"Chevalier, Tracy - Girl with a Pearl Earring" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chevalier Tracy)

He had me sit with the book, then stand holding it while looking at him. He took away the book, handed me the white jug with the pewter top and had me pretend to pour a glass of wine. He asked me to stand and simply look out the window. All the while he seemed perplexed, as if someone had told him a story and he couldn't recall the ending.
"It is the clothes," he murmured. "That is the problem."
I understood. He was having me do things a lady would do, but I was wearing a maid's clothes. I thought of the yellow mantle and the yellow and black bodice, and wondered which he would ask me to wear. Instead of being excited by the idea, though, I felt uneasy. It was not just that it would be impossible to hide from Catharina that I was wearing her clothes. I did not feel right holding books and letters, pouring myself wine, doing things I never did. As much as I wanted to feel the soft fur of the mantle around my neck, it was not what I normally wore.
"Sir," I spoke finally, "perhaps you should have me do other things. Things that a maid does."
"What does a maid do?" he asked softly, folding his arms and raising his eyebrows.
I had to wait a moment before I could answer—my jaw was trembling. I thought of Pieter and me in the alley and swallowed. "Sewing," I replied. "Mopping and sweeping. Carrying water. Washing sheets. Cutting bread. Polishing windowpanes."
"You would like me to paint you with your mop?"
"It's not for me to say, sir. It is not my painting."
He frowned. "No, it is not yours." He sounded as if he were speaking to himself.
"I do not want you to paint me with my mop." I said it without knowing that I would.
"No. No, you're right, Griet. I would not paint you with a mop in your hand."
"But I cannot wear your wife's clothes."
There was a long silence. "No, I expect not," he said. "But I will not paint you as a maid."
"What, then, sir?"
"I will paint you as I first saw you, Griet. Just you."
He set a chair near his easel, facing the middle window, and I sat down. I knew it was to be my place. He was going to find the pose he had put me in a month before, when he had decided to paint me.
"Look out the window," he said.
I looked out at the grey winter day and, remembering when I stood in for the baker's daughter, tried not to see anything but to let my thoughts become quiet. It was hard because I was thinking of him, and of me sitting in front of him.
The New Church bell struck twice.
"Now turn your head very slowly towards me. No, not your shoulders. Keep your body turned towards the window. Move only your head. Slow, slow. Stop. A little more, so that—stop. Now sit still."
I sat still.
At first I could not meet his eyes. When I did it was like sitting close to a fire that suddenly blazes up. Instead I studied his firm chin, his thin lips.
"Griet, you are not looking at me."
I forced my gaze up to his eyes. Again I felt as if I were burning, but I endured it—he wanted me to.
Soon it became easier to keep my eyes on his. He looked at me as if he were not seeing me, but someone else, or something else—as if he were looking at a painting.
He is looking at the light that falls on my face, I thought, not at my face itself. That is the difference.
It was almost as if I were not there. Once I felt this I was able to relax a little. As he was not seeing me, I did not see him. My mind began to wander—over the jugged hare we had eaten for dinner, the lace collar Lisbeth had given me, a story Pieter the son had told me the day before. After that I thought of nothing. Twice he got up to change the position of one of the shutters. He went to his cupboard several times to choose different brushes and colors. I viewed his movements as if I were standing in the street, looking in through the window.
The church bell struck three times. I blinked. I had not felt so much time pass. It was as if I had fallen under a spell.
I looked at him—his eyes were with me now. He was looking at me. As we gazed at each other a ripple of heat passed through my body. I kept my eyes on his, though, until at last he looked away and cleared his throat.
"That will be all, Griet. There is some bone for you to grind upstairs."
I nodded and slipped from the room, my heart pounding. He was painting me.
"Pull your cap back from your face," he said one day.
"Back from my face, sir?" I repeated dumbly, and regretted it. He preferred me not to speak, but to do as he said. If I did speak, I should say something worth the words.
He did not answer. I pulled the side of my cap that was closest to him back from my cheek. The starched tip grazed my neck.
"More," he said. "I want to see the line of your cheek."
I hesitated, then pulled it back further. His eyes moved down my cheek.
"Show me your ear."
I did not want to. I had no choice.
I felt under the cap to make sure no hair was loose, tucking a few strands behind my ear. Then I pulled it back to reveal the lower part of my ear.
The look on his face was like a sigh, though he did not make a sound. I caught a noise in my own throat and pushed it down so that it would not escape.
"Your cap," he said. "Take it off."
"No, sir."
"No?"
"Please do not ask me to, sir." I let the cloth of the cap drop so that my ear and cheek were covered again. I looked at the floor, the grey and white tiles extending away from me, clean and straight.
"You do not want to bare your head?"
"No."
"Yet you do not want to be painted as a maid, with your mop and your cap, nor as a lady, with satin and fur and dressed hair."
I did not answer. I could not show him my hair. I was not the sort of girl who left her head bare.
He shifted in his chair, then got up. I heard him go into the storeroom. When he returned, his arms were full of cloth, which he dropped in my lap.
"Well, Griet, see what you can do with this. Find something here to wrap your head in, so that you are neither a lady nor a maid." I could not tell if he was angry or amused. He left the room, shutting the door behind him.