The Coffee Trader

“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 co

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.