The Miniaturist(50)
‘You put the flowers in your hair,’ he says.
‘I did.’ She takes in his sun-tanned skin, the grizzled lines around his eyes, the sweep of silver stubble. ‘For restoration.’
At her words, Johannes seems unable to speak, and in that brief, held moment between them, Nella feels as if she has grown taller, as if dignity is something she can grasp in her hand.
Rezeki bounds out of the house, barking her displeasure at being left behind.
‘Do you have the sample loaves?’ Marin asks.
‘My word is enough, Marin,’ Johannes replies, but his words are eliding with emotion.
Who is this man, Nella wonders, so moved by my goodbye?
‘Why don’t you take her?’ Marin says.
‘She’ll get in the way,’ Johannes replies. ‘Just keep her safe.’
Nella prays they’re talking about the dog. Marin sounds so frosty towards her brother, it’s hard to keep up. He’s going isn’t he – isn’t that what she wants? Perhaps the miniaturist will send me something soon to elucidate this strange woman, Nella wonders. The doll of Marin holds no clues. Tonight, she tells herself. Tonight I go to the sign of the sun.
Marin moves slowly back inside, as if the cold has seized her joints. Cornelia scrutinizes her mistress’s halting progress. Standing by Otto, Nella watches her husband’s figure grow smaller as his barge moves up the Golden Bend. ‘Didn’t you want to go to Venice?’ she asks.
‘I’ve been, Madame,’ Otto replies, his gaze on the wake of the water. ‘Once is enough for the Doge’s palace.’
‘I would like to see it,’ Nella says. ‘He could have taken me.’
She catches Cornelia and Otto exchanging one of their glances. As they turn back to the house, the three of them see Jack Philips standing by the higher bend of the canal. Nella’s stomach shifts. Jack’s hands are in his pockets, his hair as wild as ever, and he scowls at Johannes’ vanishing barge. Otto propels Nella back up the steps, and she sags at the contact, letting him guide her, hearing a soft thud behind as Cornelia closes the door.
Outside, the winter night has darkened. The sky is a deep river of indigo, the stars pricked like lights in its flowing stream. Nella sits at her window, the miniature Peebo in her lap. Jack has long gone from his post. Where is Johannes now – will he take one of those mysterious gondolas, will he return to the Doge’s palace? Of course he will, Nella thinks. It’s Johannes. She turns to her cabinet and places Peebo gently on top of one of the velvet chairs. Things can change. She tries not to picture her real bird, out in a night like this, prey to hawks and owls. Perhaps the miniaturist has kept him safe – though from where else did these shortened little feathers come? The thought that the woman would pluck at him and do him harm is unbearable.
It’s time to find out. The Kalverstraat will be freezing at this hour, Nella thinks, pulling on her travelling cloak. And who knows how long it will take to persuade the miniaturist to come outside?
She drapes the small gold key the miniaturist sent around her own doll’s throat, placing her little self neatly on the real bedcovers. ‘I am not frightened,’ she says out loud, turning to see a brief gleam on the doll’s tiny clavicle. And yet, she cannot erase the thought that this gesture towards her miniature is the only thing that guarantees her safe return.
Nella has never gone out after dark in her entire life. In Assendelft, she’d only meet an errant fox breaking into a coop of chickens. The foxes in Amsterdam might take very different forms. Quietly opening her door, she inhales a lovely scent of lavender, diffusing in the passageway as steam moistens the air. The rest of the house is silent except for the sound of slopping water coming from the end of the corridor. Marin, who keeps her secrets like weapons, who wears sable dresses but eats old herring, appears to be having a midnight bath.
A bath at any time of day is a sumptuous thing to do, and Nella wonders at such nocturnal indulgence. Unable to resist, she moves silently down the corridor and puts her eye to the keyhole.
Marin has her back turned, blocking Nella’s view of the bath, which takes up most of the spare space left in her tiny room. Who put it there for her, filling it to the brim with hot water – surely not Marin herself? Her sister-in-law is not as slender as Nella thought she’d be. From behind there is a fleshiness to her thighs and buttocks, usually all hidden under her skirt. Marin’s clothes come before her, they tell the world who she wants to be.
But Marin unclothed is a different creature, her skin pale, limbs long. As she leans over to test the bath temperature, Nella sees that her breasts are not small. Marin clearly straps them down in the most unforgiving corsets. They are fuller and rounder, like they should belong to someone else. That this is Marin’s body at all is oddly unsettling.
Marin lifts a leg into the copper bath, then the other, sliding slowly in as if she aches. Her head leans back, she closes her eyes, the water covers her. She stays under for several seconds, seemingly kicking her leg against the side of the bath before coming up for air. As the dried lavender buds skate the surface of the water and release their scent, Marin rubs her skin until it turns pink.
The damp curls at her neck look girlish, unbearably vulnerable. Before her on the shelf next to all the books and animal skulls, Nella spies a small bowl of candied walnuts, gleaming like jewels in the candlelight. She cannot remember a single time Marin has publicly eaten a fritter, a waffle or bun – nothing, except Agnes’ sugar which she could barely swallow. Has Marin purloined these from the kitchen – has Cornelia colluded in her mistress’s secret appetite?