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A Golden Wager
In Amsterdam there is a bridge that once was paved with gold. No sign remains of its showy dress. It has not been painted with mock gilt. No one has mounted a plaque attesting to its lost eminence. If you cross it on a sunny day, you may see its roadway glittering as though it were embedded with crushed diamonds, but you will recognize this as a visual effect produced by a certain grade of asphalt. Not even four centuries ago, in the time preceding its exalted state, was there any suggestion that this was more than a humble span of road over an insignificant stretch of water.
On one side of the canal, at the foot of the bridge, stood a large house occupied by the brewer Van Blassen and his family. The roof of this house was tiled in orange slate, its walls painted pale yellow, its shutters varnished red. Across the canal stood a similarly spacious house with a roof of copper. Its walls were painted light blue, its shutters green. In this house lived the family of Von Houten, a wealthy and imaginative merchant, who had at one time confected a three-part deal in which cheese futures, ivory dominoes, and sacks of grain would change hands. The possibilities for profit had so excited his neighbor across the water that Van Blassen thrust himself into a principal role in the deal. Shortly thereafter, the transaction fell through at great expense to all involved.
The merchant Von Houten did not squarely assign blame to the brewer Van Blassen, but he liked to enunciate his general scorn.
“What does a brewer know about the business of doing business?” he would dismissively ask. “He knows about nothing but the drying of hops and the spoiling of barley. Even in that, his talent is meager. He waters down his beer until it’s no stronger than canal water.”
The brewer was equally contemptuous of his opposite. “What is a merchant but a professional opportunist? He makes nothing and builds nothing. All he knows is how to exploit the ignorance of others.”
Indeed, what flowed from Van Blassen’s taps was sometimes less robust than the lion rampant in his trademark was intended to suggest. And Von Houten was keenly aware, it is true, that his profit margin depended largely on the gap between what was factual and what was believed. But on the whole, the brewer and the merchant were decent men who had fallen into a peevish rivalry under the weight of the universal vice, pride. Neither could bring himself to say to the other that he regretted the past and wished it forgotten.
It would have been easier on their nerves had one of them done so, for they moved in the same circles. Their servants saw one another at the market, their children played together at school, and they often found themselves in the company of some mutual friend of theirs. Van Blassen waited for Von Houten to stop calculating percentages and walk over the bridge, his head hanging with shame, to present an ornate apology. Von Houten hoped that Van Blassen would one day put down his mug, wipe the foam from his mustache, and go across to ask forgiveness. Neither event came to pass, and a foul mist hung over the canal between the two houses.
Among the many traits that Van Blassen and Von Houten shared was a deep and disciplined gambling instinct. They would bet on any subject at all, the more inconsequential the better, usually for a trivial stake that they promptly collected or paid. They would bet silver pieces on the number of kittens in an alley cat’s litter, or coppers on a pair of beetles fighting in a jar.
One dinsdag, which is Dutch for Tuesday, Von Houten was entertaining a lawyer named Goossens.
“No one wears boots any more,” said Goossens. For centuries, city folk had shod themselves with high boots, in deliberate contrast to the rustic clogs worn by provincials in the Netherlands.
“That is an illusion,” Von Houten countered. “You see shoes everywhere because they are a new and conspicuous fashion. In fact, however, a heavy majority persist in wearing boots.”
“Are you sure, Frits? I could swear that four out of five gentlemen on the street at this moment are wearing shoes.”
Von Houten slapped the table. “Nonsense! I’ll bet you three to one that if we throw open the door, the next gentleman we see will be in boots.”
Goossens put a hand to the leather purse that hung from his belt and patted it. “Nothing there, I’m afraid. I can write you a promissory note.”
“Those are fine for business, but a bet is made with tangibles.” Von Houten looked under the table. “You’re wearing shoes, you fashion hound.”
On woensdag, which was the next day, Goossens dined with Van Blassen. Again, he mentioned his theory of preponderant shoes.
“It’s only natural,” shrugged Van Blassen, “I wear boots by force of habit, although shoes are clearly more comfortable.”
“Do you know, Frits,” said the lawyer, for the brewer and the merchant had the same Christian name, “the man across the canal is deluded in this matter. Yesterday, he offered me odds of three against one that the next man we saw walking in the street would be wearing boots.”
“Ridiculous!” snorted Van Blassen, blowing a wisp of foam out of his mug. “It’s been a month since I’ve seen anyone, man or woman, wearing boots. At those odds, I’ll bet my house.”
“You’re quite serious?”
“Certainly. I would sign a contract to this effect. That smug merchant may even take me up on it.”
After dinner, Goossens visited Von Houten. “Frits, my friend, do you remember the proposition you made to me yesterday evening? Van Blassen says he’ll bet his house at those odds.”
“What do I have that’s worth three times his house? My trading firm, I suppose. Very well. Tell that witless brewer to meet me at the canal.” Van Blassen looked at the clock. “We’ll bet on the first person to set foot on the bridge after seven o’clock.”
The merchant and the brewer appeared at opposite ends of the little bridge and glared at each other. Goossens stood in the middle, drawing up papers to formalize the bet, when he paused, his quill suspended in mid-air.
“Frits, I say, and you, Frits, what if the bet fails altogether? I mean to say, what if the first person to cross the bridge after seven o’clock wears neither boots, nor shoes, but something else entirely? Stockings, for example?”
Van Blassen shrugged. “Then we both lose.”
“That’s right!” said Von Houten. “We’ll both sell our houses and firms and pave this bridge with gold.”
Two minutes past seven o’clock, a peasant girl walked barefoot across the bridge.
The merchant and the brewer liquidated their assets and bought a sufficient quantity of beaten gold to line the bridge from end to end and side to side. For almost two days, no one believed that the bridge was paved with gold, and it remained that way, dazzling in the sun, glowing at night, a band of light over the canal. After sunset on the second day, a charwoman peeled away a strip of the paving and determined that it was true gold.
“I am rich!” she cried.
By morning, there was nothing left but stone and stucco. The losers of the bet were unconcerned. They, stoic men, retired to the country with their families and set to building themselves up anew. The going was hard, but they lived in a land of opportunity and free commerce. Within five years, Van Blassen was brewing beer under a new trademark that featured a dog recumbent. Von Houten was a broker in grain futures. They lived on the same village, on the same street, and dined with each other every zondag.