The Miniaturist(60)

Perhaps it was accidental, the miniaturist dropping a fleck of red onto the dog’s head as she moved with her paintbrush? Perhaps she didn’t notice her mistake, letting the thin lines spread on the skull’s curve. The model of Rezeki lolls in Nella’s palm, her head articulated, the mark behind it a ghoulish baptism. The room is cold, but it is Rezeki’s stained body that sends a chill to Nella’s tail bone.

She tries to control her thinking. The miniaturist didn’t seem to know what Otto was going to do when he drove that dagger into Jack’s shoulder – because Jack’s doll arrived unmarked. I had to tell that story for her. So are these pieces echoes or presages – or, quite simply, a lucky guess?

You have to go to the Kalverstraat, she tells herself. No distractions this time – and this time, you will stay until the miniaturist comes out. If you have to stand there all day with Hole-Face, you will do it.

Nella puts the dog back in the cabinet, Cornelia and Marin’s conversation about papist idols swimming through her mind. Cornelia said you could never be sure that these things wouldn’t come to life, and right now the puppet of Rezeki seems to thrum with a power Nella cannot name. And the house itself – the wooden frame appears to glow, the tortoiseshell so rich, the interiors so sumptuous. Nella stares at her own miniature clutching the tiny birdcage, that gilded trap encasing nothing. Silently, she recites the earlier mottoes from the miniaturist – Things Can Change. Every Woman Is the Architect of Her Own Fortune. I Fight To Emerge.

But who is fighting to emerge here, Nella wonders, and who is the architect – the miniaturist, or me? The old, unanswered question rises up – why is this woman doing this? Unnamed, the miniaturist lives on the outside of society, not bounded by its rules – but be you a tulip or a turnip, we are all of us accountable to someone in the end. Rezeki dead and Peebo gone, Jack at large and Agnes’ sugar languishing on the Eastern Islands, Nella can feel the chaos coming, and all she craves is some control.

The miniaturist must help her. The miniaturist knows. Everyone in this house is too scared to do a thing except throw puppets out of windows, but that doesn’t work. Nella fetches a pen and paper.

Dear Madame, she writes.

The turnip grows out of sight, while the tulip flourishes above. The latter serves the eye’s pleasure, while the former nourishes the body – but both creations enjoy the soil. Separately, they have their uses, and one is no more valued than the other.

Nella hesitates – then, unable to help herself, she writes – And the tulip’s petals will fall, Madame. They will drop long before the turnip emerges, filthy but triumphant, from the earth.

Nella worries she’s been too rude, too direct. Tell me, she adds. What is it I should do?

She lays down her pen, feeling slightly silly with all this talk of vegetables, but panicky at the thought that the miniaturist has known all along what was going to happen to Johannes’ dog. Before this mark on Rezeki’s neck, Nella has taken her for a watcher, a teacher, a commentator – but this, well, this is more like prophecy. What else does she know – what else can she prevent? Or worse – what is she determined must come to pass?



It is almost dawn the next morning when Nella creeps out of her room, her fourth note to the miniaturist in the pocket of her travelling cloak. I’m going to keep hold of this one, she thinks, until I press it myself in the palm of her hand. She is more than a little fearful of what she might discover on the Kalverstraat, face to face at last with the woman who not only looks deep into her world, but seems to build it too.

Holding a candlestick in one hand, Nella slowly withdraws the front door bolts. Opening the door, glad for the dull light breaking in the sky beyond, she hears a light clanking noise from deep in the bowels of the house. She freezes; the clanking continues. Looking down the canal path and back then towards the kitchen, Nella feels torn in two. Always, she thinks – always when it’s time to see the miniaturist, this house never fails to pull me back.

The clanking inside the house wins her natural curiosity. It is too immediate to ignore. Too long I’ve heard these whisperings and noises, she thinks, closing the door, tiptoeing downstairs, moving through the best kitchen in an attempt to follow the sound. The round plates – maiolica, Delft and China-ware – glow in the huge dresser like rows of opening eyes as she passes with her solitary candle.

She pauses, sniffing the air. An iron smell, wet earth; a laboured breathing sound. Instantly, she thinks of Rezeki. She’s come alive. The miniaturist is in this house, she’s brought Rezeki back to life. Slowly, Nella walks down the narrow corridor which separates the best and working kitchens, towards the small door at the end where the barrels of ale and pickles are kept. The smell intensifies, clogging on the back of her tongue. It’s blood, unmistakeable now. The breathing has got louder.

Nella stops, her fingers on the handle – a nightmarish belief that Rezeki is behind it, that with her long legs she has dug a way out of the sack and is scratching to be free. Nella swallows and pushes on the cellar door, terrified to her core.

Marin is standing there, her sleeves rolled up, a weak lantern on the table beside her. Next to the lantern is a line of white rags, from which she appears to be cleaning blood.

‘What are you doing?’ Nella asks, relief flooding her body even as confusion battles with it in this strange new scene. ‘What on earth are you doing?’