama.

  I waited, holding back the questions I wanted to ask.

  Van Leeuwenhoek finally spoke. “Griet, when a will has been drawn up,” he began in his deep voice, “an inventory of the family’s possessions must be taken to establish the assets while considering the debts. However, there are private matters that Catharina would like to attend to before this is done.” He glanced at Catharina. She continued to play with the powder-brush.

  They do not like each other still, I thought. They would not even be in the same room together if they could help it.

  Van Leeuwenhoek picked up a piece of paper from the table. “He wrote this letter to me ten days before he died,” he said to me. He turned to Catharina. “You must do this,” he ordered, “for they are yours to give, not his or mine. As executor of his will I should not even be here to witness this, but he was my friend, and I would like to see his wish granted.”

  Catharina snatched the paper from his hand. “My husband was not a sick man, you know,” she addressed herself to me. “He was not really ill until a day or two before his death. It was the strain of the debt that drove him into a frenzy.”

  I could not imagine my master in a frenzy.

  Catharina looked down at the letter, glanced at van Leeuwenhoek, then opened her jewelry box. “He asked that you have these.” She picked out the earrings and after a moment’s hesitation laid them on the table.

  I felt faint and closed my eyes, touching the back of the chair lightly with my fingers to steady myself.

  “I have not worn them again,” Catharina declared in a bitter tone. “I could not.”