The Miniaturist(94)

Marin pushes harder, giving herself up to the agony, resisting it no longer, accepting it as her very being. Then she stops, exhausted, unable to move, gasping for air on the bed. ‘I can’t,’ she says. ‘My heart.’

Cornelia places a tentative hand on Marin’s chest. ‘It’s jumping like a bird, Madame,’ she says. ‘It’s hammering.’

The room becomes still. Nella on her knees, Cornelia by the pillow, Marin splayed out like a star with her knees drawn up. The flames of the fire lie low, the last logs in need of stoking. Outside, there is only the sound of the rain. Dhana scratches at the door, desperate to be let in.

The women wait. The other shoulder, tiny as a doll’s, appears through Marin’s widened morass. Marin starts to heave again, and as Nella reaches for the baby’s shoulders, its teacup head, its body slithers out onto her surprised hands with a final gush of blood. Her fingers soaked, Nella feels the dense loaf weight of it, eyes closed like a philosopher, limbs wet and bluish, covered in white paste patches, folded tight upon her shaking palms. She checks. Marin’s pilgrim of pain is a baby girl.

‘Oh, Marin,’ she says, lifting up the baby. ‘Marin, look!’

Cornelia cries in joy. ‘A girl!’ she says. ‘A little girl!’ The long cord attaching her is metallic and muscular, and it snakes back up into Marin’s insides. ‘Get a knife,’ Nella tells Cornelia. ‘We need to cut this.’

Cornelia rushes away. Marin is breathing heavily, trying to pull herself up onto her elbows so she can see. She collapses back, barely able to speak. ‘My girl,’ she says, her voice half-crazed and hollow. ‘Is she alive?’

Nella looks at the child, covered in the crust of drying fluid and her aunt’s bloodied handprints. Her hair is dark and matted, her eyes still closed, as if now is not the moment to make herself known.

‘She’s not making a noise,’ says Marin. ‘Why isn’t she making a noise?’

Nella reaches for a warm damp cloth from the pail of water and begins to rub down the baby’s floppy arms, its legs and chest. ‘Do you know what you’re doing?’ Marin asks.

‘Yes,’ Nella replies, but she is making it up. Wake up, baby, she thinks. Wake up.

Cornelia appears with a carving knife. Still the baby remains quiet, and the room is deathly silent too, everyone waiting, praying with every inch for one small sound of life.

Nella hands Cornelia the child and tries to cut the cord, but for all its human substance, it seems stronger than oak. She has to saw through it, and blood spatters over the sheets and onto the floor. Dhana, who has slunk into the room, trots up, examining the possibility of a meal.

Perhaps it is the arrival of the whippet, perhaps it is the clumsy ministration on her cord – but the baby begins to cry.

‘Thanks be to God.’ Cornelia bursts into tears.

Marin draws a lengthy ragged breath ending in a sob.

With the child now cupped in Nella’s hands, Cornelia ties a dark blue ribbon on the short stub of cord by its abdomen. The stub flops onto the baby’s stomach, the little girl finally victorious in battle.

Nella rubs the baby harder with a wet cloth, watching in fascination as the blood begins to pump through the deep-layered lace of veins. Cornelia, who has been standing close by, leans in. ‘Can’t you see?’ she whispers.

‘See what?’ asks Nella.

‘Look,’ says Cornelia, pointing at the baby. ‘Look.’

‘Thea,’ says Marin, making them jump. Her voice is raw and heavy. ‘Her name is Thea.’ She shifts restlessly in her bed. Her end of the cord is still attached inside her, flowing blood. She tries to put her arms up, but is too exhausted.

‘Thea,’ echoes Cornelia, staring at the baby as Nella puts her onto Marin’s chest. The child moves with her mother’s ragged breathing. Marin’s fingers tremble over Thea’s back, feeling the little rump, the kitten curve of spine. Tears start in her eyes and she weeps again whilst Cornelia soothes her, stroking her forehead. She clutches her child, who nestles her head in the crook of her mother’s neck. Marin wears an astonished expression, a mingling of triumph and pain. ‘Nella?’ she says.

‘Yes?’

‘Thank you. Thank you both.’

They hold each other’s gaze as Cornelia bundles up the massacre of linen. Marin’s breath rattles slightly, a sound to make your skin contract and prickle. She turns away to the window to look out into the fallen darkness of the canal. The rain has finally ceased. Above the narrowly divided rooftops, the weathervanes and gables, the moon is high in the star-streaked sky, an uneven half of shining light.

Turning to the closed velvet curtains of the cabinet, it occurs to Nella that Johannes missed something out when he ordered its dimensions. For where is Marin’s room – where is her cell of seed pods and maps, her shells and specimens? There are the two kitchens, the study, the salon, bedrooms, even the attic. Perhaps he was protecting her, or perhaps he never thought to have it built. The miniaturist sent no comment on Marin’s little space. Her secret room has evaded definition.





The Tale-Teller


Nella and Cornelia try and catch sleep, upright in two of the rosewood chairs dragged up from the salon. They twist uncomfortably as Marin sighs and moans in the bed.

When Nella wakes, the bells are ringing eight o’clock. There remains a disturbing scent in the room; organs exposed, faeces, blood and vulnerable flesh. The fire is out. Around it are the futile scatterings of weak lavender heads, the silver ewer knocked on its side in Marin’s agonies. She realizes she is an hour late for her husband.