The Miniaturist(70)

‘Johannes, where have you been?’ She presses her feet into the soft wool pile of his rug, the old smell of Rezeki infused for ever in the fibres.

‘Nella?’

He looks tired, and old – and this makes her feel older too. He doesn’t know he’s been spotted, she thinks. She can tell he has no idea. Rushing towards him, she takes him by the sleeves. ‘You have to leave, Johannes. You have to get away.’

‘What—?’

‘But you must know this. I believe you’ve tried your best for me – with your cabinet, and your silversmiths’ feast, and your posies and your dresses. Conversations the like of which I’ve never shared. I want you to know that – before you have to go.’

‘Sit down, calm yourself. You look so unwell.’

‘Johannes, no.’ Nella stops, looking around at the maps, the paperwork, the golden inkstand – anything but the measured stare of his grey eyes. ‘Agnes and Frans – they saw you, Johannes. At the warehouse. With a young man.’

He leans against his high stool. He looks as if the cogs inside him have broken and he is slowing to a stop.

‘The burgomasters will kill you,’ Nella presses on in the face of his silence, hearing her reckless words slurring into one another. ‘Was it Jack? How could you? Even though he betrayed you with what he did to Rezeki—’

‘It is not Jack Philips who has betrayed me,’ Johannes says. His voice is harder than she’s ever heard it. ‘It is this city. It is the years we all spend in an invisible cage.’

‘But he—’

‘Any person’s behaviour would mutate under such constant scrutiny, such bigoted piety – neighbours watching neighbours, twisting ropes to bind us all.’

‘But you once said to me that this city wasn’t a prison, if you plotted your path correctly.’

He spreads his hands. ‘Well, it is a prison. And its bars are made of murderous hypocrisy. I’ll leave tonight before it becomes an impossible escape.’

He is abrupt, in pain, it doesn’t sound like him. Nella’s bones are falling through her body, as if she’s going to slide into her husband’s rug and never stand again. ‘Where will you go?’

‘I’m sorry, sweet girl.’ This tenderness is almost as unbearable. ‘It is best I don’t tell you. They’ll ask what you know – and they have means of getting their answers.’ He rifles around on the desk and hands her a piece of paper. ‘I’ve been working on a list of names who might be interested in the sugar. Give it to Marin. She’s well versed in the ledger book, so you won’t have any problems there. I will give you the name of an agent I trust at the VOC.’

‘More commission to share, Johannes? Any profit will be so diminished.’

‘You have been paying attention.’ He smiles with difficulty, lifting the lid of his chest to take a wad of guilders, and Nella notices how empty the inside looks. ‘But I don’t see how you can sell it without an agent.’

‘Will you come back to us?’

Johannes sighs. ‘This city is like no other city in the world, Nella. It is brilliant but it is bloated, and I’ve never called it home.’

‘Then where is home, Johannes?’

He looks at the maps on his wall. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘Where comfort is. And that is hard to find.’

That night, Nella is the only one to see Johannes off, draped in his travelling cloak, hunched against the cold. ‘Goodbye,’ he says.

‘I’ll – miss you.’

He nods, and she notices his eyes are wet. ‘You won’t be alone,’ he says, rubbing the emotion away. ‘You have Cornelia.’

He pauses, adjusting the strap on his bag, and he looks so vulnerable, an old man forced on an unwanted adventure. ‘I have friends in many countries,’ he says. ‘It will be well.’ His breath is like hot smoke in the freezing air, and she watches it disappear. ‘I will think of you. Watch Marin. Guard her. She needs it more than you think. And don’t let her feed you only herrings.’

The joke lodges inside her like a dart, a magnitude of pain she did not expect. She cannot deal with this camaraderie come too late, the sweetness of this understanding slipping out of time. ‘Johannes,’ she whispers, ‘promise you’ll come back.’

But her husband does not reply, for he has moved soundlessly up the canal path, a seasoned disappearer, the bag of money swinging from his side. I will never see him again, she thinks.

The night darkens, the stars unfriendly, the cold a knife upon her neck – but Nella waits, until she can no longer tell the difference between Johannes and the darkness that carries him away.





Horseshoe


A clanking sound outside wakes her. Nella has slept all night in Johannes’s study, and her husband’s rug has left an imprint on her face. At first, she thinks the noise is coming from the maids along the Herengracht, dipping their mops in buckets, washing the step, sloshing away the debris of the last day of 1686. For one moment, she forgets it all, staring at Johannes’ beautiful maps. Then Meermans’ anger and Johannes’ escape rush into her mind, overcrowding any path to calm thought. She looks up at the ceiling, where the candle-spots are as black as the stains on Agnes’ miniature loaf.