Remember the Morning by Thomas Fleming

Author:Thomas Fleming
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2011-04-06T16:00:00+00:00

THREE

FOR THE NEXT TWO MONTHS, PHILIP Hooft watched hungrily as I came and went from his splendid house on the Heerengracht. Each day his eyes seemed to protrude a little further, his pendulous lower lip seemed to thicken and droop another fraction of an inch. Soon I could think of him only as the Frog. Behind this derision I was scrupulously polite and occasionally flirtatious. I complimented him on his colorful Parisian clothes. Everyone in Amsterdam aped the Paris fashions. I let him take me iceboating on the frozen Amstel, and rode with him and Tesselschade in a schuit—a canal boat, towed by horses—for a visit to the Hague, the ornate capital of the Netherlands, where I was presented at the court of the current Prince of Orange, the country’s theoretical ruler.

I attended concerts, plays, readings of poems as Philip Hooft’s ghostly third, the woman of his wilderness desires. Occasionally we encountered Vondel, who one night asked me candidly how long I was planning to torture his friend. Was my skill in this black art something I had learned among the Senecas?

I pretended I did not know what he was talking about. “In America, we women are innocent about such matters. Why don’t you put that in your paper?” I said.

At the Hague, we met a fat cheerful older woman, the Countess Van Osteen, who greeted Philip with great affection. She had read about me in Vondel’s paper but assured me she did not believe a word of it. The countess talked in brilliant spurts of sarcasm and wit about the probability of war in Europe between the Catholic and Protestant powers. The Spanish were prodding the French into it, hoping they would demolish the Netherlands. The Dutch were depending on the English to protect them, in the name of Protestant solidarity. “We certainly can’t protect ourselves,” she said. “Our so-called government is a joke.”

Tesselschade Hooft agreed. She explained to me that the Prince of Orange was more figurehead than ruler. Fearing tyranny, when the Dutch won their independence from Spain they had left most of the power in the hands of the cities, who frequently chose to ignore the Hague’s feeble attempts at guiding the country. “Politics bores us. We prefer to make money—or love,” Tesselschade said.

“At my age, money is more interesting,” the Countess Van Osteen said. She began quizzing Philip Hooft about the best buys on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange.

On the way back to Amsterdam, Tesselschade told Catalyntie that the countess had been a great beauty in her youth. “Philip’s father was one of her lovers.”

Philip Hooft gazed longingly at me, his frog’s eyes pleading. See? they groaned, I am asking you for nothing truly forbidden. Over the past three months, I had almost grown sorry for him, watching him endure the icy irreversible loathing with which his wife regarded him. However, in the best Dutch tradition, I did not permit pity to interfere with business. I used Philip’s name to obtain a line of credit from

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