History of a Pleasure Seeker Page 5

  Sometimes he thought of the life he had left behind: the damp alcove in which he had slept, not six feet from his father’s snoring head; the meals conducted in sullen silence; the claustrophobic impossibility of change or optimism that clung to Herman Barol like a stubborn mist. In the Vermeulen-Sickerts’ household these recollections took on the quality of a fading nightmare.

  Nina Barol had much regretted her impulsive decision to marry her handsome, taciturn second cousin, and for much of Piet’s life she had not troubled herself to hide this regret. Having taught music to many fashionable people in Paris, she had learned the ways of the great world and taken care that her son should know them too. Her photograph, smiling from its leather frame beside his bed, offered him daily encouragement and reminded him of her maxims. Never lose your temper. Never appear to try too hard. Learn all you can.

  The service at Herengracht 605 was prompt, lavish and invisible. Nothing that passed the lips of Maarten’s family or his guests was purchased ready-made. A chef who had trained under Monsieur Escoffier in Paris oversaw the kitchen and produced meals of a quality that made Piet dread the necessity of having, ever again, to eat something made by anyone else. The family’s bed linen was changed daily and sent to be dried in the fresh-smelling fields beyond the city’s limits. Their clothes were cared for like works of art. And because Mr. Vermeulen-Sickerts deplored idleness and believed in the capacity of well-trained individuals of personal merit, all this was achieved by an indoor staff of only five servants. The chef, Monsieur la Chaume, was so well paid that he was able to keep his own house on the Egelantiersgracht.

  The light chiming of the long case clock set the tempo and under orders from the magnificently efficient Mrs. de Leeuw, Didier Loubat, Agneta Hemels and Hilde Wilken laid and carried and cleared, polished and swept, bowed, smiled and poured in strict fidelity to its sweet tollings. To be served by one of them was to feel that one was at the center of a benignly ordered universe, and though Piet took care to avoid giving offense by asking for things on his own account (except, on occasion, from Hilde) he was so often with the family that he partook of their luxuries without giving the other servants any cause for resentment.

  In this way, Piet was able to observe in detail the behavior of the very rich. In their steam-filled bathroom late at night, waiting to exchange places in the cooling tub, he and Didier discussed their observations with much hilarity; but while Didier was often scornful of the family he served, Piet found something noble in their excesses. He did not judge them, because he intended to emulate them one day if he could.

  As the winter faded, the house slowly surrendered its secrets. Piet became familiar with the large and small drawing rooms, the walnut-paneled library with its fine edition of the Sertum Botanicum; the parquet-floored ballroom; the stores of china and silver in the basement; and in his hours off he made drawings of the beautiful things he found in these beautiful rooms. He appreciated his surroundings with a wholeheartedness that was very flattering to Maarten Vermeulen-Sickerts, who had chosen all they contained. Only the bedrooms remained mysterious, and he sometimes watched Hilde returning from one, breakfast tray in hand, with an itching curiosity he knew he could never satisfy.

  In the privacy of his cozy room, in the pleasant half hour before slipping between country-scented sheets, Piet congratulated himself on the expertise with which he had so far navigated the complexities of the household. It had helped, undoubtedly, to begin on favorable terms with the mistress of the house; but once he had negotiated his salary and received a substantial advance on it, he had not rushed to renew lingering eye contact with his master’s wife. He knew that his reticence might cause Jacobina offense and permitted himself, occasionally, to convey to her in a glance that the effort required to resist her was monumental. Otherwise he treated her with superbly appropriate deference, and she never gave any hint of expecting anything more.

  This was a relief, though sometimes he found himself thinking of her as he fell asleep and getting hard at the thought of subverting her morals. He put these ideas aside in daylight hours and was punctual and humble and amusing. He played the piano after dinner and avoided Carmen and retained everything Maarten told him about the objects in his collection and never once suggested that Egbert go outside. He was wise enough to treat Naomi de Leeuw and Gert Blok with the same politesse he accorded their employers, and in time this led to many small advantages: fresh flowers in his room; a daily newspaper of his own; the gift of certain suits and shirts, perfectly stored, that no longer fit his employer.

  Agneta Hemels remained an enigma, but was not sufficiently corruptible to labor on unduly; and he handled Hilde Wilken, who was jealous of his intimacy with Didier, with a gentle disdain which reminded her that she was in no position to make life difficult for him.

  Piet’s greatest challenge in his first few months, just as Didier had predicted, was Constance Vermeulen-Sickerts, who was accustomed to being desired by young men and saw no reason why Piet Barol should be exempt from the general rule. She was shorter than her sister, radiantly blond, high spirited and popular, with (as Hilde told Didier, who told Piet) thick ankles she went to great lengths to keep secret.

  Like her father, Constance was instinctively competitive and had devoted much effort to acquiring the power she wielded over her contemporaries. Her methods relied on the magnetism of her person and the impact she could make with it when she chose. Though she complained of living in a backwater, in fact Amsterdam’s size suited Constance—because it is easier to rule unchallenged over a duchy than an empire. Her world was the city; her stage the salons and ballrooms of its canal houses; her subjects the privileged children who had been the playmates of her youth. Like Piet, she had developed over time a highly artificial naturalness that failed to charm only the least susceptible and allowed her to triumph through seduction rather than violence. Many women, despite themselves, formed intense friendships with Constance, for she was loyal and sympathetic and listened with attention. Those who did not feared her, and were wise to do so.

  It was rare for a rival to challenge Constance directly. When one did they discovered that Louisa Vermeulen-Sickerts, generally so silent, was capable of devastating sarcasm and quite prepared to unleash it on her sister’s behalf. Louisa’s maxim was: “Those who laugh are always right.” She was very good at ensuring that people laughed with the sisters, not against them.

  Men grew sleepless and erratic over Constance, and she had already (so the newspapers said) received and rejected eighteen offers of marriage, as against three for the glacial Louisa. This discrepancy made no difference to the girls’ friendship, which was devoted and tender. This was partly because Louisa discouraged all suitors, finding none to her taste, while her sister took satisfaction from quantity as well as quality.

  Constance kept her paramours in the state of consuming desire that cannot long survive its fulfillment. She had no inclination to give up her sister’s company and the freedoms of life beneath her parents’ roof; and because Louisa felt the same, neither of them had ever seriously considered becoming any man’s wife. The girls were unforgiving in the matter of masculine failings, and Constance in particular derived a cruel, self-regarding pleasure from observing how much young men minded when she dropped them.

  Maarten Vermeulen-Sickerts knew that his girls—unlike the lesser daughters of lesser men—would remain highly eligible late into their twenties and was delighted to keep them at home as long as he could. He was amused by Constance’s artifice, because beneath it she was warm and funny and family minded—as Piet learned from listening to the sisters through Didier Loubat’s window.

  Only with Louisa was Constance wholly herself, and this was partly because Louisa abhorred contrivance of any sort. In private, the listening young men half felt that Louisa was the dominant sister, which would not at all have been the verdict of someone who encountered the girls in public. On her balcony after dinner, Louisa dissected Constance’s vanities so savagely that Co
nstance screamed with laughter and threatened to wet herself.

  Louisa was the schemer, the silent observer, the strategist behind the maintenance of Constance’s position at the apex of the little world that was all she knew, or cared to know. Louisa designed Constance’s clothes, adamantly refusing her requests for frills, stays and unnecessary adornments. She decided the set of her hair, forced her to brave the sun in August, and took charge of her care during the occasional bouts of hysterical darkness, succeeded by lethargy, that punctuated the shiny ebullience of her daily performances. Louisa teased her sister for toying with men but deftly assisted her in heightening their agonies. She relayed messages, engineered encounters, and betrayed confidences with amusing precision. She did not approve of Constance’s efforts to ensnare their brother’s tutor, and said so, and poked merciless fun at her sister’s failure to provoke any response whatsoever from Piet.

  “I tell you, he’s a uranist,” said Constance one evening, having leaned heavily on Piet’s arm after dinner and received no answering pressure.

  “Nonsense. He’s just too ambitious to risk everything by entangling himself with a wildcat like you. He knows you could never marry. What does he have to gain?”

  “My person,” replied Constance, with dignity.

  “You’d never give yourself to him in that way.”

  “Some girls do.”

  “Not you, my dear.”

  Constance knew that this was true but was nevertheless irked by Piet’s relentless indifference to her charms. She decided that if he were not a uranist, he must fear rejection. She would have to make plain that his overtures would be well received and enlisted her sister’s help—because she was beguiled by the quiet arrogance with which he wore her father’s old clothes.

  Louisa agreed to participate in the enterprise on the condition that its verdict was regarded as final. The sisters settled terms during a walk through the Vondelpark, to which neither Piet nor Didier was privy, and set their minds to the most advantageous way of getting Constance what she wanted. Constance understood that smiles and ravishing gestures were insufficient and secretly respected Piet for being so much more self-controlled than other men she knew. The thought of making a private declaration entered her head, but she dispatched it at once as far too rife with humiliating possibilities. How might she combine the advantages of directness with the imperatives of discretion? Louisa could not, on this occasion, act as go-between.

  She was in her room, undressing and thinking of Piet’s first night in the house, when the answer came to her, and she went through the connecting door to her sister’s bedroom with only a silk kimono over her shoulders.

  “It’s not a bad idea,” said Louisa, “but you’d better not do it when Papa’s here.”

  So they waited until their father went to Paris, as he did every six weeks to inspect his hotels in that city, and after dinner they asked Mr. Barol to teach them about opera and opened the score of Carmen at her exchange with Le Dançaire.

  Jacobina was by the fire, her embroidery in her lap. Louisa positioned herself to obscure the expression on her sister’s face, should their mother happen to glance up. Then, taking the man’s part, she began to read from the libretto and asked Constance why she so liked Don José.

  “Parce qu’il est beau, et qu’il me plaît,” said Constance, straight to Piet. Then in English, for emphasis: “Because he’s handsome. Because he pleases me.”

  Piet Barol was aware of the dangers of even an innocent flirtation with his employer’s daughters and had no intention of making this elemental mistake. He was also alive to the advantages of being seen to show impeccable restraint. Maarten would naturally be vigilant of Constance and Louisa. Good behavior with them would earn his trust more swiftly than other, more effortful stratagems.

  Piet did not need Didier to tell him that Constance delighted in generating, and then spurning, male attention. In fact his vanity would have been injured had she made no attempt to seduce him. But what began as flattering and amusing became alarming as Constance’s steeliness showed itself, and with it her absolute determination to prevail over those who resisted her.

  In this determination, Constance Vermeulen-Sickerts and Piet Barol were well matched. As Constance’s assaults on his equanimity became more adamant, Piet was able to decode her tactics with an expert’s eye. She began, as he would have done, by subtle but significant increments in physical contact. She often took his arm on her way into and out of dinner, and occasionally her fingers touched his as they parted. He understood these fleeting invitations for what they were, but pretended not to notice them—with the result that Constance’s dresses became a little more revealing and her conversation, when they met, significantly more animated. She was a gifted storyteller, with the confidence to show herself at a disadvantage, and her tales of misadventures among the city’s gilded youth were deft and funny.

  Piet liked her enormously. For a time he hoped that her flirtatious interest would subside into friendship, but as the weeks passed he began to feel that a battle of wills was developing and that Constance would not rest until she had won it. This made her seem a little ridiculous and greatly eased the effort it cost to resist her. But he started to worry that Maarten would notice and act preemptively to avoid disaster by removing him from the house. This would have been so damaging to his plans that he began to wonder, just as Constance did, whether there might be some way to broach the topic euphemistically, but unequivocally, and lay it to rest.

  “Only a fool would do that,” said Didier. He was sitting on the radiator in the attic bathroom, in his dressing gown, while Piet lay submerged to his neck in the water Didier had just vacated. “You can’t let her know that you know she’s keen on you. Especially if you’re going to reject her.”

  “But I can’t let it go on this way forever. If her father suspects—”

  “Suspicion’s one thing. If you say anything, it’ll go badly wrong.”

  Piet agreed with his friend, so he continued to feign obliviousness as Constance’s attentions became more frequent and less subtle. When, one day, she fainted at tea and compelled him to lift her in his arms and deposit her on the sofa, a new and horrifying possibility occurred to him: that she might make an overt declaration that necessitated a plain response. What could he possibly say that would close forever the possibility of a liaison while sparing her the kind of embarrassment that so often demands vengeance? He did not wish to be her enemy. As the danger increased he began to prepare a little speech on the subject of his religious scruples, which would not permit him, etc. etc. But in the event this was not necessary, for two days later, as Didier Loubat and Hilde Wilken served the coffee and petits fours, Constance put him on the spot in a public yet deniable manner that demanded respect.

  His first thought, as she told him he was handsome and that he pleased her, was relief that her father was not there to observe the interaction; but this was followed by the certainty that, if he did not make himself clear to her now, he might not have the opportunity to do so again without Maarten present. “Would you like to sing?” he asked, playing for time.

  “I’d enjoy it much more if you would,” said Constance.

  Piet hesitated. The erotica of Carmen was not at all appropriate. It would be better to speak through music, but what could possibly serve? His choice should be moving, to avoid making light of Constance’s feelings, but not melodramatic. Ideally it should end cheerfully but convey an emphatic rejection. What on earth …?

  And then, as inspiration so often did, it came as he needed it. He raised his eyes to Constance’s and very, very gently played the first haunting chords of La Traviata.

  Jacobina, who had observed the entire exchange, smiled and bent over her embroidery. Louisa was impressed too, though she also experienced a strange and contradictory desire to puncture Mr. Barol’s improbable perfection, and see him fail. Hilde Wilken had left the room, and Didier, who never went to the opera, did not understand until Piet explai
ned later. But Constance understood and as she listened to Piet play the overture to a story about disastrous liaisons between the classes and the tragedies they lead to, and as he looked at her firmly, making his meaning plain, she abruptly abandoned the effort of seducing him—because she preferred to renounce a challenge rather than fail at it. She picked up a copy of La Mode Illustrée and buried herself behind it and later submitted to Louisa’s scalding mockery without much minding. For this was Constance Vermeulen-Sickerts’ essential genius: that she was able to desist from desiring what she could not have—a trick that, had they emulated it, might have saved her male acquaintances much misery.

  Piet was right: Maarten Vermeulen-Sickerts was watching his behavior closely, and when Maarten saw him resist Constance’s assault he too wondered whether he was a uranist. But no. He was not like Mr. Blok. This made the young man’s restraint all the more creditable and induced in Maarten a warm paternal regard he demonstrated in all sorts of touching ways. He explained to Piet how successful enterprises are run: with iron confidence, flexibility, and a willingness to innovate. He took him over every inch of the house, describing its contents with the delight of the self-made connoisseur, and lingered in particular over the cabinets in his office and the statues of Paris, Athena and Aphrodite that reigned over the staircase hall.

  It was Paris’ task, at the request of Zeus, king of the gods, to decide which of the goddesses was the most beautiful. “And that is why,” said Maarten, pointing upwards, “I never take sides between my daughters and my wife. Paris’ decision started the Trojan War.”

  It did not occur to Maarten, as he watched Constance lay unsuccessful siege to Piet Barol and steeled himself to intervene if necessary, that it was not his daughters’ virtue the young man threatened but his wife’s. Jacobina betrayed no indication of remembering Piet’s first afternoon in the house, but she thought of it constantly and was not entirely relieved that Piet seemed to have forgotten it.