The Miniaturist(75)

‘What a ridiculous thing to say.’ Marin sounds mystified.

‘Especially as I was eighteen.’

It is Marin’s skin that has softened; the exchange is now complete. Her body leans against Nella’s, lulled into a truce. Nella cannot quite believe what the evening has brought, in this tiny room of maps. It is too large a fact to incorporate – her mind hums around the edges of it, making its way in. She wants to ask so many questions, but doesn’t know how to start.

The two of them rest in this unprecedented state, and she has a thought. This child could be proof that Johannes is the husband he’s supposed to be – the creator of a good Dutch family. But looking over at Marin’s pale face, Nella stops her tongue. Give me your child, Marin, and protect your brother’s fate. They are not easy words to offer, and probably harder to receive. Marin has been making sacrifices all her life, and such a suggestion must be gently made. ‘We’ll have to find a midwife,’ she says gently.

‘You’ll have to go to the warehouse and check the sugar,’ comes Marin’s reply. Her body starts to stiffen.

‘But, Marin! What are we going to do with you?’

Nella marvels at Marin’s ability to divide herself like this, slipping the fact of her baby like a jewel into her pocket. Marin rises unsteadily off the bed and picks her way across the scattered skulls. Without her overskirts on, Nella can see her full curve, the rising swell of her breasts. Behind the walls of Marin’s anchored body a baby tumbles, possessed and possessor, its unmet mother a god to it. The child is coming – and despite Nella’s hope for openness, she knows this will be the greatest secret they will ever have to keep.

The mention of the sugar unfurls a memory in her mind. ‘Johannes gave me a list of names for selling the sugar,’ she says, reluctantly, having no wish to let Marin divert the conversation from the question of her unborn child.

‘Well, good.’

But before Nella can continue, they hear the patter of receding footsteps along the corridor. ‘Cornelia,’ Marin says. ‘All her life, listening at doors!’

‘I’ll talk to her.’

Marin sighs. ‘I suppose you must, before she fabulates another story.’

‘She won’t need to,’ Nella says, heading for the door. ‘Nothing here is more fabulous than the truth.’





No Anchor


In Nella’s room, Cornelia is at first silent and stubborn, but she breaks, collapsing to the bed as if her bones are ash. ‘I knew it,’ she says, but her mystified face betrays her fighting talk. Nella rushes to the maid, giving her a tight embrace. Poor Cornelia, she thinks. You’ve been hoodwinked. But the monumental sleight of hand has been played upon all their watch. This is the greatest trick Marin has ever pulled – except it’s real.

‘I knew something was wrong,’ says Cornelia. ‘But I didn’t want to believe. A baby?’

‘She put animal blood on her rags to fool us.’

‘Clever idea,’ Cornelia replies, her frown changing to a grudging admiration.

‘Certainly cleverer than being unmarried and getting with child.’

‘Madame!’ Cornelia looks outraged, and Nella realizes that she is not going to tell this orphan about Marin’s mixture. Although, she thinks with a surge of fondness, I’ll bet this Queen of Keyholes heard it all.

A child is on its way. Marin’s secret has been released, and now Nella sees it in the curtains’ swell, in the roundness of her bedroom pillows. She stares past Cornelia, to the middle of her bed. Marin has the one thing I will never have. Unbidden, the image of Meermans and Marin together enters Nella’s mind. Their two bodies, the swell of him pressing between her legs, the rod of pain – him rolling down Marin’s stockings, opening her, crying out in the heat of it. That is unfair, she thinks. It was probably more than that – for here is a man who believed that Marin’s touch lingered for a thousand hours, that she was the sunlight which he stood in, warmed. With such poetry, how could it ever have been so underwhelming?

‘What will we do with the child?’ Cornelia asks.

‘I suppose Marin might take it to a private orphanage.’

Cornelia jumps to her feet. ‘No! We must keep it, Madame.’

‘Cornelia, it isn’t your choice to make,’ Nella says. ‘Nor mine neither,’ she adds, thinking of Johannes in his cell.

The maid folds her arms. ‘I would look after that baby like a lion.’

‘That may be, Cornelia. But don’t dream of things you can’t have.’

This is too harsh, and Nella knows it, her exhaustion boiling over. It sounds like something Marin might say. Cornelia moves away from her towards the cabinet. The moon has now gone behind a cloud, and the candlelight pitches unevenly across the tortoiseshell.

Cornelia draws back the yellow velvet curtains and peers in. Nella, too ashamed by her outburst, does nothing to stop her. The maid lifts out the cradle, rocking it back and forth on her hand. ‘So beautiful,’ she breathes.

I should have noticed, Nella thinks – that of all the items Marin wanted to hold, the cradle was her first choice. How much else have I failed to observe? Too much, and still I keep on failing.

Cornelia has already pulled out Marin’s doll. ‘It’s her,’ she says, staring in disbelief at her mistress. ‘As if I’m holding her in my palm!’