The Anatomy Lesson (30 page)

Jacob and Hendrick didn’t bother hiding as we followed close behind him. They played that we were sailors off a merchant sea ship, on a weekend leave. There are many such packs of men out carousing on the streets in that part of town. The burgher never once looked back.

Just as we neared the Heerenlocke, the good burgher stopped before a high door. He took his keys from his belt. While fiddling with the lock, the rain started again and his lantern went out. It was in that rain and that darkness, I’m sure, that the fear finally hit him.

He leaned down to tend the flame, and while his fingers fussed, Hendrick made his move. He put his chisel to the burgher’s neck and whispered in his ear. The burgher dropped his lantern. Hendrick told him to put his key back in the lock slowly and quietly, but his hands shook too much, and the keys, too, fell down onto the cobblestones. Hendrick pushed him into the doorway and held him by the chin with his bare hands. Jacob used the chisel to pry open the metal clasp instead. Then we three stepped inside the darkened entry hall, and that’s where we tried to uncloak him.

I tried to be kind. “Be still, good sir, and it will take but a minute.”

He squirmed in Hendrick’s clutch and his eyes fell on me with a dreadful pleading.

“Be still, good sir,” I said again. I always try to go about my thieving in the pleasantest possible way, Your Honor. It’s not such a terrible thing to lose a coat. It’s the fear that does the worst harm. “I only want your coat,” I told him. “It will take but a minute.”

He got even more jumpy. He would not be still. He wrestled and pulled and then began to shout, and as soon as his scream passed his lips, I reached out to silence him with what I had: a rag inside my vest. The man had the shrill cry of a newborn, Your Honor, loud enough to wake all New Town. I felt sorry for the burgher but I needed him to be quiet. I pushed the rag between his lips and begged him to be still.

I tried my best to protect the good lame burgher, Your Honor, but Hendrick knocked him over the head. I looked up to see what he’d used: a large stone he must’ve picked up from the alley.

I yelled at Hendrick, “Why did you do that?”

He hissed back at me: “Shut up. Take his arm.”

Then we all heard heavy footsteps coming up the alley and a hard voice calling, “Who goes there? State your name and your business.”

The door to the house was open. Jacob and Hendrick dragged the burgher inside and we all went in. The night watchman called again, “Who goes there? Answer or I will ring an alarm.”

We were still trying to get the cloak. I lifted the burgher’s arm, but he was too heavy, and Jacob and Hendrick decided to run off. I thought to run into the house, but there was yet another gate. I looked down one last time to see the burgher, who was now moaning. His eyes looked up at me in frightful terror. I felt so sorry for him then, I wished I’d never left the tavern, never talked to Hendrick once in my life. I begged him to keep quiet. I left that house and ran in the direction Hendrick and Jacob had gone. There was a
body in the alley, too: they’d struck down the night watchman, who was groaning and trying to find his feet. We made it all the way back into Old Town before he caught up with us.

I was lucky to find a workman’s ladder on the Geldersekade and a small boat at the ready. I untied the skiff and, using the ladder as a gondolier’s pole, I pressed the boat from its mooring and down the canal toward the Waag. There’s a tunnel beneath the weigh hall quay. I leaned my ladder against the embankment and lay down in the skiff. Then I pushed myself by hand into that tiny passage.

I breathed a long sigh at last, hiding in that pitch-black warren, for dawn was just about rising and I’d easily have been given away. I lay there until an hour later, when I was awakened by something tossing the canal waters about my skiff.

You know the rest, Your Honor. How the night watchman climbed down my gondolier’s pole to find me. How I dunked him in the canal. I got as far as the Sint Agnieten monastery, where your civic guards were waiting, muskets aimed. It was panic that encouraged me to swim—I thought I still had both my hands; I could feel them paddling in the water. But one hand is all I have and I cannot swim with just one—nor swim at all, truth be told—so I was thankful the civic guards trawled me with the net. I was sputtering when they got me to the bank.

This I do admit, Your Honor. We were wrong to try and snatch a coat off the lame New Town burgher. The attempt was made worse still when I tried to stifle the man’s screams. But it was Hendrick hit him with that stone. I swear I wanted nothing from that burgher other than the source of his warmth.

Yes, Your Honor, you’re right. I have gone astray. I could have been a sheath maker with my training. Yet I am a coat thief. I steal and I cavort with violent thieves. But I swear I am not violent. I’m
not ripe for hanging, sire. What could the public want with my body? I am nothing. No one. I’m no more harmful than a crow that comes down into the farmer’s field and plucks away the grain. They don’t kill crows in the fields in Leiden. They scare them off with sticks.

Can you loosen the weights now, sire? I have told you my accomplices; I have confessed to my deeds. I’m sorry for the burgher and glad to hear that he is now well. I’m a stupid and useless man, Lord Schout, but there is no evil in my breast.

At least one drop of water, then, Your Honor? With a little moisture on my tongue I can go on. I will answer all your questions. I will convince you of the purity of my soul. Only the mercy of a raindrop …

Flora left my studio with a note in her hand for Fetchet: he could give her the item I’d purchased from him that afternoon—Kindt’s arm—and he could also keep my coins. But as I was placing the note in her hand, I said one thing:

“I have another way to make him whole again. You must give me time, and I will summon you again when I’m done. Stay in Amsterdam, and perhaps things will turn out all right.”

Paint, I thought to myself, once Flora had departed the studio. You must, at last, paint. It is only crushed minerals and oils. What can it do to reverse cruelty or reveal truth or transform life into something more sacred? I wasn’t sure yet. But I wanted to see if I could try to make something more powerful of this painting. Something I’d never done yet.

He was a man, and he was flesh and bones and mind and soul. She had loved him, Fetchet bought him, Dr. Tulp had claimed him for science, and I had wanted him for art. All of us sought his flesh. All
of us have wanted to make something of this man’s body. But he did not belong to any of us. He was only Aris the thief.

I turned toward my easel and once more addressed the canvas. I saw my own brushstrokes, the loose curves at the hand for the stump, the hole I’d outlined in his chest. Before Flora’s visit, I had envisioned depicting Adriaen as he was when I’d seen him: his skin scarred and beaten, his lopped hand, the mark of the rope still visible on his neck. I had planned to show him mid-dissection, with his whole body cavity open, and perhaps with his organs removed. It would be an image of an anonymous body, marked as such by all his brandings, stripped bare, supine, and subdued under the intelligent gaze of the surgeons.

But would it satisfy Flora? And would it satisfy me?

Now that I had heard Flora’s tale, I regarded the figure in the center of the frame differently. Yes, a destroyed body would be too literal. It would only elicit discomfort and shock from anyone who saw the picture. People would not see a man. He would remain a body, a poor convict taken apart. Flora was right: people didn’t mind seeing other people’s suffering.

I thought again about Emmaus, and how Christ walked among his disciples for a while before he revealed himself to them. They walked in the dark, on a path through the forest, and finally came upon an inn. They went inside to sup, and still he did not reveal himself to them. It was only once they had reclined at the table, and received their sustenance, that his image became manifest. A single candle illuminated his face, and his identity was revealed.

I brought my lantern close to the easel again. What if I were to illuminate Adriaen, to bring him into light? If he were not sliced open and degraded but instead elevated and lit? What if I did not show the power of the men over him but his own power over them?
All the other guild members would be like Cleopas, each in a different way, observing the effect of the body, learning something from it, expressing that discovery through their faces. But each would be discovering it in his own way. One would be awed, another frightened, another confused, another repelled. Each face would reflect part of the experience of facing death.

I knew at the time, of course, that if I took this course I might be upsetting Tulp or the other members of the Surgeons’ Guild by creating an allegory on their commemorative canvas. I knew that if the praelector didn’t appreciate this, did not like the portrait, he might withdraw his payment or refuse to hang it in the guildhall. I did think about that at the time. However, I knew that I needed to make a painting that meant something. Too many events had transpired that told me there was weight here. There was importance in this image. It was a kind of test.

I drew my brush out of the
pincelier
again and started to work on the thief’s body. I added details, colors, to the flesh, I added texture and substance to the skin. I worked all the way across the torso and down the arm until I got to the stump.

My instinct told me to replace it—to restore the hand. I cannot say it was a conscious choice. My own hand simply continued to dab my paintbrush into the paints and to add details. The cut went away, and in its place stood a fine, manicured, gentleman’s hand. Then it occurred to me that I had a certain power in creating this image, to replace what had been taken from him.

I thought about Tulp’s search for the soul in the body, and how we all go looking for the soul in different parts. But what if the soul can’t be found in the organs or the limbs? What if the soul of a man is found in his very life? What if the soul is not material but active? What if it’s somehow connected to how we make use of our gifts?
If I could restore the stolen limb, I could also unscar the body, remove the exterior signs of his malfeasance. He would no longer be Aris Kindt, criminal and evildoer; he would be like any man who was deserving of dignity in death.

I could close up his chest, so no one would try peering into his organs to detect evidence of his soul’s corruption. I could restore his human form so that he was a man again and not a patient. I would allow Tulp to dissect his functioning arm, to see the mechanism of that graceful limb, which allows a man to point and reach.

As I continued to dab my paintbrush into the Kassel earth and bone black, I recognized what was possible through this portrait. I could make a broken man whole. I added some lead white to my palette and painted on, adding details to the skin fold, until the hand was whole, moving on to adding color to the flesh so that it was pristine.

But there would be a sense of clear sacrifice in this image. The man has given up part of his serenity to serve scientia. No, to serve understanding, to provoke compassion.

As I was restoring Adriaen to his former shape, I realized that I was not painting a Christ figure at all. I was painting a Lazarus of Bethany, resurrected from death after four days in the tomb. Christ had not come soon enough. Flora had not come soon enough. Adriaen was already dead, and there was no way to save him. But we could raise him, in a way, from his deathbed and give him something else: immortality.

You hear me speak and this is one further heresy, is it not? I have not only claimed to be able to paint a Christ figure, I have claimed to
be
a Christ figure. I believe that with my crushed minerals and my linseed oil and my ground and my canvas and brush, I have the power to resurrect. This is why I should not go before that panel,
why it will be difficult to state my case. Because it’s true that I am arrogant and it’s possible that this is what I’ll say.

There is a nuance here, though, which I know that you can understand. I do not believe that I have the power to restore, the authority to resurrect. I am not a miracle maker, not I myself. No. It is art that has the power to do that job. It is art that can restore a broken body, return a dead man to life. It is the fiction created by the paintbrush, the pigments, the mathematical structure, the capacity to shine light.…

My job is to serve the art, to be the hand that wields the paintbrush, the eye that is capable of seeing what needs to be presented in paint. I am a mere conduit—through which art can accomplish its aims. A few crushed minerals with oil and turpentine, some strokes of a brush, and an artist has that extraordinary ability to stop time, to reverse time, to immortalize and resurrect.

It is why people sit for portraits in the first place, isn’t it? So that they can be captured at the height of their fame or youth or wealth. A portrait can freeze time, prevent aging, remove wrinkles and imperfections, and even dispense with death altogether if the sitter manages to live on in paint. Tulp knows this. That is why he has commissioned this portrait to commemorate his lesson. But we do not choose to use this art for vanity, for superficial fixes of a man’s skin. The power of our art is wasted if we use it to subtract from reality or erase a part of life.