“I must find him there,” Miguel said more loudly than he should have, his hands beginning to twitch with excitement. “I’ll see him at once.”
“See him at once,” Clara repeated back. “What care you if you see him never?”
“That’s no matter,” he answered. Miguel began to hurry off, but Clara grabbed him by the wrist. He could feel her jagged nails scrape along his flesh.
“You’ve not told me the truth, senhor. I think I know you after all. You are the man who ruined my husband.”
Miguel shook his head. “No, not ruined, but shared in his ruin. His affairs and my own suffered together.”
She cast an eye upon his clothes, perhaps a bit soiled but finely wrought. “And what do you want with him now?” Her tone seemed to Miguel not one of protective feeling, or even concern—more of curiosity, and an eager curiosity too. She moved closer to Miguel and let him take in her sweaty and feminine scent.
“I have business of the most urgent sort—it cannot wait until the morrow.”
“I think you will find that the Rasphuis does not offer such liberal hours as our musicos,” she told him, with a little laugh.
“And I think,” Miguel said, with a bravado he did not himself believe, “you will find that any building is open at any time if a man has but the right key.”
Clara turned her head just so and her eyes widened just enough to let Miguel know that she took some pleasure in his firm resolve. She liked a strong man; he could tell that at once. Joachim, if he had ever been such a one, had long since relinquished his strength, allowing his losses to undo his manhood. More the pity for a woman so fine as she.
“I must go,” Miguel said, gently prying loose his hand. “I hope I’ll see you more,” he said, if only for the pleasure of flirtation.
“Who can say what the future holds?” Clara lowered her eyes. Miguel walked away with the confident stride of a man who could have taken a woman but chose not to. Still, if Joachim persisted in incurring Miguel’s ire, if he continued in his absurd program of abuse and revenge, Miguel thought he might have no choice but to seek out Clara again. Were he to plant a cuckoo in Joachim’s unhappy nest, one would then see who had revenge and who looked the fool.
Located in the narrow Heiligeweg, an alley just north of the Singel in the old center of the city, the Rasphuis stood as a monument to the reverence with which the Dutch viewed labor. From the old cobbled streets outside, it appeared no different from any other great house, a heavy wooden door, above which stood a gable stone depicting a blind effigy of justice presiding over two bound prisoners. Miguel studied the image for a moment in the fading light. It would be dark soon, and he had no desire to be caught on the street without a lantern, nor did he wish to be alone in an ancient ghost-ridden street like the Heiligeweg.
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 cannot be. There are hours for visiting and there are hours for not visiting. Begging your pardon, I had meant to mention that before, but I must have forgotten myself.”
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 priso
n, 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?”
“I did promise, and I have kept my promise. I know nothing of your ruling council, though I believe I now know something of it. I know that you fear I should speak to it.”
“Damn you, you scurvy devil,” Miguel spat. He felt his fist clench and his arm tighten.
“It is all the more shame to you that you should need to be tricked to rescue an old associate from so horrible a fate as the Rasphuis. But you will find me not without gratitude. I’ll thank you now and be on my way.” Joachim bowed deeply and then ran into the night.
It took a moment before Miguel could begin to collect his thoughts. He could not even allow himself to consider how he had just humiliated himself before his mad enemy. It was of far more importance that the Ma’amad had called him forward and he did not yet know why. If it had not been Joachim who had reported him, this appearance must be the work of Parido. The spies he sent to Rotterdam had seen nothing they could use. Was it the matter of Joachim in the street with Hannah and Annetje? Perhaps, but they could hardly excommunicate him if he had a good explanation. He was certain he could think of one before morning.
21
Miguel was out of bed before first light. After urinating furiously from the coffee he’d taken before bed—to keep his thoughts active in his sleep—he washed and said his morning prayers with a kind of pleading enthusiasm. He dressed, ate a breakfast of bread and dried cheese, and hastily drank a large bowl of coffee.
Last night, he had been driven by desperate need to do something to further his cause, but in the silence of his room he could not escape the hard ball of fear that tightened in his belly. This was no ordinary summoning. There would be no indulgent lectures on the importance of the dietary laws or on resisting the charms of Dutch girls.
Could he really turn his back on everything as Alferonda had done? Instead of remaining in Amsterdam, a usurer and a known villain, Alonzo could easily have gone elsewhere, changed his name, settled into another community. There were other Jews in the world besides those in Amsterdam, and Miguel need not remain here. But the cherem would mean more than having to choose between being a Jew elsewhere and an outcast in Amsterdam. To leave the city would mean abandoning his plans in the coffee trade, abandoning the money Ricardo owed him. If he stayed, his creditors, no doubt including his sanctimonious brother, would descend upon him and pick his bones clean. Even if he did move to a city where no one knew him, how would he live there? A merchant without connections was no merchant at all. Was he to be a pushcart peddler?
Miguel made his way to the Talmud Torah unobserved by anyone from the community. At this hour the Vlooyenburg had just begun to stir, and though he heard the early morning cries of the milkmen and bakers, he crossed the bridge unheeded by all except a pair of beggars, who sat eating a loaf of stale and mud-splattered bread while eyeing Miguel suspiciously.
The Ma’amad held its meetings in the same building as the synagogue, but a separate entrance led to the chambers. At the top of a winding stairwell, Miguel stepped into the small familiar room where supplicants awaited their summonses. A few chairs had been set along the wall with semicircular windows behind them, allowing the early morning light to filter into a room smelling strongly of mildew and tobacco.
No one else awaited the call that morning but Miguel, and that was something of a relief. He hated making conversation with other penitents, whispering resentments and laughing off accusations. Better to wait alone. He paced back and forth and played out in his mind fantasy after fantasy: complete exoneration, excommunication, and all imaginable variations.
The worst would not happen, he told himself. He had always extricated himself from the council’s anger. And there was Parido—Parido, who was surely not Miguel’s friend but who wanted something from him. Parido, who had long known enough to have Miguel cast out and yet had not. There was no reason to believe he would let Miguel be cast out now.
He waited for nearly an hour before at last the door opened and he was ushered into the chamber. At a table at the far end of the room sat the seven men who would pass judgment. On the wall behind them was mounted the great marble symbol of the Talmud Torah: an immense pelican feeding its three young, the congregation having been formed of smaller synagogues some years before. The room reflected the wealth of the community’s elite with its lush India rug, handsome portraits of former parnassim, and an ivory cabinet in which records were stored. The men sat behind a massive dark table and looked both solemn and princely in their rich attire. To be a parnass a man must have the wealth to dress like a parnass.
“Senhor Lienzo, thank you for answering the summons.” Aaron Desinea, who led the council, spoke with a kind of arch seriousness. “Please.” He gestured to the narrow too-short chair that sat in the center of the room where Miguel would sit while in discussion with the council. One of the legs was shorter than the rest. It took far more concentration than Miguel could spare to keep from wobbling.
In the middle of his seventh decade, Desinea was the oldest of the parnassim and had begun to display signs of the ravages of age. His hair had gone from a stately gray to a sickly white and now had the coarse quality of dead leaves. His beard had grown spotty and molten, and it was generally known that his eyes were failing. Even now he stared beyond Miguel, as though looking for a friend i
n the distance. But Desinea had sat on the council many times, serving his three-year limit, standing down for the required three years, and then finding himself always reelected.
“You know everyone here, so I’ll dispense with introductions. I shall read the charges against you, and you will have an opportunity to answer them. Do you have any questions?”
“No, senhor.” Miguel felt himself longing for another bowl of coffee to sharpen his senses. Already he had become distracted, and he had to fight the childish urge to fidget.
“Of course.” Desinea allowed himself the vaguest hint of a smile. “By now you know the procedure well.” He held out a piece of paper, but his eyes made no contact with it. He must have memorized it earlier. “Senhor Miguel Lienzo—who is also known by and does business under the names Mikael Lienzo, Marcus Lentus, and Michael Weaver—you are charged with irresponsible conduct bringing shame before the Nation. You are accused of consorting with dangerous, disreputable, and inappropriate gentiles and bringing such gentiles into our own neighborhood, where they have behaved disruptively. Do you wish to respond to these charges?”
Miguel suppressed a smile, though he succumbed to the urge to breathe in the sweetness of the air. The meeting might be brought to its conclusion now, for the council would do him no harm. They did not know Joachim’s name or Miguel’s relationship with him. All the parnassim wanted was to hear an explanation and to issue a warning.
“Senhors, I should like to begin by offering my sincere apologies to this council and to the Nation. The man you mention is a Dutch unfortunate with whom, I admit, I have been friendly, but I can assure you that my intentions were always good.” He disliked lying in so holy a place, for it is written that a liar is no better than one who worships idols. But it is also written that the Holy One, blessed be He, hates a man who speaks one thing with his mouth and another with his heart. Therefore it seemed to Miguel that if he believed in his heart that his lie was justified, it was not so sinful after all.