Tulip Fever by Deborah Moggach Read Free Book Online

in her headband; they catch the light, winking at the severity of her coiffure. She wears a black bodice, shot with lines of velvet and silver. Her dress is violet silk; its pewtery sheen catches the light.
    Behind her a tapestry is strung along a wooden rail. Paintings can be glimpsed in the shadows. The green velvet curtains around the bed are pulled back to reveal an opulent bedcover. The room is bathed in tranquil golden light.
    She stands there, motionless. She is suspended, caught between past and present. She is color, waiting to be mixed; a painting, ready to be brushed into life. She is a moment, waiting to be fixed forever under a shiny varnish. Is this a moment of decision? Will she tear up the letter or will she steal away, through the silent rooms, and slip out of the house? Her face, caught in profile, betrays nothing.
    Outside, the street is busy. Two regents, sitting in a carriage, rattle over the bridge. They nod to each other; what they say is of importance to them. A barrel is winched down from a warehouse door, high in a building, and rolled onto a barge; when painted into the background, its contents will forever be unknown. A group of Mennonite men huddle like crows on the corner; children brush past them, yelling.
    Outside all is bustle. Indoors a heart stands still.
    The letter says: It is too late. We both know that. I must see you, my love. Come to my studio tomorrow at four.

13

    Jan
If you would have me weep, you must first of all feel grief yourself.
    —HORACE, Ars Poetica
    The sandglass has emptied. Jan turns it upside down for the second time. It is five o’clock. She is not going to come.
    How foolish, to think she would. Gerrit has swept the floor and tidied up the room. This morning his servant returned, chastened and purple-faced, from his drinking binge, but Jan was too distracted to be angry with him. Remorse always makes Gerrit punctilious; he has even rubbed clean the windowpanes, after his fashion. The table is laid for two: smoked meat, cheese, wine and marzipan tarts, powdered with sugar, that Jan bought this morning. Gerrit has been banished to the kitchen. The boy has been sent home.
    Sophia will not come. How mad he is to imagine, for a moment, that she might. Why should she risk everything for him? He can offer her nothing, only love.
    The sand, just a thread, falls through the pinched waist of the hourglass. So far just a pimple rests on the bottom. As Jan watches, it grows. He doesn’t even know Sophia. He feels he has known her all his life, she has made her home in his heart, but he is just a deluded fool. For a fleeting moment he is actually glad that she’s not coming, for if she stays away she will be saved from possible ruination. He is actually worried for her . This is not like him. But then none of this is.
    The heap of sand increases. The bigger it grows, the more his hopes fade. Outside in the street two men bellow drunkenly. Jan’s neighborhood, Jordaan, is too disreputable for a refined lady like Sophia. He looks around the studio and sees it through her eyes. The white sheet pinned saggingly to the ceiling; its accompanying cobwebs. The plinth, draped with cloth, where his models sit. On the walls hang curling prints; a large crack runs from floor to ceiling. Plaster casts—a hand, a leg—dangle from hooks. The whole place reeks of linseed oil.
    Jan comes from a family of craftsmen. His father is a silversmith and his two brothers are glass painters. He is used to living among the tools of his trade, but how could he have expected a gentlewoman like Sophia to gamble on her reputation for this? He has even had clean sheets put on his bed, in idiotic readiness.
    The sandglass is half filled. She is not coming. Jan sits down on the chest and pulls on his shoes. He gazes for the last time at the meal—the long-stemmed wineglasses, the bowl of fruit, the powdered tartlets. Like a still life they will sit there, stilled at four o’clock, forever unconsumed. They