David Liss - The Coffee Trader

“Prove nothing?” Daniel slammed his hand down on the table. “Is not the head of a pig proof? Recollect that you are staying in my house, and your actions have endangered my family. I nearly lost my wife and child today. I insist you tell me what you suspect .”

Miguel sighed. He had not wanted to speculate too wildly, but who could deny that his hand had been forced? “Very well. I suspect Solomon Parido.”

“What?” Daniel stared incredulously. He forgot to finish puffing on his pipe, and smoke drifted lazily from his mouth. “You must be mad.”

“No, it is precisely the sort of scheme to hatch from Parido’s vile mind, and I believe you suspect him as much as I do. He has been plotting against me, and what better way to sully my name than to leave this thing at my door as though I have brought it upon myself?”

“Preposterous. Your conclusions require a contortion of logic. Why would Senhor Parido do such a thing? Where would so righteous a man acquire an unclean animal?”

“Have you some better way to explain this madness?”

“Yes,” Daniel said, with the solemn nod of a judge. “I think you owe someone a great deal of money. I think this money may be the result of a gambling debt or some criminal doing, which is why the person you owe can’t go to the courts. This abomination upon the stoop of my house is meant to warn you to pay or face the most unpleasant of consequences.”

Miguel concentrated to keep his face from revealing anything. “How did you reach this fanciful conclusion?”

“Quite inevitably,” Daniel said. “Hannah found a note rolled up and slipped through the ear of the pig.” He paused for a moment, that he might study his brother’s response. “She tucked it away in her pocket for reasons I cannot guess, but the doctor found it and presented it to me with the greatest concern.” He reached to the bookshelf behind him for a small piece of paper, which he presented to Miguel. The paper was old and torn-clearly ripped from a document used for another purpose-and it was badly stained with blood. Miguel could not make out much of the writing except a few words in Dutch- I want my money -and, a few lines down, my wife.

Miguel handed it back. “I have no idea of its meaning.”

“You have no idea?”

“None.”

“I will have to report this incident to the Ma’amad, which will no doubt investigate. We can’t keep the matter quiet, at any rate. Too many neighbors witnessed Hannah’s distress.”

“You would sacrifice your own brother to lend a hand to Parido while he carries out his petty vengeance?” Miguel spoke so urgently that for a moment he forgot that circumstance suggested no more likely a culprit than Joachim. “I’ve wondered about your loyalties, and I always chastised myself for suspecting that you might favor this man over your own flesh and blood, but now I see you’re nothing but a player in his puppet show. He pulls your strings, and you dance.”

“My friendship with Senhor Parido is no breach of loyalty,” Daniel snapped back.

“Yet you value him over your own brother,” Miguel said.

“It need not be a contest. Why must I choose one over the other?”

“Because he has made it so that you must. You would sacrifice me for this man, and you would do so in an instant.”

“You know nothing of me, then.”

“I think I do,” Miguel said. “Answer truly. If you were asked to choose between the two of us, to make a choice in which you had to definitively side with one or the other, would you even for a moment entertain siding with me?”

“I refuse to answer your question. It is madness.”

“Then don’t answer it,” Miguel said. “You need not bother.”

“That is right. I need not bother. Why even speak of such choices? Senhor Parido has shown his goodness in the kindness he’s shown to our family, particularly after the harm you did his daughter.”

“It was no harm. It was but a silly affair and would have been of no lasting consequence if he had not allowed himself to lose all reason. I had a dalliance with his maid, and his daughter saw. Why must he make all this thunder over nothing?”

“There was harm, and permanent harm too,” Daniel replied harshly, “and if Senhor Parido feels anger over the damage done to his daughter, I for one cannot blame him, for you came close to doing the same harm to my unborn child.”

Miguel began to reply, but checked himself. There was something more to this affair than he knew. “What damage?” he asked. “She had a fright. It is nothing.”

“I should not have said anything.” Daniel looked away.

“If you know something, you must tell me. I’ll ask Parido himself if need be.”

Daniel put a hand to his forehead. “No, don’t do that,” he insisted. “I’ll tell you, but you must not let him know that you know, or that you learned from me.”

Despite his fear, Miguel could have smiled. Daniel would betray Parido if only to save his own flesh from the fire.

“More happened to Antonia than the senhor wanted the world to know. When she came into the room and saw you in your unspeakable act with her maid, she fainted.”

“I know that,” Miguel said testily. “I was there.”

“You know she struck her head. What you don’t know is that she and her husband in Salonika have since had an idiot child, and the doctors say it is the result of this injury. She can have nothing but idiot children.”

Miguel ran a hand along his beard and inhaled sharply through his nostrils. Antonia rendered unable to bear healthy children? He could not fathom the connection between her injury and its consequence, but he was not a medical man to solve such riddles. He knew enough, however, to figure out the rest. Parido’s own idiot boy was a shame to him, and Antonia had been his only hope of perpetuating the family, particularly since he had wed her to a cousin also named Parido. The parnass was a wrathful man by nature. What anger would he reserve for the man he believed had destroyed the future of his line?

“How long has he known this?”

“No more than a year. And I beg you to recall that you must not tell him I spoke of it.”

Miguel waved a hand at him. “No one told me.” He rose from his chair. “No one told me!” he repeated, this time far more loudly. “Parido had more reason to hate me than I could have known, and yet you said nothing. And now you doubt that he has sent this vile message to injure me? Your loyalties are as preposterous as your beliefs.”

“I won’t listen to any such lies about Solomon Parido.”

“Then we have no more to discuss.” Miguel hurried down the narrow staircase, almost stumbling as he did so. In his rage, he had nearly convinced himself that there was no more likely explanation for the pig’s head than Parido. Could there be any doubt that, in his rage and twisted sense of rectitude, he would do all he could to harm Miguel? Damn his brother for thinking otherwise.

In the damp of the cellar, he listened to the familiar scrape of floorboards as Daniel dressed and left the house. He had not been gone for more than a quarter hour when Annetje came down the stairs and handed Miguel a letter. It was addressed to Daniel and contained a circle in the upper corner.

The note was from the broker, asking confirmation of Daniel’s willingness to support Miguel’s trade. The letter was standard, nothing of consequence, but there was a line at the end that intrigued Miguel.

You have always been a respected man on the Exchange, and your friendship with Solomon Parido is more surety than any man could wish. Nevertheless, owing to your recent reversals and the rumors of insolvency, I hesitated before considering your guarantee solid enough to back your brother’s trade. Nevertheless, I shall gamble on Miguel Lienzo’s cleverness and your honor.