The Coffee Trader

“I wish I were, senhor. I long to undertake a trade of so much interest to men like you-and my brother.”

Parido frowned. “It is a terrible sin, punishable by the cherem, to lie to a parnass.”

Before he could check himself, the indignation, fed by coffee, became his master. “Do you threaten me, senhor?”

“We have a history filled with mistrust, have we not, Lienzo? I have spoken ill of you in the past, but remember that you have spoken ill of me as well. You must know that I have been more than willing to forgive your actions with my daughter and with the maid and her child.”

“The child wasn’t mine and you know it,” Miguel blurted out.

“Nor mine,” Parido said, with a thin smile. “Nor anyone else’s either. I know about your little trick with the whore. A few coins pressed in her hand, and she told me everything. I’ve known it for more than a year. And yet I have never brought forward that information. I’ve never used it to harm you, and now I never can, for how could I explain knowing something of such importance and keeping it secret all this time? Is that not proof enough that I am not the enemy you think I am?”

Miguel could think of nothing clever to say. “You have been very judicious, senhor,” he managed, in a croaking voice.

“I believe kind is more the word, but I would hate for my kindness to be misunderstood. It hasn’t been misunderstood, has it?”

What in the devil was he talking about? “No.”

“Good.” Parido patted Miguel on the back. “I see you’re upset, so we’ll continue this conversation another time. If you have no interest in coffee, that is the end of it. But if I learn that you have lied to me in this, that you have turned me away when I offer you friendship, you’ll discover you have angered the wrong man.”

Miguel spun around and heard a buyer call for shares at 402. What had happened since 378? Miguel had no choice other than to sell what he had rather than risk a sudden dip and lose everything.

Within two days the price rose to 423, but Miguel had done little more with his shares than break even.

Isaiah Nunes looked half drunk. More than half drunk, Miguel decided. He looked fully drunk and half asleep. They sat in the Flyboat drinking thin Provençal wine, and Miguel began to get the feeling that he was boring his friend.

“He comes to me and speaks of friendship, but he does all in his power to confuse me and prevent me from going about my trade.”

Nunes raised one eyebrow. “Perhaps you had best keep your distance from Parido.”

“That is sound advice,” Miguel said, “but I have hardly been chasing after him. Both he and my brother hound me about coffee, yet they seem to know nothing of my plans.”

“I told you to stay away from coffee.”

“I don’t need to stay away from coffee. I need to stay away from Parido and my brother. And I need a man or two in Iberia.”

“Well, they’re hard to come by these days, I hear.”

“You must have contacts,” Miguel suggested.

Nunes raised his head slightly. “What do you mean, precisely?”

“What I mean is that if you know someone who can act as my agent in Iberia, I would be grateful if you would write to this person and tell him to expect to hear from me.”

Nunes began to shake his head. “What are you doing, Miguel? You tell me that Parido is troubling you, looking to pry into your business, and you want to involve me? I won’t risk Parido’s anger, or even his notice. He hardly recognizes me when he sees me on the street, and I prefer it that way.”

“You already are involved,” Miguel reminded him. “You’re the one who is bringing my coffee into Amsterdam.”

“And I regret having agreed to do it,” he said. “Ask no more of me.”

“You won’t put me in touch with your man in Lisbon?”

“I have no man in Lisbon.” Nunes drained his glass.

Four days later, Miguel found himself in need of a piss on a horse-drawn barge headed to Rotterdam. Geertruid had not lied when she said that coffee would provoke urine. And here he was, his bladder full, and nowhere to piss but in the canal. There were women on this boat, and though a Dutchman would do his business without a second thought, Miguel could not bring himself to expose his alien member so freely. He did not need a group of strange Dutchwomen staring and pointing at his circumcised anatomy.

Just another hour to Rotterdam, he told himself. His old associate Fernando de la Monez would soon be leaving that city and heading back to London, where he lived, as he had in Lisbon, as a Secret Jew. No amount of money would ever serve as incentive for Miguel to once more take to worshiping in darkened rooms, groping in ignorance for some semblance of Jewish ritual, all the while knowing that the world outside would see you dead before permitting this hidden and undignified exercise of faith. In his letters Fernando had insisted that things were not quite so bad in London. There, he said, men of business knew him and his compatriots to be Jews, but they didn’t mind so long as they were discreet in their practice.

There were perhaps a dozen or so other people on the long bright-red boat, drawn steadily along by a team of horses that clopped along the side of the canal. It was of a flat design, more like a raft than a boat, but it was sturdy and included a hutlike structure in the center where passengers might take shelter during the rains. Miguel had been on larger horse-drawn boats, some so large that a tap man sold the passengers beer and pastries, but this conveyance was too small for such amenities.

Miguel paid the other travelers no mind; he hid from the mist in the muted light of the enclosed area and attempted to distract himself from his bladder with a tale of Charming Pieter. It was one he had read many times, concerning the cruel owners of a country estate who had robbed their tenants of their crops. Pieter and Mary pretend to be regents interested in purchasing the land, and once they gain the owners’ trust, they rob them in the night, stopping on their way out of the village to return to the peasants what belongs to them.

Miguel had already looked through his pamphlet twice by the time the boat arrived, and he wasted no time finding a private spot to take care of his pressing concerns. Once relieved of distractions, he felt free to take in the city. In many ways, Rotterdam was like a smaller, neater version of Amsterdam. He had visited there often enough to know how to navigate its streets, and he found the tavern Fernando had specified with little difficulty. There, he and his friend met and discussed the particulars of Fernando’s duties in London ’s exchange. Fernando seemed puzzled by Miguel’s insistence that the trades take place at a particular time, but he agreed nonetheless, once Miguel assured him that nothing he did would in any way bring suspicion upon him or the fragile community of Jews in London.

It grew late by the time they had finished, and Miguel accepted Fernando’s offer to remain in Rotterdam, where he attended evening prayers at the small synagogue and then took the morning boat to Amsterdam. He settled into his wooden bench on the boat and closed his eyes, thinking of what tasks remained to him before he could consider the coffee-fruit scheme in hand. In the cool of the morning he fell asleep, he knew not how long, and awoke from a hazy dream with a loud mutter. Embarrassed, he looked around to see who had heard him. A quick glance told him he recognized no one, and he almost turned back to his thoughts before something caught his eye. He looked again. In the back of the boat, quietly engaged in private conversation, he saw a pair of finely dressed gentlemen. Miguel dared take only a passing glance, but it was enough for him to see they wore beards. True, they were cut very short, but beards all the same. One man was particularly dark, and his closely shorn facial hair crept like a black fungus halfway down his throat. Any Dutchman would shave such a thing away. The only man who would wear his beard thus was a Jew-one trying hard not to look Jewish.