Girl with a Pearl Earring (10 page)

Several days passed when I bought meat from him, or passed by his stall after I had bought fish, and he simply shook his head. Then one day he looked up and looked away, and I knew what he would say. I just did not know who.

I had to wait until he finished with several customers. I felt so sick I wanted to sit down, but the floor was speckled with blood.

At last Pieter the son took off his apron and came over. “It is your sister, Agnes,” he said softly. “She is very ill.”

“And my parents?”

“They stay well, so far.”

I did not ask what risk he had gone to in order to find out for me. “Thank you, Pieter,” I whispered. It was the first time I had spoken his name.

I looked into his eyes and saw kindness there. I also saw what I had feared—expectation.

On Sunday I decided to visit my brother. I did not know how much he knew of the quarantine or of Agnes. I left the house early and walked to his factory, which was outside the city walls not far from the Rotterdam Gate. Frans was still asleep when I arrived. The woman who answered at the gate laughed when I asked for him. “He’ll be asleep for hours yet,” she said. “They sleep all day on Sundays, the apprentices. It’s their day off.”

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.