The Anatomy Lesson (18 page)

Gerrit’s accident made me want it even more. I was tormented each night in the barn by the thought that, as a consequence of the accident, I should need to stay at home at the mill and work as all my forebears had as a laborer and a tradesman dealing in grain. Losing the chance to be the painter I knew I must be.

But I was lucky: Gerrit’s fever broke. The infection abated. The arm would be saved. There was a muted celebration in our house, everyone walking carefully across the floorboards and being utterly polite in case anything would disturb our good fortune.

My mother filled me in on the plans that had been arranged: Adriaen and Willem would both take leave from their jobs for another month to work at home through the summer. It had been decided that I would spend only a few more days at Weddesteeg before I returned to my apprenticeship. My elder brothers could manage until Gerrit was ready to take his rightful place beside my father again.

Greatly relieved by this turn of events and the consideration that had been given to my artistic progress, I wanted to prove to my father and brother that I would always do my part. I awoke at dawn and joined Cornelis in the mill, offering to crank and shovel and grade the wheat, or whatever else was needed.

My father and brother tolerated me through the morning, but by noon I sensed something wrong. I did not know if I had done my
chores poorly or whether I worked too slowly, or what irked them. I tried even harder, begging for new tasks, demonstrating my willingness to help and improve.

At midafternoon, my mother sailed into the mill, flew directly at my father, and began to shout at him, as I’d never seen her do before in my life. All I heard was her constant refrain: “You promised me! You promised me!”

Finally she stormed back into the mill and toward me, as my father pleaded behind her, “I didn’t think one day could do any harm.” I thought my mother was about to reprimand me, but she grabbed my wrist and tore me away from the crank of the mill.

“You’re a good boy, my son,” she said. “You will be rewarded in heaven for trying to be a help. But your father gave me his word that he would not let you come anywhere near this mill from now on.”

I really did not understand why she’d sought this absurd promise. I was a Van Rijn son, destined to take my turn at that crank. “But, Mother,” I said, “I
must
help.”

“Look what happened to Gerrit,” she said, softening her tone. “What if that happened to you?”

She reached out and took both my hands, holding each one by the thumb and cupping my palms over her fists. “These gentle hands,” she said, “are not going to be broken in a mill.” She drew my left hand toward her lips and kissed the palm, then did the same with the right—each a benediction.

I rubbed my eyes, feeling the fullness of those orbs through the thin shield of my lids. When I blinked back to sight, tiny pink and green
dots clustered in my vision like gnats. There were the two hands. One amputated, one whole.

Here I was, in Amsterdam. Gerrit was dead, buried six months ago in Leiden, just about the time I moved here to run the academy. My brother had gone on to work the mill, but every day for him had been painful.

I put down my charcoal. My gaze continued to wander the body, like a traveler in an exotic land. Beyond the arms, past the severed limb. I rolled back the muslin and saw that the rest of the body was badly scarred: he had flogging scars on his shoulders and sides. I put down my pad and gently raised one shoulder off his bed of ice for just a moment. He was lighter than I imagined, but touching him seemed too much of a violation, and I let him down as quickly as I’d raised him. In that brief moment, though, I could see that the scars must have run the whole length of his back. They were hard, raw things, these scars—like carvings in a tree trunk, only raised rather than incised. I thought of the old tree and how it stands, in spite of these carvings, bearing those human cruelties with grace.

There were brands upon his neck and shoulders, both front and back. His stomach, though cleaner than his chest, had marks where he’d been stabbed. I imagined what kind of knife did those: the makeshift blades men fashion in jails, I thought. Some men wear their scars as badges of honor. I’ve seen university boys in Leiden who proudly cut their shirts to display their jousting scars. There are young men who seek to gain scars on their chin and neck. To toughen their flesh. To show they are men.

Leonardo wrote of
il concetto dell’anima
, the intention of the mind, revealed through the external elements—that the body is the house of the soul, and we can see into its inner chambers by way of its
facade. If that is true, this man’s soul was a house that was wrecked and sinking, discolored and chipped, the whole of the structure tipping to one side.

At last, I drew back the whole muslin and got a good look at his face. His eyes were closed, his jaw was slack, and his lips were dry and cracked. His beard was neat and his face clean. After imagining all the pain that had been inflicted on his body, I was surprised when I saw his face. It was at peace. His gaze was serene. There was no tension or sorrow or fear or pain. He was, you might say, a man without a ravaged body. A man given to complete tranquility.

I thought again about Mantegna’s picture
The Lamentation of Christ
. And I thought again of my commission. The first glimpse of an idea for the Tulp painting came to me then. The trigger of inspiration: What if I would include more than just the arm of the dead man? What if I would paint the whole man? And no one in front of him to obscure him.

Yes, the whole corpse, in the center of the frame—at the base of the pyramid, even. To not just show the doctors and their proud moment with a single severed limb, but to show the man whose body they took for this endeavor. It was a man who had been scarred and punished, who had been beaten and executed, but whose face still showed this: this state of grace.

I have told you that I’m not a religious man, but that’s not strictly true. I never attend church, and I don’t care for men of the cloth. But I was taught the stories of the Bible and I regard them as a kind of human truth. I believe there are men who are tested with terrible losses like Job and men who are blinded by birds like Tobit. Real men, men we know. The Bible is not an historical text to me. It is a text for the living, which tells what happens to those of us right
here, right now, among merchants and clergy and shopkeepers of Amsterdam. Among the rapscallions and butchers.

But men who suffer greatly, receive punishments beyond necessity, and yet they go on, continue to hope, to love, to spread their gospel. To go on until they are cut down. Christ was crucified among thieves. He died as a common criminal. Then could not a common criminal also be Christ?

I was excited by this revelation. Even there in the cold, dark, hateful tomb. Even there with the dead man in front of me. I began to become enlivened with this idea. I drew up my charcoal again to draw the face. To capture that sense of deep serenity.

As I was starting to sketch the face, I noticed another, smaller, more faded scar on his neck. I moved closer and saw that it was another brand but not the kind the executioner applies with hot pokers at the stake. Something more exact: something that looked like a prickly clover with a circle in its center. I knew that marking. It was the signature of the scabbard maker from Leiden, a man called Adriaenszoon.

It was no use trying to sketch after that. I used my handkerchief to wipe my brow—as I was suddenly sweating profusely—and grabbed my cloak and gloves, stuffing my sketch pad and charcoal back into my pockets. I threw the muslin back over the body, making sure to shroud his feet, his arms, the sides of his torso, his legs, tucking him in like a child. Then I fled the chamber into the daylight.

Outside, I drew the cold air deeply into my lungs, watching my breath on each exhale. Mercifully, the sun was still shining on the square. It was bitter cold when the wind blew, coming straight across the Nieuwmarkt from the IJ, but there was the sun, and the market was blessedly full of life. I drank in the sights and sounds—
all the swirling, beautiful activity—as if it were nourishment. I pushed my way into the crowded row of the fish stalls, where the air was thick with the stench of brine, and I inhaled.

I moved aimlessly along through the browsers and buyers, into the row of cheese sellers and bakers, and beyond them toward the vegetable stands and fishmongers. In a gap somewhere in the middle of the market, I turned around and looked at the building from which I’d just fled.

The Waag stood mutely like a proud castle in the middle of the bustle, its brick walls brilliant in the sunlight, its high turrets dusted with snow. Soon, all of Amsterdam would arrive here for the winter fest. All the guild nobles would come for the anatomy lesson and the crowds would descend for the torchlight parade.

I resolved that I needed to walk. Not just to be carried along through the streets but also to let the cold air fill me, to feel its sharp sting in my chest. I headed straight toward the wharf, letting the wind blow into my face. The sky was full of circling gulls, white and gray. The canal was dotted with black coots. Out beyond, the harbor was awash with ship masts. I walked, knowing I would walk for a long time.

I made it to Amsterdam by dint of my sharp nose, for all scents led toward the city. I wandered around, gaping at the spices atop the carts along the wharves, staring at the trollops on the quays, coveting the boats in the canals, sampling every distiller’s gin. I loved the constant tolling of the church bells all around me, the thousands of seagulls and pigeons everywhere overhead, the open windows presenting wine-filled goblets and plentiful fruit platters and cheeses of every color and crust, fine art, and silver. Even with all the trollops and brigands, the garbage and the foul stench of the canals, Amsterdam was a thief’s paradise.

I stole, it seemed, whatever was loose: copper, tin, and silver spoons, platters, cups, plates, fruit, vases, tulips if they were cut, brushes, spurs, blankets, bear hides—even shoes once, off a horse’s hooves. And I sought alms, too, using so many tricks I’d learned along the way. Merchants here seemed to prefer to drop a coin into the palm of a devout mendicant than spend a day at penance in
church. I acted the part of a saintly beggar, so enthralled by my recitation of prayers that I bumped into the fruit stands in the old market or upset a hot tray of veal collops, and left with pockets bulging.

On one of the days I was on the new canals, I met Jacob the Walloon, another vagabond. I told him of my woes and he said, “At least you’re not living on the river. It’s ten wide with rogues. There’s so much pitiful flesh cramped side by side along the Amstel, it’s like slaving on a galleon.”

He put an arm over my shoulder and pulled me close like an old pal, guiding me away from the wharves and toward the town center. “You must be cold in that vest,” he said. “I know of a way we can get you a nice, warm, tailored coat. I bet you’d like that.”

Here’s how the scam worked: We’d pick a tailor’s shop where a gentleman was getting a fitting. He’d be disrobed while the tailor was taking his measurements, and his old coat would be hanging by the mirror, or maybe by the door. Jacob would run in and start shouting that he’d been robbed out in the street and that the thief had run past the shop. Usually, the gentleman would nobly chase out into the street, and the tailor would often follow. That’s when I’d slip in and grab what had been left unattended. I’d take only the one used cloak, throwing it on over my jerkin, and walk back into the street as if it was always mine.

The first time I did it, I got a heavy wool cloak lined with purple velvet. To think, someone wanted to replace that for something new. I loved the feeling of the cloak so much, the comfort and warmth, that I told Jacob I’d keep it for myself. But he said that he deserved half so we’d have to sell it and split the cash. That’s what we did—we went down to the market on the curve of the Amstel and sold it to a secondhand coat seller for six stivers, and each of us got three.

It went like that for a few weeks. We managed to steal a dozen coats from tailor’s shops and then we got more brazen and went down to the stock exchange, where men were tossing off their cloaks in the heat of trading and leaving them on the floor. We did that only once, and the second time we were jailed and hauled up with irons.