The Veil

By Kelsey Hutton

I was born in the Dutch Republic in the year of our Lord, 1654. My earliest memory is of gripping a rain-bitten wood rail and watching, enrapt, the light play on the waters of the canals that were scattered throughout Delft. One bright ribbon would appear, then dance away to resurface in a different spot. The servants hated when I was caught in this fashion, since I would refuse to budge until, according to my nurse Gerde, all the fattiest cuts of beef were gone from the market. 

I lived leisurely in a home of relative wealth. My father was an art dealer, and mediated somewhat successfully between fickle artists and demanding patrons. Too preoccupied with business, he had no patience for petty concerns like an underwhelming son. 

Our home, on the other hand, constantly entertained me. It was a gallery, a market, and a grand meeting hall by turns. One week, I might find our salon covered frame to frame with landscapes in every shade of new-growth green, no picture larger than my two hands together; another, I might find our floors littered with bookbinders’ trimmings, or women with flushed cheeks posing for painters by windows, catching the light in their eyes. 

Others laughed at me for this, because I spoke so little in general, but I loved having people about. I would tuck myself into a corner and memorize the deep hues of a dress, the way it cast peacock or persimmon-tinted shadows on the walls. At least to my eyes, they were always tinted. Gerde would say that the new serving girl must have fed me poisonous mushrooms; I said she was not looking hard enough.

Thus my childhood passed in a swirl of colour and paint and people, never staying the same from one season to the next, but never truly changing either. I watched – and made my own feeble attempts to paint – the liveliness of my home from the comfortable position of a spectator, never participant. My father did his best to ignore me; he used up all his good graces on his customers, and had none left for me. My mother was a murky figure whose only distinctive feature was the iridescent set of pearls she wore proudly every day. Other than that, when I picture her I cannot tell where her outline ends and the wall behind her begins. It lies guilty in my mind, now, but when I was a lad I knew the texture of Rembrandt better than I knew the contours of my mother’s face. 

When I was in my eleventh year, I met Hana. She was the niece of Liesje, my mother’s personal servant. She was a few years younger than I, illiterate, and a maid. I never spent much time on serving maids—I think because they were always forced to wear drab brown, never a colour that excited my interest. However, something else caught my attention and brought me to her. 

God had taken away Hana’s hearing. Of course I did not really understand what it meant to be deaf. The realization that her ears were truly dead came only one day when Hana did not even move when a woman screamed behind her in the marketplace. 

However, not being able to hear the mourning doves coo only gave her more joy in their beauty, and she was fiercely clever. I believe wholeheartedly that nothing escaped her sight, and she and I delighted in learning to communicate in our own way.

From those late days of boyhood on, Hana was my constant companion. I went to her when my mother died of a fever the year after we met. Hana was the one who welcomed me home when my father dragged me back from the home of a friend of Gerde’s. I had tried to run away to be a painter’s apprentice, only to learn how deeply my father disdained the people who produced his fortune. When I was in my fourteenth year, almost a man, but also a boy who sometimes missed his old nurse, we became closer still when we discovered our most sophisticated form of “talking.” 

Hana wanted to describe a passing tulip that was particularly elegant. Out for the day, we had nothing to sketch with—our principal form of expression—so she grabbed my hand and traced its gentle slope onto my palm. She was astoundingly faithful to the cup of a tulip’s petal, and I could see it clearly in my mind based on her touch. 

We both surprised each other, and after that we dispensed with scraps of parchment and used our palm-speech almost exclusively. Its core was always the nouns, the things we loved to draw and show to each other, but we soon added verbs and phrases to expand our vocabulary. We both enjoyed the challenge, and it was good exercise for my budding artist’s mind.

When I was in my 17th year, for St. Martin’s Day we escaped my tutoring and her chores to a tiny courtyard encircled with tall, wiry trees and people from every cut of cloth—glass-blowers with close-cut beards, coin-counting women with smacking lips, sailors whose rolling gaits and bobbing knees hadn’t yet adjusted to land. I had my sketching charcoal, and Hana was pointing out different folk who caught her eye. I would catch them with my gaze, then focus on the sense we didn’t share; listening to the click of their boots or the jingle of their jewelry, to the tone of their voice, the humour or resentment or raspiness in their speech. I then drew either gently rolling lines, sharp shapes or rough shading, anything that their sounds brought to mind. 

When I think back on it now, this was likely more for my benefit than hers. She never acted as though her life was diminished for not being able to hear, but her eyes danced nonetheless like sunlight on the canals to see how I translated my world. 

The afternoon light was dimming surprisingly fast, and I had to squint more than usual. As evening approached, I stood up and gestured that we should return home. She did not move, and cocked her head questioningly at me. She pointed to the sun, and I gaged its position. It was still mid-afternoon.

I slowly sat back down, and put the charcoal away. Hana shook my wrist and reached for it, but I broke away and growled at her like a brute. Her hands flew away like birds, and I left her there to find her own way home. 

I have cried only twice in my life. The first time was when I watched the face of a man publicly hung turn from peach to the colour of a rotten eggplant. The second was when my father asked for his navy-plumed hat, and from behind the gradually darkening veil that separated me from the world, I could not tell which one he meant. 

Of course Hana discovered my secret, which I tried desperately to hide. She knew what it was to be forced to make up what everyone else took for granted. Unfortunately, though my father may not have been an affectionate man, he was not a fool. 

Several months after I stopped painting and studying with my tutor, I tripped over my third stool in one evening and Hana had to rush to catch me before I fell.

“Stop!” my father bellowed, and watchful Hana drew away as he charged towards me. “What are you doing?”

“Father, I am sorry,” I tried. “I was thinking of another matter, and—”

“Boy!” he ordered. “Look at me!” I did, though I struggled to distinguish his eyes in the encroaching dark. I could not remember what colour they were.

His suspicions were confirmed. He turned savagely on Hana, who took a sharp inhale of breath. “What have you done?” he shouted. “You have brought your affliction from God into this house! You spread your disease, you destroy my only son!”

I surprisingly caught his arm mid-swing. Hana fled. My father shouted at her again to return and I shouted back. I raged against my father, against God, against my prison that had no walls, but which I could never, ever escape. I smashed vases and tore paintings off the walls—which ones?—and screamed until my throat was raw and I coughed up blood.

I locked myself in my chambers for the next few weeks, and spoke not a word. I ignored callers and servants and businessmen, even Hana. I only watched my black shadow gradually cross back and forth along the length of my wall. 

In the fourth week, my father announced he was sending me to Portugal. For a cure, he said. To escape his shame, my heart told me. Blood no longer ran in my veins, only lead. He took my silence for acquiescence, and I allowed it. 

He asked for one last thing, as if he knew it would be the last time he saw me. He wanted me to pose for a painting. To this request, he waited until he finally elicited my nod.

On the day the painter came, my father got me out of bed and into an outfit with ostentatious feathers and ridiculous puffed sleeves. I stood, listless, in a corner. The painter sketched for a while before he shook his head. “There is no life in this pose,” he protested.

Hana silently came in to give us the midday meal. Hana, who had warm eyes the colour of honey and a laugh that always trebled my own. 

I finally awoke. I grabbed her hand, pulling her into the set up, and wrapped my shaking arms around her. 

“Boy, get away from her.” My father took a stride towards us, but I let go soon enough.

“With her,” I said. It was as much emotion as I had shown in a fortnight. “Or not at all.”

My father sputtered while I explained to Hana what I wanted to do. My fingers moved quickly in her palm. “She is like my sister, after all. Why not make it a family portrait?”

Our roles were reversed now, Hana and I, from our once-playful games in the bustling courtyards of Delft where I tried to convey people’s essence in sound. Now, she looked to my father’s expression and translated the imprinted emotions for me.

Pain, Hana described through my hand. You’ve hurt him.

“Do as you wish,” my father finally said with a corkscrew twist to his voice, and thumped out of the room.

So Hana and I stood as was most natural for us. I looked at what little of her pale, caring face I could still make out, and she drew in my palm, alternatively teasing and concerned. 

I did not try to explain that I would leave soon. We had never developed a word for Portugal. 

After a while, she simply held my trembling hand while the artist worked. In truth, it was all I could have asked for. 

When I left the harbour the next day at sunrise, I could not see the fiery rose and vain purple of the newborn sun. I could no longer see the light guiding our way on the swift-moving water of the canals. But I stood top deck, pressed against the damp rails, tasting wind and salt on my lips. 

I cradled one arm with the other, and held onto the rhythmic clap and call of the waves. My swollen eyes slipped shut.

Some things I had already forgotten. Others I would still mourn. But I would remember the weight of her hand, the love in her hold, and the promise of clever fingers across my palm.

Kelsey Hutton is a Métis author from Treaty 1 territory and the homeland of the Métis Nation, also known as Winnipeg, Canada. Her work has appeared in Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Augur Magazine and others. When she’s not beading or cooking, you can find her at KelseyHutton.com, on Instagram at @KelseyHuttonAuthor or on X at @KelHuttonAuthor.