A Conspiracy of Paper

SEVENTEEN

THE NEXT AFTERNOON, Elias came to pay me a visit, puffed up with joy and quite ready to hug himself. He had hardly walked through my door before his news exploded forth. “There’s been a terrible misfortune with a brother playwright,” he said with pleasure. “Some blockhead named Croger, who was to have had a play completed for Cibber, has gone and died without finishing his work. Absolutely dead. My play has been accepted and is to be performed next week.”

I heartily congratulated my friend upon his good fortune. I turned to reach for a decanter that we might share a celebratory drink, but Elias had somehow reached it before I turned around, and he handed me a glass. We drank to his success, and he threw himself down in one of my armchairs.

“Is this not unusual, for a play to be rushed into production so quickly?” I asked.

“Shockingly uncommon,” he assured me, “but Cibber is the sort of theatre manager who is always determined to have something new early in the season, and when he heard my Unsuspecting Lover, he was entirely taken with it. In no small part, I think, because I designed the character of Count Fopworth to be played by Cibber. As I read through the play—and I can tell you, reading through an entire play by one’s self, trying to get all the inflections just so, is no easy task—he kept interrupting when I read Fopworth to exclaim, ‘I think there may be something in this piece,’ or ‘That has a delightful turn.’ The key is not to write plays that are good, but rather to write plays with roles for the manager. I am so very pleased with myself I shall burst.”

I listened to him talk at some length about Mr. Cibber, about the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, about the actresses he liked there, and so forth. Elias then explained to me that he would be exceptionally busy with the rushed rehearsals, but that he still wished to assist as best he could with the inquiry. I then told him of my encounter with Bloathwait, and I asked if he had ever heard of Martin Rochester, the man my father’s slayer now worked for, but Elias shook his head.

“I cannot think how to track him down,” I complained. “A man no one can find working for another no one knows. Perhaps if I haunt Jonathan’s I might learn something of use.”

Elias smiled. “Can you be certain that you will be spending your time wisely?”

“I cannot,” I explained. “It merely appears to me to be my best option. I hope,” I said with a smile, “to study the general and to learn the particular.”

He nodded. “Very good, Weaver. In the absence of knowledge, you seek out likelihoods. There is hope for you yet.”

Elias pushed himself out of his chair and walked with an unsteady gait to my decanter, which he was displeased to find spent. “What say you, Weaver, that we go forth and celebrate my success? We shall visit the bagnio of your choice and talk probability with the whores.” I saw him looking about my shelves for another bottle of wine.

“I should like nothing better,” I assured him, “but I fear I must continue with this inquiry.”

“I suspected as much,” he replied, having no small difficulty with the word suspected. He then treated me to several soliloquies from his comedy, and though he forgot most of his words, I applauded vigorously. He then announced that he had whoring to attend to and more game bucks than I with whom to share his amusement. He made several attempts at the door handle, and then clumsily departed.

I listened to Elias make loud work of Mrs. Garrison’s stairway, and then sat myself at my desk and once again attempted to read through my father’s pamphlet. I cannot pretend to be shocked to say that my father was no more accessible in prose than he was in conversation. Consider the very first words of this document:

We cannot but be aware that in recent years there has been a general cry, indeed an uproar, over the growing powers in certain factions of Exchange Alley—factions that have made their intentions clear and have striven, against the better wishes of those who would see the nation prosper, to undo that which has been so boldly done in the Kingdom’s interest.

After this first sentence, I determined to begin a course of judicious skimming, which produced a flurry of accusations about the South Sea Company and praise of the Bank of England that swam mercilessly before my eyes. Some portions held my interest more than others; I could not but read closely where my father postulated a conspiracy within the great Company itself: “This forgery can only have been perpetrated with the co-operation of certain elements within South Sea House itself. The Company is as a piece of meat, rotted and crawling with maggots.”

I spent perhaps another hour with the manuscript, skimming about, hoping that somewhere my father had distilled his ideas into an apprehensible conclusion. Once disabused of this hope, I then determined that to understand the issues, my time should be spent not before my father’s pamphlet but in the heat of the fire. So I dressed myself in my best waistcoat and coat, carefully combed and tied my hair, and left my rooms with a very neat appearance. I then made my way to Jonathan’s Coffeehouse, where I was determined to spend a few hours among the engineers of the London financial markets. If I was to understand their intrigues, I reasoned, it was necessary I gain a better feel for these stock-jobbers.

I found the coffeehouse just as vibrant as it had been the day before, and though it was a less entertaining place to spend an afternoon than in a house of pleasure with a drunken Scot, I found myself of the opinion that Exchange Alley, with its bustle of activity, had much of interest. I took a seat at a table, called for a dish of coffee, and began leafing through the papers of the day.

I listened to men shout at one another across the room, debating the merits of this issue or that. Voices cried out to buy. Voices cried out to sell. I could hear arguments conducted in every living language and at least one dead one. Yet, confusing though it may have been, I felt I learned a great deal, and I took a certain pleasure at remaining there, feeling as though I were a bit of the stock-jobbing Jew upon the ’Change. There was something truly infectious about the exuberance of this place where momentous events were always about to happen, a fortune was always about to be made or lost. I had been in many a coffeehouse before where men argued about writers or actresses or politics with unbridled vehemence. Here men argued about their fortunes, and the results of their arguments produced wealth or poverty, notoriety or infamy. The stock-jobber’s coffeehouse turned argument into wealth, words into power, ideas into truth—or something that looked strikingly like truth. I had come of age in an unambiguous world of violence and passions. I felt myself to be among a different species of man now, in a strange and alien land ruled not by the strong but by the cunning and the lucky.

After perhaps three-quarters of an hour, I noticed my uncle’s clerk, Mr. Sarmento, among a group of men I did not recognize, vigorously engaging in their business. A series of documents lay upon a table, and several of the men were reading over these papers. This ritual continued for some time, and then the men all departed on seemingly amicable terms.

Sarmento had in no way indicated that he had seen me, yet when he was done with his business, he folded up his papers and walked purposefully over to my table.

“Shall I join you, Mr. Weaver?” he asked in a tone as blank and inscrutable as his face. I could find nowhere any trace of the puppy who had bounded after Mr. Adelman at my uncle’s house. Here I only saw the grim visage of a man who found life but a series of greater and lesser tensions.

“I should be delighted,” I said with a politeness that hung in the air like a foul odor.

“I cannot imagine what business brings you to this coffeehouse,” he said absently. “Are you thinking of involving yourself in the funds?”

“Yes,” I said dryly. “I believe I shall pursue a life as a licensed broker upon the ’Change.”

“You are mocking me, but you have still not answered my question.”

I took a sip of coffee. “What do you think I am doing here, Mr. Sarmento?”

He appeared astonished at this question. “I would not think you so bold as to speak of it openly. I never presume to judge Mr. Lienzo’s business, but I should hope for his sake that you would be subtle. You still recall, I hope, what your family is.”

Sarmento was hard to read, but he had the look of satisfaction that comes with having pieced together a complex puzzle. “What do you know of the matter?” I asked gently. I thought perhaps I could mislead him into telling me—I do not know what. I only knew that I did not trust him nor he me, and that struck me as reason enough to push onward.

“I assure you I know enough. Perhaps more than I ought.”

“I should very much like to know more than I ought,” I said with great calm.

Sarmento smiled in return. It was the crooked and misshapen smile of a man to whom mirth came unnaturally. “I do not believe you would. Do you know what I think, Mr. Weaver? I think you have ambitions that are well beyond your abilities.”

“I am grateful for your good opinion of me.” I bowed slightly.

“What? Must we conduct ourselves with the duplicitous politenesses of our English neighbors? That is not our way—all of this ‘you honor me’ and ‘I am your servant’ rubbish. We say what is on our minds.”

I rankled at the idea that I performed the Englishman, that I pretended to something I was not. That this man was a member of my race filled me with a kind of shame. It was a strange thing, for I had grown so used to thinking of myself as a Jew in a very particular way—listening to what the Britons around me had to say about Jews, wondering how I should feel about their words. But here was something else; over the last decade I had little experience of thinking of myself as a Jew in relation to other Jews. Now Sarmento made me feel something else—a kind of strange defensiveness, as though I were a member of a club, and I wished to see him cast out.

“Of what do you wish to speak, Mr. Sarmento?” I asked at last.

“Tell me about your conversation in Mr. Adelman’s carriage the other night.”

I pressed my hands together so as to appear a man deep in thought. In fact, I was deep in thought, but I wished to appear thinking thoughts of cleverness, not of confusion. “First, sir, you speak of my business with Mr. Lienzo, and now you inquire of my business with Mr. Adelman. Is there any business I have of which you do not wish to speak?”

“Business?” he asked in astonishment. “Is it business you conduct with Adelman?”

“I did not say that we had reached any agreement,” I explained. “Only that we spoke of business. But I would still very much like to know why you inquire so nearly into my affairs.”

“You misunderstand me,” Sarmento stammered, suddenly attempting to appear obsequious. “I am merely interested. Even concerned. Adelman may not be the man you think him to be, and I do not wish for you to suffer.”

“To suffer, you say? Why, did I not see you fawning all over Adelman the other night, and now you wish to warn me off him? I cannot claim to understand you.”

“I am a man who knows his way about ’Change Alley, sir, and you do not. You would be wise to remember this. But men such as Adelman and your uncle are men of business, trained in the arts of deception and flattery.”

I abruptly sat up straight, startling Mr. Sarmento. “What say you about my uncle?”

“Your uncle is not a man to be trifled with, sir. I hope you do not take him lightly. You perhaps see him as a kindly older gentleman, but I can assure you he is extremely ambitious, and it is an ambition I have come to admire and to emulate.”

“Explain yourself more clearly,” I demanded.

“Come, come. I know you are steeped now in your family business. Your uncle throws you a few coins, and you fetch them like a dog. But even you must surely see that it is strange that your uncle should have such a fond friendship with a man hated by your father.”

My uncle throw me coins? Adelman hated by my father? I wanted to know more, but I dared not expose myself by asking.

“Do not play with me,” I said at last. “And I should remind you to watch your tongue when you speak to a man who would not think twice about ripping it from your head.”

“I have no time for games, Weaver.” He mocked my name with his pronunciation. “I am also, I promise you, not a man to be trifled with. You are no longer in the ring, and you cannot beat men out of your way. If you wish to fight in ’Change Alley, sir, you will find you are outmatched by men such as myself, and here we use far more dangerous weapons than our fists.”

He looked at me in the most unanimated fashion, as though he shared a table with a piece of vegetation. There was nothing threatening about the gestures of his body, nor the look in his face. “I confess I don’t know how to understand you, sir,” I said finally. “You seem for all the world to wish to threaten me, and yet I know of no reason why you should be my enemy.”

Sarmento again offered me something not entirely unlike a smile. “If you have no wish to be my enemy, then I have no wish to threaten you.”

“What is it you fear of me?” I asked him. “That I shall assume your place in my uncle’s business? That I shall marry Miriam? That I shall challenge you to fight me? Let us be honest with each other.”

“I scorn your mockery,” he said—I cannot say angrily, for his tone changed not a whit. “You would be well advised to be cautious of me. And of your uncle—and his friends.”

Before I could respond, Sarmento had risen to his feet, shoved a short trader out of his way, and forced his way into the crowd. I was unsure of what he meant to imply about my uncle, but his warning me of Adelman troubled me more than anything else he had said, for Sarmento now wished to make insinuations of a man whom, at my uncle’s house, he had wished nothing more than to please.

Driven by curiosity, I arose from my table and made my way toward the exit, where I saw Sarmento just leaving. Waiting a moment, I followed suit, and watched him head north toward Cornhill. Once upon this busy street, it was easy for me to follow closely. He walked briskly, weaving in and out of the greedy mobs come to do business upon the ’Change.

He made his way west, to where Cornhill intersects with Threadneedle and Lombard streets, and here the thickness of the crowd began to thin out a little, so I hung back, took an instant to throw a penny at a beggar, and continued to follow at a safe distance.

By now Cornhill had turned into Poultry, and Sarmento made a right upon the much more sparsely populated Grocers Alley. I waited a moment and followed him into the alley leading to Grocers Hall, which I reminded myself was the home of the Bank of England. Sarmento veered off toward the massive building, which, like the Royal Exchange, stood as an architectural testament to the excesses of the last century.

Sarmento hurried toward a coach standing before the Hall. That I might move closer, I approached a group of gentlemen nearby and, keeping one eye upon this coach, I affected a country accent and explained that I had lost my way and required the quickest route to London Bridge. Londoners may not be the most gregarious lot in the world, but there is little they love so much as to give directions, and now, while these five gentlemen vied with each other to provide me the shortest walk, the coach began to move slowly, making its way past me. Sarmento, I could see, engaged himself in deep conversation with a man with a wide face full of undersized features. The smallness of his nose and mouth and eyes was made even more absurd by an enormous black wig that piled almost to the ceiling of the coach and undulated down in thick ringlets. It was a face that I had seen but recently and one that I recognized with little difficulty. I cannot say I felt anything so much as utter confusion as I watched Sarmento drive off with Perceval Bloathwait.