The Coffee Trader

“Nothing you say may horrify me.” He took a step forward. “I once looked upon you as a friend, but I see you are only a cheat and I’ll discuss nothing further with you.”

“You’ll discuss it with me, or you will discuss it in the courts,” Miguel answered. He saw at once that he had Nunes’s attention. “You took the coffee I had contracted for and delivered it to Solomon Parido. You then lied and told me my shipment had never been acquired. I presume you then arranged for another shipment, but I know the cargo that belongs to me by legal right came in on a ship called the Sea Lily. I have witnesses who will testify to hearing Parido discuss the matter. If you refuse to comply, my only question will be whether to bring you before a Dutch court or the Ma’amad, or both, and force you to provide not only the coffee but pay such damages that result of my not having the original shipment.” Miguel showed Nunes the contract he had made with Parido. “If I lose money on this contract, I’ll be able to sue you for the losses, for if you had not deceived me I should surely have won. And you may wager that once this matter goes to court, your reputation as a trustworthy merchant will be utterly dashed.”

Nunes flushed. “If I withhold the coffee from Parido, he will make me an enemy. What of my reputation then?”

“Surely you can’t expect me to care. You’ll transfer ownership to me by morning, or I’ll see you ruined.”

“If I give you what you ask, you’ll say nothing? You’ll not tell the world of this?”

“I ought not to keep quiet, but I’ll do so out of memory of our friendship. I never would have expected this from you.”

Nunes shook his head. “You must understand how difficult it is to resist Parido when he wants something. I dared not say no to him. I have a family, and I could not afford to put myself at risk by protecting you.”

“I understand his influence and power,” Miguel said, “and I have resisted him just the same. And he did not ask you to refrain from protecting me, he asked you to lie to me and cheat me, and you agreed. I never thought you a particularly brave man, Isaiah, but I was still shocked to learn the extent of your cowardice.”

As he walked away he heard the clock tower strike two. He asked a man standing near him how coffee had closed: twenty-five and a half guilders per barrel.

Miguel would look at once into renting a splendid house on the shores of the Houtgracht. He would contact his debtors to offer some small payment to the most anxious. Everything would be different now.

And there was his brother. He turned around. Daniel stood no more than an arm’s length away. Daniel looked at his brother, tried to lock eyes with him, but Miguel could not bring himself to say anything. The time for reconciliation was over; there could be no forgiveness. Daniel had bet his own future against his brother’s, and he had lost.

Miguel moved away. Crowds of men swarmed around him. Word had begun to spread; already every man upon the Exchange understood he had had a great victory. Even if they did not know what he had won or whom he had defeated, these traders knew they stood in the presence of a trader in his glory. Strangers whose names he barely knew clapped him on the shoulder or pumped his hand or promised they would call upon him soon to speak of a project whose value he could scarce believe.

And then, through the thickness of the traders, he saw a haggard Dutchman in fine clothes grin widely at him. Joachim. Miguel turned away from a triumvirate of Italian Jews who wanted to speak to him about figs, uttering some polite excuse and promising to call on them at a tavern whose name he forgot the moment the men spoke it. He pushed on until he stood facing Joachim, who appeared both greater and smaller than he had in his impoverished madness. His grin appeared not so much triumphant as sad. Miguel returned it with a smile of his own.

“I told you I would make things right,” he said, “if you would but trust me.”

“If I had done no more than trust you,” Joachim replied with equal cheer, “I would still be a poor man. It is only because I hated you and hounded you that you have won this victory. There is a great lesson to be learned here, but I shall burn in hell if I know what it may be.”

Miguel let out a bark of a laugh and stepped forward to embrace this man who, not so long ago, he had wished dead with all his heart. For all he knew, he might wish him dead again, and soon. For the moment, however, he did not care what Joachim had done or would do, and he did not care who knew of their hatred and their friendship. He cared only that he had righted his own wrongs and unmade his ruin in the process. Miguel would have hugged the devil himself.

32

The new girl spoke no Portuguese but made herself content with a rough exchange of signs. Catryn had a dour face, closer to plain than homely, but unpleasant enough to suit her mistress. It hardly mattered. Miguel was out of the house now, and the prettiness or plai

In the mornings, Daniel left the house almost before she was awake, and Ha

She sent Catryn to the market outside the Dam to buy coffee and had the girl prepare it for her each afternoon. One day Daniel came home early and grew so enraged when he saw her drinking it that he struck her until she cried out for the well-being of their child. Now she only drank it during Exchange hours when she knew Daniel would not be there.

Sometimes she saw Miguel on the street, dressed as he was now in his fine new suits, walking in his familiar way with the great merchants of the Vlooyenburg. He looked content, youthful in his triumph. Ha

After Catryn cleared away the breakfast things, she and Ha

This was her life now, pale carrots and rotten fish. These things were her only pleasures. She had her husband and she would have her daughter, whom she prayed would be born healthy and fit. Those things would have to be enough. They would have to be enough, because there could be nothing else.

Moving from his brother’s house was sweet. Miguel had rented a fine home across the canal, and though it was smaller than his brother’s, he thought it far more elegant and perfectly suited for his needs. He hardly even knew what he would do with the space he had, though he hoped soon enough to fill it with a wife and children. The marriage brokers had already begun to pound on his door.

The day after his victory on the Exchange, his last in his brother’s house, he had climbed up from the cellar and walked through the kitchen and then up again to the main level, where he saw Daniel sitting in the front room, pretending to look at letters. Daniel said nothing to him. Not a word of kindness. Miguel had told him that morning that he would be moving out and had thanked Daniel for his hospitality. Daniel had merely nodded and advised Miguel to be certain not to take anything that was not his.