Tulip Fever Read Online Free PDF

breasts. The fossils wait, through centuries of waiting.
    Half an hour passes. The painter has scarcely touched his canvas. He is gazing at Sophia. Behind her, on the wall, hangs a Descent from the Cross . It is an Italian painting, by the school of Caravaggio. Christ is being lowered. Light illuminates his naked torso. He is no pale, passive, Northern Christ. He is a real man—broad shoulders, muscles, ropes of veins. He has suffered and been slaughtered. The weight of him, upended, fills the frame. He seems to be sliding down on the heads of the couple below.
    Beneath Christ stands the old man, the patriarch, his chest thrust out above his spindly legs. His face, cushioned by his ruff, dares the viewer to question his fitness as one of God’s chosen. Beside him sits his beautiful young wife. Her hair is pulled back demurely from her face but pearls glint within it, winking at the viewer. They tell a different story. On her lips there is the faintest smile. For whom is she smiling, the painter or the viewer? And is it really a smile at all?
    Cornelis is talking but nobody listens. Sophia and the painter gaze at each other with a terrible seriousness. Another petal falls; it reveals the firm knob of the stigma.
    Jan starts to paint. The disrobed tulip, in the painting, will be back in full bloom. Centuries later people will stand in the Rijksmuseum and gaze at this canvas. What will they see? Tranquillity, harmony. A married couple who, though surrounded by wealth, are aware that this life is swiftly over (the scales, the skull). Maybe the old man was talking, but he is silent now. They didn’t listen then and now nobody can hear.
    His young wife is indeed beautiful. Her gaze is candid and full of love. The blush remains in her cheek but she has perished, long ago. Only the painting remains.

9

    Sophia
I saw the green parrot hanging in the parlour. Although he was caged, he spoke beautifully . . . And he was so cheerful in his prison, as if in a wedding house . . . If I may be your slave, take me, in slavery, Tie my hand to your hand, let the wedding ring be the band.
    —VAN DER MINNEN, 1694
    I am walking with my maid down the Street of Knives. It is a bright, blustery morning. Outside the shops the blades glint in the sun, as if soldiers are standing to attention. My little soldier’s dozy tonight . . . I squeeze my eyes shut.
    “You’ve never played Head in Lap?” Maria asks me.
    I open my eyes. “What’s that?”
    “One boy chooses a girl and buries his head in her lap. The others take turns smacking his bottom and he has to guess who they are.” She chuckles. “And the more they smack, the deeper goes his head.”
    It rained in the night; the buildings look rinsed. High above us a maid leans out of a window and shakes a duster. We are going to the market. We walk down the Street of Cakes, sighing at the smell. A man raises his hat and smiles.
    “Do you know him?” asks Maria.
    “Do you?”
    “Smack his bottom and see if he guesses.”
    We giggle. Sometimes, when we go shopping together, I feel like a girl again with my sisters. I feel released from that great chilly house. However much you bank up the fires, it is impossible to warm the rooms.
    If I may be your slave, take me, in slavery . The ruination of my family cut short my youth. My girlish dreams evaporated in the cruel climate of our straitened circumstances. Of course I felt affection for Cornelis, and gratitude; I am ashamed to admit, at the time, that I was also glad to escape the miseries of my life at home. But recently I feel that I have exchanged one kind of imprisonment for another.
    It is March; spring has arrived. Maria and I walk under a horse-chestnut tree. Its sticky buds have split apart; the packaged leaves spill out. Their tender green stabs my heart. Approaching the square, we hear the murmur of the market. At first it is faint, like the sea. As we walk nearer it grows into a roar—the stall holders shouting out their wares, the