The Coffee Trader (20 page)

20

Because Miguel had no precise knowledge of where Joachim lived, finding him would be time-consuming but yet possible. The fellow said he and his wife had been forced to move to one of the worst parts of the city, the run-down hovels in the shadow of the Oude Kerk where seedy musicos attracted whores and sailors and thieves. Someone in the area would know Joachim; so disorderly a man is always conspicuous.

Before entering the most unsavory part of town, he took out his purse and counted his money. He had more on him than a man in those neighborhoods would like, so he separated his coins, leaving some in his purse, some in his pocket, and some wrapped in a nose cloth.

As he walked toward the Oude Kerk, buildings began to take on a gloomy, dilapidated cast. The people in the street seemed to belong almost to a different race of man than those in the rest of the city. Foreigners often wrote that one of the great marvels of Amsterdam was its absence of beggars. That was untrue, though Miguel knew well enough that compared to most cities in Europe, the beggars were few indeed, at least in most parts of town. Those foreigners had no doubt not crossed into this district, where they would have found enough of the legless and leprous tribe to satisfy anyone’s requirements.

Miguel walked quickly among the poor, among the whores who slouched in doorways, dangling to one side or the other like hanged men, until they spotted a fellow to their liking. More than once in his short walk, Miguel pushed away some greedy she-devil or other who sprang from her lair and attempted to drag him inside.

He was about to ask a man pushing a cart of root vegetables if he knew of Joachim Waagenaar when he saw a woman with a tray of pies round the corner, calling out her goods. Though she was dressed in stained and loose clothes and somewhat dirty in the face, Miguel was sure he knew this woman. And then at once he understood where he had seen her before: she was Joachim’s wife, Clara. No longer quite the beauty he remembered, she remained pretty enough for the sailors to shout out to her with their cheerful obscenities. One approached her, staggering and lecherous, and Miguel thought to step forward, but Clara spoke a couple of pleasant words to the man, who then doffed his cap and wandered off.

Miguel then stepped forward. “Have you pies with no meat?” he asked. He thought it unlikely that she would recollect his face, so he said nothing to her to give himself away.

Her neck linen was torn and stained yellow, but the cap that covered the crown of her head appeared new. Where could she have acquired such a thing? Miguel recalled Joachim’s fears that his wife would turn whore.

“I have an onion and radish pie, sir,” she told him, watching him with evident caution.

Her caution was well founded, Miguel thought. What business had a Jew looking for his evening meal in this part of the city? “I’ll be glad of it.”

He ought not to eat such a thing. He had no knowledge of its preparation, and it had certainly sat upon her tray in close proximity to pork and other unclean meats. But there was no Ma’amad here. If this pie allowed him to obtain wealth and thereby become a better Jew, its preparation hardly mattered. He bit into it and discovered that he was ravenous. He liked his crust flakier, his vegetables less cooked—the Dutch did not consider vegetables done until they were almost turned to liquid.

“Did you bake these yourself?” he asked.

She eyed him while pretending to look upon the dirt. “Yes, sir.”

Miguel smiled. “What is your name, my dear?”

“My name,” she said, holding her hand forward that he might see her little pewter ring, “is Another Man’s Wife.”

“It’s not so pretty a name,” Miguel told her, “but you misunderstand me. If I wished for that sort of companionship, I might easily find it without buying a pie for my troubles.”

“Some men like the sport.” She smiled at him, and her eyes widened slightly. “Yet I take your point. My name is Clara, and I’d be curious to know what your business is, sir. You appear to buy your pie as a means and not an end.”

Miguel felt an unexpected tingle of interest. Were he on a different kind of business it might be no difficult thing to convince her to continue this conversation in the private room of a tavern. But what kind of a man would that make him? Regardless of Joachim’s current treachery, he had—however unintentionally—wronged the poor fellow, and he was hesitant to make matters worse by cuckolding a madman.

“Perhaps I hardly know my business myself,” he told her. “It is only that—well, if I may be so bold—you have not the look, nor the sound either, of a woman I might expect to find selling pies near the Oude Kerk.”

“And you have not the look of the sort of man I might expect to buy one.”

Miguel bowed. “I speak to you in earnest. You’re a beautiful woman who I think is used to better things. How does your husband permit you to ply such a trade?”

Some of the humor drained from Clara’s face. “My husband has fallen on hard times,” she said at last. “We once had a fine place to live and fine clothes, but he lost his money, alas, to the trickery of one of your race. Now he has nothing but debts, senhor.”

Miguel smiled. “You know something of our forms of address. I like that. How long has it been since your husband lost his money?”

“Several months, senhor.” This time the honorific was missing its touch of irony. She began to see something of value in this conversation.

“And you still have debts?”

“Yes, senhor.”

“How much do you owe?”

“Three hundred guilders, senhor. Not so very much money as what we used to have, but now it is enough.”

“I hope you will at least accept my charity.” Miguel took out his nose cloth, heavy with coin. “Here are five guilders.”

She smiled when he pressed the handkerchief into her hands. Without taking her eyes off her benefactor, she slid the little package into her own purse. “I cannot thank you enough.”

“Tell me,” he said brightly, “where I can find this husband of yours.”

“Find him?” Her eyes narrowed and her brow folded upon itself.

“You say he was done wrong by one of my race; perhaps I can do right by him. I might be able to find him some employment or introduce him to someone who could.”

“You’re very kind, but I don’t know that he would want to speak with you, and I know not in what way you might help. He is beyond such simple charity.”

“Beyond? What say you?”

Clara turned away. “He has been taken, senhor, for refusing to work and for lying in a drunken state in the street. He is now at the Rasphuis.”

Miguel felt a vague elation, the thrill of revenge, when he thought of the Rasphuis, that place of cruel discipline from which few emerged and none emerged unbroken. But he was not here for revenge, and Joachim’s suffering brought him nothing of value.

“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.