The Company of One Dutchman

There is among us a Dutchman who first came to Rouen many years ago, sailing from the colony the Dutch keep across the ocean - Suriname, a feverish place of rivers and forests which, he once remarked with perfect seriousness, produces more mosquitoes than men. How such a fellow came from that distant country to labour among French architects and surveyors I cannot say, only that he arrived with letters of introduction and a reputation for uncommon skill. We employed him when the works about the cathedral required new surveys and drafts. The Cathedral of Rouen, as any man of Europe knows, is among the grandest churches of Christendom: its great Gothic tower rising above the city, its western façade crowded with saints and kings in stone, and its forest of flying buttresses pressing against the nave like the ribs of some colossal beast. Such a structure requires endless plans, measurements, and careful drawings before even a single block of stone may be set in place. In this work the Dutchman proved a phenomenon. He was a fierce-looking creature, broad of shoulder and silent of habit, with the sort of beard that gives the impression it was cut with a sailor’s knife. Yet he possessed the calm patience of a monk when seated before parchment and ink. More curious still was his method. He would examine our existing drafts for some time, nodding slowly, then excuse himself and retire alone to a small chamber off the drafting room. There he would remain for several hours. We heard little from within - no scratching of quills, no muttering of calculations, no sound at all that might suggest the labour of a draftsman at work. Then, without ceremony, he would emerge again. And upon the table he would place drawings that would normally occupy a team of men for days: entire buttresses rendered in immaculate proportion, full sectional studies of arches, columns, vaulting ribs - every measurement neat, every line exact. It was as if a workshop of a hundred diligent hands had been condensed into one solitary Dutchman with a bottle of ink. Naturally we suspected some trick. More than once we wondered whether he had quietly taken other draughtsmen into his employ and hidden them in the room to assist him. Yet this seemed impossible, for the chamber was small and plainly furnished, and he always entered alone. Nor did we ever hear the bustle of a concealed workforce. And yet the work appeared. Perfectly. Swiftly. For years this continued. Indeed it has continued for nearly a decade now. I should clarify that I am not recounting the curious habits of some long-dead colleague whose talents may have grown exaggerated with time. No - this Dutchman remains very much among us. He still disappears into that same little room for hours at a stretch, and he still emerges with drawings that no ordinary man could reasonably have produced in the time allowed. None of us have ever solved the mystery of it. We exchange theories, we watch the door, we listen for sounds, and yet the matter remains entirely opaque. I can only conclude that the man possesses some peculiar gift - something bordering on sorcery. For there is no other explanation that fits the evidence.