The Miniaturist(110)
Her kindness nearly splits Nella apart. How can good people come and watch this?
Slabbaert lays his hand on Johannes’ shoulder and from then on, Nella doesn’t look. She only hears, closing her eyes, the wind on her face, the sails slapping like wet laundry. She hears the millstone being dragged by the two executioners. Johannes, attached to the end of it, will by now be teetering on the edge of the jetty. The half-ton of stone makes a drawn-out, grating sound that runs under Nella’s skin into the core of her bones.
As the crowd inhales, she feels the hot release of urine rush down her stockinged legs, the wool soaking it up and chafing her skin. He is speaking. She imagines him turning to look for her, for Marin, for Cornelia. Let him see me, she thinks. Let him think I’m sending him a prayer.
But the wind blows Johannes’ final words off course and she does not catch them. Johannes, she whispers. She strains to hear, but there are prosaic mutterers around her, prayers and futile utterances. He is too weak to make his voice carry, and by the time the mutters fall to silence, the millstone has been rolled off the end of the jetty. Johannes. It smashes the choppy surface of the sea and plunges underneath.
She opens her eyes. A thick wave pushes up, crests in a white circle and disappears in seconds.
No one moves.
‘He was one of our best merchants,’ a man eventually says. ‘We’re fools.’
The crowd exhales, their hair whipping on their foreheads. ‘No body to bury,’ someone says. ‘They’re not bringing him back up.’
Nella turns away. She is alive, and she is not. She is down in the water with Johannes. Leaning against the wall, head towards the ground, her body threatens to turn her inside out. How long will it take for the sea to fill his lungs? Be quick, she thinks. Be free.
She senses something. The back of her neck prickles, her knees want to sag. Nella lifts her head, scanning the crowd for a flash of pale hair. She’s still here, Nella thinks. I can feel it. She looks across the people’s faces, searching for that cool, appraising gaze, a moment for the miniaturist to say good bye.
But it is not the miniaturist standing in the line of her eye.
He is thinner, dressed in the same clothes he left in, wearing that rich brocade coat. For a mad second Nella thinks her husband has come up from the water, that an angel has brought him back to life. But no, he is unmistakeable. Nella raises her hand in recognition, and, open-mouthed with grief, Otto lifts his palm. Five trembling fingers, a star shining out from the dark.
FIVE
The same evening, Sunday, 12th January 1687
Let us solace ourselves with loves.
For the goodman is not at home, he is gone a long journey:
He hath taken a bag of money with him, and will come home at the day appointed.
Proverbs 7:18–20
Nova Hollandia
She supposes he’s in shock at what he’s witnessed, for she has to pull him away by the sleeve, their feet slipping on the tiles.
‘Come home,’ she says. ‘Come home.’ Nella is in agony, breathless because it hurts so much. The light has failed now, and dusk is on them. She tries to banish the image of the cresting water, the sound of Johannes being dragged beneath the surface of the sea. Her speed increases for fear grief will paralyse her, that she’ll curl up in a ball on the canal path and never move.
Otto turns to her, stunned, drawing Johannes’ coat tight around his body. He stops, pointing back in the direction of the docks.
‘Madame, what has happened here?’
‘I can’t. I don’t know the words, Otto. He’s gone.’
He shakes his head, still stupefied. ‘I did not know he’d been arrested. I thought to go to London would protect you all, Madame. I would never have—’
‘Come.’
When they reach the Herengracht, Otto is overcome by the sight of the house. He grips the dolphin door-knocker like a prop to ward away collapse, his face a battle between agony and self-control. What he is about to discover beyond the door unfurls like a malicious flower in Nella’s body, for it seems impossible that a person could withstand this double pain. She stumbles in Otto’s wake at this worst of homecomings; but the peaceful interior belies the loss of Marin.
‘This way.’ She leads him through to the salon, where Lysbeth Timmers has indeed set a fire burning in the grate, warmer than any of them has felt for weeks, the dancing flames incongruously cheerful. Nella feels her blood brightening. At the back of the blaze, prongs of pewter bend in curtsey, panels of tortoiseshell split apart and crackle.
Lysbeth stands in the centre of the room, holding Thea tightly to her chest, eyeing Otto as he stares at the child. ‘Who’s this?’ she asks.
Nella turns to him, wondering if he is capable of introducing himself, if he is thinking the same question of Lysbeth Timmers. As if in a dream, Otto puts out his expectant palms towards the child. Nella realizes she’s seen him make that gesture before, his hands outstretched that first day she was here, when he gave her a pair of pattens against the cold.
Lysbeth shrinks away.
‘Lysbeth, this is Otto. Please hand him the child,’ Nella says.
Her edge of authority is so palpable that Lysbeth immediately obeys. ‘Softer with her,’ the wet-nurse mutters. Otto scoops Thea to his chest as if she is life itself – as if her tiny, beating heart might keep his alive. Even Lysbeth is muted, watching an introduction so strange in the midst of all this loss; so strange, and yet so natural.