Girl With a Pearl Earring

  I did not like her tone, nor what she said. “Please wake him and tell him his sister is here,” I demanded. I sounded a bit like Catharina.

  The woman raised her eyebrows. “I didn’t know Frans came from a family so high on their throne you can see up their noses.” She disappeared and I wondered if she would bother to wake Frans. I sat on a low wall to wait. A family passed me on their way to church. The children, two girls and two boys, ran ahead of their parents, just as we had ours. I watched them until they passed from sight.

  Frans appeared at last, rubbing sleep from his face. “Oh, Griet,” he said. “I didn’t know if it would be you or Agnes. I suppose Agnes wouldn’t come so far on her own.”

  He didn’t know. I couldn’t keep it from him, not even to tell him gently.

  “Agnes has been struck by the plague,” I blurted out. “God help her and our parents.”

  Frans stopped rubbing his face. His eyes were red.

  “Agnes?” he repeated in confusion. “How do you know this?”

  “Someone found out for me.”

  “You haven’t seen them?”

  “There is a quarantine.”

  “A quarantine? How long has there been one?”

  “Ten days so far.”

  Frans shook his head angrily. “I heard nothing of this! Stuck in this factory day after day, nothing but white tiles as far as I can see. I think I may go mad.”

  “It’s Agnes you should be thinking of now.”

  Frans hung his head unhappily. He had grown taller since I’d seen him months before. His voice had deepened as well.

  “Frans, have you been going to church?”

  He shrugged. I could not bring myself to question him further.

  “I’m going now to pray for them all,” I said instead. “Will you come with me?”

  He did not want to, but I managed to persuade him—I did not want to face a strange church alone again. We found one not far away, and although the service did not comfort me, I prayed hard for our family.

  Afterwards Frans and I walked along the Schie River. We said little, but we each knew what the other was thinking—neither of us had heard of anyone recovering from the plague.

  One morning when Maria Thins was unlocking the studio for me she said, “All right, girl. Clear that corner today.” She pointed to the area that he was painting. I did not understand what she meant. “All the things on the table should go into the chests in the storeroom,” she continued, “except the bowl and Catharina’s powder-brush. I’ll take them with me.” She crossed to the table and picked up two of the objects I had spent so many weeks setting carefully in their places.

  When she saw my face Maria Thins laughed. “Don’t worry. He’s finished. He doesn’t need this now. When you’re done here make sure you dust all the chairs and set them out by the middle window. And open all the shutters.” She left, cradling the pewter bowl in her arms.

  Without the bowl and brush the tabletop was transformed into a picture I did not recognize. The letter, the cloth, the ceramic pot lay without meaning, as if someone had simply dropped them onto the table. Still, I could not imagine moving them.

  I put off doing so by going about my other duties. I opened all the shutters, which made the room very bright and strange, then dusted and mopped everywhere but the table. I looked at the painting for some time, trying to discover what was different about it that now made it complete. I had seen no changes in it over the past several days.

  I was still pondering when he entered. “Griet, you’ve not yet cleared up. Be quick about it—I’ve come to help you move the table.”

  “I’m sorry for being so slow, sir. It’s just—” He seemed surprised that I wanted to say something—“I’m so used to the objects where they are that I hate to move them.”

  “I see. I will help you, then.” He plucked the blue cloth from the table and held it out. His hands were very clean. I took the cloth from him without touching them and brought it to the window to shake out. Then I folded it and placed it in a chest in the storeroom. When I came back he had gathered up the letter and the black ceramic pot and stored them away. We moved the table to the side of the room and I set up the chairs by the middle while he moved the easel and painting to the corner where the scene had been set.

  It was odd to see the painting in the place of the setting. It all felt strange, this sudden movement and change after weeks of stillness and quiet. It was not like him. I did not ask him why. I wanted to look at him, to guess what he was thinking, but I kept my eyes on my broom, cleaning up the dust disturbed by the blue cloth.

  He left me and I finished up quickly, not wanting to linger in the studio. It was no longer comforting there.

  That afternoon van Ruijven and his wife visited. Tanneke and I were sitting on the bench in front while she showed me how to mend some lace cuffs. The girls had gone over to Market Square and were flying a kite near the New Church where we could see them, Maertge holding the end of the string while Cornelia tugged the kite up into the sky.

  I saw the van Ruijvens coming from a long way off. As they approached I recognized her from the painting and my brief meeting with her, and him as the moustached man with the white feather in his hat and the oily smile who had once escorted her to the door.

  “Look, Tanneke,” I whispered, “it’s the gentleman who admires the painting of you every day.”

  “Oh!” Tanneke blushed when she saw them. Straightening her cap and apron, she hissed, “Go and tell mistress they’re here!”

  I ran inside and found Maria Thins and Catharina with the sleeping baby in the Crucifixion room. “The van Ruijvens have come,” I announced.

  Catharina and Maria Thins removed their caps and smoothed their collars. Catharina held on to the table and pulled herself up. As they were leaving the room Maria Thins reached up and straightened one of Catharina’s tortoiseshell combs, which she only wore on special occasions.

  They greeted their guests in the front hall while I hovered in the hallway. As they moved to the stairs van Ruijven caught sight of me and paused for a moment.

  “Who’s this, then?”

  Catharina frowned at me. “Just one of the maids. Tanneke, bring us up some wine, please.”

  “Have the wide-eyed maid bring it to us,” van Ruijven commanded. “Come, my dear,” he said to his wife, who began climbing the stairs.

  Tanneke and I stood side by side, she annoyed, me dismayed by his attention.

  “Go on, then!” Catharina cried to me. “You heard what he said. Bring the wine.” She pulled herself heavily up the stairs after Maria Thins.

  I went to the little room where the girls slept, found glasses stored there, polished five of them with my apron and set them on a tray. Then I searched the kitchen for wine. I did not know where it was kept, for they did not drink wine often. Tanneke had disappeared in a huff. I feared the wine was kept locked away in one of the cupboards, and that I would have to ask Catharina for the key in front of everyone.

  Fortunately, Maria Thins must have anticipated this. In the Crucifixion room she left out a white jug with a pewter top, filled with wine. I set it on the tray and carried it up to the studio, first straightening my cap, collar and apron as the others had done.

  When I entered they were standing by the painting. “A jewel once again,” van Ruijven was saying. “Are you happy with it, my dear?” he addressed his wife.

  “Of course,” she answered. The light was shining through the windows onto her face and she looked almost beautiful.

  As I set the tray down on the table my master and I had moved that morning Maria Thins came over. “I’ll take that,” she whispered. “Off you go. Quickly, now.”

  I was on the stairs when I heard van Ruijven say, “Where’s that wide-eyed maid? Gone already? I wanted to have a proper look at her.”

  “Now, now, she’s nothing!” Catharina cried gaily. “It’s the painting you want to look at.”

  I went back to the front bench and
took my seat next to Tanneke, who wouldn’t say a word to me. We sat in silence, working on the cuffs, listening to the voices floating out from the windows above.

  When they came down again I slipped around the corner and waited, leaning against the warm bricks of a wall in the Molenpoort, until they were gone.

  Later a man servant from their house came and disappeared up to the studio. I did not see him go, as the girls had come back and wanted me to build up the fire so they could bake apples in it.

  The next morning the painting was gone. I had not had a chance to look at it one last time.

  That morning as I arrived at the Meat Hall I heard a man ahead of me say the quarantine had been lifted. I hurried to Pieter’s stall. Father and son were both there, and several people were waiting to be served. I ignored them and went straight up to Pieter the son. “Can you serve me quickly?” I said. “I must go to my family’s house. Just three pounds of tongue and three of sausages.”

  He stopped what he had been doing, ignoring the indignant sounds from the old woman he had been helping. “I suppose if I were young and smiled at you you’d do anything for me too,” she scolded as he handed the packages to me.

  “She’s not smiling,” Pieter replied. He glanced at his father, then handed me a smaller package. “For your family,” he said in a low voice.

  I did not even thank him—I snatched the package and ran.

  Only thieves and children run.

  I ran all the way home.

  My parents were sitting side by side on the bench, heads bowed. When I reached them I took my father’s hand and raised it to my cheek. I sat next to them and said nothing.

  There was nothing to be said.

  There followed a time when everything was dull. The things that had meant something—the cleanness of the laundry, the daily walk on errands, the quiet studio—lost importance, though they were still there, like bruises on the body that fade to hard lumps under the skin.

  It was at the end of the summer that my sister died. That autumn was rainy. I spent much of my time hanging laundry on racks indoors, shifting them closer to the fire, trying to dry the clothes before mildew took over but without scorching them.

  Tanneke and Maria Thins treated me kindly enough when they found out about Agnes. Tanneke managed to check her irritation for several days, though soon she began again to scold and sulk, leaving it to me to placate her. Maria Thins said little but took to cutting off her daughter when Catharina became sharp with me.

  Catharina herself seemed to know nothing of my sister, or did not show it. She was nearing her confinement, and as Tanneke had predicted she spent most of her time in bed, leaving the baby Johannes to Maertge’s charge. He was beginning to toddle about, and kept the girls busy.

  The girls did not know I had a sister and so would not understand that I could lose one. Only Aleydis seemed to sense that something was wrong. She sometimes came to sit by me, pushing her body close to mine like a pup burrowing into its mother’s fur for warmth. She comforted me in a simple way that no one else could.

  One day Cornelia came out to the courtyard where I was hanging up clothes. She held out an old doll to me. “We don’t play with this anymore,” she announced. “Not even Aleydis. Would you like to give it to your sister?” She made her eyes wide and innocent, and I knew she must have overheard someone mention Agnes’ death.

  “No, thank you,” was all I could say, almost choking on the words.

  She smiled and skipped away.

  The studio remained empty. He did not start another painting. He spent much of his time away from the house, either at the Guild or at Mechelen, his mother’s inn across the square. I still cleaned the studio, but it became like any other task, just another room to mop and dust.

  When I visited the Meat Hall I found it hard to meet Pieter the son’s eye. His kindness pained me. I should have returned it but did not. I should have been flattered but was not. I did not want his attention. I came to prefer being served by his father, who teased me but did not demand anything from me but to be critical of his meat. We ate fine meat that autumn.

  On Sundays I sometimes went to Frans’ factory and urged him to come home with me. He did twice, cheering my parents a little. Until a year before they’d had three children at home. Now they had none. When Frans and I were both there we reminded them of better times. Once my mother even laughed, before stopping herself with a shake of her head. “God has punished us for taking for granted our good fortune,” she said. “We must not forget that.”

  It was not easy visiting home. I found that after staying away those few Sundays during the quarantine, home had come to feel like a strange place. I was beginning to forget where my mother kept things, what kind of tiles lined the fireplace, how the sun shone in the rooms at different times of the day. After only a few months I could describe the house in Papists’ Corner better than my family’s.

  Frans especially found it hard to visit. After long days and nights at the factory he wanted to smile and laugh and tease, or at least to sleep. I suppose I coaxed him there hoping to knit our family together again. It was impossible, though. Since my father’s accident we had become a different family.

  When I came back one Sunday from my parents’, Catharina had begun her labor. I heard her groaning when I stepped inside the front door. I peeked into the great hall, which was darker than usual—the lower windows had been shuttered to give her privacy. Maria Thins was there with Tanneke and the midwife. When Maria Thins saw me she said, “Go look for the girls—I’ve sent them out to play. It won’t be long now. Come back in an hour.”

  I was glad to leave. Catharina was making a great deal of noise, and it did not seem right to listen to her in that state. I knew too that she would not want me there.

  I looked for the girls in their favorite place, the Beast Market round the corner from us, where livestock was sold. When I found them they were playing marbles and chasing one another. Baby Johannes tumbled after them—unsteady on his feet, he half walked, half crawled. It was not the kind of play we would have been allowed on a Sunday, but Catholics held different views.

  When Aleydis grew tired she came to sit with me. “Will Mama have the baby soon?” she asked.

  “Your grandmother said she would. We’ll go back in a bit and see them.”

  “Will Papa be pleased?”

  “I should think so.”

  “Will he paint more quickly now there’s another baby?”

  I did not answer. Catharina’s words were coming from a little girl’s mouth. I did not want to hear more.

  When we returned he was standing in the doorway. “Papa, your cap!” cried Cornelia. The girls ran up to him and tried to snatch off the quilted paternity cap he wore, its ribbons dangling below his ears. He looked both proud and embarrassed. I was surprised—he had become a father five times before, and I thought he would be used to it. There was no reason for him to be embarrassed.

  It is Catharina who wants many children, I thought then. He would rather be alone in his studio.

  But that could not be quite right. I knew how babies were made. He had his part to play, and he must have played it willingly. And as difficult as Catharina could be, I had often seen him look at her, touch her shoulder, speak to her in a low voice laced with honey.

  I did not like to think of him in that way, with his wife and children. I preferred to think of him alone in his studio. Or not alone, but with only me.

  “You have another brother, girls,” he said. “His name is Franciscus. Would you like to see him?” He led them inside while I hung back in the street, holding Johannes.

  Tanneke opened the shutters of the great hall’s lower windows and leaned out.

  “Is the mistress all right?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes. She makes a racket but there’s nothing behind it. She’s made to have babies—pops them out like a chestnut from its shell. Now come, master wants to say a prayer of thanks.”

  Though uncomfortable, I
could not refuse to pray with them. Protestants would have done the same after a good birth. I carried Johannes into the great hall, which was much lighter now and full of people. When I set him down he tottered over to his sisters, who were gathered around the bed. The curtains had been drawn back and Catharina lay propped against pillows, cradling the baby. Though exhausted, she was smiling, happy for once. My master stood near her, gazing down at his new son. Aleydis was holding his hand. Tanneke and the midwife were clearing away basins and bloody sheets while the new nurse waited near the bed.

  Maria Thins came in from one of the kitchens with some wine and three glasses on a tray. When she set them down he let go of Aleydis’ hand, stepped away from the bed, and he and Maria Thins kneeled. Tanneke and the midwife stopped what they were doing and kneeled as well. Then the nurse and children and I kneeled, Johannes squirming and crying out as Lisbeth forced him to sit.

  My master said a prayer to God, thanking Him for the safe delivery of Franciscus and for sparing Catharina. He added some Catholic phrases in Latin which I did not understand, but I did not mind much—he had a low, soothing voice that I liked to listen to.

  When he was done Maria Thins poured three glasses of wine and she and he and Catharina drank good health to the baby. Then Catharina handed the baby to the nurse, who put him to her breast.

  Tanneke signalled to me and we left the room to get bread and smoked herring for the midwife and the girls. “We’ll begin preparing for the birth feast now,” Tanneke remarked as we were setting things out. “Young mistress likes a big one. We’ll be run off our feet as usual.”

  The birth feast was the biggest celebration I was to witness in that house. We had ten days to prepare for it, ten days of cleaning and cooking. Maria Thins hired two girls for a week to help Tanneke with the food and me with the cleaning. My girl was slow witted but worked well as long as I told her exactly what to do and kept a close eye on her. One day we washed—whether they were clean already or not—all the tablecloths and napkins that would be needed for the feast, as well as all the clothes in the house—shirts, robes, bonnets, collars, handkerchiefs, caps, aprons. The linens took another day. Then we washed all the tankards, glasses, earthenware plates, jugs, copper pots, pancake pans, iron grills and spits, spoons, ladles, as well as those from the neighbors, who lent them for the occasion. We polished the brass and the copper and the silver. We took curtains down and shook them outside, and beat all the cushions and rugs. We polished the wood of the beds, the cupboards, the chairs and tables, the windowsills, until everything gleamed.