The Miniaturist(52)
‘The burgomasters,’ she says, as if that explains all. Cornelia shudders.
Arnoud confirms that the forms of men and women, boys and girls, have indeed been banned, as have the doll-seller booths on the Vijzeldam. The reason has something to do with the Catholics, he says. False idols, the importance of the invisible over the tangible. ‘Puppets are funny things,’ Cornelia sniffs.
‘That doesn’t make the Church right,’ says Arnoud. ‘Think of the cost.’
‘We’ll just have to make them in the shape of dogs,’ says Hanna, ever-enterprising.
Instead of gingerbread, Nella buys Arabella a book of insect prints. She supposes her sister would prefer Arnoud’s finest biscuits, but better, she thinks, that Arabella should have a book and learn a little. You wouldn’t have thought such a thing back in August, Nella tells herself. She feels differenced, as if something is working on her and she has taken the bait.
Back home, Marin sizes up the riding crop. ‘How much did this cost? He’s only a child.’
‘It’s what Johannes did with my cabinet,’ Nella observes, giddy with her purchases, feeling powerful and rich. ‘I’m only following suit.’
By the third week of Johannes’ absence, icicles hang off every door frame, every windowsill, even off the spiders’ webs in the garden, like tiny crystal needles. The four of them wake up cold and they all go to bed shivering. Nella yearns for spring, for blossom, the smell of turned earth, new animals, the vivid oily tang in the root of lamb’s wool. She waits at the door for something to arrive from the miniaturist, but nothing comes. Remembering Hanna’s comment about the burgomasters, the banning of puppets at Christmas, she wonders whether the miniaturist will ever send anything again.
Returning to her room, she finds Marin with her hands in the cabinet. It is a shock to see her there, and Nella rushes over, trying to pull the curtain across.
‘You didn’t ask to come in!’
‘No, I didn’t,’ Marin replies. ‘I wonder how that feels.’ She has something in her hand, and she seems agitated. ‘Petronella, did you tell someone about us?’
Please, God, Nella thinks. Let her not have found her own doll. Marin opens her palm and on it Jack Philips lies, as beautiful as his real self. ‘What are you trying to do to us?’
‘Marin—’
‘The limited appeal of furniture and dogs I can just understand. But a puppet of Jack Philips?’
To Nella’s astonishment, Marin yanks open the window and throws Jack through it. She runs to the casement to witness his flailing journey. He lands right in the middle of the iced canal, inert and marooned in the mass of white. A fear thrills through her. ‘You shouldn’t have done that, Marin,’ she says. ‘You really shouldn’t.’
‘Don’t play with fire, Petronella,’ Marin snaps.
I could say the same to you, Nella thinks, looking miserably at the stranded doll. ‘It’s my cabinet, not yours,’ she calls, as Marin closes the bedroom door.
Jack remains outside on the ice. Nella tries to coax Rezeki to bring the doll back in her jaws, but the dog growls at the sight of it, skittering, her hackles raised. Nella wants to cross the frozen canal herself, but she is not as light as Bert and the other urchins, and they are no longer around to ask. She pictures herself falling through and drowning, all to save a puppet – compelled to protect it though she doesn’t know why. Keeping Jack closer to the cabinet just seems like the safest thing to do, where she can keep an eye on him. Reluctantly Nella goes back in, cursing Marin in her head.
That night, Nella falls into a restless sleep, the words of Marin’s ripped-up love note floating in her mind. Jack is speaking it, his English accent hitting the words like a skiff on choppy waves. You are sunlight through a window, which I stand in, warmed. From back to front, I love you. A thousand hours. Jack runs through the corridors of Nella’s mind, wet from the ice, wearing one of Marin’s animal skulls upon his curly head. Nella wakes up with a jolt, her dream so vivid that she’s convinced Jack is in the corner of the room.
The next morning is St Nicholas’s Day, the sixth of December. When Nella pulls open her curtains and looks below, her breath stops in her throat. Jack’s doll is sitting up against their door post, taking in the frosty light.
The Rebel
When Nella sneaks out to pick up the frozen puppet from the front step, the street is still empty. Mists rise like swirls of breath above the ice.
‘Where is everyone?’ she asks at breakfast, Jack hidden in her pocket. Marin says nothing, delicately dismantling a herring.
‘The burgomasters have succeeded once again,’ Otto says heavily, carrying in a board laden with herenbrood and a deep disc of yellow Gouda for Nella. His weariness for the bureaucracy of state sounds almost fond – almost like Johannes.
Marin abandons her herring and stirs a bowl of compote, the tips of her fingers bluish on the spoon. She stirs and stirs, staring at the glistening maceration of plum. ‘It has been publicly stated that dolls and puppets are forbidden,’ she says. Nella can feel Jack’s frozen doll against her leg, the offending item making a dark, damp circle on the wool. ‘Papistry,’ Marin continues. ‘Idolatry. A heinous attempt to capture the human soul.’
‘You sound frightened of them,’ Nella says. ‘Almost like you think they’ll come to life.’