The Chrysalis

by Heather Terrell

  “Yes, Master.”

  “Then perhaps you should answer my question. Why is the brushstroke so different on each pendant?”

  “Master, I am not sure how to explain.”

  “Not sure? How is that possible? You chose the nette brushstrokes for the magistrate’s wife’s lace collar and gold earrings, even her skin. I can barely discern those strokes, you’ve blended them so completely. Yet you used such bold, schilderachtig strokes for the magistrate himself. You’ve not mixed them at all; I can differentiate the layers of glazes and opaque paint, even the lines of color. It is curious, Johannes. Most painters have one style, one stroke. As I have.”

  Johannes cast his eyes down; he knows the master will not like his response. “The subject tells me what brushstroke to use,” he says.

  “The subject tells you?”

  “Yes, Master.” Johannes does not lift his eyes.

  “Well, it seems as though Hendrick was wrong about one thing—failing to inform me that one of my students is a half-wit.” He pivots toward the heavy curtain guarding the exit.

  Johannes rushes to the door, blocking it. “Master, please don’t leave. I can explain.”

  The master turns, arms crossed.

  Johannes tries to describe what he intuits. “You see, the wife, she seems so genteel, so serene. She calls out for a gentle touch, a refined hand. But the magistrate appears so physical a presence, delicacy will not do. He cries out for a brushstroke to match his vigor. This is how the subjects speak to me, Master.”

  Johannes realizes that the master has grown still. He stops.

  “Who taught you this? Leonaert? Your childhood instructors?”

  “No, Master.” Johannes stutters, “I-I have always known this.”

  The master’s brow furrows. “Johannes, where do your allegiances lie?”

  “Master, I don’t understand.”

  “You sound as though you believe God empowers the paintings through you, as some sort of medium. That’s a dangerously Catholic sentiment.”

  Johannes rushes to reassure him. “No, Master, that is not what I meant.”

  “I hope not, Johannes. Remember verse 5:8 of our Lord’s disciple Pieter: ‘Like a roaring lion your enemy the devil prowls looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in your faith.’ Be careful, Johannes. I do not want to lose your talent to the enemy.”

  THE MASTER IS WORKING ON A FAMILY PORTRAIT COMMISSION much envied by his fellow guild members: the new burgomaster Claesz and his brood. The burgomaster is dependent on the province’s upper-class regents for the longevity of his position. He strives to impress them with their choice by planning lavish festivities where the portrait will be shown.

  The studio casts aside all other projects to complete the work. The burgomaster plans on unveiling the painting at his celebration, and it must be well received, for both the burgomaster and the master. The death of the prior burgomaster, long the master’s patron and advocate, jeopardizes the master’s standing and endangers his future stream of commissions. This painting could change the situation.

  Johannes sits by the master’s side as he outlines the family members with his metalpoint. The master insists that Johannes see firsthand the interplay of light from the subjects’ skin with their lush clothing and jewels, if he is to capture those accessories. Hendrick and Leonaert protest Johannes’s assignment, one more fitting to artists of their stature and experience, but the master dismisses their remonstrations and points to Johannes’s skill in calming the burgomaster’s restless lot of six children during the long hours of posing—a task the journeymen abhor.

  Johannes regrets his newfound elevation. Each time Pieter enters the room to deliver a freshly mixed paint or a newly assembled brush, he keeps his eyes down, and Johannes sees that his position pains his friend as well. The boys are no longer compatriots, no longer racing to the studio, no longer chatting in solidarity, no longer flinging prayers to the Lord like coins into a fountain. The nights are silent, each drifting off to sleep with the other nearby, yet completely alone.

  Halfway through the painting, illness strikes the master’s house, incapacitating his wife and infant son and necessitating his attendance. He leaves off completing the faces and hands of the burgomaster’s children and instructs the three to finish their parts: Hendrick, the curtain draping behind the family; Leonaert, the black-and-white tile floor; Johannes, the coveted pearls and lace handiwork. During the long days of jostling for a place at the canvas, Johannes withstands upturned paints, missing brushes, and malignant mutterings from Hendrick.

  One day, Lukens bursts into the studio, breathless. Disease has taken the master’s wife and son, leaving an afflicted master in its wake. What shall they do? It is a tragedy, of course, but only three days remain until the burgomaster’s celebration.

  Johannes knows what must happen. He alone has studied the children’s faces; he alone has formed a kinship with them. He makes his proposal.

  Hendrick erupts at Johannes’s audacity, at his disregard for the master’s reputation. Painters of the master’s ilk did not pass off the work of a lowly apprentice as their own, never mind the guild repercussions to Johannes for painting portrait likenesses before qualifying for the master test or the inevitable blow to the master’s guild standing.

  Lukens disagrees. Perhaps Johannes has a point, and there is more at stake than this painting alone. After all, what are the alternatives?

  Lukens leads the children and nursemaid into the studio. Johannes greets the gaggle as usual, tickling the youngest two and playing sleight-of-hand tricks for distraction. Johannes informs them that the master will arrive shortly, and Lukens queries as to whether Gertruyd, the nursemaid, would care to view some of the master’s other works in the main house while they wait.

  She declines, though her eyes signal acceptance. “Mistress would never like the children to be out of my sight.”

  Lukens clucks. “Too bad. You would be one of a very few to have regarded them.”

  Gertruyd’s eyes widen at the thought of the marketplace gossip.

  Lukens purrs. “It will be for but a moment.”

  Blush floods her cheeks at the unexpected attention. “Well, if it will be only a moment. Johannes, will you be able to mind the children on your own?”

  “A pleasure, Gertruyd.” The unlikely pair saunters off, arm in arm.

  Johannes places the children in the exact spots they had occupied days before and then disappears behind a screen secured around the easel. It is large enough to mask his identity, but it is angled such that he can see the subjects. He places the master’s usual hat upon his head, its wide brim peeking out from the top of the screen.

  Johannes claps and announces from behind the screen, “Places, children, the master is ready to begin.”

  The children remain remarkably still as Johannes rushes to capture their likeness: the cherubic infant docile on the obedient eldest daughter’s knee; the defiant toddler dressed like a miniature lady with her hand locked in the palm of a compliant middle daughter; the soulful young son caressing a lute; the eldest son with his hand gripping a spear, a lion in wait. Johannes lets those whispers guide his brush: nette strokes for the placid baby; bold strokes edged with controlled outlining for the reined-in toddler; an even blending for the obedient older girls; a misty cloud of color for the middle son; strong diagonal lines, jumping from the page, for the eldest.

  A bowl clatters to the floor, startling Johannes. Frozen with fear, he hears a voice. “Not to worry, children, I’ll clean up around your feet; you just stay in place.” It is Pieter. Johannes peers through a crack in the screen and watches Pieter tumble in a somersault toward the children, in an effort to soften the mood and garner laughter. Johannes smiles at the antics of his friend.

  “Many thanks, Pieter,” Johannes bellows from behind the screen, in his best attempt at the master’s voice.

  “You are welcome, Master. I thought you might need assistance.”

  A
feigned love interest by Lukens and copious quantities of mulled wine help distract Gertruyd the next day as well. Johannes spends the nights in a feverish trance of work. The third and final day, the celebration day, he gathers together Lukens, Leonaert, Hendrick, and Pieter. Standing in front of the easel, he pulls back the fabric safeguarding the canvas.

  The revelers cut a wide berth as Johannes helps the master to his seat. The master’s hollowed-out face speaks of his loss, and his body tells the tale of the ravaging power of the disease. A different man than ten days before, he looks out of place amid the merriment of the burgomaster’s celebration, yet he has insisted on attending.

  The guards grant the uninvited Johannes access to the festivities only because of the gravity of the master’s illness and circumstances; no other member of the studio is permitted entrance. Johannes takes a place standing behind the master, in the event of his need, in the long line of servants flanking the wall. Admiring the banquet table resplendent with platters of savories, porcelain vases of decadent tulips, and guests uncharacteristically colorful in saffron and crimson, Johannes longs for his easel to dissect the scene into genre paintings, portraits, still lifes.

  The burgomaster stands, his hand curling around a jeweled chalice. He lifts the cup and toasts his guests the regents with particular flourish. He announces his special commemoration of the occasion, the commission, and then pays heed to the master’s recent tragedy.

  The burgomaster strides toward a wall where a painting enshrouded in plum velvet hangs. Johannes’s stomach lurches as the burgomaster reaches for a golden cord and draws back the curtain. The portrait is unveiled.

  A hush descends among the celebrants as they await the burgomaster’s pronouncement. Johannes hears a sharp intake of breath from his wife, followed by a whisper. “It is unearthly. My children, they look so…so themselves.” The burgomaster steps back from it, staring at it from this angle and that, then issues his judgment. “Master Van Maes, you have outdone yourself.”

  As the crowd returns to its gaiety, relieved, Johannes hears a clamor. The guards scuffle into the room, trying to hold back an intruder. The man breaks free of their grasp. It is Hendrick, shouting that Master Van Maes has misled the burgomaster. The painting was finished not by Master Van Maes’s hand but by the hand of his apprentice. Hendrick lunges toward Johannes.

  The burgomaster yells out to his guards to take the imbecilic man away, to put him in shackles. They seize Hendrick and whisk him toward the exit.

  The master rises on unsteady feet. Johannes rushes forward to assist him but is brushed away. “Burgomaster, please order your men to let him go. He is one of my journeymen. He tells the truth—at least, in part.”

  The burgomaster raises a hand, staying the guards for a moment but not signaling Hendrick’s release.

  The master explains, his voice strong in conviction but weak in intensity. “My Lord, I apologize for the intrusion of my journeyman into your celebration; he has stolen from me the ability to make a planned announcement at a more opportune time. As you so graciously acknowledged, illness recently came to my family home. It took my wife and baby boy and felled me for a period…before I could finish the portrait. A gifted painter from my studio, fresh from his master test, completed the unfinished portion—the likenesses of your children—in time for this evening. I had hoped to introduce his work tonight and to present him as my partner.”

  “This is the man here? This boy?” The burgomaster gestures to Johannes, his brow arched quizzically. Johannes freezes in fear, in disbelief.

  “Yes, his name is Master Johannes Miereveld.” The master bows his head, surrendering to his sentence.

  A long pause ensues while the burgomaster considers the master’s fate, weighs the impact of it on his own. He settles on acceptance. “Master Van Maes, I shall consider myself fortunate to be the first recipient of Master Miereveld’s work; I am certain I shall not be the last.” The burgomaster welcomes Johannes to the table.

  thirteen

  NEW YORK CITY, PRESENT DAY

  OVER THE COURSE OF THE NEXT SEVERAL WEEKS, MARA spent her days at work and her nights with Michael. Their relationship moved forward with an intensity she had never known before. For the first time in a long time, Mara felt joyous. Although she’d dated since Sam, the men always seemed two-dimensional: the clever banker, the brooding artist, the humorous marketing executive. She had neither the time nor the inclination to animate those possibilities. With Michael, such investment wasn’t necessary: He was fully, immediately enfleshed.

  The impulse to share her delight tugged constantly at her. Despite all her earlier reservations, Mara wanted to introduce Michael to her friends and colleagues—especially Sophia, with whom she’d shared nearly everything for years and with whom silence felt like a sacrilege. She wanted her father to meet him; wished her grandmother were alive to approve of him. But she knew better than to act on her whims. Once she opened the door and fully welcomed Michael into her life, even if it were just to family and friends, her professional goals would be jeopardized. For at least as long as the Baum case continued and he qualified as a client, their relationship needed to remain a secret.

  In the nighttime hours, Michael pursued her, forcing her to come out of hiding, even from herself. She told him stories she’d kept locked away even from Sophia, saying them aloud in the cocoon they created for themselves, a private hibernation made easy by the cold winter nights. She toppled the myth of her father, the successful politician. She revealed his shady connections, forged in his desperation to bury his South Boston, Irish roots in political success. She disclosed the story behind his marriage to her mother, the prize daughter of a family with means substantial enough to launch his career, a woman willing to forgo her own ambitions to provide her father with a Junior League wife and a Ralph Lauren life. She divulged the pressure her parents had felt to produce children. For the first time, she revealed the way her father had pushed her mother to the periphery once she was born. Mara had been the picture-perfect trophy child pursuing success whom he pressed forward into the light as her mother retreated into the shadows. Her father needed Mara’s legitimate achievements to wash clean the taint of his own political rise. Mara shared how she had learned to become whomever her father needed her to be, a skill she now wielded at work.

  Not that her father didn’t love Mara, in his way. It was just that his love, such as it was, was won by tangible accomplishments: grades, Ivy League schools, advanced degrees, name-brand positions, mammoth salaries, and an advantageous marriage—the one area in which she’d disappointed him. She told Michael how, whenever she set her target sights wrong, she would retreat to her grandmother, her father’s mother. Her father ran from this relationship, but for Mara, her grandmother’s simple rooms at the parish rectory where she lived, worked, and had raised her son always felt like a warm embrace, where all of her accolades and awards didn’t matter. Nana inhabited a world where plain, meaningful work meant far more than public recognition or remunerative jobs. In her role as rectory housekeeper, her grandmother served as confidante, intercessor, helpmate, friend, and surrogate grandparent for the Catholic congregation, and Nana could envision no greater honor. Michael, who had been raised in a similar Catholic environment, could understand her grandmother’s world. Her death in Mara’s junior year of high school had created a void that Mara could not imagine anything would ever fill.

  But as much as Mara revealed at night, she stashed away during the day. She could not risk candor or self-disclosure at work, particularly with Sophia, so a double life became her daily fare. To her friends, to work, to her family, to Sophia, she was as she had always been: an attractive, hardworking lawyer fulfilling grand ambitions for her career. And as always, she remained entirely, inexplicably alone. What no one could see was that now she could tolerate their pity, because her life included Michael.

  In the deep hours of the night, she awakened to Michael stroking her hair. Lying on her side encased in his arms,
she struggled to turn around. Then, nuzzled against his chest, she fell back asleep.

  But increasingly, Mara’s sleep was full of dreams about The Chrysalis, and not the serene smile of the painting’s subject or the tranquil touch of its light. These dreams were filled with disturbing images of its wartime journey. Mara saw it passing from pitch-black crates to murky train cars, from skeletal hands to the gloves of soldiers in swastika’d uniforms. The dreams woke her. They lingered, and she didn’t want to be alone with them in the dark. “Are you awake?” she whispered to Michael one night.

  “Not really,” he murmured.

  “I’ve been dreaming of The Chrysalis.”

  He wrapped her up, like ropes around a cargo chest. “Good dreams, I hope.”

  “Not really. It was more like a nightmare. I pictured it during wartime.”

  “It’s only a dream, Mara.”

  “I know, but I can’t shake it.”

  He yawned. “Tell me about it, if it’ll make it go away.”

  She described The Chrysalis’s voyage as she had seen it in her dream. She compared the painting’s travails to the passage of looted art from other wars, to the famous four horses decorating the façade of the Venetian Church of San Marco, for instance. A creation of the ancient Greeks, the horses had journeyed with military campaigns from Constantinople to Venice to France and back again, as part of the Crusades, the Napoleonic Wars, and World War II—whoever won them in battle carried them as a victory banner. But, really, she wondered aloud, who rightfully owned them?

  She felt Michael disentangle his sinuous arms from her body. “You sound as if you’re thinking twice about our case.”

  “No, not at all,” she rushed to reassure them both. “The research I’ve been doing just churns all this up. The Chrysalis is different—clean.” She pulled his arms back around her and tightened them.