The Coffee Trader

16

When the boat reached Amsterdam, Miguel walked a short distance out of his way to see if the two men would follow him, but after huddling together in a brief meeting of bobbing heads they both walked off toward the Exchange. Miguel stood for a few minutes by the canal and gazed at the overcast sky before buying a pear from an old woman with a pushcart. It tasted mealy, like parsley root, and after one bite he threw it down on the road. The woman urged her wobbling cart along, determined not to notice Miguel’s displeasure, while two filthy boys lunged for the remains. Rolling the taste of bad pear around in his mouth for a moment, Miguel decided that the day was too far gone for there to be much to do on the Exchange, so he headed home.

The spies had disordered him, and he kept turning around, searching for signs of treachery in beggars and servants and burghers as they strolled along the streets. This is no way to live, he told himself; he could not spend his days jumping at every shadow. But just when he had convinced himself to be calm, he crossed the bridge into the Vlooyenburg and saw Hannah in the middle of the street-despite the veil, Miguel recognized her instantly-and, alongside her, Annetje. And Joachim Waagenaar.

Joachim had backed them into a corner. There was nothing threatening in his gestures, and he appeared calm. A passing stranger might not have noticed anything odd-although it would have been unusual for a veiled woman to speak casually with so low a man.

Annetje saw Miguel first. Her face brightened and she sucked in her breath; her bosoms heaved in the pretty blue bodice that matched her handsome cap.

“Oh, Senhor Lienzo!” she exclaimed. “Save us from this madman!”

Miguel answered in Portuguese, addressing Hannah. “Has he harmed you?”

Speechless, she shook her head no.

Then the stench hit him. The wind must have shifted, for the smell drifted in his direction. Miguel felt himself overwhelmed. The Dutch were a fastidiously, even recklessly, clean people, washing themselves far more frequently than was healthy for the body. Joachim had clearly abandoned the practice; he smelled more foul than the least washed Portuguese peasant. It was more than odors of the body, too, but smells of urine and vomit and-it took Miguel an instant-rotted meat. How does a man smell of rotted meat?

He shook his head, trying to break the numbing effect of the stench. “Hurry home,” he told Hannah. “Speak of this to no one. And keep the girl quiet.” They began to ease away from Joachim. “Be sure she knows to hold her tongue,” he said to Hannah, “or I’ll turn her out.”

He turned to Joachim. “Step back.”

To Miguel’s relief, he did so. The women slipped past him, pressing their backs against the wall to increase as much as they could the distance between themselves and the Dutchman. As soon as they had cleared him, they hurried into a brisk walk.

“Let’s go,” Miguel demanded. “Across the bridge. Now.”

Again Joachim obeyed, like a servant who has been caught by his master at something naughty. Miguel looked around to see if anyone he knew had witnessed the encounter and muttered a prayer in thanks to the Holy One, blessed be He, that the spies had not followed him home and that this disaster had happened during the hours of the Exchange, when any man who might wish him ill was off attending to business.

Once they had crossed the bridge over the Houtgracht, Miguel led Joachim to a little thicket of trees by the canal where they could speak unobserved.

“Have you nothing left of your former self? How dare you approach my brother’s wife?” Miguel shifted his position to put himself downwind of Joachim, lessening the stench a bit.

Joachim hardly looked at him. Instead he watched a duck that pecked at the ground near their feet, oblivious to the two men. “Why do you go on about your brother’s wife? I approached your whore too, don’t forget,” he said. “She is a luscious one, senhor. Do you think she’d have me? She seems to me the sort who’d take to just about anyone.”

Miguel sucked in a breath. “Don’t let me see you bother anyone of my family again. Don’t let me see you in the Vlooyenburg.”

As if he had never existed, the soft-spoken compliant Joachim was replaced by the angry one. “Or what should happen? Tell me what you will do, senhor, if you find me upon your streets, talking with your neighbors, telling tales. Tell me, what will you do?”

Miguel let out a sigh. “Surely you want something. You didn’t come to the Vlooyenburg because you have nothing better to do with your time.”

“As it happens, I have nothing better to do with my time. I have proposed that we engage together in some business or other, but you’ve rejected my proposals and made sport of me.”

“No one has made sport of you,” Miguel said, after a moment. “And as to this matter of business, I hardly know what you mean. You wish me to set you up in some project, but I know not what that would be. I can’t even think of what I might do to satisfy you, and I have far too much to do to take the time to puzzle out your meaning.”

“But that’s my very point. You have much to do, but I have so little. I thought perhaps your brother’s wife or her pretty servant might feel the same way-a little too much time, which our preachers tell us is the source of much evil in the world. People take their time, and they use it to think and do evil instead of using it to think and do good. It occurred to me that I might help you by giving your family a chance to do good works through charity.”

“I was under the impression that salvation through works was a Catholic principle, not one of the Reformed Church.”

“Oh, you Jews are so clever. You know everything. But, still, there’s value in charity, senhor. I begin to believe that you have not acted on our plans to engage upon a business venture, and so my mind must, in the absence of other options, turn to charity. Ten guilders would go a long way toward removing me from the Vlooyenburg.”

Miguel pulled back, disgusted. Joachim’s stench hovered thick in the air. “And if I haven’t ten guilders to give you?” He folded his arms, determined to be put upon no longer.

“If you haven’t the money, senhor, anything might happen.” He flashed his hideous grin.

Bravery and prudence might not always appear to be compatible virtues, Miguel told himself as he opened his purse, and a wise man knows when to bow to circumstance. Charming Pieter himself might have preferred to take his revenge another time. But Miguel did not know if his pride could stomach Pieter’s philosophy in this instance.

He briefly considered giving him more than ten guilders. The funds Geertruid had entrusted to him had already diminished significantly, what mattered if they diminished more? What if he were to pay Joachim a hundred guilders right now, even two hundred? When offered the coin, Joachim might think himself content with so little. Surely a man in his condition would not turn away a hundred guilders.

Maybe the reasonable man Miguel had once known was truly lost, but was it not possible that money could be the thing to restore him? Perhaps he was like the woman in an old tale who needed only a magical shoe or ring to return her to her former beauty. Give Joachim a bath, a good meal and a soft bed to sleep on, and hope for the future, and would he wake up himself?

“If you came to me like a decent man,” Miguel said at last, “and only asked me for the money in a humble way, I would help you. But these tricks of yours make me disinclined. Go away. The next time I see you here, I’ll beat you senseless.”

“Do you know what makes me smell so wretched?” Joachim demanded, his voice growing loud and shrill. Without waiting for an answer, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a lump of something gray and slick and-it took Miguel a moment to see that it was not merely a trick of his eyes-moving. “It’s rotten chicken flesh. I put it in my pocket to offend you and your ladies.” He laughed and threw the meat upon the ground.

Miguel stepped back.

“You would be surprised how quickly a poor man learns where to buy maggoty flesh and sour milk. Empty bellies must be filled with something, though my dainty goodwife has no love of rancid victuals. Come.” Joachim took a step closer. He held out his right hand, which was still slick from the meat. “Let us shake upon our new friendship.”

“Get gone.” Miguel hated to cringe but he would not touch the man’s flesh.

“I’ll go when I choose. If you don’t shake my hand like a man of honor, I’ll be insulted. And if I’m insulted, I may have to do something that will harm you forever.”

Miguel clenched his teeth until they began to ache. He hadn’t the energy to spare in wondering when Joachim, in his madness, might decide to tell his story before the Ma’amad. But giving the fool money would not help. He’d drink it and then demand more. Miguel’s only choice was to give him nothing and hope for the best.

“Go now,” Miguel said quietly, “before I lose hold of my anger.”

Miguel turned, wanting to hear no reply, but Joachim’s quiet parting words echoed in his ears as he walked home. “I’ve only just begun to take hold of mine.”

Miguel slammed the door upon his return, sending a ripple through the house and through Hannah’s body. She had been sitting in the drawing room, drinking hot wine. Annetje had tried to comfort her by insisting that she calm herself-though Hannah had shown no signs of agitation-and by assuring her that she did not want to have to slap her.

She knew he would come for her. He would come for her and calm her, attempt to placate her, silence her as the widow had. That was all they wanted from her, and at least, she thought, silence was something she knew how to provide.

After a moment, he entered the room. He offered her a hapless smile in an effort to appear at ease. His black suit was disordered, as though he had been exerting himself, and his hat sat askew on his head. What was more, his eyes had turned reddish, almost as though he had been crying, which Hannah considered unlikely. She knew that sometimes, when he grew intensely angry, a redness spread across his eyes like blood poured into a bucket of milk.

Miguel then turned to Annetje, his expression hard, silently asking her to leave. Hannah tried to hide her smile. At least someone dared to be harsh to the girl.

The moment Annetje stood, however, Miguel went after her. Outside the drawing room, in the front hall, Hannah could hear Miguel whispering to her in rapid Dutch. She couldn’t understand the muffled words, but she sensed that he was giving her instructions, explaining something very carefully, listening to the girl repeat everything back to him.

Miguel returned, sat down in a chair across from Hannah, and leaned forward, hands pressing on his thighs. He appeared somewhat more orderly now. Perhaps he had straightened his clothes in the hall or corrected his hat in the mirror. The buoyant handsomeness that had drained from his appearance had been restored.

“I trust you are unharmed, senhora.”

“Yes, I am unharmed,” she said quietly. Her voice sounded strange in her own mouth. So long had she been thinking about what he would say, and what she would answer, that speaking at all had an unreal quality.

“Did the fellow say anything to you?”

She shook her head as she spoke. “Nothing of consequence.” It was true enough. He had talked to her softly in thickly accented Portuguese, but his words had been nonsensical, hard to understand. They were about his suffering, much like any beggar might speak, and it had been hard to concentrate, with the wretched odor wafting from his body.

Miguel leaned back now in an effort to appear at ease. “Do you have a question for me?”

Yes, she thought. May I have more coffee berries? Her supply had run out that morning, and she had meant to raid Miguel’s secret sack before he returned, but the girl had not let her alone, and then came the business with the beggar on the street. She’d eaten no coffee in more than a day, and her desire for it made her head ache.

“I don’t understand,” she said, after a moment.

“Would you like to know who he is?”

“I assumed,” she said cautiously, “he was some beggar or other, senhor. I have no need to learn more.” Had she not secrets enough already?

“Yes, that’s right,” he told her. “He is a beggar of sorts.”

Something unspoken remained in the air. “But you know him?”

“He is no one of consequence,” Miguel said rapidly.

She remained silent for a moment, to prove to him that she was calm. “I do not wish to pry. I know how my husband hates when I pry, but I wonder if I have anything to fear from him.” And then, because she found his silence frustrating: “Should we tell my husband?”

“No,” Miguel said. He stood and began to pace about the room. “You must not tell your husband or anyone else. Do not make more of this incident than is necessary.”

“I don’t understand you, senhor,” she said, studying the tiles on the floor.

“He is but a madman.” Miguel waved his arms about. “The city has an endless store of these wretches. You’ll never see him again, and so there is no need to alarm your husband.”

“I pray you are right.” Her voice sounded whiny and weak, and she hated herself for it.

Just then Annetje returned with a platter in her hands upon which she balanced two bowls of a dark liquid. Steam poured off from them like twin chimneys. The maid set down the tray and paused to glare at Miguel before departing.

Miguel laughed after she had left. “She thinks I’m poisoning you.”

What would the widow say? “There are two bowls, senhor. You are too wise a man to poison yourself as well.”

Miguel cocked his head slightly. “This is the new tea you smelled the other night. It is made of a medicinal fruit from the Orient.” He took his seat once more. “It will enhance your understanding.”

Hannah did not think she wanted her understanding enhanced. She felt she understood well enough. Unless the drink imparted knowledge and wisdom also, it would hardly do her any service. “You take it as well, but I don’t believe senhor needs his understanding enhanced.”

He laughed. “The drink has its own pleasures.” He handed her a bowl.

Hannah gripped it in both hands and smelled it. It was familiar, like something from a dream. Then she took a sip, and knowledge flowed into her. This was coffee-glorious, glorious coffee-here before her, like a gift from the heavens.

She understood so much now. It was a tea, not a food. She had been eating what she should have been drinking. In its liquid state it filled her with a glowing warmth, a comfort she had not known for years. “It’s wonderful,” she breathed. And it was. It filled an emptiness inside her, the way she had imagined love would when she’d been younger. “It’s wonderful,” she murmured again, and took another sip to hide the moisture in her eyes.

Miguel laughed again, but this time he seemed less superior. “The first time I tasted it, I almost spat it out from the bitterness. How strange that you should like it so. I hope you are not only saying so to be polite.”

She shook her head no and took another cautious sip, lest he see her gulp it. She wanted to drink the entire bowl at once and demand more, but she could not let him see how much she loved this thing that she should not know at all.

“I am not being polite,” she said.

They sat together in silence for some time, sipping and not quite looking at each other, until Hannah felt the urge to speak. It was as though something had broken inside of her, some kind of restraint. She wanted to stand up and walk around the room and speak. She did not stand, but she did at last decide to say something.

“I believe you are trying to distract me, senhor. Do you treat me to this new tea so I shall forget the strange man who spoke to me?”

She almost put a hand to her mouth. She ought never to have said such a thing. It was precisely the kind of sauciness her father would have answered with a slap. But it was said, and there was nothing to do but see what happened now.

Miguel looked at her and something flashed across his face, something Hannah found pleasing. “I did not mean to distract you. I only wished to-to share this with you.”

“You are generous,” she said, astonished by her own boldness before the words had even passed her lips. Could she not control herself now? Had some demon taken her body from her?

“You think me elusive,” he said, looking upon her as though she were some new discovery of natural science, “but I’ll tell you all. You see, that man is a terrible villain. He has a daughter whom he wishes to marry to a very old and mean merchant, a miser of the worst sort. He arranged that her true love should be abducted by pirates, but he learned of the incident and fled. The daughter has fled too, so the miser, knowing that I am friends with the lovers, came to try to force me to give him their location.”

Hannah laughed, loud enough that this time she felt obliged to place a hand over her mouth. “This tragedy of yours would play prettily upon the stage.”

For a moment she wished her father-or anyone else-was there to slap her. How could she have spoken so pertly? Nevertheless, it was true. Miguel’s lie sounded like the stage plays she had seen, with some regularity, back in Lisbon. Some men took their wives to the Jewish theater here in Amsterdam, but Daniel thought it improper for a woman.

Her foot rotated back and forth like a pigeon by a baker’s stall searching for crumbs. This coffee is not a drink of the mind, she realized, it is a drink of the body. And the mouth. And it made her want to say all sorts of things: I find you remarkably attractive. How I wish I could have married you instead of your cold brother.

She said none of them. She still could censor herself.

“You don’t believe me, senhora?”

“I believe you must imagine me to be remarkably foolish to accept your tale.” The words seemed to come out on their own. Her parents had always taught her to be mild. Her husband had indicated with a thousand unsaid words that he would tolerate only mildness from her. Yet she did not feel mild. She had never felt mild, but she had never before forgotten to act mild.

The coffee, she told herself. Miguel has, knowingly or not, bewitched me and perhaps himself. How long until they began to shout insults at each other or fell into an unrestrained embrace?

There was no point putting the blame on coffee. The drink had not bewitched her, no more than a glass of wine could cast a magic spell. It made her eager, in the same way wine rendered her calm. This sauciness, this pertness that grew inside her mouth came not from witchery but from herself. The coffee drink only let her bad behavior out.

In recognizing the truth, in admitting it to herself, much became clear to her, but nothing so much as a resolution: she would be pert and saucy every chance she had.

For the nonce, however, she had her most distressing encounter to contend with, and no amount of coffee or wine or any other tea she could think of would make the true terror she had felt any less real. She found Miguel’s efforts to deceive her both charming and infuriating. “I know that the world does not work the way it does in plays, and that misers do not send their daughters’ lovers into the hands of pirates.” She paused. “Nevertheless, you can depend on me to keep your secret.”

Miguel leaned back and looked at Hannah as though seeing her for the first time. He glanced at her face, her neck; his eyes lingered at the swell of her breasts concealed in her high-necked gown. Men often thought women had no idea of what their eyes studied, but a woman knew, as surely as though a glance left a handprint.

He had looked at her before, of course. She had sensed that he admired her face and her shape, but this glance was something different. Miguel and men like him rarely thought much of the women they admired and bedded. A woman was an object, sometimes to be consumed like food, other times to be admired like a painting. Miguel now saw her as something more, and the idea of it thrilled her.

“I trust and believe your promise of silence,” he told her, “so I’ll tell you the truth. The man you saw has an old grudge against me for a wrong that was none of my doing, and he wishes to ruin me. He understands the ways of our community well enough to know how to ruin with whispers as easily as with deeds, and that is why you must not speak of what happened.”

He had entrusted her with the truth, and she still betrayed him with her silence. “Then I won’t speak of it,” she said, her voice hardly above a whisper.

“Senhora.” Miguel shifted uneasily. “I beg that your silence extends to your husband. I know that such vows of secrecy often include an implicit exception for the special bonds of matrimony, but in this case it is very important that your good husband know nothing.”

Hannah sipped at her coffee. A black mulch had formed at the bottom, and not knowing if she should drink it and thinking it would be rude to ask, she set the bowl back down. “I, of all people, know what my good husband should and should not hear. I’ll not tell him. But you must promise me something.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Of course.”

“That you will let me drink coffee again,” she said. “Soon.”

“I would consider drinking coffee with you a great pleasure,” he said warmly.

She studied his face. Were I a servant or a tavern girl, he would kiss me at this moment. But I am his brother’s wife. He won’t kiss me ever. He has too much honor. Unless, of course, she thought, I kiss him first. But that was unthinkable, and she blushed at her own boldness.

“Well, then,” she said with a sigh, “I’ll call the girl to clear away the dishes, lest my husband come home and find that we’ve been secreted together, drinking forbidden things.”

She enjoyed the look of wonder upon Miguel’s face for a moment before relieving him of his discomfort by ringing for the maid.