Tracy Chevalier 3-Book Collection: Girl With a Pearl Earring, Remarkable Creatures, Falling Angels. Tracy Chevalier
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opened my mouth but no words came out.
Although it was December, and cold, I walked so fast and fretted so much over Frans that I got back to Papists' Corner long before I should have. I grew hot and began to loosen my shawls to cool my face. As I was walking up the Oude Langendijck I saw van Ruijven and my master coming towards me. I bowed my head and crossed over so that I would pass by my master's side rather than van Ruijven's, but the crossing only drew van Ruijven's attention to me. He stopped, forcing my master to halt with him.
‘You — the wide-eyed maid,’ he called, turning towards me. ‘They told me you were out. I think you've been avoiding me. What's your name, my girl?’
‘Griet, sir.’ I kept my eyes fixed on my master's shoes. They were shiny and black — Maertge had polished them under my guidance earlier that day.
‘Well, Griet, have you been avoiding me?’
‘Oh no, sir. I've been on errands.’ I held up a pail of things I had been to get for Maria Thins before I visited Frans.
‘I hope I will see more of you, then.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Two women were standing behind the men. I peeked at their faces and guessed they were the daughter and sister who were sitting for the painting. The daughter was staring at me.
‘You have not forgotten your promise, I hope,’ van Ruijven said to my master.
My master jerked his head like a puppet. ‘No,’ he replied after a moment.
‘Good. I expect you'll want to make a start on that before you ask us to come again.’ Van Ruijven's smile made me shiver.
There was a long silence. I glanced at my master. He was struggling to maintain a calm expression, but I knew he was angry.
‘Yes,’ he said at last, his eyes on the house opposite. He did not look at me.
I did not understand that conversation in the street, but I knew it was to do with me. The next day I discovered how.
In the morning he asked me to come up in the afternoon. I assumed he wanted me to work with the colours, that he was starting the concert painting. When I got to the studio he was not there. I went straight to the attic. The grinding table was clear — nothing had been laid out for me. I climbed back down the ladder, feeling foolish.
He had come in and was standing in the studio, looking out a window.
‘Take a seat, please, Griet,’ he said, his back to me.
I sat in the chair by the harpsichord. I did not touch it — I had never touched an instrument except to clean it. As I waited I studied the paintings he had hung on the back wall that would form part of the concert painting. There was a landscape on the left, and on the right a picture of three people — a woman playing a lute, wearing a dress that revealed much of her bosom, a gentleman with his arm around her, and an old woman. The man was buying the young woman's favours, the old woman reaching to take the coin he held out. Maria Thins owned the painting and had told me it was called The Procuress.
‘Not that chair.’ He had turned from the window. ‘That is where van Ruijven's daughter sits.’
Where I would have sat, I thought, if I were to be in the painting.
He got another of the lion-head chairs and set it close to his easel but sideways so it faced the window. ‘Sit here.’
‘What do you want, sir?’ I asked, sitting. I was puzzled — we never sat together. I shivered, although I was not cold.
‘Don't talk.’ He opened a shutter so that the light fell directly on my face. ‘Look out the window.’ He sat down in his chair by the easel.
I gazed at the New Church tower and swallowed. I could feel my jaw tightening and my eyes widening.
‘Now look at me.’
I turned my head and looked at him over my left shoulder.
His eyes locked with mine. I could think of nothing except how their grey was like the inside of an oyster shell.
He seemed to be waiting for something. My face began to strain with the fear that I was not giving him what he wanted.
‘Griet,’ he said softly. It was all he had to say. My eyes filled with tears I did not shed. I knew now.
‘Yes. Don't move.’
He was going to paint me.
‘You smell of linseed oil.’
My father spoke in a baffled tone. He did not believe that simply cleaning a painter's studio would make the smell linger on my clothes, my skin, my hair. He was right. It was as if he guessed that I now slept with the oil in my room, that I sat for hours being painted and absorbing the scent. He guessed and yet he could not say. His blindness took away his confidence so that he did not trust the thoughts in his mind.
A year before I might have tried to help him, suggest what he was thinking, humour him into speaking his mind. Now, however, I simply watched him struggle silently, like a beetle that has fallen on to its back and cannot turn itself over.
My mother had also guessed, though she did not know what she had guessed. Sometimes I could not meet her eye. When I did her look was a puzzle of anger held back, of curiosity, of hurt. She was trying to understand what had happened to her daughter.
I had grown used to the smell of linseed oil. I even kept a small bottle of it by my bed. In the mornings when I was getting dressed I held it up to the window to admire the colour, which was like lemon juice with a drop of lead-tin yellow in it.
I wear that colour now, I wanted to say. He is painting me in that colour.
Instead, to take my father's mind off the smell, I described the other painting my master was working on. ‘A young woman sits at a harpsichord, playing. She is wearing a yellow and black bodice — the same the baker's daughter wore for her painting — a white satin skirt and white ribbons in her hair. Standing in the curve of the harpsichord is another woman, who is holding music and singing. She wears a green, fur-trimmed housecoat and a blue dress. In between the women is a man sitting with his back to us-’
‘Van Ruijven,’ my father interrupted.
‘Yes, van Ruijven. All that can be seen of him is his back, his hair, and one hand on the neck of a lute.’
‘He plays the lute badly,’ my father added eagerly.
‘Very badly. That's why his back is to us — so we won't see that he can't even hold his lute properly.’
My father chuckled, his good mood restored. He was always pleased to hear that a rich man could be a poor musician.
It was not always so easy to bring him back into good humour. Sundays had become so uncomfortable with my parents that I began to welcome those times when Pieter the son ate with us. He must have noted the troubled looks my mother gave me, my father's querulous comments, the awkward silences so unexpected between parent and child. He never said anything about them, never winced or stared or became tongue-tied himself. Instead he gently teased my father, flattered my mother, smiled at me.
Pieter did not ask why I smelled of linseed oil. He did not seem to worry about what I might be hiding. He had decided to trust me.
He was a good man.
I could not help it, though — I always looked to see if there was blood under his fingernails.
He should soak them in salted water, I thought. One day I will tell him so.
He was a good man, but he was becoming impatient. He did not say so, but sometimes on Sundays in the alley off the Rietveld Canal, I could feel the impatience in his hands. He would grip my thighs harder than he needed, press his