The Coffee Trader Read Free

little tract on the matter. The first rules were that a man must never act like a debtor and he must never announce his troubles to anyone who did not need to know them.
    “Come, sit next to me for a moment,” she said.
    He thought to say no, he preferred to stand, but sitting next to her was much more delicious than standing nearby, so he felt himself nodding before he’d realized he’d made a decision.
    It was not that Geertruid was more beautiful than other women, though she certainly had some beauty about her. At first glance she seemed nothing unusual, a prosperous widow of her middle thirties, regally tall, still quite pretty, particularly if a man gazed upon her from the proper distance or with enough beer in his belly. But even though she was past her prime, she yet retained more than her share of charms and had been blessed with one of those smooth and circular northern faces, as creamy as Holland butter. Miguel had seen youths twenty years her junior staring hungrily at Geertruid.
    Hendrick appeared from behind Miguel and removed the man sitting next to Geertruid. Miguel moved in as Hendrick led the fellow away.
    “I can only spare a few minutes,” he told her.
    “I think you’ll give me more time than that.” She leaned forward and kissed him, just above the border of his fashionably short beard.
    The first time she had kissed him they had been in a tavern, and Miguel, who had never before had a woman for a friend, let alone a Dutchwoman, thought himself obligated to take her to one of the back rooms and lift her skirts. It would not have been the first time a Dutchwoman had made her intentions known to Miguel. They liked his easy manner, his quick smile, his large black eyes. Miguel had a rounded face, soft and youthful without being babyish. Dutchwomen sometimes asked if they could touch his beard. It happened in taverns and musicos and on the streets in the less fashionable parts of town. They claimed they wanted to feel his beard, neatly trimmed and handsome as it was, but Miguel knew better. They liked his face because it was soft like a child’s and hard like a man’s.
    Geertruid, however, never wanted anything more than to press her lips against his beard. She had long since made it clear that she had no interest at all in having her skirts lifted, at least not by Miguel. These Dutchwomen kissed anyone they liked for any reason they liked, and they did so more boldly than the Jewish women of the Portuguese Nation dared to kiss their husbands.
    “You see,” she told him as she gestured to the crowd, “even though you’ve been in this city for years, I still have new sights to show you.”
    “I fear your stock of the new may be running thin.”
    “At least you needn’t worry about that Hebrew council of yours seeing us in this place.”
    It was true enough. Jews and gentiles were permitted to conduct business in taverns, but what Jew among the Portuguese would choose this foul pit? Still, a man could never be overly cautious. Miguel took a quick look around for the telltale signs of Ma’amad spies: men who might be Jews dressed as Dutch laborers, conspicuous fellows alone or in pairs, eating none of the food; beards, which hardly anyone but Jews wore, cut close with scissors to resemble clean shaves (the Torah forbade only the use of razors on faces, not the trimming of beards, but beards were so out of fashion in Amsterdam that even the hint of one marked a man as a Jew).
    Geertruid slid her hand along Miguel’s, a gesture that came just short of the amorous. She loved freedom with men above all else. Her husband, whom she spoke of as the cruelest of villains, had been dead some years now, and she’d not yet finished celebrating her liberty. “That sack of fat behind the bar is my cousin Crispijn,” she said.
    Miguel glanced at the man: pale, corpulent, heavy-lidded—no different from ten thousand others in the city. “Thank you for letting me witness your bloated kinsman. I hope I may