As his son’s demons were growing weaker, Maarten’s were threatening to overwhelm him. He kept this fact secret, especially from his wife, and to the outside world presented a façade of implacable calm that was exhausting to maintain. He dismissed the most important men Mr. Dermont had hired, engaged new builders, watched over them closely, and summoned from Lucerne the maître d’hôtel of his establishment there who took the training of the staff in hand.

A spirit of terrified industry took hold of the site at the bottom of the Central Park, but each small triumph was succeeded by a greater disaster. Ten days before the scheduled opening a fire destroyed a third of the kitchen. Forty-eight hours later, a cistern in the maids’ bedrooms on the top floor exploded, leaving seventeen rooms uninhabitable.

Maarten cabled to Amsterdam for money. He promised favorable terms and deposited $500,000 in the vaults of the Knickerbocker Trust Company, from which he hoped to elicit a further million dollars in credit. His own deposits were sufficient to keep the project afloat while the trust company deliberated, but he would soon need more. He kept on doggedly, determined to win; but though he spent eighteen hours of every day at work, the end of September found him facing a brutal choice: to open as planned, while there were workmen in the building, or delay the project until they had finished.

He decided to open, against all precedent. At once the New York Stock Exchange, which had lost a quarter of its value since the commencement of his hotel, dipped further. He was alerted to this by a screeching newspaper boy, and as he read the headlines he understood that God was willing to break thousands in order to chastise him.

He walked through the Plaza’s lobby and stood beneath the stained-glass ceiling of its Palm Court, thinking of Babylon’s fate. The light outside was fierce and cold and fairies of colored light flitted across the furniture, which smelled of new upholstery and glue. It was a splendid room, but its opulence demanded the presence of patrons with money. If these did not come in their hundreds he would be ruined.

He sat with this thought for some time. Then he went to find his wife. She was in the sitting room of their suite at the Metropole, surrounded by boxes from which Agneta Hemels was removing shoes and cuffs and scarves and gowns, each more ravishing than the next. Finding no way to articulate her dissatisfactions, Jacobina had punished her husband by spending a provocatively large sum of money. She had bought presents for herself and the children and a painting for her aunt at Baden-Baden. As Maarten entered, Agneta was removing from tissue paper a pair of ankle boots in dark blue leather, fastened with nine pink pearls and lined in scarlet. The sight made him angry, then sad. “If you please, Miss Hemels,” he muttered, and when the maid had curtsied and left he said, “I have annoyed you on this trip, my dear.”

“Not at all.”

“I am sorry for it. It was not my intention to displease you.”

“Why ever should I be displeased?”

“I have absolutely no idea, and I cannot make amends until you tell me.”

Jacobina put down the sapphire choker she had taken, on approval, for Constance and looked at her husband. She was very fond of him and in the past he had been an attentive recipient of her few, pathetic secrets. It appalled her to possess a secret she could not share with him. But the recollection of Piet Barol prohibited truthfulness, and instead of saying “You never touch me,” which was what she wanted to say, she smiled and said, “I’m just anxious, darling. I want the hotel to be a success, as you deserve. I promise to be more cheerful.”

In this way, neither husband nor wife communicated anything of substance. All Jacobina did to show Maarten she was sorry for a crime to which she would never confess was exert herself at the Plaza’s opening and ensure by the deft bestowing of an empty suite that the first name in the visitors’ register was “Vanderbilt.”

Piet Barol did not insult Egbert Vermeulen-Sickerts by telling him that the Shadowers were not real. To the child they were very real indeed, and that was the only useful truth. He addressed him on the subject, therefore, as one general to another on the eve of a great battle.

First he ascertained the enemies’ methods and territory. He observed Egbert crossing the entrance hall floor and inquired what the punishment was for seven missteps. When he learned of the ice-cold baths he almost cried. He saw to it that a warm one was run for Egbert every morning and evening and that at other times the cistern in his private bathroom was drained and inoperable. This innovation produced a gradual but unmistakable improvement. So did jovial admiration. When he told the boy he looked braver and stronger every day, Egbert began to feel brave and strong. It was his first encounter with these emotions and he enjoyed it wildly. He began to dare other audacities for the pleasure of recounting them to his tutor, who listened with absolute attention.

For the first time a genuine affection blossomed between them, nourished by a sincere unity of purpose. On the seventeenth day of joint operations Egbert did not accept the first number announced to him and crossed his aunt’s entrance hall floor in 70 steps rather than 821. In celebration of this triumph Piet asked Mrs. de Leeuw to make one of her excellent apple cakes. They shared it while conducting an optimistic review of their progress.

Egbert sat on the midnight-blue sofa in his great-aunt’s drawing room, his feet on the cushions and crumbs on his lap. Piet had never sworn in his presence and did so now to reinforce their comrade bond. “We’re ready for a stand against these bastards, Egbert. We must defy them.” He offered the child his hand. “If I lead, will you follow?”

Two weeks later, Agneta Hemels gave way to the temptations that had besieged her since her first sight of New York. Standing on the Lusitania’s deck as she steamed into the harbor, the city’s glinting towers had struck her like a land in a fairy tale. The chaos of porters and automobiles on the quay had given this paradise an earthly dimension. But in the seething swirls of humanity she had glimpsed a treasure that cozy little Amsterdam could never offer: anonymity.

Agneta had spent her life in the company of people who knew her. She had never strayed three streets beyond her home without encountering an acquaintance, and this had required her to spend thirty-two years on guard.

She was a private woman, with a dread of gossip. New York’s utter indifference excited her as much as it frustrated Maarten. As Jacobina’s maid she had traveled extensively through Europe and seen much to admire; but nothing—not Versailles nor the Coliseum, not even the soaring cathedral at Köln—had inspired the rush of love New York did.

She had accompanied her mistress on shopping trips that left her wide eyed with wonder. Crossing town in a hansom cab as the avenues swung out to left and right, she had been unable to contain her enthusiasm or understand Jacobina’s lack of it. The joylessness with which Mevrouw Vermeulen-Sickerts acquired expensive clothes and trinkets disgusted her. It seemed grossly unfair to Agneta that a woman so free from financial constraint should derive so little pleasure from it, and this thought began to undermine her ability to refrain from judging her betters.

From her little room on the top floor of the Metropole, Agneta stared out over the city’s lush park and sparkling rooftops, her heart aflame. She was allowed an afternoon off once a fortnight. Though the first of these was delirious, her second solitary promenade was spoiled by her simple Dutch clothes, which did not at all complement the triumphant splendor of the city.

It was on her return from this unsatisfactory expedition that Agneta was beset by the most seductive temptation of her life. As she put away Jacobina’s latest purchases and added them to the inventory of her clothes, the desire to wear one of them, and to wander down Fifth Avenue like a fine lady, took hold of her. It became imperative when she removed from a box an afternoon gown of peacock-blue satin with a jacket trimmed in ermine. She held it up to the glass. She was not as tall as Jacobina, but she knew that in the closet was a pair of very high-heeled shoes that would solve this problem. She went to the door and locked it, though she knew her mistress was at a fitting. It was four o’clock in the afternoon. She was not on duty again until six. Might she not …?

She did.

She took off her own dress and hung it in the wardrobe. Then she sat at the dressing table and arranged her hair. When that was done to her satisfaction she put on the peacock-blue satin, which did wonders for her eyes. Bravely she stepped into the high-heeled shoes and contemplated herself in the mirror. The transformation was dazzling. She went to the safe and removed Jacobina’s jewel box. From this she took the sapphire choker that had been bought for Constance and a pair of pearl earrings.

Agneta was at heart a modest woman, but the city’s immodesty had infected her. Now she laughed to see how magnificent she looked. She left the Vermeulen-Sickerts’ suite and entered the elevator. Although the operator saw her every day he did not recognize her and bowed. Two gentlemen entered the lift and bowed also.

“May I order a carriage for you, miss?” asked the doorman, as though he could think of no greater honor.

“No, thank you. I prefer to walk.” And Agneta swept past him to find that the crowds on Fifth Avenue parted for her and every gentleman among them doffed his hat.

That same afternoon, October 21st, an unforeseen catastrophe occurred that provided Maarten with conclusive proof of God’s directed wrath. He had an appointment with the chairman of the Knickerbocker Trust Company and had spent the morning honing what he intended to be a brilliant performance. If he could obtain a further million dollars in America, he felt confident of making up any further shortfall with European capital and thus prevailing against the odds. He was aware, however, that nothing repels credit like desperation; and because he was desperate he had taken the step of ordering a cocktail at luncheon.

He emerged from his cab ten minutes early, feeling cavalier. He was disconcerted to find a line outside the company’s offices and annoyed when the doorman refused to let him step past it.

“But I have an appointment with Mr. Barney.”

“Mr. Barney is seeing no one today.”

Over this individual’s shoulder, Maarten could see into the green marble banking room. It took him a moment to decode the chaos at the tellers’ windows. Every person in the long line was withdrawing money, apparently as much as they could. The doorman pushed him roughly aside, and when Maarten said, “I will report this insolence to Mr. Barney himself!” the man shrugged and said, “Mr. Barney’s resigned. Join the line like everyone else.”

To be treated in this peremptory fashion reminded Maarten of slights he had endured in his youth and overcome. Seeing that nothing more was to be gained by complaining, he joined the line, noting with alarm that among the ranks of messenger boys were persons of quality, evidently unwilling to rely on subordinates to retrieve their funds for them. From a lady in green serge and fox fur he learned that Mr. Barney had been implicated in a failed attempt to corner the stock of the United Copper Company; that this had exposed a web of risky commitments between the banks he had an interest in; and that it was rumored the Knickerbocker Trust Company did not have sufficient reserves to honor the claims of its depositors.

“But, madam,” said Maarten. “No bank has sufficient reserves to satisfy all its depositors at once. If everybody would simply calm down …”

But it seemed that no one was prepared to calm down. As 34th Street filled with anxious clients, the panic of the crowd began to take hold of Maarten too. Not only did he require a further million dollars in credit; the $500,000 he had raised in Amsterdam was in the trust company’s vaults and its loss would precipitate a crisis he might not survive.

The Knickerbocker closed its immense bronze doors promptly at five o’clock, while there remained dozens of people ahead of Maarten in the queue. Were it not for the lady in fox fur he might have abandoned his stoicism and begun to shout, as others were doing. Instead he said good-bye calmly and walked through eddying crowds to his hotel. From the newspapers he learned that J. P. Morgan had gathered the city’s leading financiers in his library to find a way of preventing a full-scale run on the banks; also that the National Bank of Commerce had refused to clear the Knickerbocker’s checks.

It annoyed Maarten profoundly to be a nonentity in this tangled city. In Amsterdam he would have been in Morgan’s library, taking decisions. In New York he was just another fellow in a fix.

He found his wife having hysterics in front of the hotel’s manager. A sapphire choker was missing and her pearl earrings. (She had not yet discovered the loss of the peacock-blue dress.) “My maid never forgets to lock the safe. It must have been forced,” she was shouting, her voice high and distracted.

The Metropole’s manager was used to defending his staff from the accusations of absent-minded patrons. He pointed out most respectfully that no violence had been done to the safe. “Could you, perhaps, have taken the jewels off elsewhere, madam?” he asked gently, and when Jacobina insisted that she had not, and that her maid would have found them if she had, he put on his gravest face and said: “Is your own servant wholly to be trusted?”

“Of course,” snapped Jacobina.

But she was wrong.

Agneta Hemels had lived her life scrupulously. She had cared for her parents, both now dead, and worked very hard to pay her older brother’s gambling debts. She had never stolen anything in her life. But as she stepped daintily down Fifth Avenue in Jacobina’s gown and Constance’s jewels, she found the experience addictively delightful.

She went into a shop and was fussed over by the attendants. It was a jeweler’s, and she asked to see several diamond bracelets. For a happy fifteen minutes she behaved as if she might buy one. No one had ever bowed and scraped before Agneta Hemels, nor told her that wrists as graceful as hers deserved the best. She pretended to consider an emerald ring, but in fact she was weighing another possibility that had opened before her, as glittering as the stone on her finger.

If she chose to disappear in this vast country of adventurers, she was sure she could. “I shall return tomorrow,” she told the tail-suited salesman, deceitfully. “Keep the ring and those two bracelets aside for me.”

She left the shop trembling. It was almost six o’clock. She walked back towards the Metropole, wondering if there was a God and, if so, what He would do to her if she did what she was contemplating. (If He existed, she was sure He was a “He.”) Agneta had sat through hundreds of church services but could never decide if she truly believed. As she reached the hotel she set the Deity a test: she would enter like a guest and ride the lift in her finery. If she was seen and apprehended she would face the consequences. If not, she would claim her reward for the years she had spent anticipating other people’s whims.

The doorman bowed low to her. So did the elevator attendant. Neither Maarten nor Jacobina was in the lobby, and she gained her own room without incident. Once in it she undressed quickly, put on a dress of her own, packed the peacock-blue satin in her valise with all the underwear she possessed, placed the sapphire choker and pearls between its folds, called a bellboy and instructed him to take the case downstairs and to order a cab for her. Next she went to the Vermeulen-Sickerts’ suite, which the hotel’s manager had just left, and expressed the greatest outrage that someone should have profited by her absence to steal from her beloved mistress.

She helped Jacobina undress and advised her to lie down before dinner. She ordered some bouillon for Maarten, whose ashen face irritated her. How easily he could bear the loss of a few precious stones! She left him trying to place a telephone call to Philadelphia and went into his wife’s dressing room. There she selected five gowns, two cloaks, seven pairs of shoes and a muff and packed them in a trunk, into which she also placed the contents of Jacobina’s jewel box and a quantity of cash. She put on a double-breasted traveling dress with a velvet collar and a chic hat. The dressing room had its own door to the corridor and she summoned a footman to take her luggage downstairs.

Again the elevator attendant bowed to her. As the doorman lifted her into her hired carriage, she pressed a dollar bill into his hand. It was all the spending money Jacobina had given her and it gave her pleasure to leave it behind. “Grand Central Station,” she told the driver; and when they had turned the corner and no one had run after her, she began to cry with happiness.

The revelation of Agneta Hemels’ perfidy shook Maarten profoundly and contributed to his conviction that old certainties were crumbling. He discovered that the maid had bolted when she failed to wake them the next morning, and the trauma of the missing jewels delayed him so long that by the time he reached the Knickerbocker Trust Company, the line to its door stretched halfway round the block.

The rumor was that J. P. Morgan and his associates were prepared to let the Knickerbocker fail. Many in line—men and women—were fighting back tears. Others were angry. Maarten took his place burdened by an awful resignation. He knew he had lost his money.

It was the will of God.

And so it proved. Soon after midday, the great bronze doors were closed to screams of protest. In three hours that morning, more than $8 million had been paid out in cash—$500,000 of it was Maarten’s own and lost for good. He could hardly believe it and yet, now that the disaster had occurred, he saw that he had been expecting it.

He went to other banks but he knew it was hopeless and it was. The call money rate on the New York Stock Exchange was nearing 100 percent and no one was lending. “We must go home, my dear,” he told Jacobina. “I can barely pay the hotel bill as it is.” And that evening they took the midnight sailing to Liverpool and for the first time since her girlhood Jacobina packed her own clothes.

The ship’s extravagance reproached Maarten and he spent the first three days of the voyage in bed. On the morning of the fourth he woke early and crept from their darkened cabin to a stretch of isolated deck and thought. It was no use trying to save himself if God was against him. Nothing he attempted would work; the Almighty had made that clear by bringing the entire banking system of the United States to its knees, merely to punish him. Before he took any practical steps it was vital to regain the affections of his Creator—unless, of course, he was predestined to damnation, in which case … He knelt heavily, not caring that a steward had appeared to lay out the deck chairs, and threw himself on the mercy of his Maker. He was used to dreading the flames of hell, but earthly success had so far shielded him from more immediate manifestations of divine disfavor. He prayed until the steward asked him if he would care for some coffee; and this interruption broke his concentration, leaving him answerless and afraid.

Naomi de Leeuw received the telegram announcing her employer’s unexpected return and sent Hilde Wilken to the schoolroom to convey the good news to Egbert. Opening the door in the dining room wall, the maid was confronted by an odd tableau: Piet Barol was balancing precariously on one leg in the middle of the entrance hall while his pupil watched him, shivering. She curtsied. “If you please, Master Egbert, your parents will be home tomorrow.”

Piet had counted on having weeks more to defeat Egbert’s foes. “Thank you, Hilde,” he said sharply, and once she had gone, with a greater sense of urgency, “Call again, old fellow.”

“Black.”

Piet swung his left foot away from his body in a balletic movement and very slowly brought it down on a white tile. “Call again.”

“White.”

Now Piet lifted his right leg and placed it very gently over the intersection of four tiles. He waited. The room was silent. He could hear the boy’s rough breathing and the gurgle of a filling radiator. “Call again,” he said, but Egbert did not speak.

The Vermeulen-Sickerts arrived the next morning, after spending an anxious night in a hotel at Liverpool. Mr. Blok was extremely annoyed to see that Agneta Hemels was not of the party. He assumed she had been let go in New York and regretted the lost opportunity to dismiss her himself. He enjoyed such scenes, which Mrs. de Leeuw’s stable management of the household rarely afforded him.

The news of her protégée’s wickedness shocked the housekeeper to her core. Informed of it by Jacobina, she took the unprecedented step of sitting down in her mistress’ presence, and the first thing she said was: “We must keep this from the lower servants.”

“I quite agree,” said Mr. Blok. “It would set a most unfortunate example.”

And so the fiction that Agneta Hemels had met a man in America, and been proposed to, and departed for Chicago with her employers’ blessing was devised; and when Hilde heard it she went up to the attic and sobbed among the boxes and old trunks and descended in a mood as black as Maarten’s.

Since his unsatisfactory plea for guidance and compassion on the deck of the Lusitania, Maarten Vermeulen-Sickerts had resorted to extreme self-denial. He had consumed nothing but coffee and bread for the remainder of the voyage, which meant that he endured this interview with his butler and housekeeper in a state of detached despair. It was Monday, October 28th, and the newspapers contained apocalyptic news: on both the previous Thursday and Friday, the New York Stock Exchange had barely made it to the closing bell and call money rates were at 150 percent.

Constance saw at once that something very serious was wrong. She kissed her father tenderly, resolving not to pry, but her curiosity did not long go unsatisfied. Before lunch she and Louisa were summoned to the study.

In his bath it had come to Maarten that only total humiliation, consciously self-inflicted, might cleanse the sin of overreaching. It was necessary to tell his family of their changed situation without subterfuge or excuse, and he did not delay. He did not invite Egbert to the conference, though he wished he could include his tutor—because a man of Piet Barol’s merits might have shared the burden of masculine responsibility. But this was impossible. Methodically, in a voice calmed by hunger, he told his wife and daughters what had happened—the snake-tongued Mr. Dermont and his vision of a potentate’s hotel; his own quiescence in the architect’s sinful grandeur; the disappearance of his partner at the crucial hour; his attempts to struggle on; and the Lord’s final, incontrovertible sanction: the loss of half a million dollars and the abrupt expiry of his credit. “I have asked my friends to come after dinner and will throw myself on their mercy,” he said, bleakly. “Without their help, I will go under.”

Listening to him, Louisa longed to shake her father free of his superstitions and was appalled by the totality of his subjection to them. The protective instincts of which Constance was the usual focus surged within her. How she wished she were a man! She would sail to America; track down this Lionel Dermont in Philadelphia; speak to Mr. J. P. Morgan himself, if necessary; demand and secure the restoration of her family’s money. But all she said was, “We’ll manage, Papa. Of course we will,” and hoped that the interview would end before the delivery of her morning’s purchases. It did not. While the family sat in bewildered silence, Hilde Wilken knocked on the door and staggered into the room beneath a bale of oyster cashmere, the card on which read Urgent Delivery—Paid In Full. Louisa had intended to have matching habits made for herself and her sister, but now the idea embarrassed her. “You may take it upstairs, Hilde,” she said. And to her father, once the maid had left them: “I will return it, Papa. It’s the least I can do.”

Maarten was touched by this offer, but it underlined how little experience his daughters had of the real world and how poorly they would navigate it without his money to protect them. “Keep it, my dear,” he replied forlornly. “It will not be the making or the breaking of us.”

Piet had a hint of the crisis that night, leaning out of Didier Loubat’s window, but the young men could not make sense of what they heard.

The girls were engaged in collecting their disposable assets. “I suppose you did always want to open a shop,” said Constance doubtfully, surveying the pile of clothes Louisa had decided they could do without.

“I won’t let you starve, darling. You can be my chief vendeuse.” Once the shock of her father’s news had subsided, Louisa had seen possibilities in her family’s sudden misfortune. “Poor girls go out to work.” She opened her jewel case and removed the ruby bracelet her godmother had left her. “Haven’t you always rather envied them?”

“No.”

“That’s because you lack imagination, my dear.” Louisa sat on the bed. “Think of having a little shop on the Kalverstraat. Very chic, of course, inside. Mirrors and good lighting and soft carpets. All our friends would buy from us.”

“And take pleasure in our downfall.” Constance spoke bitterly. She was thinking of Myrthe Janssen, whose engagement to Frederik van Sigelen had just been announced. Perhaps she had been unwise not to marry when she could. “Do you think anyone will have us now?” she asked, contemplating her reflection in the mirror and deriving some comfort from it.

“What a silly question. Think of the love letters in your desk.”

“They were written to a girl who had a dowry.”

“No, Constance, they were written to you.”

There was silence. Louisa began taking shoes from her closet.

“I wouldn’t marry for money in any case,” said Constance at last, following her own train of thought.

“If you worked with me, you wouldn’t have to.”

“You’re not serious, Louisa.”

“Why ever not?” Until an hour before, Louisa Vermeulen-Sickerts had not been at all serious about opening a shop. She had been content to daydream about what never could be. Now it seemed that her father’s right to oppose her had dwindled dramatically, and her sister’s skepticism provoked a rush of conviction. “If we sold our jewels, we could rent a place and hire Mevrouw Wunder and Babette to work for us. Babette’s an excellent cutter. You could be the model. I’ll design everything and make sure people don’t swindle us.”

“Don’t look so happy about all of this.”

“I’m not.” Louisa adjusted her expression. “But one of us has to be practical.”

“Not tonight, darling.” And Constance went to the window and closed it, because she felt afraid of the future and did not wish her sister to see cowardice in her face.

The servants’ ignorance was shattered the next afternoon by a raspy-voiced newspaper boy hawking a special edition of De Amsterdamsche Lantaren, a scandal sheet whose front page proclaimed likely ruin of leading burgher. Piet was drawn to the schoolroom’s window in time to see Mrs. de Leeuw buy up the entire edition. He set Egbert an exercise in geometry and went into the kitchen, which was in a state of uproar.

Monsieur la Chaume had abandoned his sauce on the stove and snatched a copy from the housekeeper before she could incinerate her haul. The article mentioned no names, but its hints were broad, and in the leaking of the story its horrors had expanded. “Several millions of dollars” had been lost by one of the “city’s first citizens.” His “extensive collection of objets d’art ” was “likely to be sold at conducive rates.”

It was true that Maarten had been closeted in his study with various grave-faced gentlemen ever since his return from America. Hilde reported that the conversation had ceased whenever she appeared, which was not at all the usual manner of the house.

“I had better take this libelous publication upstairs,” said Mr. Blok.

Maarten Vermeulen-Sickerts, like Piet Barol, inspired instinctive jealousy in a significant proportion of other men. As he contemplated the newspaper ten minutes later, he understood that one of the friends in whom he had trusted everything had betrayed him. He did his best to manufacture a becoming Christian forgiveness. He failed and flung his Venetian-glass paperweight to the floor. Beside him, on the table it always occupied, was the silver miniature of the man on a tightrope—balancing so precariously, yet permanently preserved from disaster.

It did not comfort him.

Maarten had consumed nothing all day but three cups of coffee and two slices of rye bread; and between appointments had prayed fervently. “I can do nothing without you,” he said aloud, looking heavenwards. For the first time in many weeks he felt the stirrings of the Holy Spirit. He picked up the Bible on his desk and opened it at random, convinced that he would learn his fate, and what he read brought tears to his eyes because it was the repeating assurance of the 136th Psalm: “His steadfast love endures forever.”

Maarten took this as an indication that his relationship with the Almighty was on the mend. He felt immediately easier and made a solemn vow that if the Plaza ever turned a profit he would give a third of it away. This allowed him to believe that the Plaza might make money one day, since good would come of it. Surely the Americans would recover their delight in spending. It was so instinctive in them.

It had shamed Maarten to ask his friends for money, but since God required his humiliation, he had endured it without complaint. At an extravagant rate of interest, payable a year hence, with his entire silver collection as collateral, he had been loaned enough to keep afloat for six weeks. He was aware that his own recovery depended on that of the American financial system—but since God had caused that cataclysm in order to humble him, might He not resolve it now that His purpose had been accomplished?

He rang for food. He was very hungry, and the feast sent up by Monsieur la Chaume fortified his spirits. When he had finished, he wrote a stern and litigious letter to the editor of De Amsterdamsche Lantaren and sent Didier Loubat to deliver it. He did not imagine that this action would be taken by his servants as confirmation of the article’s contents, but when Didier returned he found Hilde in tears and Monsieur la Chaume halving the quantity of champagne he was adding to the evening’s dessert.

In the sous-terrain of the house, the day proceeded methodically. But by teatime it was clear to Mr. Blok that he should take a stand. He had worked for Maarten Vermeulen-Sickerts for twenty-five years and consumed a great deal of chivalric fiction in that time. He had often imagined following his knight into battle when all was lost, and his courage now was reinforced by having enough put by to fund a modest retirement in Amersfoort. This limitation of personal vulnerability allowed him to inhabit the role of doomed retainer with total conviction.

He called the staff together after dinner had been served and cleared. Though Agneta Hemels had refrained absolutely from intimacy with anyone, her absence was felt. It was as though she had already been seized by the debt collectors and would be followed in due course by the furniture and the sculpture and the contents of the wine cellar.

Gert Blok sat at the head of the table and opened with a calming address. He reminded his audience that it was their duty to refrain from below-stairs gossip, since Mr. Vermeulen-Sickerts’ rivals would seek information from their own servants. He exhorted them to present a confident front to the world.

“Have they really lost all their money?” asked Hilde, who did not have Mr. Blok’s savings and was nauseous with worry.

Gert Blok hesitated. To deny this would be to diminish the gravity of the crisis, and hence his own importance in mitigating it. To agree would be disloyal and might encourage Hilde and Didier to look for places elsewhere. In the end he told the truth, which was that he did not know. “What I do know is that—”

But Mrs. de Leeuw interrupted him. “This family will never be poor, Hilde. They may lose a painting, perhaps all their paintings, perhaps the china that takes you two days to polish and is never used. But they will not know cold, or hunger, or the misery of unwashed clothes all through a hot summer. It is we who will suffer.” The housekeeper was not much given to public speaking, and the sudden intensity of her feelings produced two patches of deep burgundy on either side of her narrow nose.

Mr. Blok coughed. “I object to that. Mr. Vermeulen-Sickerts will provide us each with a pension, should the worst occur. The family has always paid us well. They—”

But Naomi de Leeuw had lost all composure. “Oh yes, Mr. Blok, they have paid more than their friends pay. Twice as much.” She arranged her lips in the smile of perfect concern she wore when a guest felt unwell. “But it is so little when you think of all we do, and all they have.”

Didier caught Piet’s eye and for an instant they swayed on the precipice of laughter. But they did not laugh because tears began to well in Mrs. de Leeuw’s fierce brown eyes and in a very different voice she said: “I know you all think me cold and mean-spirited.”

There was silence. As often happens after a statement of accurate fact, those present were briefly unable to contradict it.

Piet recovered first, perhaps because, knowing her mother’s ailments as closely as he did, he was most able to feel sympathy for her. “Of course we don’t. Today has simply been—”

But she raised her hand to stop him. “You are very generous, Mr. Barol, and an expert flatterer. But I know you whisper about me behind my back. You and Mr. Loubat and Hilde. You think because I do not show all I see that I am blind. I am not!” She dabbed her eyes with the edge of the tablecloth. “You think me cold because I do not smile. But that is because I have smiled so much, at so many people who have no concern for me, that my smile has lost its meaning. In my youth I was a cheerful person. I wished often to tell you, Hilde, not to fear me. But I never could because I can no longer smile. And that is why, Mr. Blok, Maarten Vermeulen-Sickerts owes each of us far more than a pension.”

“Nevertheless,” said Hilde, less timidly than before, “I would rather have a pension than nothing at all.”

Naomi de Leeuw had made a lifelong habit of suppressing her resentments. She could not otherwise have been the flawless housekeeper she was. But the dam once breached could not be refortified, and though Mr. Blok brought the servants’ discussion to an abrupt end the patches of red on her cheeks did not subside.

She went to her room directly after dinner. It was the largest of the servants’ bedrooms, but it had no windows, having once been a coal cellar, and she longed for starlight and fresh breezes. As soon as she heard Hilde close her door, she changed into slippers and went out into the corridor. The house was dark but she knew every inch of it. At the foot of the servants’ stairs she stopped and listened. No one was abroad. She went up them and into the dining room. From a cabinet with a smooth-swinging door she took a liqueur glass and exchanged it, after a moment’s hesitation, for a larger vessel. She filled this to the brim from the first decanter on the drinks tray, pinched her nose, and drank it all down.

It was port wine—very sweet, and it made her splutter. She was not an experienced drinker. She put the glass on the sideboard, where Hilde would think she had missed it when laying for breakfast, and went down the passage to the octagonal parlor. In her precisely ordered brain were stored the needs of every piece she passed—which chairs were to be waxed twice a year, which never; which tapestries must be moved in the summer months. These details mattered much more to her than the objects’ provenance or value. Her allegiance to each was total.

The octagonal room was draped in a light like silver organza. She closed the door, opened the French windows to the garden, and sat on the gilt sofa that had been made for the palace of St. Cloud. It upset her to think of all this beautiful furniture being sold to people with indifferent housekeepers.

The air was cold and stimulating. She brought her hands together but did not pray. Naomi de Leeuw had long since stopped bothering herself with God. In the mystical half-light Maarten Vermeulen came to her, bounding and energetic as he had been on the day of their first meeting, thirty-one years before.

He had just bought a share in the Amstel Hotel. She was a senior chambermaid, barred from advancement by a jealous superior. Maarten had recognized her talent and made her housekeeper of the mansion he had purchased on the Herengracht. He was unsophisticated in those days, still acquiring possessions and polish. It was she who had trained the servants and arranged the flowers and furniture. How she had helped him! Jacobina Sickerts would never have married him had she not spent three years teaching him to take deference for granted.

She looked up at the chandelier of gilded griffins above her: one of a pair bought by Maarten in the days of his bachelorhood for the salon on the first floor. In that time the drawing room had been a masculine, Gothic preserve. Miss Sickerts had objected to its gloom and Maarten had redecorated and banished its fittings as soon as they were engaged. One griffin chandelier had been relegated here; the other had been given to her—an impetuous, thoughtless gift that caused her much anguish.

Naomi de Leeuw had not known her father and was well into her teens before she understood that the strange men she passed on the stairs helped her mother pay the bills. It was her sister Annetjie, thirteen years older, who was her protectress, the fount of all affection and knowledge, a warm, sweet body to cling to at night when snow fell through the broken tiles of the roof.

When Annetjie met Gerhardt Moritz, she was twenty-four and Naomi eleven. Naomi never imagined her handsome brother-in-law might steal her sister away; it had never occurred to her that anyone could. But a year later, Mr. Moritz announced the couple’s departure for the Orange Free State, where there were farms aplenty and no white woman need do her own washing. Only then did she grasp the reality of his theft.

Gerhardt took Annetjie away one week after Naomi’s twelfth birthday, and on that day Naomi made a vow: that she would earn the money to visit her sister at the outer reaches of the world. She went into service at fourteen, and though the fantasy remained ungraspable she did not abandon it; held it, instead, as a talisman against the wretchedness of cleaning other people’s floors.

The Vermeulen-Sickerts’ gift of the griffin chandelier had seemed miraculous—because Naomi knew what her employer had paid for it, and this was more than sufficient for a passage to South Africa.

Throughout the wet winter of 1879 she had done her best to sell it; had spent her savings on the carriages required to transport it to dealers who took one look at her clothes and offered a fraction of its value; or accused her of theft. She obtained from Maarten a letter certifying her ownership, but this made the dealers less skeptical, not more generous. She began to wish that Maarten had sold it himself and given her the money, but she was too proud to ask this favor.

It was at this period that Naomi, without ever saying so aloud, jettisoned her faith in God. She continued to set an excellent example of church attendance to the lower servants but never again believed the assurances she heard that God would not abandon His children or test them more severely than they could withstand.

Three decades later, she unclasped her hands, and the anger of the evening flowed through her fingers and cooled. It left behind a polished pebble of truth: that the Vermeulen-Sickertses were not wicked. They simply did not care to imagine what life was like for other people.

It had taken the squandering of half Naomi’s savings to suffocate her long-nourished dream. With the last of her money she sent the chandelier as a wedding gift to Annetjie’s daughter, Gertruida, who was marrying a man named van Vuuren. For years, until middle age deadened such fancies, she imagined a link between the winged lions in Amsterdam and their siblings in Bloemfontein and polished their dragonscale shades herself, talking as she did so to her sister as though they were sitting side by side.

Annetjie had been dead for fifteen years, but the griffins observed her with an encouraging sternness that reminded Naomi of her sister when she wished to scold her. She rose and stood very straight. “As long as I can walk and speak,” she said to the moon-drenched garden, “I will make my own luck.”

And she went to bed and behaved the next day as though her outburst had never taken place.

In answer to Maarten’s plea, the banking system of the United States began an abrupt and emphatic recovery. On October 23rd, while he lay in despair in his cabin on the Lusitania, J. P. Morgan succeeded in persuading New York’s leading financiers to provide loans of $8.25 million to prevent a second trust company from following the Knickerbocker into oblivion. The next day, Thursday 24th, Secretary Cortelyou of the Treasury deposited $25 million of government money in the New York banks and J. D. Rockefeller pledged half his fortune to maintain America’s credit. The New York Stock Exchange almost suspended trading that day and the next, and the markets only made it to Friday’s closing bell thanks to Morgan’s raising of $33.3 million in forty-eight hours.

When Maarten later pieced together these events and compared them with the trajectory of his own drama, he was not surprised to discover that none of these measures had worked. None of them could have done while God remained intent on punishing him. Only over the weekend of October 26th and 27th, when through fasting he had begun to see clearly, did the panic ebb. And only on Monday 28th, after Maarten had confessed to his family and begun the grueling admission of his downfall to his friends (one of whom would play Iscariot) was $100 million in loan certificates issued by the New York Clearing House.

In the absence of a central bank these loan certificates functioned as de facto currency. With each confession Maarten made, more banks agreed to accept them in settlement of loans and advances. This enabled other institutions to retain reserves of real greenbacks to honor the demands of frightened depositors. By Tuesday 29th, when Maarten, having abandoned all pride, threw himself wholly on his Creator’s mercy, proof of God’s steadfast love was provided by the restoration of calm in New York.

The news reached Amsterdam on Wednesday 30th and confirmed to Maarten the centrality of his position in the Almighty’s plans. He resumed his fast as a precaution against resurgent pride and consumed nothing but coffee and rye bread for a further two weeks—because the stock market continued its fall and the situation remained delicate. Having secured six weeks of funding, he did not waste time in courting moneylenders. He threw himself into punishing bouts of prayer, refusing to rise from his knees until the ache in them was agony and his body, like Christ’s, was paying a physical price for the sins of the world.

In the end, further self-sacrifice was required. It took a promise to give to the poor three-quarters of the Plaza’s profits, after interest on its loans was paid, to save the Exchange. Maarten made this pledge in all solemnity on November 14th. The following day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average touched a low of fifty-three, then started to climb; and the confidence this unleashed filled the Plaza’s bar to overflowing, and then its palatial suites, and thus God preserved Maarten from the necessity of requesting more money from his friends.

The banks were quite prepared to lend again, and delighted to serve a client who owned New York’s most fashionable hotel.

Shortly after her father received confirmation that a credit facility of $2 million had been placed at his disposal at the National City Bank of New York, Louisa Vermeulen-Sickerts pulled the silk bellpull outside his office door. She had spent the days of his prayer-filled sequestration energetically and tasted a happiness that her former life of wasteful leisure had never offered her. Overruling Constance, she had sought and discovered an empty shop just off the Kalverstraat on which a year’s lease might be obtained for rather less than the value of her ruby bracelet. She had sold this bauble without embarrassment to Frederik van Sigelen, who had paid a full and generous price, and disposed of a rope of pearls and a pair of diamond earrings similarly. This left her with the funds to pay two cutters and an embroiderer for a year, and her own extensive collection of fabrics would see her through a first season. Though her palms were wet with perspiration, she told her father all this with aplomb.

Maarten, so narrowly rescued from ruin, was in tremendous spirits. “What a kind and generous step to have taken, my darling. I’m sure you would have saved us all from penury.”

This was not at all the response Louisa had expected. Her shoulders relaxed. She sat down. “I have so much to learn from you, Papa, but be assured I will be an attentive and diligent student. If only you will show me how to do the first few months’ accounts, I promise I’ll manage thereafter. Constance has agreed to help in the shop and model the collection. I am certain—”

“But there is no longer any need, my precious.” Maarten squeezed her shoulder. “You must buy back your jewels at once. The world has come to its senses. The Plaza is full. This very morning I have had word that sufficient credit has been extended to see me through, and the refurbishments in London and Frankfurt will soon be finished. You may carry on living gaily amongst your friends.”

“But that is not how I wish to live.”

“Nonsense, my treasure.”

“It is not nonsense, I assure you.”

“You are right.” Maarten grew penitent. “Your motives are generous and thoughtful. I do not mean to disparage your efforts, only to tell you that the crisis has passed.”

“I am glad of that, but I mean to do this, Father.”

“Do what?”

“Open a shop. Make my own money.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

Louisa began at the beginning and repeated her plan in detail. This time she was not nervous but angry.

“It is quite impossible,” said Maarten when she had finished.

“On the contrary. It is quite possible, Papa.”

“Then it is not advisable.”

“On what grounds?”

“On the grounds of decency and common sense, Louisa.”

“Where is the shame in hard work? In making one’s own way, as you yourself—”

“You are not at all in the situation I faced when I was your age. Believe me, you should be glad of that.”

“I am grateful for the start you have given me. But I wish, I wish—”

“What do you wish, my child?”

“To make my own way in the world.”

“Then you must marry a man with talent and ambition, whose interests you may serve as your mother has served mine. That is the way in which a woman may succeed.”

“I am capable of succeeding on my own, Papa.”

“I do not doubt it. But that is not the way of the world.”

Constance Vermeulen-Sickerts had not at all looked forward to fawning over her former rivals in an effort to sell them clothes. She had not been a wholly benevolent ruler of Amsterdam’s jeunesse dorée and she knew she had enemies who would pay large sums to have her kneel at their feet as they tried on shoes. She felt a moment’s disloyal relief to learn of the enterprise’s doom. “My sweet—”

But Louisa stalked past her, closed her door in her face, and dragged the dressing table against it. I will defy them, she thought. I will open my shop whatever they say. But she knew, even as she made these promises, that she would break them. The knowledge inspired a wish to break other things. She flung open her closet and pulled from it all the presents her mother had brought her from New York. She was about to take her scissors to them when a more pointed vengeance occurred to her. She rang for Hilde.

Hilde Wilken was not often summoned by Louisa Vermeulen-Sickerts, except to be told off. When she saw the pile of clothes on the floor and the fury on Louisa’s face, she started to cry.

“No time for tears, Hilde.” Louisa intended to act before her passion cooled, in case she thought better of challenging her parents in this manner. She picked up the dresses. “These are for you.”

“Pardon, miss?”

“These are a gift for you.” Louisa attempted to inject warmth into her voice. She was not over fond of Hilde, whose timidity and lack of initiative annoyed her. She would much rather have given her clothes to Agneta Hemels, who had been an active collaborator in several memorable coiffures. “I wish you to have them,” she repeated, and in her tone was a note of command.

“Yes, miss.” Hilde stopped crying.

Louisa smiled. “You have been a good and loyal servant, and this is your reward. Come, let us find some shoes to match them.”

Like Piet Barol, Egbert had dreamed of conquering his captors before his parents’ return from New York. Their sudden arrival was inhibiting. But the anxiety they brought with them was not. Egbert was used to being the failed member of a high-achieving family; for the first time it seemed that his parents and sisters had troubles of their own, and this gave him strength. So did Piet Barol’s deliberate provocation of the Shadowers, who retaliated only by instructing Egbert not to speak to him—and this was the first commandment he broke. The second was their punishment for this betrayal, which he refused to implement.

He took two warm baths a day as a point of honor, and with each his determination grew. But he did not take the decisive step, and as the household’s confidence seeped back he began to worry that his captors would recover as his family was doing. Piet Barol, after all, was an outsider and a grown-up; perhaps he could flout the Shadowers’ decrees with impunity.

Lying awake one morning, fretting in the dark, Egbert made up his mind to act. He got out of bed. He did not return to it a further six times. Neither did he dress and undress repeatedly. He splashed water on his face, put on his clothes, and bit his lip till he tasted blood. Then he went to his door and opened it. He ran down the stairs and arrived in the entrance hall just as the clock was striking five. The lamps by the front door were burning low and gave an encouraging glow. He paused, but he knew delay would undo him. Like a fugitive evading a distracted guard he ran down the hall, through the dining room, and opened the secret door.

His great-aunt’s entrance hall floor loomed before him. He switched on a light. He had spent hundreds of hours navigating this treacherous terrain and remembered the shame of such journeys; then Piet Barol’s calm courage and his masters’ inability to punish it.

He held his breath and ran.

Hilde Wilken was aware that Louisa Vermeulen-Sickerts had no great affection for her, and she did not trust her motives. Her first thought, on receiving Louisa’s gifts, was that she should spirit them from the house before they were countermanded. But where could she store such clothes? They would test the honesty of the truest friend and Hilde did not have any friends in Amsterdam. An afternoon off every fortnight did not leave her much time to make them. She decided, finally, to put her faith in the Baggage Store of the Central Station.

The morning of Egbert’s bid for freedom, Hilde rose early too. As he was dressing, she was folding his sister’s clothes as tightly as she could and putting them into a sack. She could not carry a trunk unaided and had no money for a hired carriage. When she had laid the table for Maarten’s breakfast and set fires in his office, the kitchen, the drawing room and the dining room, she told Mr. Blok that Mrs. de Leeuw had an errand for her, and Mrs. de Leeuw that Mr. Blok had one; and in order to escape the prying eyes of the servants she left Herengracht 605 by the front door.

Hilde was not used to sudden good fortune. She ran the whole way to the station, possessed by a superstitious certainty that something or someone would snatch it away. But nothing and no one did. She hired a locker and deposited her haul in it. She obtained a ticket and a receipt. If Mrs. Vermeulen-Sickerts demanded the return of her daughter’s possessions, she could now say she had sold them. She walked back to the Herengracht. Mist was rising from the canals and the cold inhibited their stench. It was a sparkling winter’s day. You may have found a husband, Agneta Hemels, she thought, but you’ve missed the chance of all this.

Egbert reached the schoolroom. From the shadows came hysterical hissing. He silenced it by switching on the lights. He went to the piano. On the music stand was the edition of Chopin Piet had bought him, which opened like an invitation at the fourth ballade.

The boy sat on the stool, resolved to play it come what may. His aunt’s piano had known less tedious masters than Egbert. As his hands stretched in the opening octaves, its strings quivered in recognition and joy. He had never heard the ballade before, but its opening soothed his fear and beckoned him from the Bach-like maze in which he had wandered for so long. The tune prepared him for adventure. When it slipped away only to return, embroidered as finely as any garment of Louisa’s, he had to search in the mass of notes to find it.

Once grasped he did not let it go. His fingers went faster or slowed down as the music led him; he obeyed no regimenting discipline but began to delight in his skill. As the page filled with notes, he was astonished by what he could do—for the sound his hands and feet produced was one of transcendent beauty.

When he had finished, he knew for the first time that there is value even in the darkest sorrow. He stood up. He went to the drawer in which his aunt’s front-door key was kept and removed it. Then he took his grandfather’s signet ring from its box and picked up his collected Bach. Without hesitation, he crossed the hall and let himself out onto the street.

So many unusual things had happened to Hilde Wilken since the previous afternoon that the sight of Egbert Vermeulen-Sickerts throwing a music book and a gold ring into the water from the Utrechtsestraat was almost unremarkable. At first she barely registered what she was seeing. When she did, she hurried closer. The boy was standing on the bridge, his face shining in the morning light. Was he a ghost? She crossed herself and crept closer.

“Good morning, Hilde.”

“Good morning, Master Egbert.” Hilde was too astonished to curtsy. For the first time she was not afraid of this little boy.

“It is a very pleasant morning, is it not?”

“Indeed it is.” Hilde could not help herself; she leaned forward to touch him.

“I am quite real, I assure you.”

And this was confirmed by the warmth of Egbert’s skin.

Hilde ran into the drawing room without knocking and spoke without curtsying. “Oh, madam! Master Egbert is outside!”

“Whatever can you mean, Hilde?”

“I have spoken to him.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am certain, madam.”

“Call my husband at once.” Jacobina went to fetch a cloak; then thought better of it and ran down the stairs.

Maarten was in his office. It was now his habit to spend three hours each morning in prayer. At the tinkling of the silver bell he rose painfully. Hilde’s breathlessness annoyed him, but as he listened he saw that proof of his salvation had come at last. Finally he understood the purpose of his recent sufferings. By forcing him to renounce vanity, God had prepared him for a gift greater than riches returned: the glory of a son like other sons.

He too ran down the stairs and into the street.

Piet Barol had been searching halfheartedly for his pupil for an hour, and it was Didier Loubat who conveyed the extraordinary news. By now the entire household had learned it. This meant that when Egbert turned the corner of the Herengracht, the nine people who had witnessed his years of failure and confinement were there to celebrate his triumph.

It was Mr. Blok who sounded the first cheer, and Monsieur la Chaume who lustily seconded it. Maarten Vermeulen-Sickerts began to run. He had not run for many years and it was fortunate that his son was not very far away. He reached him a moment after Jacobina did and picked him up and embraced him. Then he burst into tears, not caring a damn who saw.

Egbert completed the journey to his home smiling shyly, but inside he felt like a hero. He was ravenous with hunger and consumed an enormous breakfast. When it was finished a delicious heaviness stole over him, quite unlike the exhaustion that had succeeded his journeys across his great-aunt’s entrance hall floor. With his head against his father’s shoulder he fell into a deep doze at the dining room table.

“Let him sleep as long as he likes,” said Piet, with the authority of a staretz. “When he wakes, he will be cured.”

Egbert did not wake until midmorning of the following day, and when he did his father took him out and bought him half the contents of a toy shop. They returned from this expedition in great good humor and had an excellent lunch. As soon as it was over, Maarten went to his office and called for Piet Barol.

“Mr. Barol!” He leaped to his feet and embraced him. He had not been so excited since the day of Egbert’s birth. “You have achieved what I had begun to fear was impossible. How ever did you manage it?”

“The credit is Egbert’s alone, sir.”

“Don’t be so devilish modest. Sit down and tell me all about it.”

Piet sat, but he had already decided to preserve his pupil’s confidence. “All that was wanted was patience and sympathy and”—with sudden inspiration—“prayer.” He inclined his head. “The Lord God Almighty has intervened here.”

This was exactly the right thing to say. In a locked drawer of his desk Maarten had a large gift of money for Piet Barol, but the young fellow’s piety demanded greater recognition. He glanced around his office and his eye fell on the miniature of the man on a tightrope. He hesitated. It was the jewel of his silver collection, worth twice what he had paid for it to say nothing of the luck it had brought him over twenty years. “My dear man.” He pressed it into Piet’s open hand. “You have given me back my son. I should like you to have this. And this.” He unlocked the drawer and took out an envelope promisingly swollen with cash. “Let me say that should you wish to work for me in a more dignified, better remunerated position than the one you currently occupy, you need only say the word.”

Piet had expected a bonus. He had not imagined it would be accompanied by a life-changing offer. He looked at the money and the miniature in his lap. They represented freedom, the capital to make his own way. They were what he had come to Amsterdam to seek. A job with Maarten would mean more of a life he had already glimpsed. And then there was the question of Jacobina … It seemed that the opportunity had arisen to exit with honor from the Vermeulen-Sickerts’ lives and he was minded to take it.

“I am grateful for this gift and for your confidence, sir,” he said, finally. “But for the moment I am very happy as Egbert’s tutor, and after that I wish to work for myself, and no other man.”

Maarten clapped him on the back. “If that is your answer, I shall not dissuade you from it. The best strike out on their own. When the moment comes, you must go into the world and make your fortune as I did.”

“That is my intention.”

“And an admirable one. Keep that man on a tightrope ever beside you. He will protect you from harm.”

“I shall treasure him.”

The next day was a Saturday. Didier had one good suit of his own and Piet loaned him an Hermès tie and a set of studs and squeezed his large feet into a pair of Maarten’s discarded shoes. He was not superstitious and had no intention of keeping the miniature Maarten had given him, but he knew that guile—and a guileful accomplice—would be required to realize its full value.

They left the house looking like gentlemen of good family and ample means and exploited this impression at three of the city’s leading silver galleries. Piet had watched many young men in Leiden liquidate their possessions and knew better than to appear at all anxious for money. He also knew that good prices are paid only to those with the confidence to decline bad ones. He had no idea what the thing was worth so he decided that no sum would tempt him to sell to the first two buyers. This allowed him to bluster convincingly with the third.

He and Didier presented themselves as cousins and the object as an unwanted gift from Didier’s father. They elicited promises of absolute discretion.

“I shall wait, naturally, a dignified interval before offering it for sale,” said the gentleman to whom Piet finally sold it. “And I will not put it in the shop window. We would not like to cause your uncle any offense.”

“No indeed.” Didier frowned. “I’m afraid my father would be extremely displeased.”

“And his father is extremely alarming when displeased,” added Piet.

The dealer smiled. He had paid an approximately fair price, much against his usual custom, but he had also been prepared to offer more. Now he disparaged his purchase to make the young gentlemen feel they had done well out of him. “You may rest easy, dear sirs. Though charming and undoubtedly finished by hand, this miniature is made from a mold. There are others in existence. Even if your uncle were, by chance, to encounter it, he would not be able to tell that it was the one he gave you.”

The young men left the shop, arm in arm. Didier was thrilled by Piet’s bravado and proud to be walking beside him. He was also proud of himself because he was not jealous of Piet’s sudden luck. He cared for him enough to rejoice in his blessings. “What will you do with all this money?”

“Buy passage to New York on a wonderful ship. I don’t mean to go steerage, either.” Piet’s impersonation of a gentleman of means had worked its magic on him and his imagination had polished his future to a high sheen. He did not intend to sleep on planks with hordes of snoring immigrants now that he could avoid it.

Didier put his arm around Piet’s shoulder, to show that he did not resent his good fortune, and ruffled his thick, sweet-smelling hair. “Why leave Holland? Everything for a happy life is here.”

“There’s no adventure in staying in the same place and I mean to have adventures. If you’d come with me to buy my ticket, we can celebrate with wild drunkenness and a fine dinner. The expense will be mine.”

Didier Loubat had long since given up hoping for a drunken night with Piet Barol and the sudden granting of one made him feel that the day was glorious for him, too. “It’s the least you can do, you lucky bastard,” he said gruffly, and made a show of pushing his friend into the gutter.

They went to the offices of the Loire Lines, an ornate building on the Damrak. As they passed beneath the crossed gilt Ls set in a marble shell above its door, the doorman bowed so low that Piet was briefly ashamed to join the throng at the third-class window. His hesitation confirmed the doorman’s first assessment. He pressed a discreetly placed bell, which summoned a deferential official. This gentleman escorted Piet and Didier to a private office and assured them of his very best attention at all times.

“May I ask your destination, my dear sirs?” Karel Huysman took his seat beneath a framed oil painting of the liner Eugénie.

The picture reminded Piet of Constance’s handsome, unpleasant friend, who had refused to travel on any other ship. “I’m inclining towards New York.” He spoke languidly, still acting the part he had reprised for the silver dealers. “I’ll be traveling alone but I insist on the Eugénie.” It gave him great pleasure to mimic an aristocrat’s prejudices before a credulous audience and Didier. He decided to bluff here as long as it amused him and buy his ticket elsewhere.

Mr. Huysman’s face fell. “A most judicious choice, may I say. But the Eugénie is full in first class for the next four years. Now the Joséphine is—”

“But I insist on the Eugénie.”

Mr. Huysman inclined his head. “And very wise you are to do so. Many notable Americans reserve their favorite cabins for every crossing, merely to keep them permanently at their disposal. It is, of course, their right, but so inconvenient for others.” He looked down at the ledger before him. “Tourist class to New York is also full until the middle of 1909, I regret to say.”

“No matter.” Piet stood up. “I’m told Cunard’s Mauretania is very comfortable.”

But Karel Huysman’s competitive instincts were aroused. “You will find that Cunarders fall regrettably short of our standards, sir. I should not forgive myself if you had an uncomfortable voyage.” He had correctly assessed his young client as an adventurous type. “Perhaps I might suggest an alternative. Will you be traveling for business or leisure?”

“Leisure, naturally.”

“There is a berth in tourist class. Just one, in a shared cabin. Departing January 18th.”

“My cousin only travels first class.” Didier also rose.

“Quite so.” Mr. Huysman smiled. “But tourist class on the Eugénie is in every way superior to first class on every other ship. Besides, her January voyage will be an event to describe to your grandchildren.” He lowered his voice. “She is christening the company’s new service to South Africa. En route she will call at the island of St. Helena. How many can boast of having seen it? A ball is being given there in aid of orphaned infants. It will be talked of for years to come—though unfortunately all the tickets have long since been sold.” He drew breath and smiled. “Would you at all consider Cape Town? It is a city full of opportunities for enterprise and pleasure.”

“My cousin doesn’t—” began Didier.

“It would be remiss of me not to mention,” Mr. Huysman continued, “that though the voyage will last seventeen days, it will cost only a trifle more than the six-day crossing to New York.” He pointed to a number on a list in front of him and slid the paper towards Piet. “This represents a superb compromise between quality and value.”

The figure was so confidently astronomical that Piet was gripped by the idea of paying it, since for the first time in his life he could. His vague plans of New York shimmered a moment, then disintegrated. He was sure to be a success wherever he went. Besides, Africa was cheap, and life with so much native labor was bound to be comfortable. To sail to his future on a ship as luxurious as the Eugénie struck him as wholly appropriate. With his savings and the money Maarten had given him, he could afford a one-way passage and still have money left over to start his new life. It would not be as much as he had intended, but the South African War was over and calm restored; men had made fortunes in diamonds and gold. He was sure he could find a way to divert some of that free-flowing cash into his own pocket.

Observing the look on his client’s face, Mr. Huysman pressed home his advantage. “Every cabin in tourist class has hot running water, salt and fresh,” he murmured, “and taps plated in the latest white metals. The food is equal to that of the best restaurants in Paris.”

“A moment with my cousin, if you please,” said Didier.

“Of course, sir.”

As soon as the agent had withdrawn, Didier said, “That’s most of your money.”

“Cape Town will be less expensive than New York. I wouldn’t need so much.”

“But you’ll need some. You’ve had a stroke of luck. That’s not the same as being rich.”

But Piet was already imagining himself in a mahogany deck chair, being fawned over by obliging stewards; and the vision’s foolhardiness was part of its appeal. “I’d have enough to get by for a few months. And, more important, to buy us dinner tonight. I’ll find some way of prospering once I’m there. Think of the fun of a seventeen-day voyage! You never know who you might meet.”

“Don’t be a fool.”

But this only fortified Piet’s resolve. With a young man’s delight in showing off to a friend he called the agent back and paid for the cabin then and there and emerged into the dwindling light aware that he had made a wager with Fortune and confident of winning it.

They went to the Karseboom, a music hall and tavern frequented by a boisterous crowd. As he pushed his way to the bar behind Piet, Didier did not miss the chance to press heavily against him or to lean so close to make himself heard that their cheeks touched. Piet’s immediate proximity eased the looming wrench of his departure.

“When will you tell your father?” he shouted as their beers were set before them.

“At Christmas. He won’t mind.”

“Won’t he miss you?”

“He’s not sentimental.”

“Mine would have a fit if I went off to the other side of the world.”

Piet thought of the genial Monsieur Loubat, and for the first time all day a trickle of sorrow contaminated his triumph. “My father’s not like yours,” he said briefly. “Let’s play billiards.”

The game of Wilhelmina billiards was taken seriously at the Karseboom. Piet and Didier secured one of the twenty-four tables but they were soon challenged for it; and their joint defense was so successful they drew a large crowd. Didier was an indifferent player, but Piet’s presence combined with just the right amount of alcohol unleashed a long run of luck. The watching women sided with the handsome “cousins” and their cheers prompted them to accept ever greater bets, which they won as if claiming a natural right. At eleven they adjourned for supper with fistfuls of coins and a pewter flask pledged in lieu of cash. They selected two of the most forward spectators to join them at it. These ladies made it clear, as they ate beef and oysters, that they were prepared to lower their prices considerably for the pleasure of entertaining their hosts for the night.

The one with her hand on Didier’s thigh was called Greetje. “Two is better than one, and four is better than two,” she whispered, brushing her lips against his ear. She had had a long run of foul-smelling, middle-aged men. Since she had to be where she was, she did not want to pass up the chance of Didier Loubat and Piet Barol. Neither did her colleague Klara, who at that moment was sliding her finger under the waistband of Piet’s trousers.

The thought of sharing these women in naked abandon with Piet Barol made Didier do some calculations of his own. His yearly bottle of Chartreuse aside, he permitted himself few luxuries. He had many uses for his half of the winnings, and yet—He would never have the chance again. He considered the practicalities. “Have you a place?”

“Not a minute’s walk from here.”

“I’ll put it to my friend.”

But Piet would not. He had a horror of venereal disease, gained from the nasty pustules exhibited by certain university acquaintances, and was quite imaginative enough to know that many had preceded him with Klara and paid for the honor (not always very well). As her vulgar polished nails clawed the tender flesh of his backside, he was seized by an urgent longing for the chaste, patrician Jacobina.

They had had no contact since the day he carried Egbert out onto the street. Both had shunned the indecency of the idea. But Piet had now cured Jacobina’s son. He had honored his conscience’s debt to Maarten and showed her that she had no reason to chastise him. He was slightly appalled that Didier should wish to cavort with two women of the night and told him sternly that a man like him did not have to pay for pleasure.

Didier took this as a terrific compliment and was consoled. They walked home through the chilly air, arms about each other’s shoulders, uncoordinated from drinking. Didier was half a head taller and their hold was not wholly comfortable; but neither let go. As they turned onto the Leidsegracht, Piet stopped. Above the unlit street the night sky was bright with starlight. The waters of the canal reflected the houses faintly; they were entirely alone. “I’ll be sorry to leave all this,” he said contemplatively. “And you, of course.”

What would happen if I kissed him now? Didier wondered. But he did not dare. Piet had never shown any inclination that way, and yet—He is standing with his arm around me, in a beautiful place, late at night. Didier had slept with men encountered in far less tender circumstances. Testing the possibilities, he leaned heavily against his friend’s unyielding body and said, “I can barely stand, I’m so drunk.” He knew that a few feet farther on, beneath the bridge, was a small quay sheltered from wind and prying eyes. It was a place he went to alone; it held no illicit memories. “I know somewhere we can sit.” He lurched forward, drawing Piet with him.

They climbed down the slippery steps and sat on Didier’s coat with their legs dangling over the water. Their knees knocked, but their descent had loosened their grip on each other. Piet opened the pewter flask they had won, which was half full of decent brandy. They passed it between them, cold fingers touching, and relived their exploits in the silver galleries. They praised each other extravagantly and agreed that it was marvelous to be grown-up. Didier stared at Piet’s profile, hoarding its memory.

“I bet those tarts are missing us,” he said. “How’s your married lady?”

“She’s been away.”

“Frustrating for you.”

“Unimaginably.”

They sat in silence, each thinking of sex. Didier broke it. “Have you cuckolded many husbands?”

“Hers is the second.”

“Whose was the first?”

Told of the mezzo-soprano at Leiden, Didier pretended to be less impressed than he was and produced some stories of his own—each lewder than the next, the genders of the participants carefully reversed. An atmosphere of bawdy candor grew up between the young men. Didier coarsened his language and considered provoking a friendly brawl. It would get their arms around each other again. “I should beat you for leaving me at Blok’s mercy,” he growled, laying the ground for provocation later.

But Piet had stood up and did not hear. He retreated to the dark space beneath the bridge. Didier hesitated, but a sixth sense told him not to follow. The silence lasted so long he almost thought himself mistaken until a thunder of urine confirmed that this was a call of nature and not an invitation. When Piet returned he was paler.

“Regretting the brandy?”

“Beginning to.”

Didier considered. It would be easier to initiate a play fight during the walk home, but there were also possibilities in the view and the moonlight. He decided in favor of tenderness. “You’ll be sick if you move at once. Stay here a bit.”

Piet obeyed. It was obvious from the way he sat down that he was considerably drunker than Didier, who took heart from this advantage. Nina Barol had liked to play with her son’s hair. When Didier ran his fingers through it—very calmly, with no trace of nerves—Piet did not resist. He was not troubled by physical affection. On many occasions he had spent an hour or two lying in another boy’s arms and had often profited from the willingness of certain school friends to perform relieving favors for him. Tonight his thoughts were running in a wholly different direction. As Didier stroked his curls he imagined Jacobina Vermeulen-Sickerts in a slip of rippable muslin and began to wish for morning. Finally he shook his friend’s hand from his head and stood up. “Come on. Have to sleep.”

They walked home together, not touching. Didier let them into the kitchen, and when he had locked the door he bent down and undid Piet’s laces. He pushed him against the range, lifted his feet one by one and pulled his boots off. “They’ll squeak on the tiles.” He leaned very close as he whispered. “If we wake the witch she’ll turn us to stone.”

“Mustn’t wake the witch.”

“Indeed not.”

“What I need …”

“Is some help getting to bed.”

“No. Witch’s apple cake. Must have some of the witch’s apple cake.”

Didier took his hand and led him to the stairs. “You go up before you break something. I’ll bring it in a minute.”

As Gert Blok readied himself for bed on the deserted attic floor of Herengracht 605, he knew instinctively that the young men were out together. The knowledge lurked on the edges of his consciousness: a heavy, gray mass of bitterness. It was not the first time Gert Blok had been left out. As he brushed his teeth he felt like the seven-year-old he had once been, forced by the popular boys to play in the woods alone. The intervening fifty years had not made this misery easier to bear; they had fossilized it into rage.

He went into his bedroom and closed the door, resisting a mounting, savage lust. Unexpressed, unsatisfied, sincerely repented; capable, nevertheless, of overthrowing his reason. He hesitated before taking off his dressing gown. He was sure the boys would not be back for hours. A devilish voice suggested he profit by their absence, since the opportunity might not recur for months. He stood still, paralyzed by a familiar and unequal struggle; then he lost it and went into the corridor and opened Didier’s door.

Gert Blok remembered very well his first glimpse of Didier Loubat: holding a silver-plate cake stand on the terrace of the Amstel Hotel, bending slightly toward the gentleman he was serving, his trousers hugging the curve of his spectacular arse. He had seconded him at once to the house and trained him personally. Since that day, on two occasions, he had seen his buttocks wrapped in a tightly stretched towel. Once, by creeping to his door and throwing it open the instant he knocked, he had caught him with nothing on at all. He went into his bedroom and buried his nose in Didier’s pillow. Though the linen was changed regularly, it was incontrovertibly his pillow. This was where his cheek rested; here was a fine blond hair.

Mr. Blok put the hair into his dressing gown pocket and began to touch himself. For a moment he was handsome and vigorous and carousing with the young men. The vision made him bold. He replaced Didier’s pillow and rifled his laundry bag, where the smells were stronger and less decorous. Next he went to Piet’s room, but found to his irritation that his sheets were clean and held no trace of him. His laundry bag was empty. All he had were the memories of summoning him to Maarten’s office or barging in before dinner and catching him half dressed.

He took these images back to his own bed and opened the Pandora’s box in which he kept other guilty treasures: snatched glimpses of a foot or a strong bare arm; the ripple of youthful muscle beneath a starched shirt. He started to sweat as he rubbed himself faster and to dread the end even as he neared it. It was announced by a spurt of warm slime, and at once the customary revulsion settled over him and cooled into a sarcophagus of shame. He remembered the prohibitions of Leviticus and St. Paul; he thought of them constantly and did his best to abide by them and always failed. He was accustomed to self-loathing, but tonight it mixed with the ache of abandonment and coagulated into hatred.

He lay in the dark as he had lain on many nights, listening to Piet and Didier laugh in the echoing bathroom across the hall. With a slow, deliberate cruelty he tortured himself by imagining them together—maybe with women, certainly drunk and happy. So real were these visions that when he heard a floorboard creak he thought he had imagined it. But he had not. Piet was climbing the stairs. Where was Didier? He felt in the dark for his pocket handkerchief and dried his sticky fingers. Then he switched on the light. The evening’s agonies demanded expression, and the only expression was vengeance. He felt sure that Didier was doing something for which he might punish him; with any luck, something so grave that the punishment might be permanent. He owed the lad nothing. If he could not have him he would not protect him.

When he had washed his hands and arranged himself he put on his dressing gown, parted his hair carefully, and went downstairs. He found Didier in the kitchen stealing two slices of the Vermeulen-Sickerts’ apple cake and dismissed him on the spot. “You may stay the night since it is so late,” he said with splendid froideur. “But I will not tolerate thieving. Make sure you are gone before lunch tomorrow.”

And when Didier had stumbled up the stairs, his apologies refused, Gert Blok sat down at the kitchen table, and ate both slices of cake, and felt better.

Didier went straight to Piet’s room. He was horny enough not to mind much about the future. Piet was lying on his bed, shirt and trousers on the floor, head back, mouth open. He was fast asleep. The moon’s light caught his profile and shadowed the indentations of his powerful body. He was snoring lightly and twitching as he dreamed. A longing to kiss him stole over Didier, but again he resisted it.

He sat down on the bed, suddenly tired. Piet muttered in his sleep and turned on his side, pulled his thick, hairy legs under him. The movement struck Didier as an invitation, as though Piet half sensed his presence and was making space for him. He took off his shirt and lay down beside him. He pressed his shoulder against Piet’s back. He could feel the warmth of Piet’s body and smell the cigar smoke in his hair; see the pimple on the back of his neck, the imperfection that made him perfect. And though the darkness had begun to spin he fell into a deep and easeful sleep.

The sound of the bell ringing to summon the household to church infiltrated Piet’s dreams as fiery, crashing cymbals. He did not often drink and was not at all accustomed to the inconveniences of a hangover. He was desperately thirsty and at the same time unable to move his body in search of water. He opened his eyes. Church was impossible. He closed them again, but then his door was knocked on and opened.

“Cheer up, chum.” Didier had risen at dawn to enjoy his final bath and pack his trunk. “You’ve got my hot water to yourself now. I was just saying good-bye.”

“Good-bye?”

“Blok caught me last night getting our cake. I have to be out of the house before they get back from their prayers.”

Piet sat up. “Again … slower.”

Didier repeated himself. When Piet understood what had happened, he subsided onto his pillows and told Didier to stop packing. “Mrs. Vermeulen-Sickerts trusts me. I’ll make sure of everything.”

“Cocky, aren’t you?”

“It’s only cake. She’ll see that.”

“She can’t countermand her own butler. That’s not how these things work.”

Piet got out of bed and pulled his trousers on. “I’ll see to it. There’s no need to pack.”

“I don’t much fancy being here when you’re gone, as it happens. Blok’s only prey. Get me a reference if you’ve got so much influence.”

“That’s easily done.” But Piet’s conscience was troubled. He did not think Didier should pay the penalty for the purloined apple cake alone. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay?”

“Not if you’re not.”

“All right, then.” He stepped by him, went to the desk, and opened the steel box he kept in it. He had a small bundle of notes left and counted out ten of them. “I always earned more than you, though I hardly deserved to. Take your share and have the winnings from last night, too.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Of course you could.”

“I won’t.”

Piet made as if to put the money back, but at the last moment he grabbed Didier’s arms and pinned them behind him. He put the notes forcibly into his trouser pocket. “And now you have. I feel sure we will meet again. God bless, and good speed.”

Piet slept for four hours, and as he drifted towards consciousness Jacobina appeared to him, aloof but available. He woke with the idea that he should not delay and got out of bed. As he washed and dressed he almost brought himself to believe that Maarten owed him the freedom to pleasure his wife.

He had saved his son, after all.

The house was Sunday-quiet. He went to Jacobina’s private sitting room and found her in her reading chair, beside the window that looked onto the canal. On her lap was an open book that had rested there for half an hour.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Barol,” she said coolly.

“Good afternoon, mevrouw.”

“You missed church.”

“I was unwell. I said my devotions in private.”

“I trust you are better now?”

“I am, thank you. I have come about Didier Loubat.”

Jacobina’s face tightened. “There can be no leniency for thieves. I would never have thought it of him.”

“I asked him to get the cake. I did not know it was forbidden.”

“You woke him at three in the morning to send him on an errand?”

“No, mevrouw. We were out together.”

Jacobina’s older brothers had been merry carousers, and she had often heard them defend themselves to her parents. She approved of boys sticking up for one another. “Why did he not come to me to explain?”

“He did not wish to place you in the awkward position of going against Mr. Blok.”

“I see.”

“He is an upstanding fellow. I come to ask you to give him the reference he deserves.”

Jacobina did not intend to gratify Piet’s request too readily. “I will consult my husband. The last word on the matter is his.”

“Thank you, mevrouw.”

“Is there anything else?”

“I should like to give my notice.”

“May I ask why?”

“Now that Master Egbert is well, he should go to school. He will have no need of a tutor after Christmas.”

“On the contrary, Mr. Barol. He may need your assistance to make up lost ground.”

“He is far ahead of his peers in anything I can teach him.”

“What if he relapses?”

“He will not. Be firm with him if he stumbles.”

Jacobina was not in the habit of begging servants to stay on, and she did not intend to do so now. Nevertheless, she had imagined having the time to subdue her conscience and enjoy Piet again. The knowledge that this was not so made her petulant. “Have you not been happy with us, Mr. Barol?”

“It has been an honor to be of service to your family.” Piet paused. “And especially to you. I have never had such rewarding employment.”

“You have done fine work.”

“Perhaps I might be useful in some small way before I leave?”

Jacobina rang the bell. “Tomorrow afternoon at three o’clock.” She spoke without emotion. “I have some letters you might address.”

“With pleasure.”

And when Piet had bowed and left her, Jacobina ordered hot chocolate from Hilde and found fault with the china she had selected, and the composition of the tray, and told her that if she did not improve she would have to get rid of her.

Then she sat down and wrote Didier Loubat an excellent reference.

Almost twenty-four hours separated this brief conversation from the time Jacobina had named. Piet passed them in a state of trying anticipation. There was no Didier to hurry the minutes along with, and weeks without touching a woman made the wait unendurable. His suspense was heightened the next morning when Maarten proposed a visit to Willemshoven to show Egbert the place for the first time. The boy accepted excitedly; so did Constance; but Jacobina said she had too much to do to go frolicking about the countryside. She was wearing her apple-green dress and looked at her plate when Piet excused himself too, on the grounds that it should be a family outing. Louisa also refused, because she was angry with her father and wished to make this plain to him.

“We shall spend the night in an inn in the village and return tomorrow,” said Maarten merrily.

“Don’t hesitate to spend two if you’re enjoying yourselves.” Jacobina had spent much of the previous day, and all this morning, adjudicating a fierce debate between her conscience and her inclination. She had decided at last on a rendezvous with Piet Barol; now the question remained what its business might be.

The party left after lunch. As she waved them off she reached a compromise she found acceptable and climbed the stairs to her aunt’s bedroom, feeling fearful but alive. She would see Piet naked, but this would be their last encounter. She would never repeat such wickedness with him or anyone else.

He knocked ten minutes later and had had the good taste to change into the suit of English wool he had worn to their first interview. He was wearing nothing that had once been her husband’s.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Barol.”

“Good afternoon, Mevrouw Vermeulen-Sickerts.”

At the foot of the bed was a round carpet, which had been the setting for certain fantastical scenes Jacobina now intended to act out. “Please stand in the center of the circle and remove your jacket,” she said.

Piet did as he was told.

“And your waistcoat.”

He complied again.

“Your tie, if you please.” She spoke in exactly the tone she had used to Hilde that morning, when instructing her on the correct way to lay out her clothes. “Your shirt.”

Now Piet understood her intentions. He had long wished to show her his body, but his hands as they undid his buttons were shaking.

“You may drop it at your feet.”

He did so.

“Now your shoes and socks.”

He bent down before her and removed them.

“Your trousers,” said Jacobina.

Piet took his trousers off. In the cheval glass on the wardrobe door he could see his reflection: his pale, muscular body; the patch of dark hair on his chest; the trail of it that led over his stomach and thickened at the waistband of his drawers, which were unequal to restraining their contents. He was proud of his cock, which had aroused admiring attention before. And the clipped, disinterested voice in which Jacobina said, “You may remove your undershorts,” satisfied the last demands of ego.

He obeyed her. The spectacle of his nakedness exceeded Jacobina’s expectations by some measure. She had lived this scene many times before but had never pursued it beyond this climactic point. Now she saw that Piet would honor further direction, and the desire to touch him took hold of her. This was not part of the bargain she had made with her conscience. However, having come so far she could not resist the urge to continue. I will never do this again, she thought, and made up her mind to do as she pleased.

But where should she touch him? Where first?

She walked the circumference of the carpet twice, inspecting Piet carefully. She chose his shoulder blades and ran her hand across them. Goose pimples rippled over his back. She circled him again. His cock was throbbing in time to the pulsing artery on his neck. She put her left hand to the place where his buttocks began their hairy outward curve, then her right in the middle of his chest, on the cushion of soft black curls between his pectorals. His body was wonderfully solid and warm. She put her arms around his neck and leaned back, watching his sinews tighten as he took her weight. Piet shivered, but he was not cold. When she had touched his thighs and his calves and the hard roundness of his upper arms, the idea of handling his cock began to mesmerize her. She stood in front of him. It was pointing straight up at her from a thicket of coarse black hair. She put her index finger to it and provoked a violent spasm. Piet grinned. Now she looked at his face, and his excitement made her brave.

She gripped it with her right hand and squeezed.

This action sent an instruction to Piet Barol’s brain that no human effort could override. His eyelids snapped shut. His knees buckled. His overfull balls discharged their cargo with thundering conviction. But the anesthetic of ecstasy did not last long. He opened his eyes to find the front of Jacobina’s apple-green dress thickly adorned with white matter. He was appalled to have lost control in this schoolboy fashion. For a moment he wanted to cry.

“Forgive me, mevrouw.”

Jacobina was also horrified, but horror was not the only emotion she felt. The simultaneous crumpling of Piet’s body and spirit inspired an unexpected tenderness. She could hardly blame him for finding her presence stimulating beyond endurance. Neither did she intend to terminate this encounter until she, too, had achieved the release Piet’s body had so abruptly claimed. Her dress was ruined, but the presence of this divine young man, so delectably cowed, overcame the promptings of mortification. A daredevil spirit alighted on her shoulder. Obliging its whispered instruction, she turned her back on him and said, “Unfasten my buttons, Mr. Barol.”

Piet put his undershorts on and complied. Jacobina’s buttons were tiny and covered in slippery apple-green silk. There were twenty-seven between neck and bustle, and his large fingers handled them clumsily. He did not know what he should expect. Certainly he did not imagine that Jacobina, having stepped out of her dress, would instruct him to unlace her corset and remove her petticoat, her stockings and silk knickers, and would cross to the chaise longue and recline on it in the position she had so often assumed when fully clothed. But she did all these things. He followed her meekly and knelt on one knee before her.

This afternoon there were no tickles. Jacobina could not silence a low protest of delight. She raised herself on her elbows, the better to see him. “I did not ask you to dress again.”

“No, mevrouw.”

Piet removed his drawers to reveal an emphatic recovery. Its rapidity was exceedingly flattering. Jacobina arched her back and pushed her cunt against his face, pulling his curly head closer with both hands.

The sensation was electrifying. Piet’s cock jolted taut. He had often thought of having this haughty, still-beautiful woman and sensed that the day was one of unprecedented permissions. He looked up. So did she, and neither looked away. He straightened his back, brought his face closer to hers. There was wantonness in her eyes, and it decided him. He held her legs apart, raised himself from the floor, and plunged his cock into her.

It was much wider than Maarten’s.

Jacobina cried out. The effrontery of it! But she had imagined this impudent act too often to resist sincerely at the final hour. The room began to swim. Piet was fucking her with quick, violating thrusts. It was stupendous, but he was shaking so severely she feared a repeat of his former punctuality.

“Lentement, Mr. Barol.”

Piet slowed down. As he found his rhythm and kept to it, Jacobina closed her eyes. She had never in her life experienced such a thing, and the longer it lasted the more complex and wonder-filled it became. The pleasure was so consuming it left no space in her head for any consciousness of wrongdoing. She floated upwards, until she could clearly see the shining muscles of Piet’s back, then herself on the chaise longue and the room and the house and the city, the fields around her childhood home, Riejke Vedder’s blue-veined breasts, her children’s births. As she soared over her life she felt free—and in that freedom was the knowledge that Egbert was free too, that she need no longer blame herself for his suffering, and that the young man who had saved him was now leading her towards this blissful extinction of the self.

On an impulse, she kissed him.

Then nothing mattered any longer. They threw themselves into one another, kissing and clutching and fucking. A wild delirium took hold of them; lifted them up, caressed them, goaded them. Jacobina’s climax unfurled and billowed, hurtled her into the air, only to catch her again on a zephyr breeze. She was conscious much later of the spurts of Piet’s semen; felt the death throes of his body, a pre-echo of its end at this moment of heightened life. They clung to each other, two naked human animals in a true state of innocence—unconscious of their nakedness and of everything else.

Then it was over. As the pleasure lifted so did its protections against reality. Jacobina was the first to regain her senses and pushed Piet from her.

He got up at once and dressed.

Now she could see herself in the cheval glass, naked and sweaty. She did not inspect the reflection closely. As the practicalities of the situation crowded in on her, she rose and arranged her disordered underwear. How was she to get back to her room? Her own dress was in no state to be worn. She considered sending Piet for a clean one, but what if he were caught rifling her closet? There was no one in the house she could trust.

Without looking at him, she went to her aunt’s wardrobe and selected a mauve tea gown. It was three seasons old and far too big for her, but it had a sash and would have to do. She put her own dress in a drawer and put her aunt’s on. “My buttons, please, Mr. Barol.” She turned her back to him.

As Piet fastened them, Jacobina’s self-possession returned. She had not scrutinized her body in the mirror for fear of the signs of aging and decay she might detect, but these did not seem to have mattered to her heroic young slave, and that made them matter much less to her. When Piet had finished, she pinned her hair and went to the door.

“Thank you,” she said, and stalked down the stairs without a backward glance.

When Jacobina had gone, Piet collapsed in an armchair and closed his eyes. What an afternoon! He was wholly satisfied with life. He had come to the Vermeulen-Sickerts’ resolved to live in opulence. He had done so. He’d intended to make the money for a new start; he had done this too, in less than a year. He had cured the little boy in his charge and given his mother a first-class fuck. In the drawer of his dressing table was a tourist-class ticket on the world’s most luxurious ship, beside a bundle of cash. These facts combined to induce a sensation of tranquil and total self-approval.

He dozed for ten minutes, then straightened the cushions on the chaise longue and checked that he was presentable. He was. He locked the door behind him, put the key in its vase, and went down the stairs.

Louisa was in the hall at Herengracht 605. “Have you seen my mother?”

“Not since lunch.”

“She’s marching about in a ghastly old frock.”

Piet smiled. “Perhaps you should dress her.”

“She is beyond my assistance.”

“No one is.”

But Louisa did not reach for this pretty compliment. Instead she said, “What’s that smell of dead flowers?”

Piet stepped away from her, careful not to blush. “I’ve no idea,” he replied, and went upstairs to wash.

When informed of Piet Barol’s imminent departure, Maarten Vermeulen-Sickerts was delighted by the young man’s vim. He thought Jacobina might be angry with him for giving Piet the means to leave so soon—but it seemed, as December began, that there was nothing he could do to try his wife’s patience. Jacobina was as attentive and amusing and tender as she had been in their first year of marriage. It was marvelous. As he contemplated Christmas, Maarten felt profoundly at peace. His hotels in London and Frankfurt had reopened triumphantly and the Plaza’s Presidential Suite was booked until the middle of 1908. His debts remained burdensome, but he had again the means to service them without anxiety. Now that God was formally on his side, he did not doubt his ability to repay the capital when required.

Egbert’s remarkable recovery made him feel like Abraham: sorely tried but amply rewarded. The joy of showing his son over the properties he would one day own made Maarten giddy. To be blessed, besides this, with a thoughtful wife, two charming daughters, a house still full of fine things and a chef as gifted as Monsieur la Chaume further stoked the high spirits of the season. He was aware that Louisa was cross with him but refused to be provoked; and to each slight or cold word he responded with humor, which he considered the best medicine for her fanciful afflictions. Rising from his knees each morning, rejoicing in the ache of his body after three hours of prayer, he felt quietly secure among the Elect. For the first time in his life he was certain of salvation.

Piet Barol was also having a splendid time. Egbert was so often out with his father that he had many hours to while away in studied leisure. The secondment of three chambermaids and a footman from the Amstel Hotel allowed him to ask for things he would never have troubled Agneta Hemels for. Their acceptance of his authority showed him how much he had learned from the Vermeulen-Sickertses, and this made him sentimental. He completed his sketches of the most arresting pieces of furniture and presented twelve of the best to Maarten. He sang for the guests who came four nights of every seven and went skating with the girls and their friends on the lake in the Vondelpark and enjoyed Egbert’s enthusiastic devotion. With deepening affection he took him over the house and taught him to appreciate the treasures that would be his.

By mutual and wordless consent neither he nor Jacobina alluded to their indiscretions or made any attempt to resume them. They had had their fill of one another. Neither wished to blur by repetition the perfections of their last encounter.

Piet’s final day was set for December 20th. He would spend the holidays with his father in Leiden and sail for Cape Town in January. To his great satisfaction, Maarten proposed a farewell dinner and Constance threw herself into organizing it. The guests were invited for Wednesday 18th. That afternoon Piet was sitting on the first-floor landing, sketching the statues beneath the dome, when Louisa Vermeulen-Sickerts sat down beside him.

“There should be four, of course,” she remarked.

“Four what?”

“Figures. That’s Paris in the center, but there are only two goddesses when there should be three. The myth says Aphrodite, Athena and Hera competed for his golden apple.”

“A dangerous contest.”

Louisa kept her hands still; she was nervous and tempted to play with her fingers. “He gave it to Aphrodite, who bribed him with the love of Helen of Troy. He would have done better to take the riches Hera offered him, or Athena’s wisdom.”

“I didn’t know you were a classical scholar.”

“There’s a good deal you don’t know about me, Mr. Barol.” Louisa had promised herself to meet his eyes, but when the moment came she could not. “We will lose our very own Paris when you go.”

“In me?”

“Of course. The only young man in a household of women.” She smiled. “It fits beautifully, does it not? Constance is the prettiest. Aphrodite, if you will. I’m the wisest, like Athena.”

“And Hilde is Hera, queen of the gods?”

“Not Hilde. Mummy.”

“What nonsense you talk.”

She laughed, and he saw she had no idea of the truth she had stumbled so close to. “It’s obvious she’s fond of you. Everyone is. But it was Athena who helped heroes. Don’t forget that.”

Since her encounter with her father, Louisa Vermeulen-Sickerts had given her full attention to the question of how to leave her family without destroying it. She loved her parents too well to escape their care by any means that would shame or wound them. She could not elope or run away. Neither could she bear the idea of joining forces for life with any of the young men she and her sister danced with. Besides, she knew that to live independently of her father she would have to leave Amsterdam.

It had taken her some time to see that the solution to her problem was right before her. She did not dislike Piet Barol. She thought him unscrupulous but admired his guile more than she let on to Constance. He was a man who could make things happen, and their not being in love was surely an advantage. She had too much experience of her sister’s chaotic affairs to believe in the longevity of romance. It would be wiser to trust Piet’s self-interest, which would never let her down.

She took his hand. “Let me come to Cape Town with you.”

“What?”

“Marry me.”

“What on earth?”

“Please, Piet. I cannot live my life in this house. I must escape.”

“From whom?”

“From my family, much though I love them. Let me come with you. I’ll not be a burden.”

Piet’s astonishment was so sincere he could not mask it. He took his hand from hers, afraid that someone would see.

“It is not a very romantic proposition, I grant you.” Louisa was aware that a passionless proposal might offend a man as vain as Piet Barol, but she could not lie. “You do not love me, nor I you. But many marriages prosper without that fickle commodity. We are both intelligent and ambitious. We are amused by one another. Together we would make a formidable pair.”

“You do me a great honor, but—”

“I could not run away. It would cause my parents too much pain. Yet to stay here, to live this frivolous life forever, will cause me too much pain. My father says a woman may fulfill herself by helping a man succeed. I am capable of more, but it is a place to start.” The skepticism on Piet’s face made her promise recklessly. “I should not mind if you took a lover. I have no inclination to children, but would bear you one if you wished. You—I—I will have a sizable dowry. You may keep it all for yourself.”

This last concession struck quite the wrong note. “I would not consider that,” said Piet with dignity; and then, more gently, because he could see what this offer cost her: “It is hopeless, Louisa.” It was the first time they had used each other’s Christian names. “Your father would never permit it. I am from quite a different class.”

“So was he, once. He loves you, Piet. You are the only man he would let me cross the world for.”

“What about Constance?”

“Constance will fend for herself. Papa’s troubles gave her a shock. She wishes to be married by Easter. She has told me so.”

There was silence in the deserted corridor. Piet frowned to imply that he was giving this wild proposal his full consideration. In fact he was not remotely tempted by it. He could never marry one of Jacobina’s daughters, no matter how platonic the understanding. And a lifetime of being silently judged by Louisa Vermeulen-Sickerts was not worth any amount of money.

“Please,” said Louisa, humbly.

“I cannot,” he answered. “It would not be right. You will find some other means to win your independence. I know you will. Forgive me.”

To have offered herself for sale was one thing. To have had the transaction declined was another. Louisa, who rarely blushed, went very red in the face. She stood up. She felt she should say something superb to Piet Barol but did not trust herself to speak. Instead she bowed and walked down the stairs. She wasn’t dressed for the cold, and it was snowing outside. The idea of retracing her steps to change was impossible. So was the thought of any interaction with a member of her family.

She went through the dining room and into her great-aunt’s house. Egbert was playing the piano. She tried the library door, which was locked. She went up the stairs. All the rooms on this floor were locked, too. She tried every door, rattling their handles as though sheer force of will could open them.

Someone must clean these rooms, she thought. How do they get in? She began to look in all the places one might hide a key, lifting every ornament with increasing irritation. Finally she picked up the ugly gray vase that sat on the radiator cover and shook it. A key fell out. She tried it on all the doors in succession and one opened. It was the door to her great-aunt’s bedroom.

Louisa was a little in awe of her great-aunt Agaat. Even though she was hundreds of miles away she hesitated before entering her private quarters. Agaat did not approve of children. She had not relaxed this attitude as Constance and Louisa reached womanhood, and in any other mood Louisa would not have contemplated this audacious trespass. But today was not like other days, and she passed through the door and locked it behind her.

Now her feelings overwhelmed her entirely. She threw herself across the chaise longue and sobbed. She was furious and afraid. Constance would marry soon and have her own house. She would be left with her parents until she accepted the offer of a polite young man and moved two streets away. Constance’s lack of enthusiasm for earning her living had sounded the first note of permanent discord between them. Louisa had not ceased to love her sister ardently, but she respected her less. For the first time in her life she felt truly alone.

Added to which was the embarrassment of being refused by Piet Barol! He who had gone to such lengths to charm her! It was bitter indeed to be spurned by one she had so subtly patronized, in whose goodness she had never believed. I suppose he’s pleased with himself now, she thought, the stuck-up, self-aggrandizing—She threw herself on the floor and beat the carpet with her small fists, in unconscious imitation of her childhood tantrums. It took half an hour for her anguish to drain. Finally she sat up. “I will live my life as I wish!” she shouted. She did not know how she might accomplish this feat, which no other girl of her acquaintance seemed even to have imagined. But the promise she made herself was one she would not break. She dried her eyes and stood up. As she did so her foot connected with something solid in the carpet’s pile.

It was a tiny button covered in slippery, apple-green silk.

Three hours later, Piet Barol began dressing in superb spirits. He put on the tailcoat he had worn to Constance’s birthday party and knotted his white bow tie eight times to achieve perfection. His cheeks were rosy from his bath; his hair shone with brilliantine. He opened his door to find Egbert waiting outside.

The child held in his hand a small velvet box, in which was a set of gold-and-onyx shirt studs he had helped his mother choose for Piet. He had spent all afternoon devising what to say, but now his eloquence abandoned him. “Please don’t go, Mr. Barol.”

He held out the velvet box.

Piet took it from him and opened the card. From all of us, to wish you well, Jacobina had written. “My dear Egbert.” He crouched down, so that their heads were level. “You are ready for me to go. You have beaten your enemies forever.”

“What if they come back?”

“If they so much as dare, you must defy them at once. That’s the way to break them. It was you who found that out. Don’t you remember?”

“It was both of us together.”

“I was honored to collaborate with you. Shake my hand, as one man to another.”

The boy did so, his grasp surprisingly firm. He was on the edge of tears but held them at bay. In a small brave voice, he said: “Will you teach me one thing more before you go?”

“With pleasure. What is it?”

“How to skate with my sisters.”

“Of course. We’ll go tomorrow, first thing.”

Having orchestrated the banishment of Didier Loubat, Gert Blok was feeling better disposed towards handsome young men. “You do look splendid,” he said, encountering Piet on his way downstairs. “May I say, Mr. Barol, that you will be as warmly missed below stairs as above them.”

Piet shook the butler’s hand. “It has been an honor to watch you at work, Mr. Blok. I hope to have an establishment of my own one day, and will endeavor to replicate the excellence I have encountered here.”

Gert Blok had worked so long for a man accustomed to faultless service that his achievements were rarely praised. He was touched. “Any man would be fortunate to win a place in your household, Mr. Barol.” He stood back for Piet to pass.

Piet met Constance outside the drawing room, but she barred its door to him. “There’s a surprise in there. You must wait for it. Cocktails are downstairs tonight.” The surprise was a Louis Vuitton traveling trunk, just arrived from Paris. It was a sign of her affection for Piet that Constance had disobeyed the impulse to keep it for herself and give him cufflinks instead. They went down the stairs to the octagonal parlor, which had been transformed into a bower of oleanders.

Constance had invited to dinner the two most agreeable young men in her circle who were, as yet, without wives, and her plans for the evening included a deft exhibition of her skills as a hostess. She nodded in agreement when Piet told her how lovely everything looked.

Maarten was waiting for them and poured the champagne himself. “What a beauty you are, my dear.” He kissed his daughter as he handed her a glass. “You won’t find such loveliness in the colonies, Mr. Barol.”

“I dare say not, sir.”

Jacobina entered, in a tight-waisted gown of amethyst silk. She had not trusted her hair to Hilde and the attentions of a professional hairdresser, anxious to win her patronage, had put her in an extremely good mood. She was glad to look her best for the departure of Piet Barol; glad, too, that he was going at last. There would be no more tutors, no more trysts in the house next door; no more flutterings of treachery as she slept beside her husband, her body still tingling from the attentions of another man. She kissed Piet’s cheek and told him how sorry they all were to say good-bye to him.

It was five minutes past seven. The guests were asked for seven-thirty. “Now where the devil is Louisa?” Maarten looked at his watch. “Constance, go and fetch her.”

“I expect she’s dressing, Papa.”

“Well, hurry her along.”

Constance left, and when she returned it was clear to Piet that she was annoyed. “She’s not well, Papa, and asks to be excused. She sends her compliments, Mr. Barol.”

“Not well? She was in radiant health this morning.” Maarten had drunk two glasses of champagne, and Louisa’s absence poisoned the gaiety they had fueled. “Fetch her down.”

“It would be better to leave her.”

“Nonsense. Fetch her down.”

She is embarrassed to face me, thought Piet. The idea was not wholly unpleasant. He thought of the many nasty things he had overheard Louisa Vermeulen-Sickerts say to her sister about him, and then about the day she had tried to break his neck on her mother’s horse. To have refused her, and done it kindly, was magnificent. “Please, sir. If she’s not well …”

“You are good-natured as ever, Mr. Barol. But I won’t stand for prolonged sulks. Constance, fetch her down.”

Constance was gone longer this time and Maarten drank another glass of champagne. Again she returned without her sister. “Really, Papa, she has a fever. She should have some soup and go to bed.”

“She was perfectly well this morning, was she not, my dear?” But Maarten did not wait for his wife’s reply. “I am afraid, Mr. Barol, that my daughter is displeased with me and chooses to make her displeasure plain on this happy night. Well it will not do.” He went to the foot of the stairs and bellowed her name.

Louisa appeared a few minutes later, wearing a monk’s habit of oyster cashmere with a cowl over her dark hair. “You sent for me, Papa?”

“Whatever do you mean by this?”

“By what?”

“Our guests will arrive at any moment. You are not dressed to receive them.”

“You did not instruct me to dress. You merely called my name so loudly I thought some grave crisis had overtaken you.”

It was a long time since anyone had been insolent to Maarten Vermeulen-Sickerts. It enraged him. “Go upstairs at once and change.”

Louisa wished strenuously to disobey her father, but a strict and careful upbringing had left her without the necessary courage. Seeing her hesitate, the idea of being magnanimous was irresistible to Piet. “No harsh words on my account, sir. If Miss Vermeulen-Sickerts wishes—”

“Very well, Papa.” Louisa did not intend to owe her solitude to Piet Barol. She turned on her heel and left the room and despised herself.

The doorbell rang and the first guests were announced. Among them, to Constance’s relief, was her friend Myrthe Janssen (shortly to be van Sigelen), who could always be relied on to cheer people up. Soon laughter and high, excited talk were bouncing off the room’s stone walls, and the family recaptured its spontaneity.

Louisa came downstairs, inscrutable once more, and they went into dinner. The table had been opened to its fullest extent and Maarten had sanctioned the use of the Sèvres porcelain. Piet was directly opposite Frederik van Sigelen. It amused him to see that this ungenerous young man could not for the life of him fathom why anyone should go to such trouble for a servant. This heightened his pleasure at the saumon Dorne Valois, baked in lobster butter and decorated with coquilles of oysters. As the poached purée of Bordeaux pigeon was served, he remarked that he would shortly be sailing on the Eugénie. “I remembered your ardent recommendation.”

“I’m sure even steerage is more comfortable than on other ships.”

Myrthe Janssen looked at her plate. She was already beginning to dislike her fiancé, whose malice made her uneasy for her own future. “How thrilling to be going to New York,” she said, lightly.

“My destination is Cape Town, in fact, Miss Janssen. The ship is making a special voyage.”

“But I know all about it.” Myrthe laughed the merry laugh she was known for. “Frederik’s parents are going too, aren’t they darling?”

“I believe they were invited. Albert Verignan, who owns the line, is a personal friend. But my father cannot be away from Amsterdam so long.”

“Oh Mr. Barol, what fun you’ll have. I’m told there’s to be a fancy dress ball on St. Helena.”

“Only for the first-class passengers.” Van Sigelen tapped his glass and a footman bent to refill it.

“My means don’t extend so far.” Piet smiled. “I was fortunate to get the last berth in tourist.”

Frederik saw Myrthe’s warning look and forbore from asking Piet where he had got the money. “I’m sure it will be worth every centime.”

“If it’s not, I shall have you to blame.”

As she left the table after the last course, Constance whispered, “Join us soon, Papa.” And after the port had gone round once the assembled men surged up the stairs. In the drawing room Piet was presented with his trunk and made a witty and affectionate speech of thanks, which was met by a request from Maarten for “one last song at the piano, Mr. Barol.”

“Something jolly!” called one of the young men, who had inveigled himself onto the sofa beside Constance.

“A song of farewell,” said Myrthe Janssen.

Piet bowed. “Figaro’s farewell to Cherubino, then, from the Marriage of Figaro.” He struck it up merrily. Everyone knew the tune and there was much thumping of feet. “No more, you amorous butterfly, will you flutter around night and day,” Piet sang, “disturbing the peace of every beautiful woman.” The words made him think of himself, for he had conquered Jacobina, and resisted Constance, and provoked from Louisa a proposal of marriage.

His performance was met with rounds of applause and calls for an encore. He resisted modestly but at length allowed them to persuade him. “This was a huge hit in Rome a few years ago. If you want a farewell scene I can’t think of one more moving. A man is in his cell, awaiting execution. This is the letter he writes his lover, a dazzling beauty named Tosca.” He played a sprinkle of notes, feeling pleasantly invincible, and at once the atmosphere altered. Those watching were seized by a glorious, uplifting sorrow. “Oh! sweet kisses, oh! languid caresses!” Piet sang, and for a moment in the crowded room his eyes met Jacobina’s, and they said good-bye.

Louisa saw them. She blinked and looked again. Piet was now concentrating on the piano and her mother had turned to a friend. All was as it should have been. Louisa accepted a cup of coffee from Hilde and tried to turn her mind to her own troubles, but certain facts abruptly forged a hazardous whole: an ugly dress, a potent smell, a green button lying on a blue carpet.

She said nothing as the guests began to take their leave and did not join her parents and Constance and Piet as they saw them off downstairs. As soon as she was alone she went into her mother’s dressing room and opened her closets. The little green button had been fretting at the limits of her other sorrows; now she was sure she knew the dress it had come from. If the garment was undamaged she would know she was wrong.

But the gown of apple-green wool was not in the wardrobe. Nor was it in the laundry or the sewing basket. Louisa had a couturier’s natural inventory for clothes and traced her way through a fortnight of her mother’s discarded garments. Everything was there, either cleaned or about to be, but not the apple-green dress she had worn the day Constance and Egbert and her father went to the country. She bit her knuckle. Surely that was the day her mother had appeared in a hideous mauve concoction. This was in her wardrobe. She took it out. It was not at all Jacobina’s size. When she put her nose between the ruffles of its neck she was met by the unmistakable smell of her great-aunt Agaat. Why should her mother wear her great-aunt’s clothes? And why should she have damaged her own dress, apparently beyond repair, in Aunt Agaat’s bedroom?

Louisa Vermeulen-Sickerts had no acquaintance with the odors of masculine arousal. This did not mean she was oblivious to them, and now she remembered the odd smell Piet had brought with him into the entrance hall that day. She began to understand other things, too: why Piet had not been dismissed for shaming the family by carrying Egbert into a crowded street; why he had been permitted to behave with total freedom, as no tutor before him had done.

Jacobina, Maarten, Constance, and Piet re-entered the drawing room to find Louisa standing by the fire, very pale. They were pleased with the evening and themselves. His daughter’s pallor inspired penitence in Maarten. What if she really had a fever? He was about to order a hot chocolate for her to take to bed when she said: “Where is your green wool dress, Mama? The one with the small train?”

Jacobina had given much thought to how to dispose of sixteen yards of satin-lined wool—no small challenge in a house full of servants and sweet smells. She had decided against burning it in her aunt’s bedroom fireplace, which someone would have to clean. Neither could she burn it in her own room, for fear of the smell. She had considered dumping it in a canal, but what if it floated? In the end, she had stolen down to the kitchen at two o’clock in the morning and stuffed it into the furnace. All this flashed into her head as Louisa spoke. “It’s in my cupboard, I suppose.”

“No it’s not. I’ve checked.”

“Why ever did you do that?”

“Because of the way you and Mr. Barol looked at each other when he sang about sweet kisses and languid caresses.”

“What an idea, darling!”

“I found a button from that dress in Aunt Agaat’s bedroom this afternoon. What were you doing there?”

“No one goes into that room, as you very well know.”

“Well someone did, wearing a dress that now cannot be found.” Louisa spoke levelly. “You were wearing it the day Constance and Egbert and Papa went to the country. You went next door in it, after lunch. Why did you come back in one of Aunt Agaat’s dresses? And why did Mr. Barol follow you, smelling like—like—someone who has taken strenuous exercise?”

This last detail had the ring of truth. Maarten Vermeulen-Sickerts said “Louisa!” but he was looking at Piet Barol. And on Piet’s face, where he expected indignation, he saw fear.

“Where is it, Mama?”

“I don’t keep track of all my clothes.”

“Have you destroyed it? Was it ripped or damaged in some way?”

Now Constance lost her temper. “Do shut up, Louisa. Are you drunk?”

“I am upset, Constance.”

“But why, my sweet?”

“Because Piet Barol has seduced our mother.”

Maarten took charge. “My dear, let us go to bed.” He offered his wife his arm. “Louisa, I will deal with you severely in the morning. You have had too much wine. Mr. Barol, my apologies.”

But he left the room without shaking Piet’s hand.

Jacobina went with him. She knew she should protest, but truth boldly stated is hard to contradict to those who know us best. She climbed the stairs behind her husband and her silence confirmed to Maarten what the terror in Piet’s eyes had already told him. Both of them feigned calm. Jacobina called for Hilde and began to unpin her hair. Maarten went into his dressing room and took off his clothes.

He was eight years older than his wife: stocky and strongly built. He did not pay much attention to his appearance and the studied avoidance of personal vanity had taken its toll. His legs were greeny-white, almost hairless now. He turned sideways to observe himself in profile. His belly was the size of a woman’s in the sixth month of pregnancy. He thought of the marvelous suits Jacobina had bought him long ago, which he would never wear again: suits that now hung in the closet of Piet Barol. He sat down on a stool, dazed by his daughter’s revelation, and waited for a surge of rage to carry him through to morning.

But instead a very different emotion took hold of him. To his surprise, and at first against his will, he began to see things from his wife’s point of view.

Maarten had never considered that his sexual abstinence might have a cost for Jacobina. Now he saw that it inevitably did. Piet Barol was a tempting proposition to a woman. Was she not human, after all? She had enjoyed the carnal side of love in their first years of marriage. What if she missed it? What if Piet had laid siege to her, as he had once done, and reminded her of the attentions she no longer received from him? He put on his nightshirt and rang the bell. When Mr. Blok appeared, he spoke a few low words to him and went into his bedroom.

Jacobina was already in bed. They had shared this same bed for twenty-eight years and the moment of settling into it beside her was often the happiest of Maarten’s day. He had never told her this. As he repeated the familiar movement, the fact that he had lain so close to her for ten years without once embracing her no longer seemed admirable. He was an intelligent man and loved Jacobina deeply. Abruptly he understood how wounding these bedtimes had been for her: the long sequence of days brought to a close by nothing more intimate than a chaste good-night kiss. He remembered the occasion, many years before, when she had asked for what she wanted; the way he had refused her, proud of his own restraint. What sorrow he must have caused her!

He turned towards his wife. Jacobina was propped up on her pillows, eyes closed. She had made her pain clear to him in many subtle ways. He understood this now and was overcome by remorse. To have put his own salvation before the happiness of one whom he had vowed to cherish was abominable. He leaned closer to her. Jacobina could sense him. She could not imagine what he was doing. She was torn between apology and accusation. That Louisa should know! Her clever, self-contained Louisa. The little girl whose dolls she had once helped dress. It appalled her. She felt the mattress tilt. Surely he would not hit her? She had several times been slapped in the face as a child by the sullen English governess who succeeded Riejke Vedder. Her body tensed. But to her astonishment, which was followed by an outpouring of long-seasoned love, Maarten did not hit her.

He kissed her neck and said, “Forgive me.”

For the first time since their son’s birth, Maarten Vermeulen-Sickerts ran his hand under his wife’s nightdress. He buried his face in her hair and inhaled. Jacobina’s smell was familiar to him, complex and sweet and reassuring beneath her Parisian perfume. It excited him. He pressed against her and his fingers edged up her thigh. They tickled her and she jerked away.

“Kiss me there,” she whispered.

With creaking joints he shifted place and pushed her nightgown to her waist and obeyed.

Maarten had never been as assured in bed as he was in business. He had too little experience to trust himself, which made him an anxious, perfunctory lover. Fortunately Jacobina was no longer as unsure as he was. She suggested what he should do and shifted her body until his tongue found the right spot. Maarten was grateful for direction. It was the first time anyone had used forbidden words to him and they charged his imagination. The impact his attentions were having on his wife gave him confidence. Each time he came close to spending Jacobina pulled away, and calmed him, and so subtly asserted her authority.

Jacobina had expected many things from Maarten, but not penitence. To receive an acknowledgment of the part he had played in her transgressions inspired an explosion of love, for his acceptance of her humanity was more profound than any man-made law or church-made vow. The idea of refining with him the lessons she had taught Piet Barol, night after night for the rest of their lives, overthrew her fears of the future. She pulled her nightdress off, then his. His body was not as hard as Piet’s, nor his skin as smooth and taut; but it was his body, and his skin, and for this reason alone she loved them.

While Piet Barol packed his trunk on the floor above, prevented by Mr. Blok from taking anything that had once belonged to their employer, Maarten Vermeulen-Sickerts hoisted himself over his wife. As Jacobina opened to him he almost came, but did not. He began to press into her, tenderly but surely. She opened her eyes and smiled.

If God exists, thought Maarten, then He is here.

They made love for hours. They fucked and kissed and explored their once-familiar bodies in a wonder of rediscovery. They did not hear Piet take his trunk down the stairs or pass through the entrance hall for the last time. As he walked to the station with nothing but his tailcoat, his trunk, a set of onyx studs, the clothes he had come in, and two sketchbooks full of careful drawings, they lost themselves in each other, forgave one another, and like a Phoenix from a lustful fire their friendship emerged, purged and renewed.

Piet had been sitting on the cold stone floor of the ticket hall for three hours, waiting for the first Leiden train, before they were finished. It was almost light. As they lay with their faces touching, Maarten’s arms around her shoulders, Jacobina said, “What about Louisa?”

“We shall go to your dressmaker’s this morning and order another gown, identical to the first. We will say that the original is being laundered in the country. When the new one is ready, you shall wear it as if nothing has happened. Every time you do, I will take it as an invitation to make you my own.”

“I am yours.” She kissed his shoulder. “I never wasn’t. I’m glad he’s going.”

“My darling,” said Maarten, “that young scoundrel has already gone.”