I felt a tiny hand tugging at my dress and looked down. Little Frans had found me and was clinging to my skirt. I touched the top of his head, full of blond curls like his father’s. “There you are,” I said. “Where’s Jan and your grandmother?”
He was too young to be able to tell me, but I then saw my mother and elder son coming through the stalls towards me.
Tanneke looked back and forth between my sons and her face hardened. She darted a look at me full of blame, but she did not say what she was thinking. She stepped back, treading on the foot of the woman directly behind her. “Mind you come this afternoon,” she said, then turned away before I could reply.
They had eleven children now—Maertge and market gossip had kept count for me. Yet Catharina had lost the baby she delivered that day of the painting and the palette knife. She gave birth in the studio itself—she could not get down the stairs to her own bed. The baby had come a month early and was small and sickly. It died not long after its birth feast. I knew that Tanneke blamed me for the death.
Sometimes I pictured his studio with Catharina’s blood on the floor and wondered how he was able still to work there.
Jan ran to his little brother and pulled him into a corner, where they began to kick a bone back and forth between them.
“Who was that?” my mother asked. She had never seen Tanneke.
“A customer,” I replied. I often shielded her from things I knew would disturb her. Since my father’s death she had become skittish as a wild dog about the new, the different, the changed.
“She didn’t buy anything,” my mother remarked.
“No. We didn’t have what she wanted.” I turned to wait on the next customer before my mother could ask more questions.
Pieter and his father appeared, carrying a side of beef between them. They flung it onto the table behind their stall and took up their knives. Jan and little Frans left their bone and ran over to watch. My mother stepped back—she had never grown used to the sight of so much meat. “I’ll be getting along,” she said, picking up her shopping pail.
“Can you watch the boys this afternoon? I have some errands to run.”
“Where are you going?”
I raised my eyebrows. I had complained before to my mother that she asked too many questions. She had grown old and suspicious when there was usually nothing to be suspicious of. Now, though, when there was something to hide from her, I found myself strangely calm. I did not answer her question.
It was easier with Pieter. He simply glanced up at me from his work. I nodded at him. He had decided long ago not to ask questions, even though he knew I had thoughts sometimes that I did not speak of. When he removed my cap on our wedding night and saw the holes in my ears he did not ask.
The holes were long healed now. All that was left of them were tiny buds of hard flesh I could feel only if I pressed the lobes hard between my fingers.
It had been two months since I had heard the news. For two months now I could walk around Delft without wondering if I would see him. Over the years I had occasionally spotted him in the distance, on his way to or from the Guild, or near his mother’s inn, or going to van Leeuwenhoek’s house, which was not far from the Meat Hall. I never went near him, and I was not sure if he ever saw me. He strode along the streets or across the square with his eyes fixed on a distant point—not rudely or deliberately, but as if he were in a different world.
At first it was very hard for me. When I saw him I froze wherever I was, my chest tightened, and I could not get my breath. I had to hide my response from Pieter the father and son, from my mother, from the curious market gossips.
For a long time I thought I might still matter to him.
After a while, though, I admitted to myself that he had always cared more for the painting of me than for me.
It grew easier to accept this when Jan was born. My son made me turn inward to my family, as I had done when I was a child, before I became a maid. I was so busy with him that I did not have time to look out and around me. With a baby in my arms I stopped walking round the eight-pointed star in the square and wondering what was at the end of each of its points. When I saw my old master across the square my heart no longer squeezed itself like a fist. I no longer thought of pearls and fur, nor longed to see one of his paintings.
Sometimes on the streets I ran into the others—Catharina, the children, Maria Thins. Catharina and I turned our faces from each other. It was easier that way. Cornelia looked through me with disappointed eyes. I think she had hoped to destroy me completely. Lisbeth was kept busy looking after the boys, who were too young to remember me. And Aleydis was like her father—her grey eyes looked about her without settling on anything near to her. After a time there were other children I did not know, or knew only by their father’s eyes or their mother’s hair.
Of all of them, only Maria Thins and Maertge acknowledged me, Maria Thins nodding briefly when she saw me, Maertge sneaking away to the Meat Hall to speak with me. It was Maertge who brought me my things from the house—the broken tile, my prayer book, my collars and caps. It was Maertge who told me over the years of his mother’s death and of how he had to take over the running of her inn, of their growing debt, of Tanneke’s accident with the oil.
It was Maertge who announced gleefully one day, “Papa has been painting me in the manner in which he painted you. Just me, looking over my shoulder. They are the only paintings he has done like that, you know.”
Not exactly in the manner, I thought. Not exactly. I was surprised, though, that she knew of the painting. I wondered if she had seen it.
I had to be careful with her. For a long time she was but a girl, and I did not feel it right to ask too much about her family. I had to wait patiently for her to pass me tidbits of news. By the time she was old enough to be more frank with me, I was not so interested in her family now that I had my own.
Pieter tolerated her visits but I knew she made him uneasy. He was relieved when Maertge married a silk merchant’s son and began to see less of me, and bought her meat from another butcher.
Now after ten years I was being called back to the house I had run from so abruptly.
Two months before, I had been slicing tongue at the stall when I heard a woman waiting her turn say to another, “Yes, to think of dying and leaving eleven children and the widow in such debt.”
I looked up and the knife cut deep into my palm. I did not feel the pain of it until I had asked, “Who are you speaking of?” and the woman replied, “The painter Vermeer is dead.”
I scrubbed my fingernails especially hard when I finished at the stall. I had long ago given up always scrubbing them thoroughly, much to Pieter the father’s amusement. “You see, you’ve grown used to stained fingers as you got used to the flies,” he liked to say. “Now you know the world a little better you can see there’s no reason always to keep your hands clean. They just get dirty again. Cleanliness is not as important as you thought back when you were a maid, eh?” Sometimes, though, I crushed lavender and hid it under my chemise to mask the smell of meat that seemed to hang about me even when I was far from the Meat Hall.
There were many things I’d had to get used to.
I changed into another dress, a clean apron, and a newly starched cap. I still wore my cap in the same way, and I probably looked much as I had the day I first set out to work as a maid. Only now my eyes were not so wide and innocent.
Although it was February, it was not bitterly cold. Many people were out in Market Square—our customers, our neighbors, people who knew us and would note my first step onto the Oude Langendijck in ten years. I would have to tell Pieter eventually that I had gone there. I did not know yet if I would need to lie to him about why.
I crossed the square, then the bridge leading from it over the canal to the Oude Langendijck. I did not hesitate, for I did not want to bring more attention to myself. I turned briskly and walked up the street. It was not far—in half a minute I was at the house—but it felt long to me, as if I were travelling to a strange city I had not visited for many years.
Because it was a mild day, the door was open and there were children sitting on the bench—four of them, two boys and two girls, lined up as their older sisters had been ten years before when I first arrived. The eldest was blowing bubbles, as Maertge had, though he laid down his pipe the moment he saw me. He looked to be ten or
