Girl with a Pearl Earring Read Online Free PDF Page A

but because he could not face the strangeness day after day. What kept him there was knowing that our father had spent all his savings on the apprentice fee, and would have sent him right back if he had come home. Besides, he would find much more strangeness out in the world if he went elsewhere.
    “I will come and see you,” I whispered to the butcher, “when I am alone.” Then I hurried to catch up with Tanneke and Maertge.
    They had stopped at a stall farther along. The butcher there was a handsome man, with graying blond curls and bright blue eyes.
    “Pieter, this is Griet,” Tanneke said. “She will be fetching the meat for us now. You’re to add it to our account as usual.”
    I tried to keep my eyes on his face, but I could not help glancing down at his blood-splattered apron. Our butcher always wore a clean apron when he was selling, changing it whenever he got blood on it.
    “Ah.” Pieter looked me over as if I were a plump chicken he was considering roasting. “What would you like today, Griet?”
    I turned to Tanneke. “Four pounds of chops and a pound of tongue,” she ordered.
    Pieter smiled. “And what do you think of that, miss?” he addressed Maertge. “Don’t I sell the best tongue in Delft?”
    Maertge nodded and giggled as she gazed at the display of joints, chops, tongue, pigs’ feet, sausages.
    “You’ll find, Griet, that I have the best meat and the most honest scales in the hall,” Pieter remarked as he weighed the tongue. “You’ll have no complaints about me.”
    I stared at his apron and swallowed. Pieter put the chops and tongue into the pail I carried, winked at me and turned to serve the next customer.
    We went next to the fish stalls, just beside the Meat Hall. Seagulls hovered above the stalls, waiting for the fishheads and innards the fishmongers threw into the canal. Tanneke introduced me to their fishmonger—also different from ours. I was to alternate each day between meat and fish.
    When we left I did not want to go back to the house, to Catharina and the children on the bench. I wanted to walk home. I wanted to step into my mother’s kitchen and hand her the pailful of chops. We had not eaten meat in months.

    Catharina was combing through Cornelia’s hair when we returned. They paid no attention to me. I helped Tanneke with dinner, turning the meat on the grill, fetching things for the table in the great hall, cutting the bread.
    When the meal was ready the girls came in, Maertge joining Tanneke in the cooking kitchen while the others sat down in the great hall. I had just placed the tongue in the meat barrel in one of the storage rooms—Tanneke had left it out and the cat had almost got to it—when he appeared from outside, standing in the doorway at the end of the long hall, wearing his hat and cloak. I stood still and he paused, the light behind him so that I could not see his face. I did not know if he was looking down the hallway at me. After a moment he disappeared into the great hall.
    Tanneke and Maertge served while I looked after the baby in the Crucifixion room. When Tanneke was done she joined me and we ate and drank what the family did—chops, parsnips, bread, and mugs of beer. Although Pieter’s meat was no better than our family butcher’s, it was a welcome taste after going so long without. The bread was rye rather than the cheaper brown bread we had been eating, and the beer was not so watery either.
    I did not wait on the family at that dinner and so I did not see him. Occasionally I heard his voice, usually along with Maria Thins’. From their tones it was clear they got on well.
    After dinner Tanneke and I cleared up, then mopped the floors of the kitchens and storage rooms. The walls of each kitchen were tiled in white, and the fireplace in blue and white Delft tiles painted with birds in one section, ships in another, and soldiers in another. I studied them carefully, but none had been painted by my father.
    I spent most of the rest of