Excerpt from 'A Lady Standing':

The young woman stands in the centre of the picture and is looking sideways at the viewer over her be-ribboned and satin-covered shoulder. Her face is in half-shadow, the source of light coming from behind her. She seems as static as the room that she is in, as motionless as the paintings on the wall and the furniture in the room. The painting of Cupid with a golden bow by his side seems ironic, considering the subject matter. Also, it seems odd, seeing paintings in this picture, as if the painter wished to invite the viewer to inspect the work more closely... paintings within a painting.

It has been quite awhile since I last saw this painting, but the artist’s careful brush-strokes remain, capturing the torpid atmosphere of many such warm afternoons, a young woman arrested in an attitude of quiet alertness on the canvas. The artist had been Vermeer. I remember him, standing taut behind the wooden easel, working like one in a trance, such was his fierce concentration. The sweat beading on his neck as he sought to paint the light on Abigail’s face, the light on the wall, the light on the floor. He was a barely-leashed energy, a contrast to Abigail, standing there, her hands poised above the keys of the virginal.

I remember Abigail. Such a serious girl, yet I was totally devoted to her. I had been the one who had carefully sewn back the one pearl on her shoulder that had broken free from the rest. I was the one who had helped arrange the folds on her dress. I had been there, standing in a darkened part of the room, waiting, ready to serve. But most of the time, I just sat there, quietly, and watched Vermeer watch Abigail.
Now and then another memory comes to mind: the harsh scratch of his long sleeves as it brushed the canvas, as his paint patiently recorded the attitude, the quiet expression of Abigail’s face, and the light settling as quietly as dust over one afternoon and the next.

After every sitting, Abigail never stayed long. She would be walking slowly away, pensive, when the sitting had finished for the day, with not a word or a glance in Vermeer’s direction. Not that she was being discourteous to him; it was just her nature to be so, deep in her own thoughts. She would leave him, whilst he carefully covered the canvas with velvet and put away his brushes and oils, ignorant of the covert glances he sent her retreating frame.

He himself had forgotten me sitting there, quiet and unmoving. He seemed racked by some emotion that I could only have guessed at, while he looked at her. After she had passed from his sight, his eyes would stray and wander as if in madness, and then turn to the windows desperately, his mouth agape in a wordless cry of pain, just as the failing light slanted into the darkening room. Long minutes passed, time in which I watched him undergo the silent return to self-composure. He willed himself to a mask of complete self-possession, of unconcern. Then he would quietly leave the room, his artist’s tools by his side, totally unaware of my presence.

I had watched this same drama enacted day after day for almost a year, the time it took for Vermeer to finish the work. The first time I witnessed this private agony, I became mute myself, awed by such emotions. Lingering there after he had gone, hardly aware of time passing, I moved in that empty room, unseeing, yet oddly sensitised to whatever lay in the path of my sight. Even as the light segued into a dusky twilight, my eyes seemingly missed nothing — the mullioned windows, the strict patterning of the tiles on the floor, the keys of the virginal on which Abigail’s cool ivory fingers had touched earlier. I did not understand my emotions then, or why they were so strong.

My eyes then lit on a black-framed painting. A golden cherub boy was enigmatically holding up a grainy white card in his chubby left hand. I had stared at that card, wondered to myself why it arrested me so. Unable to see clearly from where I was standing, I carefully carried and placed right underneath it a blue velvet-covered chair on which I could stand. Closer and closer, the image neared my eye. The room dimmed, almost imperceptibly, as the sun sank another degree into the earth. Black faded paint had traced out curious words with painstaking care: perfectus amor est nisi ad unum. Cupid’s painted eyes then seemed to lock onto mine, unnerving me profoundly. This picture is in Vermeer’s painting, I thought. Then it seemed as if I came to, returning to myself from a trance. I stepped down to the floor and replaced the chair where it had been. After a last glance, I closed the door behind me.

The next day, I asked Vermeer what those words meant. He explained it to me absent-mindedly, in that oddly accented way he had. His attention was elsewhere. In-between the painted Cupid on the wall and the Cupid in the portrait was an empty space in which Abigail had so recently occupied.

‘Perfect love is but for one lover,’ he had breathed in an undertone I barely caught. The room became still. As motes of dust sifted downwards in a nearby patch of sunlight, I watched as Vermeer placed his tools in a wooden case and snap it shut. Then he was gone. But in my mind, an after-image seemed to remain, of him standing there in front of his painting, as his brush slowly stroked a rose-ivory colour on Abigail’s right cheek, his strong, thin jaw tightening from the effort of concentration.

Abigail, to my knowledge, had never asked Vermeer why he had positioned the Cupid with such particular care behind her, probably unaware that it was even there. In the many nights when I had helped with her dress or readied her room, not once did she ask a question about him. The only time I can remember her referring to Vermeer’s painting was on the night before the last sitting. She had said to me, ‘He is a good artist, Maria, but I am glad that these sessions will soon be over. Wearing that dress, having to stand still... it is getting tedious,’ and with that she had dismissed me.

It was in the early part of the evening. The painting had just been set aside to dry, the still-wet oils just lately brushed there by Vermeer. During that last session, Vermeer had been no different, his concentration seemed unwavering and sure, yet I had noticed him lingering on details when it seemed unnecessary. In my eyes, his painting was perfect and complete in every way. He had seemed to have captured the light and made it manifest, a tangible thing, as if it were a muslin veil laid on Abigail’s lips and eyes.