The Coffee Trader (36 page)

“Yes,” Geertruid said quietly. “We are Charming Pieter and his Goodwife Mary. As to which of us is which, I cannot say.” She let out a laugh. “Poor Hendrick is more the fool than you, I’m afraid, but he always did as he was told, and he let the world believe that he was behind Pieter’s heroic robberies. It hardly mattered. I had come to believe that, in this age of stories and adventures, if we could make people believe in Charming Pieter as a hero, no one would turn him in, and the legend would only confound the efforts to catch him. Little did we know how well the plan would work. I expected to hear stories of our adventures, but I never expected to see these tales in print. Half the stories you read are false and the other half wild exaggerations, but they have served us well.”

“Where is Hendrick now?”

“Fled.” She sighed. “He is a silly man, but not so silly as not to know what it means to be unable to pay a cruel usurer. I have not seen him since the loss upon the Exchange. He was never at peace with my dealings with Alferonda and my plans to make our fortune through trade. He could not understand how it all worked, and he thought it doomed. I fear that any way this ended, Charming Pieter’s adventures were destined to reach their conclusion.”

“How could I have done this to you?” Miguel said. He put his face in his hands.

“It is my doing. I put you at risk. And that poor girl, your brother’s wife—please tell her I am sorry to have had to frighten her.”

“She is to be my wife soon,” Miguel said, feeling somehow the need to be honest.

“Is she now? Well, I can’t say I understand the ways of the Israelites, but they are not mine to understand.”

“What is it that Hannah saw? She did not even know.”

Geertruid laughed. “She did not even know. How very amusing. She saw me speaking with Alferonda, and I was afraid that if you were to learn of it you would grow suspicious. But,” she said, pushing herself to her feet, “enough chatter, senhor. I must be on my way.”

“You are too drunk, madam, to leave town tonight. Let me take you home.”

She laughed, holding on to his arm for support. “Oh, Miguel, still trying to find your way to my bed.”

“I only want to see you safely—”

“Shh.” She pressed a finger to his lips. “There’s no need to tell stories. Not anymore. I must go, and it must be tonight, and my being drunk shall only make things easier, not harder.” Yet she did not move. “Do you remember, senhor, the night you tried to kiss me?”

He thought about lying, to pretend it had been no matter to him and he had not bothered to remember. But he did not lie. “Yes, I remember.”

“I longed to kiss you back,” she said, “and more, too. I never let you, not because I did not want to but because I knew you would be more pliable if I never gave you more than enough to whet your appetite. A woman such as I am must know how to use her quim, even if it means not using it.”

“Let me take you home,” Miguel said again.

“No,” she said, pushing herself off with unexpected sobriety. “I said I must go, and so I must. Let us part quickly, or we’ll never part at all.” And so she left, out the door and into the night. Without a lantern. If ever a woman lived who could outwit the thieves and the Night Watch, it was Geertruid Damhuis.

He remained still for a long time. He simply stared into the distance until a pretty girl came over and asked him if he required anything. “Wine,” he whispered. “A great deal of wine.” When he drank it, when he had so much wine in him that he could no longer tell what was right and what was wrong—that was when he would go in search of Alferonda.

from

The Factual and Revealing Memoirs of Alonzo Alferonda

I had hardly thought that after Miguel Lienzo’s victory on the Exchange all would be done with. I had won, Parido had lost, and the victory tasted sweet, but there was still Miguel. I had trod upon him, and he would not take it kindly. I had thought to fool him when he came to see me, to dazzle his eyes with tricks and illusions until he doubted that there even was such a man as Alonzo Alferonda, let alone one who had used him ill. But I had always liked Miguel, and I owed him a debt. I had begun with no intention of hurting him or his friends but rather using him as an instrument that would facilitate what I wanted and at the same time allowing him to make a guilder or two.

There would have been no harm done, surely. If some lies were told, if some coins were palmed and made to magically appear, what wrong can there be in that? All men love trickery and tricksters. That is why half-starving peasants surrender their hard-got wages when mountebanks and Gypsies come through their towns. All the world loves to be deceived—but only when it consents to the deception.

I sat in my rooms one night reading the Holy Torah—I speak the truth, for the
cherem
had not diminished my love of learning one jot—when there was a loud banging on the door below. In a few moments my serving man, old Roland (for, despite the Dutch fashions, I like a manservant and will not allow a nation of cheese eaters to tell me whom to employ), tapped upon the door to my closet and told me there was “a very drunk Hebrew of the Portuguese kind” come calling and, when asked his business, stated that it was to kill the man who lived here.

I carefully marked my place in the volume and closed it reverently. “By all means,” I said, “show the fellow in.”

Soon enough a besotted Miguel Lienzo stood before me, teetering this way and that. I asked Roland to bring us some wine. I doubted Miguel wanted any more than he had already enjoyed, but I could still hope this encounter might end with his falling asleep. With the servant gone, I offered my visitor a chair and told him I awaited his words.

He awkwardly lowered himself into the hard seat, for in this room I only received visitors whom I did not wish to stay long.

“Why did you not tell me you lent money to Geertruid Damhuis?” he asked, his words a thick mumble.

“I lend to so many people,” I said, “I cannot be expected to keep track of every one.”

This bit of obfuscation was not meant to trick him. In fact, I’m not sure what it was meant to accomplish. I can say what it did do: it angered him greatly.

“Damn you,” he shouted, half rising from his chair. “If you play games, I will kill you.”

I began to believe him, though he had no weapon in sight, and I did not anticipate any great difficulty in eluding his drunken pursuit, should things so degenerate. Nevertheless, I held up my hand in a staying gesture and waited for him to settle back into his chair. “You are right. I did not tell you because it suited me for you to think she was in league with Parido. You must know by now that I could not be more delighted that your scheme has burnt Parido, but the truth of it is I had more of a hand in this than you could have imagined.”

Miguel nodded as though recollecting something. “Parido was invested in coffee before I decided to begin my venture, wasn’t he? He was not the man who sought to undo my scheme. I was the man who sought to undo his. Is that right?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “Parido entered the coffee trade a few months before you. It was a bit of a trick keeping it from you, but I had my man at the coffee tavern refuse to admit you if Parido was there. A simple precaution. Parido, you understand, had nothing so elaborate as your monopoly scheme in mind. He only wanted to play in calls and puts, and when you started buying up coffee as you did, you threatened his investments, the way you had done in whale oil.”

Miguel shook his head. “So you had Geertruid lure me into the coffee trade for the single purpose of damaging Parido, and you then turned around and betrayed her?”

“I am flattered you think me so ingenious, but my involvement was something less than that. Your Madam Damhuis discovered coffee on her own and enticed you into the trade because she thought you would make a good partner. When I learned of your interest, I admit I encouraged it because I knew it would be bad for Parido, and I fed you a hint here and there about how Parido plotted against you. But I did no more than that.”

“How is it that Geertruid came to you for her loan?”

“I don’t know if you are familiar with that woman’s story, but you must know she is a thief, and I am the man thieves come to when they need large sums. I doubt she could have borrowed three thousand guilders from anyone else.”

“You’ll not see that money. She has fled the city.”

I shrugged, having expected something of that sort. “We’ll see. I have agents in such places as she might go. I have not given up hope on those guilders, but if they are gone it is a price I am will-ing to pay for harming Parido. He has not only lost a great deal of money, he looks like a fool before the community. He’ll never again be elected to the Ma’amad, and his days of power are over. Is that not worth inconveniencing a thief like Geertruid Damhuis?”

“She is my friend,” he said sadly. “You could have told me what you knew. You need only have told me all and I could have avoided all of this.”

“And what else would you have avoided? Had you known that Parido’s overtures of friendship were genuine, that he had come to coffee first and that you threatened his investments, would you have gone ahead? Would you still have sought to best him in that contest, or would you have backed down? I think we both know the truth, Miguel. You are a schemer, but not so much of a schemer as to do what needed to be done.”

“It did not need to be done,” he said softly.

“It did!” I slammed my hand on the desk. “That wretch Parido had me cast out of the community because he did not like me. He used flimsy excuses to justify himself, but he was no more than a petty despot who relished what little power he had to make himself feel great. So what if he reached out to you, the brother of a partner, to make amends? Does that excuse the evil he has already done and the evil he would continue to perpetuate? I’ve done our people a great service, Miguel, by knocking him down.”

“And it hardly matters that Geertruid, who was my friend, gets destroyed?”

“Oh, she’s not destroyed, Miguel. She’s a thief and a trickstress. I know the kind. I
am
the kind, and I can tell you she will always do well for herself. She is a wily woman with yet an ample share of beauty. This time next year she’ll be the wife of a burgher in Antwerp or the mistress of an Italian prince. You needn’t worry about her. I’m the one who has lost three thousand guilders, after all. She might have repaid me some portion of it.”

Miguel merely shook his head.

“You’re angry about something else, I suppose. You’ve made some money. You’ve extricated yourself from debt, you have a tidy profit besides, and you are the most popular merchant in the Vlooyenburg—at least for the moment. But you are angry that you are not on your way to opulence, as you had hoped.”

He stared. Perhaps he was ashamed to admit that he was indeed angry not to have earned so much as he believed he might.

“The two of you might have captured the coffee market in Europe,” I said, “but I don’t think so. This plan of yours was too ambitious; the East India Company would never have allowed it. I had every intention of rescuing you before you overreached yourself. Had I not done so, you would have been destroyed again in a half year’s time. Instead, you have done quite well. You think because your scheme with Geertruid Damhuis failed that you can have nothing more to do with coffee? Nonsense. You have made that commodity famous, Miguel, and now the city looks to you. There is still a great fortune to be made. You wanted a trade that would put all your scheming to an end, but instead you have one that presents only a beginning. Use it wisely, and you’ll have your opulence in due time.”

“You had no right to trick me as you did.”

I shrugged. “Perhaps not, but you are the better for it. You have your money, and, I now hear, you are to be married soon as well. Many congratulations to you and the beautiful bride. You have said you wanted a wife and family, and now you shall have those things because of me. I may not have been your most honest friend, but I have always been your best one.”

Miguel rose from his chair. “A man must make his own fortune, not be played like a chess piece. I’ll never forgive you,” he said.

Given that he came to my home with the intention of killing me, I considered never being forgiven a considerable victory.

“Someday you’ll forgive me,” I said, “and even thank me.” But he was already gone—down the stairs at a hurried pace that came just short of a tumble and off to find his own way to the door. Drunk as he was, it took him a few minutes. I heard some bottles break and a piece of furniture topple, but that meant little to me. Once he was gone I had Roland tell the girl, Annetje, that she could come out of hiding. She was much more beautiful, now that she had me to take care of her. I knew it was for the best that Miguel not see her in my home, for her radiant face gave unmistakable testimony that I was a superior lover, and that was information from which his fragile feelings were best protected at this tender time.

35

Miguel hardly knew the layout of his furniture, and there were trunks of clothes and boxes of newly bought goods scattered about the rooms. The knock came at his door early in the morning, before the sun had only just burned off the dew, and he sensed that his serving woman had already left for the morning milk and bread. His head ached and the nagging sense of something terrible, something he dare not recall, haunted the outer reaches of his thoughts.

Geertruid. He had destroyed Geertruid for nothing—for Alferonda’s petty revenge against a man who had truly wanted to make things right and be Miguel’s friend. Parido had been but a merchant looking to preserve his investments. Miguel had been the villain.

Better to go back to sleep and think of it no more, if only for a few hours.

The pounding at the door would not let him be. He rolled out of his bed—for the first time since he moved in not relishing the comfort of a full-sized bed instead of one of those cupboard monstrosities—and quickly wrapped himself in a dressing coat and found a pair of wooden slippers. The house was a maze of trunks and misplaced furniture, and he tripped twice before reaching the back door in the kitchen.

At last he had made his way to the kitchen, and opened the top portion of the door. The pleasant odors of the early morning—fish and beer and freshly baked bread—burst in upon him so strongly his stomach turned forcibly, and he had to close his eyes to keep from vomiting. When he looked again, there to greet him was the haggard face of Hendrick. He had lost his hat, and his hair hung filthily around his face. He had a cut just below his eye that had clotted nastily, and blood smeared his shirt. Miguel somehow knew at once that the blood was not Hendrick’s.

“I haven’t the luxury of time,” he said, “so I won’t make you ask me in.”

“What do you want?” He had begun his new life, and he did not want to be seen having a conversation with one such as this. And the distant memory of a conversation echoed on the fringes of his consciousness. Hadn’t Hendrick promised to kill Miguel if he betrayed Geertruid?

But it seemed Hendrick had not come for murder. “I’ve come for my fifty guilders,” he said, smoothing some dirt out of his mustache.

“I don’t understand you.”

“We had a contract, you and I. A deal. You offered me the money, and I took you up on it. Last night. I found the fellow, and I did the business.”

Joachim. He had beaten up Joachim. “But I never told you to carry on with that. I merely asked you about it.”

“Well, it’s too late for quibbling back and forth, arguing over this detail or that. The deed is done, and I need the money. There you have it.” He let out a throaty half laugh that turned into a cough. “The fellow is beaten, and I’d best leave town as quick as I can before the constable’s men catch up with me.”

“I won’t give you a thing,” Miguel said. “I never asked for this.”

The violence that always lurked in Hendrick now rose to the surface. His face reddened and his eyes grew wide. “Listen to me, Jew Man. You’ll give it to me, or there will be more trouble than you reckoned on. If they do catch up with me, I’ll not hesitate to say you were the one to set me upon the task, so you had better think about that, and think about it quickly. I know you don’t want me to be seen here, so let’s just have this over with.”

Miguel knew it was well worth fifty guilders to make him disappear, so he excused himself and found the money in metal, presuming Hendrick would not care for a banknote.

“How badly did you hurt him?” he asked, as he handed over the purse.

“That’s the thing,” Hendrick said. He patted at the cut on his face with his sleeve. “More than I intended. I don’t suppose he needed both eyes, though, did he? One will do quite nicely.”

Miguel swallowed. “You took out an eye?”

“I didn’t take it out,” Hendrick corrected him. “It came out on its own. These things happen from time to time, and there isn’t much point lamenting what can’t be undone.”

“Get out of here,” Miguel said quietly.

“He didn’t know what was going on, why I should just grab him and throw him down and kick him in his face. He kept asking me
why, why, why
—like a little girl being fucked for the first time. But I believe in honesty. I told him to ask the Jew Man. The Jew Man would tell him why, since the Jew Man paid for it.”

Miguel closed his eyes and looked away. After a moment—too long a silence, he thought—he turned back to the wretch. “Why would you do such a thing? Why did you tell him that?”

“Because Madame Damhuis made me promise not to hurt you, despite your treatment of her. So I decided it was well enough: I would not hurt you, but I would have my own way with something. And there it is.”

“Get out of here,” Miguel said again.

“Oh, that I’ll have no trouble doing, you can depend on it. Best to you, Jew Man.” Hendrick pretended to tip the hat he had lost and then took off in a happy skip along the canal side. Miguel stood at the door and watched him go, and even after he had been long gone, he stood by the door watching the space where he had disappeared.

Later on he could not say how long he stood there in cheerless and nauseated silence. He finally looked behind him and saw his servant woman cooking in the kitchen, ignoring him out of fear and confusion, pretending that men always stood by the open door in their bedclothes, staring out into the morning. Later that day, he looked up and saw himself doing business on the Exchange and wondered how he had come to be there, what trades he had made already, and if in such a state he traded with more prudence than when his wits were about him. How could he think of business? His friend Geertruid, ruined and exiled forever. Joachim beaten and perhaps in danger of dying. His brother ruined and humiliated.

He waited for the Watch to come and question him about his role in the beating, but they never came. When he went in search of Joachim a few days later, to bring him gifts, to make certain he had the best surgeon, he found that he and his wife had left town, scurrying away with their share of the coffee scheme money before Miguel could, as he surely now suspected, find some way of taking it back. He had left believing, as always, that these gestures of friendship were but a prelude to treachery.

The thought weighed him down, a dourness that no triumph on the Exchange could extinguish. But in a few weeks’ time, when Hannah was free of Daniel, he took her for his wife and vowed he would be dour no more. In the comfort of married life, he found it easy to forget Joachim and Geertruid by turns and to once more take pleasure in his business. He put a hand to his temple. Alferonda had surely been right about one thing: it would be madness for him to let coffee go. Already, buoyed by the fame of Miguel’s duel against Parido on the Exchange, the drink’s fame had begun to spread. Already he saw jittery merchants, animated by the wondrous fruit, shouting out their business maniacally. At taverns all over the city, traders had begun to demand the brew in place of beer or wine. Miguel might make his fortune yet.

Though Hannah found, after the baby was born, she had no time to learn to read as she had planned, she did not complain, not even in her heart. Miguel knew she had wanted a girl, but she loved the boy, Samuel, all the same. They discussed the problem of hiding from Daniel that the boy was his, but there was no way to undo what had been done. And Miguel loved the boy as though he were his own. But later, when they had their second son, whom they named for his true father, Miguel found himself favoring this child. At times it sat ill with him that he repeated the arbitrary preferences with which he found such fault in his own father, but what could he do? Some things, he had come to conclude, were merely in a person’s nature.