Tracy Chevalier - Girl with a Pearl Earring

Or I might simply say, “Your husband touched me, here, in this room.”

They did not know what I might say.

Catharina was no fool. She knew the real matter was not the earrings. She wanted them to be, she tried to make them be so, but she could not help herself. She turned to her husband. “Why,” she asked, “have you never painted me?”

As they gazed at each other it struck me that she was taller than he, and, in a way, more solid.

“You and the children are not a part of this world,” he said. “You are not meant to be.”

“And she is?” Catharina cried shrilly, jerking her head at me.

He did not answer. I wished that Maria Thins and Cornelia and I were in the kitchen or the Crucifixion room, or out in the market. It was an affair for a man and his wife to discuss alone.

“And with my earrings?”

Again he was silent, which stirred Catharina even more than his words had. She began to shake her head so that her blond curls bounced around her ears. “I will not have this in my own house,” she declared. “I will not have it!” She looked around wildly. When her eyes fell on the palette knife a shiver ran through me. I took a step forward at the same time as she moved to the cupboard and grabbed the knife. I stopped, unsure of what she would do next.

He knew, though. He knew his own wife. He moved with Catharina as she stepped up to the painting. She was quick but he was quicker—he caught her by the wrist as she plunged the diamond blade of the knife towards the painting. He stopped it just before the blade touched my eye. From where I stood I could see the wide eye, a flicker of earring he had just added, and the winking of the blade as it hovered before the painting. Catharina struggled but he held her wrist firmly, waiting for her to drop the knife. Suddenly she groaned. Flinging the knife away, she clutched her belly. The knife skidded across the tiles to my feet, then spun and spun, slower and slower, as we all stared at it. It came to a stop with the blade pointed at me.

I was meant to pick it up. That was what maids were meant to do—pick up their master’s and mistress’s things and put them back in their place.

I looked up and met his eye, holding his grey gaze for a long moment. I knew it was for the last time. I did not look at anyone else.

In his eyes I thought I could see regret.

I did not pick up the knife. I turned and walked from the room, down the stairs and through the doorway, pushing aside Tanneke. When I reached the street I did not look back at the children I knew must be sitting on the bench, nor at Tanneke, who would be frowning because I had pushed her, nor up at the windows, where he might be standing. I got to the street and I began to run. I ran down the Oude Langendijck and across the bridge into Market Square.

Only thieves and children run.

I reached the center of the square and stopped in the circle of tiles with the eight-pointed star in the middle. Each point indicated a direction I could take.

I could go back to my parents.

I could find Pieter at the Meat Hall and agree to marry him.

I could go to van Ruijven’s house—he would take me in with a smile.

I could go to van Leeuwenhoek and ask him to take pity on me.

I could go to Rotterdam and search for Frans.

I could go off on my own somewhere far away.

I could go back to Papists’ Corner.

I could go into the New Church and pray to God for guidance.

I stood in the circle, turning round and round as I thought.

When I made my choice, the choice I knew I had to make, I set my feet carefully along the edge of the point and went the way it told me, walking steadily.

When I looked up and saw her I almost dropped my knife. I had not set eyes on her in ten years. She looked almost the same, though she had grown a little broader, and as well as the old pockmarks, her face now carried scars up one side—Maertge, who still came to see me from time to time, had told me of the accident, the mutton joint that spat hot oil.

She had never been good at roasting meat.

She was standing far enough away that it was not clear she had indeed come to see me. I knew, though, that this could be no chance. For ten years she had managed to avoid me in what was not a big town. I had not once run into her in the market or the Meat Hall, or along any of the main canals. But then, I did not walk along the Oude Langendijck.

She approached the stall reluctantly. I set down my knife and wiped my bloody hands on my apron. “Hello, Tanneke,” I said calmly, as if I had only seen her a few days before. “How have you been keeping?”

“Mistress wants to see you,” Tanneke said bluntly, frowning. “You’re to come to the house this afternoon.”

It had been many years since someone had ordered me about in that tone. Customers asked for things, but that was different. I could refuse them if I didn’t like what I heard.

“How is Maria Thins?” I asked, trying to remain polite. “And how is Catharina?”

“As well as can be expected, given what’s happened.”

“I expect they will manage.”

“My mistress has had to sell some property, but she’s being clever with the arrangements. The children will be all right.” As in the past, Tanneke could not resist praising Maria Thins to anyone who would listen, even if it meant being too eager with details.

Two women had come up and were standing behind Tanneke, waiting to be served. Part of me wished they were not there so that I could ask her more questions, lead her to give away other details, to tell me much more about so many things. But another part of me—the sensible part that I had held to now for many years—did not want to have anything to do with her. I did not want to hear.

The women shifted from side to side as Tanneke stood solidly in front of the stall, still frowning but with a softer face. She pondered the cuts of meat laid out before her.

“Would you like to buy something?” I asked.

My question snapped her out of her stupor. “No,” she muttered.

They bought their meat now from a stall at the far end of the Meat Hall. As soon as I began working alongside Pieter they had switched butchers—so abruptly that they did not even pay their bill. They still owed us fifteen guilders. Pieter never asked them for it. “It’s the price I have paid for you,” he sometimes teased. “Now I know what a maid is worth.”

I did not laugh when he said this.

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.