Tracy Chevalier - Girl with a Pearl Earring

When I turned around Agnes had gone.

I shall have to explain to her when I see her Sunday, I thought. I have two families now, and they must not mix.

I was always ashamed afterwards that I had turned my back on my own sister.

I was hanging out washing in the courtyard, shaking out each piece before hanging it taut from the line, when Catharina appeared, breathing heavily. She sat down on a chair by the door, closed her eyes and sighed. I continued what I was doing as if it were natural for her to sit with me, but my jaw tightened.

“Are they gone yet?” she asked suddenly.

“Who, madam?”

“Them, you silly girl. My husband and— Go and see if they’ve gone upstairs yet.”

I stepped cautiously into the hallway. Two sets of feet were climbing the stairs.

“Can you manage it?” I heard him say.

“Yes, yes, of course. You know it’s not very heavy,” another man replied, in a voice deep like a well. “Just a bit cumbersome.”

They reached the top of the stairs and entered the studio. I heard the door close.

“Have they gone?” Catharina hissed.

“They are in the studio, madam,” I responded.

“Good. Now help me up.” Catharina held out her hands and I pulled her to her feet. I did not think she could grow much bigger and still manage to walk. She moved down the hallway like a ship with its sails full, holding on to her bunch of keys so that they wouldn’t clink, and disappeared into the great hall.

Later I asked Tanneke why Catharina had been hiding.

“Oh, van Leeuwenhoek was here,” she answered, chuckling. “A friend of the master’s. She’s afraid of him.”

“Why?”

Tanneke laughed harder. “She broke his box! She was looking in it and knocked it over. You know how clumsy she is.”

I thought of my mother’s knife spinning across the floor. “What box?”

“He has a wooden box that you look in and—see things.”

“What things?”

“All sorts of things!” Tanneke replied impatiently. She clearly did not want to talk about the box. “Young mistress broke it, and van Leeuwenhoek won’t see her now. That’s why master won’t allow her in his room unless he’s there. Perhaps he thinks she’ll knock over a painting!”

I discovered what the box was the next morning, the day he spoke to me about things that took me many months to understand.

When I arrived to clean the studio, the easel and chair had been moved to one side. The desk was in their place, cleared of papers and prints. On it sat a wooden box about the size of a chest for storing clothes in. A smaller box was attached to one side, with a round object protruding from it.

I did not understand what it was, but I did not dare touch it. I went about my cleaning, glancing over at it now and then as if its use would suddenly become clear to me. I cleaned the corner, then the rest of the room, dusting the box so that I hardly touched it with my cloth. I cleaned the storeroom and mopped the floor. When I was done I stood in front of the box, arms crossed, moving around to study it.

My back was to the door but I knew suddenly that he was standing there. I wasn’t sure whether to turn around or wait for him to speak.

He must have made the door creak, for then I was able to turn and face him. He was leaning against the threshold, wearing a long black robe over his daily clothes. He was watching me curiously, but he did not seem anxious that I might damage his box.

“Do you want to look in it?” he asked. It was the first time he had spoken directly to me since he asked about the vegetables many weeks before.

“Yes, sir. I do,” I replied without knowing what I was agreeing to. “What is it?”

“It is called a camera obscura.”

The words meant nothing to me. I stood aside and watched him unhook a catch and lift up part of the box’s top, which had been divided in two and hinged together. He propped up the lid at an angle so that the box was partly open. There was a bit of glass underneath. He leaned over and peered into the space between the lid and box, then touched the round piece at the end of the smaller box. He seemed to be looking at something, though I didn’t think there could be much in the box to take such interest in.

He stood up and gazed at the corner I had cleaned so carefully, then reached over and closed the middle window’s shutters, so that the room was lit only by the window in the corner.

Then he took off his robe.

I shifted uneasily from one foot to the other.

He removed his hat, placing it on the chair by the easel, and pulled the robe over his head as he leaned over the box again.

I took a step back and glanced at the doorway behind me. Catharina had little will to climb the stairs these days, but I wondered what Maria Thins, or Cornelia, or anyone would think if they saw us. When I turned back I kept my eyes fixed on his shoes, which were gleaming from the polish I had given them the day before.

He stood up at last and pulled the robe from his head, his hair ruffled. “There, Griet, it is ready. Now you look.” He stepped away from the box and gestured me towards it. I stood rooted to my place.

“Sir—”

“Place the robe over your head as I did. Then the image will be stronger. And look at it from this angle so it will not be upside down.”

I did not know what to do. The thought of me covered with his robe, unable to see, and him looking at me all the while, made me feel faint.

But he was my master. I was meant to do as he said.

I pressed my lips together, then stepped up to the box, to the end where the lid had been lifted. I bent over and looked in at the square of milky glass fixed inside. There was a faint drawing of something on it.

He draped his robe gently over my head so that it blocked out all light. It was still warm from him, and smelled of the way brick feels when it has been baked by the sun. I placed my hands on the table to steady myself and closed my eyes for a moment. I felt as if I had drunk my evening beer too quickly.

“What do you see?” I heard him say.

I opened my eyes and saw the painting, without the woman in it.

“Oh!” I stood up so suddenly that the robe dropped from my head to the floor. I stepped back from the box, treading on the cloth.

I moved my foot. “I’m sorry, sir. I will wash the robe this morning.”

“Never mind about the robe, Griet. What did you see?”

I swallowed. I was terribly confused, and a little frightened. What was in the box was a trick of the devil, or something Catholic I did not understand. “I saw the painting, sir. Except that the woman wasn’t in it, and it was smaller. And things were—switched around.”

“Yes, the image is projected upside down, and left and right are reversed. There are mirrors that can fix that.”

I did not understand what he was saying.

“But—”

“What is it?”

“I don’t understand, sir. How did it get there?”

He picked up the robe and brushed it off. He was smiling. When he smiled his face was like an open window.

“Do you see this?” He pointed to the round object at the end of the smaller box. “This is called a lens. It is made of a piece of glass cut in a certain way. When light from that scene”—he pointed to the corner—“goes through it and into the box it projects the image so that we can see it here.” He tapped the cloudy glass.

I was staring at him so hard, trying to understand, that my eyes began to water.

“What is an image, sir? It is not a word I know.”

Something changed in his face, as if he had been looking over my shoulder but now was looking at me. “It is a picture, like a painting.”