The Coffee Trader

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, Ha

“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. “Ha

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 Ha

“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 ca

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 co