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.”
Windhandeclass="underline" 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.”
“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.