Miguel stole a look toward the exit and saw a figure step toward the dark. “Christ’s tabernacle. What does he want?” The parnass had been his enemy since an unfortunate incident two years earlier, which had ended with his withdrawing his offer to wed his daughter to Miguel.
“Nothing good, you can depend on that. A parnass lying in wait is always bad news, and Parido is worse news than most. And Parido lying in wait for Miguel Lienzo-well, it is hard to think of a more dire situation. To be honest, I hate for him to see us together. I have troubles enough without a parnass looking into my affairs too deeply.”
“You have no troubles at all,” Miguel said darkly. “I should lend you some of mine.”
“Your brother does business with him, doesn’t he? Why don’t you have him ask Parido to leave you alone?”
“I think my brother encourages him, frankly,” Miguel said bitterly. It was bad enough that he was dependent upon his younger brother, but Daniel’s friendship with the parnass particularly unnerved him. He could never quite shake the feeling that Daniel reported everything Miguel said or did.
“Let’s go back inside,” Nunes suggested. “We’ll wait for him to pass.”
“I won’t give him that satisfaction. I’ll have to take my chances, but I don’t think your performance has fooled anyone. We should break your toe in earnest. If he wants to examine your foot, you’ll be found guilty of having lied in the synagogue.”
“I’ve put myself at risk for your sake. You ought to show some gratitude.”
“You’re right. Should he inspect your toe and find it whole, we’ll tell him that a great miracle happened here.”
They hobbled out to the courtyard and, though he meant to restrain himself, Miguel couldn’t help but look to the corner where he had seen Parido lurking. But the parnass was already gone.
“Parido lying in wait for you is bad enough,” Nunes observed, “but spying on you and disappearing into the shadows-that is something altogether more terrible than I had thought.”
Miguel had fears enough without having his friend fan the flames. “Soon you will tell me that a quarter moon makes things worse.”
“A quarter moon is a bad omen,” Nunes agreed.
Miguel let out a raspy noise, half chortle, half cough. What did the parnass want from him? He could think of no religious laws he’d openly violated in the recent past, although he might have been seen on the street with Hendrick. Still, inappropriate contact with gentiles hardly warranted this kind of surveillance. Parido had something else in mind, and while Miguel could not think what it might be, he knew it was nothing good.
from
The Factual and Revealing Memoirs of Alonzo Alferonda
My relocation to Amsterdam proved, at first, to be all I could have hoped for. After wallowing too many years in the squalid mud of London, that putrid capital of a putrid island, Amsterdam seemed to me the cleanest and most beautiful of places. England had become a disorderly nation, with its revolutions and regicide. While living there I had the chance to meet a man called Menasseh ben Israel, who came from Amsterdam to convince England ’s warrior-priest king, Cromwell, to allow English Jews to make a home there. Menasseh painted a picture of Amsterdam that made it sound like the Garden of Eden with red-brick houses.
In my early days there, I was inclined to agree. The local Ma’amad, the ruling council of Jews, warmly embraced newcomers. It arranged for kind strangers to take us in until we could find a place of our own. It at once assessed our understanding of the customs and holy laws of our race and began training us in those areas in which we showed ignorance. The Talmud Torah, the great synagogue of the Portuguese Jews, offered the opportunity for study at all levels of understanding.
I arrived in Amsterdam with a few coins in my purse and could afford to establish myself in business, though I did not yet know what business I would make my own. However, I soon discovered something to my liking. On the Exchange a new form of commerce had emerged, that of buying and selling what no one owned and, indeed, what no one ever intended to own. It was a gambling sort of trade called futures, in which a man wagered on whether the price of a commodity would rise or fall. If the trader guessed correctly, he would earn far more money than if he had bought or sold outright. If he guessed incorrectly, the cost could be formidable, for he would not only lose the money he had invested, he would owe for the difference between what he had bought and the final price. I saw at once that this was no trade for the timid or even for the merely brave. This was a trade for the lucky, and I had spent my life learning how to manufacture my own luck.
I was not alone in doing so. Throughout the Exchange were groups called trading combinations, and they would manipulate markets as best they could. A combination might circulate a rumor that it intended to buy, let us say, British woolens. The Exchange, hearing that a large group of men planned to buy, would respond, and the price would rise accordingly. All along, however, the combination intended to sell, and once the woolens reached a rewarding price, the combination would react accordingly. These organizations, my astute reader will see, engage in a tricky business because these men will have to do as they pretend most of the time; otherwise rumors surrounding their movements will never be believed.
I soon found myself something of a purveyor of rumors. I would make commodities do pretty little dances as I saw fit, and I had a knack for disguising my footprints as I did so. Check the dice if you wish, dear sir. You will see that they are but ordinary. A word dropped here, a rumor spread there. Not by me, of course, but done all the same. This commodity bet on, this one bet against. It all proved a handy little trade.
Shortly after my arrival in the city I found myself passing idle hours in a little gambling establishment owned by a fellow called Juarez. Gambling was strictly forbidden by the Ma’amad, but many forbidden things were, in truth, tolerated, so long as they were done quietly. Juarez ran a tasteful little tavern that catered to Portuguese Jews. It offered food and drink that conformed with our holy laws, and he permitted no whores to ply their trade, so the parnassim chose not to bother him.
I played cards there with, among other men, a merchant some ten years my senior named Solomon Parido; he disliked me and I disliked him. Why should that be? I cannot say for certain. There was no initial slight that began it, no wrong left to be revenged. It is sometimes so simple as two men having natures that cannot stand to be near each other, like magnets that push each other away. I found him too sour; he found me too ebullient. Though our work and worship often threw us together, neither was ever happy to see the other. We might be in the same room, and for no reason he would scowl at me and I would smile saucily in return. He might make some reference to cheats, meaning to needle me for my background; I would return a reference to idiots, knowing that his only son had been born deficient of mind.
Perhaps you will say, Alferonda, you are cruel to mock a man for his misfortune, and surely you would be right to say so. It is cruel, but Parido brought forth the cruelty in me. Perhaps had he been kinder I would have looked upon him compassionately. I might then have seen his wealth-his massive house full of rugs and paintings and gold trinkets, his indulgent coach-and-four, his maneuvers on the Exchange that succeeded simply because of the sheer volume of capital propping them up-as some small compensation for his domestic sadness. I might have looked at his expensive clothes as a mask behind which he could hide his melancholy. I might have viewed his lavish banquets-indulgent affairs with dozens of guests, barrels of wine, wheels of cheese, herds of roast cattle-with new eyes, for I would have been a guest at those banquets and seen what satisfaction he took in playing host. But I never received the handsomely inscribed invitations to Parido’s house. My friends did, I can assure you, and I listened to the tales of their delight. But Parido could find no place for Alferonda in his magnificent house. Why, then, should Alferonda make room in his equally magnificent heart?