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excerpt
The Blind Tobit - Rembrandt, 1651
Amsterdam, 1668
REMBRANDT VAN RIJN: (Aside) What is going on; The room is swimming with confused reflections. I
shake my head, and the furniture takes flight. My eyes focus on the table, but
it is not there — at least, it has no depth. Light plays on the surface — it
seems transparent, almost like a lake. The candle flickers in broad sweeps. Only
a glimmer of shapes all around me. The curtains are a falling haze, a sug'
gestion of green, and outside the window, the houses and rooftops hover in
mid-air. The few meagre trees resemble trees but they are not trees: they have
no substance or life. Brown spots float before me instead of passing clouds,
instead of seagulls swooping over the canal. The sun is in fragments, surrounded
by a filmy halo. Below me, even Titia’s face is veiled. Her eyes like two milky
moons! Magdalena’s features are undefined, abuzz in the air. Could this really
be happening; Something has poisoned me. What did I eat this morning; Oh, my
blasted, diseased eyes!
MAGDALENA VAN LOO: Sir, did you hear what I said;
REMBRANDT VAN RIJN: Magdalena, take the baby.
MAGDALENA VAN LOO: What?
REMBRANDT VAN RIJN: Raising his voice. I said, take the baby!
The daughter-in-law jumps in front of the grandfather and pulls the baby from his
arms. He rises from his chair and takes a few steps towards the door.
REMBRANDT VAN RIJN: (Aside) I have to get to my workshop. Look at one of my
paintings. Then I will know...
MAGDALENA VAN LOO: Behind his back. What’s happened? Are you ill?
REMBRANDT VAN RIJN: You should go. (Aside) I move across the hallway one step at a time. Where
the hell is the door? My toe catches the edge of a board and pulls off my
slipper. I must look like poor old Tobit! My hands are outstretched, guiding me
as if through a fog. Thank the Lord they know the way.
A Creeping Infection
When I reach the door of my workshop and look in, everything is blurry. I
recognize that pungent smell — and the atmosphere is familiar, but the room
resembles a skewed box, all its walls misaligned. Which way is right and which
is left? Trying to skirt round the furniture, I stumble against my easel. It
floods the room with a sinister creaking. My leg buckles under me. Grabbing the
table, I send a jar flying - it hits the floor with a crash. Not important; I’ll
leave it for later. I fumble round for a canvas in the corner and grab the edges
with both hands. As I heave it over the table, my brushes and trinkets crash to
the floor. I stand in front of the painting and look at it squarely: my
Lucretia. At least, it seems like my Lucretia...
While I know there is only one figure, I cannot make her out. 1 see her white
shift like a veil, but where is the dagger she has plunged into her heart? What
was once a crimson lake of blood is only a blur, restless and crude. I tell
myself that the red patch is red only in relation to the shadow lying across it.
Focus on the play of light there! But the colour runs away in a pale pink
stream, losing its saturation. What is happening to my painting?
Half closing my eyes, I try to find the vermilion and gold in her gown, but
there are no variations, no intermediate shades. I know they are there! What
about the light ochre in her face and throat? The terre verte in her hands, one
clutching the knife, the other raised to open the curtains of her bed? No matter
how hard I try, rubbing my lids then squinting or opening wide and staring, I
cannot conjure up my colours. There is only her brown hair and beaded hat
hovering in the distance. A hat with no head. Then I am left with a single
teardrop, a pearl, dangling from her earlobe. All I see is a cloudy, macabre
shade, not like any I have witnessed before. How could this be? The disease has
spread like a pool of turpentine, erasing the rest of the picture. My canvas is
blank!
Reality hits me: I am going blind. I must be! This is what I have most feared
for my entire life ... my father’s weakness, his eyes of death. Oh, my poor
father! Perhaps the fear has brought me here, or Fortuna, who allures me with
false good fortunes, smiles upon me then turns away. I am overcome with nausea
and drowsiness. My teeth chatter. Sleep, that’s all I want to do. Sleep.
I walk my hands along the walls, skirting toward the parlour. When I reach the
door, the opening jumps from place to place. Trying to slip through, I hang
against the frame. My head throbs and drums. Where was I going? Oh yes, back to
my chair. Magdalena looms in front of me, a smudgy outline enveloped in ghost
rings. I hold up my palms, blinded by the brightness of her form. Falling to my
knees, I sink into obscurity, an abyss of darkness.
INTERLUDE
Clip-clop, clip-clop.
Sir, can you hear me;
A rustle of fabrics, clipped breathing.
The scent of breast milk.
Rebecca, come quickly!
A firm hand pressing my arm.
Here, let me help you into your chair.
Heavy footfalls on the stairs.
A gasp then a high voice, Gracious me!
Beef brisket? Stewed pork?
A baby’s cry fills the room, an echo.
Shhh, hush now. Look! Grandpa’s just playing.
Master! Are you ill;
Pat, pat, pat. A gurgle.
No, I’m blind.
That cracked jar: linseed oil.
Are you certain; Master, look about you. Who goes there, ha?
Muffled squealing
in the walls, the cry of roaches.
I hold my eyes tight.
Rub on the egg yolks. Then fetch the doctor.
Clip-clop, Clip-clop.
Is someone speaking?
The odour of raw eggs.
Warm sap on my eyes and temples, trickling down my cheeks. Listen to the rain.
Nothing but a Mist
The doctor enters the parlour and extracts his shiny utensils from a leather
satchel. He yanks open the blind man’s eyes with two fingers and shines a light
in them.
REMBRANDT VAN RIJN: Struggling from his grasp. Don’t touch me! Get away from me, you old goat!
As the blind man grunts and groans, the maidservant and the doctor hold him down
and tie his arms to the chair with leather straps.
THE DOCTOR: Tugs at his lids, prods his pupils. What do you see now?
REMBRANDT VAN RIJN: Shouts. Nothing but a mist!
THE DOCTOR: Holds up card after card of pictures — mostly red and green circles.
Look closely.
REMBRANDT VAN RIJN: There’s nothing. Didn’t you hear me?
THE DOCTOR: Very mysterious, indeed.
The doctor unbuckles the straps round the patient’s forearms.
REMBRANDT VAN RIJN: Thank heavens!
THE DOCTOR: Pinches on his Jine spectacles. There is no explanation for your
blindness. Master van Rijn. Your eyes seem perfectly normal, despite a slight
deficiency in the left one. But you already knew that, didn’t you?I can only
suppose you must resign yourself to being blind for the rest of your days.
The doctor bends down and scoops up his leather bag.
REMBRANDT VAN RIJN: Grabbing handfuls of air. Is that all? No, please, wait! (Aside) I hear the
fabric of his trousers crackling, leather brushing against wool. How can he
leave me here?
The maidservant and the doctor shuffle down the stairs, their mules scraping
against the grainy floor.
The Old Blind Man Wasting Like a Candle
For the next few hours, I stumble round my house, colliding with objects. I
scoot up and down the stairs, my hands caressing the walls to feel their bumpy
texture, or lean out of the window to catch any passing sounds: the cackle of an
old whore, the chickens in the coop, the flies buzzing on the canal. How I long
to see my old territory! I blink. Never again. All 1 see is the windmill perched
on the riverbank and a desolate plain in the distance. Where am I? Let me
listen. I can hear the steps of those heading home, their exhalations after
work. The sound of a flute calls up the bluish'green colour of the sky. When the
evening wind rustles delicate leaves, I see the waning light in trees and
bushes. By the rattle of a carriage and the rhythm of horses’ hooves, my eyes
sense the unevenness of the cobbles. I coast among the people coasting by. They
carry on with their lives, no questions asked.
I try to convince Rebecca to let me cook or at least chop the vegetables — to
feel the cold colours under myfingers — but she refuses. What if I cut myself? I
should stay in bed, where it is safer. She is probably right, considering that I
was old and clumsy even when I could see. Yet I refuse to become my father! In
the process ofgoing blind, he abandoned his habits and made himself into an
invalid. I never understood how he could resort to such immobility, such
nothingness from the very start. He did not try to see, even in his mind’s eye.
He left the world too soon. From early on I vowed that, if ever I were blind, 1
would not change my life or my conduct in it. Now, here I am.
When Cornelia returns from school, she does not come to me immediately. She
whispers downstairs with Rebecca for what seems like hours. Oh, even time is
blurry! Afterwards, my daughter rushes into the room and finds her
invalidfather, cane in hand, walking wall-to-wall across the shabby floorboards.
I am thinking of Descartes. What did he say? The hand is affected by probing
with a stick just as the eye is affected by light carried in the air. I must
resemble a blind beggar, shattered and grey-headed, irritable and mistrustful.
My daughter stands before me, her liquorice breath on my face. It does not feel
like indifference or scorn. Is she scared? As her nose hovers before my nose,
her voice is extremely solemn, telling me not to worry. She vows to stay by my
side and be my eyes. She wipes my rheumy eyes with her handkerchief. I stutter
like someone unfamiliar with speech, telling her about my day - Magdalena’s
visit, Titia’s sweet face and how I lost my sight. Then, devout like her mother,
she holds my hand and recites her prayers aloud. I wish I could see her face,
the soft down on her cheek. I have no desire to eat, but she feeds me a plate of
beetroot and sprats with horseradish.
With this, I renounce myself once and for all. No one has spoon'fed me since I
was a boy in the arms of my mother. I am in the arms of my daughter, wasting
like a candle, the better part of which has already gone. Like fob, my soul is
weary of my life.
Synopsis: Amsterdam, 1667. Pieter Blaeu, a young publisher, meets the aged, destitute
painter Rembrandt van Rijn, and is powerfully drawn into his orbit. Together
with a poet named Clara he begins a pursuit of the elusive man’s confidence, in
a quest that is at once a love affair and a layered, luminous portrait of a most
mysterious artist and his world.
‘It is no mean feat for a young writer to pitch herself against the great master
and attempt to achieve in prose the explorations of identity that Rembrandt
achieved in paint... All we now have of [Rembrandt] are the paintings themselves
and Van Rijn returns us to these with a renewed sense of wonder’
Times Literary Supplement
ϟ
Van Rijn
Sarah Emily Miano
Picador, 2006
excerpt: pp 426-433
28.Mai.2024
Publicado por
MJA
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