I Am Rembrandt's Daughter (16 page)

At the tavern, the screech of a fiddle and rough laughter blasts from the open window as I brace myself for what I know will come next when I enter. Old men smoking pipes will stare; women who don’t wear enough over their bosoms will chuck me under my chin; and Vader, in his corner, will drain his tall glass, then rise unsteadily to his feet
.

The women will lean against the wall as we pass, giving Vader a look like the one on Moeder’s face in a painting he has done of her where she leans against the wall with her bosom uncovered, a key tucked into her bodice. Jannetje Zilver’s moeder plays the spinet, takes Jannetje’s old clothes to the orphanage, writes letters, tastes the cook’s food, scolds the serving girl for leaving a wrinkle in a collar, but Jannetje Zilver’s moeder does not have time to slouch against the wall
.

A wail, terrible in its length and pitch, pierces the night. I whirl around to scan the row of houses behind me
.

The tavern door flies open. I shrink against the painted brick wall as men and women spill outside. A man staggers from a doorway in the row of houses and drops to his knees on the street
.

“Our daughter,” he groans
.

A man steps from the neighboring house. As a crowd gathers, he swings out his lantern, spilling pale light over the man on the ground
.

The man with the lantern shrinks back. “Mijnheer Visscher! Get back in your house. Your neck, man!”

The man clamps his hand above his open collar, but not before I have seen the plum-sized swelling in the dim light
.

Someone grabs my arm. I look up
.

Vader sways in the lamplight. “Don’t tell your moeder you saw this. She worries too damn much.”

Chapter
21

Tijger sleeps in a patch of sunlight as birds sing outside the open window of Vader’s studio. Strains of organ music from the New Maze Park float in on a soft breeze; a woman laughs in the distance. It is a blue-sky day in May, a day for lovers—even the doves are waddling in pairs on the rooftops—and I am stuck inside this musty house, sucking in greasy paint fumes. For twenty-nine days in a row I have been without Carel, a punishment that would be excruciating even without the added misery of having to wear a scratchy old gown the color and weight of a side of fresh-killed beef while Neel Suythof clings to my hand so that Vader can carefully place a tiny dab of paint just right
there
. I can bear no more. I pull my hand away from Neel and rub it.

“Sorry.” Neel wipes his own hand on his breeches. “I am holding it too hard.”

“It’s not you, Neel. It’s never you.”

Neel casts down his gaze but says nothing. I have hurt him, I am always hurting him, even when I don’t mean to.

“It’s just that we have been standing here since breakfast,” I say, trying to make amends, “and now it’s almost time for de noen. Vader, can we please take a rest?”

Vader stands back, regarding his latest dab, then puts down his brush with a frown. I notice with quiet satisfaction that there is but one tiny nick on his chin and that his bristly gray mustache has mostly filled in—my attempts at shaving him have improved over the weeks. “All right, all right,” he says, “you may stop.”

I stretch my arms as Neel goes to Vader’s easel. After twenty-nine days in close quarters with him, I am starting to fear that Magdalena might be right and that Neel cares for me more than he should. Ignore it as I might, the evidence is mounting. To begin, he comes to the workshop earlier than necessary. He sometimes stammers when addressing me. And he looks me in the eye only when forced to, and then on those occasions he turns an alarming shade of red.

Even if he is perhaps a suitable age for a husband—twenty-one to my almost fourteen—his affections are mislaid. I am not serious or sweet tempered enough for him. Kind Neel deserves a porch-scrubbing, sock-knitting, orphan-dressing minister’s daughter. I am my rogue vader’s coarse spawn—the very reason, evidently, Carel has abandoned me.

“The texture of the skirt is magnificent, mijnheer,” Neel says, over at the easel. “I can almost feel it with my eyes.”

I wade over in my gown to see for myself, trying not to notice as Neel draws in his breath when I stand next to him. “All this morning we sat for you, Vader, and you only put these three new dabs on it?” I point there, there, and there.

“How did you know that?” Neel says with awe.

Together, Vader and I shrug and say, “Wet paint.”

I frown at Vader’s grin to keep myself from smiling.

Neel swallows as if recovering himself. “Well, it may be only three strokes, but they have added depth.”

Vader nods. “Sometimes a single dab can make all the difference.”

“True, mijnheer. A simple reflection of light can bring an eye to life. Light is the key, isn’t it?”

I wince, remembering my discussion about light with Carel. How many times in the past twenty-nine days have I recalled that conversation, wondering what I might have said to repel him.

I shake Carel from my head and sigh. “Vader, you haven’t even started on the heads and the hands, and my bodice is still just a shadow of underpainting, and yet you have been working on this for over a month!”

“I thank you for your patience,” Vader says. “Tintoretto himself could not have asked for a better daughter.”

“Who is Tintoretto again, mijnheer?” Neel asks as if I am not in the room.

I cannot help but speak up when I know the answer. “He was a famous Italian artist from the last century. His paintings are quite huge—the size of palace walls—and full of figures and action. His
Paradise
is the largest painting in the world.” I tug at the band at the top of my bodice. Hateful thing. My breasts will never blossom forth, smashed like this. I look up and find Vader gazing at me. “What?”

“How did you know about Tintoretto?” Vader says.

I shrug. “I’ve read your books.”

“Which ones?”

“All of them.”

Vader beholds me, hands on hips. I look away, suddenly shy.

“Why do you speak of Tintoretto’s daughter, mijnheer?” Neel asks.

Vader nods at me. “You tell him.”

I smile at the memory of sitting by the front-room window under Vader’s book of painters (for it had been nearly my size). How I pored over the stories of the painters’ lives, wondering if any of their stories was anything like mine. The closest was that of Tintoretto’s daughter—except she was her vader’s favorite.

“It is said she was his most faithful assistant,” I say, “working with him side by side. They say she had the gift herself—”

Just then, as if struck by an idea, Vader jumps up and hobbles to the canvas on his bandy legs. Carefully, he places a single dab, not listening, it seems, to me.

“I wonder why I have never heard of her,” Neel says. “I have been making a study of all the great artists.”

“It is because she was a girl,” I say bitterly.

Vader leans back to look at his mark. “No, it is because she died young, while her vader was working on the
Paradise
. She became ill as he was finishing his five-hundredth angel, and when she died, he immediately took out his brush and painted her in as the five-hundred-and-first—directly in the center of the piece.” He glances at me. “I am surprised you don’t remember that part of the story.”

I stare at him in astonishment. And he did?

Do not get overexcited about Vader remembering the daughter in the story, I tell myself. He is no Tintoretto. Not only has he not worked with me as Tintoretto worked with his daughter, but he’s not painted me, either. When the time comes, he will fill in the face of this painting with Magdalena’s fair visage. Far from being the five-hundred-and-first angel, I am but a cut above a straw dummy to him.

I slog over to the window in my gown. No Carel. Of course not. Why do I look, just to wound myself once more? His uncle, seeing me in my shabby clothes, must have advised him against further discourse. Magdalena was right. Nicolaes Bruyningh’s invitation was but idle talk, designed to smooth over an awkward situation. Perhaps mere talk is all that Carel’s conversation was with me. That is how rich boys must treat inferior girls, speaking to them with honeyed tongues to avoid a confrontation, while the poor girl stupidly mistakes it for love.

When I turn away from the window, Neel snatches up a stone pestle as if he has not been watching me. “Would you like me to grind some pigment, mijnheer?”

“Thank you,” Vader says. “I could use some vermilion. Don’t thin it too much with the oil. I like a good thick paste, you know.”

“Yes, mijnheer.”

I could grind and mix pigments just as well as Neel, but would Vader ever let me? “It is a blessing Tintoretto’s daughter did not live to maturity,” I say. “She would have been disappointed to find that she could not find work on her own.”

“Why do you say that?” Neel exclaims, then checks himself. “Perhaps,” he says more quietly, “it is harder for them to find the time to pursue it with managing their households and children, but some have done it. In Delft there is a woman artist of the highest caliber, Judith Leyster. She paints, as does her husband. Both are successful in their own right.”

Vader puts another painstaking dot of paint on his canvas, then stands back. “I have seen Leyster’s work. Family scenes, mostly. Honest work.”

I smooth the stiff cloth of my skirt. What if I did try painting but was no good?

“I need to go outside,” I say.

Vader waves me off. “Go. I need a break myself. These hands joined together—” He points at the canvas with the padded end of his maulstick. “There’s something not true about them.”

I shake my head as I pick my way down the steps in my monstrous dress. Could it be because half of the time I am pulling from Neel’s grasp? Tenderest love, indeed. Then I smile almost fondly. Poor Neel does put up with much ill use. And I cannot help but ponder his point—does he truly believe a woman might paint?

Engrossed by this thought, I let the organ music, distant shouting, and laughter from the New Maze Park pull me to the front of the house, though I know I should hide my ridiculous costumed self in the courtyard. Across the way, on the ramp into the canal, a crane peers into the water, patient as a preacher, as I settle myself on the stoop. I lift my face to the sun, then close my eyes to watch fireworks of blue against the red of my lids. A peacock sounds its strangled call in the distance. The sun’s warmth soothing my cheeks, I listen as water laps against the brick banks of the canal; a moeder duck calls to her young. They answer with endearing peeps as the water laps and laps and laps.

“Remember me?”

I open my eyes. Like a heavenly vision, Carel stands before me in a suit of smooth gray worsted that brings out the shine of his golden hair. He holds out a fragrant bunch of lavender. “Friends?”

The crane flies off with a flap of stately wings as fire leaps into my face. Carel is here! But he calls us “friends.”

“What are these for?” I ask, then cringe at my coarseness.

“For you. Hang them in your window, to keep away the contagion.”

I mumble something about not worrying about that. How can he appear after twenty-nine days and act as if he has never been gone? I glance down at the lacy layers of my awful vermilion skirt. “This is not my gown!” I exclaim. “I am modeling for Vader.” I swallow. “An important work.”

He raises golden brows. “Lucky you, watching him paint.”

I burst out in a laugh. Across the canal, a grandmother leading her little grandchild turns to look. Carel frowns. I have displeased him.

“Sorry,” I say. “It’s just that I am …” Overjoyed? Furious? Terrified? “… weary,” I finish.

“I was hoping you could walk.”

“I can.” I struggle to my feet. “Oh! This terrible gown.”

He takes the bunch of lavender, lays it on the porch, then clasps my hands. “
I
think you look like a princess.”

“In this?” Oh,
Maidenly Virtures
come to me! I can think of nothing except his hands on mine.

He lets go with a tender squeeze, then walks slowly along the canal, allowing me to breathlessly maneuver next to him in my leaden pool of red. How can he stand me? Why did he return?

“Forgive me,” he says.

I cradle hands still throbbing from his touch. “For what?”

“For not coming sooner.”

“I understand,” I say, though my brain is a tangled ball of yarn.

“It’s not like that. I could not come, or I would have been here. I was detained by family business.”

“I thought you had …” I look away from his iris-blue gaze.

“I did not forget you, Cornelia. How could I forget the girl with the eyes of an artist?”

The death bells of the Westerkerk toll, my heart pounding with them. “There are your bells,” I murmur.

“They ring with more frequency. Nine times yesterday. I have heard that three streets over, several families have fallen victim to the contagion. I know all this should trouble me, but instead—each time the bells ring, I find myself thinking of you.”

I gaze in the direction of the canal though it is a blur. What is he saying? I swallow, trying to fight my way back down to earth. “So how does your painting come along?”

“I’ve not had time to paint. I’ve been put in charge of the family business here while Vader and my older brothers are abroad. You will have to inspire me again.”

“You are running the business? What an honor.”

He plucks at one of the silky tassels on his collar. “I have no head for it.”

“Surely you do.”

“No, I don’t. Remember those ledgers that I drew upon as a child? I was better off drawing ships in them. The books are a mess. Uncle Nicolaes had been showing me how to enter things, but then he was called abroad, too.”

“Oh, he must have gone after we—”

Carel cocks his head. Does he not know his uncle and I have met?

“Excuse me, I am confused,” I murmur. How foolish to think Nicolaes Bruyningh would bother to speak of me.