Various Flavors of Coffee (38 page)

“Oh, spare me your riddles, old woman,” he grumbled.

She pushed him, hard, on the shoulder. “Less of the old,” she said. “I’m not so old, for example, that if you start coming to my hut again . . .”

“Yes?”

She shook her head. “Let’s just say the forest has made me a promise.”

“Oh,” he said. She saw that he understood, and she saw, too, that he was not going to spoil everything by putting it into words, this hope she had.That was one of the things that made her love him, she realized: it was the fact that, generally, he knew what not to say.

[
sixty-one
]

t is a strange courtship, not least because much of it
takes place in the run-up to a general election.There is all the intense activity of a political campaign: writing leaflets, printing leaflets, folding leaflets, going from door to door delivering leaflets; attending meetings, organizing debates, lobbying, touring the constituency. . . . It is thrilling, but they are rarely together for more than a few minutes at a time; he is the general, and she among the foot soldiers. Arthur demonstrates his affection by inquiring, tenderly, if she is not working too hard, by telling the other volunteers that he must insist she takes a short break, now, with him. Her frailty becomes a convenient myth between them: the unspoken reference is to her tears, that time in his office, and

the gift of a handkerchief scented with Trumper’s cologne. . . .

It becomes clear to the others that the two of them have an understanding. His chivalry, and his gallantry, have become focused on her. When, at a public meeting, he talks about the Vulnerable, his eyes seek out hers in the audience.When he speaks of the Role of Woman, it is one particular woman he favors with a smile. When he talks about the Liberals as the Party of the Family, he

catches her eye and looks grave, so that she cannot help smiling, and has to stare at the floor for fear she make him grin, too.

She does not think about Robert Wallis. Or if she does— because however hard she tries, it is impossible, sometimes, to tell her mind what not to think about—it is only anger, of all those initial emotions, which she still feels. At these times she does not feel at all like the frail little woman Arthur believes her to be. At these times she still feels like finding that stupid, feckless, self-centered young man and giving him a bloody great thump on the nose.

The election
coincides with the return of thousands of soldiers from the war against the Boers in South Africa.The Conservative government organizes victory parade after victory parade. Sometimes it is hard to tell the election and the celebrations apart.

The Conservatives retain power by a comfortable margin. Afterwards, Pinker is enraged to discover that William Howell, of Howell’s Coffee, has been knighted; ostensibly for his services to philanthropy, but actually—everyone knows—for his contribution to Conservative party funds.

Senior Liberals complain that support for issues like female suffrage is keeping them out of office.What is needed, they argue, are policies designed to appeal to
electors,
rather than to those who have, by definition, not got a single vote to cast in their support. Sick pay, pensions, unemployment benefit—these are the ways to appeal to the working man.

In London, the Suffrage Union redoubles its efforts to win influence. Emily works as hard for them as she ever did for Arthur’s constituency. She looks frail now—she is terribly thin; but her eyes are bright, and in any case, the thinner and frailer she is, the more Arthur seems to dote on her.

the various flavors of coffee
*
361

• • •

F
OR
A
RTHUR
, the disappointment when his party lost the election has been tempered by the fact that, in his own constituency, his personal share of the vote has gone up. He is an important man now among the Liberals, a possible future minister.

It is time to settle his domestic affairs. Luckily, he has found the perfect minister’s wife: hard-working, right-thinking and, thanks to her father’s endeavors, wealthy. There is nothing more natural than to make a proposal of marriage.

It is a low-key proposal—deliberately so: they are neither of them enamored of histrionics. He takes her to the terrace of the House of Commons. It is evening; the endless to-ing and fro-ing of traffic along the waterway has quietened.Arthur speaks at some length, impressing upon her that this is not a step he takes lightly, that no one has a higher regard for the sanctity of love, expressed in its purest form as a lifelong union between two people, than he does.

“In conclusion,” he says, “I should like your permission to speak to your father, and ask him for your hand.”

“Oh, Arthur,” she says. It is not entirely unexpected: he has made his regard for her clear over these last weeks.“The answer is yes—of course it is yes.”

Of course it is yes. How can it not be? This is what she has al-ways wanted. She is a Rational person: to walk away from this now, from everything she has ever envisaged for herself, would be a deeply irrational thing to do.

If, over the coming days and weeks, she has doubts—and she does have doubts—then those too are only natural. It is a big step, a change in both their lives. And if, when he speaks of marriage, it sometimes seems to her that he means by it something different, something more abstract and possibly rather nobler than she does,

then that too is only to be expected. He is an idealist: it is one of the things she most admires in him.

It is not love which will sustain their marriage: rather, marriage will sustain their love—she fervently believes it. Nevertheless, she cannot help wondering what will happen if it is not so.

Pinker sees
that he has been wrong to rely on politicians. If something needs doing, it is Business that will do it. Sales of Castle are at an all-time high and his coffers are full. True, Howell has copied his strategy and launched his own packaged coffee now, under the name Howell’s Planter’s Premium, but Pinker is confidently one step ahead. He expands into other forms of packaging— half-pounds, quarter-pounds, even a new kind of container, the vacuum tin, that allows him to store ground coffee for weeks at a time.The copywriters at the London office of J.Walter Thompson call it the “everlasting coffee.” They are busy turning out a dozen ads a week, all of them drumming home the message that Castle Coffee is a vital ingredient of a happy marriage.
(“When you make him that special cup of Castle... you’re making a home!”)

He spends long hours in his office, plotting and scheming and thinking.

[
sixty-two
]

n the whole, Kiku decided, things were working out.

Alaya was pleased to be looking after someone as important and distinguished as Massa Wallis.Wallis, although he was still not speaking much, was eating again, and working every day in the forest, picking coffee.And Tahomen and she were spending several nights each week together, not always to make love—because, although she might still be young enough to have a child, she was certainly too old to be wearing herself out like that—but talking, and wondering aloud how things were going, and sharing the village gossip, and sleeping nestled into the familiar shapes of each other’s bodies. And although it was too early to say whether she would be given another child, and certainly much too early to know if this one would stay with them or be called away, the whispers of the forest were reassuring.

But the question of Wallis was still not finally settled, and at last Kiku judged that the time had come. She waited until the council of the age-clans had gathered to discuss a number of village matters, and then she raised her
siqquee
stick to indicate that she had something to say.

“Sons of woman, daughters of woman,” she began. Tahomen nodded to her.“Speak, and we will listen.”

“You will recall,” she said, “that when the white men came,
saafu
was broken. The forest was unhappy; but the forest knew to wait. Now the fields they cleared are full of weeds and bushes, and the trees are growing back.

“But do not think that everything is going back to the way it was before. Already, stories reach us of other white farmers, com-ing to other valleys. Already traders are coming to this place, with their crates of goods to sell, looking for things to buy or exchange. “The forest can grow back, but it cannot defend itself against the next white man who comes, wanting to tear it down and plant straight lines. We can tell the white man his plants will die, that warthogs will eat his seeds and the sun will shrivel his seedlings, but the white man will not listen to us, because that is his nature.” “What do you suggest?” somebody asked.“Or are you like the

dog who barks when the hyena is gone?”

She shook her head.“I am like the spider who says: one cobweb is easily broken, but a thousand cobwebs may tie down a lion. What I suggest is this. We have been paid money by the white man, money for our work. Instead of using that money ourselves, we must give it back to him.”

There was a long silence as the villagers pondered this odd proposal.

“Massa Wallis cannot stay here,” she explained. “Until he goes, there will not be
saafu.
To get back to his own valley he needs money—a lot of money. If we give him back the money we have earned, he will have enough.”

“But then we will have no money to buy clothes, or to buy food for our children. All the work we have done for the white man will have been wasted,” a listener objected.

“Yes—but when he has gone, we will still be able to pick the wild coffee berries from the forest, and take them to Harar to be

sold.They will be worth more than before, because the white men have shown us how to wash off the pulp and dry them in the sun. Then we will all share the money that we make.And, most importantly of all, no other white man will be able to come and say, ‘I think I will have this land now.’ That is not how it works: they would have to find Massa Wallis and buy the land back from him, and he will be a long way away.”

“Surely the forest already belongs to us,” someone objected. “It should, but it does not. There is nothing we can do about

that now.That is what I mean when I say that things have changed.” “And why should we help this man?” somebody else asked.

“Why does he deserve our generosity?”

“We should help this man,” Kiku said,“because he is a man, the son of a woman, just as we are the sons and daughters of women.” There was a long silence. Then Tahomen cleared his throat. “Thank you, Kiku,” he said. “You have given us much to think

about.”

They talked
for days. That was their way: what might look like aimless chatter was actually a slow process of reaching consensus, looking at an issue from many different points of view, testing each against the proverbs which constituted their received wisdom, un-til at last a collective agreement emerged. It was a very different decision-making process from the white man’s. That assumed the most crucial thing in any situation was speed, not agreement, and therefore allowed orders to be imposed on the unwilling in the name of discipline. The villagers had no discipline, but they did have something far more powerful: the need for
saafu.

[
sixty-three
]

“Caramel”—this wonderful smell evokes that of caramel, coffee, grilled pineapple and strawberries, which is not surprising as all four of these contain furaneol. This scent is a powerful flavour enhancer and an important part of the aroma of coffee.

—lenoir,
Le Nez du Café

*

am sitting in my hut as dusk falls. It is the best part of
the day, the part when the pain of Fikre’s absence is dulled by the prospect of the approaching night. Below me in the valley, clouds gather and bubble. Tropical birds dart suddenly amongst the tree canopy, flashes of brilliant color amongst the gloom. I am struck by how dandified they are: one, with a long orange streamer for a tail, bobs and weaves in and out of the creepers; another, iridescent in blue, hops impatiently from one leg to another; a third fluffs up his red throat feathers self-importantly as he twitters—for all the

world like a trio of fops in a café.

Tahomen appears, walking slowly up the hill toward me. He is dressed in his chief ’s finery: my old alpaca jacket, worn over a

piece of cloth wrapped at the loins. Behind him is Kiku.The medicine woman’s hair has been colored with red dye, and at her throat is a necklace of ebony beads. Behind her is Alaya, and behind her, a long line of villagers. But there is none of their usual frivolity: this procession is conducted in an eerie, watchful silence.

Tahomen stops in front of me.

“Massa Wallis go home,” he says. Solemnly, he places two coins, thalers, on the ground by my feet. Then he walks on a little way and squats down to watch.

Kiku says something in Galla. She too places a couple of coins at my feet.

Alaya smiles at me and gives me one thaler.The person behind her does the same, and the person after that . . . Those who have no money donate a mirror, or a glass necklace, or some other trin-ket given to them by Hector and me. One elderly gentleman fishes in his loincloth and produces a half-smoked cigar, which he adds to the pile.Those who have nothing else deposit a handful or two of coffee beans.

To an outsider, it might look as if they are giving me tribute— I am sitting there in my camp-chair like a king on my throne, and they are filing past me one by one, making their obeisance. But it is I who is humbled, who bows my head as each passes, my hands clasped together, tears flowing from my eyes, saying over and over,
Galatoomi. Galatoomi.

Thank you.

Next day
Jimo and Kuma and I load my few possessions onto a mule. I take only what I can sell in Harar; the rest I leave for the villagers.To this day, perhaps, somewhere in the high mountains of Africa there is a village which enjoys the use of a Gasogene Rechargeable Sodawater Maker, a wooden lavatory seat, a copy of the
Yellow Book
for April 1897, a cracked Wedgwood coffee cup, a