One night fate placed the two of us together at a game of cards. I’d had more wine than a gambling man ought, and seeing Parido showing a pleasant face to every man at the table but me, I was unable to resist the urge to cheat him, if just a little.
If a man cheats at cards to win for himself, he is bound to raise the suspicions of all. But if he cheats at cards for no reason other than to make another man lose, he is likely to find more allies than enemies. The more Parido regarded me with disdain, the more I saw to it that the cards did not turn the way he wished. The suit or the number he longed for would find its way to another man’s hand or, if I was desperate, in my sleeve. Moments when he thought all would go his way burst like flimsy bubbles. More than once he cast a suspicious look in my direction, but I had only modest winnings to show for myself. How could I be responsible?
I suppose this might have come to nothing if it had ended there. He lost a few guilders that night, but nothing of consequence. A man like Parido knows never to bring more to the table than he is prepared to lose as the price of an evening’s entertainment. A few months later, however, matters took another turn.
I knew Parido and his trading combination planned a maneuver with Setúbal salt. The price had been depressed for some time, so exports had been reduced. They were therefore due to rise, and Parido’s men wanted to effect that rise themselves rather than be taken by surprise. I caught wind of this from a tavern keeper-one of the many I paid for such information-and saw an opportunity to profit for myself. I want to be clear that I never engaged in any action simply for the purpose of stinging Parido. I did not much like him, nor he me, but that mattered for little when it came to trade. I did what I did to earn a profit. It was nothing more than that.
Parido’s combination began to spread the tale that the latest shipments of Setúbal salt were selling for a much higher price than had been anticipated. By doing so, they hoped to spark a buying frenzy upon the Exchange of those wishing to secure the current low price. Thus they intended to profit from the salt they had themselves acquired and from their puts: wagers that the price would rise. When they began to sell their salt at the new price, I and my agents sold as well, flooding the market in order to capitalize on the price differential. My method enabled me to exploit their scheme for some fair gains. It also had the unavoidable side effect of making their trade unprofitable, and their puts ended up costing them a slightly more than insignificant amount. But that is the price they had to pay for their trickery.
I was always certain to hide myself behind strange and unknown brokers when I attempted these sorts of maneuvers, but Parido prided himself on being mightily well connected, and he found me out. The next day he came up behind me on the Exchange. “You’ve crossed the wrong man, Alferonda,” he said.
I said I knew nothing of his complaint. My father had always told me to deny everything.
“Your lies don’t impress me. You’ve profited from ruining my scheme and costing me money, and I’ll see to it that you get what such a low trickster deserves.”
I laughed off these threats as I had laughed off others. Indeed, as the months and even years passed, I forgot his words. He didn’t much like me, he spoke ill of me when he could, but never that I knew did he act against me in matters of consequence. It could have been, I realized, that he acted against me in any of a number of trades that went bad, but that might have been fate, and I tended to believe that he would not have been shy about taking credit for any harm he might send my way.
But then he was elected to the Ma’amad. As both a wealthy merchant and a parnass, he possessed as much power as was possible for a man in our community. I had no reason to celebrate his election, but I had no reason to suspect that he would use his new position to attack me so ruthlessly.
3
Down in the kitchen, Hannah nearly severed her thumb as she chopped asparagus. She’d not been paying attention, and the knife, which had grown dull under months of the maid’s inattention, slipped easily from her grasp and dug into her flesh with amputating force. But the same dullness that made the blade dangerous rendered it impotent, and the wet metal barely broke her skin.
Hannah looked up to see if Annetje had noticed. She hadn’t. The girl was busy grating cheese, humming some drunken ditty to herself-appropriate enough since she’d been dipping into the wine again. If she’d noticed Hannah’s mishap, she’d certainly have said something: Oh, look how clumsy you are or What a fine thing that can’t handle a knife. She would say it with a laugh and a turn of her pretty head, as though a laugh and a turned head made everything amicable. Hannah would let her pretend that it did make everything amicable, though she’d be biting back the urge to slam the half wheel of cheese into the girl’s face.
Hannah stabbed at the drop of blood with her rigid tongue and pushed the asparagus into the bowl, where it would be mixed with the cheese and some old bread and baked into a flan like they had eaten in Portugal, except in Lisbon they had used different vegetables and different cheeses. Annetje thought flans were disgusting-unwholesome, she said, a term she used to describe any food she hadn’t eaten growing up in Groningen.
“Someday,” she was now observing, “your husband will notice that you fix elaborate meals only when his brother plans to dine with you.”
“Two people don’t eat much,” Hannah answered, almost successfully willing herself not to blush. “Three people eat a great deal more.” That was something her mother had taught her, but it was particularly true when her husband was involved. If Daniel had his way, they’d eat nothing but bread and old cheese and pickled fish, anything they could get cheaply. And he was the one who insisted that they make something of the evening meal when his brother joined them, probably so that Miguel wouldn’t think Daniel a miser-which he already did.
But she also liked to feed him well. Miguel did not eat properly when left to himself, and she did not like him to go hungry. Also, unlike Daniel, he always appeared to relish his food, to regard it as a pleasure rather than a mere necessity that kept him alive for one more day. He would thank her and praise the quality. He went out of his way to say little meaningless things to her, observing that the added nutmeg in the herring made the dish sparkle or that the prune sauce she served over the eggs was more delicious than ever.
“The carrots need to be stewed in the prunes and raisins,” Annetje said, seeing that Hannah had taken a moment to rest.
“I’m tired.” She sighed to emphasize her point. She hated pleading weakness to the girl, but she was with child now, and that ought to be excuse enough. It ought to be, but there was nothing to be gained by thinking about what ought to be. It ought to be, for example, that the wife of a Portuguese hidalgo was not in a hot and nearly windowless kitchen chopping asparagus with her maid. Still, that was what he asked of her, and that is what she would do. She took grim pleasure in keeping his house in order, in making herself blameless in his eyes.
After their move to Amsterdam, Daniel had allowed her to hire a houseful of servants, but within weeks he had learned it was the Dutch custom for wives, even the wives of the greatest heren, to share their labors with their maids. A house with no children never had more than one servant. Eager to save his money, Daniel had dismissed nearly everyone, keeping just the girl, whom he favored because she was a Catholic, to help Hannah with her chores.