The Anatomy Lesson (13 page)

I told Guus that Adriaen weren’t to hang.

The boatman looked over his shoulder and saw what we saw. “Better close your eyes, then,” he said. “No need for you to see such things now.”

We followed the big ships down the main canal from the IJ they call the Damrak. The boatman were right. I could see that the smaller canals were all jammed up with skiffs and rowboats, and the banks were full to overflowing. We were just one boat in a sea of ships trying to get to the Dam. We clung close to the canal wall, and sometimes the bigger boats banged against us. The boatman put his oars into the boat and used his hands to push up along through the vessels. We held on to each other, the boy and me, as the boatmen all around us shouted and cursed, seeing who could get farthest.

If that were not enough, on all sides were those street vendors. Hands came reaching down at me as we moved through the stinking canals: smoked fish and cobbed corn and toys for the boy. Harlots raised their skirts to the boatman. Street vendors cried, “East Indies
sugar and spices! Sugar from the New World. Spices from the Far East!”

I wanted to be there. We were late. We would not get to Adriaen in time. The boatman knew my thoughts. He saw the fear in my eyes and said, “Lass, we’re closer than you think.”

The buildings grew bigger and bigger as we passed through the Damrak. They were grand and tall, twice as high as buildings in Leiden. It looked like they were built one on top of the other, not even a garden or a simple path between them, and doors right on the street, so you step from your own rooms right into public, everyone on top of everyone else.

“I’ll stop here,” he said at last, “and walk you to the square. It’s not far, but the Damrak’s too crowded and we’ll get there faster on foot.” He turned and looked at my belly. “You okay to walk?”

I told him I were. He turned into a narrow canal, tied up the skiff, and we got out. I tried to hand him my coins again but he would not take them. He took me by the arm and the boy came to my other side. We went into a narrow alley and I could hear the crowds nearby. He were doing what he’d promised. He were tattered and hard, but I could tell he were a good man.

“I need to see the magistrate,” I said.

But soon as the narrow alley opened into the huge square I feared we were too late. Everyone were already there and the scaffold were readied, waiting. I saw them drag a woman up the gallows in chains, and thought: If Amsterdam hangs a woman it’ll hang a thief just the same.

The boatman said to keep our chins low and go direct to town hall. It were not far, just right there on the square. There were a posting on the door I could not read and the room were dark inside. I thought I’d missed the magistrate, but the boatman told me there
were men inside. A man pushed open the door, almost hitting us with it as he went out, waving a scroll of paper in one hand. He were a short man carrying a burlap sack.

It were the boatman who opened the door for us. We stepped onto a marble floor and the heavy wood slammed it shut. A clerk came in and without asking who we were told us to wait. They sat us down in high-backed chairs covered in red velvet. They made that room for important men, and I felt small and dirty in there, like a field mouse sneaking in for cheese.

We waited a long time and I could hear the crowd outside the door get loud again before the magistrate’s clerk called us in. He were a thin man with a long chin and bulging eyes. He wore a long white collar and a tall black hat. His face had small lines etched from his eyes to his lips.

The boy came with me to his desk. I did as Father van Thijn had told me. I said my name and showed my belly and told him I were Adriaen’s “betrothed.”

“Marriage papers?”

I shook my head. “We didn’t marry yet.”

He nodded in silence. “Birth record?”

I shook my head again. Adriaen were born around when I were born, too.

“Any papers at all?”

The boy stepped forward and put Father van Thijn’s letter on the desk.

“What’s this?” The clerk opened the letter and read it through one time. Then he eyed the boy. “Who are you?”

“Father van Thijn sent me,” he said proudly. “I’m an orphan in our church.”

Until then, I hadn’t even thought on who the boy’s parents might be.

The clerk looked at both of us. “Your intentions are noble, but I’m afraid you’ve come too late. There’s only two men to hang today and the first one just got taken off the noose. Next one is condemned. I’ve just signed his body over to the Amsterdam Surgeons’ Guild.”

“Signed his body …?” I said.

“They use convicts for the annual anatomical lesson.”

“To the skinners?” the boy said.

“They’ve paid a goodly sum for his flesh.” The clerk straightened and glanced at my face. “He’s to serve medicine. His body will be used for public good.”

“For public good?” I said. “But he doesn’t need to die. He’s not a murderer. He’s only a thief.”

The clerk looked down at a book in front of him where words were written and looked back up at me. “Yes, that’s what it says here. A thief.”

He read to me from his book: “Early in the morning about five or six o’clock, on the Heren Sluis in this town he joined two others to attack a certain person with the intent to snatch away his cloak and whom they threw to the ground while all the three pounced upon him and as this man, this victim, tried to cry for help, they gagged him, preventing him from making a noise. If the night watch had not discovered them in time, they certainly would have killed him.”

He had put Father van Thijn’s letter away, shaking his head. “All these evil facts and their serious consequences are not to be tolerated in a town of justice and honesty.”

“But Adriaen. Adriaen loved …” I knew my speech would not be heard.

I pulled out Father van Thijn’s purse and poured the coins out onto his desk. They made a sound like heavy rain. “What did they pay for his body? We will pay more.” I did not know how many coins were there or what they were worth.

The clerk stood, pulling his hat tighter on his head. “There’s nothing I can do for you now. The sentence was sealed four days ago. The hangman already pardoned the other convict on the word of his wench. And the Surgeons’ Guild must have its anatomy.”

“Adriaen weren’t never cruel,” I said. “Never violent …”

He had some pity in his eyes. “You should have come earlier. There’s to be no more pardons on this Justice Day.”

He stood and his chair screeched against the marble floor.

“But we have come from Leiden. The church …” the boy said.

“If you want to claim that body, I’m afraid you’ll have to wrestle it from the surgeons.” He were already walking out of the room.

“That man …” I said. “The one who just left? He’s the one bought Adriaen’s body?”

He didn’t answer my question. “After the execution, you’ll have to go to the guild, to the tower in the Waag. Dissections begin at sundown. I suggest you get there first.”

I ran out of the town hall and into the crowd, looking for that short man, the one with the scroll. If he’d paid for Adriaen’s body, he’d take my money instead, wouldn’t he? He’d let them leave Adriaen alive. He’d let them hear me.

I ran through the square, and the boatman and the boy followed me. But I saw none of that short man and all of the other people. It were like wading into a river, the current against us, the tall grass grabbing at our ankles. It all went too fast. I lost so much so fast, so deep I were in sorrow. I could do nothing to stop them hauling him up on that rope. I nearly drowned in that square.

“I’m real sorry you have to see this,” were the last thing the boatman said when we got to the center of that square.

The voices and the noise and the smells and the sounds were more than I could bear. I did not move forward but there I were right in front. I stood and I watched and I saw. Adriaen were bruised and cut and his right hand were gone.

The people parted and he walked toward the hangman’s scaffold. His face were pale, sunken. His eyes were red and wild. He didn’t seem to see anything, though he looked straight ahead. His legs were in chains that rattled against the ground, his arms held behind him in irons. There were a guard on each side of him, shoving, making him shuffle and clank. They were as rough as if he were a mule.

He did not resist them. He would not resist. He were trying to walk tall. He puffed out his chest and kept his chin high. But they shoved him through the crowd, and the people shouted his name, then the guards pushed and pushed.

He were beaten and weak but he did not let them see it. The hangman unlocked the irons, and they fell to the scaffold with a clank. Then the hangman asked him if he had any last words. He asked only if he could take off his jerkin and shirt. He stood there, in the whipping wind, his body cut and scarred and beaten, his lips dry and bloody, his pant legs torn. He raised his free arms into the sky and flexed them like a strongman.

“I’m not afraid,” he cried. “I’ve been waiting for a long time. Death, I welcome your embrace. I do not fear you.”

I looked up for some sign of mercy, but the sky were dull and dark and threatening. There it were, right before me, the dangling noose, readied for my Adriaen.

The boy’s small fingers crept into my hand and I were glad, at least, for that. It made me think on Carel and how I had to live for him.

Then the bells began to ring. The church bells ringing out the hour. The deathly hour. The sound were hard and cruel.
Bong, bong, bong
, like a demand. Like the devil himself instructing the hangman to do his work. I felt every ring of that bell like I were on the end of the cord that rang it.

The hangman stepped forward and put the noose around Adriaen’s neck. “Aris! Aris! Aris Kindt! Aris Kindt!” the people cried in time to the sound of the bells. It were not music. It were not chanting or singing. It were not the sound of God or Jesus or love or prayer. It were thunder crashing in your ears before a coming storm.

I felt the whole square close around me. They were all moving up to see it done. Now it were time. The bells rang, and it were to be done. It were so tight. There were nowhere to move, no air to breathe. I were ready to drown. The hangman stepped toward Adriaen. He were not a human but a devil with black holes for eyes inside his mask. I closed my eyes and kept them shut. My head pounded with every chime, every
bong
. I breathed in the foul smell of Amsterdam. The people, the square, the black sky. All of Amsterdam were roaring. They roared his name with a loud, wide throat. “Aris!”

Then there were silence. The moment that they put the noose around his neck, Adriaen stopped and stood still. It were only then, the moment before they hauled him up, that he saw me. Somehow he saw me.

He stopped looking proud. He stopped looking strong. The noose were on his neck and he looked down. That’s where we were standing, right there, straight ahead. His eyes fixed on my face, but he saw my belly, too. He saw me and he saw his babe.

“Flora.” He said my name.

“Adriaen.” I said his.

Then the hangman covered Adriaen’s face with a hood.

CONSERVATOR
’
S NOTES, TRANSCRIBED FROM DICTAPHONE

Painting diagnosis: Rembrandt’s
Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp
, 1632

Earlier, I noted something that intrigued me when I began to observe the right hand of the corpse with a scope. I described it as an “uneasy transition between Adriaen’s right hand and the body” with wrinkles of paint occurring together with a few premature cracks. This is the hand that is not the focus of Tulp’s dissection (the one that has gotten so much attention from the medical community over the years) but the other one. I requested a copy of the 1978 radiograph from De Vries and his team and I have that in my hands now.

Over lunch, in the cafeteria, I gave the X-ray a great deal of my attention. I observed something no one seems to have noted so far in previous examinations of this X-ray or of the painting: remarkably, the underpainting of the right hand is a very unusual shape. It is not a full hand but a shape that is more like a curve, like a very large backward
C
. This seems to indicate that Rembrandt originally painted in a hand that is not quite a hand. This presents two possibilities, it seems to me: it could either be a kind of sketch for the hand, or it could actually be a depiction of a severed limb. That is, a hand that was amputated. A stump.

I’m quite surprised we overlooked this in the 1978 study, because it’s right there, and quite easy to see, now that I’m looking at it.

Could this just be a way that he sketched out a location for the hand before adding more detail later? I suppose that’s possible. But I’ve never seen him use that technique in other paintings. His underpaintings are typically quite detailed, especially in these younger years when he seems to never want to waste any paint.
When he does change things using his pentimenti, he typically moves objects or figures left or right or up or down—he makes some of his characters in this portrait lean one way at one point and then adjusts their position in the frame later, to make way for other figures, like Colevelt. But I have never seen him sketch out a hand like a club and then paint in a more detailed hand later. Nor a foot. Nor a head, for that matter. Rembrandt didn’t sketch on canvas. He painted. And when he made a mistake, he went back and dabbed in pigments until he corrected his painting.

I am almost certain there is something else going on here. Perhaps what Rembrandt was trying to paint was indeed a stump. Because now we know that the dead man he painted was a thief, a recidivist thief. And in the seventeenth century, thieves were often punished with the amputation of their right hands. Corporal (corporeal) punishment. The next step is to check this
justitieboek
to see if he was in fact punished in this barbaric way.

Fascinating, really. It could explain why there is so much discussion of the left hand being quite distended. The right hand is quite a bit shorter, and it appears that the distal area of the hand has been painted over the shorter limb.