The Anatomy Lesson Read online

  Leonardo wrote of il concetto dell’anima, the intention of the mind, revealed through the external elements—that the body is the house of the soul, and we can see into its inner chambers by way of its facade. If that is true, this man’s soul was a house that was wrecked and sinking, discolored and chipped, the whole of the structure tipping to one side.

  At last, I drew back the whole muslin and got a good look at his face. His eyes were closed, his jaw was slack, and his lips were dry and cracked. His beard was neat and his face clean. After imagining all the pain that had been inflicted on his body, I was surprised when I saw his face. It was at peace. His gaze was serene. There was no tension or sorrow or fear or pain. He was, you might say, a man without a ravaged body. A man given to complete tranquility.

  I thought again about Mantegna’s picture The Lamentation of Christ. And I thought again of my commission. The first glimpse of an idea for the Tulp painting came to me then. The trigger of inspiration: What if I would include more than just the arm of the dead man? What if I would paint the whole man? And no one in front of him to obscure him.

  Yes, the whole corpse, in the center of the frame—at the base of the pyramid, even. To not just show the doctors and their proud moment with a single severed limb, but to show the man whose body they took for this endeavor. It was a man who had been scarred and punished, who had been beaten and executed, but whose face still showed this: this state of grace.

  I have told you that I’m not a religious man, but that’s not strictly true. I never attend church, and I don’t care for men of the cloth. But I was taught the stories of the Bible and I regard them as a kind of human truth. I believe there are men who are tested with terrible losses like Job and men who are blinded by birds like Tobit. Real men, men we know. The Bible is not an historical text to me. It is a text for the living, which tells what happens to those of us right here, right now, among merchants and clergy and shopkeepers of Amsterdam. Among the rapscallions and butchers.

  But men who suffer greatly, receive punishments beyond necessity, and yet they go on, continue to hope, to love, to spread their gospel. To go on until they are cut down. Christ was crucified among thieves. He died as a common criminal. Then could not a common criminal also be Christ?

  I was excited by this revelation. Even there in the cold, dark, hateful tomb. Even there with the dead man in front of me. I began to become enlivened with this idea. I drew up my charcoal again to draw the face. To capture that sense of deep serenity.

  As I was starting to sketch the face, I noticed another, smaller, more faded scar on his neck. I moved closer and saw that it was another brand but not the kind the executioner applies with hot pokers at the stake. Something more exact: something that looked like a prickly clover with a circle in its center. I knew that marking. It was the signature of the scabbard maker from Leiden, a man called Adriaenszoon.

  It was no use trying to sketch after that. I used my handkerchief to wipe my brow—as I was suddenly sweating profusely—and grabbed my cloak and gloves, stuffing my sketch pad and charcoal back into my pockets. I threw the muslin back over the body, making sure to shroud his feet, his arms, the sides of his torso, his legs, tucking him in like a child. Then I fled the chamber into the daylight.

  Outside, I drew the cold air deeply into my lungs, watching my breath on each exhale. Mercifully, the sun was still shining on the square. It was bitter cold when the wind blew, coming straight across the Nieuwmarkt from the IJ, but there was the sun, and the market was blessedly full of life. I drank in the sights and sounds—all the swirling, beautiful activity—as if it were nourishment. I pushed my way into the crowded row of the fish stalls, where the air was thick with the stench of brine, and I inhaled.

  I moved aimlessly along through the browsers and buyers, into the row of cheese sellers and bakers, and beyond them toward the vegetable stands and fishmongers. In a gap somewhere in the middle of the market, I turned around and looked at the building from which I’d just fled.

  The Waag stood mutely like a proud castle in the middle of the bustle, its brick walls brilliant in the sunlight, its high turrets dusted with snow. Soon, all of Amsterdam would arrive here for the winter fest. All the guild nobles would come for the anatomy lesson and the crowds would descend for the torchlight parade.

  I resolved that I needed to walk. Not just to be carried along through the streets but also to let the cold air fill me, to feel its sharp sting in my chest. I headed straight toward the wharf, letting the wind blow into my face. The sky was full of circling gulls, white and gray. The canal was dotted with black coots. Out beyond, the harbor was awash with ship masts. I walked, knowing I would walk for a long time.

  I made it to Amsterdam by dint of my sharp nose, for all scents led toward the city. I wandered around, gaping at the spices atop the carts along the wharves, staring at the trollops on the quays, coveting the boats in the canals, sampling every distiller’s gin. I loved the constant tolling of the church bells all around me, the thousands of seagulls and pigeons everywhere overhead, the open windows presenting wine-filled goblets and plentiful fruit platters and cheeses of every color and crust, fine art, and silver. Even with all the trollops and brigands, the garbage and the foul stench of the canals, Amsterdam was a thief’s paradise.

  I stole, it seemed, whatever was loose: copper, tin, and silver spoons, platters, cups, plates, fruit, vases, tulips if they were cut, brushes, spurs, blankets, bear hides—even shoes once, off a horse’s hooves. And I sought alms, too, using so many tricks I’d learned along the way. Merchants here seemed to prefer to drop a coin into the palm of a devout mendicant than spend a day at penance in church. I acted the part of a saintly beggar, so enthralled by my recitation of prayers that I bumped into the fruit stands in the old market or upset a hot tray of veal collops, and left with pockets bulging.

  On one of the days I was on the new canals, I met Jacob the Walloon, another vagabond. I told him of my woes and he said, “At least you’re not living on the river. It’s ten wide with rogues. There’s so much pitiful flesh cramped side by side along the Amstel, it’s like slaving on a galleon.”

  He put an arm over my shoulder and pulled me close like an old pal, guiding me away from the wharves and toward the town center. “You must be cold in that vest,” he said. “I know of a way we can get you a nice, warm, tailored coat. I bet you’d like that.”

  Here’s how the scam worked: We’d pick a tailor’s shop where a gentleman was getting a fitting. He’d be disrobed while the tailor was taking his measurements, and his old coat would be hanging by the mirror, or maybe by the door. Jacob would run in and start shouting that he’d been robbed out in the street and that the thief had run past the shop. Usually, the gentleman would nobly chase out into the street, and the tailor would often follow. That’s when I’d slip in and grab what had been left unattended. I’d take only the one used cloak, throwing it on over my jerkin, and walk back into the street as if it was always mine.

  The first time I did it, I got a heavy wool cloak lined with purple velvet. To think, someone wanted to replace that for something new. I loved the feeling of the cloak so much, the comfort and warmth, that I told Jacob I’d keep it for myself. But he said that he deserved half so we’d have to sell it and split the cash. That’s what we did—we went down to the market on the curve of the Amstel and sold it to a secondhand coat seller for six stivers, and each of us got three.

  It went like that for a few weeks. We managed to steal a dozen coats from tailor’s shops and then we got more brazen and went down to the stock exchange, where men were tossing off their cloaks in the heat of trading and leaving them on the floor. We did that only once, and the second time we were jailed and hauled up with irons.

  It was a good enough trade, though, in secondhand coats, that we went back to it. Sometimes, I got to wear the coat for half a day until I met up with Jacob again, who wanted his spoils in stivers. Even if I had to give up the comfort of that coat, I could use what we’d
earned to buy a near feast and sleep with a full belly. Later, we improved our game by focusing on barbershops. We’d sneak into the shop while some burgher or other was having his neck shaved. It was easy enough to snatch a coat without even being seen when the barber and the man were so focused on the blade.

  On the sixteenth of November 1623, I was wearing one of my fine borrowed cloaks and trying to woo a pair of trollops beside the Oudezijds Voorburgwal, when I saw a lovely lady riding a black mare, her silk purse hanging loosely off her hip. Excusing myself from the trollops, I stepped out of the doorway and approached. “Madame,” I said, “I am but a humble Leidener …” Before I even finished my opening salvo, the lady dropped her purse into my hands and urged her mare into a trot.

  Not an hour later, the lady seemed to regret her generosity and sent a civil guard to search me out, accusing me of thievery. It’s true that in my life I stole a good many things without any cause, but in this case the woman had wronged me. I was merely seeking alms! I was now nineteen, and so I was taken to the house of correction for questioning. I was very nervous. I sputtered some words. It was he, sir, who jotted down the first words on that piece of parchment you have in your hands—that, having stolen a purse, I was released from custody by the gentlemen of the tribunal on the affirmation that I would leave town forever on pain of imprisonment.

  That evening, as I tried to stoke a fire along the banks of the Amstel with a crooked twig, I considered how I’d been wronged: my mother cruelly stolen from me at birth, my father knuckled under with his rage, our property taken over some meager dues. I had done my best to honorably beg and had only stolen things that no one would bother to miss, some bread or a pig’s trotter here and there for a soup, and all the rest of Amsterdam sups on mutton while I sit empty bellied before a waning fire! My stomach ached that night like a lovesick man missing his mistress, and it howled at me as if I had stolen the lass myself.

  That night, when I fell asleep against the log I’d pulled beside my fire, I had that terrible dream again. Once again, I was naked upon a table and could not lift my arms or move my head or open my eyes or scream, though I could feel the air on my lips and hear the murmurs of conversation taking place around me—without hearing the words.

  This time, the nightmare took a new turn, which I only wish that I could forget. The man who stood above me, the one who resembled my father, was in this dream not wearing a coat but instead a butcher’s apron, and he held in his hands not a pair of shears but a carving knife, which he used to flay me. I saw arrayed around me every manner of delicacy—the head of a succulent swine, a roasted rabbit and a larded dove, oysters in their shells, asparagus, grapes, apricots, pomegranates, lemons, and an array of colorful gourds. I—me, my body—was the centerpiece of a banquet. My father raised a goblet in a toast, pulled a chair up to the table, and then invited the other men to sit down and feast!

  My luck wasn’t all gone, for at that moment I awoke, and found myself very much whole, but still penniless and banished from Amsterdam, that city that had kept me fed. I swore not to close my eyes again until I had made my way all the way back to the Oudezijds Voorburgwal, where last I stood before my arrest.

  I made my way to Den Helder, where I sought, on the main, to feel the fresh crosswinds of the seas on my face. As a lad I was rather comely and ruddy cheeked, with locks of curly blond hair. Amsterdam had stunted me, though, and turned my pretty features mean. I had, in a short time, greatly aged. I could no longer run as fast or survive as long on a crust of bread and I slept less out in the elements. I knew that as soon as my eyes were shut some other vagabond could steal my things. I’ve been told my eyes are as bloodshot as the devil’s own, and the purple rings beneath my eyes seem fixed in my face.

  They say that he who sleeps well, sins not. But I have never slept well, Lord Schout, and perhaps that is why I’m always sinning. The less I slept, the more I came to curse those houses where Mother and Father called out, “Sleep tight, sleep tight” to their lucky babes in cozy cupboard beds. For the right to rest my head in peace and sleep a single night, I would’ve traded all I had in worldly possessions, but naturally I had nothing to trade.

  In Alkmaar, I was arrested with a group of men and accused of mendicancy and banned from the state of Holland and West Friesland, for life. But where, indeed, was I to travel? Do I speak any other language than Dutch? Do I know any people other than my kinsmen?

  There are gibbets just outside the city gates of every town in Holland, bodies hanging like flightless crows; and every time I saw one, I thought of my future fate. I knew I should heed the message of those lifeless gallows birds, for I could see they were my brothers and sisters in luckless fate.

  I joined up with the military service in Utrecht in 1629. They gave me a pair of shoes—the first I’d ever had in my life—and the pay was fair and the companions were jolly, but I offended my colonel more than once by failing to report on time. Since I knew I’d soon face a military tribunal if I erred again, I escaped that company without permission or papers of discharge.

  For this I knew I’d be chased, so I headed to Houtten. There, a friend in cups named Jan Berentszoon took me to a house where two half crates stood below a window, inviting entry. He used an iron to break the lock, and I stood guard. This house provided us with clothes and linen, money and silver decoration, and we were able to sell the vest and buttons, and immediately expend the money on mutton and beer and pastries.

  I regret nothing except that I do not still have that selfsame meal before me on a plate right now. Good Jan and I divided the rest of the plunder. So sated was I that I felt worthy of my new weal and left Houtten with the burgled clothes on my back. That was how I was found out in Utrecht, where a day watch became suspicious at the fancy tassels on my belt. I was again flagellated in public, branded with that town’s name, and imprisoned in the house of correction.

  The Utrecht house didn’t hold me well, and twice I was able to break free. The first time, just digging with my hands, I removed a large stone from the wall that separated my cell from the church wall outside and kept digging out the wall until I managed to squirm out the hole. The second time, I stole a small handsaw from the rasp house and sawed through a window post to get out to the square. When the guard caught me in the act that time, I threatened him with the saw blade. I didn’t really plan to hurt the guard, as I told the judges there, and I will tell you again. It was only that I preferred to die rather than to stay any longer at that house of correction.

  I didn’t get my wish. I was flagellated there in the square. I know the good people of Utrecht must have seen quite enough of my bare back, because every one of my public lashings was attended by the full populace of that town, including the miller’s rooster and the egg farmer’s hen. It was at this time that the name of Aris the Kid was whispered from one town in Holland to the next. For it was said that I was some kind of sainted thief, as no amount of punishment or banishment or branding could deter me.

  Where did I go after I left the corpse in the Waag? Time ceased to matter as I walked away from the Nieuwmarkt and all I know is soon I was outside the city limits. Snow was falling, the sky beginning to darken, and the wind, though strong as I walked along the banks of the IJ, had begun to abate. I must have crossed over the Sint Antoniesdijk, because I passed the line of mills and eventually found myself in a clearing.

  There I stood, as the snowfall became thicker and faster, and the ground was soon patterned in shapes of old lace. I was cold but I don’t remember that I shivered, so engrossed was I in thought. After a while, the clearing was no longer a detailed tapestry but a single sheet of linen, blanketing a landscape barren of man-made structures. At first the cows mottled the horizon, until they, too, were erased.

  It was not so unusual, was it, that two men from Leiden should both find their way to Amsterdam, one beginning a life and the other losing it to the hangman?

  I closed my eyes, feeling snowflakes fall upon my eyelashes and cheeks.
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  Soon, he stood there before me in the clearing, the youth I’d first met so many years ago, who was now the full-grown man who lay on the dissection table in the Waag. Blond, awkward, with knocking knees, he stumbled along the dry dirt path in Leiden, in front of our home, the Weddesteeg. Ahead of him was his father, his head covered in a flat black hat like a pie, and his mouth had the same shape. Flat and grim. He wore a black shirt with a double set of brass buttons down the front of an unadorned black cloak that came below his black knee breeches. His heavy boots hit the ground so hard when he walked that they sprayed dust into the face of his son, who stumbled blindly behind him through the dirt.

  He was a study in contrast with my father, who was a giant of a man—tall, wickedly intelligent, wise, fair, and mild in all his dealings—and who wore a generous beard and a thick head of hair, tousled by the wind and colored by the sun. He was the rudder of our lives, as sturdy and purpose giving as the mill.

  Adriaen’s father seemed cold and small. He never spoke to me, but if my mother happened to be in the yard, he would always address her, not with neighborly greetings but with a rebuke. “Will we be seeing your boys in church this week, Mevrouw Van Rijn?” he’d ask, knowing the answer would be no.

  She would patiently answer that church was not for everyone, though once the old man was out of earshot she would mutter curses at him under her breath. She was Roman Catholic though my father was a Calvinist, and he knew that full well. Nevertheless, she simply endured the old man’s implied reprimand and we went on doing our Sunday chores.