Read Online Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier - Free Book Online

keys so that they wouldn’t clink, and disappeared into the great hall.
    Later I asked Tanneke why Catharina had been hiding.
    “Oh, van Leeuwenhoek was here,” she answered, chuckling. “A friend of the master’s. She’s afraid of him.”
    “Why?”
    Tanneke laughed harder. “She broke his box! She was looking in it and knocked it over. You know how clumsy she is.”
    I thought of my mother’s knife spinning across the floor. “What box?”
    “He has a wooden box that you look in and—see things.”
    “What things?”
    “All sorts of things!” Tanneke replied impatiently. She clearly did not want to talk about the box. “Young mistress broke it, and van Leeuwenhoek won’t see her now. That’s why master won’t allow her in his room unless he’s there. Perhaps he thinks she’ll knock over a painting!”
    I discovered what the box was the next morning, the day he spoke to me about things that took me many months to understand.
    When I arrived to clean the studio, the easel and chair had been moved to one side. The desk was in their place, cleared of papers and prints. On it sat a wooden box about the size of a chest for storing clothes in. A smaller box was attached to one side, with a round object protruding from it.
    I did not understand what it was, but I did not dare touch it. I went about my cleaning, glancing over at it now and then as if its use would suddenly become clear to me. I cleaned the corner, then the rest of the room, dusting the box so that I hardly touched it with my cloth. I cleaned the storeroom and mopped the floor. When I was done I stood in front of the box, arms crossed, moving around to study it.
    My back was to the door but I knew suddenly that he was standing there. I wasn’t sure whether to turn around or wait for him to speak.
    He must have made the door creak, for then I was able to turn and face him. He was leaning against the threshold, wearing a long black robe over his daily clothes. He was watching me curiously, but he did not seem anxious that I might damage his box.
    “Do you want to look in it?” he asked. It was the first time he had spoken directly to me since he asked about the vegetables many weeks before.
    “Yes, sir. I do,” I replied without knowing what I was agreeing to. “What is it?”
    “It is called a camera obscura.”
    The words meant nothing to me. I stood aside and watched him unhook a catch and lift up part of the box’s top, which had been divided in two and hinged together. He propped up the lid at an angle so that the box was partly open. There was a bit of glass underneath. He leaned over and peered into the space between the lid and box, then touched the round piece at the end of the smaller box. He seemed to be looking at something, though I didn’t think there could be much in the box to take such interest in.
    He stood up and gazed at the corner I had cleaned so carefully, then reached over and closed the middle window’s shutters, so that the room was lit only by the window in the corner.
    Then he took off his robe.
    I shifted uneasily from one foot to the other.
    He removed his hat, placing it on the chair by the easel, and pulled the robe over his head as he leaned over the box again.
    I took a step back and glanced at the doorway behind me. Catharina had little will to climb the stairs these days, but I wondered what Maria Thins, or Cornelia, or anyone would think if they saw us. When I turned back I kept my eyes fixed on his shoes, which were gleaming from the polish I had given them the day before.
    He stood up at last and pulled the robe from his head, his hair ruffled. “There, Griet, it is ready. Now you look.” He stepped away from the box and gestured me towards it. I stood rooted to my place.
    “Sir—”
    “Place the robe over your head as I did. Then the image will be stronger. And look at it from this angle so it will not be upside down.”
    I did not know what to do. The thought of me covered with his robe, unable