Tulip Fever Read online

  I am damp with sweat. We sit there, wedged together on the bed. I am wearing his nightshirt. On my lap a red drop appears. For a moment I think it falls from the ceiling. Another drop appears, and then another. I have a nosebleed. This happens when I am agitated.

  Jan presses a handkerchief to my nostrils and holds back my head. Between his fingers the handkerchief reddens. Nosebleeds are strange because you bleed without pain. The handkerchief grows sodden. When Jan releases my head he has blood on his hands.

  32

  The Tulip Grower

  Select a large bulb with several well-developed offsets. Clean off the soil from the offsets and pull them away from the parent bulb, taking care to preserve any roots. Prepare pots with a moist, sandy compost. Insert a single offset into each pot, and cover it with compost. Label, and water.

  —ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY, Encyclopedia of Gardening

  Claes van Hooghelande is a man possessed. In his house on the Sarphatistraat he sleeps fitfully. He is a tulip grower. He used to be a tax collector but now he has given that up, much to his wife’s dismay, so that he can stay home and watch his garden. It is only a small garden, but it is the center of his universe. Beneath the soil, out there in the night, his babies are fattening.

  His real children lie sleeping upstairs but he has no time for them anymore; they have been forbidden to enter the garden, on pain of a beating, and have to play in the street. When he thinks of them, which is seldom, he pictures them as nodes on a tulip bulb—offsets nestling against the parent bulge. Everything he sees speaks tulip to him. Comely women are tulips; their skirts are petals, swinging around the pollen-dusted stigmas of their legs. The taxes he used to collect are precious nodes prized from the plump bulb of a yearly wage.

  He is obsessed with nodes. The more nodes, the heavier the bulb. The heavier the bulb, the more azen it weighs. The more azen it weighs, the more money for him. That is why he leaves his tulips in the soil for longer than his rivals, the other amateur growers whose gardens are now empty earth. They lifted theirs in June, but he has waited weeks longer.

  It takes its toll on his nerves, however. Despite his precautions—his trip wires, his round-the-clock vigils—while his bulbs are still in the earth they are at risk. Thieves, dogs, slugs. He used to be a corpulent man with a healthy appetite; in pretulip days he could hardly squeeze through his front door. Now he cannot eat; he scarcely sleeps. His clothes hang loosely on him; his wife has had to take them in. He suffers from heartburn and has to drink tinctures of peppermint and brandy. He and his wife used to sleep in a bed downstairs, built into the back-room wall. With the money he made, last season, he bought a freestanding bed and has moved it upstairs next to the window. From here he can see down into the garden.

  Compost is his secret. All autumn he prepared the soil, digging in his magic mixture—cartloads of cow dung, sack-loads of chicken excreta, fine sand, and bonemeal from the slaughterhouse. Since then he has applied thrice-weekly applications of his special fertilizer. He has worked out the ratio per foot and written it in a book, which he keeps locked in his strongbox.

  “You’d dig in your children if you thought it would improve the soil,” mutters his wife. She doesn’t understand. Sometimes she looks at him strangely. He likes to squat in the garden, crumbling the earth between his fingers, sniffing it. No sweetmeats smell more delicious; he could gladly eat it.

  “Maybe, my love, you should see a doctor,” says his wife. Wait until she sees the prices he will get. Sixty thousand florins in four months, that is the profit one man has made, the other side of the city. That is sixty times his annual income. See her face then. And this man has a smaller garden.

  Claes has already lifted and stored most of his bulbs, his Miracles, his Emeralds and his main stock-in-trade, his Goudas. He has triumphed this year, perfecting several new varieties—his own homebred mutations, which he is yet to name. One of them bears an indigo blush like a drop of ink dissolving in milk. He has split off their nodes, weighed them and packed them in straw. These he has stored in his vault, under lock and key, to wait until the prices rise. His Admirals—Admiral van Enckhuysen and Admiral van Eyck—still lie under the soil. Last night he dug his hand into the earth and cradled a bulb with his fingers, feeling how it had fattened up. He felt the thrill of a deviant, rummaging under a man’s nightshirt to fondle his balls. When sailors were caught doing this they were sewn into sacks and thrown into the sea. What punishment awaited those who fondled an Admiral?

  Maybe you should see a doctor. Why? He is simply a man in love. How beautiful they were in bloom—blousy and seductive, moving gently in the wind. How vast were their flowers, nourished by his secret tonic (soot and his own urine). They were his choicest of children. They were his company of angels, trumpeting soundlessly. How he loved them, the intensity varying according to their value. The financial scale is this: first the yellow-on-reds (Goudas); then purple-on-whites; and finally the most thrilling of them all—the red-on-whites.

  Semper Augustus is a name he can only whisper, as if in church. The king of kings, the holiest of holies. He has five of them slumbering under the soil. He grew them from five offsets he purchased the year before—five was all the investment he could afford. Five flowers have bloomed— petals as white as a virgin’s brow, veins as ruby-red as blood, their chalices blushing as blue as a summer sky. Solomon himself could not sing of them with greater fervor. Behold, thou art fair, my beloved, yea, pleasant; also our bed is green. They are his five dazzling maidens. Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet . . . Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee . . . Thou hast ravished my heart.

  They have died down now; beige tatters are all that remain. Their beauty lies beneath the soil, to which we shall all return. Tomorrow is the big day. Tomorrow he shall lift them . . . they will rise like Christ from their long sleep; their resurrection shall make him rich.

  Claes sleeps. He dreams of the soil breaking open. Soldiers rise from it, their spears bright. He turns, bumping against his wife, and sinks back into slumber. He dreams of an intruder. It’s a large black dog. Stealthily, it lopes through the streets . . . lightly it vaults over the wall . . . soundlessly it lands in the garden. It looks around, baring its white teeth in a grin. It leaps into the tulip bed and starts digging. It digs up tiny arms and tiny legs, the dismembered limbs of Claes’s children.

  The bell jangles. Claes sits up, wide awake. He leaps out of bed. Flinging open the window, he yells: “Who’s there?” Down in the garden more bells are ringing. He sees something move—a blacker clot in the moonlight.

  And now he is out in the garden, tripping over his own trip wires, setting off the bells again. They peal dementedly, calling the sinners to be punished.

  Claes examines the earth. In the moonlight he sees a footprint. Nothing has been disturbed. This particular sinner has got away. The alarm system has been Claes’s salvation.

  33

  Sophia

  All these fools want is tulip bulbs.

  —PETRUS HONDIUS, Of de Moufe-Schans, 1621

  There is a knock at the door. Gerrit, Jan’s servant, stands there holding a letter.

  “What has happened?” I have a sinking feeling of foreboding. “Has something befallen him?”

  “No, madam.” Gerrit is a phlegmatic man—stolid, with a face as lumpy as putty. He comes from the swamps of the Marken, where the peasants move sluggishly in perpetual fog. Nothing that has been happening arouses his curiosity, for which I am grateful.

  I tip him. He leaves and I tear open the letter. Jan has had cold feet. He is not going to go through with it.

  Destroy this when you have read it. I’m wrong. Jan tells me about his attempted robbery last night. See? Another crime has been added to the list. But he was interrupted, he says. The man woke up. Luckily Jan escaped without being seen. We will have to buy the bulbs.

  This is a small setback, but we will manage. I will have to raise some money to help pay for them. We will have to bu
y a considerable number of bulbs, to spread our speculation and cover our inevitable losses. Upstairs I open my jewelry chest. Pearl earrings, my pearl necklace, sapphire bracelet and pendant. There isn’t a great deal of it. Though generous to my family, and to myself in many ways, Cornelis is parsimonious when it comes to jewelry. Precious stones do not interest him. He prefers to spend his money on paintings, on embellishments for his home and on our own fine clothes. His in particular. He is surprisingly self-indulgent in this respect. When I arrived at this house I counted in amazement the items crammed into his linen cupboard: thirty pairs of drawers, seventy shirts, twenty-five collars, forty pairs of ruffled cuffs, thirty ruffs, ninety handkerchiefs . . . The closet is burdened to breaking point; last week we had to call in a blacksmith to repair the hinges.

  I pick out some items of jewelry and lay them on the bed. I cannot pawn it all—Cornelis will notice—but I can spirit these out of the house.

  Maria comes in. She knows about our plan, of course. She has to, since it revolves around her. She agreed to it, but she still seems in a state of shock.

  I tell her about the failed theft. She gazes at the few pieces of jewelry laid out on the coverlet. They look pitiful, like small slaughtered birds after a poor day’s shooting.

  “I’m frightened,” she says.

  Maria cannot talk like this. She is the sensible one, the practical one. I pretend not to understand. “We will get enough money, don’t worry,” I tell her. “We’ll get the bulbs and then we will make a lot more.”

  “I’m not frightened of that.”

  IT IS NIGHT. I step into the courtyard. The flowers breathe courage on me. I invest them with courage, knowing that their blowsy lives are soon over. Despite their beauty, they are insensible. Little do they know that we recognize, through their brief blossoming, the futility of human endeavor.

  I pause, breathing in their scent. There is a purity about our love of flowers; it is an act of homage untempered by greed. Tulips are the exception to this; when I think of them lust rises within me, a shameful wave of heat. I think: next year I shall plant tulips in this narrow bed. Then I realize that there will be no next year.

  I pace around the yard like a condemned prisoner. In the darkness I feel a crunch under my foot. When I was being prepared for marriage I was told the proverb of the snail: she is a good housewife, carrying her home with her wherever she goes.

  Well, this particular snail is gone; and her house with her.

  34

  Jan

  PIETER I like you very much. That is why I want to propose to you this advantageous transaction. I do it without any self-interest, and out of pure friendship. HANS I am listening carefully, my friend. PIETER I have a bulb of the tulip “Harlequin.” It is a very beautiful variety, and in addition much sought after on the market. HANS But I never had anything to do with flowers in my whole life. I don’t even have a garden. PIETER You don’t understand a thing. Please listen to me; don’t interrupt, because who knows, maybe today a great fortune is knocking at your door. Can I go on? HANS Yes, yes, of course. PIETER Well, the “Harlequin” bulb is worth a hundred florins, and maybe even more. In the name of our unblemished (as I said) friendship, I will let you have it for fifty florins. Still today, without any effort, you can make quite a lot of money. HANS This is indeed a splendid proposition. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. Only tell me, please, what am I to do with this “Harlequin”? After all, I will not stand at the street corner . . . PIETER I will tell you the whole secret. But note it down well in your memory. Why are you fidgeting? HANS I am listening, only I’m a bit dizzy. PIETER Do exactly as I say. Go to the inn At the Lion. Ask the innkeeper where the tulip vendors meet. You will enter the room he indicates. Then someone will say in a very thick voice (but don’t you be put off by it): “A stranger has come in.” In answer to that, cluck like a chicken. From that moment on you will be included in the community of vendors.

  —CONTEMPORARY PLAY, QUOTED IN Z. HERBERT, Still Life with a Bridle

  A week has passed and Jan, in his studio, is trying to make a deal with the man he attempted to rob. It is unnerving to stand there with him in broad daylight, but there is no way the man can recognize him. He is the only grower Jan has heard of—his name was given to him by a drinker in the Cockerel tavern, who said that Claes van Hooghelande had a substantial hoard, rigorously guarded. Jan is only too aware of this now.

  The tulip grower fidgets. He looks restless, as if he is longing to get back to his house. He has told Jan that all his bulbs are now lifted and stored under lock and key. There is a manic gleam in his eye.

  “I have five Semper Augustuses,” he says, his voice hoarse with excitement. “A little out of your league.”

  The trouble is, the bulbs he has brought along are also out of Jan’s league. Jan has the money from Sophia’s pawned jewelry, his own savings and a loan from Mattheus, but there is still a shortfall. At this stage he needs to buy heavily. He has ordered a bagful of Goudas—red-and-yellow, the cheapest of the flames—plus several thousand azen of some Admirals whose full names he didn’t catch. I’ve wasted my time collecting taxes, joked Claes, I’ve joined the navy now. Only if Jan buys heavily now will he make the fortune that is, literally, a matter of life and death.

  “Take a painting.” He grabs Claes’s arm and leads him to the canvases. “Take a Raising of Lazarus. That’s worth thirty florins.”

  He pulls out canvases and panels and leans them against the wall. Jacob, who is grinding pigment, stares.

  “Take a Sacrifice of Abraham; take a Landscape with Cows.”

  “But, sir—” says Jacob.

  “Be quiet!” barks Jan. “Take a Woman Taken in Adultery .”

  Claes van Hooghelande stands there, scratching his head. “What about that still life over there? Those flowers?” He points to a panel, propped in the corner. “Look— see there—between the columbine and the guelder rose— see that tulip? That’s a General of Generals.”

  “It is?”

  “You painters, you’re such ignoramuses.”

  “We just paint what we see.”

  “Oh, yes?” replies Claes. “Daffodils and lilies, blooming together? That’s impossible.”

  “Not impossible when I paint them.” Now it is Jan who fidgets.

  “Such a graceful tulip, such a poem of blooms,” says Claes. “You have caught it to perfection—the drop of dew—”

  “Thank you, but—”

  “Strange, isn’t it? That flowers are transient but a painting lasts forever.” Claes’s voice throbs with emotion. “Yet one bulb of that tulip is three times more precious, in financial terms, than your painting of it. Try to sort that one out.” Recovering himself, he speaks briskly. “Throw in that painting and you have a deal.”

  Jacob gasps. Jan ignores him.

  JUST BAGS OF ONIONS, that is what they look like. For them, Jan has paid as much as he makes, with luck, in a year’s work. How homely they look. Yet they are more valuable than jewels, than paintings, than gold. Stored within those bulbs, fattened by sunshine and rain, is his future.

  Jan feels too restless to work. He longs to speak to Sophia. He misses her desperately; she is so near yet so far, locked into her echoing prison. He wants to tell her about Claes, the manic gleam in his eye and those loose breeches that he kept hitching up. He longs to tell her everything in his head, those words he stores up for her until they meet again. Is she thinking of him now? What is she doing— sewing, gazing out of the window, the sun shining on that beautiful bumpy nose? He longs for her so much that he feels winded. He tells himself: just a few months and we will be together, forever.

  He walks past her house but there is no sign of life, no face at the window. Maybe she is shopping. He walks down to the marketplace but it is late; the stall holders are packing up. It has been such a strange day that he has lost track of time.

  Coachmen lounge beside their horses, waiting for fares. When a customer arrives they throw a di
ce to decide who will take him. Jan thinks: how stolid we look, but underneath we are all gamblers. We are a people possessed. And mine is the biggest gamble of all.

  THAT NIGHT HE DREAMS that people are tulips, stem necks rising from their ruffs. Their heads nod; they bend this way and that in harmonious agreement. It seems entirely natural that Amsterdam is peopled with blooms.

  He is in the town square, calling out to Sophia. She walks toward him, nodding. It must be Sophia; he recognizes the violet dress. He asks her to accompany him across the seas. She nods more vigorously. Her petals fall, revealing a naked stalk.

  JAN’S FRIEND MATTHEUS knows a crooked doctor. His name is Doctor Sorgh. He performed an abortion on a maid that Mattheus had impregnated and was paid with a painting of Peasants Carousing.

  “Why do you want him?” Mattheus leers. “Got some tart in the family way? When will you stop fucking around and settle down with a nice girl, eh? Gerrit makes a terrible wife. Wrong shape, for a start.”

  Jan meets the doctor in an apothecary’s shop down by the docks. This turns out to be a mistake. Doctors hate apothecaries because they steal their custom. They belong to the same guild and pass themselves off as physicians, sitting under their stuffed crocodiles and giving muttered consultations. They even wear the same outfits—black robe and coat, pointed hat.

  “Why did you want to meet me here?” snaps Doctor Sorgh.

  Jan thought it seemed appropriate. The doctor flounces out and they sit down in a nearby tavern.

  “So what is it?” asks the doctor.

  “You did my friend a service some years ago. Both parties were satisfied and he recommended you as someone of discretion.”

  Doctor Sorgh has a narrow, foxy face and ginger hair. Jan needs to trust him. This man holds three lives in his hand—four, counting the baby. By now Jan feels a certain protectiveness toward Maria, who is the most vulnerable of them all. He feels almost as responsible as if he has impregnated the girl himself.