Rembrandt's Mirror (25 page)

I'd never seen anyone weep like this. I held him until it stopped and then I lay with him, our heads touching. We'd entered the heart of stillness, the currents of life diverting around us. We were beyond time's reach.

And yet it flowed close by, licking at our sides, coaxing us into the stream once more.

His lips roused me. And then our breath kindled the fire that breathes God into all things. I unbuttoned his shirt and emerged from mine. I sat in his lap, folding my legs around his waist. I felt his hardness. I could have him now, in his fullness. I lifted myself up and brought him inside me. He made a sound – a groan – but let me rule him until I found my pleasure.

After a while I slowed our doing, breathing quietude, always with him alive in me. Then a cusping from the stillness, rousing us again. A spreading of sensation, of him, far beyond his cock, into my breath, my blood, my heart. He rocked us vigorously, back and forth, back and forth.

The sun burning behind white wings, setting them on fire. Gone in an instant, leaving me – the sky.

PART III

Fifteen years later

Self-Portrait

Rozengracht, Jordaan, July 1663

I sat in the plush chair, staring at the back of the half-finished canvas on the easel. An incongruous thing without him. When would he be back?

Cornelia was still playing in the kitchen, judging by the clattering sounds. She could not understand why I wouldn't allow her to be with her friends, no matter how carefully I explained the danger. She was eight years old, but in the absence of playmates had resorted once more to stacking pots into precarious towers or making a ‘soup' from onion peelings, bits of peat and scrapings of dried oil paint that her father had given her. There were more hours in the day than any of us knew how to fill, except for Rembrandt who always had his work. I got up and looked out of the window. A few moored boats were bobbing on the canal. The trees were beginning to look a little tatty even though it was still the midst of summer. The world looked as if it was obscured by layers of darkened varnish and yet I'd only cleaned the windows two weeks ago.

I heard the rattling of wheels and the tolling of the bell, by now
a daily occurrence, warning people not to come near. On the other side of the canal was the death cart piled with bodies, some of them naked. Lately the heap was so high that I feared the bodies would fall off. One of the men walked in front of the cart, swinging his arm, clanging the bell; the other led the horse.

They came to a halt at the house opposite. The letter ‘P' gleamed white on the door. It did not stop them. They entered the house and emerged only moments later with a body, one man holding the wrists, the other the ankles. The corpse looked very thin; they all did. It looked to be a young man. He was clad in nothing but a nightshirt. They swung him back and forth and then, with a big heave, threw him on the cart, on top of the other bodies. He landed haphazardly, one arm under his torso, the other to the side, like a doll cast aside by a child. My eyes returned to the house. There was the ghost of a woman's face behind a first-floor window. Had it been her son, her husband? She pressed her palm flat against the glass as the cart carried on, jostling its cargo of loved ones towards the pits.

The weather had been very hot, causing the distemper to thrive, sending the weekly death count into the hundreds. Cornelia and I had stayed in the house at all times, but Rembrandt and Titus, now twenty-one, had to go out for supplies. The black market flourished as food was scarce; farmers did not like to come into town for fear of infection and they could easily sell their wares to those of means who had fled to the country. We had not. In order to eat we had to carry on with our business of buying and selling art. After Rembrandt's bankruptcy, Titus and I had set up an art dealership which employed
Rembrandt in order to prevent income from his work being claimed by creditors. Thankfully, demand for his art had never dried up entirely.

Despite the risks, a few brave and wealthy souls had remained in the city. They'd either chosen to stay because their livelihood, like ours, depended on the city or because they trusted the Almighty to preserve them. Or perhaps they simply did not object to joining the Lord sooner rather than later. I was surprised we still managed to sell art. Why would anyone, in times like this, be interested in luxuries? Perhaps there was no better way for the wealthy to reassure themselves of their longevity than to purchase an expensive painting to be enjoyed in the years to come.

Most of those who'd stayed had taken the precaution of barricading themselves in with months' worth of supplies, believing that the illness could be kept out by closed doors. I touched the glass with my hand and looked down at the street and the canal below. Different realms. Life inside, death outside.

A small boy, carrying a white stick, came out of one of the houses opposite, looking for playmates. It was Frank. Cornelia used to play with him. The stick signalled that he was living with someone who was stricken. I wondered if any other child would come to join him. No one did.

Rembrandt had experienced it all before in the thirties and told me that things would get better when the weather cooled. I fetched a bucket and cloth, rubbing away at the soot. It was satisfying to see it come off, as if I was removing impurities from the world. I longed
to taste some fresh air. As the cart had gone, I considered it safe to open the window. Instantly I was caressed by a warm breeze, although it did carry the fetid whiff from the canal. I leaned out over the windowsill, looking down at the water lapping at the foot of the building. The wet cloth was still in my hand and a big droplet of water slipped from it and sped towards the canal. It would hit the surface in an instant and be subsumed, gone but not gone. I smiled, and as I smiled I felt as if someone was watching me but the face behind the window opposite was gone. There was a slight pain in my head. I probably needed a rest as I'd been up since five. No doubt as soon as I drifted off to sleep Cornelia would come and wake me. I closed the window, went to the adjoining room and lay down on the bed. How sleepy I felt.

But pain barred my sleep. My thoughts started wandering. It was strange to think that we'd been in the Jordaan for five years already. Cornelia had not even been two when we were forced to leave the old house as a result of the bankruptcy. The Jordaan was a poor quarter, crowded and noisy, and the four of us were cramped into only four rooms, with the studio doubling as living quarters. And yet he painted, if anything, more prodigiously than before. If nothing else, our financial affairs had been simplified by losing everything. Although I wished Rembrandt would not waste so much time trying to find a way of getting some of Titus's inheritance back. Sometimes I thought that he and Geertje had more in common than they liked to think. But Geertje had fought her battles with virtually no means. She made up for it in determination. After her release, even though
she was seriously ill, she'd managed to have her name added to the list of his creditors. And it may well have been her comparatively modest claim that had caused his fragile edifice of loans and credit notes to collapse like one of Cornelia's badly constructed towers. Or perhaps he just could not stand the thought of this particular creditor holding him to account and so he decided to give the tower a good kick by filing for voluntary bankruptcy. That way he'd eluded his responsibilities – at least that's how his creditors saw it. Poor Geertje died before she could receive a stuiver from the auctions of his possessions.

The pain was getting worse and thoughts about the troubled past were not helping. I'd direct my thoughts to something pleasing: him painting. A few days after moving here he'd gone out and bought a mirror and a large canvas from money we'd hidden. And soon we'd settled into a daily routine. I spent many hours each afternoon with him in the studio, doing the accounts at the desk. He started a new portrait bigger than any I'd seen him do before. It was almost eleven foot by three. The mirror was propped up a few feet away from him so he could use himself as a model. He began by applying the grey-coloured ground. His arm and hand flowed from canvas to palette and back like the water brought in and out of the harbour by the tides. Over the next few weeks a formidable presence emerged: a man in golden robes, with a staff like a sceptre and the bearing of a king. However, on his head he wore no crown but a simple brown beret. His face and stature were Rembrandt's and yet his golden attire made
him look so unlike the grey-haired man in painter's garb that served as a model.

For a few weeks I watched the enormous portrait come into being from a distance. Then one afternoon I got up and looked over Rembrandt's shoulder to see what he saw in the mirror. There was his dear familiar face in deep concentration. It was then that I noticed – I think for the first time – that he had the face of an old man.

I looked at the canvas. He'd used his face most honestly; there was the slack skin around his eyes and cheek, and the pallid flesh tones were rendered with cruel accuracy. And yet the impression conveyed by the king was one of absolute triumph. Yes, the body was growing old, but the paint told a different story, as if the entire figure was imbued with the vigour of each brushstroke; the clothes were not merely ostentatious but almost alive, the large hands chiselled, sharp. As if to say, there's more that animates a man than the youth of his flesh. The paint had been placed with supreme self-belief. As if he'd felt the need to put his brush against the Reaper's scythe and won.

I watched his hand at work; and it seemed to me, as it dragged lead white across the sleeve of the robe, that not only was it investing the canvas with a life of its own but making it into something more than a portrait of himself: a mirror to each and every soul who cared to look at it.

We'll be fine, I thought, there'll always be buyers for this.

*

The pain in the end forced me to abandon these memories. Titus and Rembrandt were both still out. Cornelia was downstairs but I did not want to call her in case this was the sickness. It could be something else of course. I'd had headaches before, but not like this. If only he'd come back soon. I'd ask him if headaches were a symptom of the distemper. He'd know.

I adjusted my position, but the slightest movement caused a stabbing pain in my head. I wanted a drink but could barely move. I decided to cool my forehead with the cloth from the bucket. I kept low, crawling on all fours, dragging the bucket and cloth back to the bed, and then put the filthy wet cloth on my forehead. It helped a little.

Finally I heard the front door open and called for him. His step paused and then quickened up the stairs.

‘What is it?' he asked, his voice wavering.

‘My head's in agony. I don't know why.' The sound of my voice was splitting my head.

‘Have you exhausted yourself?'

I tried to speak quietly and with few words. ‘I don't know. Nothing unusual. The pain's getting unbearable. Call a physician, please.'

‘It's risky,' he said.

‘Why?'

‘Physicians visit plague victims, they often carry the infection and also . . .'

He did not continue.

‘What?'

‘Well, they might report you – wrongly report you – as being infected. If our house gets marked we won't be able to sell a thing.'

‘What if I am?' I thought of the unspeakable screams we heard every day from houses nearby. One man had been in such agony that he'd roared almost incessantly all night. I'd lain awake pressing my hands to my ears. At last he'd fallen quiet and in the morning I'd seen his body thrown on the cart. I imagined my own body lying on the corpses, wearing nothing but a shift.

I wanted to take Rembrandt's hand but then I paused for fear of passing the sickness to him.

The ache in my head pinned me down as if someone had driven a giant nail right through my skull and into the bed frame. Then it was as if something icy cold flowed in my veins. I wanted to see his face but I could no longer open my eyes. I felt an urge to scream and flee the house. It was said that sometimes the fear killed people before the disease. Those were the lucky ones.

He must have noticed my quiet distress, for I heard him coming closer to the bed.

‘No,' I said, holding my arm outstretched, my eyes still closed.

But he took my hand and I felt the warmth of his. ‘Don't be silly, Rika.'

Silly was good. A word from a world of minor worries.

Then he added quietly, ‘It can't be.'

‘Why can't it be?' I managed to half-open my eyes.

‘It will be fine. You did not leave the house,' he said.

Then I remembered the all-important question. ‘Headache, is that a symptom?'

He looked at me and then away.

‘Is it?' I cried.

‘It's also the symptom of the common headache and a dozen other illnesses.'

‘Fever, do I have a fever?'

He put his hand on my forehead. ‘Yes, I think you do. Are you thirsty? Of course you are.' He saw the dirty cloth. ‘I'll get you water and a fresh cloth.'

He patted my hand. ‘Don't worry, people still get ill with all the usual ailments and recover. It could be from the food. Maybe something is spoiled. You cannot trust the merchants – they try to flog anything, for folk are desperate.'

He got up to leave.

‘Did Titus come back with you?'

‘Yes.'

‘I don't want Cornelia or Titus in here until we know.'

He nodded.

After he'd gone I thought of Saskia. I didn't want him to have to see me like this. My body was boiling. I had not asked him about other symptoms. I knew that swellings were a sure sign and then there were ‘tokens'. I'd heard about them when I was a child. People had whispered that so-and-so had tokens and I knew they would die. The word was both intriguing and terrifying. Tokens of what? Something too grizzly to imagine.

He returned and held out a mug of diluted beer.

‘Please put it on the table. Don't come near,' I said. ‘We must be careful, for Cornelia's sake. She'll need you.'

‘And she'll have you too,' he said, and sat down on the edge of the bed, ignoring my request to stay away. Then he helped me drink.

‘Many a nurse does not fall ill despite touching the sick.'

‘And many a nurse does,' I said.

‘It's not the plague, Rika.'

Plague, did he have to use that word? His denials were reassuring but the throbbing in my skull was not. For Titus and Cornelia's sakes we could not afford to delude ourselves; perhaps he could still flee with them.

‘Tell me the symptoms,' I said.

He stared into space as if struggling to remember. ‘A high fever or shuddering cold, along with vomiting, headaches and dizziness.'

‘Tell me how it progresses.'

‘Usually visible marks start to appear – buboes, blisters or spots.'

‘And after that?'

‘Rika, please, what good is this? You're only frightening yourself.'