The Anatomy Lesson Read online

  That were us, outsiders. That were the world, coming to see Adriaen hang. I ran to the captain and told him I had to go to the Dam to stop them, but he weren’t hearing me. There were a racket with the horses and so many men shouting for the boats to turn back. They had to go around and sail it to the Haarlemmer Port, he said. That were the only way in. I told him Adriaen would hang if I could not get there with my letter. He said he were sorry. I’d just have to wait.

  That’s what they did. Turn back. The horses were wild with the chaos on the banks, but the shipmen whipped them till they quieted and backed out the sluice. I were getting nervous and Guus kept looking up at me and saying, “We’ll be there soon, ma’am. Don’t worry. I’ll get you there.” As if a young boy could fix everything.

  I didn’t find my paradise at the quayside stables. I couldn’t find Rotzak either, though I got there as quickly as my legs would run me. The stable keepers told me they’d seen a cage that they assumed held a bird and that Rotzak himself had picked it up a few moments earlier. He’d come and gone fleet-footed, and hadn’t said where he was bound. When I asked them his direction, I was pointed toward the wharves.

  Perhaps he’d gone back to his boat. I ran out along the piers and down to the water, not knowing on which ship he’d arrived, or whether he was already bound for the sea again. I climbed aboard ship after ship. I couldn’t find him anywhere. One sailor told me to look by the herring packery, so I went there; a fishmonger pointed back toward the pier, so I ran out that way again. Back and forth I went, first inquiring politely, then calling out his name. The phantom Rotzak was “just here a minute ago” or “went down to get a beer, I think” or unsettlingly “was talking to some dealer on the pier.”

  I was frenzied, finally running about decks, shouting like a bloody pirate bent on revenge. At one point, I saw a man carrying something that looked like a covered cage, and without looking at his face I ran up and grabbed it from his hands. It was only a foul-smelling bucket of trout, and the fisherman I’d assaulted demanded it back with both fists.

  This was like chasing the bird of paradise itself. I gave up, cursed the deckhand, and muttered angrily all the way back to Dam Square. I figured I would deposit myself before the hangman’s scaffold, catch my breath, and wait for Joep to drop. It was then I heard my name ringing through the square: “Jan Fetchet, Jan! I’ve been looking all over town for you!”

  The phantom I’d chased from ship to ship was standing there, wearing a big drunken grin. It hit me: I’d never checked the taverns. The cage was in his hands, covered with a tarpaulin, just as it’d been described to me. “Rotzak, you rascal,” I shouted, and ran toward him. “I’ve been chasing you and that paradise. I should charge you for all I’ve lost in sweat!”

  He wobbled on his feet. “It’s yours, my friend, all yours,” he said, holding the cage up in the air. “Fifteen stivers for the paradise.”

  I reached for the cage but he pulled it back, taunting me with the prospect of eluding me still. I could see that my anxiousness offered him a bit of a thrill.

  “Here, then,” I said, and pressed my stivers into his palm. “Hand it over.”

  He did, but not with out twirling it over my head one more time. I stomped on his foot once and he howled. Then I added, “Someday you’ll pay me back for making me jump.” The words were harsh but the exchange was merry. At last he put the cage in my hands. “Spend your coins on a nice young wench!”

  So relieved was I to finally have that cage in my possession, that I didn’t bother to check if the bird was footless. No matter, I thought, as I flew from the square toward the Sint Antoniesbreestraat—I had very little time to get there and return to the Dam for the hanging—I’ll earn some profit for the brief excursion either way.

  I was still wearing a ridiculous triumphal grin when I arrived on the Sint Antoniesbreestraat and rang the bell at Uylenburgh’s shop. Something was troubling me, though, and I hadn’t had time to think about it while I was running. It came to me just as the maidservant was opening the door: the cage was strangely light. There was no life energy within it—no noise, no rebellious wings.

  It was too late to turn back. The maid, a pale-skinned young thing, was gazing upon me with gimlet eyes. “What’s your business here?” she asked, since I had not spoken to introduce myself. “I seem to have knocked upon the wrong door …” I started to say, bowing to take my leave, but then she said, “Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Fetchet, I didn’t recognize you at first. The master said I must bring you to him soon as you arrived. Come along.”

  Now I couldn’t leave for two reasons. First, because I had no excuse to leave now that I’d only just arrived. Second, the maidservant had taken me by the hand, and was already leading me through the main chamber of Uylenburgh’s house, full of paintings and sculptures he must’ve been dealing, along with fine draperies, porcelain from the Orient, and hand-carved wood furniture from Italy. I was doing a mental inventory, in case this information should prove useful someday.

  She let go of my hand as soon as we reached the narrow stairs, only to allow me to steady myself on the railing while we climbed. Yet as I padded up the stairs behind her, I became ever more aware that something was desperately wrong within the cage. She arrived on the second landing and motioned that I should enter the studio first. I hesitated and the girl came back down the narrow corridor and grabbed my hand again. A sound also fell from her lips, the kind of disapproving cluck I associate with New Town ladies, and then she reached out to release the door’s iron latch. The door swung open so quickly I feared we’d burst in upon the painter unawares.

  The studio was, in fact, already full of people. There was a boy of maybe eleven sitting before what looked like an apothecary’s table, crushing minerals in a mortar with a pestle. Behind a curtain, I could spy at least two other people; at first I thought they might be two more assistants, though on second glance it appeared to be a painter with his model, who was only half-clad. Painters do have the jolliest excuses for frolics.

  Van Rijn stood with his back to us, facing his easel. There was a rather giant blank canvas before him, which he was observing with intense contemplation. Another boy was seated next to the easel, with a small drawing pad in his hand, sketching out shapes of several men. The windows were flung open, perhaps to let in the sun or else to let out the reek of turpentine.

  “Master, the curio dealer Jan Fetchet,” the maidservant announced.

  Van Rijn turned abruptly, clearly untroubled at the interruption, and when he saw my face he wiped his brushes against his smock. In a second he was before me, vivid and expectant. “Fetchet! What a treat! I’ve been eagerly awaiting your arrival.”

  The artist was dressed in a smock that covered his rumpled studio clothes, and his sleeves were pushed up above his elbows. His bushy red hair was springing out from all points on his head like a haphazard halo. “I received your note and was very pleased,” he said.

  Without waiting for my reply—for the painter was a busy man—Van Rijn removed the cloth from the birdcage. We both discovered, with one short swipe of the painter’s hand, that I was a fraud. Instead of a living bird of paradise, the cage contained a stuffed and mounted sack of feathers on a stick. Dead, of course, and footless, too.

  “What’s this?” he said. “This morning’s note said you had …”

  The cheerful smile that had greeted me sank like a Swedish ship. The expression was more dismay than disappointment. Keeping one eye fixed upon my face, he undid the clasp on the cage, reached inside, and removed the feathery trinket. He drew it out of its prison with two fingers, by one wing, and held it before me. “Tell me, Jan. Is this bird, in your estimation, alive?”

  “I am no anatomist, Master van Rijn, but I must admit, I do not think it is well.”

  “Not well?”

  Why had I replied so saucily, too? “Not very sprightly, it’s true.”

  “Not sprightly?” Van Rijn’s eyebrow was raised and mouth turned to a mocking frown. He was
beginning to find it amusing, I think. “I’d say not sprightly at all. I’d even venture to say entirely lifeless. As an exemplar of living beings, I’d say, quite poor. I’d even say desiccated. What do you think, Jan, am I getting close?”

  I could not form words that were appropriately contrite, I know not why. I was sick with myself, after the running, after all the shouting for that lousy double-dealer. “Master” was all I managed at first. I took a deep breath and finally lowered the cage. “I was most egregiously misinformed.”

  Van Rijn called out to the young man who had been seated next to his easel, “Tomas, I need you a moment.” The painter held the sad bird aloft by the useless wing, and the assistant came toward us with cupped hands, like a supplicant. Van Rijn deposited the dead paradise in his hands and said to the youth, “Tomas, we must be very careful when we deign to do business with curio dealers.” The comment was certainly meant for my ears. “They offer you one thing and deliver something quite … other.” Then, turning to look me full in the face, he added more gravely. “They raise your hopes only to dash them.”

  The youth nodded and took the bird over to a shelf by the window, which was already full of items he’d collected from me and my competitors—Roman busts and shields, masks and swords, shells and animal skins. I saw that in the corner there were also a few cages and in them winged creatures that moved. I felt all the more ashamed.

  “There is not a very high price attached to this pouch of feathers surely?” He was rooting through his pockets for a coin.

  “You owe me nothing, master,” I said, finally finding a tongue for contrition. “I’ve made a terrible mistake.” I didn’t think it wise to get my supplier in trouble, for tattle travels too fast down these narrow byways. What other excuse had I? “Life and death live so close by in this city, I can only say that sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which,” I said rather feebly.

  Van Rijn said, “Hum,” and put a hand upon his hip in a pose of exaggerated consideration. “Now this confounds me truly, Fetchet. You say you cannot tell the difference between life and death? Have you spent too much time in the burgomaster’s chambers, then?” He laughed, and I managed to join him in a half chuckle. “Why, I can show you life.” The painter grabbed my arm and drew me toward the back of the studio, where the two unidentified people were sitting behind a sheet. It was a woman there, and she was, just as I thought, poorly garmented and being sketched by a young man. She did not cry out or cover up when we entered, merely pulled a sheet closer to her breast and giggled. Her cheeks were ruddy, her legs beautifully rotund.

  “This,” said Van Rijn, “is life.” He leaned down and planted a kiss on the woman’s bare shoulder. He did not stop there: he kissed three more times, all the way up her neck, until she was squirming and squealing. Then he walked across the room, drew me toward the window of the studio, and pointed out across the IJ.

  “And there, my friend, is death.” We could see the gallows field from that window, though it was not very close. We could make out only three figures hanging from the gibbets, while I knew there were other, older bodies, farther along.

  “Indeed, Master van Rijn,” I found the courage to say at last. “To the left is Bas van der Plein, who strangled his mother with his belt in the Nieuwe Heren Sluice. In the center is the former bailiff Bart Boatel, who knifed four men in the rasp house, just for the fun of it, and blamed it on other prisoners though he was caught in the act. To the far right is sad Sander van Dam, who tried to torch the landlord with a burning mop head, and hangs there six weeks since.”

  “Ah, now see. You do know something about death, at least. You seem to be its chronicler.” He was a little impressed.

  “I am, sire, in a manner of speaking,” I said. “I am present at every sentencing and execution and know the names of all the condemned. Because I buy the bodies from the city.”

  “And what, pray tell, do you do with them?”

  “I work as the famulus anatomicus for the Amsterdam Surgeons’ Guild,” I added, since I thought I could recoup some of my dignity with this splendid title. “I choose the bodies that shall be used for the praelector’s dissection, and then I cart them to the Waag. I’m late for collecting a patient just now.”

  His reaction was far more pronounced than I would’ve ever anticipated. “You work for the surgeons’ guild, you say?” His attention shifted. “And what is that: famulus anatom …?”

  “Anatomicus, sir. It is a glorious title for a gruesome post. I arrange for the bodies for the public dissections.”

  “And you will do this today?” he probed further. “For tonight’s festive anatomy with Praelector Tulp?”

  “I am meant to be there now, as a matter of fact.”

  Then the artist’s face seemed to change. “I am to be there tonight as well,” he said, picking through what was in his palm for the small coins.

  I paused before answering. “Why, I should expect as much, master. All the city’s important men will be attending.”

  Van Rijn gave me a quizzical look. “I’m glad we had this transaction today,” he said, handing me four stivers, which seemed to be payment, not for the bird but for the information about the gibbet.

  Still, the coins felt paltry in my hand, since I’d spent so much in sweat to earn that damned paradise, and yet I took the money and bowed deeply. It was an absurd and unnecessary gesture, but a man has to stay in the good graces of his clients.

  “Stand up, Fetchet,” Van Rijn said. “We are not in Italy. Tell me: When will you have your corpse?”

  I straightened. “In moments, I hope. It is a noon execution.”

  “Then you are already late,” he said. “Be off.”

  I ran down the stairs and out the door and up the Sint Antoniesbreestraat, and across Old Town and back to the Dam, and arrived in the square just in time to see the hangman raise the noose over Joep’s head.

  As I caught my breath, I felt relief. Though it would’ve been natural for me to have pangs of sadness for doomed Joep, I was more like a turkey hawk circling its prey. My hunger trumped my mercy. I thought: At least I will get this bird.

  Just as the hangman tightened that cord, a shriek arose from the crowd so high and piercing it forced all of Dam Square to turn to look. The crowd parted around the font of this eruption, as it might be trying to protect itself from a rearing horse. There was a wench, dressed in tattered rags; her bodice was undone, revealing nearly her full bosom, and her hair wildly sprouted from her head.

  “Stop, devil!” she screamed. “No man shall be hanged! Save the innocent!”

  Oh, she cried and cried like a Greek siren so no one could ignore her. She screamed that she was a witch who’d already borne five tigers out of her womb, and “I’ll birth ten more here and unleash them upon the square unless you halt this execution!” Though I have seen many a true witch in my day, there were more theatrics in her than sorcery. Her hands outstretched attempted to summon lightning but none came. Her eyes, though red and wide open, were not demonic, only at wit’s end.

  It was whispered through the crowd that her name was Trijntje van Dungeon, from Antwerp, the widow of the slain fishmonger. Some wenches pushed her forward, and a few men lifted her onto the scaffold next to the hangman to plead her cause.

  We could all see her more clearly. Her face was round like a plate and smeared from tears; her hair was a mass of curly locks with threads of gray poking out among the fairer hues. She was like some kind of wild Medusa, writhing out of the sea. Her arms were like two great oars stolen off a war galleon. This was no witch, but some proud specimen of Nordic womanhood, who could crush a frail man as easily as a passing carriage wheel would flatten a mouse.

  Instead of trying to press her back off the stage, the hangman seemed as awed by her presence as the rest of us. She did not go directly for Joep, as I anticipated, but instead took the scaffold as if it were her own stage and launched her soliloquy upon the crowd.

  “This man is innocent,” she cried ou
t, now that she’d gotten the full attention of thousands of spectators. “He did not kill my husband.” Seeing them standing next to each other on the scaffold, it was hard to believe that there was supposed to be a link between this fleshy Medusa and the timid, pious tailor. It was like imagining a bull wed a wood ant. “I stabbed my husband myself out of pure malice and without a moment’s regret,” she went on. “I hated him with all my guts and knifed him right in the throat and watched him bleed.”

  The crowds gasped but I doubt it was because anyone thought she wasn’t capable of it.

  “Oh, I hated him truly,” she went on. “Joep loved me, and he stumbled in during the act and, poor blessed man, took the blame. The sheriff hauled him off and he never argued. All these months, he paid for my crime, now I am here to die for him.” She turned and gazed kindly on her beloved. He exchanged the gaze and anyone could see it was real love between that twig and the hearty pea stew.

  Turning back to her audience, she began to shout: “Take me! Take me instead. It is I, I, who should have the hangman’s rope. I’m the murderer and I have no remorse. I was crazy with hatred. I killed him with my own hands.”

  She scratched at her breast with exaggerated histrionics to prove her point, crying that the crowd must prevent the unjust execution. She would not be silenced unless the hangman removed the rope from her beloved Joep and put it on her neck instead. She even tried to push the masked man aside and to draw down the rope, accidentally beginning to strangle her own lover with this force … but here the scaffold carpenters and several men from the crowd stepped in. They managed to wrangle her off her stage, but she kept screaming and pounding her massive chest.

  I was moved by this scene, I must admit. I was happy for Joep. I’d always found him to be a kind and gentle soul in the months I’d courted his flesh. I’d never wanted to pluck his eyeballs and put them in a cup.