The Miniaturist(79)
She and the guard walk along the side of an open courtyard, and in the middle of it Nella can see contraptions made of planks fastened with adjustable bolts. Another machine has a row of sharp spikes. The prisoners are quite literally here to be reformed. Nella averts her eyes, determined not to be cowed, touching the warehouse key hidden on her breast, her fresh idea still glowing in her mind. Don’t let sweet weapons stray.
‘Here he is,’ says the guard, opening the door to Johannes’ cell. He lingers for longer than is necessary, then locks the door behind her.
‘Don’t come back too soon,’ Nella says, handing him a guilder through the bars. The things this city has taught me, she thinks. The guard pockets the guilder and quickly his footsteps fade to silence. From outside, Nella can hear gulls wheeling far up in the sky, the distant clatter of carts on cobbles.
In the shadows, Johannes is leaning against a small table. There is no stool or chair, so she stands against the door. There’s a dank atmosphere, moss covering the walls, a map of green islands devoid of latitudes. Johannes looks pensive, but his energy is powerful. Even here, stripped of his rights, he still has the capacity to impress. ‘Bribing officials?’ he asks.
‘We should keep them as friends.’ Her voice is deadened by the mineral thickness of the walls.
‘You sound like Marin,’ he says with a smile.
Both his eyes have been punched, and the skin around them is the colour of a dying tulip. His hair is wild like bleached seaweed, and his clothes look filthy. His arms tremble as he supports himself against the table. ‘They won’t let me have a Bible,’ he says. ‘Or anything to read, for that matter.’
From the pocket not containing the scrunched-up sugar list, Nella pulls out three slices of smoked ham wrapped in paper, half a bread roll covered in fluff and two small olie-koecken. She walks across the cell, her palms open and Johannes takes the offering, visibly touched. ‘You’d have got in trouble if they’d found it.’
‘Yes,’ she says, stepping away again, sweeping the corner of the cell with her foot.
‘I nearly got away.’
Nella looks towards the corner of the cell, where a family of newborn mice rustle the straw, crawling over one another in blind familiarity. She sits down heavily on the pallet, and a deep sadness diffuses inside her, fogging her will to fight. ‘What have they said to you?’
Johannes points to his black eyes. ‘They are men of few words.’
‘When I first met you,’ she says, desperate to crush her sadness, ‘you did not bother with the Bible, with God, with guilt and sin and shame.’
‘How do you know that I did not?’
‘You did not attend church, you itched at Marin’s home-prayers. And you bought such things. You ate richly, you enjoyed the delights you could take. You were your own god, the architect of your fortune.’
He smiles, gesturing to the walls around him. ‘And look at the building I made.’
‘But you’ve been free, haven’t you? Think of the places you’ve seen.’ Nella swallows, scarcely able to keep her speech afloat.
‘My sister always said I was an awful combination of carelessness and determination.’
‘Is that why you went back to Jack?’
Johannes closes his eyes as if the name floods him.
‘He betrayed you, Johannes. Money paid and money taken—’
‘I haven’t given him a penny since the day he drove his dagger through my dog,’ Johannes says. His words seem to drop through him like stones. ‘I employed him to guard the sugar, but Marin was so worried about him that I decided to dismiss him. I saw her point, of course. He went back to making deliveries, and that’s when it all went wrong. I did see Jack after he killed Rezeki.’ His face softens in the dim light. ‘I’ve never seen a body so full of remorse for what he’d done.’
Nella bites her tongue. Jack probably had no choice but to seem sorry, and Johannes in turn to believe that it was true.
‘You must hold him in great store – to forgive such a thing,’ she says. He is silent. ‘Johannes, was it – love?’
He considers her question, and she is struck again by how seriously he always takes her. ‘With Jack, it seemed as if . . . something ungraspable . . . quickly became very real. The speed of it, Nella. By telling me lies, Jack made me see truth, the way a painting can better show a thing whilst never being the thing itself. He became nearly indistinguishable to me from love,’ Johannes sighs, ‘but he was only ever love’s painting. Do you see? The conceit of love was better than the mess it left behind.’
Johannes bestows his honesty on her like another unexpected gift. The open channel between them can be so clear and crystalline, but when Nella closes her eyes all she sees is a stagnant stream.
‘Are you quite well?’ he asks.
‘Marin believes love is better in the chase than caught,’ she says.
He raises his eyebrows. ‘That does not surprise me. It is not better. But it is easier. One’s imagination is always more generous. And yet, the chase always tires you out in the end.’
What are we all chasing? Nella wonders. To live, of course. To be unbound from the invisible ropes that Johannes spoke of in his study. Or to be happy in them, at least. ‘Where were you going when they caught you at Texel?’