The Coffee Trader (26 page)

She shook her head. “I wish I didn’t have to tell you, but I have made up my mind to do so. I know I can trust you, senhor, and if you must confront her, and you make it clear you already know my secret, perhaps she won’t tell others, and the worst may be spared. Can I tell you and trust that you will tell no one else?”

“Of course,” Miguel said hastily, though he wished desperately that he could somehow avoid this entire conversation.

“I am ashamed,” she said, “and yet not ashamed to tell you this, but I saw the widow on my way from a sacred place. A church of Catholic worship, senhor.”

Miguel stared at her with unfocused eyes until she blended into the dark wall. He hardly knew what to think. His own brother’s wife, a woman for whom he had cared and felt desire, had revealed herself a secret Catholic.

“You have betrayed your husband?” he asked quietly.

She swallowed hard. The tears had not yet come, but they would come soon. They filled the air like a coming rain. “How can you speak of betrayal? I was never told until the eve of my wedding that I was a Jew. Have
I
not been betrayed?”

“You betrayed?” Miguel demanded, once again forgetting to keep his voice quiet. “How can you say so? You live in the new Jerusalem.”

“Have you or your brother or the rabbis spoken to me of what is in your Torah or Talmud other than to tell me what I must do to serve you? When I go to your synagogue, the prayers are in Hebrew and the talk is in Spanish, yet I may not learn these tongues. If I have a daughter, must I raise her to serve an arbitrary God who will not even show His face only because she is a girl? It is well for you to talk of betrayal when the world hands you all you desire. I am offered nothing, and if I wish to take for myself some comfort, am I to be condemned?”

“Yes,” Miguel said, though he did not believe it and instantly regretted having said so. But he was angry. He could not have said why, but he felt wounded, as though she had violated some trust between them.

He had not seen the tears start, but there they were, glistening upon her face. He fought the urge to pull her to his body, to feel her breasts against his chest, but he couldn’t, so instead he pressed on. “I have nothing more to say to you. Now leave me so I may think on what to do with this knowledge that I wish I had never heard.”

The cruelty of his words stuck in his throat; he knew what they would mean to her. She would wonder if Miguel might keep quiet. He now knew his brother’s wife was a papist, and that information could destroy Daniel. Miguel might reveal this information to usurp his brother’s place in the community, or he could use it to threaten Daniel into forgiving his debts.

Miguel would do none of these things. No matter how repulsive her sin, he would not betray Hannah. Even so, he felt such sudden rage that he had to punish her, and his words were the only way he knew how.

“I heard voices. Is something wrong?”

Daniel appeared at the doorway of the kitchen, looking pale. His little eyes focused on his wife, standing far too close to a retreating Miguel.

“It is only your silly brother,” Hannah said, hiding her face in the poor light. “I saw him come in wearing these wet clothes, but he refuses to change out of them.”

“It is not for a woman to decide if a man is silly,” Daniel pointed out, not unkindly. He merely illuminated information she may have forgotten. “Nevertheless,” he said to Miguel, “she may be right. I won’t have you catch plague and kill us all.”

“The entire household has an opinion on my clothes.” Miguel affected as best he could an easy manner. “I’ll go change at once before the maid is summoned to speak her piece.”

Hannah took a hurried step back, and Miguel turned instinctively toward the stairwell. Daniel had seen nothing; Miguel could be almost certain of that. What, after all, had there been for him to see? Yet he must know the full vocabulary of his wife’s expressions, and surely he had seen one upon her face that could not be a simple matter of housewifely advice.

His confusion about Hannah’s Romish inclinations was so intense that he did not even consider what she had said about Geertruid for several hours. Once he recalled her words, however, he found himself awake much of the night, regretting his cruelty and wishing there were a way to go to Hannah and ask her questions. And perhaps apologize.

Hannah was first out of the house the next morning, stepping onto the stoop to look for the bread man, whose cries she heard through windows hazy with morning cool. Before her husband had opened his eyes, before Annetje had even washed and begun to prepare breakfast for the house, Hannah had dressed herself, put her veil firmly in place, and stepped outside.

She found the pig’s head. It sat upon the stoop just inches from the door, angled in a congealed pool of blood. Already ants had begun to crawl upon it in such numbers that at first it appeared to Hannah black and writhing.

Her shriek roused the house and the closest neighbors. Miguel had slept badly and had already risen, prayed, and dressed. He sat struggling with the weekly Torah portion when her shrill voice penetrated the tiny windows of the cellar, and he was the first to find Hannah upon the steps, a hand clasped over her mouth. She turned to him and fell into his arms, burying her head in his shirt as she wept.

They called immediately for the doctor, who gave her potions to help her sleep and explained that if she could be kept calm for a day, the danger to her life would pass. Hannah had insisted that she needed no potions, she had been only startled, but the doctor would not believe a woman could receive so great a shock without its disordering her humors and, more important, he explained, the humors of the unborn baby. Daniel shot Miguel hard looks but said nothing, made no accusations. Nevertheless, Miguel could no longer ignore the simple truth that things between himself and his brother would never be the same.

from

The Factual and Revealing Memoirs of Alonzo Alferonda

I returned home one night from evening prayers (yes, evening prayers—there were still, thank God, a few small synagogues that defied the Ma’amad and permitted me to worship among their number so long as I was careful not to be seen), when I felt a hand grip my shoulder. I looked up expecting to see some desperate debtor who, fearing for his life, thought to strike at Alferonda before he could be struck. Instead, I saw Solomon Parido.

“Senhor,” I said, swallowing my relief, “I hardly thought to receive another visit from you again so soon.”

Parido appeared hesitant. He no more liked coming to see me than I liked seeing him. Perhaps he liked it less. I had nothing to lose from these encounters, but he had his pride. “I had not thought to seek you out.”

“And yet,” I observed, “here you are, lurking in the streets, waiting for me.” I had cause to be anxious that he knew I had been at worship, but he said nothing, and I could only conclude that he would not have failed to play so valuable a card. My friends at the small synagogue were safe.

Parido set his jaw as though bracing himself and turned to me. “I want to know more of what you have planned with Miguel Lienzo.”

I picked up my pace, if only a little. It was a trick I learned so long ago I hardly even notice doing it most times. Varying your pace of walking sets your companion on edge. He has to think more about trivial things than he ought, and that takes his concentration from where it needs to be. “I marvel at your presumption,” I said. “What makes you think, if I had anything planned, I would tell my enemy?”

“I may be your enemy, as you style it, but Lienzo is not. You are manipulating him.”

I let out a laugh. “If you think so, why not tell him?”

“Things have gone too far now; he’d never believe me. I’ve asked his brother to warn him off you, but I doubt that will do much good.”

“I doubt it too. A better strategy might have been to have his brother encourage him to do business with me.” I winked at him. “I heard someone left the head of a pig on his brother’s doorstep. I wonder if
you,
senhor, might know who would do such a thing.”

“How dare you accuse me of so wretched a crime? Listen to me, Alferonda. If you bear any friendship for Lienzo, you’ll stop this. If he crosses me, I’ll destroy him.”

I shook my head. “You think you can destroy anyone you like. You think you can work miracles of destruction. Your power as
parnass
has corrupted you utterly, Parido, and you cannot even see it. You’ve become a distortion of the man you once were. You threaten me, you threaten Lienzo—you see plots everywhere. I pity you. You can no longer tell what is true and what is your own fancy.”

He stared at me for a moment, and I could tell by his face that I had struck something. This was the oldest trick of them all, but I knew it well. I had practiced it often. The appearance of sincerity can truly unman even the most stalwart foe.

“Think,” I said, eager to press the advantage, “of what you have accused me, of what you have accused Miguel. Do you really think it plausible that men engage themselves in these wild plots? Is it not far more likely that your suspicion and greed have misled you not only to suspect things that are untrue but to do real harm to others?”

“I see I’ve wasted my time,” he said, and turned away.

I was not one, however, to let the fish go, once hooked. “You haven’t wasted your time,” I called after him, “if you will only think of what I have said. You are wrong, Parido. You are wrong about me and wrong about Lienzo, and it is not too late for you to atone for your sins.”

He began to walk faster and hunched his shoulders as if to protect himself from whatever I might hurl at him. And I did hurl: I hurled lies, powerful lies that fell like stones because they so clearly resembled the truth.

In the same way you can make a simple peasant who has given you his last coin think that a mere lout with too much hair on his back is a werewolf. He fears it may be a werewolf, so all you need do is point and whisper a suggestion, and the peasant will hear the howling for himself.

25

Though still in bed, Hannah ate her soup that evening and chatted calmly with her husband. Miguel and Daniel both showed their relief, though the storm had not yet passed. Miguel had been doing his best to stay out of Daniel’s path, but that night Annetje brought him word that his brother wished to see him in his study. Miguel found him hunched over his writing table, scribbling in the light of a good candle. Three or four more flickered in the breeze of the open window. Daniel had been smoking an acrid tobacco, and Miguel felt a headache gathering its forces.

“How does your wife?” Miguel asked.

“I no longer fear for her life. These frights, you know, can be fatal to a woman’s delicate humors, particularly one in her condition. But the doctor tells me there is no risk to the child.”

“I’m glad. It’s a terrible thing.”

Daniel paused for a moment. He picked up a pen and then set it down again. “It
is
a terrible thing. What do you know of it, Miguel?”

Though he had considered how he might respond to this line of questioning for the better part of the day, Miguel still had no clear idea of what he could say to put matters at ease. Did Daniel want a confession, or did he want to be comforted?

“I can’t say for certain,” he told his brother at last.

“But you have ideas.” It was a statement, not a question.

“I can’t say that I have no guess, but I have no way of knowing for certain.”

“Perhaps you should tell me about your guess.”

Miguel shook his head. “It would be inappropriate for me to speculate. It is wrong to make accusations where I can prove nothing.”

“Prove nothing?” Daniel slammed his hand down on the table. “Is not the head of a pig proof? Recollect that you are staying in my house, and your actions have endangered my family. I nearly lost my wife and child today. I insist you tell me what you
suspect
.”

Miguel sighed. He had not wanted to speculate too wildly, but who could deny that his hand had been forced? “Very well. I suspect Solomon Parido.”

“What?” Daniel stared incredulously. He forgot to finish puffing on his pipe, and smoke drifted lazily from his mouth. “You must be mad.”

“No, it is precisely the sort of scheme to hatch from Parido’s vile mind, and I believe you suspect him as much as I do. He has been plotting against me, and what better way to sully my name than to leave this thing at my door as though I have brought it upon myself?”

“Preposterous. Your conclusions require a contortion of logic. Why would Senhor Parido do such a thing? Where would so righteous a man acquire an unclean animal?”

“Have you some better way to explain this madness?”

“Yes,” Daniel said, with the solemn nod of a judge. “I think you owe someone a great deal of money. I think this money may be the result of a gambling debt or some criminal doing, which is why the person you owe can’t go to the courts. This abomination upon the stoop of my house is meant to warn you to pay or face the most unpleasant of consequences.”

Miguel concentrated to keep his face from revealing anything. “How did you reach this fanciful conclusion?”

“Quite inevitably,” Daniel said. “Hannah found a note rolled up and slipped through the ear of the pig.” He paused for a moment, that he might study his brother’s response. “She tucked it away in her pocket for reasons I cannot guess, but the doctor found it and presented it to me with the greatest concern.” He reached to the bookshelf behind him for a small piece of paper, which he presented to Miguel. The paper was old and torn—clearly ripped from a document used for another purpose—and it was badly stained with blood. Miguel could not make out much of the writing except a few words in Dutch—
I want my money
—and, a few lines down,
my wife.

Miguel handed it back. “I have no idea of its meaning.”

“You have no idea?”

“None.”

“I will have to report this incident to the Ma’amad,
which will no doubt investigate. We can’t keep the matter quiet, at any rate. Too many neighbors witnessed Hannah’s distress.”

“You would sacrifice your own brother to lend a hand to Parido while he carries out his petty vengeance?” Miguel spoke so urgently that for a moment he forgot that circumstance suggested no more likely a culprit than Joachim. “I’ve wondered about your loyalties, and I always chastised myself for suspecting that you might favor this man over your own flesh and blood, but now I see you’re nothing but a player in his puppet show. He pulls your strings, and you dance.”

“My friendship with Senhor Parido is no breach of loyalty,” Daniel snapped back.

“Yet you value him over your own brother,” Miguel said.

“It need not be a contest. Why must I choose one over the other?”

“Because he has made it so that you must. You would sacrifice me for this man, and you would do so in an instant.”

“You know nothing of me, then.”

“I think I do,” Miguel said. “Answer truly. If you were asked to choose between the two of us, to make a choice in which you had to definitively side with one or the other, would you even for a moment entertain siding with me?”

“I refuse to answer your question. It is madness.”

“Then don’t answer it,” Miguel said. “You need not bother.”

“That is right. I need not bother. Why even speak of such choices? Senhor Parido has shown his goodness in the kindness he’s shown to our family, particularly after the harm you did his daughter.”

“It was no harm. It was but a silly affair and would have been of no lasting consequence if he had not allowed himself to lose all reason. I had a dalliance with his maid, and his daughter saw. Why must he make all this thunder over nothing?”

“There
was
harm, and permanent harm too,” Daniel replied harshly, “and if Senhor Parido feels anger over the damage done to his daughter, I for one cannot blame him, for you came close to doing the same harm to my unborn child.”

Miguel began to reply, but checked himself. There was something more to this affair than he knew. “What damage?” he asked. “She had a fright. It is nothing.”

“I should not have said anything.” Daniel looked away.

“If you know something, you must tell me. I’ll ask Parido himself if need be.”

Daniel put a hand to his forehead. “No, don’t do that,” he insisted. “I’ll tell you, but you must not let him know that you know, or that you learned from me.”

Despite his fear, Miguel could have smiled. Daniel would betray Parido if only to save his own flesh from the fire.

“More happened to Antonia than the senhor wanted the world to know. When she came into the room and saw you in your unspeakable act with her maid, she fainted.”

“I know that,” Miguel said testily. “I was there.”

“You know she struck her head. What you don’t know is that she and her husband in Salonika have since had an idiot child, and the doctors say it is the result of this injury. She can have nothing but idiot children.”

Miguel ran a hand along his beard and inhaled sharply through his nostrils. Antonia rendered unable to bear healthy children? He could not fathom the connection between her injury and its consequence, but he was not a medical man to solve such riddles. He knew enough, however, to figure out the rest. Parido’s own idiot boy was a shame to him, and Antonia had been his only hope of perpetuating the family, particularly since he had wed her to a cousin also named Parido. The
parnass
was a wrathful man by nature. What anger would he reserve for the man he believed had destroyed the future of his line?

“How long has he known this?”

“No more than a year. And I beg you to recall that you must not tell him I spoke of it.”

Miguel waved a hand at him. “No one told me.” He rose from his chair. “No one told me!” he repeated, this time far more loudly. “Parido had more reason to hate me than I could have known, and yet you said nothing. And now you doubt that he has sent this vile message to injure me? Your loyalties are as preposterous as your beliefs.”

“I won’t listen to any such lies about Solomon Parido.”

“Then we have no more to discuss.” Miguel hurried down the narrow staircase, almost stumbling as he did so. In his rage, he had nearly convinced himself that there was no more likely explanation for the pig’s head than Parido. Could there be any doubt that, in his rage and twisted sense of rectitude, he would do all he could to harm Miguel? Damn his brother for thinking otherwise.

In the damp of the cellar, he listened to the familiar scrape of floorboards as Daniel dressed and left the house. He had not been gone for more than a quarter hour when Annetje came down the stairs and handed Miguel a letter. It was addressed to Daniel and contained a circle in the upper corner.

The note was from the broker, asking confirmation of Daniel’s willingness to support Miguel’s trade. The letter was standard, nothing of consequence, but there was a line at the end that intrigued Miguel.

You have always been a respected man on the Exchange, and your friendship with Solomon Parido is more surety than any man could wish. Nevertheless, owing to your recent reversals and the rumors of insolvency, I hesitated before considering your guarantee solid enough to back your brother’s trade. Nevertheless, I shall gamble on Miguel Lienzo’s cleverness and your honor.

So Daniel was in debt. That explained why he insisted on receiving Miguel’s money right away. Well, it was no matter. Miguel forged a reply, which he gave to the girl to send off. She hesitated a moment, and only when pressed did she explain that the senhora had requested his company.

Hannah lay propped up, her head wrapped in a bluish cloth and her skin pale and wet with perspiration, but she appeared to be in no great danger. She was stretched out comfortably on that proper bed of hers, long enough that she could lie flat on her back, unlike the cupboard bed that tortured Miguel. This one had been built of an elaborate oak frame that rose above her. Among the wealthy Dutch, these new beds had become the fashion, and Miguel vowed he would buy one for himself the moment he left his brother’s house.

The bed had no curtains to part, so she lay there for him to see, her eyes wide and sorrowful. “We should talk quickly,” she said, her face grave but without accusation. “I don’t know where your brother has gone, so I don’t know when he will return.”

“I suspect I know where he has gone,” Miguel observed. “He’s gone to see Parido.”

“That may be,” she said.

Miguel took a step closer. “I only want to say that I am sorry for what happened to you, and for your distress. I never meant for you to be hurt. I promised you would not.”

She smiled slightly. “Your brother made more of it than was necessary. I was frightened for a moment, but I soon recovered. I have felt the baby moving all day as she always does. I have no fears there.”

She,
Miguel noticed. Would she dare speculate on a girl child in front of Daniel? Did her speaking of it in front of Miguel constitute an intimacy?

“I am very happy to hear there are no lasting consequences.”

“I’m only sorry I couldn’t do more. I found a note, and I don’t know what it said, but I hid it thinking it might do you harm. Your brother took it from me.”

“I know. It was of no importance.”

“Do you know who left that vile thing there?”

Miguel shook his head. “I wish I did, but still, I thank you for your efforts. I’m sorry,” he said, taking a sharp breath, “that I behaved so poorly. I wish to discuss this matter with you again. Perhaps another time. When you are rested.” He had not planned to, but he took her hand in his and held it tight, feeling its coolness, the contours of her smooth skin.

He expected her to pull away, to chastise him for his unforgivable presumption, but she looked up at him as though this gesture of devotion were the most natural thing in the world. “I am sorry too—that I was so weak—but I knew nothing else.”

“Then we shall have to teach you what you want to know,” he told her kindly.

Hannah turned her head away for a moment, burrowing into her pillow.

“I must ask you something else,” he said, rubbing her hand with his, “and then I’ll let you rest. You mentioned Madam Damhuis. What more did you wish to tell me?”

Hannah remained motionless, as if she might pretend not to have heard him. Finally she turned back to face him with her reddened eyes. “I hardly even know. She was speaking to some men when I saw her, and I scarcely looked at all. But she thought I had seen something I ought not to have.”

Miguel nodded. “Did you know the men? Did they appear to you of the Nation or Dutch or something else?”

She shook her head. “I can’t even say that. I think they were Dutch, but one might have been a Jew. I am not certain.”

“You did not know them? You had never seen them?”

“I think one was her servant man, but I can’t say.” She shook her head. “Senhor, I was too frightened to see them.”

Miguel knew the feeling well. “I’ll let you sleep,” he said. He knew he should not do it, he told himself not to, that he would regret it, that it would only bring trouble. But he did it anyway. Before gently setting her hand down upon the bed, he raised it to his lips and softly kissed her warm skin. “And thank you, senhora.”

He didn’t wait for a reply but hurried out of the room, fearing he might cross paths with his brother on the stairwell, but no such thing happened.

Hannah closed her eyes, not knowing what to think, or even how. Miguel had forgiven her. He understood her. He had taken her hand and kissed it. Could she dare to hope for more than that? Oh, what had she done to deserve such mercy? She slid a hand down to the comforting bulge of her belly, caressing this unborn child, this daughter, whom she would protect from all the evil that threatened them both.

When she opened her eyes, Annetje stood before her. Her face was immobile, jaw thrust outward, eyes little more than slits. Where had she come from? Hannah had heard no one climb the stairs. The girl could do that; she went in and out of rooms like a ghost.

“You told him,” Annetje said, so quietly Hannah could hardly hear her.

She briefly considered lying, but what good would it do? “Yes,” she said. “I thought it important he know.”