“However,” Miguel added after a moment, “your resolve makes me curious. Why should a man, whoever he might be, fear to involve himself in the coffee trade?”

But now it was Daniel who wanted to speak no more of it.

They ate the rest of the meal mostly in silence, Daniel staring at his food, Miguel exchanging glances with Hannah when he felt he could do so without her husband noticing. If he ever contemplated that he might well have been married to her, he never showed any signs of it, but he was always kind. Miguel was rarely home except to sleep in his damp cellar, so there were few occasions for them to talk without her husband’s presence, but on those occasions he spoke to her warmly, as though they were old friends, as though he valued her opinion.

One time she had even dared to ask him why he slept in the cellar. When he had first moved in, Daniel had placed him in a small windowless room on the third floor-what the Dutch called the priest room-but Miguel had complained that it was too hot and smoky if he burned peat and too cold if he did not. Hannah suspected he’d moved out for other reasons. The priest room was located directly under the room in which she and Daniel slept, and on Saturday mornings, after she and her husband had observed the tradition of conjugal duties (one of the few rules of the Hebrews Daniel showed any interest in adhering to-at least until she had become pregnant), Miguel always seemed embarrassed and uncomfortable.

So now he lived in the damp cellar, sleeping in a cupboard bed that even the shortest man would have to curl up to fit into. At night, when the tides rose, the canal water spilled through the windows and onto the floor, but he still preferred it to the priest room, at least when he wasn’t creeping up the stairs to Annetje’s garret chamber.

At the conclusion of the cheerless meal, they were rescued from their misery by a pounding at the door. It turned out to be the parnass, Senhor Parido, who entered the room and bowed in his overly formal way. Like Daniel, Parido dressed like a Portuguese man, and while Hannah had grown up thinking nothing of men who wore bright colors and giant hats, in Amsterdam such clothes appeared to her slightly ridiculous. At least Parido went to a decent tailor, and his suits of reds and golds and bright blues somehow looked more appropriate on him than on her husband. Parido had wide shoulders and a muscular frame, a rugged face with dull eyes.

He radiated a melancholy that Hannah had never fully understood until the day she’d seen him on the street, leading his only son by the hand. The boy was her age but addled in his head and hooted like a monkey she’d once seen in a traveling show. Parido had no other sons, and his wife was too old to bear more.

Parido’s sadness meant nothing to Daniel. Hannah would have been surprised if he had even noticed it. Daniel saw only the enormity of Parido’s house, the expense of his clothes, the wealth that he gave to the charitable boards. Parido was one of the few men in the city, Jew or gentile, who owned a coach, and he maintained his own horses in a stable on the fringes of the city. Unlike in Lisbon, horse travel was not generally permitted in Amsterdam, and each venture had to be approved by an office in the Town Hall. And even though the coach had little practical use, Daniel envied its shiny gilding, the padded seats, the envious looks of the pedestrians they passed. That was what Daniel wanted. The envy. He wanted to be the object of everyone’s envy, and he had not the first idea how to go about it.

Daniel greeted the parnass in the most elaborate terms imaginable. He nearly fell over, getting up from the table so he could return the bow. He then told Hannah that he and Senhor Parido would withdraw to the front room. The maid should bring them some wine-a bottle of his best Portuguese-and then she should get out before she offered any of her tongue.

“Perhaps the elder Senhor Lienzo would like to join us,” Parido suggested. He stroked his beard, which he kept fashionably short and slightly pointy, like a painter’s rendition of his namesake.

Miguel looked up from the last of his stewed herring. He had barely responded with a nod to Parido’s bow. Now Miguel continued to stare as if he didn’t understand his Portuguese.

“I’m sure my brother has other things to do with his time,” Daniel suggested.

“It does seem likely,” Miguel agreed.

“Please, why don’t you join us?” Parido suggested again, an unusual softness in his voice. Miguel could not refuse unless he wished to risk utter rudeness.

Instead he nodded sharply, almost as though trying to shake something out of his hair, and the three men disappeared together into the front room.

Hannah had made a habit of eavesdropping, despite her intentions to obey her husband’s wishes. A year before, she had found Annetje, in the great tradition of Dutch servant girls, pressing her ear against the heavy oak door to the antechamber. Inside, Daniel’s nasal voice vibrated, muffled and incomprehensible, through the walls. Now she could no longer recall to what the girl had been listening. Daniel with a tradesman? Daniel with a business partner? It might have been Daniel with that nasty little portrait painter who once, when he had got Hannah alone, had tried to kiss her. When she protested, he’d said it was no matter and that she was too plump for his taste anyhow.

Hannah had walked into the hall to find Annetje with her face against the door, her dung-colored cap pushed askew by the force of her eagerness.

Hannah had placed her hands upon her hips. She screwed her face into a mask of authority. “You mustn’t eavesdrop.”

Annetje had turned from the door for an instant, not even the hint of a smile on her pale Dutch face. “No,” she’d said. “I must,” and so resumed her business.

There had been nothing for Hannah to do but to press her ear against the door herself.

Now she could hear Parido’s muffled voice on the inside. “I was hoping I might have a moment to speak with you,” he said.

“You might have taken that moment last night. I surely saw you at the Talmud Torah.”

“Why should he not have been at the Talmud Torah?” Daniel asked. “He is a parnass.”

“Please, Daniel,” Parido said quietly.

A moment of silence and then Parido began again. “Senhor, I have but this to say. Things have been uneasy with us for a long time now. After the business with Antonia, you sent me a note in which you offered an apology, and I was uninterested at the time. I now regret my coolness toward you. Your behavior was foolish and inconsiderate, but not malicious.”

“I will agree with that assessment,” Miguel said, after a moment.

“I don’t expect us to become great friends in an instant, but I would like to see less discomfort between us.”

A brief pause, and sounds like the drinking of wine. Then: “I have felt particular discomfort when you brought me before the Ma’amad.”

Parido barked out a laugh. “Do me justice and acknowledge that I never charged you unfairly, nor have you ever faced serious punishment. My duties as a parnass require that I guide the behavior of the community, and in your case I have tried to show mercy out of affection for your brother rather than be cruel out of resentment toward you.”

“It is strange that it never occurred to me.”

“You see?” Daniel said. “He has no interest in ending animosities.”

Parido seemed to ignore him. “We have been angry with each other these two years. I cannot expect for us to be friends because I say so. I only ask that you not look to extend hostilities, and I will do the same, and in time we may come to trust each other.”

“I appreciate your words,” Miguel said. “I’d be happy if things could become easy between us.”

“The next time we see each other,” Parido pressed, “we will meet if not as friends then at least as countrymen.”