The Coffee Trader

There could be no mistake about it. These were Ma’amad spies.

16

When the boat reached Amsterdam, Miguel walked a short distance out of his way to see if the two men would follow him, but after huddling together in a brief meeting of bobbing heads they both walked off toward the Exchange. Miguel stood for a few minutes by the canal and gazed at the overcast sky before buying a pear from an old woman with a pushcart. It tasted mealy, like parsley root, and after one bite he threw it down on the road. The woman urged her wobbling cart along, determined not to notice Miguel’s displeasure, while two filthy boys lunged for the remains. Rolling the taste of bad pear around in his mouth for a moment, Miguel decided that the day was too far gone for there to be much to do on the Exchange, so he headed home.

The spies had disordered him, and he kept turning around, searching for signs of treachery in beggars and servants and burghers as they strolled along the streets. This is no way to live, he told himself; he could not spend his days jumping at every shadow. But just when he had convinced himself to be calm, he crossed the bridge into the Vlooyenburg and saw Ha

Joachim had backed them into a corner. There was nothing threatening in his gestures, and he appeared calm. A passing stranger might not have noticed anything odd-although it would have been unusual for a veiled woman to speak casually with so low a man.

A

“Oh, Senhor Lienzo!” she exclaimed. “Save us from this madman!”

Miguel answered in Portuguese, addressing Ha

Speechless, she shook her head no.

Then the stench hit him. The wind must have shifted, for the smell drifted in his direction. Miguel felt himself overwhelmed. The Dutch were a fastidiously, even recklessly, clean people, washing themselves far more frequently than was healthy for the body. Joachim had clearly abandoned the practice; he smelled more foul than the least washed Portuguese peasant. It was more than odors of the body, too, but smells of urine and vomit and-it took Miguel an instant-rotted meat. How does a man smell of rotted meat?

He shook his head, trying to break the numbing effect of the stench. “Hurry home,” he told Ha

He turned to Joachim. “Step back.”

To Miguel’s relief, he did so. The women slipped past him, pressing their backs against the wall to increase as much as they could the distance between themselves and the Dutchman. As soon as they had cleared him, they hurried into a brisk walk.

“Let’s go,” Miguel demanded. “Across the bridge. Now.”

Again Joachim obeyed, like a servant who has been caught by his master at something naughty. Miguel looked around to see if anyone he knew had witnessed the encounter and muttered a prayer in thanks to the Holy One, blessed be He, that the spies had not followed him home and that this disaster had happened during the hours of the Exchange, when any man who might wish him ill was off attending to business.

Once they had crossed the bridge over the Houtgracht, Miguel led Joachim to a little thicket of trees by the canal where they could speak unobserved.

“Have you nothing left of your former self? How dare you approach my brother’s wife?” Miguel shifted his position to put himself downwind of Joachim, lessening the stench a bit.

Joachim hardly looked at him. Instead he watched a duck that pecked at the ground near their feet, oblivious to the two men. “Why do you go on about your brother’s wife? I approached your whore too, don’t forget,” he said. “She is a luscious one, senhor. Do you think she’d have me? She seems to me the sort who’d take to just about anyone.”

Miguel sucked in a breath. “Don’t let me see you bother anyone of my family again. Don’t let me see you in the Vlooyenburg.”

As if he had never existed, the soft-spoken compliant Joachim was replaced by the angry one. “Or what should happen? Tell me what you will do, senhor, if you find me upon your streets, talking with your neighbors, telling tales. Tell me, what will you do?”

Miguel let out a sigh. “Surely you want something. You didn’t come to the Vlooyenburg because you have nothing better to do with your time.”

“As it happens, I have nothing better to do with my time. I have proposed that we engage together in some business or other, but you’ve rejected my proposals and made sport of me.”

“No one has made sport of you,” Miguel said, after a moment. “And as to this matter of business, I hardly know what you mean. You wish me to set you up in some project, but I know not what that would be. I can’t even think of what I might do to satisfy you, and I have far too much to do to take the time to puzzle out your meaning.”

“But that’s my very point. You have much to do, but I have so little. I thought perhaps your brother’s wife or her pretty servant might feel the same way-a little too much time, which our preachers tell us is the source of much evil in the world. People take their time, and they use it to think and do evil instead of using it to think and do good. It occurred to me that I might help you by giving your family a chance to do good works through charity.”

“I was under the impression that salvation through works was a Catholic principle, not one of the Reformed Church.”

“Oh, you Jews are so clever. You know everything. But, still, there’s value in charity, senhor. I begin to believe that you have not acted on our plans to engage upon a business venture, and so my mind must, in the absence of other options, turn to charity. Ten guilders would go a long way toward removing me from the Vlooyenburg.”

Miguel pulled back, disgusted. Joachim’s stench hovered thick in the air. “And if I haven’t ten guilders to give you?” He folded his arms, determined to be put upon no longer.

“If you haven’t the money, senhor, anything might happen.” He flashed his hideous grin.

Bravery and prudence might not always appear to be compatible virtues, Miguel told himself as he opened his purse, and a wise man knows when to bow to circumstance. Charming Pieter himself might have preferred to take his revenge another time. But Miguel did not know if his pride could stomach Pieter’s philosophy in this instance.

He briefly considered giving him more than ten guilders. The funds Geertruid had entrusted to him had already diminished significantly, what mattered if they diminished more? What if he were to pay Joachim a hundred guilders right now, even two hundred? When offered the coin, Joachim might think himself content with so little. Surely a man in his condition would not turn away a hundred guilders.

Maybe the reasonable man Miguel had once known was truly lost, but was it not possible that money could be the thing to restore him? Perhaps he was like the woman in an old tale who needed only a magical shoe or ring to return her to her former beauty. Give Joachim a bath, a good meal and a soft bed to sleep on, and hope for the future, and would he wake up himself?

“If you came to me like a decent man,” Miguel said at last, “and only asked me for the money in a humble way, I would help you. But these tricks of yours make me disinclined. Go away. The next time I see you here, I’ll beat you senseless.”

“Do you know what makes me smell so wretched?” Joachim demanded, his voice growing loud and shrill. Without waiting for an answer, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a lump of something gray and slick and-it took Miguel a moment to see that it was not merely a trick of his eyes-moving. “It’s rotten chicken flesh. I put it in my pocket to offend you and your ladies.” He laughed and threw the meat upon the ground.