The Miniaturist(5)
For two years, Nella practised being a lady. She walked with new poise – though there was nowhere to walk to, she complained, feeling for the first time a desire to escape her village, ignoring the enormous skies, seeing only a bucolic prison already developing fine layers of dust. In a newly tightened corset she improved her lute, moving her neat fingers on the fretboard, concerned about her mother’s nerves just enough not to rebel. In July this year her mother’s enquiries, through the last of her husband’s connections in the city, finally fell on fertile ground.
A letter arrived, the handwriting on the front neat and flowing, confident. Her mother didn’t let her read it – but a week later, Nella discovered she was to play for a man, a merchant called Johannes Brandt, come to the country from Amsterdam. As the sun lowered over the browning Assendelft flatlands, this stranger sat in their gently crumbling house and listened to her play.
Nella thought he seemed moved, and when she’d finished he said that he’d enjoyed it. ‘I love the lute,’ he told her. ‘A beautiful instrument. I have two hanging on my wall, but they haven’t been played for years.’ And when Johannes Brandt – thirty-nine, a true Methuselah! Carel crowed – had asked for her hand, Nella decided to accept. It would have seemed ungrateful and certainly stupid to say no. What other option was there but – as Marin puts it – life as a wife?
After the Assendelft ceremony in September, their names entered in the church register, they had a brief dinner at the Oortman home and Johannes left. A shipment needed to be delivered to Venice, he’d said, and he had to do it himself. Nella and her mother had nodded. Johannes was so charming, with his crooked smile, his suggestion of such power. On her wedding night, the newly married Nella slept as she had for years, top to toe with her wriggling sister. But it was all to the good, she thought, picturing herself rising from the flames of Assendelft like a new woman – a wife, and all to come—
Her thoughts are interrupted by the sound of dogs in the hall. Nella hears a man – Johannes’ voice, she is sure. Her husband is here, in Amsterdam – a little late, but here. Nella sits up in her wedding bed, blearily rehearsing. I am so pleased. Was your journey safe? Yes? So happy, oh so happy.
But she dares not go down. Struck with nerves, the excitement of seeing him is not quite enough to overcome. Waiting, apprehension blooming in her stomach, she wonders how to begin. Finally she shucks on her pattens, pulls a shawl over her nightgown and creeps along the passageway.
The dogs’ claws skitter across the tiles. They bring the sea air in their fur, their tails thwack the furniture. Marin has got to Johannes first, and Nella can hear them talking.
‘I never said that, Marin,’ Johannes says. His voice is deep and dry.
‘Forget it now. Brother, I am glad to see you. I have prayed for your safe return.’ As Marin moves out of the shadow to survey him, the light of her candle dips and dances. Craning over the banister, Nella watches the unfamiliar bulk of Johannes’ travelling cloak, the surprising butcher’s fingers. ‘You look worn out,’ Marin goes on.
‘I know, I know. And autumn in London—’
‘Is gruesome. So that’s where you have been. Let me.’
With her spare hand, Marin helps remove his cloak. ‘Ah, Johannes. You are thin. You have been away too long.’
‘I am not thin.’ He moves away. ‘Rezeki, Dhana,’ he calls, and the dogs follow him like familiars. Nella digests the odd sounds of their names. Rezeki, Dhana. In Assendelft, Carel called their dogs Snout and Blackeye, unimaginative but perfect reflections of character and appearance.
‘Brother,’ says Marin. ‘She’s here.’
Johannes stops but he does not turn. Shoulders dropping, his head inclines a little lower to his chest. ‘Ah,’ he says. ‘I see.’
‘It would have been better for you to be here when she arrived.’
‘I’m sure you coped.’
Marin pauses, and the silence grows between her pale face and the closed bulk of her brother’s back. ‘Don’t forget,’ she says.
Johannes runs his fingers through his hair. ‘How could I?’ he replies. ‘How could I?’
Marin seems about to say something else, but instead she folds her arms across her body. ‘It’s so cold,’ she says.
‘Then go to bed. I have to work.’
He shuts his door, and Marin swings her brother’s cloak onto her shoulders. Nella leans further over, watching Marin bury her face in the long folds of material. The banister creaks and Marin whips off the cloak, peering up into the darkness. When Marin opens a cupboard off the hallway, Nella creeps back to her room to wait.
Minutes later, at the sound of Marin’s bedroom door closing at the end of the corridor, Nella sidles down the main staircase. She stops by the hall cupboard and expects to find the cloak hanging, but it is crumpled on the floor. Kneeling down to pick it up, she finds it has a damp scent of a tired man and the cities he’s seen. After placing it on the hook, Nella approaches the door behind which her husband disappeared, and knocks.
‘For God’s sake,’ he says. ‘We’ll speak in the morning.’
‘It’s me. Petronella. Nella.’
After a moment, the door opens and Johannes stands there, his face in shadow. He is so broad-shouldered – Nella hadn’t remembered him being this imposing at the half-empty church in Assendelft. ‘Esposa mía,’ he says.