He had not even spoken in private to Hannah of Jewish worship until they began their preparations to move to Amsterdam. Her father and three brothers had all been devoted Secret Jews, but no one had told her so before her marriage. On the eve of her wedding, when she was but sixteen years old, her father had explained that because her mother was renowned throughout the land for her loose tongue, he had assumed that Hannah would have the same streak of womanly treachery and had decided not to entrust the truth to his daughter. For the good of the family she had been allowed to think of herself as a Catholic, worship as a Catholic, and hate Jews as a Catholic. Now, as she prepared to marry this stranger who had been selected without even asking her opinion (he had dined with her family twice and, her father had pointed out, Hannah had politely returned his awkwardly tight-lipped smiles that looked like the grimace of a man in pain), her father had chosen to reveal to her the family secret.
The secret: she was not the person she had always been led to believe she was; even her name had been a lie. “You are not truly Bernarda,” he told her. “You are Hannah, which is also the true name of your mother. You must call yourself Hannah from this moment on, but not in public, for that would betray us all, and I hope you are not so stupid as to do that.”
How could she be a Jew? Was it possible that she was of the race of child-killers and well-poisoners? Surely her father had made some mistake that her husband would clarify, so she had merely nodded and tried not to think too much about it.
But how could she not think about it? Her father had kept her own name from her, and now she had to practice strange rituals, which he explained rapidly and impatiently, assuring her that her new husband would clarify any foolish questions she might be imprudent enough to ask. She never asked and it would be years before he explained. Later she heard strange stories: that only the circumcised can enter the Kingdom of Heaven (did that mean women were forever banned from their eternal reward?); that only flattened bread should be eaten in springtime; that blood must be drained from meat before it can be eaten.
Her father, on the eve of her wedding, had cared nothing for Hannah’s knowledge or for her ability to keep the laws-only her tongue. “I suppose your silence will now be your husband’s problem,” he had said, “but if the Inquisition should take you, I hope you’ll have the good sense to betray his family rather than your own.”
Hannah sometimes regretted that she had never had the opportunity to betray either.
She could tell at once that the meal would go badly. Annetje spilled some of the flan on the table and almost dropped a steaming heap of it into Daniel’s lap.
“Learn to conduct yourself, girl,” Daniel snapped, in his nearly incomprehensible Dutch.
“Learn how to put your lips to my plump ass,” Annetje answered.
“What?” Daniel demanded. “What did the girl say? I can’t understand a word of her garbled accent.”
It was true enough that she spoke in the odd manner of Dutch northerners-and exaggerated the accent when she spoke impertinently-but Daniel only used that as an excuse for barely knowing the tongue of a land in which he had lived for more than two years. He had no idea what she’d said, but he saw Miguel’s stifled laugh, and that was enough to set the mood.
Miguel, who Hannah was sure had put his own lips to all sorts of places on Annetje’s anatomy, tried to avert discomfort by praising the food and the wine, but there was no appealing to his host’s pride.
“I’ve heard,” Daniel said, “that you’re to lose a great deal in the brandy trade.”
Daniel had never shown warm feelings for his brother. There had always been a rivalry between them. She knew that when they were boys their father had told them that Lienzo brothers had never gotten along, not since their great-great-grandfather had killed their great-great-great-uncle in an argument over a tavern bill. When he saw the boys playing happily together, he would remind them of this tradition. Miguel wanted only to avoid his brother whenever possible, but Daniel believed in a more aggressive approach, and he had grown even more acrimonious in recent months. Perhaps Daniel had been embarrassed by Miguel’s difficulties in trade, perhaps he regretted having loaned his brother so large a sum, and perhaps it had something to do with his friendship with Solomon Parido.
Hannah did not entirely understand the relationship between her husband and the parnass, but it had formed almost from the instant they arrived in Amsterdam. A member of the community always looked after new arrivals (Daniel had been asked to do this but had refused, saying it was well known that refugees always brought strange smells into an established household), and Parido had been the one to look after Daniel. Within a few months they had begun working together, as Parido mined Daniel’s Portuguese contacts to trade mostly in wines, but also in figs and salt and olives and sometimes dried lemons. In that first year, she had overheard a conversation-really, quite by accident-in which Daniel lamented already having a wife, and thus far a barren wife too, since Parido’s daughter was of a marriageable age and an alliance between them would be the most beneficial thing in the world. That was how they had begun to think of linking the family through Miguel.
If that marriage had gone through as planned, perhaps feelings between brothers would have softened, but things went horribly badly. Not that Hannah minded. She had disliked the girl and thought Miguel might do better. But the disaster had left Daniel feeling he could speak to his brother any way he liked, a feeling only intensified by Miguel’s losses in the sugar market.
Miguel, however, at least maintained the appearance of calm. As his brother harassed him about his brandy futures, he only took a sip of his wine and half smiled. “Reckoning day has not yet come. We’ll see how things stand then.”
“As I hear it, you’ll stand another thousand or more in debt.”
Daniel had loaned Miguel fifteen hundred guilders when his affairs soured, and while Daniel never referred to the loan directly, he knew a hundred ways to refer to it obliquely.
Miguel attempted the same half smile but said nothing more.
“And what is this I hear,” Daniel pressed on, “about the coffee trade?”
Miguel kept his smirk, but at once it seemed to turn waxy and false, as though he had tasted bitter meat and needed someplace discreet to spit it out.
“What makes you think I have an interest in the coffee trade?” he asked.
“Because when you came home last night, you woke me by clattering drunkenly around the house and muttering about coffee.”
“I have no recollection of doing so,” Miguel answered, “but I suppose that is the nature of drunken mutterings-one never recollects them.”
“What is your interest in coffee?”
“No interest. I was feeling overly wet in my humors, so I took a prescription of coffee to dry myself out. I was most likely merely marveling at its curative powers.”
“I cannot recommend that you enter into the coffee trade,” Daniel said.
“I have no plans to do so.”
“I think you will find it a less hospitable commodity than you might imagine. After all, it is only a medicine used by a few apothecaries, prescribed by a few physicians. What advantage could you find in trading in so unwanted a thing?”
“I’m sure you’re right.”
“Trading in something no one wants can only lead to more ruin.”
Miguel set down his glass of wine too hard, and a few drops rose up to splash him in the face. “Are you deaf?” He wiped away the wine from his eye. “Are your ears in your teeth? Have you not heard that I have no interest in the coffee trade?”