Various Flavors of Coffee (30 page)

Later there was
more coffee, and more love, and then she lay in my arms and we talked.We did not speak immediately of Bey, or anything serious: that was the world outside, the world we had re-nounced. Instead she told me about the French merchant who had lived in the house before me.

“It was a very sad story. In his youth he had been very beautiful—and a prodigy: he wrote poems that were lauded by all the great men of letters. One of them, another poet, took him to be his pupil. But he also demanded that the youth become his lover.

Eventually the boy shot him with a gun.Yet in a strange way, being that man’s catamite had also been the source of his talent. Afterwards he never wrote another word: he came here to the end of the world instead, and lived his life as if he were already dead.”

“Who told you that?” “Ibrahim.Why?”

“It’s a good story. But if there really had been a French boy ge-nius like that, I would have heard of him.”

“You think Bey made it up?” “I think Bey exaggerates.” She smiled.

“What?”

“He will have no need to exaggerate when he hears about this.”

“But he must never hear,” I said. Now that the madness of our coupling was over, it was hard to keep the fear in check.What we had just done was so much more than a crime. I had taken another man’s woman, violated his property and ruined his investment, all in a few minutes. I had no idea what kind of legal system there was in Harar, but I suspected that my status as a British subject would offer scant protection. Already a laughingstock for the way he had handled Fikre, Bey would know that the only way to regain any sort of credibility would be to exact a revenge of such voluptuous cruelty that even his enemies would be impressed.

“What is it?” Fikre lifted herself up so she could look into my eyes.

“Nothing.”

“You were wondering what he will do,” she guessed. “How did you know?”

She placed her hand on my cock.“Like a snail you drew in your horn.”

“Ah.”

I was struck by the fact that what we had done could not be

undone. It was no use saying “We must never see each other again,” or “we must stop this before it is too late.” It already was too late.We had done the single, terrible thing which would condemn us both. But even that was a kind of freedom: there was no point in turning back.

With the third cup of coffee she brought a sprig of
tena adam.
We made love slowly, almost reflectively, all urgency gone. I remembered something else Bey had said about the coffee ceremony—that the third cup was the blessing, the one that sealed the transformation of the spirit. But in truth that had happened to me long before.

Afterwards
we slept, and woke together, and lay in an unspoken union of smiles and silence.“We will think of something,” she said, breaking into my thoughts. She stroked my stomach with the backs of her fingers, lightly. “When I first saw you—it is true, my only thought was that it would be a wonderful revenge on Ibrahim. I wanted to die anyway, and I wanted to cause him as much embarrassment as possible. But now . . .” One finger circled my navel gently, as one might rub the rim of a glass.“Now I do not want this to end.”

“Nor do I. But it’s hard to see how.”

“Perhaps I can seduce him. Then he will believe he deflow-ered me.”

“You’d do that?”

“Of course. If it meant I could be with you sometimes.”

I thought about Bey heaving his fat body on top of her, his wet mouth on hers, slobbering, where so recently mine had been.“He would know you weren’t a virgin.”

“There are ways of pretending—little bags of sheep’s blood that burst when you do it. It would not fool a doctor, but it might fool a man in lust—such a man believes what he wants to believe.”

“Too risky. Besides, imagine if it didn’t work—if he refused you. He’d know for certain something was up.”

“What, then?”

“I don’t know. I’ll think of something.” It was like a refrain— one or the other of us was always saying it:
I’ll think of something.
The words reassured, like a mother’s soothing comforts.
Don’t worry. Go back to sleep. It’ll be all right.
It would not be all right—we were doomed—but the words worked their magic all the same.

“I must go.” She sat up and reached for her robe. “Not yet.”

“I have to.The servants will be suspicious. I tried to make sure no one followed me but even that is not certain.”

“Don’t go.” I reached for her breast.

“There’s no time.” But she shivered with pleasure and lay back anyway. “Be quick,” she breathed, bringing up her knees to open her thighs.

She lay underneath me, supine, holding my face between her hands, one palm on each cheek; her eyes fixed intently on mine. This time there were no spasms inside her, but as my pace quickened she drew her legs even higher, the pink soles of her feet al-most by my ears, and whispered
yes, yes, yes
until I had spent: then she kissed me, got up, cleaned herself unselfconsciously with the water I had brought to make coffee, and was gone.

Few people
realize how salty coffee is. In its fresh state, the salt is hidden: it acts as a buttress for the other flavors, and is responsible for a fleeting bitter aftertaste that is one of the drink’s pleasures. But if you leave a pot for a hour or two, so that some of the liquid evaporates, you will find the saltiness intensifies to such an extent that the coffee is almost undrinkable.That is why the coffee ceremony is only three cups long: the third cup is the last that can be extracted before the coffee becomes as briny as tears.

But there is a fourth cup that can be taken, a cup that is not named: the cup that is drunk, however bitter, by the lover, lying alone in his bed, as he pictures his loved one slipping through the dark streets in a saffron-yellow robe, back to the house of the man who owns her.

[
for ty-four
]

“Wild”—a gamey flavour often found in Ethiopian coffees.

—smith,
Coffee Tasting Terminology

*

eeks passed. Like a hibernating animal I made do

with my store of recollections, recalling the smooth, cool, spicy sleekness of Fikre’s skin, the taste of her nipples . . .

“I must say,” Hector observed one morning as we walked between the work gangs, “you’re taking this remarkably well, Robert. I confess I thought you’d be pining for your auld Regent Street haunts by now.”

“Regent Street? It’s a funny thing, but I don’t miss Regent Street in the slightest. In fact, it seems to me that my old life in England was remarkably dull, compared with here.”

“Is that so?” Hector seemed quite taken aback.“We’ll make an adventurer of you yet.”

“Speaking of which, though,” I said casually, “I’ll need to go into Harar again soon.”

He frowned.“Again?”

“I do understand that it’ll be much more difficult to leave the farm after you’ve shipped out. But that’s all the more reason to do as much trading as I can before you go, wouldn’t you say?”

Reluctantly he said,“I suppose so.” “Good.That’s settled, then. I’ll go on Sunday.”

We had reached the brow of the hill: below us, the gangs were working on digging the planting pits, one every six feet, along the lines of white tape we had marked out. Hector gazed down at them. “Look at those lines, Robert. When all’s said and done, Civilization is just straight lines and bonnie white paint.”

A sound
was coming toward us through the jungle—the low, desultory chanting of men who sing not to give voice but to keep a marching rhythm. Everyone stopped work, Hector and I included, and gazed expectantly at the dripping trees.

“No stop!” Jimo shouted. He had acquired a switch these days, a long whippy branch which he swished through the air to give emphasis to his shouts.“No stop!”The villagers reluctantly turned back to their work.

Through the trees two long lines of men were coming toward us. No, not just men—women too, laden down with cooking pans, bags of maize, even small children tied in papooses around their backs. They were blacks, but quite unlike the blacks of our village. These were short and swarthy, with wavy hair and heavy eyebrows.

“The coolies,” Hector said with satisfaction.“I wondered when they’d get here.”

The front man of each column gave a command.The newcomers stopped, swinging their packs to the ground and crouching down beside them.

“Where have they come from?” I asked, puzzled.

“Ceylon. They’re Indians—Tamils. Fantastic workers. Not like these Africans.”

“But how have they got here?”

“We ordered them, of course.” Hector seemed impatient with my questions as he strode up the slope toward the men’s leader. He was standing waiting for us, his head lowered respectfully.

“You had them shipped over?”

“I had them recruited.They pay their own passage.” Hector extended his hand to the head Tamil, who placed in it a sheaf of grubby papers.

“I’m surprised they can afford it.”

“They can’t.” Hector sighed, as if having to explain to a simple-ton. “There is no work for them now in Ceylon. So they have signed on with a gang-master to be shipped here.The cost of their sea-passage will be deducted from their earnings. We buy their contracts from the gang-master, so that his expenses have been covered, and the Tamils will get work and food, and everyone will be happy.”

“I see,” I said, although in truth I still could not understand how the mechanism of economics had somehow magicked these peo-ple so many thousands of miles from their homes.

The Tamils
were a surly lot.Their habitual expression was a heavy scowl, quite unlike our local villagers, who were always laughing. But I could not deny that they were remarkable workers. Within days they had erected three large huts—one for the men to sleep in, another for the women, and one where, Hector explained, the coffee beans would be sorted. When they dug planting pits they managed three hundred yards for every sixty covered by the locals. “It is because they are indentured,” Hector said. “They work

hard because they owe money.”

• • •

A few days
later he assembled the African villagers in our camp. Going to the crate which held our farm tools, he took out a cou-ple of European-made axes.

“These are good axes—very expensive,” Hector said, showing them. “They cost hundreds of rupees. None of you could afford one.”

Jimo translated this: there was a general nodding.

“But for our workers, it will be different. If you agree to work until our coffee harvest comes, we will give each of you an axe of your own. Or for women, a hoe.”

Jimo translated again.This time there was a puzzled silence. “You do not have to give us any money now,” Hector explained. “You will pay us back one rupee a week, from your wages.”

Jimo translated. Now there was a hubbub of noise.Those who had grasped the concept were explaining it to their slower neighbors. Others had leapt up to examine the axe, running their hands over the smooth, lathe-turned shaft, touching the mirror-like surface of the head, the greased cutting edge, murmuring with amazement.

“There is more,” Hector shouted over the noise. “See! Over here!” He went to the crate containing our trade goods. “Fishhooks! Mirrors! They are all available on credit to those who sign up!” He held up a glass necklace and shook it. “See?” It was plucked from his hand by a wondering villager.

He turned to me with an expression of satisfaction.“They’ll all agree. How can they not? It’s the best offer they’ve ever had.”

“But once they’ve paid off their debt, mightn’t they decide to go and farm their own land with these tools?”

“Yes, in theory. I think you’ll find only a very few manage to do that.” He rubbed his hands together with satisfaction.“The beauty

of it is, we’d have had to get more tools anyway. This way every-body wins.”

In the village
that night there was plenty to talk about. Kiku, a veteran of these debates, knew the best policy was not to put her own view forward too soon, but to consider what the other women said before using her seniority to bring them to a collective agreement. However, it was difficult in this case, because for the first time since she could remember, no one else seemed to share her point of view.

“What is going to happen to the forest, once we all have these axes?” she asked plaintively.“What will happen to the trees?”

“But there are many trees, and so few of us. It seems only right that we should be able to chop them down. Then we will have made more
saafu,
not less, because the numbers will be more evenly balanced,” someone said.To Kiku’s annoyance it was Alaya, Tahomen’s new wife, who had spoken, and to her even greater annoyance the others seemed to be impressed by Alaya’s logic.

“Saying that we shouldn’t use axes to chop trees—isn’t that like saying that we shouldn’t use pots to carry water?” someone else added. “We have enough work to do already without making life more difficult.”

“And I for one don’t mind hoeing,” Alaya added, “if the hoe is a good one, although of course I will probably stop when I am with child.”

The other women nodded.When Alaya was carrying Tahomen’s baby, it stood to reason that she would not work. But they admired the fact that she was prepared to work hard until then. Not all headmen’s wives were so industrious.

Kiku could almost hear these thoughts going through their heads, and when the women looked at her, waiting for her response, it was as if she could see the question forming in their eyes,

And Kiku? She does not bear Tahomen’s child, but neither does she want to do his hoeing! That is the real reason she does not want us to have hoes and axes—she might have to do some hard work herself, for once in her life!

“This hoe of yours,” Kiku said. “Yes?”Alaya beamed.

“How will you pay for it when you are with child?”

Alaya frowned as she thought about this. The question had clearly not occurred to her. Then her brow unfurrowed. “If Tahomen has an axe,” she announced,“he can pay for my hoe, and his axe, by chopping trees.”