Chapter 10

The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Jan Deyman.
1656. Canvas.

My legs are tired. If you step on a crack, you break your moeder’s back, but Moeder is walking fast and I can hardly hop quickly enough from brick to brick in my clompen. It is November and my breath comes out in clouds in the cold air.

“Are we almost there, Moeder?” I know it is silly for an eight-year-old to jump cracks, but I do it anyhow. You have to be nimble to do it in clompen because they slip on the bricks. I have not stepped on a crack since we left home.

“Two more canals to cross,” she says.

My hop sends me into the empty basket that swings on Moeder’s arm.

“Careful, puss.”

I can see her breath, too, and her nose and cheeks are red from the cold. It is freezing outside but it is better than staying at home, where the picture of Mijnheer Gootman still lies on the front-room floor though it has been a week since the men brought it back from the Town Hall.

“Why do we have to go to this baker?” I ask. “I like our baker on the Rozengracht. Mijnheer Frankrijk puts extra sugar on the buns if you ask him.”

“This baker is much better,” Moeder says.

I keep hopping but my tiptoes hurt. Finally Moeder turns into a shop. I jump inside the door onto the smooth black and white tiles on the floor. I can walk anywhere I want in here. Cracks between tiles don’t count.

Moeder twists the red beads hidden under her gauze neckcloth and orders two loaves of bread from the baker, who is covered with flour from his frizzy white hair to his round-toed shoes. I push my cape off my arms. It is hot in here after the cold outside, but it smells good, like baking bread. I look on the shelves for the fancy iced cakes shaped like lambs or ducks or rabbits, but there are none. Someone must have already bought them.

The baker gives Moeder the bread. She fits it into her basket. “And a dozen currant buns, please.”

I look at her in surprise. Has Vader sold a painting? We are going to eat like kings!

“Four stuivers, please,” the baker says.

Moeder tucks away the buns. “Could you please put that on my bill?”

The baker’s smile goes away.

“I ran out today without a single stuiver,” she says. “Isn’t that ridiculous? I shall return on Friday to pay.”

The baker’s voice is not nice. “Whom shall I record on the bill?”

Moeder touches her beads. “Hendrickje Stoffels.”

I look at Moeder. Why doesn’t she say that she’s the wife of Rembrandt van Rijn? Vader is famous. He knows rich people.

“We live at 4 Breestraat.”

What is wrong with her? That was our old address. We moved four years ago. I tug at her elbow.

“Good day, mijnheer.” She grabs my hand and pulls me out of the bakery. I’m so surprised I forget to jump the cracks. When I remember, it’s too late.

“Oh!”

“What’s wrong?” She gives me a bun before I can answer. “Here.”

I look at the bun. It’s not even de noen. She always makes me wait until de noen to eat after we have had breakfast.

“Go ahead. Eat it.”

I take a bite. Bah! Moeder was wrong. This bun is not as good as the buns from the other bakery; it is dry and hardly sweet. I don’t wait to empty my mouth to tell her the bad news.

“Shhh, puss,” she says. “I am trying to find our way.”

The houses here are different from our neighborhood. Taller. Cleaner. “Where are we?” When I look up at my moeder, there are tears in her eyes.

She wipes her eyes when she sees me looking. “It’s from the cold.” She smiles. “How would you like to see the biggest house in Amsterdam?”

I nod yes, though I don’t want to. I want to go home.

“It’s on the Kloveniersburgwal,” Moeder says. “Isn’t that a funny name?”

“Klo-Klov—”

“Kloveniersburgwal. You had better learn it, puss. It is the name of money.” Her voice is happy, but her smile goes away when she turns to look around.

“Here,” she says after we walk a minute, “this is the passage.”

We are hurrying so fast I cannot eat my bun. We come to a canal. It is much wider than ours, with beautiful painted boats on it, and there are big trees, their bare arms reaching into the cloudy sky. A shiny green carriage drawn by six white horses clatters by. I stare at it in wonder. Carriages drawn by six matched horses don’t come down the Rozengracht.

“How much farther?”

“Just a few more houses—it is right up there. We are on the Kloveniersburgwal now. Isn’t it pretty here?” She keeps her face pointed ahead, even though there is a boy with pretty gold hair watching us from the porch next to us. Someone opens the door to the house and pulls him inside.

Moeder seems not to have seen him. “You will like this mansion,” she says lightly. “For two years I have watched it rise out of the ground. It belongs to the Trip family. Your vader is painting the portraits of the Trippen for it—how do you like that?”

I nod as if I like it, though I hope they don’t send the picture back like they did from the Town Hall. Since then, many days Vader goes away in the morning and comes back at nighttime smelling of ale.

I stumble on a cobblestone and drop my bun. When I open my mouth to protest, I see Moeder staring at something down the street.

“Moeder?”

She puts her hand to her hidden beads with a little cry, but I see nothing different, just a group of men in black hats and capes, coming down the walkway like you see everywhere in Amsterdam.

She pulls me away from the dropped bun. We start running in the other direction. We run past one big building and another, my clompen slipping on the bricks, to the end of the street, where there is a big castle with five pointy-topped towers.

“What is this place?” My cap tips off my head as I look up at the main door. A giant could fit through it.

Moeder doesn’t answer, just throws open the door, her basket banging against the wood, and tugs me inside, my cap flapping. The group of men passes by. One of them looks over his shoulder at us, his golden curls under his big black hat catching on his collar. I wriggle out of Moeder’s grip to see him better. Could it be—is it my gold mustache man? I hope it is him so I can ask Moeder who he is. I tap my lips in our signal, but before he can tap back, Moeder pulls me into the dark and leans against the wall, clutching her basket.

“Moeder, I wanted to see! Where are we?”

She doesn’t answer for a moment. When she does, she is out of breath. “The Weighing House.”

“It’s all dark. Why are we here?” Now I will never know if it was him.

I can hear her swallow between breaths. “I wanted to show … your vader did a painting …”

“May I help you?”

Moeder screams.

A bent old man holding a broom steps into the strip of light from the half-closed door.

“Sorry, mevrouw! I did not mean to scare you.” He scratches at one of the white bunches of hair curled over each ear. He smells of bacon and dust.

“I am fine.” Moeder pats at her beads. She is still breathing hard. “I am the … wife of Rembrandt van Rijn.” She pushes me forward. “I have brought my daughter … to see his picture of Dr. Deyman’s anatomy lesson.”

“Ah, the famous painting.”

Moeder nods.

He looks at me, then raises his droopy white brows at her. “The little girl …?”

Moeder opens her mouth, then closes it. “I did not think of that. I was remembering what a success … Never mind.” She turns to go. “Come, Cornelia.”

“But—you brought me in here to see it.” I like Vader’s paintings. Sometimes the people in them are so real they almost talk to me. I think they must know I am Vader’s daughter.

Moeder rubs at her neck. “A quick look, then.”

Tap, step. Tap, step. The old man uses his broom as a staff as he leads us up the stone staircase. “I know your husband,” he says. “I met him when he was doing the picture, though I’d heard of him before. Everyone has heard of the famous Rembrandt.”

“Yes,” Moeder murmurs.

“They say he has a bit of devilment in him, but he always had a smile and a nod for me.”

We reach the top of the steps, then head down a dark hall. The tapping of the old man’s broom handle echoes from the ceiling.

“I thought I remembered hearing Rembrandt lost his wife the year he did that painting that caused all the commotion, the picture of Captain Banning Cocq’s company.”

“That was his first wife,” Moeder says.

“Ohhh. Excuse me, mevrouw. I don’t believe I had heard he had re-married, but my memory’s gone tricky. You could tell me anything and I would forget it before de noen the next day. Congratulations, mevrouw.”

Moeder murmurs something.

The tapping stops. There is a jangle of keys, then the creaking of a hinge. A strong smell, even sharper than Vader’s paints, bites the inside of my nose as I step inside a dark room.

“Moeder, what stinks?”

“They do anatomies in here, little miss,” says the man. “Mevrouw, are you sure we should—”

I hear the rustle of Moeder’s bodice as she looks behind her. “Yes. Yes. But quickly, please.”

My nose runs as we wait for the man to push back the shutters at the windows with his broom handle. When the light pours in, I can see wooden seats all around, in rows that go down like steps. I follow Moeder’s stare to a big painting on the wall. I walk underneath it, my clompen clacking on the tile.

The picture is of men gathered around another man, who is lying on a table. The man on the table has big bare feet, pointed right at me, almost coming out of the picture, and they are dirty. There is a cloth across his legs, but he is bare, all bare, and his stomach is all black.

No, it’s not black, it’s a big hole. A big, big hole. His insides have been scooped out like a roasting hen’s.

“Thank you, mijnheer,” Moeder says. “We must go now. Come, Neeltje.”

I cannot move. Why have they taken out his insides? Insides aren’t supposed to come out. They don’t want to come out, they want to stay inside and hide. If they get out, people will know bad things about you, secret things. You have to keep them hidden.

“Neeltje, please!”

Even dead, with his insides let loose, the hollow man’s face is unhappy under the mop of thick rosy hair hanging over his forehead.

Wait.

No.

That is not rose-colored hair, parted and pushed down from the top of his head; it is the hollow man’s own dead flesh. They have cut open his head and are looking inside.

“They’re not supposed to look in there! It’s supposed to stay inside! No one is to see it.”

“Don’t cry, schaapje,” the old man says. “There now, little maid.”

But when I turn around to protest that I am not crying, I see he is not talking to me.

He is speaking to Moeder.