The Miniaturist(93)

‘No,’ says Nella, handing her a clean, damp towel. ‘It never is.’

Marin crushes lavender in her fist, breathing it deeply. ‘I’m so tired,’ she says. ‘I’m worn to my bones.’

‘It’ll be all right,’ says Nella, but she knows they’re only words. Outside in the hallway, she breathes the cool air, relieved to have escaped the bedroom’s thick atmosphere, its sluggish pulse of fear. Cornelia comes up the stairs, taking Nella’s hand and giving her a smile. ‘It is a blessing, Madame,’ she says. ‘It is a blessing that you came here.’

As evening falls and the rain continues, the waves of pain come constantly. Marin seems to be spiralling through herself. It feels, she says, like a deep, rolling agony. I am a cloud full of blood, she mutters – a giant bruise, my skin being broken over and over. For her comfort, they have taken off her outer skirts and she wears nothing but a cotton blouse and petticoats.

Marin is a vessel for the pain and she is the pain itself. She is nothing she has ever been before. As Cornelia and Nella dab Marin’s forehead and rub scented oils in her temples to calm her, Nella thinks of Marin as a mountain, huge and anchored, immoveable. The child inside her is a pilgrim descending her heights, in motion whilst Marin herself is paralysed. Every step he takes, every prod of his staff in her side, every kick gives him more power.

Marin cries out. Her hair is plastered to her forehead, her normally smooth face looks flushed and puffy. Leaning over the side of the bed, she vomits onto the rug.

‘We should get help,’ whispers Nella. ‘Look at her. She wouldn’t even know.’

Cornelia bites her lip, considering Marin’s sweat-soaked, scrunched-up face. ‘She would,’ she whispers back, her eyes shining with fear. ‘We can’t. Madame Marin wants no one else to know.’ She throws a towel over the thin liquid Marin has expelled, watching it soak up. ‘And anyway, who would we fetch?’

‘There’ll be someone in Smit’s List. We don’t know what we’re doing,’ hisses Nella. ‘Is she supposed to vomit like that?’

‘Where is he?’ Marin mutters, wiping her mouth on one of the cushions. Nella gives her the corner of a damp face cloth to suck the moisture.

‘We’ll have to look under her petticoat,’ she murmurs, walking back to Cornelia.

Cornelia blanches. ‘She would have my head off if I did that. She doesn’t even let me look at her bare back.’

‘We have to. I don’t know if this pain is normal.’

‘You will have to, Madame,’ says Cornelia. ‘I cannot.’

Marin’s eyelids flutter and she begins a low, guttural sound. It pitches higher, rising out of her like a bugle call. When she lets out another of these piercing exhalations, Nella hesitates no longer and gets on her knees, lifting the hem of Marin’s petticoat. It is almost unthinkable, looking between Marin’s legs. It is blasphemy.

Nella ducks her head under the hot fug of the petticoat and looks hard at what she can see. It is the most extraordinary thing she has ever laid eyes on. Neither fish nor fowl, nor godly nor human, and yet strangely all these things at once. At that moment, it seems like something coming from another land. A small thing stretched giant, a huge mouth stoppered with a baby’s head.

Nella sees a tiny crown, retches in the heat of the sheets, and pulls her head up into the air. ‘I can see it,’ she says, elated.

‘You can?’ asks Marin weakly.

‘You have to push now,’ says Nella. ‘When you see the top of the baby’s head you have to push.’

‘I’m too tired. He has to make his own way out.’

Nella ducks under the hem of the petticoat again and reaches out to feel the baby. ‘His nose isn’t out, Marin. He won’t be able to breathe.’

‘Push, Madame, you have to push,’ Cornelia cries.

Marin bellows and Nella places a twig between her teeth. ‘Now push again!’ she says.

Driving her molars into the wood, Marin begins to push, gargling behind the stick. She spits it out. ‘He’s ripping me,’ she gasps. ‘I can feel it.’

Nella pulls up the petticoat and Cornelia covers her eyes. ‘You’re not ripping,’ she says, but she can see a red fissure in that purple hairiness, and yet more blood. She keeps this to herself. ‘He’s coming,’ she calls. ‘Keep pushing, Marin, keep pushing.’

Cornelia stands by the window and begins a long and feverish prayer. Our Father, which art in – but Marin begins to ululate, a high, unending moan of excruciation, of epiphany. It is a sound that would flay off skin – but without warning, bird-sudden, the full head of the child breaks through. It comes facing down, its nose towards the sheets, its head a wet dark mass of hair.

‘His head is out! Push, Marin, push!’

Marin screams, piercing the women’s ears. A lot more blood comes, rushing out hot and wet, soaking the bed. Nella feels queasy, unsure whether there should be this much or not. Marin nearly pulls Cornelia’s hand off in the effort to expel the child. Its head turns a quarter circle, and Nella watches in amazement as the little thing appears to try and wriggle itself free.

A shoulder emerges, and again Marin bellows. The baby turns his head back towards the bed.

‘Push, Madame, push,’ urges Cornelia.