The Coffee Trader

5

Miguel first met Geertruid nearly a year before she proposed a venture in coffee. It was in the Flyboat, a tavern off the Warmoesstraat, close enough to the Exchange that merchants regarded it as adjunct, a place to continue business when the gates of the bourse closed. Though owned by a Dutchman, it catered to Jewish traders by offering drinks that conformed to the dietary codes. Jewish boys of the Portuguese Nation were hired to keep separate the serving glasses for the Jews and to clean them in accordance with Jewish law, and a rabbi would occasionally come to inspect the kitchens, strolling like a general with his hands behind his back as he peered into cabinets and pried open containers. The owner charged almost twice the going rate for wine and beer, but Jewish merchants gladly paid higher prices in exchange for the chance to conduct business in a Dutch tavern with an easy conscience.

Miguel had been continuing a conversation with a sugar merchant after the close of the Exchange, and the two men had taken a table and talked of their business for hours, all the while drinking with Netherlandish intensity. The sugar merchant was one of those good-natured Dutchmen who found Jews fascinating, as though their alien beliefs and customs made them a puzzle. The Vlooyenburg crawled with these men, who came to learn Hebrew or study Jewish theology, in part because it helped them better to understand their own religion but also because the Dutch were curiously attracted to foreigners. The Ma’amad’s strict injunction against religious debate with gentiles made Miguel only more irresistible, and the merchant had bought drink after drink, with the playful intention of breaking Miguel’s defenses. At last he abandoned the effort, announcing that he must go home to his wife lest he face her fury.

Warm with beer, Miguel had been in no mood to return to the solitude of his own home, so he remained at his table, quietly drinking while he puffed lazily upon a pipe of good tobacco. Conversations swirled all around him, and he half listened for any useful rumor or tip. Then he heard a fragment of conversation that jolted him out of his stupor.

“… a sad end for the Indian Flower,” a voice pronounced, with the kind of narrative fervor only to be found on the lips of a drunk Dutchman. “Cleaned out to her core, until there was nothing left but a pack of unmanned sailors shitting themselves silly.”

Miguel turned slowly. He owned shares in the Indian Flower-quite a few, in fact. Wading through a swamp of boozy confusion, he tried to recall how much he had invested. Five hundred guilders? Seven hundred? Not enough to ruin a man who stood as he had at the time, but well enough that he could not count the loss insignificant, particularly since he had already invested his anticipated profits.

“What did you say?” Miguel demanded of the speaker. “The Indian Flower?”

He took his first look at the fellow, a grizzled man well into his middle years with the blotchy face of a lifelong sailor. His companions were all the rougher sort of Dutchman who frequented taverns closer to the docks.

“The Indian Flower’s been taken by pirates,” the older fellow told Miguel. “I heard they were pirates, at any rate. They’re all in service of the Spanish Crown, if you ask me.”

“How do you know this?” Miguel demanded. He twisted his hands, which felt awkward and spongy from too much drink, but his head had already begun to clear.

“I’ve got a mate on the Glory of the Palm,” the man explained, “which came into dock late this afternoon. He told me the news.”

This afternoon. No one knew yet. He might yet salvage this wreck.

“Have you a particular interest in that ship?” One of the man’s companions spoke. He was younger than the rest, with less of the look of the sea.

“Suppose I have?” He meant no challenge. The two men were testing each other.

“I might be able to offer you my services,” the raggedy trader told him. “By this time tomorrow, word will be out and those shares of yours won’t be good for much more than wiping your ass. But tonight they just might be worth something.”

“Something other than wiping your ass,” one of his friends clarified.

“What are they worth tonight?” Miguel knew a schemer when he saw one, but schemes were the blood flowing through the city’s veins, and only a fool would refuse to listen.

“If you want to sell at fifty percent, I’d be willing to unburden you.”

Miguel had no taste for losing half his investment, but even less for losing all of it. Still, something sat ill with him. “If the ship has been taken, what good are the shares to you?”

“I’ll sell them, of course. Tomorrow the Exchange opens, and I’ll unload them at seventy-five or eighty percent. By the time the news hits the Exchange, I’ll be rid of them.”

“Then why should I not do the same?” Miguel asked. “I could have eighty percent back rather than a mere fifty.”

“You could,” the man said, “but there’s always the chance that the news may beat you to the Exchange. Besides, men know you; if you sell, your reputation might suffer. I’m used to plying my trade in The Hague, so I won’t lose for my deeds here.”

Miguel put his hands to his forehead. He could not entirely ignore the moral issue that presented itself: if he sold his shares to this fellow, he would be knowingly allowing an unknown person to buy something that was worthless. Did the sages not say that the man who robs his fellow of even the smallest coin is as sinful as a murderer? On the other hand, all investment was risk. Miguel did not know when he bought the shares that the ship would be taken by pirates, yet it had been; perhaps it had been destined to be so taken. Surely the Most High knew of the boat’s fate, but Miguel did not believe that the Holy One, blessed be He, had cheated him. What difference did it make if someone knew beforehand?

The trader read Miguel’s uncertainty. “You do what you like, Jew. I’ll be here for another hour or so. If you want to do business, it had best be done quickly.”

Before Miguel could respond, a new voice rose up. “Aye, quick enough that this man not learn the truth.” The woman sounded like a heroine from a stage play. There she stood, hands upon her hips, ample bosom thrust outward, her soft features pointed defiantly at these men.

In her yellows and blacks, she looked like a honeybee and a pretty one at that, if a bit older than Miguel liked his women. He couldn’t decide if she were more wench or virago.

“What truth is that?” he asked cautiously, not for the first time suspicious of these schemers. Against these grizzled fellows stood this handsome woman, both confident and defiant. Miguel decided in an instant that he trusted her far more than the sailor and his friends.

“That the ship they speak of remains unharmed,” she announced. “At least it does as best they know.”

The men at the table exchanged glances. “Have I met you, mother?” the older fellow asked. “I think you ought to think carefully before you accuse a man in public, ruining his trade and such. Otherwise,” he added, with a glance to his companion, “he and those he’s friendly with might take some offense and offer your plump bottom a spanking.”

“Aye, you know me. My name is Geertruid Damhuis, and you were the kindly stranger who told me of the wreck of the Angel’s Mercy, a ship in which I owned shares. You were good enough to take those shares off of me for half price. Then the ship sailed into port a few weeks later, on schedule and bursting with cargo.”

“You’ve made a mistake,” the older man said, at the same moment that the trader said, “I cannot guarantee the truth of every rumor I hear.” Seeing that they had undone themselves, the party arose in a single movement and dashed out the door.

“Should we pursue,” Miguel asked, “or call the Night Watch?”

Geertruid Damhuis shook her pretty head. “I’ll not raise my skirts to go running in the dark for a gang of ruffians who would only knock me down.”

Miguel laughed, feeling a sudden rush of friendship and gratitude. “I thought you valiant enough just this moment.”

She grinned: wide, beautiful, white as pearl. Miguel sucked in his breath, feeling as though he had caught a glimpse of something forbidden. “It’s an easy thing to be valiant when surrounded by a few dozen men who would never stand to see a woman set upon. Quite another to go chasing after thieves in the dark.” She let out a long sigh and pressed her fingers to her chest. “By Christ, I could use a drink. See how I shake?” She held up her trembling hand.

While she drank, Geertruid explained that these men made it their business to learn the names of those who had invested in particular ships and then to track them down and tell stories so the investors might overhear. From there it took only a little trickery to convince even the most skeptical man to part with his shares.

“It is the urgency that undoes their victims,” Geertruid told him. “I had to make a decision at that moment or suffer the consequences, and I could not endure the thought that I might have avoided total disaster yet lacked the resolve to do so. As they say, the patient dog eats rabbit while the hasty dog goes hungry.”

Miguel was taken at once with Geertruid’s easy demeanor, somehow both mannish and seductive. She explained that her husband, who had never done her a kind turn before he died, had left her comfortable, and though most of her money was bound up in neat little investments, she had some few guilders with which to play.

Since that night they had made a habit of smoking and drinking together, but there were many things Miguel did not understand about this widow. She kept much about herself quiet-Miguel hardly even knew the part of town she called home. She would ask him to broker for her but only small quantities, surely far less than she had at her disposal. She would disappear for weeks at a time, neither telling Miguel before she departed nor explaining her absence after her return. She would flirt with Miguel incessantly, leaning in close to speak with him, showing him her deep cleavage, intriguing him with talk both lascivious and vague.

One summer night, after they had both had too much beer and were wet from an unexpected rain shower, Geertruid had leaned in to whisper some silly thing in his ear, and he kissed her hard upon the mouth, knocking his teeth into hers as he attempted to slide a hand between her breasts. Geertruid extricated herself from his clumsy grip and made some little quip, but it was clear that Miguel had crossed a line she would not have him cross again. The next time she saw Miguel, she handed him a tiny volume as a present: ‘t Amsterdamsch Hoerdom, a guide to the whores and bawdy houses of the city. Miguel had thanked her with good cheer but in truth had felt a humiliation greater than that of his bankruptcy, and he vowed never again to fall victim to her amorous nonsense.

And then there was the matter of Hendrick, a man some fifteen years her junior. Geertruid kept him at her feet almost all the time. He would sit sometimes apart from her at taverns while she chatted with men of business, but he always kept one eye upon her, like a half-sleeping hound. Was he her lover, her servant, or something else Miguel could not quite fathom? She would never say, eluding his questions with graceful ease so that Miguel had long since ceased to ask them.

Often when they met, Hendrick would slink off, glowering at Miguel for a moment before he took himself to wherever such a man might go. Yet he never quite acted with resentment. He called Miguel Jew Man, as though to do so were the height of wit or a sign of their private friendship. He would clap Miguel on the back, always just hard enough to seem something other than amicable. But when the three of them sat together, if Miguel grew quiet or preoccupied with his troubles, it was always Hendrick who tried to draw him out, Hendrick who would burst into a bawdy song or tell some ribald tale, often at his own expense, such as the time he nearly drowned in a trough of horse dung. If such a thing had happened to Miguel, he was sure he’d never recount the tale, not even to bring cheer to the Messiah.

Miguel resented Geertruid’s refusal to talk about her companionship with Hendrick, but he understood her to be a woman well able to keep a secret, and that was a quality not to be underestimated. She knew their friendship could cause Miguel problems with the Ma’amad and so rarely showed herself at taverns where Jews congregated-or, if she did have business there, she pretended not to know Miguel. Certainly he had been seen speaking to her a little intimately once or twice, but that was the very beauty of her being a woman-she was invisible to the men of the Nation. If they saw her at all, they saw her as Miguel’s whore; he had even been teased once or twice for liking his Dutchwomen overripe.