Study
On their way back, Johannes lies stretched like a beached seal inside the barge.
‘You know lots of people, Johannes. They admire you.’
He smiles. ‘Do you think they’d talk to me if I wasn’t rich?’
‘Are we rich?’ she asks. The words come out of her before she can stop them, the worry in her voice too obvious, the question mark too loud and accusatory.
He turns his head to her, his hair trapped on the bench beneath his cheek. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asks. ‘Ignore Marin, the things she says. She loves to worry.’
‘It isn’t Marin,’ Nella replies, but then she wonders if it is.
‘Just because someone tells you something with a bit of passion doesn’t mean it’s true. I have been richer. I’ve also been poorer. It never seems to make a visible difference.’ His voice slows, drugged by food and the exhaustion of the evening. ‘You cannot really touch my wealth, Nella. It is in the air, swelling, diminishing. Growing again. The things it buys are solid but you can put your hand through it like a cloud.’
‘But, husband, surely there is nothing more solid than a coin?’
As he yawns and closes his eyes, Nella pictures her husband’s money, no more than moisture, dissolving and reforming without prediction. ‘Johannes, there is something I should tell you.’ She pauses. ‘There was – a miniaturist I hired—’
But looking over, she sees he has succumbed to the oblivion of a full stomach. Nella wants him to wake up, so she can ask him more questions. Unlike Marin, he always gives her an interesting answer. He seemed restless after Frans and Agnes left, his grey eyes shifting over private thoughts, locking her out once more. Why did Meermans seem so much less enthusiastic than his wife in dealing with Johannes? Why did Johannes not invite them to the house?
Nella smells the residue of Agnes’ floral pomade on her hands. Her stomach mewls under her lace petticoat and she wishes she’d eaten more. Johannes’ age is showing in the way his eyelids droop and his chin draws to his chest. He looks craggy, at thirty-nine a face from a fairy tale. She thinks about the silences that follow on from his bright chattiness, before he moves once more into darker distraction. She closes her eyes, putting her hand on the flat plane of her stomach. Much like Brandt will spoil you.
The love note hidden in Marin’s room comes back to her. Where has it come from, how many days – or years – has it lain there in her pages? Nella wonders how Marin reads it – with pleasure or disdain? The soft touch of sable in the severity of her plain black bodice, her bridal bouquet a yellowing skull propped upon her shelves. No. Nobody would ever spoil Marin. She wouldn’t let them.
Nella lifts her hand in the semi-darkness, looking at her wedding ring, her nails like faint pink shells. In Assendelft, there may have only been one town square, but at least the people sitting in it would listen to her. Here she is a puppet, a vessel for others to pour their speech. And it is not a man she has married, but a world. Silversmiths, a sister-in-law, strange acquaintances, a house she feels lost in, a smaller one that frightens her. There is ostensibly so much on offer, but Nella feels that something is being taken away.
When they enter the house, she turns, determined to speak – but now Johannes is bent over in commune with Rezeki. She is clearly his favourite, and Johannes runs a tight palm over the dog’s skull. Rezeki bares her teeth in unaggressive pleasure. No one has lit the candles in the hall. The space is so dark, no moon through the high windows.
‘Have they fed you, my beauty?’ he asks, his voice gentle, full of love. The whippet responds by thumping her muscular tail on the tiles, and Johannes chuckles.
The chuckle irritates Nella, the attention she wants given to an animal. ‘I shall go to bed, then,’ she says.
‘Do, do,’ he replies, straightening up. ‘You must be tired.’
‘No, Johannes. I am not tired.’
She holds his gaze until he looks away. ‘I must make notes on those men I met.’ He walks towards his study and the dog follows immediately.
‘Does she keep you company?’ Nella calls. Eleven days alone as a wife, she thinks. Longer than it took God to make the world.
‘She helps me,’ he replies. ‘If I try and solve a problem directly, I can’t do it. If I tend to her, the answer comes.’
‘She is useful then.’
Johannes smiles. ‘She is.’
‘And how much did you pay for Otto – is he useful?’ she asks, her voice cold and shrill with nerves.
Johannes’ expression clouds and Nella feels the blood pounding in her face. ‘What did Agnes say to you?’ he says.
‘Nothing,’ she replies, but it is true that Agnes’ words have crept under her skin.
‘I merely paid Otto’s first wages in advance,’ he says, his voice level.
‘Does Otto think you set him free?’
Johannes sets his jaw. ‘Does it bother you, Petronella, living here with him?’
‘Not at all. It’s just – I’ve never – I mean—’
‘He’s the only manservant I’ve ever had,’ Johannes replies. ‘And ever will.’
He turns away. Don’t go, Nella thinks. If you go then I will become invisible, right now in this hallway, and no one will ever find me again. She points to the dog, sitting obediently at his side. ‘Is that Rezeki or Dhana?’ she asks.
Johannes raises his eyebrows, patting the animal with a loving hand. ‘You have been paying attention. This is Rezeki. Dhana has a spot on her belly.’
I know she does, Nella thinks, picturing the little dog upstairs, waiting in the cabinet. ‘They have strange names.’
‘Not if you’re from Sumatra.’
‘What does Rezeki mean?’ She feels young and stupid.
‘Fortune,’ he replies, slipping into the study and closing the door.
Nella peers into the darkness of the hall, a cold draught blowing towards her as if another door has opened somewhere beyond the expanse of marble tiles. The hairs on the back of her neck rise up. Someone is in the shadows.
‘Hello?’ she calls.
From deep in the kitchen come faint voices, urgent mutterings, the occasional clang of a pan. The sensation of being observed diminishes slightly, and these sounds, however distant, are a comfort. The house makes Nella lose her sense of proportion, and as if to reassure herself, she puts her hand out and touches the solid wood of Johannes’ door frame. When she hears what she believes is an intake of breath behind her, and something brushes against the hem of her dress, Nella hammers with both fists on the study door.
‘Marin, not now.’
‘It’s Nella!’