The Coffee Trader (4 page)

It is true that before I knew how to walk I could hide a card in my clothes and make the dice roll the way I wished, but I vow to practice no trickery in these pages. I will be like the Bear Man, a petulant fellow with whom I traveled for years. I will disrobe to show you nature’s truth. If you like, reader, you may even pull on the fur to see that it is no deception.

2

Geertruid could never understand the difficulty Miguel faced in doing business with her. She might smile sympathetically when he spoke of his fears, but in the end she almost certainly believed his resistance was some willful Hebrew eccentricity, like not eating squid or refusing to talk business on Saturday day, but being happy to talk on Saturday night.

Miguel hated that she should think him foolish or stubborn. When he would violate some small law or other—drink impure wine or labor, just a little, on the Sabbath—she would ask how he could do these things and still purport to care so much for his observance. He did not know how to explain that no one but a
tsadik
—a saint—could hope to obey all the laws; it was the effort that brought a man closer to the Holy One, blessed be He.

Though he had told her about his past, Geertruid still had no understanding of what it had been like to live as a Secret Jew in Lisbon, with only a vague notion of who he truly was. If it was so truly terrible, she would ask, why do any of you Jews remain?

Why indeed? Because it was where they had always lived, for hundreds of years. Because their families were there, their businesses. Some stayed because they had no money, others because they had too much. The stories of freedom to worship in Amsterdam or in the East sounded as elusive as the coming of the Messiah.

Many New Christians embraced Catholicism with a slavish fervor, and Miguel’s father had been such a man. Not that he believed deeply, but he believed deeply in convincing the world of his sincerity with his regular church attendance, his public denouncement of Jewish “superstition,” his donations to the Church. New Christians, sincere or not, lived in a single community, and Miguel’s father wanted his sons to stay away from the backsliders. “My grandparents chose to convert rather than be exiled,” he had explained, “and I’ll not dishonor their choice.”

Perhaps for the pleasure of defying his father, perhaps because it was dangerous, Miguel had begun secretly attending study groups when he was still a boy. The older men there encouraged him, made him feel special with their praise, and let him know without words that they too thought his father a great boor. Miguel had loved the feeling of being included in something larger than himself and of doing something wicked that was, at the same time, righteous.

Miguel’s younger brother, Daniel, understood this division between father and son and exploited it, showing his father every day in a dozen ways that he was not one of those horrible backsliders who brought nothing but woe to their community. Their father was inclined to favor Daniel at any rate, since he looked far more like his side of the family. Miguel bore a striking resemblance to his mother’s father. Daniel had always been thin, like the elder Lienzo, all hard angles and sharp corners, eyes too large for his face, hands too small for his body. Miguel took after his mother’s side—meaty men who commanded attention, just the sort of man the elder Lienzo had always despised.

When his father discovered that Miguel had been attending the secret synagogues, he called him a traitor and a fool. He locked Miguel in a room for a week with nothing but wine, some dried figs, two loaves of bread, and a chamber pot far too small for so long a duration. Later Miguel would find this choice of punishment horribly ironic, for it was his father the Inquisition had taken and locked in a prison and tortured—accidentally, they claimed—to death. He had been named by another Converso who, under the Inquisitor’s knife, had shouted any names he could recall, whether they be Christian, Jew, or Mohammedan.

Miguel had been three years gone by then, after a rupture with his father over his marrying a woman with an insufficient dowry. Miguel’s father had absolutely forbidden the marriage. Not only had Katarina too little money but her family consisted of well-known Judaizers who would bring down trouble on the rest of them. And, he insisted, she was far too pretty. “I don’t like to see you with so beautiful a girl,” he’d said to Miguel. “It’s unseemly for you to marry a better-looking woman than your father did. It makes you appear undutiful.”

Miguel was not so easily swayed by dowries, and he thought it perfectly seemly to marry someone pretty. But more than beauty, Katarina had possessed great understanding. Her family was devout, and she had an uncle who was a great Talmudist in Damascus. She understood Hebrew better than most men in Lisbon. She knew the liturgy and could keep a home in accordance with the holy writings. Miguel’s father had spat on the floor when Miguel announced that they had secretly married. “You’ll regret defying me,” he’d said, “and you’ll regret marrying a woman who knows how to read. I won’t say another word to you until you come to me and beg my forgiveness.”

Four months later, when Katarina had died of a sudden fever, they spoke for the last time. “Thank Christ that’s over with,” his father had said to Miguel at the conclusion of the funeral. “Now we can get you married to someone who will do our family some good.” Two weeks later, Miguel boarded a ship bound for the United Provinces.

While Miguel established himself in Amsterdam, his father and brother continued to export wine and figs and salt, but then the Inquisition arrested the elder Lienzo and everything came to an end. By Portuguese law, the Church could confiscate the material goods of anyone convicted by the Inquisition, so wealthy merchants made particularly popular victims. After suddenly expiring during a questioning session, Miguel’s father was found guilty posthumously, and the family business ceased to exist. Left with only a few items in his own name, Daniel had no choice but to leave Lisbon. Following his brother and the mass exodus of Conversos to Amsterdam had seemed the inevitable choice.

The Ma’amad had welcomed Miguel when he came to Amsterdam; its teachers helped him expand his understanding of the holy tongue, taught him the liturgy, and explained the holy days. Though still disoriented with grief for Katarina, those first few weeks had been full of excitement and learning, and though his circumcision was an event best not recollected too often, even that bloody affair had been moving. However, it was not long before he discovered that the council’s aid did not come without its price. The
parnassim,
the men who composed the Ma’amad, ruled absolutely, and those who would live in the community lived by their law or were cast out.

Two evenings after his meeting with Geertruid, Miguel had attended a study meeting at the Talmud Torah. Here was where the Ma’amad
shone. Study groups met constantly in the synagogue’s cloistered chambers. Jews recently escaped from Iberia and the Inquisition, who knew nothing of their faith but that it was in their blood, learned how to conduct themselves, to pray, to live as Jews. In the next chamber wise men, the
chachamim,
argued details from the Talmud that Miguel did not believe he would ever begin to comprehend. He met with a group of men not unlike himself—returned within the past few years but dedicated to embracing the ways of their fathers. They read in Hebrew the weekly Torah portion and worked through its meaning while a
chacham,
who served as their guide, discussed the Talmud commentary.

Miguel loved these meetings. He looked forward to them all week. He had not the luxury to study quite so much Torah at home as he would have liked—though he did try to go to the early morning study sessions at least once or twice a week—and what time he did have he did not always use wisely. These meetings were therefore doubly precious. For the space of a few short hours he was able to forget that reckoning day crept cruelly toward him, and the brandy futures he’d bought so impulsively would make his debts even more hopeless.

In the halls of the Talmud Torah, just after his meeting, Miguel paused with his friend Isaiah Nunes to continue debate on the interpretation of a particularly thorny bit of Hebrew grammar. Nunes traded mostly along the Levant routes but had recently begun to expand into Portuguese wine. Having sampled too many of a buyer’s wares before the meeting started, he now argued loudly. His voice echoed off the high ceilings of the nearly empty synagogue as they made their way toward the exit.

Nunes was a large man, bulky without exactly being fat. Not yet thirty years old, he had already managed to establish himself as a man to be reckoned with in the Levant routes. Miguel liked the young trader, but there were limits to how much an indebted widower his age could like someone so young and successful. Almost by accident Nunes stumbled on lucrative deals; he invested cautiously but with obscene success; he had a beautiful and obedient wife who had given him two sons. However, these accomplishments were tempered by Nunes’s inability to take pleasure in anything he’d done. Growing up, he’d witnessed one relative after another taken by the Inquisition, and he’d become nervous by disposition. He regarded his success as a mere illusion, a trick of the devil aimed only to raise Nunes’s expectations before dashing them.

The two made their way out in the darkness, for only a few candles burned in the common areas. Nunes had been in the midst of a long harangue, half of which was pure nonsense, as he reasoned, backtracked, apologized for making little sense, and then demanded that Miguel agree with him. Then he stopped short and bent over.

“By Christ, I’ve just broken a toe!” he shouted. Like most Jews from Portugal, he cursed like a Catholic. “Miguel, help me along!”

Miguel bent to help his friend. “You drunkard, on what did you break a toe?”

“On nothing,” Nunes whispered. “It’s a ruse. Don’t you know a ruse when you see one?”

“Not if it’s a good ruse.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment, I suppose.”

“Now that we have established that you have only pretended to break your toe in order to fool me,” Miguel said quietly, “perhaps you might tell me why you would do such a thing.”

“By the Virgin,” Nunes cried out, “it hurts! Help me, Miguel!” In the dim light of sparse candles, Miguel could see Nunes close his eyes in a moment of concentration. “There’s a man lurking in the shadows by the door,” he added more quietly. “He’s been watching you.”

Miguel felt himself tense. A man lurking in the shadows awaiting him could never be good news. More than once he’d been spirited away to some dank tavern cellar by an angry creditor who kept him there as prisoner until he could send for the money he owed or—and this was more likely to happen—he could talk his way out of imprisonment.

Then another thought crossed his mind. Those strange notes he had been receiving.
I want my money.
He felt his skin prickle.

“Did you see who it is?” he asked Nunes.

“I caught a quick glimpse, and unless I miss my guess it is Solomon Parido.”

Miguel stole a look toward the exit and saw a figure step toward the dark. “Christ’s tabernacle. What does he want?” The
parnass
had been his enemy since an unfortunate incident two years earlier, which had ended with his withdrawing his offer to wed his daughter to Miguel.

“Nothing good, you can depend on that. A
parnass
lying in wait is always bad news, and Parido is worse news than most. And Parido lying in wait for Miguel Lienzo—well, it is hard to think of a more dire situation. To be honest, I hate for him to see us together. I have troubles enough without a
parnass
looking into my affairs too deeply.”

“You have no troubles at all,” Miguel said darkly. “I should lend you some of mine.”

“Your brother does business with him, doesn’t he? Why don’t you have him ask Parido to leave you alone?”

“I think my brother encourages him, frankly,” Miguel said bitterly. It was bad enough that he was dependent upon his younger brother, but Daniel’s friendship with the
parnass
particularly unnerved him. He could never quite shake the feeling that Daniel reported everything Miguel said or did.

“Let’s go back inside,” Nunes suggested. “We’ll wait for him to pass.”

“I won’t give him that satisfaction. I’ll have to take my chances, but I don’t think your performance has fooled anyone. We should break your toe in earnest. If he wants to examine your foot, you’ll be found guilty of having lied in the synagogue.”

“I’ve put myself at risk for your sake. You ought to show some gratitude.”

“You’re right. Should he inspect your toe and find it whole, we’ll tell him that a great miracle happened here.”

They hobbled out to the courtyard and, though he meant to restrain himself, Miguel couldn’t help but look to the corner where he had seen Parido lurking. But the
parnass
was already gone.

“Parido lying in wait for you is bad enough,” Nunes observed, “but spying on you and disappearing into the shadows—that is something altogether more terrible than I had thought.”

Miguel had fears enough without having his friend fan the flames. “Soon you will tell me that a quarter moon makes things worse.”

“A quarter moon is a bad omen,” Nunes agreed.

Miguel let out a raspy noise, half chortle, half cough. What did the
parnass
want from him? He could think of no religious laws he’d openly violated in the recent past, although he might have been seen on the street with Hendrick. Still, inappropriate contact with gentiles hardly warranted this kind of surveillance. Parido had something else in mind, and while Miguel could not think what it might be, he knew it was nothing good.

from

The Factual and Revealing Memoirs of Alonzo Alferonda

My relocation to Amsterdam proved, at first, to be all I could have hoped for. After wallowing too many years in the squalid mud of London, that putrid capital of a putrid island, Amsterdam seemed to me the cleanest and most beautiful of places. England had become a disorderly nation, with its revolutions and regicide. While living there I had the chance to meet a man called Menasseh ben Israel, who came from Amsterdam to convince England’s warrior-priest king, Cromwell, to allow English Jews to make a home there. Menasseh painted a picture of Amsterdam that made it sound like the Garden of Eden with red-brick houses.

In my early days there, I was inclined to agree. The local Ma’amad, the ruling council of Jews, warmly embraced newcomers. It arranged for kind strangers to take us in until we could find a place of our own. It at once assessed our understanding of the customs and holy laws of our race and began training us in those areas in which we showed ignorance. The Talmud Torah, the great synagogue of the Portuguese Jews, offered the opportunity for study at all levels of understanding.