History of a Pleasure Seeker Read Online Free PDF Page B

bored of her. It was a certainty that had been creeping up on her, stealthily, for some time. As it sunk its claws into her back she thought she might faint. Instead she picked up the tray and left the room, digging her nails into the flesh of her palms to guard against tears.
    On the other side of the door, Piet was singing, “My poor heart, so easily consoled, my heart is as free as the air.” He was giving it beautifully and he knew it. “I have admirers by the dozen, but none of them are to my taste.”
    It was a devastating choice, because the words gave form to feelings within Jacobina of which she had been quite unaware even six hours before. Her heart
was
poor and worthy of consolation. She longed to feel as free as air. She thought of the dozens of suitors who had adorned her youth and glanced at her husband. Then she looked at Piet, a young
galent
entirely to her taste; and though she knew that she should be ashamed of herself for inviting this peacock into her nest, in fact she felt as though life had taken an exciting turn.
    Maarten coughed. The sound brought echoes of his snoring and reminded her that he had done no more than kiss her—and that all too rarely—since Egbert’s birth. For ten years she had submitted to this denial of affection and after one explicit rejection on the night of their eighteenth wedding anniversary had not again sought to arouse her husband’s interest. What Jacobina Vermeulen-Sickerts did not know was that Maarten had woken on many nights to find himself stiff with dreaming of her and feasted his eyes on her warm body beside him. It was not because he did not wish to touch his wife that he did not touch her.
    It was because of a promise he had made to God.
    M aarten Vermeulen was twelve years old when he found in the ruins of a burnt-out farmhouse a charred section of beam in the shape of a cross and took this as divine confirmation of that morning’s sermon. It was a winter’s day of uncompromising harshness and the flames of hell had been vividly evoked by the charismatic young vicar of the Johanneskerk. This gentleman had read every word John Calvin ever wrote and had no time for spineless modernists who softened his teachings. Walking home from church, Maarten said nothing to his parents; but as soon as they had eaten he set out across the dunes of Drenthe to look for a sign.
    He was at first reluctant to believe that God had decided, long before his birth, whether he was to be saved or damned; but the burned beam convinced him that the vicar was right. God
had
decided. Moreover, His decision was final and irrevocable. This begged the further question: what was the Almighty’s judgment in his, Maarten Vermeulen’s, specific case? When he pressed for an answer the following Sunday he was informed that such mysteries are not revealed before the End but that clues might be deduced from his behavior through life.
    From that day, the question of whether or not he was predestined for salvation consumed a significant portion of Maarten’s time and energies, and though he searched for a sign and detected many, none was ever as unequivocal as the charred cross he had found.
    His career and the good works he went to great lengths to perform gave him some cause for comfort—as did the delectable Jacobina Sickerts’ decision to marry him, though she had grander suitors. God had smiled on his idea of transporting ice great distances to slow the decay of perishable food. The fledgling concern had often come close to failure, but each time God had intervened and rescued it. Once he was reliably prosperous, Maarten had given 12 percent of his profits away each year: 20 percent more than the Bible instructed. He hoped his generosity was a sign that he was destined for heaven, but to make sure he went further than passive philanthropy. He threw his considerable energies into improving the lot of the less fortunate. He built bread factories and founded societies for land reclamation. He