The Miniaturist(42)

At first, Nella does not understand. Then Marin’s face opens towards her, a book showing its pages. A prickling sensation runs over her. It pinks her cheeks, it rushes through her blood.

‘You knew? You knew?’ She feels the sob come – this is almost worse than seeing her husband naked on his office couch with Jack. ‘Dear God. I am your fool – I’ve been a fool since the moment I arrived.’

‘We have not laughed at you, Petronella. Ever. You are no one’s fool.’

‘You’ve humiliated me. And I’ve seen it with my own eyes now. The disgusting, awful thing he did with – that boy—’

Marin stands up and walks to the window. ‘Does Johannes disgust you in his entirety?’

‘What? Yes. Sodomites – beware them all, Pellicorne said. God’s fury will seep into the land. I’m his wife, Marin!’ Words pour out of her, words she never thought she’d say. Letter by letter, she feels lighter, as if she might take off.

Marin spreads her fingers wide against the windowpane until the tips go white. ‘Your memory of that sermon is prodigious.’

‘You knew that Johannes would not love me!’

When Marin speaks, her voice is cracked. ‘I wondered how he could not. I – do not always understand.’ She pauses. ‘He likes you.’

‘Like a pet. And he likes Rezeki more. I cannot forgive this trick, this shame – you knew what this would be for me. The nights I waited—’

‘I did not see it as a trick, Nella! It was an opportunity. For everyone.’

‘You? Did Johannes even pick me himself?’

Marin hesitates. ‘Johannes was – reluctant. He did not want – but – I made enquiries. One of your father’s friends in the city mentioned your family’s financial predicament he’d left behind. Your mother was more than enthusiastic. I thought it would satisfy everyone.’

Nella pushes the plate onto the floorboards where it breaks in three pieces. ‘And what opportunity have I had, Marin?’ she cries. ‘You’ve controlled everything. You’ve ordered my clothes, you hold the ledger book, you drag me to church, you push me into guild feasts where everyone stares at me. I was so grateful when you let me play the lute. Pathetic. I’m supposed to be the wife in this house but I’m no better than Cornelia.’

Marin covers her face with her hands as the air thickens between them. Nella feels her own vitality surge as she watches Marin’s struggle to remain composed.

‘Marin, stop pretending to be so calm! This is a disaster.’ Tears bubble up and Nella wills them to stop, but they run down her face despite her. ‘How can I be happy with a man who is going to burn in Hell?’

Marin’s face turns into a mask of rage. ‘Be quiet. Be quiet. Your family had nothing but your name. Your father left you paupers. You would have ended up a farmer’s wife.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with that.’

‘You say that in ten years’ time when the dams break, when your hands are raw and ten children are running around your feet, needing to be fed. You needed security, you wanted to be a merchant’s wife!’ Nella stays silent. ‘Petronella? What are you going to do?’

As the panic in Marin’s speech intensifies, it begins to dawn on Nella that some real power is finally hers. Does Marin think I’m going to the burgomasters? She stares in wonder at Marin’s contorted, pale features, feeling giddy that she – an eighteen-year-old from Assendelft – could go and tell the fathers of Amsterdam that her respectable merchant husband is possessed by the Devil.

Oh, you could do it, Nella tells herself. Right now, she feels like doing it. You could report Jack Philips, too. Who could stop you, if you wanted to go? You could crush this woman’s life in one sentence and free yourself of all humiliation.

As if she has read her mind, Marin speaks again. ‘You’re part of this family, Petronella Brandt. Its truth sticks to you like oil on a bird. What do you want, a pauper’s life again? And what would happen to Otto and Cornelia if you let our secret out?’

She spreads her arms wide like wings, and Nella feels her own body contract into the bed.

‘We can do nothing, Petronella – we women,’ Marin says. ‘Nothing.’ Her eyes burn with an intensity Nella has never seen in her before. ‘All we can do if we’re lucky is stitch up the mistakes that other people make.’

‘Agnes is happy enough.’

‘Agnes? Oh, Agnes plays her role, but what will happen when her lines run out? That plantation was her father’s and now she’s handed it to her husband. It astonishes me how she can feel so clever about it. And some of us can work,’ Marin cries, ‘back-breaking work, for which they won’t even pay us half of what a man could earn. But we can’t own property, we can’t take a case to court. The only thing they think we can do is produce children who then become the property of our husbands.’

‘But you have not married, you do not—’

‘There are some women whose husbands don’t leave them alone. Baby after baby till their body’s like a wrinkled sack.’

‘I’ll be a wrinkled sack if it means I’m not alone! A public wife, a private life – isn’t that the way the motto goes?’

‘And how many women die on the birthing bed, Petronella? How many girls become a housewife corpse?’