Girl in Hyacinth Blue (8 page)

And now, thanks to the Countess of the Marits huis, I knew that Monsieur le C— could, with his swirling variations on a theme, sweep away the de spair of my restlessness.

I sent a message to the Oude Doelen, inviting him and three others of his choosing, a string quar tet, to give a chamber evening in our home, "an ample white stone mansion on the Vyverburg," I wrote, so he'd know he would get an audience of substance. He replied cordially, and with that en couragement I called upon him the next day for the purpose of making arrangements. When he re ceived me, the immaculate whiteness of his neck linen sent me into a swoon, but luckily, with my smelling salts and his firm hand at my back, I was able to recover. I invited, breathlessly. That is to say I determined not to breathe again until he as sented. He tipped his head in consideration, arched a perfectly plucked eyebrow, straightened the lace at his cuff, gave a slow, practiced smile, and sug gested that we take a carriage ride in the Bosch, the great wood outside the city.

We did so, with the curtains down. So steamy it was in that close, rumbling box—it was July—that I couldn't bear it. My fichu was stuck to the damp back of my neck and in the front to my allurement mounds as well. I had no choice but to remove it. In the dim light I discovered as I looked down and sideways—coquettish still, I hoped—that on his waistcoat an entire landscape was worked in petit point. When I took the liberty to run my hand across the stitching, he covered my hand with his, pressing it to him, a sure sign that he had agreed to assemble a quartet. I could breathe!

"Haydn is de rigueur," he said, "but might I suggest as well the Mozart Quartet in C Major? It's called 'The Dissonant.' Does that frighten you?"

"On the contrary, it sounds thrilling."

"It begins with a pulsing bass note, like the heartbeat of a man expectant of fulfillment, and then swells to fullness as the higher voices join."

"Does it . . . does it reach crescendo?"

"With sublime consummation."

"Then we shall have it."

The next week he sent word by messenger that he had secured the other members of the quartet, and a few days later I called upon him again to dis cuss the guest list and finalize the evening's musical program, which we did while taking a walk around the feather-flecked Vijver to view the swans.

"It's always politic," I said, "to have some Patri ots in attendance, so I have invited the families of Leopold van Limburg Stirum, Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp, and Adam van der Duyn.

"Did you know that swans mate for life?" he asked. "What do you think about that?"

"Foolish. See how tiny their heads are?"

The evening of the chamber concert, I wore silk faille, the color of a hyacinth, like the girl's smock in the painting, not too showy, but certainly notice able. In a last-minute inspiration, I had sent our houseman all over the city looking for hyacinths to dress the grand salon. The scent would be intoxi cating. While waiting for his return, I paced the rooms, moist under my arms and breasts. I bathed again, pouring cool water over my neck to calm me, and listened to the sounds of the house—Ger ard humming in his dressing gown, off-key but happily; staccato steps on the marble floor, chairs being arranged in the salon, hushed voices urging, "No, no, Madame said you're to put it there," and "Madame said we must not light the oil lamps in the drawing room, and the petite salle must be kept dim." It would be ever so lovely, everywhere one looked, those plucky columns of sweetness in all shades of blue standing stiffly up like, like . . . yes, well, this would be a night, I told myself, when ladies sheathed in spangled moonlight would feed on blossoms drenched with honey.

When the houseman finally did return, I saw at once that it was too late in the summer. "No hy acinths, madame. Dreadful sorry. I went to every flower shop I know." He held forward one bedrag gled bloom, embarrassingly past its prime. To avoid comparison, I thought it wise not to exhibit it.

The grand salon glowed golden with fresh ta pers in the sconces. Pastel guests skimmed across black and white floor tiles polished so that the whole surface seemed coated with glass. Across tin kling laughter, Gerard bent gallantly to kiss the hand of that Orange woman, Agatha of the prepos terous headdresses, who was, no doubt, sewn into her gown. I searched the depths of my heart for the graciousness to greet that woman kindly, but a feather bird nested in organdy on her cabriolet bonnet fell forward at each nod of her head so that it appeared to be pecking for food. I didn't trust myself.

Suddenly there he was!

He wore a sleek tailcoat with a pattern of seagreen scales. When he turned to greet Gerard, I could see the tails tapered into points like the tail of a cod. From the back, he looked, mon Dieu! he looked like—a fish, a veritable fish! I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. He began to make his way toward me when he was intercepted by the Countess Maurits, and then others, and I had to content myself by greeting him without a private word.

During the Haydn I adopted the attitude I imagined him to cherish—a lofty, ethereal dreami ness. I leaned forward to show I was intensely in terested, although it shot a pain through my lower back, and the vertical bones in my corset dug into my stomach—which would not have happened had we been in Paris where we belonged.

I noticed Gerard looking around the room dis tractedly instead of paying full attention to the notes. How could anyone not keep his eyes fas tened on the musicians?

I concentrated on Monsieur le C—'s mouth, how he puckered it in a precious little pout when he had to play something allegro. His hands, how deft and light, like birds. And his plucking! My heartstrings vibrated. To create such heavenly sounds, such moods, to have the power so to lift the spirit—was it any surprise that he stirred my passion? Heartwrenchingly, I wondered, as you are, if that could be the budding of love. I wasn't quite sure how to identify it. Was it something that made one all aflutter, or gave one an inner pool of great calm? That sounded too aged. Like a cheese. I pre ferred the flutter of birds, and my mind gamboled under their spell for all of the Mozart.

After an appropriate time mingling with the guests, I approached him, said that he played like an angel, and let him kiss my hand. It was not diffi cult thereafter to lure him into the drawing room. I only had to say I had a small Dutch masterpiece to show him. "A painting of a young girl, a virgin," I taunted, though now I'm ashamed I used her so. Passing through the petite salle, I turned down the wick in the oil lamp, then took his hand and led him to the darkened drawing room and quickly closed the door behind us. We could see nothing.

I counted the six steps to the divan and we sank into sinful luxury with a sigh. He kissed. I kissed, and I discovered, with the very tip of my tongue, a callous under his left jawbone. With a start I real ized that must be where he squeezed the violin with his jowl, an occupational malady I could for give for the grace of his bowing arm.

And I did forgive, for his hands played me like a beloved instrument. He danced his fingers across my throat pianissimo and executed a glissando down my spine. His prelude, an arpeggio trilling through my entire being. His plucking, all that I had hoped for.

Desperately he was rustling through dress, che mise, petticoat, crinoline and shift, and I thought with gratitude how impractical pantalets would have been. Breathing. There was deafening breath ing and such rustling. Was he suffocating under there? So as not to be indelicate, I'll just say that his strings were swelling into a vibrato. He uttered a soft cry, in tremolo, until he sang one thin note, falsetto.

Was it my imagination or did I hear devilish sti fled laughter? Decidedly feminine. We were not alone! Moreover, we might have been seen com ing in the door at that moment of illumination. Lighting a lamp would tell me who it was, that is to say, who must be presented with a lavish gift, and quickly too, so that she would remain silent. Under my billowing gown Monsieur le C— stirred, and seemed about to begin the second movement, but I was so distracted by that pres ence, the rustling of fabric—taffeta it was—that all pleasure I had imagined for weeks flitted as quickly as a grace note. I tried to think who had been wearing taffeta this late into summer. I pushed myself away from him, felt for the table, struck a match and in the first flicker of lamplight saw, on the chaise beneath the chaste eye of the girl in the painting, with his breeches lowered like a plucked goose, Gerard.

And with him, not that Agatha creature of the bird's nest headgear, but the Countess Maurits, both of them staring at both of us.

I was caught, yes, but released too, in the same instant. Heaven's blessing! This would send me back to Paris!

I had only one alternative. Quickly, though without one shoe, I swept through the petite salle to the grand salon and marshaled the Baroness of Orange to witness his disarray. Like it or not, Agatha van Solms was going to countenance the in fidelity of her lover.

It was, in all respects, an eventful night. I wouldn't give a thousand placid summer days in exchange for it. When I settled under the bed clothes toward dawn, Gerard was still raging.

"How dare you compromise my position here! You realize, don't you, that it will be all over The Hague tomorrow?"

Those were, I believe, the last words I heard that night as I turned on my side, raised the bed clothes over my ear, and remembered with a chuckle how, on my way back through the petite salle with Agatha in tow like a Dutch barge, I had collided with Monsieur le C— slinking his way out. I fell asleep thinking: What a shame we didn't have hyacinths.

Bitterness was out of the question. That I did not charge him with his various infidelities; that I did not attack that matron of the Mauritshuis who, God give her mercy, first introduced me to the pleasures of Dutch musical salons; that I was, in fact, indifferent to my husband's indiscretions testi fied, to me foremost, that our love was of a tepid paleness. The Hague was, every Dutchman de clared pridefully, the very capital of reason above passion. Therefore, what I had been taught to fear, now I embraced. Betrayal—his or mine, it didn't matter—freed me. Best to leave quickly than be come a byword of reproach mentioned behind linen fans out of range of daughters' ears. A season of contrition among the plumbago at my aunt's summer house in Provence, and then I would be back in Paris, at Charlotte's, where there would be theater and opera to keep me from thinking. Ah, that sublime, escaping sigh one sighs when one un laces one's corset, that exquisite freedom could be mine with only a coach ride back to Paris.

But how to pay for it? Impossible to wait for my father to send me money. That would take a fort night. And there would be questions. It would be indecent to stay here a night longer than necessary. I had to think. This time, I really truly had to think. What could I do? What did I have?

With a stab of pain, it came to me—the paint ing.

Trying not to look, I wrapped it in muslin the next morning and called for the carriage. The pa pers, which Gerard kept in his strongbox, I would have to do without. I started at van Hoep's, but encountered only niggling there. Standing up as if to go, the muslin in my hand, I couldn't keep my eyes from the girl in the painting. What I saw be fore as vacancy on her face seemed now an irre trievable innocence and deep calm that caused me a pang. It wasn't just a feature of her youth, but of something finer—an artless nature. I could see it in her eyes. This girl, when she became a woman, would risk all, sacrifice all, overlook and endure all in order to be one with her beloved.

"This is more than a pretty curio, my good man," I said. "You are looking into the guileless soul of maidenhood."

There was, I realized then, something indecent about behaving as we had in front of her. The shock to her sensibilities would leave indelible marks.

"Are you sure it's a Vermeer?" the dealer asked.

"Positive. There are papers, but at the moment they are inaccessible to me."

"And the papers indicate—?"

"That it was painted by Jan van der Meer of Delft, and auctioned in Amsterdam about a hun dred years ago. I can't remember when or where." I flipped my handkerchief to indicate that such de tails were of no consequence.

"There's no signature. If there was any chance those papers said a van Mieris, I'd give you two hundred guilders, but for only a Vermeer, phugh."

I wrapped the painting again and left without a word more, took it to a second dealer and said it was a van Mieris.

"Are you sure it's not a Vermeer?"

"I'm certain."

Again he asked for documents, but without pa pers testifying it as a van Mieris, he offered me only twenty-four guilders. Barely enough for a hired coach and inns to Paris. I accepted, and cried all the way home in the carriage.

Grâce à Dieu, Gerard was at the ministry. I had time for only a quick note to Charlotte: "I am es caping to France. Prepare Father. Let's spend the rest of the summer in Provence."

When my trunks were loaded and I was helped into the coach, what I felt was not a weeping, but a longing to weep that I mastered all too easily. Ger ard would survive, and thrive. If there was anything to weep for, it wasn't Gerard, or Monsieur le C—, or even me. It was the painting, for now it would go forth through the years without its certification, an illegitimate child, and all illegitimacy, whether of paintings or of children or of love, ought to be a source of truer tears than any I could muster at parting.

Love as I knew it was foolish anyway, all that business about blood boiling and hearts palpitating, all that noticing of eyeballs. Think realistically, my dear. Who wants to peer into a quivering nostril anyway? If, indeed, that was love, it wasn't enough. I came to see that knowing what love isn't might be just as valuable, though infinitely less satisfying, as knowing what it is. Looking out the coach window at men and women bending over flat potato fields, I determined I would be just as content as my lost girl gazing out her own sunlit window. A great deal can be said for just sitting and thinking. Life is not, nor has been, a fantaisie, but one can still amuse one self, no? And as for Monsieur le C—, though his face eludes me, I still say an ave for him every Pas sion Sunday at the Church of the Madeleine, as a way of thanking him from the strings of my heart for my resurrection.