The Anatomy Lesson (31 page)

It was not Adriaen I wanted to preserve, restore, resurrect. He was no saint, no man of terrific honor. He was, it was true, a common thief, who lived by the laws of the street and stole what he needed to get by. But I also saw that, if Aris Kindt the thief could be given a reprieve, if he was restored with beauty and love and light,
then we could all be reprieved. All of us would be resurrected, forgiven, illuminated in his flesh.

This idea enlivened me, excited me, and I painted on, thrilled and busy with the incredible sense of purpose it contained. This work. It was not just painting, it was making art.

I could hear the sounds of the festival in the streets getting more riotous as I relaxed into the freedom of painting what I wanted to paint. Outside in the street I could hear a lute player. The slurred song of a drunken singer trying desperately to remember the words.

I worked on the guild figures, creating the expressions in each face, giving them variety and simplicity, but singularity. One awed, one frightened, one philosophical, one full of hope. I continued to work more diligently on Adriaen’s left hand—the one I needed to represent with its anatomy revealed—adding a few details to the arm based on what I could still remember from Tulp’s lesson.

Tulp’s hand needs to apply the forceps to demonstrate the movement of Adriaen’s muscles and tendons. So I began to outline his hand, leaving the rest of his figure merely in sketch. It was an extraordinary feeling to paint one man’s hand using an instrument to operate another man’s hand.

I thought of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel and God’s hand reaching out to Adam. There is irony in letting a pair of forceps intervene between the surgeon’s hand and the hand he will animate through his touch. But just when I thought this, I looked down and saw my own hand, holding the paintbrush, and the brush itself, like the forceps, was an instrument of reanimation as well.

I wish I could tell you that a kind of fire burned through my hand just then, feeling my mother’s benediction on my skin, but I can’t. All I can say is that I knew it was the right thing. That, right there, would be the center of the painting. The artist’s invisible hand presents the surgeon’s living hand, to reanimate the hand of the dead convicted thief. And in that way, to resurrect all humanity.

I heard the singing grow louder outside my windows as the parade took shape along my street. I knew that I had finally found my way into this painting, and that it would be no mere portrait but one of my greatest works. I would illuminate Adriaen’s body. I would cast the damned man into light.

Watch your step as you climb the stairs and hold the rope fast. Come, then, let me take your mind off your daily worries, and step, instead, into my chamber of wonders.

Now that the Waag is an attraction, I get hundreds of visitors each day. Like you, they want to see that portrait by Van Rijn—I still can’t manage to call him what they call him, just “Rembrandt”—and the anatomy theater depicted in his painting. It’s inside the theater that I keep my chamber of wonders when the anatomy isn’t in session. I’ve got such rarities there as no man’s ever seen.

Oh, yes, I am the only one—apart from Tulp—who has the keys to the chamber where the painting now lives. I could not possibly let anyone in there, seeing as I’d run a great risk of losing my position as
famulus anatomicus
if it were discovered.

Come, now, don’t press ahead. The stairs can be slippery when they’re wet. Oh, yes, I’ve seen it many times. Perhaps more than even Tulp. And of course I know the painter; he is one of my best
clients. One of my true connoisseurs. Indeed, he is a brusque sort. Not at all like dear Professor Tulp. That’s why he has caused such a controversy for the guild. He prefers to call his work “art,” and seems to forget it is a commission.

Oh, yes, it is praised! I have heard some say it is greater than Raphael’s paintings. That our very own Amsterdam master has outdone the Italian greats. I am no
liefhebber
, so I cannot give you my own opinion. A shame they don’t take it out of that storage chamber behind that door right there and let the public see. Then every man and woman could make up their own mind.

There, the door to my chamber of wonders is unlocked. Come in, come into my cabinet. Within my cabinet are some of the most singular objects and relics ever known to the world, and yet very few men are aware of my holdings. Only the truly curious—and the truly deserving—are given an opportunity to tour my finds. Typically, I charge a fine fee for access to these chambers. You, however, have won over my trust to such a degree that I no longer seek your coinage. Come, if you will, join me within.

To the left you will find my
naturalia
, all the wonders of nature’s kingdom: dried herbs to cure any worldly ills and a rare assemblage of shells from the farthest earthly shores. A conch shell dotted so evenly with brown freckles along its curves one imagines a painter has taken his brush to this surface.

To the right, I’ll show you my
animalia:
birds and mammals of sea, land, and sky, from here to the Australasias and as far as the New World. Farther into the room, you’ll find the pride of my collection: preservations of human flesh, including mummies from ancient Egypt I was able to purchase from Heurnius’s troves.

Above, you’ll see my armadillo and crocodile, a boar’s head and sea monkey. See spears from tribal Africa on this wall, and horns and
antlers from more than twenty different species. There you have seats made out of bones and cowhide; here there are drinking cups made of ivory. See my whole elephant tusks, too, and here a coat made of leopard pelts.

Earlier, I told you of a marvelous creature, the bird of paradise, that true rarity of rarities, which inspires awe through its beauty and through the fact that it, alone among winged creatures, can never alight upon the earth. One can only assume that this constant need for flight is a burden to this ethereal fowl. And yet even flight, this eternal flapping of wings, is essential to its soul. For when caught, it soon dies, so well does it love the free air. The great wonder hunters of all Europe have tried, and failed, to capture one alive. But it will not be snared, nor tethered to earth. For the
paradiseus
, its form is its destiny.

Here, then, feast your eyes on this true wonder. This marvelous creature that evades earthly captivity. This one is, of course, dead, but from its incredible plumage you can imagine how it must’ve looked while it was alive.

Oh, yes. There’s the door there, yes. Right behind that door is the Rembrandt portrait. And it’s true, I do have the key. As I mentioned, it would be a serious risk to my position as the
famulus anatomicus
to allow anyone past that door.… It would have to be something very interesting to make it worth the risk.

Oh, well, maybe. I might be able to consider a donation … for my collecting. Yes, in the interest of science … I could maybe allow you in for just a moment, if you promise not to tell.…

Right this way, then, right this way.

You know I had a hand in the conception of that masterpiece? It’s a long tale, but I’ll tell it for an extra stiver if you’d truly like to hear.

Well, yes, I know that Van Rijn personally. Ask any burgher in Amsterdam and he’ll tell you: if there’s an oddity or rarity you seek, I can put it into your hands. I’m a barterer, a trader, and a broker in God’s great bounty. Should you desire a clawless otter from the Cape of Good Hope or a bull’s horn to be played like a trumpet, merely inquire here. Maybe you want a tortoise shell worn as a German helmet in our roiling Spanish wars? Just say my name: Jan Fetchet …

The whole city around them celebrates. As Flora and the boy head toward the skiff the boatman has tied to the edge of the canal, they must push their way through the rowdy masses. Flora takes the boy’s hand and elbows her way to the canal edge. She drops and seats herself on the bank, then draws the boy onto her lap and passes him along to the boatman. He carefully guides them down.

Revelers troll the streets, bearing lanterns and long wood poles wrapped with cloth and set aflame. As they begin to drift slowly among the other boats in the water, Flora watches the celebrants, thinking this must be a foretaste of hell, the grotesque figures dancing and laughing and drunk with vengeance.
Adriaen
, she thinks,
I hope the man was right and that you are already long gone
.

The church bells are sounding out the final hour of 31 January 1632, and these bells are subdued and kind, like a hand gently caressing a wound. Each chime from the towers overhead drives another shovel into the ground, burying the day bit by bit.
Bong, bong, bong.
No melody to the chimes this time, only a slow and steady ringing of finality. Adriaen’s day has ended.

Flora watches the lines of dark figures make their grim procession through the street above, now in a sudden sweep of enthusiasm, shouting and raising their torches high. Some people are singing, some drunkenly staggering in the streets, their torches burning wayward circles in the air. If it were not so unreal, Flora would cry. But she is done crying for today; she cried out all her tears as she told her tale to the painter. Tomorrow she will surely cry again, but for today her tears are spent.

Alongside their skiff, other boats pass with their own lanterns lit, making a double pageant of light as each flame is reflected against the black surface of the canal waters. The crowd bawls and bellows, and some men jokingly try to climb down into their craft. The boatman warns them away with the blunt end of his paddle. “Back off or you’ll end up in the soup.”

She is glad for him, this stranger who became her protector. Where did he come from and why has he, of all the people in this city, managed to be so kind?

Ice has formed in only some places along this canal, and there are a few drifts, especially near the bridges, not yet thick enough to prevent their motion but suggesting the hazards to come in narrower channels.

“Where to?” asks the boatman, and Flora cannot say. She has decided not to return to Fetchet, not to deliver the painter’s note, not to take the limb, or any of the rest of the body. It is too terrible a task. Too horrendous even to think about. She will not try to piece Adriaen back together in this way. She will do as the painter suggested. She will stay in Amsterdam and she will wait.

Where to? All day, her destiny has led her from one station of the
cross to the next and now there are no more stations. Without the purpose of seeking Adriaen, she must act on her own free will. It will be the first of many hard and lonely choices, she thinks. It will be a lifetime of choices ahead.

“I know a place,” says the boatman, relieving her of her silence. “It’s no castle, but the linens are clean and the keeper is honest. And it will be off the main streets, so you won’t hear the parade. He is a friend and will not charge you too dearly. You and the boy will be safe.”

Flora nods, content to have this decision, at least, made for her. “Where will you go?” she asks, feeling a flash of panic that her guide will leave her, too.

“I will not go far,” he tells her. “I will come and check on you in the morning, and you can tell me what you want then. Tonight, you should only sleep, and let the weight of sleep clear your head, forget all you have seen today; forget these torches. Tomorrow, you will set a new course and I will take you where you need to go.”