Trompe l’?il
As Marin turns upstairs and her footsteps echo away, Nella creeps down to the lower ground floor, where Peebo clicks for his mistress. To her surprise, Peebo’s cage is now hanging in the best kitchen. No cooking takes place here – that exertion is saved for the working kitchen, across the corridor. The best kitchen is a room used solely to display the Brandt collection of China-ware, free of spattering pots and pans, the walls unstained. Nella wonders how long Peebo has been breathing clean air, and more intriguingly, who committed this act of charity.
Otto sits at a small side table, slowly buffing the silver cutlery they will be using for dinner. He is not tall, but his shoulders are wide and he looks too big for his chair. On seeing her at the threshold, he points towards Peebo’s cage. ‘He’s a noisy little thing,’ he says.
‘I’m sorry. I’d have him in my room—’
‘I like his noise.’
‘Oh. Good. Thank you for putting him there.’
‘It wasn’t me, Madame.’
Madame. It feels lovely when he says it. His shirt is immaculate, neatly pressed, no loose threads or stains. His arms beneath the calico move with unconscious grace. How old is he? Thirty, perhaps a little younger. His boots shine like a general’s. Everything about him is so fresh, so unfamiliar. To be called Madame in her own house by a servant in such perfect clothes is suddenly the apogee of her very being. Her heart swells with gratitude but Otto doesn’t seem to notice.
Blushing, Nella walks to the cage and begins to stroke her parakeet through the bars. Peebo makes a gentle ick-ick sound, and runs his beak through his feathers as though in search of something.
‘Where’s he from?’ Otto asks.
‘I don’t know. My uncle bought him.’
‘Not born from an egg in Assendelft, then?’
Nella shakes her head. Nothing so bright and otherly would ever be born in Assendelft. She feels awkward but giddy – Otto knows the name of her village. What would her mother, the grandfathers in the town square, the little schoolchildren, make of this man?
As Otto picks up a fork and runs a soft cloth through each of the tines, Nella presses on the cage bars until her fingertips turn white, craning her neck as she follows the polished wall tiles, right up to the ceiling. Someone has painted a trick of the eye upon it – a glass dome pushes up beyond the plaster towards an impossible sky.
‘Seigneur Brandt had that made,’ says Otto, following the direction of her gaze.
‘It’s clever.’
‘It’s a trick,’ he replies. ‘It’ll peel off soon enough in the damp.’
‘But Marin told me that this house is dry. And that pedigree counts for nothing.’
Otto smiles. ‘Then she and I must disagree.’
Nella wonders to which of Marin’s two statements Otto is referring. She surveys the enormous shelves built into the wall, where three huge glass panes protect various plates and pieces of porcelain. She has never seen such a large collection. At home, they had a small array of Delftware and little else, for most of it had to be sold.
‘The Seigneur’s world in a set of plates,’ says Otto. Nella listens, trying to tell his voice for pride or envy, but hearing neither. Otto’s tone is studiedly neutral. ‘Delft, Dejima, China,’ he goes on. ‘Spanning the seas in crockery.’
‘Isn’t my husband rich enough for someone to travel for him?’
Otto frowns at the knife blade he’s buffing. ‘You have to keep your wealth afloat and no one will do it for you. It’ll run through your fingers if you don’t take care.’ He finishes, folding his soft cloth into a neat square.
‘So he works hard?’
Otto makes a spiral motion with his finger, to the fake glass dome above their heads, toward the illusion of depth. ‘His shares have gone up and up.’
‘And what happens when they get to the top?’
‘What always happens, Madame. Things will spill over.’
‘And then?’
‘Why then,’ he says, ‘I suppose we sink or swim.’ Picking up a large soup spoon, Otto looks at his warped features shrunk into the convex silver.
‘Do you go with him to sea?’
‘No.’
‘Why not? You are his servant.’
‘I no longer sail.’
Nella wonders how long he’s lived upon this man-made land, shored up from the marshes with deep polders and determination. Marin called him a Dutchman. ‘The Seigneur’s spirit belongs on the seas,’ Otto says. ‘And mine does not, Madame.’
Nella pulls her hand out of Peebo’s cage and takes a seat next to the fireplace. ‘How do you know so much about my husband’s spirit?’
‘Haven’t I ears and eyes?’
Nella is startled. Such boldness was not expected – but then Cornelia too feels this free to speak her mind. ‘Of course you do, I—’
‘The sea is something the land can never be, Madame,’ Otto says. ‘No patch stays the same.’
‘Otto.’
There is Marin, standing at the doorway. Otto rises, his cutlery laid out like an arsenal of gleaming weapons. ‘He’s working,’ Marin says to Nella. ‘With much to do.’
‘I was only asking him about the Seigneur’s—’
‘Leave that, Otto,’ Marin says. ‘You need to send those scrolls.’
Marin turns away and disappears. ‘Madame,’ Otto whispers to Nella under the receding footfall. ‘Would you kick a hive? It’ll only get you stung.’
Nella cannot tell if this is a piece of advice or an order. ‘I’d keep that cage shut, Madame,’ he adds, nodding at Peebo. She listens to his step up the kitchen stairs; perfectly measured and soft.