Various Flavors of Coffee (31 page)

There was a collective sigh as the women drew in their breath. The headman himself, chop trees? As if he were no better than any other man? But then—and once again Kiku could almost hear the thought as it took shape in their minds—why should it not be so? Why should the headman be exempt from physical labor? Let him work alongside his barren wife!

It was the realization that she had been out-maneuvered by Alaya that made Kiku say baldly,“Well, I don’t agree.”

“But you don’t have to agree, do you?” Alaya said. “Let those who want axes, and are prepared to work for them, have them.The same with hoes. We can all choose for ourselves whether this is something we want to do.”

There was another shocked silence.The idea that this decision might be a matter for each individual, rather than the tribe, was also completely novel. Kiku could see the women looking at each other, trying it for size—and then nodding. Alaya was right, they were thinking; why should we be bound by what others want to do? Let those with strong, young husbands who are prepared to work hard do so, and earn their axes! Some would prosper—not all, obviously, not the very old or the very young or the infirm, but they were not the ones who had to do hard physical labor without the benefit of axes in the first place.

In that moment, Kiku knew it was all over.You could not stop these changes, any more than you could stop water when it wanted to flow downhill. But she was uneasy: she did not know what was coming, or where it would all end.

The next day they all signed up for the new contracts, even Tahomen. But as she looked at the necklaces which now adorned each woman’s neck, Kiku could not help thinking that they looked more like the chains worn by slaves than anything the villagers had ever fashioned from the forest.

[
for ty-five
]

ather to Emily’s irritation, Mr. Cairns’s condescend-
ing advertisements have been a great success. Whether it is their message, or simply that Pinker’s has drawn attention to itself by running such an ambitious campaign, she is not certain, but Castle Coffee is now the best-selling packed coffee in the grocers’ stores.As there is currently a massive expansion in that sector, with people like Thomas Lipton and John James Sainsbury opening vast new emporia as aggressively as Pinker’s is expanding its coffee business, the new way of marketing suits all parties. Sainsbury can place an order for Castle knowing he will get exactly the same product in every one of his shops, while Pinker knows the massive demand his advertising is creating can be satisfied through sufficient outlets. Lipton in particular has become almost a business partner; when he suggests a version of Castle which is pre-ground, to go along with his own innovation of tea packaged in small

porous bags, Pinker readily agrees.

“But pre-ground coffee will not last as long, or taste so good, as beans freshly prepared,” Emily points out.

“Perhaps there is a small difference—but not every woman has

leisure to grind coffee these days. So many women have jobs, Emily.You would not want women to be penalized for working, would you?”

Of course she would not, and so she drops her objections—not that he would take much notice of her opinion anyway, she suspects. Her father has a whole army of advisers now, secretaries and factotums and a new breed of assistant called
executives.
The language of business is changing along with the business itself. She has noticed that he sometimes refers to the warehouses as
depots,
and to Castle as
the product.
From the ledgers, she can tell that they are buying no more fine coffee than before; the expansion is being fu-eled by ever-increasing quantities of the cheaper stuff, leavened with a sprinkling of good arabica. True, the product is cheaper, too—just enough to undercut Howell’s—but most of the money they save on raw materials is going to fund their advertisements. Expansion, not profit, has become the objective.

One day her father takes her into the street to show her a remarkable sight. Parked at the curbside are three petroleum vans painted in the Castle livery, black and gold, their engines filling the street with turpeny fumes. Each bears the same picture of a castle that dominates Pinker’s packs, above which are the words
Castle Coffee—choice of the discerning wife.

“It was Cairns’s idea. As the vans drive round London making deliveries, people will see them and think of ordering Castle.”

“I suppose we should be grateful he did not put something about Love,” she mutters.

The only part
of their empire which does not thrive, in fact, are the Temperance Taverns. Sometimes Emily accompanies her father on visits to these establishments, trying to puzzle out the problem. “It cannot be the concept,” Pinker says, looking around at one almost deserted coffee-house. “Look at Lyons—they sell their tea

through grocers, just as we do, and yet their cafés seem always to be full.”

“Perhaps it is the location. Lyons tea shops are on busy streets, so that women can stop off for a few minutes during shopping trips.Whereas our taverns are in residential areas.”

“That is because they were converted from public houses.” Her father sighs. “I think I may have misjudged the public this time, Emily.And if they cannot make money we will have to close them down.”

“But I thought the taverns were the reason—the reason for everything? Or is Temperance no longer your aim?”

“Temperance is the objective, of course. But perhaps the means will be different—perhaps it will be packet coffee that will change the working man’s habits.”

“While there are still public houses, and alcohol, there will still be drunks,” she reminds him.

He shrugs. “Perhaps, but a business that does not make money cannot be the instrument of change. We will do nothing yet. Perhaps the market may turn.”

[
for ty-six
]

lay in Fikre’s arms, sated. She had perfumed her skin
with myrrh smoke before she came to meet me, standing naked over a brazier as the Bedouin women did, and now the fragrance mingled with the liquors of our lovemaking, the smell of sackcloth

and the aroma of coffee beans from our impromptu bed.

I laughed suddenly, thinking of the Guide: so many categories, yet ultimately one simply went on instinct:
yes, I want this, now; this is good.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked, stirring in my arms. “A very stupid experiment I carried out before I came here.” I explained about the Guide, and Pinker, and the boxes of samples— “But I want to see them!” She had jumped up—her energy was never stilled for long: minutes after lovemaking she would always want more: more sex, more talk, more passion, more planning.

“Are they here?” “Yes, somewhere.”

I located the case with the scents and brought it to her. “Which is your favorite?”

“This one, perhaps.” I opened the phial marked “apple.” For a moment I thought it must have evaporated—there was almost nothing there: then I caught a faint whiff of something bland and uninteresting, as insipid as milk. “But it seems rather horrible now.” I held it out to her.

She sniffed it and shrugged.“It’s so faint.” “You have changed the way I smell things.” “Africa has done that.”

“You and Africa.”

I went back to the bed and she came back to me.“I found one of his poems,” she said.

“Whose?”

“The Frenchman’s, the one who used to live here. Do you want to hear it?”

“If I must.”

She sat cross-legged on the coffee sacks, naked and unselfconscious, and began to read aloud. “Enough,” I said after a few moments.“Fikre, stop. It’s just—sound without meaning.”

“It’s as if he’s drunk with words,” she insisted. “Can’t you hear it?” She jumped up and walked around the room, beating the rhythm with her free hand as she declaimed,

“ ‘Est-ce en ces nuits sans fond que tu dors et t’exiles, Million d’oiseaux d’or, ô future Vigueur.. .’”

I could not help smiling—her energy was like that of a child, and on her lips the French phrases, however nonsensical, were deliciously erotic.“Come back to bed.”

“ ‘Mais, vrai, j’ai rop pleuré! Les Aubes sont navrantes.. .’”

“I want to fuck again.”

“Well, I don’t. I want to shout this poetry!”

I grabbed her ankles and tipped her up onto the bed. She fought me, scratching and fighting and laughing and trying to roar her poem as I took her. Even when I was inside her that strange,

almost demonic energy was not dissipated—she twisted herself so that she was on top of me, and even when I had spent she did not stop, but rode my softening manhood and spat at me,

“ ‘Ô que ma quille éclate! Ô que j’aille à la mer!’ ”
—digging her nails fiercely into my stomach.

It was doggerel, of course it was—but there was something in its cadence, in the simple savage drumbeat of its rhythm, that throbbed and echoed in my blood.

I thought:
I am not a plantation manager. I am not a coffee merchant.

I am certainly not a husband.

When all this is over, I promised myself, I will write again—I will rediscover that savage, exultant succubus who used to live in-side me and write verse.

“I’ve had
an idea,” Fikre’s voice said. “Hmm?” I was drifting off to sleep.

Something hard and light and dry dribbled between my teeth. I spluttered and opened my eyes. She was pouring coffee beans into my mouth from her hand. She grinned and ate the rest herself, chewing them straight from her palm with quick, fierce movements of her teeth, like a cat crunching bones.

“You eat unground beans?” I said. She nodded.“They’re good.”

Experimentally, I tried some. She was right—they were good: the pure taste of coffee, undiluted.

“And besides, you needed to wake up.” She paused.“My idea. I have decided we must kill Ibrahim. It’s the only way.”

“How would we do a thing like that?”

“You must hire a gang of
bashibazuks—
the mercenaries. They will kill him and then you and I can be together.”

“Unfortunately, you’re mortgaged. He told me so in the desert.

Even if he died, the moneylenders would take you to cover the debt.”

Her eyes flashed. “How I hate him.” She threw herself back onto the bed.“When this is over, we must find a way to make sure the world stops being like this.”

I grunted.“That’s the least of our worries.”

She reached out to stroke my face.“Now that I have you—now I’ve got
this—
I want to live.To be with you.”

“I’ll think of something,” I promised. That comforting lie again.

[
for ty-seven
]

“Caustic”—caused by bitter replacing sweet in the basic taste modulation.

—lingle,
The Coffee Cupper’s Handbook

*

n the quiet of the night there was a scream.

Kiku knew immediately that this was not the scream of someone who has stepped on a snake or hit their hand with a maize pestle. This was not even the scream of someone in pain. This was the scream of someone who is trying—desperately, inarticulately— to tell others that something is terribly wrong.

She rushed out of her hut. Alaya was stumbling down the path from the white man’s camp, one hand folded across her chest, the other clutched to her mouth as if she were trying not to choke.

Together Kiku and a few other women who had heard the noise helped her inside one of the huts, and little by little the story spilled out.A man had approached her, but she had not been interested in him—or at least, only enough to agree to go to his hut.

He had said he had a gift for her, and sure enough he had given her a necklace. But she had not wanted to give him what he wanted in return, so he had hit her—had knocked her to the ground—then taken what he wanted by force.

“What man was this?” Kiku asked.“Who did this thing to you?” “Vanyata Ananthan,”Alaya whispered.

It was the Tamils’ foreman. This made the situation even more complicated. The workers feared the foremen far more than they feared Massa Crannach or Massa Wallis. It was the foremen who could assign you to an easy job such as hoeing or a hard job such as moving a fallen tree; the foremen who would flick you surreptitiously across the legs with a stick if they thought you were not working hard enough; the foremen who would dock your wages if you did not do as they wanted.

Kiku knew that if the villagers did not act together now, their lives would become impossible. She went into her hut and found her
siqquee
stick.

Every woman had a
siqquee:
you were given it by your mother when you stopped being a girl. It was made of sycamore, the women’s tree—as was every other woman’s stick. It was a symbol that you were all connected. When Kiku delivered a baby or boiled herbs to treat a fever, she tapped her stick on the forehead of her patient to show that she was using not only her own knowledge, but also the power of the
siqquee,
through which flowed all the power of the women who had come before her. Just to hold it gave you strength—not a man’s strength, which could lift up rocks or wrestle, but a woman’s strength, the strength to endure. With this gift of strength, though, came a responsibility. If a woman needed help in an emergency, all she had to do was to take her stick, step out of her hut, and call out the special words of the
siqquee
shout. It was a kind of alarm; each woman who heard it was bound to stop what she was doing and come to join the shout.

Kiku touched her stick to her forehead, gathering its strength. Then she went outside and shouted,
“Intala Aayyaa dhageettee?
Daughter of woman, do you hear?”

For a moment there was silence. Then, from one of the huts, came an answering call,
“Oduun na gahee!
I have heard!”

“I have heard!” another voice shouted.

From every direction women were coming at a run. All were calling that they had heard the
siqquee.
They gathered round Kiku and Alaya, facing outwards with their sticks raised, chanting the same question:
“Intala Aayyaa dhageettee? Intala Aayyaa dhageettee?”
until every woman in the village was there. The men gathered round them, shaking their heads.