The Miniaturist(107)

But Pellicorne merely purses his lips. Seclusion is bad; Nella knows what his expression means. Civic-mindedness, neighbourly surveillance, everyone checking up on everybody else – that’s what keeps this city ticking on. Not cloistering yourself away from prying eyes. ‘It will be a brief ceremony,’ he says, putting the guilders into the register.

‘We don’t like pomp,’ she replies.

‘Precisely. And aside from her name and dates, what would you have inscribed on the gravestone?’

Nella closes her eyes and conjures Marin in her long black dress, the perfection of her cap and cuffs concealing so much turmoil underneath. Publicly rejecting sugar but sneaking candied walnuts, hiding Otto’s love notes, annotating unvisited countries on her brother’s pilfered maps. Marin, so dismissive of the miniatures, but who slept with Otto’s doll beneath her pillow. Marin, who didn’t want to be a wife, but who had Thea’s name waiting on her tongue.

Nella feels weighed down by the pointless loss of Marin’s life, the many unanswered questions. Frans, Johannes, Otto – this trio of men, did they know her sister-in-law any better than she?

‘Well?’ asks Pellicorne impatiently.

Nella clears her throat. ‘T’can vekeeren,’ she replies.

‘Is that all?’

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘T’can vekeeren.’

Things can change.





Degrees of Being Alive


On Saturday morning, Nella takes a pie from the pantry, thinking it’s made of berries. She’s starving, having barely eaten since the verdict.

The crust is deceptive, turning out to conceal a pie made of cold fish, prosaic flounder where she’d hoped for winter fruits. In Nella’s nervous state, it almost feels like the food is taunting her. She wonders miserably whether Cornelia will ever candy anything again. The sight of a crystallized walnut might conjure Marin and her delicious contradictions.

Her stomach rumbling, Nella heads to Hanna and Arnoud’s shop, under their sign of two sugar loaves.

‘We’ll take more,’ says Arnoud when he sees her. ‘It works well with the honeycomb, and you’ll be desperate to get rid of it, no doubt.’

‘Noud,’ Hanna reprimands. ‘I’m sorry, Nella. They never taught him decent manners in the Hague.’

Nella smiles. Business is business. I don’t have to like you, Arnoud, she thinks – though she is fond of Hanna – clear-speaking, a diplomat in a dusted apron. As soon as this sugar’s sold, Nella promises herself she will shove Arnoud’s doll into a city apiary, to be covered by greedy bees.

‘Come,’ Hanna says, beckoning her to sit down on the polished bench in the front of the shop. Arnoud stomps to the back, banging out his trays.

‘Try this new cocoa-bean drink I’ve been testing,’ Hanna says brightly. ‘I put some of your sugar loaf in, and a few vanilla seeds.’

It is truly delicious. Like a happy childhood memory, it warms Nella up. ‘Have you heard?’ Hanna asks.

‘What?’

‘The burgomasters have lifted the ban on people-shaped biscuits. Though our dogs were so popular, I’m pleased we can go back to carving people’s sweethearts for those lucky enough to be young and in love. It’s good news for your stock.’

Nella wraps her grateful fingers round the hot terracotta mug. It is good news, and yet, not good enough to lift the overwhelming bleakness she feels inside. ‘I cannot be long away,’ she says, thinking of her household; newly configured, half of whom she’s only just met.

‘Of course,’ says Hanna, looking at her carefully.

Does she know, Nella wonders – has Cornelia finally held her tongue? ‘But I thank you,’ she says, ‘for your friendship and your trade.’

‘I would do anything for her,’ Hanna says.

Nella imagines Hanna and Cornelia in the orphanage – what pacts did they swear, what blood oaths till the day they died? Hanna lowers her voice. ‘Since my marriage—’ She cuts herself off, looking over her shoulder at Arnoud. ‘Running a business takes up every hour of my day.’

‘You have Arnoud.’

‘Exactly.’ Hanna smiles. ‘He is not a cruel man. Nor is he a selfish one. I have made my doughy bed.’ She leans forward, whispering. ‘We will pay you the money you need. From little seeds great flowers grow.’

Nella looks into the kitchen. ‘But what will Arnoud say? I cannot sell at a low price.’

Hanna shrugs. ‘There are means of persuasion. It’s my money too. I earned and saved what I could before I married. My brother gambled for me on the bourse and once I’d made a profit I told him to stop. He listened, unlike some.’ She sighs. ‘Arnoud admires my abilities, but he seems to have forgotten the source of half his capital. He likes his new role as sugar-trader. It’s brought him status in the Guild of Pastry Bakers. They might appoint him as an overman. The product is good, so they think he is too.’ Hanna smiles. ‘New recipes, plans for expansion. He wants to go and sell the next batch of sugar in Delft and Leiden, as well as The Hague.’ Hanna pauses. ‘All decisions I have encouraged.’

‘Will you go with him?’

‘Someone has to keep the business open here. We’ll take another three hundred loaves. And give you six thousand. That’s fair, isn’t it? Sugar crystals are more use to me than diamonds, Madame Brandt.’