Girl In Hyacinth Blue

The decree from the Germans is eight months old, and Hannah’s father has not yet sent his pigeons off to his partner in the diamond business in Antwerp. Now, if he is caught doing so, instead of turning them in, as the decree says of all animal ownership, then he might be in serious trouble. So one day, he asks Hannah to write a note: “Kill my pigeons” (37). Her father knows he can’t ask his partner to feed them, but he must not return the pigeons either. He has Hannah write instructions about the last things his partner should do before he kills the pigeons: pet them, love them, and feed them till they’re fat. Then, he ties the note to the pigeons and throws them into the air and watches as they fly off.

The next day, Hannah sees the pigeons returning. It’s too late to get rid of them, and she grows afraid: “She felt her breath leak out and leave only blackness” (39). She reads the return note attached the pigeons and learns the Germans have taken over the diamond trade in Antwerp. She watches her father pet and stroke his birds with love, and she wishes they could be freed into the wild, which would be fitting since it’s Passover. She knows logically it would be the cruelest way to kill them. She waits every day, wondering if this will be the day her father kills the birds while she watches her mother and grandmother clean everything for Passover. She sits and looks at the beautiful painting of the girl in the blue dress. She recalls the day her father purchased it at an auction to benefit the German Jewish refugees who had fled the Nazis. He paid a lot for it.

Just before Passover, Hannah’s mother gives Tobias, Hannah’s brother, the only food she has for the pigeons—potato skins. Tobias is worried about what they’ll feed them tomorrow. Hannah listens to Grandmother Hilde scolding her mom for making the boy sad. Then, she yells at Hannah to help her mother. Hannah refuses, and Hilde shames her until her mother asks Hannah to go to the store for the parsley and the egg to go on the Passover plate. Hannah agrees and puts on her sweater with the yellow star. Before she leaves, she hears her grandmother shouting at her mother about Hannah’s insolence and laziness, lack of maturity, and lack of friends. She yells, “You’ve got to do something, or she won’t have the strength” (48). Hannah slams the door on her way out. She thinks how she had a best friend named Maria, but now Maria won’t speak to her anymore because she’s Jewish.

As she walks on, she sees two German soldiers and fear grips her; “For a moment, the whole world stopped” (49). She wets her pants and begins to sweat. She must jump out of the way because the Germans won’t move. Things are getting scary. She isn’t sure what’s happening but knows it’s bad. A few minutes later, she sees a Jewish family heading to Westerbork, a German concentration camp. She catches the eye of the scared boy. She doesn’t understand why them and not her.

Later, Tobias brings in one of the pigeons’ feathers and brushes it along a wooden spoon where the crumbs from the cooking are. Hannah’s father takes the feather, the spoon and the crumbs and puts them in a paper bag to be burnt the next morning. That night, while Tobias sleeps, Hannah looks at him and sees how much he resembles the boy in the street. In the morning, the family watches while Sol, Hannah’s father, burns the bag and its contents. Hannah thinks, as the flames converge from either end of the bag, that it looks like the red sea converging, not parting.

Later, just before sundown and the start of the Passover holiday, Hannah dusts the painting of the girl while her father and Tobias leave to gather up the two German refugees for Passover. Grandmother Hilde believes that the girl in the painting is looking out the window waiting for her future husband. Hannah rolls her eyes. She says the only thing that matters is that the girl is thinking. It doesn’t matter what she’s thinking, only that she is thinking. Her mother asks Hannah if that is why she likes the girl in the painting. Hannah says yes, but she also likes the girl because she knows the girl. Hannah gets up, goes to the chicken coop and kills the pigeons. Her mother knows what she is doing and afterward quietly tells her to wash her hands. Hannah hears her mother warn her grandmother to be silent. She says, “This is one time, in your son’s home, you will say nothing, Hilde. Nothing” (58).

Her father and Toby arrive with the two German Jewish refugees. One is a boy about Tobias’s age. Hannah’s mom keeps Tobias busy getting things ready for the Passover dinner to deter him from taking the boy to see the pigeons. Then, Hannah’s mom pulls the Delftware sabbath candles from the sideboard and tells Hannah that they were her great-great-grandmother’s. She says that Hannah should wash them and put them on the table, they are hers now, for tonight and forever. As the sun sets, Hannah’s mother passes the lighting of the sabbath candles to her daughter, and Hannah watches the candlelight illuminate the image of the girl in the painting. She knows why this night is different from all other nights. 

On an afternoon stroll, Laurens and his wife, Digna, watch as their daughter, Johanna, leans into her fiancé, Fritz. Laurens does not approve of the union. He believes they are too conspicuously happy. He enjoys when the dog, Dirk, tries to get between the two lovebirds. But there is one moment in which he is moved by the joy between them, which hints that Laurens might be thinking more about himself in love than his daughter.

As they walk, Digna suggests to Laurens that they should give them a gift: the painting of the girl at the table. They call the painting, Girl With a Sewing Basket. Laurens disagrees. Neither of them believes it’s a Vermeer, but they both love the painting. He suggests she give them one of her embroidery adages instead. Laurens admits that he bought the painting because it reminded him of a girl he once knew: “The way the girls is looking out the window […] waiting for someone. And her hand. Upturned and so delicate. Inviting a kiss” (67). Digna is shocked since he gave her the painting for their anniversary.

Laurens tells Digna about the girl. He dare not look at the expression on his wife’s face, but he wonders if she sees the sweetness he does when he speaks about his first love. He is clueless to the fact that it hurts his wife. As the conversation continues, he tells her intimate details about the woman and why the relationship didn’t work out. When Digna asks if he loved her, he doesn’t answer, but it’s obvious he did.

Laurens finally realizes Digna’s hurt: “He felt, rather than saw, Digna move away” (71). He wants to tell Digna the times he remembers being with her, but her straight back and the way she appears makes him feel tongue-tied. Later, when Fritz and Johanna come into the warm house, they notice that something has changed. Johanna thinks her mother’s sudden bad mood has to do with her love for Fritz. Fritz leaves early, and Johanna asks her father if he is happy for her. She tells him that she never knew love could bring a person such a sense of power. Later, Digna picks up her embroidery. Laurens asks her what adage she is embroidering now. She tells him the Latin and then translates it for him: “Remember no wrongs” (75).

Laurens goes outside and stands near the canal. He thinks of his old flame, Tanneke, and remembers how much she incited his lust and how fast he’d fallen for her. He wonders if it was Tanneke, himself, or the euphoria of first love that made him remember. He knows it’s the latter and wants to tell Digna that he doesn’t love Tanneke, but he decides he should wait till the awkwardness dissipates. He thinks of all the times he has looked at the painting of the girl in blue and thought not so much of Tanneke, as of love, and the way one should pay attention to it. Before returning inside, he thinks about the ordinariness of his love for Digna, how unspoiled and beautiful it is.

Inside, he sees Digna has stopped sewing. She tells him she took her cue from the painting—in the painting, the girl is not sewing. She tells Laurens she looked up the Latin word that was part of the adage she was sewing. She tells him how after Erasmus liberated Athens from the Thirty Tyrants, he issued a decree that prohibited bringing up the past. They call the decree Amnestia. Amnesty. Laurens wells up with tears. He knows then that they will give the painting to their daughter. He wonders if Digna will hang the adage she has stopped embroidering for the moment, on the wall in place of the painting, but she would never do that. He tells Digna that if the girl in the painting could look in, at them, and not out the window, she would see the two most enviable people in the world. Digna smiles and tells him that if he looks long enough, out or in, he will be glad at who he is.

Back in time to the late 1700s: Claudine, a wealthy woman in an arranged marriage, is unhappy. She and her husband, Gerard, have left Paris and moved to the Netherlands. Claudine does not like the Dutch. They are out of step with the latest fashions, and in all other things, backwards. One thing that Claudine likes about the Dutch are the paintings. Gerard has given her one by what he says is a minor artist, Johannes Van der Meer. The painting is of a girl in a blue dress, and it makes Claudine think about the fact that she cannot have children. This is a great disappointment to her and to Gerard, who has always wanted a son. She thinks the gift of the painting is to placate her for the two more years she must spend in the Netherlands. Later, she realizes that her husband has been having an affair with the Countess Maurits, the lady of the Mauritshuis Mansion.

One day, Claudine attends a small orchestra at the somber brick mansion owned by the countess. The countess is in charge of the musical entertainment for the rich people. There, Claudine spots the violinist and instantly finds him attractive. She discreetly asks the countess where she might find him. The countess tells Claudine that he is staying at the Oude Doelen, a hotel where Claudine herself stayed when she and her husband first moved there. Claudine realizes she needs two things to seduce him; an invitation to the Binnehoff concert where he will next be playing, and a new gown.

She manages to finagle an invitation to the Binnehoff mansion to watch the concert. She brings her husband. By the middle of the concert, she thinks she’s in love with the violinist: “I was dizzy to the point of rapture” (90). She remembers the moment when her husband began to love the Dutch. They had been in the bedroom dressing, and he called her name. At that moment they both realized they had stopped trying to get pregnant. After that, Gerard became more and more part of the Dutch culture. Now, Claudine is after only one thing; a love affair with the violinist. She hopes it will change her sour mood. Perhaps he could indeed, “with his swirling variations on a theme, sweep away the despair” (94) of her restlessness. She writes to the hotel and invites him, and three of his favorite musicians, to give a chamber concert in her home. He agrees and suggests that they take a ride through the forest.

On the day of the chamber concert in her home, she sends the houseboy to find hyacinths, but he returns to say there are none. She is disappointed, thinking how well they would have matched the gown she had made and the blue smock the girl wears in the painting. During the concert, Claudine is swept away with lust, though she also wonders whether this is the first inkling of love. Afterwards, she flirts with the violinist and lures him into the drawing room, telling him she has a small Dutch masterpiece. She taunts him, saying, “A painting of a young girl, a virgin” (100). He follows her in and in no time, he is beneath her gown, trying to get through all the petticoats and crinoline. She worries that he might be suffocating. As they make love, Claudine hears giggling and sees that she has been caught in the act by none other than Gerard and Countess Maurits, who themselves are having a tryst. The first thing Claudine considers is that now she is free to return to Paris.

Claudine’s husband is furious and screams at her well into the night, concerned that the news will be all over The Hague by the next morning. She doesn’t care. She believes that this betrayal will give her the freedom she desires. She falls asleep thinking what a pity it was there were no hyacinth at the party.

The next day, she wonders how to get the money to leave immediately for Paris. It would take too long to get it from her father. Then, she realizes she has the painting. She will sell it. As she wraps it to take to the art dealers in town, she is struck by the calm beauty in the girl’s face. It unnerves her and causes a pang. She realizes the girl in the painting is a true romantic: “When she became a woman [she] would risk all, sacrifice all, overlook and endure all to be one with her beloved.” Clearly, Claudine is nothing like this, But she has never been in love. She takes the painting but has to leave its papers behind because they are under Gerard’s lock and key. She tries to sell it, but because she has no papers, she is only able to get 24 guilders.

She packs her trunks, and before she leaves, she weeps, not because she is sad, but because the painting would go forth forever without its papers, verifying it’s a Vermeer. The thought makes her cry harder because the painting would be “an illegitimate child, and all illegitimacy, whether of paintings or of children or of love ought to be a source of truer tears than any [she] could muster at parting” (107). As she watches the Dutch countryside from her carriage window, she wordlessly thanks the violin player for freeing her from her sad, loveless life.