The Miniaturist(101)

Marin’s cleverness has endured until the end, enabling her to leave unseen. Her spirit has slipped through their fingers. Even in her final breath has she evaded, keeping for herself the moment of her death.

‘No,’ Nella chokes. ‘No. Marin, do you hear me?’

But Nella knows that she is no longer there. Standing with Cornelia at the side of the bed, they touch Marin’s face. She is covered in a sheen of moisture, as if she’s been lying in the rain.

Shaking, Cornelia gathers up Marin’s solitary legacy from her inert breast. She lifts Thea up, her entire hand cupping the baby’s tiny skull. Cornelia has swaddled her with so many lengths of cotton, only her nutshell face peeps through. Nella and Cornelia remain at the bed, still obedient to Marin in their shock.

‘It isn’t possible,’ Nella breathes.

‘There was nothing I could do,’ says a voice at the open door. Nella jumps, turning in horror to see a large woman walking towards them, sleeves rolled up, built like an Assendelft cow-herd.

‘Who—’

‘Lysbeth Timmers,’ the woman interrupts. ‘Your maid found me in Smit’s List. You should take that child out of here immediately.’

‘She was the nearest,’ Cornelia mutters to Nella, her voice hoarse as she holds Thea tight. ‘You told me to, Madame.’

Nella stares at this Lysbeth Timmers, shielding Marin’s prone body from the stranger’s shrewd observance. In this odd, held calm, she wonders how she could have been so reckless, telling Cornelia to throw open their doors and expose their secrets. A fox in the hen house, Lysbeth stands with her hands on her hips.

‘She’s a wet-nurse,’ Cornelia whispers. ‘But she didn’t pass the midwife examination.’

‘I birthed four children of my own,’ Lysbeth answers equably, overhearing. She strides towards them, plucking Thea out of Cornelia’s arms.

‘No!’ Cornelia cries as Lysbeth carries the child to the threshold, where she pulls up a chair. The wet-nurse examines the baby back and front, as if Thea were a suspect vegetable at market. After running her reddened fingers over Thea’s tight little cap, without further ado she pulls down her loosened corset and shirt. She hikes Thea onto her dark pink nipple and lets the child feed. ‘You’ve done a bad job,’ she observes.

‘What do you mean?’ Cornelia says. Nella hears the inexplicable panic in her voice.

Lysbeth looks up at her. ‘Swaddling her like this.’

Exhausted, Nella bristles. ‘We’re not paying you for your criticism, Mrs Timmers,’ she says.

‘Look,’ says Lysbeth, unruffled. ‘Their limbs are like wax at this age. If you bind them wrong, you’ll have a crooked spine and twisted legs by the time she’s one year old.’

She pulls Thea off her breast and begins unravelling her like a parcel. In a second, she has whipped off the child’s cap.

Cornelia takes a step forward, tense, alert.

‘What’s the matter?’ Nella asks. In the rush to the Stadhuis, she had barely looked at the child the morning after the birth. But now, as she remembers Cornelia’s agitation – It doesn’t seem possible. It cannot be true – her own eyes see what the astonished maid was trying to tell her.

With her head of dark hair, so black for a Dutch baby, Thea’s newly washed skin is the colour of a candied walnut. The baby’s eyes have opened, and her irises are small pools of night. Nella comes closer; she cannot stop staring.

‘Thea,’ Cornelia breathes. ‘Oh, Toot.’

As if she has heard this, Otto’s daughter turns to the maid. She offers a newborn’s gaze; a world entirely of herself.

Lysbeth looks up at Nella, waiting for her to speak. As the silence in the room thickens, Marin’s words begin to race around Nella’s head. This child will be far from convenient. If he survives, this child will be stained. Surely Lysbeth can hear her hammering heart? Beside her, Cornelia seems paralysed.

‘You will be amply rewarded – for all your help. A guilder a day,’ Nella manages to say, a tremor in her voice revealing the shock at what she’s seeing; a face in a face, a secret rising. From back to front, I love you.

Lysbeth puffs out her cheeks in contemplation, her rough hand gently patting Thea’s black hair. The illegal wet-nurse takes in the paintings, the pendulum clock, the silver ewer. Her eyes focus on the huge cabinet holding their miniature lives, standing so opulent, so redundant, that Nella feels ashamed.

‘I’m sure I will, Madame,’ Lysbeth finally observes. ‘I’ll take four guilders a day.’

Nella is still too astonished to say much, but she’s been in Amsterdam long enough to know that one barters as soon as breathes. Generally, she feels relieved that Lysbeth seems to desire their money more than their secrets, but perhaps the woman is enjoying her sudden luck too much. I will not be beholden, Nella tells herself. The wet-nurse seems to know the chaos that swirls beneath the surface, but unfortunately she also knows her price.

Maybe Johannes was right – even abstracts such as silence can be negotiated as one might a haunch of deer, a brace of pheasant, a handsome slab of cheese. She thinks of Johannes’ dwindled chest of guilders. You must go and see Hanna, she reminds herself. All that sugar needs to sell. But when? Things are already spilling over, just as Otto said they would.