Rembrandt's Mirror (26 page)

‘I want to know how it ends!' I said, raising my voice again.

He sighed. ‘Some die quickly, within a few hours of the first symptom, others last about a week, a great many survive. There's often a faintness at the end, a kind of swooning.'

‘What about tokens?'

‘Oh, they are an old-wives' tale.'

He clearly was not telling me everything. I felt with my hand for swellings under my arms and in my groin. Nothing.

‘Bring me the mirror,' I demanded.

He did not move.

‘It's either the mirror or a physician,' I said.

He went to get the mirror and held it up for me. ‘See! No red spots or anything.'

I didn't know what
he
was seeing but my face looked like a ghost's, drained of colour, black circles around my eyes. Again the peculiar sensation of ice water trickling through my veins. I felt quite unwilling to draw another breath, as if by pausing the heave for air the inevitable march towards my fate could be halted.

I thought of Cornelia. I must not leave her while she needed me. And he must not lose another wife. Then I felt hope again; some survived, maybe I would – even if it was the distemper.

He was sitting there, looking out of the window, his face vacant.

‘Get me a nurse,' I said.

He took the mirror from my hand and leaned it with the shiny side against the wall.

‘Why? I can look after you and you'll be up and about again in a few days.'

‘No,' I said, ‘I'll be in agony before long. She might know how to ease it and help me recover.'

‘You're right. I'll get you a nurse. I'll find a good one. Now try to sleep – you'll be better when you wake again. I'll go right away.'

‘How long?' I said.

He stroked my hair.

‘Don't touch me,' I pleaded, with little conviction.

‘I can't help it,' he said, shrugging his shoulders and smiling. ‘I'll be as quick as I can. Not more than two hours in any case.'

As he left, I shouted after him, ‘Look in on Titus and Cornelia and forbid them to come up.'

He shouted back his agreement from halfway down the stairs.

I tried to sleep but I could not – it was as if my skull was being wrenched apart. I hoped it would take him less than two hours.

I tried to console myself with thoughts that it would be a relief to have a nurse, someone who'd know what to do. As I lay, I began to wonder if God had decided the time had come for me to pay for my sin of living with Rembrandt outside the bounds of marriage. But I'd not even thought of it as a sin for a long time. Everyone treated us like man and wife. Could the Almighty be more begrudging than man? Were we not married in his eyes too?

He could only think of one person who could get him a competent nurse at this time: Jan Six. He broke into a run. But soon he was out of breath and had to slow down again; besides, he needed time to work out what to say to his friend – if he was still his friend.

How striking the sky looked tonight, streaks of pastel pink,
green and blue. What an unfitting backdrop to what was unfolding beneath. The few people who were out walked close to the edge of the canals, avoiding the houses because of the smell wafting from many a door and for fear of infection.

When the distemper had first started he'd found it heart-wrenching to listen to the screams, but as things got worse he'd grown used to it, even used to seeing the bodies. Sometimes they were slumped in a doorway or had simply collapsed dead in the middle of the street. The only reason he even noticed the corpse floating in the canal was that the unusual beauty of the sky had seduced him to use his eyes again and now he wished he hadn't.

What to say to Six? He might not want to help him, and besides he might have gone to his country estate. The last time he'd seen Six, many years ago, was to warn him of his imminent bankruptcy so that he could sell the credit note while it still had value. On that occasion he'd also asked Six for a loan, as he could have bailed him out, but Six had flatly refused and not seemed too pleased that he had even asked.

He'd arrived at the old gates. There was no footman in sight so he pushed them open and walked up to the house. The hedges looked unkempt and the path was littered with dry leaves and twigs. He banged the giant lion head door-knocker as loudly as he could. An old manservant opened a window above.

‘How may I be of assistance?' The man's demeanour belonged to another time.

‘Is your master at home?'

‘He is receiving no one.'

‘Tell him it's Rembrandt. I need to speak to him, it's urgent. If he can come to the window.'

‘Please wait a moment, Mijnheer, I will enquire.'

After a few minutes Six's head appeared in a first-floor window. He looked pale from being indoors.

‘Rembrandt, what brings you here at a time like this?'

‘Hendrickje is ill.'

‘With the plague?'

‘No, no, it's only a fever but she needs a nurse and they are rather hard to come by at the moment.'

Six gave a tired smile. ‘Yes, somewhat, I dare say.'

‘I know we did not part on the best of terms, but I was hoping you might ask Dr Tulp to make a recommendation.'

‘I happen to know a good nurse myself. She helped us greatly with our children last year. If I write a note, she might be persuaded if she is free. She's good.'

With that he disappeared inside and after a time threw down a weighted piece of paper and said, ‘I'm so sorry, my friend.'

‘No, Jan, it's nothing, just a common fever, but she's got a terrible ache in her head.'

There was a change in Six's expression that frightened Rembrandt. ‘Tulp is retired but there is no one who knows more about migraines . . . and the plague. He issued guidelines during the last epidemic on which medicines to take, in order to put a stop to all those concoctions created by quacks. I will write you a letter to
give to him, asking him to advise you which physician to call – should things get worse.'

Six disappeared again for several minutes. Then he came back and threw down another paper, folded up and weighted like the first.

Rembrandt put it in his pocket. ‘Are you all right? Why have you not left?'

‘I'm needed here. The Church is making sure the poor are fed enough to keep them alive if the plague does not get them.'

It was hard to believe, but Six was risking his life for the common good. And how wrong he'd been, thinking his old friend might not help him.

‘I'm sorry, too,' said Rembrandt, craning his neck to look at Six above.

‘Whatever for, my man?'

‘For asking you for money just before I went bankrupt. For being less than warm when you did not give it to me.'

‘Don't think of it for another minute; you were in desperate straits – of course you tried. You thought you were heading down the drain and that I could prevent it.'

Rembrandt nodded. Six probably could have prevented it but then he'd only have struggled on for longer and possibly still failed to pay it all back.

‘Have you done much these last few years?' asked Six.

‘I have indeed. I have had much more time.'

‘Good, good, I was hoping you'd be working prodigiously.'

‘But I'm selling less than I used to. Of course, if I adapted my style a little . . .'

Six interrupted, ‘You've never bothered with that – why start now? You can't go backwards.'

‘No, quite right,' he said, grinning at his friend.

Six continued, ‘You know the portrait we did, I mean you did – I look at it every day. It's a masterpiece.'

Rembrandt smiled. ‘I know.'

Six laughed, ‘That's better.'

‘You must come by when things are back to normal,' said Rembrandt.

‘I will,' said Six. ‘And keep on painting, especially now. It'll keep you out of trouble.'

‘What a complete bore you have become,' said Rembrandt.

‘Take a look at yourself,' Six laughed. ‘Paunch, children and devoted to your lovely wife.'

Rembrandt had to press his lips together to stop despair getting the upper hand.

‘Send word if you need anything else,' Six said. ‘No need to come in person. You'll be needed at home.'

‘Thank you, thank you so much. May God love you as much as I.'

Six laughed heartily. ‘There's a man of true faith, asking God to try to measure up to Rembrandt. Only you could see it that way.'

*

As he hastened through the dark streets towards the nurse's house he kept feeling that he'd missed something obvious, something in plain sight – like the corpse in the canal. It was one thing to be blind to the ravages of the plague but to go for months without looking at the sky . . . He looked at it now. An inky black. And yet he could still discern the remains of the fading light. Or was it the afterglow of something luminous he'd seen in another life? It seemed a very long time since he'd last set eyes on something truly bright.

I must have drifted off into some kind of stupor for the next thing I knew he came through the door with a little woman who wore a perfectly starched white cap that was fringed by the fairest wisps of hair. It was possessed of so little weight that it refused to clump into strands and instead hovered around her face.

‘I'm Anna. I'm going to look after you,' was all she said for introduction.

Her voice was like the notes of a small flute. There was something child-like about her. This alarmed me at first; how could a slight thing like her stand with me against the sickness? I needn't have worried for she immediately set to work.

‘Looks like you're running a fever, my dove.'

She'd brought a large basket with her and from it she produced herbs, tinctures and cloths from which she quickly assembled poultices and applied them to my legs.

‘To draw out the heat,' she said.

And indeed for the first time I felt a lessening of the pain in my head, at last allowing tiredness to win out.

‘There, there,' she said, ‘let sleep take care of you.' Through half-closed lids, I watched her white lace cap and the near-white hair, a blurry halo about her face.

Rembrandt visited every few hours but stayed away from the bed, as I had wished. In the evening Cornelia came to speak to me from the doorway. As much as I longed to see her, the thought that I might never hold her again made me feel wretched and hopeless.

The next time I woke, the pain had subsided a little. It was dark night and yet Anna was there in her chair. I was able to speak so I asked her about how others fared that had been stricken. She told me that in many cases they turned to the Almighty. And that the closer death came, the more the heart was moved to repent. She'd heard the most desperate confessions and pleas of forgiveness from the sick on their deathbed. Many had advised her not to leave things as late as they had. Perhaps when death draws near the urge to cleanse oneself is inescapable. I too started to feel troubled. Not by the recollection of my sins but by my failure to think of any. It must be my pride obscuring them, I thought. And I had been excluded from partaking in the Eucharist for over ten years now. My sins must have stacked up all this time and brought the plague upon me.

My limbs grew hot again with fever and my mind was taken by it too. I thought I was in the dark, cavernous chamber of the Church
Council, summoned there for the one sin I did remember. The first thing I noticed were not the twelve men that sat behind a long rectangular table but the table itself. It was very beautiful, with gold trimmings and carvings, possibly a leftover from the old Church. How strange that it had not been replaced with something much less wonderful.

I could not bring myself to look up but had a vague impression of a row of gloomy figures lined up behind the table. My hands were shaking uncontrollably, whether from present fever or past fears I did not know – they were as one.

The heat was so overwhelming that I looked for its source and saw two great stoves, one on each side of the chamber. A servant stood by to keep them well fed with coals. Old men are often cold.