The Coffee Trader

Miguel rapped on the door three or four times before a surly-looking fellow with a grease-slicked face opened the upper portion. Streaked with the light of a candle he had set down on a bench behind him, the guard stood offering his studied scowl at Miguel. He was a short man, but broad and thick-necked. The better part of his nose had been cut off in what looked like the not too distant past, and the inflamed skin glistened in the thin light of dusk.

“What do you want?” he asked, with boredom so intense he could hardly bring himself to move his mouth.

“I must have a word with one of the prisoners within these walls.”

The fellow let out a snorting and gurgling sound. The tip of his nose became even more reflective in the candlelight. “They’re not prisoners. They’re penitents. And there are hours to visit the penitents, and there aren’t hours. These aren’t them.”

Miguel had no time for nonsense. What, he asked himself, would Charming Pieter do?

“Those hours ought to be considered flexible,” he suggested, holding up a coin between his thumb and index finger.

“I suppose you’ve a point.” The guard took the coin and opened the door to let Miguel enter.

The front hall indicated nothing of the horrors below. The floor was of a checkered heavy tile, and a series of arches on either side separated the entrance hall from a handsome open-air courtyard. Miguel might have thought this the outer garden to some great man’s home rather than the entrance to a workhouse famed for its torments.

He had heard little of what actually took place inside these walls, but what he had heard bespoke cruelty: vagabonds and beggars, the lazy and the criminal, all thrust together and made to do labors of the cruelest sort. The most incorrigible of these men were given the task of rasping brazilwood, sawing it down to extract the reddish dye. And those who would not do this work, who steadfastly refused to labor, found a worse fate awaited them.

The Rasphuis was said to contain a chamber down below called the Drowning Cell, into which were thrown those who would not work. Water flooded the room, which contained pumps, that the inmates might save their lives through their toil. Those who failed to pump would meet their end. Those who learned the value of hard work would live.

The Dutchman led Miguel, who strained his ears for the sound of sloshing water, down a set of cold and stony stairs and into a chamber, none the most pleasant but hardly a dungeon of terrors. After they left the courtyard, the floor turned from tile to dirt, and the only furniture included a few wooden chairs and an old table missing one of its four legs.

“Who’s the fellow you’re looking for?”

“His name is Joachim Waagenaar.”

“Waagenaar.” The Dutchman laughed. “Your friend’s made a reputation for himself in as short a time as any. They got him rasping away even after most have finished for the night, and if he don’t meet the demands they’ve set, he’ll find his way to the Drowning Cell soon enough.”

“I’m sure he’s difficult enough, but I must speak with him.” Miguel pressed another coin into the Dutchman’s palm. Best to keep the wheels greased.

The fellow set down his candle upon a rough wooden table. “Speak with him?” he asked. “That ca

Miguel sighed. The money, he reminded himself, was nothing. In a few months’ time, he would laugh at these little expenses.

He reached into his pocket and withdrew the last coin he had tucked there: five guilders. The noseless Dutchman pocketed it and disappeared from the room, locking it from the outside. A cold panic spread through Miguel, and when no one had returned for nearly a quarter of an hour, he began to wonder if perhaps he had become the victim of some horrible trick, but then he heard the door unlatch, and the Dutchman entered, pushing Joachim before him.

Each time Miguel saw Joachim, the fellow was the worse for it. He had lost weight since their last meeting and had now grown sickly gaunt. His hands and arms and much of his face were stained red from sawing at brazilwood, so that he looked more like a murderer than a penitent in a house of correction.

“You don’t mind that I’ll listen to your conversation,” the Dutchman said. “I have to make certain nothing improper happens here.”

Miguel did mind, but he sensed at once that he would have little success removing the fellow, so he simply nodded.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit, senhor?” Joachim’s voice sounded even, devoid of sarcasm. He wished to play at formality.

“I must know what you have said to the Ma’amad. Have you sent a note? Is that how you communicated from these walls? I must know.”

Joachim’s lips curled just slightly. “How badly would you like to know?”

“I must have the answer. Tell me precisely what you revealed to them, every word. I have no time to play games.”

“No games. You’ll not have the answer of me in here. They have cast me in, and I may not even know the length of time I am to be a prisoner, nor even my crime, other than I did not wish to work as their slave. So I say that if you can get me from this prison, I’ll tell you all I know.”

“Get you out?” Miguel nearly shouted. “I am no magistrate to get you out. How do you propose I do such a thing?”

The noseless Dutchman coughed into his fist. “These things may be ordered, if one but knows how. Not for every man, but for those thrown here without a crime save only vagrancy.”

Miguel sighed. “Very well,” he said. “Speak plainly.”

“Oh, I think twenty guilders should do the business.”

Miguel could scarce believe that he was now prepared to bribe a guard twenty guilders to free from the Rasphuis an enemy he very recently would have paid a much larger sum to have cast in. But Joachim knew why the Ma’amad had summoned him, and he would consider such information acquired cheap at twenty guilders.

Miguel peered into his purse, embarrassed that the guard now discovered he had apportioned out his money into different piles. He had only a little more than what was required.

The guard counted out the coins. “What is this? Twenty guilders? I said forty. Do you think me a fool?”

“Surely one of us is a fool,” Miguel replied.

The guard shrugged. “I’ll just take this fellow away, then, and we’ll say no harm done.”

Miguel opened his purse once more. “I have only three and a half guilders remaining to me. You must take that or nothing.” He handed it to the guard, hoping that by so doing he would seal the bargain.

“Are you sure you have no more purses or pockets or piles about you?”

“This is all I have, I promise you.”

His words must have conveyed an element of truth, for the Dutchman nodded. “Get on with you,” he said. “I won’t have you loitering in front of the premises.”

They took a few steps in silence. “I can’t thank you enough,” Joachim then began, “for this kindness.”

“I should have been happy to see you rot there,” Miguel murmured, as they passed through the courtyard, “but I must know what you said to the Ma’amad.”

They stepped into the Heiligeweg, the guard closed the door behind them, and the series of locks and bolts echoed into the street. “I must first ask you a question,” Joachim said.

“Please, I have little patience. It had better be relevant to these matters.”

“Oh, it is. It could not be more relevant. My question is this.” He cleared his throat. “What the Christ is a Ma’amad?”

Miguel felt an ache in his skull gathering force, and his face grew hot. “Don’t play the fool with me. It is the council of Portuguese Jews.”

“And why should I have ever spoken to so august a body?”

“Did you not tell me before that you would tell me what you know?”