Chapter 14
Claire
I don’t like the look of Isaac Israels from the very start.
Our knocks echo unanswered when his door finally creaks open.
He stands before us, taking up the entire small frame.
His sandy hair is disheveled, though his beard is neat and tidy.
He looks each of us up and down with a set of piercing dark eyes as though he did not expect us.
Jo’s arms overflow with tulips, their petals already wilting like sad question marks.
“Are tulips a silly gift to bring to a man?” she had asked earlier when we bought them, her voice tinged with uncertainty.
They are, but in the vast new Amsterdam train station I had taken pity on the flower girl with the filthy infant in her arms and said we should buy them, despite our carefully managed frugality.
“Jo, it is so wonderful to see you,” Isaac drawls. He leans in to kiss her cheeks three times before acknowledging my existence with a smoldering stare.
“Isaac, this is Claire. She works with me,” Jo introduces us, her tone cautious. “Didn’t you know I was coming? I wrote to you.”
“Yes, yes.” He gives a thin smile. “I fell asleep. I was up all night last night and the night before in a fever of inspiration and then I thought I would lie down for a moment or two and it turned into many hours. Please excuse my appearance.”
“I can visit another time?” Jo offers.
“No. Come in now,” he insists with strange urgency. “I will put on tea, and I cannot wait to show you my newest painting. I was hoping to finish it before you came, but as you know, a painting is never truly finished.”
His last words carry a trace of sarcasm.
Vincent’s many “unfinished” paintings have been an excuse for collectors and dealers to drive down Jo’s asking prices.
She battles this constantly but is quite persuasive in her arguments about how Vincent’s style might appear incomplete to untrained eyes, but every brushstroke was placed with a near spiritual intention.
I’ve watched her defend this position until her voice goes hoarse. I once asked her if she believes it.
“No. Not always. Some of them may indeed have been unfinished,” she had said. But when it comes to defending Vincent, her assertions grow more confident with every meeting.
I pinch Jo’s arm now, our secret signal that we can still escape, but she’s already following him across the threshold, still clutching those ridiculous tulips like they might shield her from whatever awaits inside.
“Do you have a vase for these? I don’t want them to wilt,” she says, though they already have.
Isaac’s intimate things are scattered all over the room: a rusty razor on a windowsill, undergarments tossed carelessly over a chair.
Canvases are piled on every available surface, some of them still wet, leaving smudges of paint on the whitewashed walls.
Silvery paint tubes litter the floor, their caps carelessly strewn about.
Some are perched on easels, as if waiting for admirers.
Almost all the subjects are women, one applying lipstick in a mirror, two chambermaids gossiping.
“I tidied up for you,” Isaac jokes. “I can make you tea. I may also have some biscuits somewhere.”
“We ate before we came,” Jo lies politely. “But tea would be lovely. I don’t think we can stay terribly long, but I am happy we could make the time for a visit.”
“Me too,” he says, producing a chipped vase from a creaky cupboard.
I take a knife from the table and begin chopping the stems. Before I know what is happening there is a crash.
One of the rickety table legs gives way with a sudden crack.
Water cascades over Jo’s skirt and streams toward a nearby painting of two women gazing longingly at children’s clothing in a shop window.
“Oh no!” I lunge for the painting, grabbing a rag from the floor to dam the flow. Jo stands frozen, watching dirty water seep into the fabric of her good dress.
“It is not the first time.” Isaac shrugs. “I must fix that table. Or buy a new one. Do not worry about it.”
“Your painting,” I protest, still dabbing frantically.
“You saved it. No damage is done. Except to your dress.” He gestures toward Jo.
Her outfit was selected for our meeting after this.
She has an appointment later with Simon De Jong, the owner of a large gallery who is finally showing an interest in Vincent’s work.
And now this carefully chosen outfit bears streaks of paint and filthy water.
“Oh no,” she whispers, examining the damage. “I am meant to meet De Jong after this.”
Isaac’s laugh fills the small space. “That ancient knob. Whatever for?”
Jo hesitates, and I watch her calculating how much to reveal. “He has promised to do a showing of Vincent’s paintings.”
“Oh yes. I have heard that you inherited all of them when your husband…” His awkward pause betrays a man who’s never truly lost anything irreplaceable. “That you inherited them from Theo. And you are representing them now. That must be quite difficult.”
“I am sure you have heard more than that. Lips are very loose around here,” Jo replies, her tone sharpening.
An idea forms in my mind. “Let me go fetch you a new dress.”
Jo startles. We don’t buy new things, but I have connections in this city that Jo doesn’t know about and wouldn’t understand. I don’t plan on buying anything.
“I can be back in an hour’s time,” I continue, already calculating the route. “The two of you can catch up. Jo, you can still make your meeting.”
Jo’s eyes dart around the studio and then down to her spoiled dress.
“It will be fine,” I assure her. “No one knows we are here.” I shoot Isaac a look then. I am trusting him to take care with her.
“Please sit with me, Jo,” Isaac pleads almost sweetly.
“I may be helpful to you in preparation for meeting with De Jong. I know how these men operate, and I can make some suggestions. I would be honored to help you get a show of Vincent’s work.
As you know I was a great admirer of what he did. I think about him often.”
His kind words about Vincent soften Jo, who doesn’t hear enough of them. She turns to me. “Claire, you really think you can find me a dress?”
“I do.”
“Then, Isaac, we have an hour to talk.” She settles in.
I hustle quickly through the city streets, crisscrossing canals and tripping over the uneven bricks.
I know a woman here. I wrote to her when I knew we would be moving.
Though I have come to trust Jo, women like me must always have a secondary plan.
Lisette moved from Paris to Amsterdam because she heard it was easier to launch a new business in Holland.
Paris was too crowded with workers like us and she was an entrepreneur at heart.
We have exchanged several letters over the past year, and she told me I would always be welcome to visit.
I have no intention of buying Jo a new dress we cannot afford, but I know I can borrow one.
I finally reach a small gabled house, set off from the others around it by a large brass lion that serves as a knocker on the bright red door.
I rap on it sharply and a pie-faced girl no older than twelve cracks open the door.
She reminds me of myself when I lived with Madam all those years ago, and I wonder what misfortune brought her to this house.
“I am here to see Lisette.”
The girl looks me up and down with her wide brown eyes before opening the door enough to let me through. “She is in the kitchen.”
The house is much nicer than the boardinghouse Jo and I run.
The furnishings are elaborate pieces of carved dark wood, and the walls are covered in beautiful deep blue wallpaper that conveys a sense of warmth and sophistication.
It smells of a mixture of rose water perfume and the men’s cologne that seeps into fabrics and never quite leaves.
I find Lisette enjoying coffee and a cigarette in her kitchen, her long fingers curled elegantly around the delicate cup.
“Welcome to Amsterdam,” she says with a hug once I introduce myself. “Have you spent much time in the city?”
“Not yet,” I explain. “I came with my employer this morning and sadly I cannot stay long for a social call. We’ve had a bit of an accident.”
As I describe our predicament—Isaac Israels’s studio, the water, the ruined dress, the crucial meeting with De Jong—Lisette’s laugh rolls through the kitchen.
“Two men that we are well acquainted with in this house,” she says, eyes gleaming with insider knowledge. “I could tell you things about both of them.”
The young girl scurries upstairs to find a suitable dress while I sit across from Lisette, ravenous for the kind of information that doesn’t circulate in polite society. Jo will be fine for a few minutes more, and this intelligence could prove invaluable.
Isaac, she tells me, has built quite a reputation for himself in the brothels of Amsterdam.
He is obsessed with the models who sit for him, many of whom he selects from her neighborhood.
He is also known to have affairs with the older wives of the men who purchase his art.
He once bragged to one of her girls, “The ideal thing about being a painter is selling art to a woman and making love to her afterward.”
“He is damaged in many ways,” Lisette says.
“It is so obvious, but then isn’t it always?
His father was such a famous artist that Isaac will always live in his shadow and everyone in this city knows it.
I would warn your mistress not to spend too much time alone with him. Tongues will certainly wag.”
I tell her I will take her advice to heart.
The young girl appears carrying a simple velvet dress in a lovely shade of dark green that will go wonderfully with Jo’s eyes.
It has a high neck and a bit of lace on the wrists.
It is much smaller than anything I could wear, but that means it will be well-suited to Jo’s little frame.
“Thank you,” I say, standing to accept it and pulling out the little money that I have in my purse. “I will return it, but can I give you something for the inconvenience?”
Lisette waves my hand away. “Consider it a favor. I am happy that an accident brought you over today. Bring the dress back whenever you return to the city and we can chat over a jenever.”
“I appreciate the kindness.” It feels like I have made a new friend. As I head to the door, I realize that Lisette has told me nothing of the time that De Jong spends in her home. I ask quickly.
“He is much less interesting than Israels. He hardly speaks. In fact, all he wants is to be treated like a stubborn child and smacked hard on the ass.”
I try to picture the tall and dignified De Jong with his prim and uppity wife and his air of pretension bent over a prostitute’s knee and walloped like a recalcitrant child.
The image comes all too easily, and I tuck it away to tell Jo on our way to visit with him.
It will perhaps make it easier for her to ask for exactly what she wants from him if she can hold that particular image in her mind.
“It is always the quiet ones,” I say.
“Always,” Lisette agrees.
I hurry back to Isaac’s studio. We have very little time left.
When I arrive and knock on the door, there is no answer, and the knob does not turn.
How strange. Perhaps they have gone out for a bite, but it doesn’t seem possible with Jo’s ruined dress.
I walk along the side of the building, looking for an outdoor patio where they could have been taking their tea.
There is a small window low enough for me to look through.
I only mean to tap on it to get their attention, assuming they can’t hear the door for some reason, but when I reach the dirty glass I have to pause.
Inside the firelit room, amid all the clutter, Jo perches on a high-backed chair in front of Isaac.
Her soiled dress lies drying in front of the flames.
She wears nothing but her slip and petticoat and a shy smile as Isaac sits across the room from her contemplating a canvas, quietly sketching her.
I have no idea what transpired before I arrived, but I know enough about men to know Isaac Israels cannot be trusted with my dear Jo.