The Coffee Trader

by David Liss

  “My resources have their limits,” Geertruid agreed. “How much do we require?”

  Miguel spoke quickly, wanting this most difficult part resolved. “I believe that, in order to perform these tasks, I’ll require of you no more than three thousand guilders.”

  He waited. A man could live in great comfort for a year on three thousand guilders. Could Geertruid have so much at her disposal? Her husband had left her an estate of some value, but did she live the life of a woman who could summon three thousand guilders upon command?

  “It’s not easy,” Geertruid answered, after a thoughtful pause, “but it can be done. When will you need it?”

  Miguel shrugged, trying hard to contain his glee. “A month?” Best to act as though three thousand guilders were of no importance. In fact, seeing how easily she agreed to the sum, he at once regretted not having asked for more. Had he requested four thousand, he might have used the extra money to pay off some debts and provide a little room to breathe—surely a legitimate business expense.

  Geertruid nodded with great seriousness. “I’ll arrange for the funds to be transferred to your account at the Exchange Bank, so you may proceed without the world knowing that my hand is thrust in with yours.”

  “I know we don’t like to look into each other’s affairs, but now that we are business partners, not merely friends, you will understand if I am curious about a thing or two.”

  “I would be surprised if you were not,” Geertruid answered happily. “You wonder how I can produce so great a sum so easily.” She remained cheerful, careful that Miguel not even suspect a hint of bitterness. The question, after all, was certainly proper.

  “As you’ve brought it up, I must admit curiosity.”

  “I haven’t buried it in my cellar,” Geertruid said. “I propose to sell off some holdings. It may take a few weeks to be certain that I obtain the best prices, but I can raise the funds without undoing myself.”

  “Would you like for me to broker these matters for you?”

  She clapped her hands together. “I should be delighted if you would do so. It would relieve me of a great burden.” Then her eyes narrowed. “Yet I wonder if you should. I know you fear your evil council. Do you wish to do anything in public that might link our partnership more than necessary?”

  “The council is not evil, only overzealous, but I take your point. Have you other men to whom to turn?”

  “I’ll take care of everything.” Geertruid rolled her head back, looked toward the ceiling, and then turned to Miguel. “It must have been the will of God that brought us together, senhor. I am in awe of you.”

  “Soon the world will be in awe of us both,” he told her.

  This plan, this child of Miguel’s mind, seemed to him so simple he could not believe that no one had thought of such a thing before. Of course, it required certain conditions. A man had to make his move at just the right time in the life of a commodity, and this was the time, he knew with ferocious certainty, for coffee.

  First, Miguel would arrange to bring a large shipment of coffee into Amsterdam—a shipment so large it would flood the market, which was now very small and specialized—in this case, ninety barrels. No one would know of this consignment, so the first stage of making money involved the element of surprise. To take advantage of this secret, Miguel would purchase a large quantity of puts, guaranteeing him the right to sell at the predetermined price of approximately thirty-three guilders per barrel.

  When news of the shipment spread, the price of coffee would drop and Miguel would profit handsomely from the difference in price, as dictated by the puts, but these profits would only whet his appetite, a small first course in the larger feast ahead. By that time, Miguel and Geertruid would have hired agents to do their bidding on the dozen or so most active import commodity exchanges in Europe: Hamburg, London, Madrid, Lisbon, Marseilles, and several others he would carefully select. Each agent would know his own task but not that he was part of a larger scheme.

  A few weeks after their shipment arrived in Amsterdam, once the rest of Europe had learned that the coffee market was flooded and the price had now dropped at every exchange, these agents would move. Every man would buy all the coffee upon the market at its now artificially lowered price. They would act at a single time—this was the part so brilliant it made Miguel need to empty his bladder just to think of it. If word were to reach London that a man sought to buy all the coffee in Amsterdam, the price in London would soar, making the acquisition unprofitably expensive. It was the simultaneity that Miguel embraced as his most clever stroke. Before anyone knew what had happened, he would own all the coffee in Europe. The price would be his to dictate as he pleased, and they would be in a position to give the law to the importers. They would have that most sought-after of powers, a rare thing upon which unimaginable fortunes are built: a monopoly.

  Maintaining the monopoly would require some skill, but it should be possible to manage it, at least for a while. The East India Company, which imported the coffee, would find itself in a position to break Miguel’s control of the prices, but only if it could dramatically increase the amount of coffee on the European market. True, the Company had plantations in Ceylon and Java, but it would be many seasons before those crops yielded significant quantities, and to deplete its warehouses in the East would mean sacrificing a trade of far more importance. The Company would have no motive to act for some time; it would be content to watch and wait. It would plant and it would hoard. Only when the Company had enough coffee to break his hold would it strike.

  Let it strike, Miguel thought. Five, ten, perhaps even fifteen years will go by first. The Company had the patience of a spider; by the time it moved, Miguel and Geertruid would be immeasurably wealthy.

  Perhaps long before that time the Ma’amad would learn of Miguel’s partnership with Geertruid. What could it say once he had donated tens of thousands of guilders to charity? Miguel was only a few months away from the kind of wealth that most men only dream of, but already he could hold it in his hand and know its taste. It tasted savory indeed.

  So great was his enthusiasm that later that night as he lay in bed, when he recollected that he had utterly forgotten to meet Joachim Waagenaar as planned, Miguel felt only the slightest twinge of regret.

  from

  The Factual and Revealing Memoirs of Alonzo Alferonda

  I talk about myself too much. I know that. I’ve looked over the pages I’ve penned, and what do I see but Alferonda and Alferonda? To this objection my readers will surely say, “But my dear Alonzo, what more interesting subject can there be but your life and your opinions?” Fair enough, dear readers. You have swayed me with your gentle arguments. But there are other things to write about, reasons why I began this memoir in the first place.

  For one thing, there is coffee.

  Not so long ago, in the time of my boyhood, coffee was like any other exotic powder or dried berry you might find in an apothecary’s musty cabinet. It was given in small doses for diseases of the blood and bowels. Too much is poison, they would say. Even now, as this elixir spreads like a murky tide across Europe, the apothecaries cry out to drinkers to stay their hands. Great quantities of this medicine will make you weak, they say. It dries out the blood; it leads to impotence and infertility. Coffee leads to nothing of the sort, I promise you. I consume it in great quantities, and my blood is as robust as that of a man half my age.

  It has always been looked on dubiously, this poor drink that only wants to improve us, to make us more than we are. It first became known among the men of the Orient, who were suspicious of its marvelous effects. Those of the Mohammedan faith shun alcohol, so they had no experience with drinks that change a man’s disposition. Over a hundred years ago, in the land of Egypt, the viceroy summoned the great imams to debate whether coffee was permitted or forbidden by the dietary code of their sacred teachings. Coffee is like wine, one imam declared, and is therefore forbidden. But who could agree or disagree, these all being righteo
us men who had never themselves tasted wine and could only guess. They knew wine makes a man sleepy, yet coffee makes him alert. Therefore coffee could not be like wine.

  Another shouted that coffee is black, and the beans, when roasted, are like dirt. The eating of dirt was forbidden by Mohammed and therefore coffee is forbidden. But another argued that since fire purifies, the process of roasting the berries makes them not unclean but rather cleanses away that which was once unclean in them. In the end they could only say that coffee was neither forbidden nor permitted, but was mekruh, undesirable.

  Of course, they were mistaken. Coffee is nothing if not desirable. All men desire its power, and when it first emerged there were those who desired the wealth it might bring. One such man, of course, was Miguel Lienzo, the benefactor of my youth. How good he had been to my family, providing us with warning about the Inquisition when no one else thought to save us! Did he do this for profit? No, there could be none. Did he act out of love? He barely knew us. He did it, I believe, because he is a righteous man and delights in thwarting the plans of evildoers.

  I had no desire to make him uncomfortable, so when I formed a friendship with Lienzo in Amsterdam, I did not embarrass him by recollecting the kindness he had done my family. Instead, I did some small business with him, joined him at taverns and eateries, and studied with him at the Talmud Torah until the time of my exile.

  When I saw him we talked of little of consequence. Then one day he informed me that he wanted to enter into the coffee trade. I knew about coffee from the years I had sojourned in the East. I knew that a man who drinks coffee is twice as strong, twice as wise, and twice as cunning as the man who abstains. I knew that coffee unlocks doors in the mind.

  And I knew other things too. I knew things I was not quite prepared to tell my friend Senhor Lienzo. Not because I wanted him to fail, oh, no. Nothing of the sort. I held on to my secrets because I wanted him to succeed, and I had every reason to believe that this new coffee venture could be just the thing I needed.

  11

  Coffee. It was a fire that fed on itself.

  Miguel sat in his cellar, his feet cold from canal water, as he drank bowl after bowl of coffee and wrote to brokers and traders on every exchange he knew. It would be weeks, of course, before he would get responses, but soon they would come. He urged quick replies. He promised generous commissions.

  It was as Alferonda had said. He remained awake half the night, reading through his letters, tearing them up, and rewriting them. He studied the week’s Torah portion and knew he would dazzle his study group at the synagogue. He reread eight tales of Charming Pieter.

  The next day he felt weary, but if that was the price of productivity he was willing to pay. In any case, morning coffee paid the debts incurred by the coffee of the previous night.

  Miguel heard that Parido and his trading combination had lost a great deal—that is to say, they had not profited as handsomely as they had intended—because of Miguel’s interference in whale oil. When the two men saw each other on the Exchange, however, Parido showed no ill will.

  “I hear your month ended well,” the parnass said. He might have been discussing the death of a friend for all the cheer in his voice.

  Miguel smiled brightly. “It might have been better.”

  “I could say the same for my own. Did you know your machinations in whale oil caused me to incur some unpleasant losses?”

  “I’m terribly sorry to learn that,” Miguel said. “I had no idea you were involved, or I would never have ventured there myself.”

  “So you tell me, but things appear somewhat dubious,” Parido said. “There are those who whisper in my ear to tell me your whale-oil scheme was a slap in the face.”

  “I would not let my brother whisper in your ear if I were you. His breath would fell a horse. If you don’t have faith in my honesty, at least have faith in my caution. Why would I risk your displeasure by trading knowingly against your interests?”

  “I cannot say what compels a man to act as he acts.”

  “Nor can I. You know, brandy surged at the last moment. Some Dutch fellows bought a massive quantity and sent the price soaring. You had no knowledge of that, I suppose, though men might whisper a thing or two in my ear if I let them.”

  Parido frowned. “You don’t think I would trick you out of your futures, do you?”

  “Things appear somewhat dubious,” Miguel said.

  Parido let out a sour little laugh. “Perhaps we are on an equal footing. You lost far less in brandy than I did in whale oil, but your losses are surely more significant to you than mine are to me.”

  “Surely,” Miguel agreed.

  “Let me ask you one thing, however. How is it that you just happened upon whale oil? It is an odd coincidence, don’t you think?”

  Miguel could think of no answer, but Parido spoke again before the silence became too conspicuous.

  “Did someone advise you to trade in whale oil?”

  It was as though Charming Pieter whispered the name. Of course. Why not say so?

  To implicate this man could not be counted as a betrayal, because the man was out of Parido’s grasp. “I did receive a note—unsolicited, of course—from that fellow Alferonda. He advised me to buy into whale oil.”

  “And you believed him, this man we had cast out of the community?”

  “I thought he had no reason to lie, and when I examined the commodity for myself and asked around the Exchange, I concluded that the advice had been good.”

  Parido scratched at his beard thoughtfully. “I had supposed it might come to this. I would advise you to have no more dealings with him, Lienzo. Pay him a broker’s fee if you must, but be rid of him. The man is a danger to anyone he touches.”

  Miguel could hardly believe his luck, having so easily escaped Parido’s anger. Certainly he seemed irritated that he had lost money, but he was too eager to blame Alferonda to waste his anger upon Miguel.

  Meanwhile, he had begun to realize that obtaining his whale-oil profits might be more difficult than he thought. After reckoning day, when no money had been deposited into his account at the Exchange Bank and he began receiving letters from his Muscovy agent regarding his nineteen hundred guilders, Miguel thought it was time to hunt his money. He found Ricardo, the broker to whom he’d sold his shares, at a tavern popular with Portuguese Jews. He was already slightly drunk and looking like he wanted, more than anything else, to be in his own bed—or, at the very least, away from Miguel.

  “How are you, Lienzo?” he asked, and then walked away without waiting for an answer.

  “Oh, I’ve been a busy man, Ricardo,” Miguel said, hurrying after him. “I’ve made a few trades here and there and earned a few guilders. The thing of it is, when a man earns a few guilders, he expects to have those guilders appear in his account at the Exchange Bank.”

  Ricardo turned. “I’ve heard your creditors say much the same thing.”

  “Oh, ho!” Miguel shouted back. “You’ve a sharp tongue today. Well, you may sharpen your tongue all you like so long as you also sharpen your pen before signing over my money.”

  “As you’ve only been in Amsterdam five years,” Ricardo said quietly, “and you clearly haven’t mastered the art of doing business here, let me make bold by explaining something to you. The flow of money is like the flow of water in a river. You may stand by the shore and urge it on, but doing so won’t earn you much advantage. You’ll get your money in due time.”

  “In due time? The fellow I borrowed from in order to buy that whale oil isn’t talking about due time.”

  “Maybe you should not have extended credit when you had none to extend. I would have thought you might have learned that lesson before now.”

  “You’re in no position to lecture me about extending credit when you won’t pay me. Who is your blackguard client anyhow who holds back?”

  Ricardo sneered under his unkempt mustache. “You know I won’t tell you that,” the broker explained. “I won’t h
ave you making trouble for my clients, or for me either. If you don’t like the way I do business, you know what you may do about it.”

  Here was something of a bind. Had Ricardo been a Dutchman, Miguel could have taken the matter to the Exchange board or to the courts, but the Ma’amad discouraged Jews from resolving their differences so publicly. Instead, it preferred to resolve these things itself, but Miguel was disinclined to bring a matter before the council. Parido might choose to lead the Ma’amad against Miguel out of spite, and then he would have no recourse.

  “I don’t much like the tone you’ve taken with me, Ricardo,” Miguel said, “and I promise you that this incident will not shine favorably on your reputation.”

  “You’re a fine fellow to talk about reputations,” the broker answered, as he turned away.

  Later that week, Miguel left his brother’s house early and strolled along the Herengracht, whose handsome wide streets were bursting with linden trees newly rich with foliage. Grand houses rose upward on either side of the canal, glories of the prosperity that the Dutch had built for themselves in the last half century. These were enormous red-brick dwellings—too well constructed to require the sealing black tar that covered so many houses in the city—grand structures with ornate angles and dazzling flourishes. Miguel loved to study the gable stones above the doorways, coats of arms or symbols of the source of the household’s wealth: a bound bundle of wheat, a tall-masted ship, an African brute in chains.

  Just ahead, a beggar wound his way through the street, stumbling like a drunkard. He was filthy, covered in rags, and missing most of his left arm from an accident still new enough to leave the wound raw and rancid. Miguel, who was kind, sometimes too kind, with the city’s mendicants, felt the pull of generosity. Why should he not be munificent? Charity was a mitzvah, and in a few months’ time he would hardly miss a handful of stuivers.