I Am Rembrandt's Daughter (21 page)

“You capture yourself well,” I say, nodding toward the picture.

Vader looks in the mirror, then transfers a dab of paint from his palette to the canvas. “Every decent painter can portray himself well. In fact, he puts himself in every painting, whether he likes it or not. It is really amusing when he strikes upon the creature that resembles him best. My student Carel Fabritius looked exactly like a finch he painted, and young Bol was the spitting image of the spaniel he’d done.”

“I have heard of this sort of thing,” says Neel, stirring his mixture. “Some say that Leonardo da Vinci’s famous portrait of the mysterious lady is actually a painting of himself. He gave her his features.”

“Hmm.” Vader places another spot of paint. “Perhaps he thought of himself as a woman.”

“So that is why Vader painted that carcass of beef when I was little,” I say. “He paints himself.”

Vader and Neel turn in unison to look at me. Vader bursts into a laugh.

“Cornelia,” Neel says. “Be kind.”

“No,” Vader says. “She’s got a point. At the time I was painting it, I did feel rather like a butchered carcass. It was at the time of my bankruptcy, when my creditors were coming at me from all quarters.”

I wince and glance at Neel to gauge his disapproval at Vader’s poverty, but he only tips the pot he is stirring toward Vader.

Vader peers inside it. “Put in more thinner.”

Neel lifts his chin when he sees me watching. “So, Cornelia, how would you see me? As what creature should I paint myself?”

I look into his solemn face and find myself smiling.

“As a crane.”

“Sorry, boy,” Vader says with a laugh.

Neel looks away with a small, pained smile.

“It’s not an insult,” I say in a rush. “Cranes are noble in their movement and they show great patience while hunting fish. They move unmolested by other birds or beasts, and they have beautiful”—I notice them both staring—” wings.” I clamp my mouth shut.

Neel lowers his head. But when he looks up, and our eyes connect, it is I who must look down. What has gotten into me?

Vader looks between Neel and I, then presses back a smile. “Well, Neel, how is the work coming along on your Prodigal Son?”

Neel breathes in. “Slowly, mijnheer.”

Even though I dare not look at Neel, I can feel something in the air between us. Confused, my gaze seeks something safe—his unfinished painting, propped against its easel. One shadowy figure is kneeling, another standing over it, another looking on.

Vader is studying it, too. “Where is the scene supposed to take place? I have no sense of it.”

Neel lets out a breath. “I had thought a rich palace.”

“You don’t say,” Vader says. “I can’t see it. Maybe some props would help get you going. Cornelia—go look in the attic. See if there’s something in there that will inspire him.”

I leave, grateful to get out of the room. What is wrong with me, babbling about Neel and cranes? Neel is boring, dull, and serious. I do not find him attractive. Just because he had suggested that I paint, I make too much of him.

Once inside the attic, the dusty air brings me back down to earth. I scan the shrouded piles before me, my nose adjusting to the smell of tar and mold and my eyes to the quiet gloom.

A loud
bong
vibrates the room. I jump.

I pat my chest, calming myself. It is just the hateful death bells. So they ring again today. Well, that signifies nothing. Carel is right, the contagion is abating, I tell myself, then try to remember where I’d once seen a vermilion and gold carpet among this mess. Perhaps the kneeling figure in Neel’s
Prodigal Son
can rest upon the rug, suggesting the rich palace Neel mentioned.

I inch past a pile of rotting trunks to prod a rolled-up length of material with my toe. When it does not open, I bend down and lift an edge. It is not the carpet, but a canvas. I unroll it until I am greeted by the one-eyed stare of Mijnheer Gootman.

I smile to myself.

Gently, I roll the canvas back up, then stand, bumping my head. I whirl around and see an empty birdcage swinging from the rafters like a tolling death bell. In its arc I see a painting from which a drape has fallen.

I squeeze my eyes shut but it is too late. I can see the painting as clearly as if my eyes were open. I can see the dark shadow between her legs. Her uncovered breasts. The red ribbon winding down her neck like a snake. The string of red beads in her hair. Moeder’s face is turned to the side.

Why did you let Vader paint you like this?
He spared you nothing, not a ripple or blemish, not your belly, not the sorrow on your face. He left you exposed for anyone to see, and you let him. You let him.

“Bird?”

Titus is in the doorway.

“What are you doing here?” I bolt to him before he can see the painting. She is not his moeder. He has no right.

“Well, I can always count on a warm welcome from my little sister.”

I herd him out the doorway and shut the door. “What
are
you doing here?”

“That’s not much more hospitable, Bird. But never mind. Magdalena waits downstairs. We have some news to share.”

He steps down onto the landing and opens the studio door. “Vader? Oh, hallo, Neel.”

Soon all but Neel have gathered in the front room, where Magdalena sits on the chair with the lion’s-head arms, her silvery hair looped high on her head like a crown, the peach silk of her dress pouring down her lap in shimmering folds. With pale almond eyes she looks down upon us crowded before the printing press and worktable, smiling as at small children.

Titus says, “We wanted you to be the first to know—”

“After my mother,” Magdalena says.

“—that Magdalena is with child.”

Vader springs forward and hugs Titus, then Magdalena, then Titus again. “Oh, this is excellent news!”

Magdalena receives my embrace with a patient smile.

“According to the physician,” Titus says, wheezing in Vader’s renewed hug, “the baby is due in March. It will be a boy.”

“You know all this?” Vader says.

“We have the very best physician in Amsterdam,” Magdalena says. “Hendrik van Roonhuysen. Johanna de Geer recommended him. He has delivered her of all her children.”

“But how do you know it’s a boy?” I ask.

“Because,” Titus says with a grin, “in my bones I feel lucky.”

Vader shakes Titus’s hand. “May your child bring you the happiness you’ve brought me.”

I frown at Titus. Sweat clings to his brow and upper lip. “You look hot. Are you well?”

“It is the end of August,” Magdalena says. “Everyone is hot. He is not the one carrying a child.”

Titus reaches over and pats her hand. “That is right. I will not complain.”

We chat for a few minutes, discussing names for the baby until Magdalena states it will be named Jan after her vader, period; then we listen in detail to how Magdalena is feeling. At last she rubs her belly, which has not begun to round, and says, “We must be off, Titus sweet. I shall need a nap soon. We were on our way to the lacemaker’s shop,” she explains. “I am working on our son’s christening gown.”

I cast a look of sympathy to Titus but he does not catch it. He wipes his forehead with the back of his arm. “I am sorry, Magdalena, but I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I am so very hot.”

“Sympathy pains,” Magdalena says lightly. She kisses his hand, then draws back with a not entirely playful smile. “You are a sweaty beast!”

“I think I need to go home and lie down.”

“But we have come all this way,” Magdalena says plaintively. “I had my heart set on finding the perfect Flemish lace for Little Jan’s gown.”

“Neeltje,” Titus says, “could you go with her? Magdalena, would you mind?”

Magdalena scowls, then spreads her hands with generosity. “Of course not. Change quickly, Cornelia,” she says, eyeing my clothes. “I shall wait.”

Chapter
29

“Dear Titus!” Magdalena says as we stroll down the street on the far side of the Westermarkt, the peach silk of her skirt swishing. “He is such a child. I am supposed to be the queasy one.” She raises her sweet voice to a shout above the din of the peddlers and their haggling customers. “For several weeks I was so tired I thought I was sure to die—I had Titus fetch the minister, and Moeder was up nights brewing me potions—but I have since shaken that malaise and feel quite marvelous.” Her pale eyes flash at a carter who has gotten too close with his wagon heaped with hay. “Are you blind?” she shouts. “You almost killed us!”

The carter yanks on his reins, jerking back his horse’s head. Hay slides off the top and onto the street. I stop to pick it up.

Magdalena pulls me away by the arm. “I am the stronger one of Titus and I,” she says over the marketplace din. “Women are always the stronger sex.” She smiles to herself. “The trick is not appearing to be so.”

I falter as we walk. Have I been appearing to be too strong to Carel? I should have never, ever mentioned I wanted to paint to him. He will think me in competition with him. And I am always spouting off my opinions. Does he think me bossy?

The noise lessens as we leave the Westermarkt. As I worry about chasing Carel away with my pushiness, Magdalena continues to list Titus’s many faults as we journey down narrow streets and across humpbacked bridges. Soon we enter Dam Square, where the sounds of laughter and clopping hooves and the creaking of carts mercifully drown out Magdalena’s complaints. I gaze at the Town Hall, remembering, all of the sudden, going there with Moeder to look for Vader’s picture. I remember seeing the men come with the cart when we returned home, and Vader raising his knife—

“Cornelia?” Magdalena peers into my face. “Cornelia, are you listening?” She pulls back with a swish of silk when satisfied she has my attention. “Do you see that third building to the left of the Town Hall? The pretty one, with the silver sign?”

“Yes.”

“That’s the Silversmith’s Guildhouse. When I was a child, my vader was the head of the guild. I imagine Little Jan shall be someday, too.”

“You don’t think Titus will want his son to deal in art with him—when he gets that business going better?”

“Oh, dear, no. It does not pay, does it? In fact—you mustn’t tell your vader, this is still a secret—Titus is taking silversmithing lessons from my uncle.”

“He is?”

“He seems to have quite a knack for it. He made me the sweetest candlesticks. He had engraved flowers on them. I keep them at our bedside.”

The candlesticks he had offered to me—dear Titus, had he tried to give them to me first?

She shades her eyes to look across the crowded square. “You will have to keep in mind this lacemaker when you next need lace. I know, I know, it is ladylike to make one’s own lace, but Johanna de Geer does not make hers. It is a waste of her good time, she says. A waste of mine, too. Goodness knows I have plenty of other things to do.”

Magdalena has a cook, a maid, and a moeder to jump to her every command. I wonder what those other things to do might be, besides to harry my brother.

“This woman makes lace far better than I can,” Magdalena says. “Of course she does. She is only a thousand years old. She has been at it so long she probably weaves all those threads as easily as breathing. Besides, Johanna has told me how to get a bargain from her.”

Magdalena trods near a legless beggar, who, quick on his hands, skitters crablike out of her way. “The secret, Johanna says, is to buy more than you need at a cut-rate price.”

I pull my apologetic gaze from the angry beggar.

“Later,” Magdalena says, “you bring back what you don’t need for a refund at the regular price. You come out ahead that way, you see.”

“But—isn’t that wrong?”

“No. The old woman builds a high profit into her price. I am just bringing it down to a reasonable rate. She should not charge so much in the first place.”

We leave Dam Square by way of the Damstraat. I recognize where we are—headed toward the Kloveniersburgwal.

Magdalena nods at a young woman dressed in pink silk with bows all over the skirt and trailed by a small brown-skinned boy in a matching livery. He struggles along on his tiptoes, balancing the long handle of a pink umbrella in an effort to keep her shaded.

“I asked Titus to get me one of those,” Magdalena says after they have passed. “But he is being rather stingy and refuses to. Johanna de Geer has one. Named Coco. A darling little thing from the New World. Quite rare, you know. He had an unfortunate habit of sucking his thumb—not really nice for serving at table—but she cured him by putting red East Indies pepper on his nail.”

My heart sinks for the little boy, so far from home without a moeder. What is wrong with Magdalena, not realizing he is not a toy or a pet but a feeling, frightened child? “What happens to the little boys when they grow up?”

Magdalena blinks her almond-shaped eyes. “I do not know. I had not thought of that.” She laughs. “Now I know why Titus calls you Worry Bird. I shall call you the same.” She pauses a moment at a street corner and presses a slender finger to her lips. “Now, where are we?”

My heart beats harder. What if we see Carel? What foolish blunders will I make around him with her judging my every move? Has Vader told her and Titus that I’m not to see him?

“Are we going to Kloveniersburgwal?”

“No,” she says, “the street before it. The shop is quite convenient to Johanna’s house. Why do you ask?”

I shake my head.

“Oh, I know.” She gives me a sly smile. “It is the Bruyningh boy, isn’t it?”

I look down.

“Wor-ry Bird!” she sings.

I bite my lip.

“There’s no use in denying it. People talk, you know. A person cannot sneeze in this town without everyone knowing it.”

I gasp. “What did Vader say?”

“Your vader? Nothing that I know of.”

“Someone else is talking? What could they possibly say?”

“Oh, just that you two young people are keeping company. Nothing much. Johanna mentioned it to me—Carel’s vader has been grumbling.”

“Carel’s vader is grumbling!”