Tulip Fever
by Deborah Moggach
List Price: $12.95
Pages: 288
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0385334923
Publisher: Random House
Sophia
Trust not to appearances.
-- Jacob Cats, Moral Emblems, 1632
We are eating dinner, my husband and I. A shred of leek is caught in his
beard. I watch it move up and down as he chews; it is like an insect caught
in the grass. I watch it idly, for I am a young woman and live simply,
in the present. I have not yet died and been reborn. I have not yet died
a second time -- for in the eyes of the world this will be considered
a second death. In my end is my beginning; the eel curls round and swallows
its own tail. And in the beginning I am still alive, and young, though
my husband is old. We lift our wine flutes and drink. Words are etched
on my glass: Mankind's hopes are fragile glass and life is therefore also
short, a scratched homily through the sinking liquid.
Cornelis tears off a piece of bread and dips it into his soup. He chews
for a moment. "My dear, I have something to discuss." He wipes
his lips with his napkin. "In this transitory life do we not all
crave immortality?"
I freeze, knowing what is coming. I gaze at my roll, lying on the tablecloth.
It has split, during baking, and parted like lips. For three years we
have been married and I have not produced a child. This is not through
lack of trying. My husband is still a vigorous man in this respect. At
night he mounts me; he spreads my legs and I lie there like an upturned
beetle pressed down by a shoe. With all his heart he longs for a son --
an heir to skip across these marble floors and give a future to this large,
echoing house on the Herengracht.
So far I have failed him. I submit to his embraces, of course, for I am
a dutiful wife and shall always be grateful to him. The world is treacherous
and he reclaimed me, as we reclaimed our country from the sea, draining
her and ringing her with dykes to keep her safe, to keep her from going
under. I love him for this.
And then he surprises me. "To this effect I have engaged the services
of a painter. His name is Jan van Loos and he is one of the most promising
artists in Amsterdam -- still lifes, landscapes, but most especially portraiture.
He comes on the recommendation of Hendrick Uylenburgh, who as you know
is a discerning dealer?Rembrandt van Rijn, newly arrived from Leiden,
is one of his proteges."
My husband lectures me like this. He tells me more than I want to know
but tonight his words land noiselessly around me. Our portrait is going
to be painted! "He is thirty-six, the same age as our brave new century."
Cornelis drains his glass and pours another. He is drunk with the vision
of ourselves, immortalized on canvas. Drinking beer sends him to sleep,
but drinking wine makes him patriotic. "Ourselves, living in the
greatest city, home to the greatest nation on the globe." It is only
me sitting opposite him but he addresses a larger audience. Above his
yellowed beard his cheeks are flushed. "For doesn't Vondel describe
Amsterdam thus? What waters are not shadowed by her sails? On which mart
does she not sell her wares? What peoples does she not see lit by the
moon, she who herself sets the laws of the whole ocean?"
He does not expect an answer for I am just a young wife, with little life
beyond these walls. Around my waist hang keys to nothing but our linen
chests, for I have yet to unlock anything of more significance. In fact,
I am wondering what clothes I shall wear for my portrait. That is the
size of my world so far. Forget oceans and empires.
Maria brings in a plate of herrings and retreats, sniffing. Fog rolls
in off the sea and she has been coughing all day. This hasn't dampened
her spirits. I am sure she has a secret lover; she hums in the kitchen
and sometimes I catch her standing in front of a mirror rearranging her
hair under her cap. I shall find out. We are confidantes, or as much confidantes
as our circumstances allow. Since I left my sisters she is the only one
I have.
Next week the painter will arrive. My husband is a connoisseur of paintings;
our house is filled with them. Behind him, on the wall, hangs a canvas
of Susannah and the Elders. The old men peer at the naked girl
as she bathes. By daylight I can see their greedy faces, but now, in the
candlelight, they have retreated back into the shadows; all I can see
is her plump, pale flesh above my husband's head. He lifts a fish onto
his plate. He is a collector of beautiful things.
I see us as a painting. Cornelis, his white lace collar against black,
his beard moving as he eats. The herring lying on my plate, its glistening,
scored skin split open to reveal the flesh within; the parted lips of
my roll. Grapes, plump and opaque in the candlelight; the pewter goblet
glowing dully.
I see us there, sitting at our dining table, motionless -- our own frozen
moment before everything changes.
After dinner he reads to me from the Bible. "All flesh is grass,
and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field; the grass
withereth, the flower fadeth, because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon
it; surely the people is grass..."
But I am already hanging on the wall, watching us.
Courtesy of Random House, Inc.
Excerpted from Tulip Fever © Copyright 2008 by Deborah Moggach. Reprinted with permission by Random House. All rights reserved.
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