The Coffee Trader

4

Though he had more pressing things to consider, Miguel visited a bookseller near the Westerkerk and found a translation of an English pamphlet extolling the virtues of coffee. The author wrote with an enthusiasm that dwarfed Geertruid’s. Coffee, he insisted, has all but destroyed the plague in England. It preserves health in general and makes those who drink it hearty and fat; it helps the digestion and cures consumption and other maladies of the lung. It is wonderful for fluxes, even the bloody flux, and has been known to cure jaundice and every kind of inflammation. Besides all that, the Englishman wrote, it imparts astonishing powers of reason and concentration. In the years to come, the author said, the man who does not drink coffee may never hope to compete with the man who avails himself of its secrets.

Later, down in his space in Daniel’s cellar, Miguel fought back the urge to pick up a pewter pitcher and hurl it against the wall. Should he give his attention to coffee or brandy? Could he separate the two? The brandy business pulled him down like a weight on a drowning man, but coffee could be the very thing to buoy him up.

He turned for comfort, as he increasingly did, to his collection of pamphlets. Since coming to Amsterdam, Miguel had discovered a love of Spanish adventures, translated French romances, marvelous travel stories, and, most of all, salacious tales of crime. Of these accounts of murderers and thieves, Miguel loved best the pamphlets recounting the adventures of Charming Pieter, the clever bandit who had been playing his wily tricks on the foolish rich in and around Amsterdam for years. Geertruid had first introduced him to the adventures of this scoundrel hero who, she said, along with his Goodwife Mary, embodied the very core of Dutch cleverness. She read the pamphlets eagerly, sometimes aloud to her man, Hendrick, and sometimes to an entire tavern of men, who laughed and hooted and toasted this thief. Were the stories true, were they mere fictions like Don Quixote, or something in between?

Miguel had resisted the allure of these stories at first. In Lisbon he had never bothered with lurid accounts of murderers and executions, and now he had reading enough with his studies of Torah. Nevertheless, Charming Pieter had won him over; Miguel had become enchanted by the bandit’s celebration of his own duplicity. The Conversos of Lisbon had been duplicitous by necessity, even those who fully embraced the Catholic Church. A New Christian could be betrayed at any time by a victim under an Inquisitor’s knife. Miguel had habitually lied, hidden facts about himself, eaten pork in public; he had done anything to prevent his name from being the one to come to a prisoner’s lips. Deception had always been a burden, but Pieter reveled in his duplicity. Miguel was enchanted by these tales because he longed, like Charming Pieter, to be a trickster instead of a liar.

Now he tried to lose himself in one of his favorite stories, that of a rich burgher who, entranced by Goodwife Mary’s beauty, had thought to cuckold Pieter. While she provided a distraction with her wit and artful ways, Pieter and his men carried off all of the burgher’s possessions. After turning the burgher out of his own home, naked to the world, Pieter and Mary opened up the man’s larder to the people of the village and allowed them to feast upon his wealth. And so, in his own way, Charming Pieter carried out the justice of the common folk.

When he closed the little volume, Miguel was still thinking about brandy and about coffee.

That afternoon, he received a letter from the usurer Alonzo Alferonda, with whom he maintained a cautious friendship. Alferonda had a reputation as a man dangerous to neglect-dozens of blinded and lamed debtors in Amsterdam would testify to that-but Miguel found Alferonda’s hobbled victims hard to reconcile with the plump and jovial fellow who seemed to have an infinite store of kindness. The Ma’amad would have destroyed Miguel for his congress with a man it had expelled, but Alferonda’s company was too merry to set aside. Even in his exiled state, he had knowledge and information, and he never hesitated to pass it along.

Some months ago, Miguel had mentioned a rumor he’d heard, and Alferonda volunteered to find out what he could. Now he claimed to have learned something important and requested that they talk-always a tricky business, but usually managed well enough with a bit of caution. Miguel wrote to Alferonda suggesting they meet in the coffee tavern, which he had found by inquiring of a few men in the East India trade.

Miguel knew only that the place was located in the Plantage, which stretched out east of the Vlooyenburg, endless walks cutting through sculpted gardens. Square paths crisscrossed walkways, peopled with the high and the low alike. The burgomasters had ruled that no permanent buildings might stand on its verdant grounds, so all structures here were made of wood, ready to be taken apart should the city so decree. On pleasant evenings, the Plantage became a garden of delights for those who had the coin and the inclination. Strollers could walk among bands of fiddlers and fife players. On the well-lighted paths, entrepreneurs had set up tables and poured beer and served sausage or herring or cheese; in houses hardly more than huts, a man could buy delicacies of a more human kind.

Miguel located the meeting place with difficulty, after asking several other proprietors for directions. Finally he came upon what he suspected was the right building, a poor wooden structure built at crazed angles, hardly looking fit to withstand a rainstorm. Miguel found the door locked, but a nearby brothel keeper had assured him that it was the right place, so he knocked loudly.

Almost at once the door opened a crack and Miguel stared at a dark-skinned Turk in a yellow turban. The man said nothing.

“Is this the coffee tavern?” Miguel asked.

“Who are you?” the Turk grunted in muddled Dutch.

“Is the tavern private? I did not know.”

“I did not say it was. I did not say it wasn’t. I only asked who you are.”

“I’m not sure my name will mean anything to you. I am Miguel Lienzo.”

The Turk nodded. “Senhor Alferonda’s friend. You may come in. Senhor Alferonda’s friends will always find themselves welcome here.”

Senhor Alferonda’s friend? Miguel had no idea that Alferonda had even heard of coffee, but apparently he was well known among the Mohammedans. Miguel followed the Turk into the building, hardly more impressive on the inside than the outside. Rough chairs and tables sat on a damp earth floor. At once he was overwhelmed by the scent of coffee, far more intense and pungent than what he had smelled at Geertruid’s cousin’s tavern. On a half dozen or so benches sat an odd assortment of men: Turks in turbans, seafaring Dutchmen, a hodgepodge of foreigners-and one Jew. Alonzo Alferonda sat conversing with a tall Turk in faded blue robes. He whispered something as Miguel approached, and the Turk departed.

Alferonda stood to greet Miguel, though standing only emphasized his shortness. He was a rounded fellow with a wide face and large eyes hidden behind a thick beard of slightly graying black. Miguel could scarce believe there were many men who trembled before this pudgy face. One night they had walked together after drinking at a tavern near the docks. A pair of thieves had leapt from an alley, knives brandished, set to take their purses. One look at Alferonda, and they scurried away like frightened cats.

“I was surprised you asked to meet here,” Alferonda said. “I had no idea you had any taste for coffee.”

“I might say the same of you. I’ve only just learned of it. I wanted to see what a coffee tavern would be like.”

Alferonda gestured for them to sit. “It is not much, but they obtain good fruit, and the demand is low enough that they rarely run out.”

“But supplies are sometimes short?”

“They can be.” The usurer studied Miguel. “Coffee is controlled by the East India Company, and as there is not much demand in Europe, the Company doesn’t import a great quantity. It mostly trades the fruit in the East. What do you care about the supplies?”

Miguel ignored the question. “I’d forgotten you’d lived in the Orient. Of course you know coffee.”

He opened his hands wide. “Alferonda has lived everywhere and has connections everywhere, which is why you seek him out.”

Miguel smiled at the hint. “You have information?”

“Excellent information.”

Miguel had asked Alferonda to inquire into a rumor he’d overheard regarding Parido’s involvement in an impending whale-oil trade. He’d been hesitant to pursue this affair; it would be dangerous to oppose the parnass in matters of business. Still, Miguel only sought information, he told himself. He needn’t act on it.

“You were certainly right about Parido,” Alferonda began. “He has a spy inside the East India Company.”

Miguel raised his eyebrows. “I would have thought that beyond even his ambition.”

“The Company is not so powerful as it would have you believe. Gold works for Company men as it does for everyone else. Parido has learned that they plan to buy large quantities of whale oil to sell in the Japans and Cathay, but these Company fellows have the patience to wait for the price to drop since they know production has been climbing steadily of late. Parido has been quietly collecting whale oil on other exchanges-just a little here and there, you understand-and hopes to flood the market slowly enough to lower the price without raising suspicion. Meanwhile, he and his combination are also buying calls, which will allow them to secure the current low prices.”

Miguel let out a breath. “I am no friend of that man, but I am impressed. At some point the East India Company will decide the price is low enough to buy and stock their own warehouses, and when that happens the price goes up. Meanwhile, Parido’s combination has the calls, which allow them to buy at the artificially lowered price and then turn around and sell at the new inflated price.” Trading combinations manipulated the markets all the time, but this plan-buying on other exchanges, creating a market to tempt a buyer-was beyond anything Miguel had ever heard. “How did you learn all this?”

Alferonda smoothed his beard. “Anything that is known can be learned. You hear rumors about whale oil, I ask some questions, and soon everything is revealed.”

“When will this trade take place?”

“Sometime next month, between this reckoning day and the next. I hardly need say anything to you, but as your friend I must warn you to proceed carefully. You may hitch a ride on Parido’s venture if you like. He’ll scowl that you should have profited from his work, and that’s nothing, but do him no harm that he can see or he’ll never forgive you.”

“You must think me addled to lecture me about that,” Miguel said good-naturedly.

“Not addled, but I would hate to see your eagerness undo your ambitions. Now, I’ve already bought whale oil at its low price, and I suggest you do so too as quickly as you can.”

“It will have to wait until after this reckoning day. I hope to have a few coins to my name then.”

A Turk placed two small bowls before them. They were smaller than any drinking vessels Miguel had ever seen and contained a liquid black and thick as mud.

“What is this?” Miguel asked.

“It’s coffee. Have you not tried it yet?”

“I have,” Miguel said, as he picked up the bowl and held it closer to an oil lamp, “but it seemed a different thing than this altogether.”

“This is how the Turks drink it. They boil it three times in a copper pot to darken and distill it. In their native land, they often serve it with great ceremony. But Amsterdammers have no time for the frivolity of ritual. Be careful. Let the powder rest at the bottom.”

“When I drank it before,” Miguel said, eyeing the drink skeptically, “it was made with milk. Or sweet wine. I can’t recall.”

“The Turks believe that combining milk and coffee causes leprosy.”

Miguel laughed. “I hope not. You seem to know a great deal about coffee. What else can you tell me?”

“I can tell you about Kaldi, the Abyssinian goatherd.”

“I don’t know that I have any interest in goatherds.”

“You’ll find this one interesting. He lived quite some time ago, tending his flock in the hills of Abyssinia. One afternoon he noticed that his goats were much more lively than usual, dancing about, raising up on their hind legs, bleating out their little goat songs. Kaldi spent several days watching them, and they grew increasingly more lively. They ran and played and hopped about when they should have been sleeping. They danced and sang instead of eating.

“Kaldi was certain a demon had possessed the goats, but he summoned his courage and followed the beasts, hoping to catch a glimpse of this fiend. The next day, he saw that the goats had come upon a strange bush. After they ate the fruit of the bush, they once again began to leap about. Kaldi ate some of the berries himself, and soon he could not resist the urge to dance with the goats.

“A holy man happened by at that time and asked Kaldi why he capered with his herd. He explained that he had eaten the fruit of the bush, and it had filled him with untold vigor. So the holy man, who was rather a boring fellow, took some fruit home. He was plagued by the fact that his students would fall asleep while he was lecturing, so he made a drink out of the berries and fed it to his students before he lectured. Soon he was known throughout the world of the Mohammedans as a man who could deliver discourses from sundown to sunup without his students falling asleep.”

Miguel paused for a moment. “That is very interesting, but I thought to inquire about the coffee trade as it is now, not among Abyssinian goatherds.”

Alferonda raised one eyebrow. “There is no vigorous coffee trade outside of the Orient, and the East India Company controls that. Not much remains for the rest of us.”

“But you are speaking about the East. Perhaps coffee would be of interest to men here in Europe. I, for one, have no love of sleep. I see it as a waste of time. If I could drink coffee instead, I would be most pleased.”

“You would have to sleep in the end,” Alferonda said, “but I take your point. Men who drink coffee come to love it beyond all things. I’ve heard that among the Turks a woman can divorce her husband if he does not provide her with enough coffee. And the coffee taverns of the East are strange places. There the drink is combined with powerful medicines, like poppy extract, and men go to such places in search of pleasures of the flesh.”

Miguel looked around. “I see nothing so pleasurable here.”

“The Turks don’t look kindly upon women in social places such as a coffee tavern. The pleasures you pay for in those places are the pleasures of boys, not women.”

“That is a strange way to do things,” Miguel said.

“To us, but they enjoy themselves. In any case, you must keep me informed about your interest in coffee. If I can be of any help, you may depend on me. But you must remember to be careful. Coffee is a drink that brings out great passions in men, and you may be unlocking great forces if you trifle with it.”

Miguel drank down the rest of his bowl, swallowing a bit of the powder at the bottom. It coated his mouth uncomfortably. “You’re the second person to warn me off coffee,” he told Alferonda, while he wiped at his mouth with his sleeve.

The usurer cocked his head. “I hate being second at anything. Who was the first?”

“My brother, if you can believe it.”

“Daniel? Reason enough to pursue it if he warns you off. What did he say?”

“Only that it was dangerous,” Miguel said. “He somehow knew I’d developed an interest. He told some story about me muttering drunkenly, but I’m not sure I believe him. More likely he’s been searching my things again.”

“I would pay his warning no mind. Your brother, if you will excuse me for saying so, has no more brains than the idiot son Parido keeps locked in his garret.”

“I thought it odd,” Miguel said. “I wonder if he’s somehow learned that I have been thinking of the coffee trade and wants to set me off out of spite. He doesn’t like that I carry on with his serving girl.”

“Oh, she’s a pretty one. Are you fond of her?”

Miguel shrugged. “I suppose. I’m fond of her looks,” he said absently. In truth, Miguel found her somewhat impertinent, but she was the one who had begun the dalliance, and Miguel had known from an early age that a man never turns away an eager serving girl.

“Not so pretty as the mistress though, eh?” Alferonda said.

“True enough. My brother doesn’t much like the way I speak to her.”

“Oh?” A wide grin spread across Alferonda’s face. “What way is that?”

Miguel had the feeling he’d fallen into a trap. “She’s a pleasant girl. A pretty thing, with a quick mind, but Daniel never has a kind word. I think she takes a great deal of pleasure from the occasional bit of congress with me.”

Alferonda was now moving his eyebrows up and down and flaring his nostrils. “I, for one, thought it was a fine thing when the rabbis revoked the commandment against adultery.”

“Don’t be foolish,” Miguel said, turning to hide his blush. “I only feel sorry for her.”

“I’ve known Miguel Lienzo to have dealings with pretty girls, and what he feels is generally not sorry.”

“I have no intention of bedding my brother’s wife,” he said. “In any case, she is far too virtuous a woman to allow it.”

“May the Holy One, blessed be He, help you,” Alferonda said. “When a man starts protesting about a woman’s virtue, it means he’s either had her already or would kill to do so. I will say that it is one way to get back at your brother for his foul temper.”

Miguel opened his mouth to protest but thought better of it. Justification was for the guilty, and surely he had done nothing wrong.

from

The Factual and Revealing Memoirs of Alonzo Alferonda

I had been plying my trade with a fair amount of success for some time when I was approached by a Tudesco merchant with a proposition that appeared to me both lucrative and rewarding. For some years now the Tudescos, the Jews of Eastern Europe, had been making their presence increasingly felt in Amsterdam, and this development was not at all to the Ma’amad’s liking. While we Jews of the Portuguese Nation have no shortage of beggars among our number, we also enjoy our share of wealthy merchants, and these can afford to be charitable. Our community had struck a deal with the Amsterdam burgomasters to remain a city apart, taking care of our own charitable cases and producing no burden on the metropolis itself. Thus we took care of our own, but the Tudescos had few men of significant wealth, and most were desperately poor.

Though with our beards and our bright colors we looked different from the Dutch, we thought ours a dignified difference. A Hebrew of Portugal could not go anywhere in the city, no matter how neatly trimmed his beard and no matter how dull his clothes, without being recognized for a member of his nation, but the Ma’amad believed the merchants among us were ambassadors. We might say, in the silence of our finery, Behold us. We are different, but we are worthy people with whom to share your land. More important, they might look on our poor and think, Ah, those Jews feed and dress their own mendicants, relieving us of the burden. They’re not so bad.

Thus the problem of the Tudescos. They had heard that Amsterdam was a paradise for Jews, so they fled to our city from Poland, Germany, Lithuania, and all manner of other places where they were savagely abused. I had heard that Poland in particular was a land of ghastly torments and scarcely believable cruelties: men made to watch while their wives and daughters were brutalized, children tied in sacks and thrown on burning fires, scholars buried alive with their murdered families.

The parnassim surely sympathized with these refugees, but they had grown to depend on the comforts of Amsterdam and, like the fat and rich of all nations and beliefs, they were unwilling to sacrifice their ease for the well-being of others. Their concerns were not unfounded, and they dreaded a future in which the streets of Amsterdam were crawling with Jewish beggars and Jewish hucksters and Jewish whores. The Dutch would then surely rescind their former generosity. The Ma’amad concluded that the Tudesco community would be best handled if kept small.

There were several plans for accomplishing this goal, but they all centered around keeping these troubling people at a distance from Iberian wealth-a maneuver they believed would make Amsterdam less appealing than cities where their own kind thrived. Tudescos were therefore forbidden to enroll their children in schools run by Portuguese Jews. They could have no position of standing in Portuguese synagogues. Their meats were declared unclean and off limits to Portuguese households, so their butchers could not sell to our people. The Ma’amad even declared it a crime, punishable by excommunication, to give charity to any Tudesco except through one of the official charitable boards. These boards believed that the best charity would be passage on ships heading out of Amsterdam, so it could do no good to encourage them to stay by dropping a stuiver or two into their greedy little hands.

I knew all this, but I did not have it much in my thoughts when I was approached by a member of the Tudesco community. Many of the refugees, he told me, managed to escape from their oppressive lands with a precious stone or two hidden away on their persons. Would I be willing to broker these stones to Portuguese merchants? He suggested that I would ask for a bit more than the lowest price, explaining that the stones belonged to wretched wanderers who longed to begin anew, and take only a fraction of the usual brokering fee. I might make a few extra guilders and still do a good deed that would win me favor in the eyes of the Holy One, blessed be He.

For several months I went about this business during what time I could spare for it. A bottle of wine purchased, a smile, a word about the importance of charity, and I soon found most gem merchants willing to pay a few extra guilders for a stone if it would help a poor family enjoy a peaceful Shabbat. So it went until I one day came to my home and found a note for me, composed in florid Spanish, written in a fine hand. I had been summoned to the Ma’amad.

I still thought nothing of the matter. Sooner or later every man found himself standing before that council: a rumor of unclean food eaten or a Dutch slut got with child. The council itself was little better than a pack of old women, wanting only a soothing word to make them calm again. I knew that my old enemy, Solomon Parido, now held a place on the council, but I hardly thought he would use his power for nefarious ends.

Yet that is precisely what he did. He sat there, stiff in his laced suit, glaring at me. “Senhor Alferonda,” he said, “you are surely aware of the ruling of the council that no help shall be given to the Tudescos other than through the charitable boards of the synagogue.”

“Of course, senhor,” I said.

“Then why have you ensnared men of our nation, law-abiding men, into your wicked schemes of jewel peddling?”

“My wicked schemes, as you style them, provide aid to the poor. And while you have made it clear that you do not want us throwing our coins to Tudesco beggars, you have said nothing about buying and selling with them.”

“Is it not the same as tossing coins if you intentionally ask merchants to give more than they wish to pay that the seller might take that money and do with it as he will?”

“As he will,” I pointed out, “often means buying bread.”

“That is not your concern,” one of the other members of the council said. “There are charitable boards to see that these people don’t starve.”

The offense was minor enough, but Parido wished to cast it in the most dire light possible. He turned the other parnassim against me. He prodded me into speaking angrily. And yet, though I saw all that, I could not help but be angry. I had done nothing wrong. I had violated none of the holy laws. Indeed, I upheld the commandment to give charity. Was I now to be punished for doing as the Torah commands? This question, in particular, may have been what set them against me. No one likes to have his hypocrisy exposed.

After much interrogation, the parnassim asked me to wait outside. When they called me back in, after more than an hour, they announced their decision. I was to ask the men for whom I had brokered to rescind their sales. They were, in other words, to buy back their stones.

I had seen the men for whom I had brokered. They were poor, dressed in rags, crushed by hardship and despair. Many had lost parents or children or wives to the cruelty of Poles or Cossacks. To go to them and ask them to return money, which they surely no longer had because they had spent it rather than starve or go naked, seemed to me not only preposterous but depraved. I supposed it was meant to be so. To undo these sales, I would have to buy those stones back with my own money, and surely Parido had known I would refuse to do so.

The council urged me to reconsider, but I swore I would never obey such an unreasonable demand. The parnassim then told me I had forced their hand and they had no choice but to put me under cherem, the ban-to excommunicate me.

Men fell under the ban frequently. Most times it was but for a day or a week but in some it was permanent. And so they meant it in my case. More than that, Parido made it clear to the Tudescos that if they admitted me into their synagogue they would be made to suffer for their kindness. He wrote to the Ma’amads of every community upon the face of the earth, giving them my name and speaking of my crimes in the most exaggerated terms. I had become an outcast with nowhere to go, the mark of Cain upon me.

They chose to treat me like a villain. What choice did I have but to become one in earnest?