“Then we must go ahead,” Miguel began humorlessly. “We must send the letters at once. We can’t delay any longer. The time must be set. Eleven in the morning, three weeks from today.”
“Three weeks from today? The ship has not yet made port.”
“It must be three weeks from this day,” he insisted, looking away. She had betrayed him. He knew it was true, but his own act of betrayal tasted bitter in his mouth.
“Senhor, have you decided to get forceful with me?” She reached out and began to run a finger lightly along Miguel’s hand. “If you’re going to thrust something upon me, I should like to know what I shall be receiving.”
“You shall be receiving a great deal of money,” he told her, “if you do what I say.”
“I should always like to do what you say,” she told him. “But I must know why.”
“I have been assured the shipment will be here by that time. I have reason to believe there are others who take an interest in coffee, and if we wait too long, they may make it more difficult for us to manipulate the prices as we planned.”
Geertruid considered this for a moment. “Who are these people?”
“Men of the Exchange. What does it matter who they are?”
“I only wonder why, at this time, they take an interest in something that hardly anyone has taken an interest in before.”
“Why did you take an interest in it?” Miguel asked. “Things happen all at once. I’ve seen it countless times. Men from all over the city, from all over Europe, will suddenly decide this is the time to buy timber or cotton or tobacco. Maybe it’s the stars. All I know is that this may be coffee’s moment, and we may be but one party to have recognized it. If we are to do what we planned, then we had better act decisively.”
Geertruid remained quiet for a moment. “You say you’ve been given assurances about the shipment, but those assurances cannot predict pirates or storms or any of a thousand things that can make a ship late. What if the shipment is not yet in port when our agents begin?”
Miguel shook his head. “It won’t matter. I have been on the Exchange too long to let it matter. I know it as though it were my own body, and I can make it do what I want, just as I move my arms and legs.”
Geertruid smiled. “You speak with such confidence.”
“I only speak the truth. Our only enemy now is timidity.”
“I love to hear you talk so”—she leaned forward and touched his beard—“but you can’t risk putting yourself in a position in which you must sell what you do not have.”
“You needn’t worry about that. I’ll not be caught unprepared.”
“What do you plan?”
Miguel smiled and leaned back. “It’s very simple. If need be, I’ll cover my own losses as the price drops and therefore simultaneously acquire the very goods I will promise to sell, only I’ll buy when the price dips below the price at which I have promised to sell, so I might profit on the sales while lowering the value. It is something I would not have known how to do before, but now I believe I can order it effectively.”
This plan was nonsense. Miguel would never have attempted anything so foolish, but he doubted Geertruid had sufficient business sense to know it.
She didn’t say anything, so Miguel pushed harder. “You asked me to join you because you needed someone who understood the madness of the Exchange, someone who could navigate its peculiarities. I am doing the very thing you sought me out to do.”
She let out a sigh. “I don’t like taking this risk, but you’re right: I did ask you to order these things, and I’ll have to trust you. But,” she added with a grin, “when we are rich, I’ll expect you to obey me in all things and treat me as your mistress.”
“It will be my pleasure to do so,” Miguel assured her.
“I understand you must be cautious, but there is no need for you to be so grim. Have you no laughter to spare until you are rich?”
“Very little,” Miguel said. “From now until all this is settled, you will find me to be a man of business and very little else. You’ve done your part; now it is time for me to do mine.”
“Very well,” Geertruid said, after a moment. “I admire and appreciate your dedication. In the meantime, I’ll have to seek out Hendrick, who has nothing to lose by being jolly. We’ll make merry on your behalf.”
“Please do,” he said sadly. He had once thought Geertruid the jolliest woman in the world, but he had just made her complicit in his plans to destroy her.
Perhaps they should have gone to the coffee tavern in the Plantage. It would have been more appropriate, and it would surely have made it easier for Joachim to concentrate. But they’d let him pick the tavern, and here they were, all three—two of them marked by their beards as Jews—in a tiny room full of drunken Dutchmen who stared and pointed. One even came over and examined Miguel’s head by gingerly lifting his hat and then, when he was done, politely replacing it.
Joachim’s months of hardship now compelled him to drink all the beer that someone else was willing to buy, so only an hour after the meeting began, he was already slurring his words and having some difficulty remaining on his splintered bench.
What surprised Miguel was how much Joachim did not irritate him. Now that he, as Joachim had phrased it, was no longer mad, he had demonstrated an endearing warmth Miguel had never seen in him before. He laughed at Alferonda’s jokes and nodded approvingly at Miguel’s suggestions. He raised his tankard to toast the two of them, “and Jews everywhere,” and did so without irony in his voice. He treated Miguel and Alferonda like men who had pulled him aboard their vessels when he had believed himself left to drown.
Now they sat together in planning, all of them having had too much to drink. It would not be long now, only a few weeks, and they were equal to the task. It would tax them and torment them, but it could be done.
“I understand,” Joachim said, “how it is we are to buy and sell what it is that no one wants to buy and sell. What I do not understand is how we are to sell what we do not have. If this Nunes has sold your fruit to Parido, how can we affect the price through sales?”
Miguel had wanted to avoid speaking of this, for it was the hardest thing. He would have to do something he had vowed he would never do on the Exchange—a practice that, no matter how desperate he became, would always be the height of madness.
“By a windhandel,” Alferonda explained, using the Dutch word.
“I was told they were dangerous,” Joachim said. “That only a fool would attempt such a thing.”
“True on both counts,” Miguel said. “That is why we will succeed.”
Windhandel: the wind trade. A colorful term for something dangerous and illegal, it was when a man sold what he did not have. The burgomasters had outlawed the practice, since it added chaos to the Exchange. It was said that any man who engaged in a windhandel might just as readily throw his money into the Amstel, for these sales could easily be voided if the buyer provided proof. The seller would then have worse than nothing for his pains. But in their coffee trade, they would have an advantage—the buyer would be guilty of too many tricks of his own, and he would not dare to contest the sale.
Later, when they had concluded their business, Alferonda excused himself and Miguel and Joachim remained alone at the table. Here he was, Miguel thought, drinking with a man he would gladly have strangled only a few weeks before.
Joachim must have read the look on Miguel’s face. “You’re not scheming something, are you?”
“Of course we are,” Miguel answered.
“I mean against me.”
Miguel let out a laugh. “Do you really think that all this—these meetings, these plans—are a trick against you? That we have so much invested in your destruction that we would play these games? Are you certain you’ve left your madness behind?”
Joachim shook his head. “I don’t think these schemes are about me. Of course not. But I wonder if I am to be sacrificed on the altar of your vengeance.”
&
nbsp; “No,” Miguel said softly, “we are not out to trick you. We have thrown in our lot with yours and so have more to fear from your treachery than you do from ours. I cannot even imagine how we might sacrifice you, as you say.”
“I can think of a few ways,” Joachim said, “but I will keep them to myself.”
When Miguel walked into the entrance hall, he knew Daniel could not be at home. The house had turned shadowy in the dusk, and the inviting scent of cinnamon filled the air. Hannah stood ready to greet him at the far end of the hall, the single candle she held in her hand reflecting off the black-and-white tiles of the floor.
It was not the way she was dressed, for she wore her usual scarf and shapeless black gown, revealing the now undeniable swell of the child growing inside her. There was, however, something in the intensity of her face, the way her dark eyes shone in the candlelight and her jaw jutted forward. She stood unusually still, with her chest pressed out as if to accentuate the heaviness of her breasts, and in his drunkenness he felt dizzy with desire.
“It seems as though it has been weeks since we’ve talked, senhor,” she said.
“I am attempting something on the Exchange. It takes much of my time.”
“It will make you rich, yes?”
He laughed. “I most fervently hope so.”
She looked at the floor for what felt like minutes. “May I speak with you, senhor?”
With her arm holding the candle outward, as though she were a spirit in a woodcut, she led Miguel into the drawing room and set the candle down in one of the sconces. Only one other candle was lit, and the room shimmered with flickering light.
“We must hire another girl soon,” she said, as she sat.
“You are clearly too busy to light candles,” Miguel observed, as he took a seat across from her.
She let out a burst of air, a half laugh. “You make sport with me, senhor?”
“Yes, I do, senhora.”
“And why do you make sport with me?”
“Because you and I are friends,” he said.
Miguel could not see her face clearly, but he detected something of a smile. It was so hard to tell. What did she want of him in this poorly lit room? What if Daniel were to walk through the door now and find them, scrambling to light candles together, brushing off their clothes as though they had been rolling together in sawdust?
He almost laughed aloud. If he were to make a success of himself at this late stage in his life, he had to stop planning for what could never happen. He had outlived the time when he could gamble away guilders he did not have or invest in commodities because of an inexplicable urge. I am a grown man, he told himself, and this is my brother’s wife. There is nothing more to it.
“You wished to speak to me about something,” he said.
Her voice cracked as she tried to talk. “I wish to speak to you about your brother.”
“What about my brother?” His eyes shifted momentarily to her belly.
A moment of hesitation. “He is out of the house,” she said.
When he was a boy, he and his friends had a favorite rock from which they would leap into the waters of the Tagus. They fell five times the length of a man. Who could say how far it was now, but in the thrill of childish excitement it seemed halfway to eternity. Miguel remembered the twisting and terrifying feeling of freedom, like dying and soaring at once.
Without moving he now felt the same terror and excitement. His gut twisted; his humors rushed to his brain. “Senhora,” he said. He rose, planning to escape as quickly as he could, but she must have misunderstood. She stood as well and walked to him until she was only a few inches away. He could smell the sweet perfume of her musk, feel the heat of her breath. Her eyes locked upon him, and with one hand she reached up and pulled the scarf from her head, letting her thick hair fall around her shoulders and down her back.
Miguel heard himself suck in his breath. The urges of his body would betray him. He had been so resolved only an instant before. This beautiful, eager woman could not, he reminded himself, be made any more pregnant than she was already. Her body emitted its own heat and closed in on him. Miguel knew he need only lift his hand and put it upon her arm, or run it along her face, or touch her hair, and nothing else would matter. He would be lost in the mindless revel of senses. All his determination would be for nothing.
And why should he not give in? he asked himself. Had his brother treated him so well that he should not pluck this illicit fruit of his hospitality? Adultery was surely a great sin, but he understood that such sins were born of the need to maintain order in households. It was not bedding another man’s wife that was the sin; it was getting her with child. Since that could not happen, it would be no sin to take her here upon the floor of the drawing room.
And so he leaned in to kiss her, to finally feel the press of her lips. And in the instant he thought to pull her closer to him, he felt something much darker. He knew with perfect clarity what would happen if he kissed her. Would she be able to return to her husband’s bed without revealing what had happened? This poor, abused girl—she would, in a thousand silent ways, betray him before a day had passed.
He took a step backwards. “Senhora,” he whispered, “it cannot be.”
She bit her lip and looked down at her hands, which were twisting her scarf so hard as to almost destroy it. “What cannot be?” she asked.
Let us pretend then, Miguel silently agreed. “I beg your pardon,” he told her, as he took another step back. “I seem to have misunderstood something. Please forgive me.” He hurried out of the room and into the dark hall to feel his blundering way to the cellar.
There, in the damp and the dark, he sat mutely, listening for some sign of her anguish or her relief, but he heard nothing, not even the creaking of floorboards. For all he knew she remained motionless, her hair exposed to the empty space. And strangely, Miguel felt the heat of tears on his own face. Do I love her so much? Perhaps he did, but he did not cry out of love.
He wept not for her sadness, or even for his own, but for the knowledge that he had been cruel, that he had led her to believe what he had always known must be impossible. He had acted out the fancies of his imagination upon her without thinking that for her to abandon those fancies might crush her. He had been cruel to a sad woman who had done nothing worse than be kind to him. He wondered if he had indeed played his hand so badly in all other spheres.
31
Just before noon, outside the Exchange, excitement was building upon the Dam. Two weeks had passed since Miguel’s conversation with Geertruid. Today was reckoning day on the Exchange, and today Miguel’s investments came due. He stood in the crowd, awaiting the opening of the great gates, and scanned the faces about him: hard and intense stares into the distance. Dutchman, Jew, and foreigner alike all clenched their teeth and maintained a martial watchfulness. Any man who had spent enough time on the Exchange could sense it, like the smell of coming rain. Great schemes were ready to be unleashed that would affect everyone who traded. Every reckoning day was charged, but today something more than the usual would happen. Everyone knew it.
As he had made himself ready that morning, Miguel felt a troubling peace. His stomach had been in a twist for weeks, but now he felt the calmness of resolve, like a man walking to the gallows. He had slept surprisingly soundly but still drank four large bowls of coffee. He wanted to be wild with coffee. He wanted coffee to rule his passions.
He could not have been more ready, but he knew some things were beyond him. Five men, knowingly or not, were his creatures, and he depended on them to act their parts. It was all so fragile. This enormous edifice could in an instant crumble into dust.
And so he prepared himself as best he could. He cleansed himself before Shabbat at the mikvah and dedicated himself to prayer on the holy day. The next day he continued in prayer, and he fasted from sunup to sunset.
He could not survive two ruins. The world might blink at the first one, forgive it as bad luck. Two ruins would
crush him forever. No substantial merchant would ever entrust such a failure with his daughter. No man of business would ever offer Miguel a partnership. To fail today would mean he would have to abandon the life of a merchant.
With his teeth gritty from ground coffee berry, Miguel had stepped outside and breathed in the early morning air. He felt more like a conquistador than a trader. Only a few wisps of clouds drifted across the sky, and a light breeze came rolling in from the waters. A superstitious Dutchman might see clear skies as a good omen, but Miguel knew the skies were clear for Parido too.
Outside the Dam, Miguel waited in the unusually silent crowd. No arguments or bursts of laughter. Nowhere did the sound of early trading set off a ripple of exchanges. When men spoke, they spoke in whispers.
Parido’s calls, like Miguel’s puts, were to come due at the close of the day. That meant Parido needed to keep the price high, and the higher it went the more he would profit, just as the lower it went, the more Miguel would earn. If Miguel did nothing, Parido would gain on his investment and Miguel would lose. As Parido held the coffee shipment that was meant to be Miguel’s, he would hold on to his goods until after tomorrow. He might then slowly sell what he had at the inflated price.
“If you were Parido,” Alferonda had reasoned, “you would want to use your trading combination. You could spread the rumor that his combination was planning to dump holdings, which would bring down the price. But you don’t have that kind of power. Parido does.”
“Why does he not simply spread the rumor that his combination will be buying, thus causing the price to rise even higher?”
“The rumor game is a delicate one. If a combination overuses it, no one will believe rumors associated with that combination anymore, and it has lost a valuable tool. This business with the coffee is Parido’s, not his combination’s. The other members would be unwilling to expend the capital of rumor on his behalf here, not unless the promise of wealth were sufficiently compelling. But there are other ways he can use his combination.”