A bald, slight man, he reminded me of a baby bird. He was surprised to see me. Few people ventured out in such cold. He sat behind a table, a set of scales at his elbow, and waited for me to speak.
‘I've come for my master and mistress,’ I gasped at last when my throat had warmed enough for me to speak. He looked blank and I added, ‘The Vermeers.’
‘Ah. How is the growing family?’
‘The babies are ill. My mistress needs dried elderflowers and an elixir of coltsfoot. And my master —’ I handed him the pouch. He took it with a puzzled expression, but when he read the slip of paper he nodded. ‘Run out of bone black and ochre,’ he murmured. ‘That's easily repaired. He's never had anyone fetch the makings of colours for him before, though.’ He squinted over the slip of paper at me. ‘He always gets them himself. This is a surprise.’
I said nothing.
‘Have a seat, then. Back here by the fire while I get your things together.’ He became busy, opening jars and weighing small mounds of dried flower buds, measuring syrup into a bottle, wrapping things carefully in paper and string. He placed some things in the leather pouch. The other packages he left loose.
‘Does he need any canvases?’ he asked over his shoulder as he replaced a jar on a high shelf.
‘I wouldn't know, sir. He asked me to get only what was on that paper.’
‘This is very surprising, very surprising indeed.’ He looked me up and down. I drew myself up — his attention made me wish I were taller. ‘Well, it is cold, after all. He wouldn't go out unless he had to.’ He handed me the packages and pouch and held the door open for me. Out in the street I looked back to see him still peering at me through a tiny window in the door.
Back at the house I went first to Catharina to give her the loose packages. Then I hurried to the stairs. He had come down and was waiting. I pulled the pouch from my shawl and handed it to him.
‘Thank you, Griet,’ he said.
‘What are you doing?’ Cornelia was watching us from further along the hallway.
To my surprise he didn't answer her. He simply turned and climbed the stairs again, leaving me alone to face her.
The truth was the easiest answer, though I often felt uneasy telling Cornelia the truth. I was never sure what she would do with it. ‘I've bought some paint things for your father,’ I explained.
‘Did he ask you to?’
To that question I responded as her father had — I walked away from her towards the kitchens, removing my shawls as I went. I was afraid to answer, for I did not want to cause him harm. I knew already that it was best if no one knew I had run an errand for him.
I wondered if Cornelia would tell her mother what she had seen. Although young she was also shrewd, like her grandmother. She might horde her information, carefully choosing when to reveal it.
She gave me her own answer a few days later.
It was a Sunday and I was in the cellar, looking in the chest where I kept my things for a collar to wear that my mother had embroidered for me. I saw immediately that my few belongings had been disturbed — collars not refolded, one of my chemises balled up and pushed into a corner, the tortoiseshell comb shaken from its handkerchief. The handkerchief around my father's tile was folded so neatly that I became suspicious. When I opened it the tile came apart in two pieces. It had been broken so that the girl and boy were separated from each other, the boy now looking behind him at nothing, the girl all alone, her face hidden by her cap.
I wept then. Cornelia could not have guessed how that would hurt me. I would have been less upset if she had broken our heads from our bodies.
He began to ask me to do other things. One day he asked me to buy linseed oil at the apothecary's on my way back from the fish stalls. I was to leave it at the bottom of the stairs for him so that he and the model would not be disturbed. So he said. Perhaps he was aware that Maria Thins or Catharina or Tanneke — or Cornelia — might notice if I went up to the studio at an unusual time.
It was not a house where secrets could be kept easily.
Another day he had me ask the butcher for a pig's bladder. I did not understand why he wanted one until he later asked me to lay out the paints he needed each morning when I had finished cleaning. He opened the drawers to the cupboard near his easel and showed me which paints were kept where, naming the colours as he went. I had not heard of many of the words — ultramarine, vermilion, massicot. The brown and yellow earth colours and the bone black and lead white were stored in little earthenware pots, covered with parchment to keep them from drying out. The more valuable colours — the blues and reds and yellows — were kept in small amounts in pigs' bladders. A hole was punched in them so the paint could be squeezed out, with a nail plugging it shut.
One morning while I was cleaning he came in and asked me to stand in for the baker's daughter, who had taken ill and could not come. ‘I want to look for a moment,’ he explained. ‘Someone must stand there.’
I obediently took her place, one hand on the handle of the water pitcher, the other on the window frame, opened slightly so that a chilly draught brushed my face and chest.
Perhaps this is why the baker's daughter is ill, I thought.
He had opened all of the shutters. I had never seen the room so bright.
‘Tilt your chin down,’ he said. ‘And look down, not at me. Yes, that's it. Don't move.’
He was sitting by the easel. He did not pick up his palette or his knife or his brushes. He simply sat, hands in his lap, and looked.
My face turned red. I had not realised that he would stare at me so intently.
I tried to think of something else. I looked out the window and watched a boat moving along the canal. The man poling it was the man who had helped me get the pot from the canal my first day. How much has changed since that morning, I thought. I had not even seen one of his paintings then. Now I am standing in one.
‘Don't look at what you are looking at,’ he said. ‘I can see it in your face. It is distracting you.’
I tried not to look at anything, but to think of other things. I thought of a day when our family went out into the countryside to pick herbs. I thought of a hanging I had seen in Market Square the year before, of a woman who had killed her daughter in a drunken rage. I thought of the look on Agnes' face the last time I had seen her.
‘You are thinking too much,’ he said, shifting in his seat.
I felt as if I had washed a tub full of sheets but not got them clean. ‘I'm sorry, sir. I don't know what to do.’
‘Try closing your eyes.’
I closed them. After a moment I felt the window frame and the pitcher in my hands, anchoring me. Then I could sense the wall behind me, and the table to my left, and the cold air from the window.
This must be how my father feels, I thought, with the space all around him, and his body knowing where it is.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘That is good. Thank you, Griet. You may continue cleaning.’
I had
