That man was van Ruijven?
The patron? Father chuckled. No, no, child, not him. That was the painter, Vermeer. That was Johannes Vermeer and his wife. Youre to clean his studio.
To the few things I was taking with me my mother added another cap, collar and apron so that each day I could wash one and wear the other, and would always look clean. She also gave me an ornamental tortoiseshell comb, shaped like a shell, that had been my grandmothers and was too fine for a maid to wear, and a prayer book I could read when I needed to escape the Catholicism around me.
As we gathered my things she explained why I was to work for the Vermeers. You know that your new master is headman of the Guild of St. Luke, and was when your father had his accident last year?
I nodded, still shocked that I was to work for such an artist.
The Guild looks after its own, as best it can. Remember the box your father gave money to every week for years? That money goes to masters in need, as we are now. But it goes only so far, you see, especially now with Frans in his apprenticeship and no money coming in. We have no choice. We wont take public charity, not if we can manage without. Then your father heard that your new master was looking for a maid who could clean his studio without moving anything, and he put forward your name, thinking that as headman, and knowing our circumstances, Vermeer would be likely to try to help.
I sifted through what she had said. How do you clean a room without moving anything?
Of course you must move things, but you must find a way to put them back exactly so it looks as if nothing has been disturbed. As you do for your father now that he cannot see.
After my fathers accident we had learned to place things where he always knew to find them. It was one thing to do this for a blind man, though. Quite another for a man with a painters eyes.
Agnes said nothing to me after the visit. When I got into bed next to her that night she remained silent, though she did not turn her back to me. She lay gazing at the ceiling. Once I had blown out the candle it was so dark I could see nothing. I turned towards her.
You know I dont want to leave. I have to.
Silence.
We need the money. We have nothing now that Father cant work.
Eight stuivers a day isnt such a lot of money. Agnes had a hoarse voice, as if her throat were covered with cobwebs.
It will keep the family in bread. And a bit of cheese. Thats not so little.
Ill be all alone. Youre leaving me all alone. First Frans, then you.
Of all of us Agnes had been the most upset when Frans left the previous year. He and she had always fought like cats but she sulked for days once he was gone. At ten she was the youngest of us three children, and had never before known a time when Frans and I were not there.
Mother and Father will still be here. And Ill visit on Sundays. Besides, it was no surprise when Frans went. We had known for years that our brother would start his apprenticeship when he turned thirteen. Our father had saved hard to pay the apprentice fee, and talked endlessly of how Frans would learn another aspect of the trade, then come back and they would set up a tile factory together.
Now our father sat by the window and never spoke of the future.
After the accident Frans had come home for two days. He had not visited since. The last time I saw him I had gone to the factory across town where he was apprenticed. He looked exhausted and had burns up and down his arms from pulling tiles from the kiln. He told me he worked from dawn until so late that at times he was too tired even to eat. Father never told me it would be this bad, he muttered resentfully. He always said his apprenticeship was the making of him.
Perhaps it was, I replied. It made him what he is now.
When I was ready to leave the next morning my father shuffled out to the front step, feeling his way along the wall. I hugged my mother and Agnes. Sunday will come in no time, my mother said.
My father handed me something wrapped in a handkerchief. To remind you of home, he said. Of us.
It was my favorite tile of his. Most of his tiles we had at home were faulty in some waychipped or cut crookedly, or the picture was blurred because the kiln had been too hot. This one, though, my father kept specially for us. It was a simple picture of two small figures, a boy and an older girl. They were not playing as children usually did in tiles. They were simply walking along, and were like Frans and me whenever we walked togetherclearly our father had thought of us as he painted it. The boy was a little ahead of the girl but had turned back to say something. His face was mischievous, his hair messy. The girl wore her cap as I wore mine, not as most other girls did, with the ends tied under their chins or behind their necks. I favored a white cap that folded in a wide brim around my face, covering my hair completely and hanging down in points on each side of my face so that from the side my expression was hidden. I kept the cap stiff by boiling it with potato peelings.
I walked away from our house, carrying my things tied up in an apron. It was still earlyour neighbors were throwing buckets of water onto their steps and the street in front of their houses, and scrubbing them clean. Agnes would do that now, as well as many of my other tasks. She would have less time to play in the street and along the canals. Her life was changing too.
People nodded at me and watched curiously as I passed. No one asked where I was going or called out kind words. They did not need tothey knew what happened to families when a man lost his trade. It would be something to discuss lateryoung Griet become a maid, her father brought the family low. They would not gloat, however. The same thing could easily happen to them.
I had walked along that street all my life, but had never been so aware that my back was to my home. When I reached the end and turned out of sight of my family, though, it became a little easier to walk steadily and look around me. The morning was still cool, the sky a flat grey-white pulled close over Delft like a sheet, the summer sun not yet high enough to burn it away. The canal I walked along was a mirror of white light tinged with green. As the sun grew brighter the canal would darken to the color of moss.
Frans, Agnes, and I used to sit along that canal and throw things inpebbles, sticks, once a broken tileand imagine what they might touch on the bottomnot fish, but creatures from our imagination, with many eyes, scales, hands and fins. Frans thought up the most interesting monsters. Agnes was the most frightened. I always stopped the game, too inclined to see things as they were to be able to think up things that were not.
There were a few boats on the canal, moving towards Market Square. It was not market day, however, when the canal was so full you couldnt see the water. One boat was carrying river fish for the stalls at Jeronymous Bridge. Another sat low on the water, loaded with bricks. The man poling the boat called out a greeting to me. I merely nodded and lowered my head so that the edge of my cap hid my face.
I crossed a bridge over the canal and turned into the open space of Market Square, even then busy with people crisscrossing it on their way to some taskbuying meat at the Meat Hall, or bread at the bakers, taking wood to be weighed at the Weigh House. Children ran errands for their parents, apprentices for their masters, maids for their households. Horses and carts clattered across the stones. To my right was the Town Hall, with its gilded front and white marble faces gazing down from the keystones above the windows. To my left was the New Church, where I had been baptized sixteen years before. Its tall, narrow tower made me think of a stone birdcage. Father had taken us up it once. I would never forget the sight of Delft spread below us, each narrow brick house and steep red roof and green waterway and city gate marked forever in my mind, tiny and yet distinct. I asked my father then if every Dutch city looked like that, but he did not know. He had never visited any other city, not even The Hague, two hours away on foot.