Girl with a Pearl Earring (13 page)

“Which is she doing?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes it seems one thing, sometimes the other.”

My father sat back in his seat, frowning. “First you say the cap is white but not painted white. Then you say the girl is doing one thing or maybe another. You’re confusing me.” He rubbed his brow as if his head ached.

“I’m sorry, Father. I’m trying to describe it accurately.”

“But what is the story in the painting?”

“His paintings don’t tell stories.”

He did not respond. He had been difficult all winter. If Agnes had been there she would have been able to cheer him. She had always known how to make him laugh.

“Mother, shall I light the footwarmers?” I asked, turning from my father to hide my irritation. Now that he was blind, he could easily sense the moods of others, when he wanted to. I did not like him being critical of the painting without having seen it, or comparing it to the tiles he had once painted. I wanted to tell him that if he could only see the painting he would understand that there was nothing confusing about it. It may not have told a story, but it was still a painting you could not stop looking at.

At the time my father and I talked, my mother had been busy around us, stirring the stew, feeding the fire, setting out plates and mugs, sharpening a knife to cut the bread. Without waiting for her to answer I gathered the footwarmers and took them to the back room where the peat was stored. As I filled them I chided myself for being angry with my father.

I brought the footwarmers back and lit them from the fire. When I had placed them under our seats at the table I led my father over to his chair while my mother spooned out the stew and poured the beer. My father took a bite and made a face. “Didn’t you bring anything from Papists’ Corner to sweeten this mush?” he muttered.

“I couldn’t. Tanneke has been difficult with me and I’ve stayed away from her kitchen.” I regretted it the moment the words left my mouth.

“Why? What did you do?” More and more my father was looking to find fault with me, at times even siding with Tanneke.

I thought quickly. “I spilled some of their best ale. A whole jug.”

My mother looked at me reproachfully. She knew when I lied. If my father hadn’t been feeling so miserable he might have noticed from my voice as well.

I was getting better at it, though.

When I left to go back my mother insisted on accompanying me part of the way, even though it was raining, a cold, hard rain. As we reached the Rietveld Canal and turned right towards Market Square, she said, “You will be seventeen soon.”

“Next week,” I agreed.

“Not long now until you are a woman.”

“Not long.” I kept my eyes on the raindrops pebbling the canal. I did not like to think about the future.

“I have heard that the butcher’s son is paying you attention.”

“Who told you that?”

In answer she simply brushed raindrops from her cap and shook out her shawl.

I shrugged. “I’m sure he’s paying me no more attention than he is other girls.”

I expected her to warn me, to tell me to be a good girl, to protect our family name. Instead she said, “Don’t be rude to him. Smile at him and be pleasant.”

Her words surprised me, but when I looked in her eyes and saw there the hunger for meat that a butcher’s son could provide, I understood why she had set aside her pride.

At least she did not ask me about the lie I had told earlier. I could not tell them why Tanneke was angry at me. That lie hid a much greater lie. I would have too much to explain.

Tanneke had discovered what I was doing during the afternoons when I was meant to be sewing.

I was assisting him.

It had begun two months before, one afternoon in January not long after Franciscus was born. It was very cold. Franciscus and Johannes were both poorly, with chesty coughs and trouble breathing. Catharina and the nurse were tending them by the fire in the washing kitchen while the rest of us sat close to the fire in the cooking kitchen.

Only he was not there. He was upstairs. The cold did not seem to affect him.

Catharina came to stand in the doorway between the two kitchens. “Someone must go to the apothecary,” she announced, her face flushed. “I need some things for the boys.” She looked pointedly at me.

Usually I would be the last chosen for such an errand. Visiting the apothecary was not like going to the butcher’s or fishmonger’s—tasks Catharina continued to leave to me after the birth of Franciscus. The apothecary was a respected doctor, and Catharina or Maria Thins liked to go to him. I was not allowed such a luxury. When it was so cold, however, any errand was given to the least important member of the house.

For once Maertge and Lisbeth did not ask to come with me. I wrapped myself in a woollen mantle and shawls while Catharina told me I was to ask for dried elder flowers and a coltsfoot elixir. Cornelia hung about, watching me tuck in the loose ends of the shawls.

“May I come with you?” she asked, smiling at me with well-practiced innocence. Sometimes I wondered if I judged her too harshly.

“No,” Catharina replied for me. “It’s far too cold. I won’t have another of my children getting sick. Off you go, then,” she said to me. “Quick as you can.”

I pulled the front door shut and stepped into the street. It was very quiet—people were sensibly huddled in their houses. The canal was frozen, the sky an angry grey. As the wind blew through me and I drew my nose further into the wool folds around my face, I heard my name being called. I looked around, thinking Cornelia had followed me. The front door was shut.

I looked up. He had opened a window and poked his head out.

“Sir?”

“Where are you going, Griet?”

“To the apothecary, sir. Mistress asked me. For the boys.”

“Will you get me something as well?”

“Of course, sir.” Suddenly the wind did not seem so bitter.

“Wait, I’ll write it down.” He disappeared and I waited. After a moment he reappeared and tossed down a small leather pouch. “Give the apothecary the paper inside and bring what he gives you back to me.”

I nodded and tucked the pouch into a fold of my shawl, pleased with this secret request.

The apothecary’s was along the Koornmarkt, towards the Rotterdam Gate. Although it was not far, each breath I took seemed to freeze inside me so that by the time I pushed into the shop I was unable to speak.

I had never been to an apothecary, not even before I became a maid—my mother had made all of our remedies. His shop was a small room, with shelves lining the walls from floor to ceiling. They held all sizes of bottles, basins and earthenware jars, each one neatly labelled. I suspected that even if I could read the words I would not understand what each vessel held. Although the cold killed most smells, here there lingered an odor I did not recognize, like something in the forest, hidden under rotting leaves.

I had seen the apothecary himself only once, when he came to Franciscus’ birth feast a few weeks before. A bald, slight man, he reminded me of a baby bird. He was surprised to see me. Few people ventured out in such cold. He sat behind a table, a set of scales at his elbow, and waited for me to speak.

“I’ve come for my master and mistress,” I gasped at last when my throat had warmed enough for me to speak. He looked blank and I added, “The Vermeers.”

“Ah. How is the growing family?”

“The babies are ill. My mistress needs dried elder flowers and an elixir of coltsfoot. And my master—” I handed him the pouch. He took it with a puzzled expression, but when he read the slip of paper he nodded. “Run out of bone black and ocher,” he murmured. “That’s easily repaired. He’s never had anyone fetch the makings of colors for him before, though.” He squinted over the slip of paper at me. “He always gets them himself. This is a surprise.”

I said nothing.

“Have a seat, then. Back here by the fire while I get your things together.” He became busy, opening jars and weighing small mounds of dried flower buds, measuring syrup into a bottle, wrapping things carefully in paper and string. He placed some things in the leather pouch. The other packages he left loose.

“Does he need any canvases?” he asked over his shoulder as he replaced a jar on a high shelf.

“I wouldn’t know, sir. He asked me to get only what was on that paper.”

“This is very surprising, very surprising indeed.” He looked me up and down. I drew myself up—his attention made me wish I were taller. “Well, it is cold, after all. He wouldn’t go out unless he had to.” He handed me the packages and pouch and held the door open for me. Out in the street I looked back to see him still peering at me through a tiny window in the door.

Back at the house I went first to Catharina to give her the loose packages. Then I hurried to the stairs. He had come down and was waiting. I pulled the pouch from my shawl and handed it to him.

“Thank you, Griet,” he said.

“What are you doing?” Cornelia was watching us from further along the hallway.

To my surprise he didn’t answer her. He simply turned and climbed the stairs again, leaving me alone to face her.

The truth was the easiest answer, though I often felt uneasy telling Cornelia the truth. I was never sure what she would do with it. “I’ve bought some paint things for your father,” I explained.

“Did he ask you to?”

To that question I responded as her father had—I walked away from her toward the kitchens, removing my shawls as I went. I was afraid to answer, for I did not want to cause him harm. I knew already that it was best if no one knew I had run an errand for him.

I wondered if Cornelia would tell her mother what she had seen. Although young she was also shrewd, like her grandmother. She might hoard her information, carefully choosing when to reveal it.

She gave me her own answer a few days later.

It was a Sunday and I was in the cellar, looking in the chest where I kept my things for a collar to wear that my mother had embroidered for me. I saw immediately that my few belongings had been disturbed—collars not refolded, one of my chemises balled up and pushed into a corner, the tortoiseshell comb shaken from its handkerchief. The handkerchief around my father’s tile was folded so neatly that I became suspicious. When I opened it the tile came apart in two pieces. It had been broken so that the girl and boy were separated from each other, the boy now looking behind him at nothing, the girl all alone, her face hidden by her cap.

I wept then. Cornelia could not have guessed how that would hurt me. I would have been less upset if she had broken our heads from our bodies.

He began to ask me to do other things. One day he asked me to buy linseed oil at the apothecary’s on my way back from the fish stalls. I was to leave it at the bottom of the stairs for him so that he and the model would not be disturbed. So he said. Perhaps he was aware that Maria Thins or Catharina or Tanneke—or Cornelia—might notice if I went up to the studio at an unusual time.

It was not a house where secrets could be kept easily.

Another day he had me ask the butcher for a pig’s bladder. I did not understand why he wanted one until he later asked me to lay out paints he needed each morning when I had finished cleaning. He opened the drawers to the cupboard near his easel and showed me which paints were kept where, naming the colors as he went. I had not heard of many of the words—ultramarine, vermilion, massicot. The brown and yellow earth colors and the bone black and lead white were stored in little earthenware pots, covered with parchment to keep them from drying out. The more valuable colors—the blues and reds and yellows—were kept in small amounts in pigs’ bladders. A hole was punched in them so the paint could be squeezed out, with a nail plugging it shut.

One morning while I was cleaning he came in and asked me to stand in for the baker’s daughter, who had taken ill and could not come. “I want to look for a moment,” he explained. “Someone must stand there.”