Alone in Amsterdam

Even the shopkeepers looked like professors, the street sweepers like jazz musicians. There was never a city more rationally ordered.

Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

Figure 1.

The Syndics of the Draper's Guild, oil on canvas, 1662, by Rembrandt van Rijn, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands

On a quiet morning in late November, the eyes of five men lock with mine as I approach the canvas of The Syndics of the Drapers' Guild, one of Rembrandt van Rijn's most successful group portraits. As an undisputed masterpiece from an undisputed genius of the Golden Age of Dutch art, the super-sized painting occupies most of a wall in Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum. These are the "Dutch Masters" often associated with cigar boxes. In 1662, they were the well-heeled businessmen of Holland's flourishing economy, a corporate board of directors huddled over a ledger whose job it was to monitor the quality of dyed cloth in the Netherlands. Surely they kept track of volumes of data. Surely they knew of each shipment of indigo delivered from the Far East by the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC), or the Dutch East-India Company. Ships owned by this unique corporation, which was chartered in 1602 by the Dutch government, sailed in and out of Amsterdam's harbor like clockwork, unloading their cargo of spices, indigo, coffee, and textiles. Perhaps a shipment had just arrived from Java or Sri Lanka. Perhaps there was a problem to solve, a deal to be made on this very day. We will never know.

As I walk toward these men in their crisp collars and dark suits, I have the sensation that my presence here, nearly 350 years later, has interrupted a conversation. All but the man at the center, whose eyes shift slightly to his right, stare at me with polite disdain. I am an unwelcome intrusion for him as well, but he is momentarily distracted by the man with goatee rising slowly from his chair, the one who seems to be whispering under his breath as he lifts himself up, eyes fixed on the intruder in the room.

"Wait a minute," he seems to say in hushed tones. Then, "Who's there?"

"A woman from America, come to see your Golden Age, come to pay homage to your improbable city, your flows of global culture, your flowers and swans, your watery world that never seems to rest," I reply.

"You come here alone?"

"Yes. Women travel alone now," I say, standing my ground.

I consider asking a question about their beloved Rembrandt for whom each of them must have sat long hours in order to achieve what art historian Helen Gardner described as a "harmonizing of the instantaneous action with the permanent likeness" of each man. In the same room, I see Rembrandt's shadowy self-portrait at 22 and self-depicted many years later as St. Paul, naked with human isolation.

"Alone in Amsterdam?" The man poised to turn a page joins the conversation. I can see that he is half-amused, imagining me squeezing in and out of taverns in my peculiar clothes, sidling past overloaded wagons in the street. The others, even the servant, the one in the back without a hat, wear masks of suspicious resistance. Do I see fingers tightening around a sack of money on the far right? Does that one imagine me a thief?

"Yes. Alone in Amsterdam," I reply. "So sorry to disturb you."

And so I leave them there, frozen forever in speechless disapproval.

* * *

Out in the street, a damp day huddles beneath a canopy of low-lying clouds. A flat gray light falls over the canals, turning ripples of dark water into heavy steel. When sun appears, these waterways reflect the tall, shimmering façades of narrow brick houses. But in this light, all is gray.

I walk along the Museumplein past the Van Gogh Museum toward the Van Baerlestrasse where I spot a café on the corner. Interludes spent in cafés and pubs have always been as much a part of my travels as museums and monuments...