44
Jan
Put a curb on thy desires if thou wouldst not fall into some disorder.
—ARISTOTLE
Darkness has fallen. Rain lashes at the window. It has been seven hours now and still no word. Jan does not expect a message for some time yet, but he can almost feel the people in this city who wait, poised to go into action. Maria’s labor has lit a touch paper.
Seven hours! How time drags, but labors can take double this time. Triple. His mother told him that he took two days to struggle into this world and in doing so nearly killed her. He longs to go to the house in the Herengracht, to see if everything is going according to plan. Without seeing for himself he can scarcely believe that it is happening. His earlier anxiety has been replaced by a sense of unreality.
His studio, too, looks unfamiliar. He has packed up in readiness to leave. His paintings, wrapped in sacking, are stacked along the wall ready to be delivered to Hendrick Uylenburgh, the dealer, who will sell them and forward the money. Jan is only keeping his drawing books and his paintings of Sophia. They are packed into his trunk, ready for the voyage. Also in the trunk are his own clothes and two of Sophia’s dresses, smuggled out of the house.
In two days he and Sophia will be gone. Maria’s timing is perfect. Tomorrow he will discharge his debts; on the fifteenth, at dawn, they will set sail. It has all been successful so far—all but the final gamble upon which it hinges.
Jan cuts a slice of cheese, splits open a roll and eats. He is alone. Jacob left a week earlier, still rigid with fury, slamming the door behind him. Nowadays Gerrit only pops in occasionally. He has been phlegmatic about Jan’s departure. He has always helped out at the local tavern heaving barrels, and he is now in his bumbling way working there full-time. Jan is fond of his servant, who has been loyal to him, in his manner. When he gets his hands on the money, before he sails, he will pay Gerrit off handsomely.
Lightning flashes. Jan jumps. Thunder crackles, with a sound like tearing cloth. Above him, the heavens are splitting open.
45
Cornelis
The end makes all equal.
—JACOB CATS, Moral Emblems, 1632
It is late at night. Outside, the storm rages. Cornelis sits hunched beside the fire, drinking brandy. The cries upstairs ceased some minutes ago. Now there is a deathly silence.
He cannot move. He has been told to wait here. Although he has put on his dressing gown he is still shivering. It is cold outside and the fire gives off little heat in this great room. He wants to suffer, however, in his own small way.
Then he hears a cry upstairs. Faint, but unmistakable.
He hears the cry again—a thin wail, like a kitten. Joy floods through him. He drops to his knees and clasps his hands together. Oh, my Lord, I offer up my heartfelt thanks for Thou hast heeded my prayers . . .
He stops. Footsteps are descending the stairs.
The midwife comes into the room. She is a massive, square woman, built like a barn door. In her arms she carries a bundle. Cornelis rises to his feet.
“Sir,” she says. “You are delivered of a fine baby girl.”
The bundle stirs. He sees black, damp hair. He is about to speak when something stops him. It is something in the midwife’s big, perspiring face.
“I offer my condolences, sir,” she says. “We could not save your wife.”
UPSTAIRS DOCTOR SORGH restrains him at the doorway. “Just for a moment—you may just see her for a moment. Please don’t touch her. There is a danger of contagion spreading.”
“Contagion?”
The doctor pauses. “I have reason to suspect that your wife was suffering from an infectious fever.”
“The plague?” Cornelis looks at him stupidly. He must be still sleeping. He urges himself to wake up.
Cornelis puts his hands on the doctor’s shoulders and moves him aside like a chair. He steps into the bedchamber. It is stifling hot. A bitter smell fills his nostrils, and something sickly, like violets.
Sophia’s face is covered with a sheet. The doctor pulls it down, just for a moment. Sophia’s face is revealed. It is pale, peaceful, and bedewed with sweat.
“We did all we could,” says Doctor Sorgh. “She is at peace now, with the Lord.”
Cornelis bends toward his wife’s face. The physician grabs his arm and pulls him back.
“Let me kiss her!”
“No, sir.” The doctor’s grip hurts his arm. “You must arrange for this room to be fumigated and for the bedding to be burned. Necessary precautions, I am afraid . . . the fluids, the blood . . .”
The room looks strangely blind. The doctor has turned the pictures to face the wall. It is the usual custom, but now it seems like a bizarre game. Cornelis gazes numbly at his wife. It is all a game. She is just pretending. In a moment she will open her eyes and sit up. It is all over, my dearest. Look! We have a beautiful daughter.
The doctor ushers him out of the room. The corrupt, sweet smell clogs Cornelis’s nostrils. He looks at his wife for the last time, her long humped shape under the sheet. Being drawn up over her head, it has exposed her feet. They look ludicrously naked. If he waits, she will wriggle her toes. She does not care to sleep like this; she likes to curl up, her knees under her chin.
The doctor shuts the door and accompanies him downstairs. Cornelis thinks: I cannot leave her there; she is so alone.
They sit down beside the fire. The physician is speaking but Cornelis cannot reply; his throat has closed. It cannot be true.
“I blame the foul waters of our city,” says the doctor. “Do you know how many deaths by fever have occurred this autumn?”
Cornelis does not know. He does not care.
“Had she shown any signs of sickness?”
Cornelis tries to think, but the process is too laborious. He wishes this man would stop talking.
“Had she recently been complaining of headaches?”
His wife has been snuffed out like a candle.
“Sir?”
“This last week—yes,” replies Cornelis. “She has twice taken to her bed with a headache.”
“The fever attacks the brain. Did she demonstrate any other unusual behavior?”
Cornelis remains silent. Sophia has, of course, been acting oddly. Not wanting to be touched. Jumpy if he even approached her.
“One of the symptoms is tender skin,” says the doctor. “Burning, as if it is on fire.”
“You have been looking after her, all these months,” blurts out Cornelis. “Why didn’t you tell me there was a danger?”
“Your agitation is understandable, sir, but I did not suspect she would succumb to this particular contagion. I simply found, in my first examination, that she was of a frail and vulnerable constitution. Any excitation might have triggered an inflammation of the womb, which would then spread through the blood to the brain.” He coughs. “That was why I suggested . . . er, marital abstinence.”
He pauses. Cornelis looks at the doctor’s white fingers. Why could they not have saved her?
“The body—”
“How dare you call her that!”
“I’m sorry. Your wife—she cannot stay here. I will arrange for her remains to be removed from the house immediately, to await burial.” Doctor Sorgh laces his fingers together. “This is a terrible loss for you, I know. But you will be glad to know that your baby daughter is not affected. She is in fine health.”
CORNELIS SITS, NUMB. Around him swirl currents of activity. He hears muffled voices upstairs; doors opening and closing. Heavy footsteps descend the stairs; strange men are removing his wife. Something bumps against the wall. Cornelis cannot bear to look up. What right have they to do that? She does not belong to them.
A cup of hot gruel has been placed in his hand. He has a sense that Mrs. Molenaer is here fussing over him, fussing with the baby. It is the middle of the night, but the neighboring women are rallying round. He is sure they are being kind but he hasn’t the energy to thank them, nor even
see who they are.
None of this is happening. He cannot take it in; it is still a dream. Sophia is playing a joke on him, as she joked with her sisters. She is too alive to die. Her sewing frame lies on her chair, where she left it; her foot warmer sits on the floor waiting for her long narrow foot to place itself on it again. When he opens his eyes she will be sitting there, lifting her face to smile at him before she bends down again to her work. The light is dim; she raises the sewing frame closer to her face. She shifts in her seat, with a little sigh, to rest the other foot on the warmer.
God cannot play this cruel trick on him yet again. What sort of God is this, who would do it? . . . Cornelis is on the beach . . . he is a boy again. His father presses a shell to his ear. A roaring fills his head—a roaring from far away. “It is the breath of God,” says his father. “Everything in your heart, He can hear it.”
OUTSIDE, THE ROAR HAS SUBSIDED. The storm is over. Cornelis seems to be lying in his bed, in the Leather Room. He gazes at the window. Dawn has broken; gray light filters through the thick panes of glass. He can now feel Sophia’s absence in the house—a hollowness, a stillness, simply the lack of her. His wife has been washed away like driftwood; how quietly, how uncomplainingly she has slipped in and out of his life. His years with her seem like a dream, dreamed up by an old man who has gazed into paintings and known that, even if those people ever stood there, poised in a room, they have long since gone. They are but shadows . . . the gleam of a dress, burgundy red in the candlelight, the tilt of a head, the proffered glass of wine that has long since been drunk. That was never drunk in the first place. They have gone, and even his pictures are turned to the wall.
He thinks: art remains in the present tense, long after we humans are consigned to dust. He feels this has some significance, but he is too fatigued to work out the meaning.
He must have been dozing. The doctor, before he went, gave him a draft of something chalky and bitter. Grief has not hit Cornelis yet; it waits in the shadows like a footpad.
Maria comes in. He has forgotten about Maria. She looks unsteady on her feet; for a moment he thinks she is drunk. Staggering into the room as if she is in pain, she supports herself by holding on to a chair.
She says: “This is a terrible loss, sir.” She looks all disordered—gray, damp face; matted hair.
He vaguely remembers that she should have been here— where was she?—but his brain is fuddled. Besides, he has no energy to rebuke her now.
“Oh, sir, what can I say?”
“My poor girl.” She is not drunk; he realizes this now. She is just overcome with grief. “I can see this has devastated you too.”
She sits down heavily in the chair. “Oh, sir,” she says.
“You look quite undone.”
She nods, wordlessly, and gazes into the crib. There is a tiny, mewling sound, a sound in miniature. He has forgotten about the baby. Maria leans over—she stops halfway, grimacing in pain—then she lifts out the moving bundle.
“What has happened tonight, sir, is very terrible. It is God’s will that your wife was taken, but it is also His will that He has given you a daughter.” She holds the baby in her arms and strokes the damp, dark hair. “A beautiful, healthy daughter and for that we must be thankful.” She kisses the baby, breathing in her scent. “I will care for her as if she was my own child.”
Cornelis starts crying—deep, racking sobs. He has no energy to hide this from her. When Maria sees him her own eyes brim with tears. She moves beside him and places his daughter in his arms.
46
After the Storm
They are generally not so long-lived, as in better airs, and begin to decay early, both men and women, especially at Amsterdam . . . Plagues are not so frequent, at least not in a degree to be taken notice of, for all suppress the talk of them as much as they can, and no distinction is made in the registry of the dead, nor much in the care and attendance of the sick; whether from a beliefof predestination, or else a preference for trade which is the life of the country before that of particular men.
—WILLIAM TEMPLE, Observations upon the Netherlands, 1672
After the storm the city lies becalmed. It is a sunny morning, still and cold. Branches litter the streets like broken limbs. People clear away the wreckage. They swarm around like ants whose anthill has been scuffed; how doggedly they rebuild their lives. The Dutch are a hard-working, resourceful people; when their land is flooded they pump out the water and drain it again. They are used to repairing the ravages caused by the wrath of God, for He has sent these tempests to test them.
Along the Herengracht the sun shines on the great gabled houses. It warms their new red brickwork and the stone scrollwork around their doors; it blazes on the leaded glass of their many windows. How impressive they are. Monuments to the wealth and good fortune of those who live within them, for this is the noblest street in the city.
The opposite side of the street, however, is plunged in shadow. There is a hush about it; the blind windows reveal no sign of life. In Cornelis Sandvoort’s house the shutters are closed. During the night a death occurred; he lost his young wife in childbirth. He is a widower for the second time. Neighbors pause outside, shaking their heads. How cruel, for it to happen to him again when he should surely expect his wife to outlive him, providing him with comfort in his declining years. And some say that she was suffering from a pestilence too. Just a rumor, but the body has been removed for the safety of her surviving family. There will be no days of mourning around an open casket.
Mr. Sandvoort must be sleeping; he was up all night. The neighbors do not yet disturb him, to offer their condolences. But if they listen carefully they can hear, through the shutters, the faint mewl of a baby. One life has been taken, to bring another into the world.
47
Jan
He that sendeth a message by the hand of a fool cutteth off the feet and drinketh damage.
—PROVERBS 26
Jan is woken by a knock at the door. The sun is shining; it is midday. After his tumultuous night he fell asleep at dawn and slept like the dead.
Gerrit stands there. He looks awkward—his hands hanging, his big meaty face blushing. “Just come to say good-bye, sir, and to express my best wishes for the future.”
“Ah! You’ve come for your money.”
Gerrit shuffles his feet.
“Let me get dressed,” says Jan, “and I will go and fetch it for you.”
“I’ll come back later—”
There is another knock at the door. Gerrit opens it while Jan pulls on his breeches. Doctor Sorgh comes in. He looks exhausted—gray skin, bruised shadows around his eyes.
Jan gives him a chair. “I received the message.”
Sorgh nods. “It all went according to plan. A straightforward delivery, thank the Lord; she is a healthy young woman.”
Jan is still groggy. For a mad moment he thinks the doctor means Sophia. Then he realizes. “I’m most grateful to you,” he says, buttoning up his shirt.
“I have come to collect the balance.” The doctor indicates the servant. “Can we talk freely?”
Jan shakes his head. His bladder is bursting. He wishes the doctor would come back later, when he can think clearly. It is hard to think of payment for something he can scarcely believe has happened.
He says to Gerrit: “Go into the kitchen and fetch some wine for Doctor Sorgh.”
Gerrit leaves. Doctor Sorgh says: “You have the bill for my services and those of the midwife. There is a small extra charge for the—shall we say pallbearers? They were not included in the original agreement.” He passes him a piece of paper. “But it adds little to the final amount.”
“Come back this afternoon, at your pleasure, and I will settle up with you then.”
Jan explains the situation. How, a month earlier, he bought the Semper Augustus bulb for a large sum. The grower, Mr. van Hooghelande, has been guarding the bulb for him under the tightest security.
“You know what’
s happened to its value these past few days?” Jan’s voice rises in excitement. “The price doubled, then slumped, and now, if I can believe the information I’ve been given—and there’s no reason to doubt it; my source is impeccable—when trading closed last night the price had reached four times the sum I paid for it, and today it rose again!”
The physician, however, shows little interest. He sits there, making a steeple with his long white fingers.
“So I will go there now and collect the bulb,” says Jan. “There are several consortia waiting to bid for it, down at the Cockerel, and by the end of the day you’ll have the money in your hand.”
There is another knock at the door. Gerrit returns, ushering in a boy. For a moment Jan fails to recognize him.
The boy says: “I’ve come to collect the money for your tickets.”
“What tickets?” asks Jan stupidly.
“Two passages to Batavia,” says the boy, “on the Empress of the East.”
“But I arranged to pay on the day—”
“My master says because you’re sailing at dawn it has to be the day before.”
“You’re leaving the country?” The doctor’s voice is sharp.
“And he’s not coming back,” adds Gerrit.
“All right, all right! I’m going to get it.” Jan turns to the physician. “Come back this evening at six. It will all be sorted out then.”
There is a silence. Doctor Sorgh looks at him, at the packed-up room, at the other small creditor waiting restlessly. “I would prefer to wait here,” he says, “if you don’t mind.”
Jan stares at him. “What?”
“No disrespect, sir. But in my particular line of work . . . maybe you can understand . . . the type of people I do business with . . . Well, one has to take some elementary precautions.”
“You think I’m going to slip my leash?” Jan is dumbfounded. “Is that it? You think I’m going to run away?”
Tulip Fever Page 14
