David Liss - The Coffee Trader

He was ready to reach out for her, to take her hand and lead her to the cellar. But something happened first.

“What is this?” Annetje’s voice fell hard, startling them. She stood at the doorway to the drawing room, arms folded, a wicked smile on her lips. She glanced at Miguel and then looked at Hannah and rolled her eyes. “I think the senhora is bothering you.” Annetje walked forward and placed a hand on Hannah’s shoulder. “And what have you here?” She took the book from Hannah’s hands. “You know you are too foolish for books, dear senhora. No doubt she’s being tiresome, Senhor Lienzo. I’ll make certain it does not happen again.”

“Return that to your mistress,” he said. “You forget yourself, girl.”

Annetje shrugged and handed the volume back to Hannah, who slipped it in the pocket of her apron. “Senhor, I am sure you do not mean to raise your voice to me. After all”-she smiled slyly-“you are not the master here, and your brother may not like the tales he hears if someone should speak them. You might think upon these things while I remove the senhora to where she will trouble you no more.” She tugged roughly on Hannah’s arm.

“Let me go,” Hannah said in Portuguese, her voice loud, almost a shout. She pulled herself loose of the maid’s grip and then spun around to face her. “Don’t touch me!”

“Please, senhora. Let me just take you to your room before you shame yourself.”

“Who are you to speak of shame?” she answered.

Miguel could not begin to understand this display. Why did the maid think she could speak to Hannah with such cruelty? He hardly ever thought of her as speaking at all, just some pretty thing fit only for the occasional romp. Now he saw there were intrigues-plots and schemes he could not have imagined. He opened his mouth, prepared to speak once more, but Daniel appeared at the door.

“What goes on here?”

Daniel looked at the two women, too close for any casual business. Hannah’s face had turned red by now, and Annetje’s had hardened into a mask of rage. They flashed cold stares at each other, but upon hearing his voice, they turned and shrank into themselves like guilty children, caught at dangerous play.

“What goes on here, I say?” Daniel repeated, now to Miguel. “Is she touching my wife?”

Miguel tried to think of what lies might serve best Hannah, but nothing came to mind. If he accused the maid, she might betray her mistress, but if he said nothing, how could Hannah explain this abuse? “Servants don’t behave so,” he said haplessly.

“I know these Dutch have no sense of propriety,” Daniel shouted, “but I have seen too much. I have indulged my wife with this impudent strumpet long enough, and I’ll not listen to her pleas any longer. The girl must go.”

Miguel strained to find some words to cool everyone’s tempers, but Annetje spoke first. She took a step toward Daniel and sneered at him full in the face. “You think I don’t understand your Portuguese palaver?” she asked him in Dutch. “I’ll touch your wife when I please. Your wife,” she laughed. “You don’t even know your wife, who takes gifts of love from your brother and then hides them in her apron. And her lust is not the least of her crimes. Your wife, mighty senhor, is a Catholic, as Catholic as the pope, and she goes as regularly as she can to church. She gives confession, and she drinks the blood of Christ and eats his body. She does things that would horrify your devilish Jew soul. And I won’t stay in this house a moment longer. There’s more work to be had, and with Christian folk too, so I take my leave of you.”

Annetje spun and swished her skirts as she had seen actresses do upon the stage. She held her chin high as she walked, pausing a moment at the threshold. “I’ll send a boy for my wages,” she said, and paused, waiting to see Daniel’s response.

They stood there, still and silent. Hannah clenched her body, hardly daring to breathe, until her lungs became hot and desperate and she sucked in air like a woman who had been under water. Miguel bit his lip. Daniel remained as still as a figure in a painting.

Here was trepidation, hot, itching trepidation of the kind Miguel had known only a few times in his life: once in Lisbon when he had been warned that the Inquisition sought him for questioning; then again in Amsterdam when he knew his investments in sugar had ruined him.

He thought of all the steps that had led to this moment: the sly glances, the secret conversations, the drinks of coffee. He had held her hand, he had spoken to her as a lover, he had given her a present. If only he could have known what there was between the girl and Hannah. But he could not erase the past. There could be no duplicity now. A man can live his life through trickery, but there are moments, there must always be moments, when the trickery is exposed.

Annetje basked in the silence. Each awkward second excited her as she dared Daniel to speak, but he only stared at her in utter astonishment.

“You have nothing to say, cuckold?” she spat at him. “You are a fool, and I leave you to your own wickedness.” With that she forced her way past Daniel and out of the room.

Daniel stared at his wife, cocking his head slightly. He glanced at Miguel, who would not meet his gaze. He removed his hat and scratched his head thoughtfully. “Can anyone understand a word that slut speaks?” he asked, carefully replacing the hat. “Her Dutch is the most garbled thing I know, and it is as well for her, for the look on her face was of such impudence, I’m sure I should have struck her if I’d comprehended her rudeness.”

Miguel cast a look at Hannah, who stared at the floor, trying, he suspected, not to weep with the force of relief. “She said she is leaving your service,” he ventured cautiously, still not certain Hannah had escaped. “She tires of working for Jews; she might prefer a Dutch mistress-a widow.”

“Good riddance to her. I hope,” Daniel said to Hannah, “she has not upset you too greatly. There are other girls in the world, and better ones too, I’d venture. You’ll not miss her.”

“I’ll not miss her. Perhaps,” she suggested, “you will let me select the servant next time.”

Later that day Miguel received a message from Geertruid expressing concern that they had not spoken in some time and requesting a meeting as soon as possible. To find some reason for delay, Miguel wrote to his partner that he could not possibly think of meeting until after the Sabbath. His words were so jumbled as to hardly make sense, even to their author, and Miguel moved to tear up his note. Then he thought better of it, deciding he might gain something by being incoherent. Without rereading what he had written, he sent the note.

from

The Factual and Revealing Memoirs of Alonzo Alferonda

There are, of course, a hundred such homes in the Jordaan-hastily built things of three or four stories, cramped rooms, narrow windows, too little light, and too much smoke. This one is owned, as they all seem to be owned, by a pinch-faced widow who sees nothing and judges all. This particular pinch-faced widow had recently rented rooms to a young girl. There were two rooms-one more than the girl had ever paid for on her own, but then she was now being paid better than she had ever been in the past. She had new clothes and some treats too-apples and pears and dried dates.

She had been enjoying these dainties along with the scent of her civet perfume and her new linens and ribbons, when the pinch-faced widow informed her that there was a man-a merchant, it seemed-there to see her. The widow did not like that the girl said to send him up, for she did not enjoy being a woman who allowed young women to receive men in their rooms, but she could hardly prevent that sort of thing, and since some folks will be Christian and some will not, there was not much to be done for it. She sent the man up.