Tulip Fever Read online

  His role model is not Jan, about whom he has mixed feelings. Those he admires are Nicholaes Eliasz and Thomas de Keyser, successful portraitists at the height of their fame. They are commissioned, paint to a reliable standard and deliver their canvases on time. After all, painting is a trade, like any other; those who succeed are those who give good value for money. His other idol is Gerrit Dou, a past pupil of Rembrandt van Rijn. How different is Dou from his erratic and temperamental master! Dou’s fine detailing means that his paintings are in high demand. The collector Johan de Bye owns twenty-seven of them; the Swedish ambassador in The Hague pays a thousand florins a year— a thousand—simply for the promise of first refusal. Dou’s is the style to which Jacob aspires. Neatness and order, not the baffling self-indulgence of Rembrandt or the florid brushwork of the Antwerp phenomenon, Peter Paul Rubens. Jacob likes to be in control.

  Painting is a job, not a gamble. Jacob distrusts excess. This tulip craze that has enslaved his countrymen leaves him cold. He feels nothing for it but contempt. Unlike his master, he is not a dreamer. The only indulgence he allows himself is a Saturday stroll through Amsterdam’s most prestigious residential streets where the new mansions are being erected; as he passes, he speculates on which house he will buy when he makes his fortune. When the time is right—when he has established himself—he will find a suitable girl from a good family and settle down. But not yet. Not now.

  In several respects Jan van Loos has been a disappointment to him. For a start, he keeps a disorderly studio. When Jacob arrived it was a pigsty. The brushes looked as if they had been chewed by rats. When customers arrived Jan greeted them in his bespattered old painting clothes— were they not due some respect? Then there is that ramshackle servant wandering in at all hours—where does the man sleep? The gutter?

  Worse than that, Jan is clearly dissolute—Mattheus was right to warn Jacob about this. Jan has plainly been fornicating with that married woman. When Jacob returns home each night he does not confide this to his parents. They would be horrified and take him away.

  It is this sexual excess, no doubt, that has caused Jan to neglect his work. Loss of spermatozoa enfeebles a man and thins his blood. Then there is this tulip business. Nowadays, Jan is looking even more disreputable—wild eyes, ragged beard. The man has not had a haircut for months. Where is his professionalism? Some days he doesn’t go near his easel at all.

  Of course, this is a disappointment. Jacob was expecting more instruction. But it has also worked to Jacob’s advantage. He had expected his first year to be taken up with mundane tasks—binding brushes, lacing canvases onto stretchers, sharpening metalpoints and preparing the white ground on the panels. If he were lucky, he would get to copy some of the master’s works.

  Nowadays, however, Jan is often out. Even when he is in the studio he is distracted. He is late in fulfilling his commissions and has started relying on Jacob to help him. In the past few months, in fact, Jacob has become more his master’s partner than his pupil. During the summer Jan began three paintings to sell on the open market: a Landscape with Shepherds, a Rape of Europa and a canvas depicting—most appropriately, in Jacob’s opinion—The Effects of Intemperance. He has also embarked on a portrait commissioned by a prominent official in the Stadholder’s court. But he never has time to paint them and has told Jacob to complete the canvases. Not just backgrounds, not just clothing—the entire painting.

  Jacob is only too delighted to do this. He knows that his talent is equal to that of his master. This, combined with his single-minded industry, will make him ultimately the more successful of the two. Sometimes Jacob considers that it is he who should be giving lessons to his master.

  And then comes the bolt from the blue. It is the first week of November. Jan has been offered an important commission: a group portrait depicting the Regents of the Leper Hospital. And he has turned it down.

  “Why?” asks Jacob, his brush poised.

  “Because I have to go away.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Jan pauses. “I must apologize, Jacob. I have been meaning to tell you.” He sits down heavily on the bed. “Things have been—well, in a state of some confusion recently. I have to go overseas.”

  “When?”

  “In two weeks. On urgent business.”

  “When are you returning?”

  Jan shakes his head. “I am not returning. I shall be gone for good.” He looks up at Jacob as if seeing him for the first time. “I’m so sorry.”

  Trembling with anger, Jacob lays down his brush. “You cannot do this, sir. You contracted to teach me for two years—”

  “If you knew the circumstances—”

  “You gave your word!”

  “—maybe you would understand—”

  “My parents pay you fifty florins a year—”

  “I will reimburse them—”

  “What about my examination? What about my membership of the guild—”

  “I will find you another master. Mattheus can take you; I’m sure he will find room for you—I’ll insist—”

  “You—you—” Jacob splutters for a word. He is not used to swearing. “You wretch!”

  Jan gets up and puts his hand on his arm. “Jacob, believe me. It is a matter of great importance.”

  “To you,” Jacob spits, shaking off his hand. Just then there is a knock at the door. Jan answers it.

  A boy steps into the room. For a moment Jacob thinks: it is all a lie. Jan is getting rid of me so that he can take on another pupil. I am too talented—that is the answer—he’s jealous that I will show him up.

  Jacob is wrong. The boy passes Jan an envelope.

  Jan opens it and looks at the contents. Then he goes to his strongbox and scrabbles among his papers. He brings out a purse of money and gives it to the boy. “This is the deposit. Tell him I will make up the full amount on the day—it’s all right, it is all agreed.” He scribbles something on a piece of paper. “Here is my bond.”

  LATER, JAN GOES OUT. He never bothers to lock his strongbox; he is the most careless of men.

  Jacob opens the box and takes out the envelope. He opens it. Inside lie two tickets of passage on the Empress of the East, sailing on the fifteenth of November to Batavia, East Indies.

  38

  Maria

  Though the bird’s in the net, it may get away yet.

  —JACOB CATS, Moral Emblems, 1632

  The baby is overdue. He was due in the first week of November and already it is the twelfth. Maria is pulled two ways. She wants him to hurry up and be born; she wants to get it over with. She even feels a sense of obligation to the others—the sooner she performs her part of the bargain, the sooner they can leave. Sophia told her that their passage is booked for the fifteenth of the month. Time is running out. If this baby is not born by then they will have to cancel it and book a later date, but that might be weeks or even months hence. Maria is still enough of a servant to feel this obligation.

  On the other hand, she is terrified. It’s like being torn apart, said her butter-churning grandmother. It’s like all your guts they’re being pulled out. Thump-thump went her pole. It’s like being slit open with a red-hot knife.

  Maria misses her grandmother; she misses her mamma. Now that her time is near she aches for them even more strongly than for Willem. Who is going to take care of her? Not her mistress, that’s for sure. She will be occupied elsewhere. Maria feels utterly alone.

  That night she sleeps fitfully. The baby is kicking. Her belly is a rock; she cannot turn over in bed. She prays to the baby: don’t be born tomorrow, not on the unlucky thirteenth. Please wait until the next day.

  She dreams her dream again. How painlessly her babies slip out, shoals of them . . . She floats through the submerged rooms, swimming in her underwater palace, her babies flicking behind her.

  The next morning she is chopping the heads off sprats when the pains begin.

  39

  Sophia

  As you sow, so shal
l you reap.

  —JACOB CATS, Moral Emblems, 1632

  I hear a cry and I hurry into the kitchen.

  Maria is doubled up. “It’s started,” she mutters.

  I help her up to the attic room—one flight of stairs, then another, then another. It seems to take forever. At the top Maria has another contraction and has to sit down.

  I have laid a fire in the little room. I light it and settle Maria on the bed.

  “I want my mamma,” wails Maria. “Don’t go.”

  “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Don’t go!”

  I hurtle down the stairs and out of the house.

  40

  Mrs. Molenaer

  Fear is a great inventor.

  —JACOB CATS, Moral Emblems, 1632

  Mrs. Molenaer sits in her parlor. She is singing a ditty to her baby, Ludolf, as she wipes his bottom.

  Sleep, little child, sleep,

  Outdoors is walking a sheep

  A sheep with white feet,

  That’s drinking the milk so sweet . . .

  Baby Ludolf gazes up at her with fathomless understanding. How lucky she is. Each day, before she rises, Mrs. Molenaer offers up a prayer of thanks. She lives in a handsome house in the Herengracht. Her husband is a kindly man who loves his family. As Chief Inspector of Hygiene he holds a prominent position in society. He gives generously to the poor and has a fine baritone voice. In the evenings he sits in his cap and dressing gown, surrounded by his children, and says, There is no greater happiness on earth than this. He plays droughts for hours, patiently, with his eldest son.

  Mrs. Molenaer is roused from her reverie by a battering at the door. Her maid ushers in Sophia, her heavily pregnant next-door neighbor.

  “The baby’s started,” gasps Sophia, clutching her belly. “Please could you get a message to my husband, down at his warehouse?” She stops, doubled over in pain. She breathes heavily for a moment and then straightens up. “And could you send the de Jonghs’ groom to this address?” She shoves a piece of paper into Mrs. Molenaer’s hand. “It is where the midwife lives. Tell him it’s urgent.”

  Mrs. Molenaer rises to her feet. “My dear, I will come to the house with you—”

  “No! My maid will attend on me until the midwife arrives.” Sophia hurries out. Mrs. Molenaer frowns. Why on earth didn’t the maid deliver the message herself? Fancy letting her mistress do it, in her state. What a fat, lazy slattern that Maria is! Mrs. Molenaer has always thought so. Whenever she has seen her lately the girl seems to be sitting down, taking a break from her none-too-onerous duties. She has grown huge with sloth. And she’s pert too.

  Mrs. Molenaer washes Ludolf’s bottom with a damp cloth. Her maidservant would not behave like that. But then she has always been blessed with excellent servants. It is just another aspect of her great good fortune.

  41

  Cornelis

  How you stare at this flower, which seems to you so fair,

  Yet it is already fading in the sun’s mighty glare.

  Take heed, the one eternal bloom is the word of God.

  What does the rest of the world amount to? Nothing.

  —JAN BRUEGHEL THE ELDER

  Cornelis paces up and down. Cries of pain float down from Sophia’s bedchamber. Each cry pierces his heart. If he could but bear the baby for her. He would give up everything—his house, his wealth—to ease her agony.

  On the table sits the sandglass. He has already turned it twice; she has been in labor for two hours. He paces back and forth across the floor. The marble squares measure out the intervals between her cries . . . black . . . white . . . black . . . white . . . like some grotesque game of chess. We are but playthings of God.

  The room seems unnaturally still, as if it is holding its breath. Outside, it is overcast; daylight barely filters through the window. On the shiny oak table, with its bulbous legs, sit the sandglass, an uneaten apple and a pair of polished candlesticks. They look like the stillest of still lifes. Natures mortes, the French call them—a phrase that has always unsettled him.

  A yell comes from upstairs—hoarse, indescribable, an inhuman noise that drains his blood. On the wall hangs Susannah and the Elders . Her plump flesh taunts Cornelis.

  He used to find it arousing—how disgusting that seems now, for look where his brutish desires have led him: to inflict this suffering on the woman he loves best in the world. How obediently Sophia submitted to his lust, night after night, and what is the result? This horror, where he cannot follow her.

  Oh, most powerful and glorious God, we Thy creatures, but miserable sinners, do in this our hour of distress cry unto Thee for help . . . save her, oh, Lord . . .

  Black . . . white . . . black . . . white . . . now there are fewer steps between her cries. The contractions are coming faster.

  Look down, we beseech Thee, and hear us calling out of the depth of our pain . . . hear me, oh, Lord my God . . .

  Black . . . white . . .

  For we adore Thine divine majesty and implore Thy goodness . . . help, Lord, and save us for Thy mercy’s sake . . .

  The midwife hurries downstairs and into the room. “Please send for Doctor Sorgh,” she says.

  “What has happened?”

  “There is no cause for alarm. I simply need some assistance.”

  The midwife tells him the doctor’s address. Where is that damn maid? Cornelis grabs his cloak; he will have to go himself. How could Maria disappear when she is most needed? Upon his arrival home, when he rushed in to see Sophia, she told him that Maria had popped out on an errand to the tailor’s, but that was hours ago. The tailor’s shop is only a few streets away. Where in God’s name is she?

  Cornelis rushes out to get the doctor himself. It has started to rain.

  42

  Jan

  Grasp all, lose all.

  —JACOB CATS, Moral Emblems, 1632

  In a fug of tobacco smoke Jan paces up and down his studio. Outside it is raining. Noon . . . He has turned the sandglass three times since the urchin brought Sophia’s note. Maria has been in labor for three hours.

  Jan feels helpless—a mere man, when two women are in danger. For weeks, absorbed by his own business, he has hardly given Maria a thought. Now he feels for her with every bone in his body. He fears for them both; Sophia is taking her own terrible gamble. What a woman she is. What women they are! He is impotent. He can do nothing except smoke pipe after pipe of tobacco. In sympathy, his stomach is gripped by cramps. He urges Maria to give birth to a healthy child, for its delivery will be his deliverance.

  Oh, Lord, if in Thy wisdom Thou spare this woman, I will mend my ways and serve Thee in righteousness all the days of my life . . .

  He needs God now. How blithely he has broken one Commandment after another: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’swife . . . Thou shalt not commit adultery . . . How he laughed at Sophia’s religious scruples. Once they leave Holland he will become a changed man. He might even convert to Catholicism.

  He pictures Batavia. He has more information about the place now. Gone are its pagan palm trees and sensual self-indulgence; that was simply a daydream. Batavia, he has learned, is altogether more sensible. Built on the ruins of ransacked Jakarta, the town is growing into a little Amsterdam: gabled dwellings, canals, bridges, a courthouse and churches. There are even mills to pull energy out of the suffocating heat.

  Jan makes a bargain with God. If in His goodness He spares them and they survive the journey, he and Sophia will live like model citizens. They will be pillars of this new colony and go to church twice every Sunday. He promises God this, with all his heart.

  43

  Cornelis

  Mankind’s hopes are fragile glass and life is therefore also short.

  —ANON.

  Cornelis lets the doctor into the house. They are both soaking wet. Doctor Sorgh makes for the stairs. When Cornelis tries to accompany him he puts his hand on his arm. “Remain here, sir,” he commands.

  �
��But I—”

  “It is no place for a husband. If you want to be of use, fetch us some more hot water.” He hurries upstairs.

  “Maria!” shouts Cornelis. There is no reply. Where is the girl?

  A scream issues from the bedchamber. Cornelis’s blood freezes. If only he could comfort his wife. He knows that it is no place for a husband, but it tears at his heart.

  In the kitchen he pumps water into the pot. His hands are trembling. He must trust this doctor but why, oh, why, did Sophia insist on his services rather than those of Doctor Brusch? There is something odd about Doctor Sorgh— that lisping voice, those fluttering gestures. And the man has red hair, always a sign of doubtful integrity.

  Cornelis puts the water pot on the stove and stokes up the fire. He seldom comes into the kitchen; this domain belongs to Sophia and her maid. Cornelis gazes at her copper pans hanging on the wall. Inside the glass-fronted treasury he glimpses trenchers and sauceboats, familiar to him from a thousand companionable meals. How neat is her little kingdom where, aided by her maidservant, she prepares his food with wifely devotion! On the table is a covered dish. He lifts the lid. Headless sprats lie there. They look pitiful—bodies one side, heads in a pile. The triangle heads stare at him with their glazed, baleful eyes.