Miguel reddened, not from embarrassment but indignation. “Leave us!” he hissed. “You may tease a man, but only a coward teases a young woman.” Before, we had been only eager and curious and full of childish giggles over we knew not what. Now we were shamed, by our curiosity and his hard glare. We’d committed a crime we were too young to understand, and our lack of understanding made it all the more terrible.
We all backed up and raced down the stairs, but I paused because I saw that Daniel did not move. He stood in the doorway, preventing Miguel from closing it. I could not see his eyes, but I somehow knew he stared hard. At Miguel? The girl? I don’t know, but he was utterly unmoved by Miguel’s majestic wrath or the girl’s tears.
“Go!” Miguel told him. “Can’t you see the girl is distressed?”
But Daniel stood there staring, listening to the girl’s muted sobbing. He never moved for as long as I dared to remain.
For what reason do I mention this? my reader may wonder. Well, it is to help explain some of the animosity between these two men, which went back many years and was, as near as I could tell, utterly senseless.
But such was the way with these brothers. Thus the reader may not be entirely surprised to learn that it was Daniel Lienzo himself who owed Miguel more than two thousand guilders in whale-oil debt. Far from being in debt to his brother, Miguel was his creditor and never once suspected it.
18
The letters had been coming in at the rate of two or three a week, and Miguel stayed up late, straining his eyes against the thin light of a single oil lamp, to answer them. Animated by coffee and the thrill of impending wealth, he worked with jubilant determination, making sure his agents understood precisely what he required of them.
Miguel had not seen Geertruid since his return from Rotterdam, which made it easy to avoid dwelling on having lost most of her capital. He knew of men who had lost their partners’ money, and they invariably broke down in confession immediately, as though the burden of living in falseness was too much to endure. Miguel felt he could live with the falseness as long as the world let him get away with it.
Nevertheless, he wanted to see Geertruid and tell her of his progress, and he had other things to say too, but Geertruid was nowhere to be found. It was a cursed time for her to hide herself. Miguel sent messages to all the most likely taverns and paid visits to those places at even the most unlikely hours, but he found no sign of her.
Once, by coincidence, he ran into Hendrick, who stood idly near the Damrak. He leaned against a wall and busied himself with his pipe, watching as men and women paraded past him.
“Ho, Jew Man,” he called out. He puffed smoke cordially in Miguel’s direction.
Miguel hesitated a moment, wondering if he could pretend to have neither seen nor heard Hendrick, but it was no good. “What news of Madam Damhuis?” he asked.
“What?” Hendrick asked. “You don’t ask after my health? You injure me.”
“I am sorry for the injury,” Miguel said. He had, over time, learned to defuse Hendrick’s bombast by pretending to take it seriously.
“As long as you’re sorry, that’s the important thing. But it’s Madam Damhuis you want, and I can’t hope to serve as Madam Damhuis serves. I haven’t her charms.”
Was he jealous? “Do you know where I might find her?”
“I haven’t seen her.” Hendrick turned his head and blew a long cloud of smoke.
“Perhaps at her home,” Miguel began hopefully.
“Oh, no. Not at her home.”
“Still, I should not mind looking for myself,” Miguel pressed, wishing he could be more clever and subtle. “Where might I find her home?”
“It’s not for me to say,” Hendrick explained. “You foreigners are perhaps not so clear about our customs. If Madam Damhuis has not told you, it would not be my place to do so.”
“Thank you, then,” Miguel said as he hurried off, eager to waste no more time.
“If I see her,” Hendrick called after him, “I’ll be sure to give her your regards.”
Such was his luck that day. He decided, on a whim, to visit the coffee tavern in the Plantage, but when the Turk Mustafa opened the door-only a crack-he stared suspiciously at Miguel.
“I’m Senhor Lienzo,” he said. “I’ve been here before.”
“This is not the time for you,” the Turk said.
“I don’t understand. I thought this was a public tavern.”
“Go away,” the Turk said, and closed the door hard.
Hannah sat in the dining room, eating her breakfast of white-flour bread with good butter and some yellow apples that an old woman had been peddling door-to-door the previous evening. Her wine was more heavily spiced and not nearly so watered down as usual. Annetje knew how to be parsimonious with the wine and generous with the water-more wine for herself that way-so Hannah understood what the strength of her drink meant. The maid wanted to talk with her and so tried to loosen her tongue.
Miguel had given her coffee, and now Annetje gave her wine. The world plied her with drink in order to make her do its bidding. This thought saddened her, but even so, Hannah could not quite forget the thrill of having consumed Miguel’s coffee. She loved learning the true nature of that fruit; she loved the way it made her feel animated and alive. It was not as though she discovered a new self; rather, coffee reordered the self she already had. Things at the top sank to the bottom, and the parts of herself she had chained down rose buoyantly. She had forgotten to be demure and modest, and she loved casting off those constraints.
She now recognized, perhaps for the first time, how Miguel had always seen her: quiet, foolish, stupid. Those Iberian virtues of femininity held no allure for him. He enjoyed connivers like Annetje and his wicked widow. Well, she could be wicked too. The thought almost made her laugh aloud. Of course she could not be wicked, but she could want to be wicked.
Annetje came up from the kitchen and stood in the doorway, eyeing, as Hannah had suspected she would, the now-empty goblet. Daniel and Miguel had both left to attend to their business, so the girl took a seat at the table, which she loved to do when they were alone together, poured herself some wine from the decanter, and drank it down quickly, apparently unconcerned with how loose her own tongue became.
“Did you and the senhor have a pleasant talk yesterday?” she began.
Hannah smiled. “You didn’t listen at the door?”
Something violent flickered across Annetje’s face. “You spoke too rapidly in your language. I could hardly understand a word of it.”
“He asked me not to talk of what had happened. I am sure he told you the same thing.”
“He did, but he did not give me any special potions to make me obey. Perhaps he has more faith in my silence.”
“Perhaps he does,” Hannah agreed. “And perhaps you’ve no faith in mine. That’s what you want to know about, yes? If I spoke to him about the widow.”
“Well, I would know if you spoke about the widow. You may count on that. Just as I know from your face now that you haven’t, but that you’ve done something else.”
Hannah said nothing. She cast her eyes downward, feeling the familiar rush of shame that gripped her when she spoke out of turn or made eye contact with a guest of her husband’s.
Annetje arose and took a seat next to her. She took Hannah’s right hand in both of hers. “Are you ashamed of talking so intimately with the senhor?” she asked sweetly, her pretty green eyes locking onto Hannah’s. “I don’t think it so wrong that you should enjoy a little innocent congress. The women of my nation do so every day, and no harm comes to them.” She squeezed Hannah’s hand between hers. Here was the Annetje who had first shown herself, who had lured Hannah into revealing her secrets.
Hannah would have no more of it. “I don’t see anything evil in speaking with him. I may say what I like to whom I like.”