The Miniaturist(35)
‘You!’ Nella says. But the woman doesn’t move. ‘Why—’
‘She won’t come out,’ interrupts a man’s voice. ‘However hard you try. I’ve got a good mind to report her to the authorities.’
Nella swivels towards the speaker. He is a little way off from her, sitting outside what appears to be a wool shop. Nella swallows. It’s smallpox man – Hole-Face – the one who called Otto an animal, whom Cornelia yelled at in the street. Up close, his skin is like a sea-sponge, full of pinkish craters.
Nella looks back to the window. The woman has gone, the pane empty, and the house has a sudden deadened aspect, as if no one lives there at all. She rushes to the door and starts hammering, as if to beat the building back to life.
‘I told you, she doesn’t answer. She’s a law unto herself,’ Hole-Face remarks.
Nella spins round and presses her back against the door. ‘Who is she? Tell me who she is.’
He shrugs. ‘She doesn’t talk much. Funny accent. Nobody knows.’
‘Nobody? I don’t believe you.’
‘Well, we’re not all civic-minded, Madame,’ he says. ‘She keeps herself to herself.’
Nella pauses for breath. ‘In Smit’s List, a miniaturist advertised under this address. Are you telling me, Seigneur, that the only person who lives here is a woman?’
Hole-Face brushes wisps of wool from his trousers. ‘I am, Madame. And who knows what she’s getting up to in there?’
‘All and yet nothing,’ Nella replies.
‘Is that what you ladies call it.’
It cannot be possible that a woman lives alone in the heart of Amsterdam, under the eye of the burgomasters, the guilds, the hypocritical puritans like Hole-Face. What thoughts whir under her pale hair, why does she send out these breathtaking, unasked-for pieces?
I just want to know, thinks Nella, closing her eyes, remembering the inexpressible sensation of the woman’s gaze in the church and before that, out here on the Kalverstraat. This is too wonderful to be believed – a woman! Shame courses through Nella for what she wrote in her second letter – Sir . . . I will curtail our transactions forthwith. But it hasn’t seemed to matter. The woman seems to enjoy disobeying rules.
‘A woman alone like that can only mean one thing,’ Hole-Face goes on. ‘She’s a strumpet. And the boy who came to take her parcels was another foreigner. Those goings on should be kept for the Eastern Islands. Honest people who just want to work and live well shouldn’t have to—’
‘How long has she been here?’
‘Three or four months, I suppose. Why’s she so important to you?’
‘She’s not,’ says Nella, the fib jarring in her mouth. It feels the same as a betrayal. She girds herself, feeling protective towards the woman but not knowing exactly why. ‘She isn’t important at all.’
From one of the higher windows Nella thinks she sees movement, but it’s muddled by the reflection of another woman in the window above the wool shop, beating a rug into the street and looking irritated by the fuss outside her door.
‘Seigneur, if you speak to her—’
‘I won’t be doing that,’ Hole-Face interrupts. ‘She’s got the devil in her.’
Nella fumbles for a guilder, placing it in his filthy palm. ‘If you do speak to her,’ she turns and calls up to the window. ‘Tell her Nella Brandt is sorry! And to ignore her last letter. I only want to know why. And tell her – I’m looking forward to what she sends next.’
Even as she shouts these words up to the window, Nella wonders if they are exactly truthful. Only widows and whores live alone, some happily, others unwilling – so what exactly is the miniaturist doing up there, sending out her pieces, wandering the city alone? Nella has no idea what she’s playing with, but it certainly doesn’t feel like a toy.
She drags her heels back up the Kalverstraat. The miniaturist’s extraordinary existence is wasted on people like Hole-Face, she thinks. And it will be extraordinary – whatever it turns out to be – those eyes alone, that stare, these incredible packets full of clues and stories. The back of Nella’s neck prickles and she turns quickly, believing herself connected to that house at the sign of the sun.
But the Kalverstraat is once again quiet, unaware of the presence hiding in its heart.
Nella returns home and rushes upstairs to the cabinet, running her fingers over the miniaturist’s pieces. They are charged with a different energy, laden with a meaning she cannot penetrate, yet even more addictive in their mystery. She’s chosen me, Nella thinks, glowing with this discovery, yearning to know more.
Cornelia’s voice and approaching footsteps pull her from her reverie. Hastily, she draws the cabinet’s curtains as the maid pokes her head round the door. ‘The Meermanses are coming within the hour,’ Cornelia gabbles, ‘and the Seigneur still isn’t home.’
Downstairs, Cornelia and Otto have exhausted themselves with extra polishing, sweeping, mopping, beating the curtains, pummelling the cushions, as if the house is out of shape and needs a realignment which cannot be achieved. The faience and China-ware glitter in the best kitchen, the mother-of-pearl winks from inlays, and seeing how all the tallow candles have been replaced with those of beeswax, Nella takes the chance to inhale their lovely scent.