About this story
On the Kalverstraat a man in a worn shawl takes hold of your coat button — a schoolfellow who once rescued you, back from the Indies with a family and a favour to ask. You escape down a side lane; the next morning his parcel sits on your desk, full of petitions, poems and official copies from years abroad. Your new trainee opens the first sheet: an assistant resident bound for a neglected district, named Max Havelaar.
Who you’ll meet
Ernest Stern, the merchant's son who reads the parcel as something other than stock, and Frits, the broker's deadpan teenage son with two ruled columns where one was asked for.
How it opens
You were Batavus Droogstoppel, coffee broker, respectable citizen, and declared enemy of poetry.
You had written to Ludwig Stern offering his son Ernest a traineeship and anxiously awaited a reply.
Frits DroogstoppelFather, will Stern copy figures or help with your coffee book?
Choose
Facts should arrive dressed for business, never theater.
A writer must omit whatever cannot survive an invoice.