Rivas’ collection of short stories includes one about a young man who studies diligently to go to university and leave the small village for the big city. This story, also the title of the collection, sees the young man travel to Amsterdam to the Rijksmuseum just to see Vermeer’s painting De Melkmeid. After his trip, he travels back to his village to visit his Mother, a milkmaid. He shows her the postcard of Vermeer’s painting. She smiles. The next day, she gives her son a photograph of her as a young girl of 16, taken in the 1930s. He notices how similar she looks to Vermeer’s milkmaid. All his life he wanted to see this painting, and he realizes that his milkmaid was with him all along.
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