Various Flavors of Coffee (36 page)

Tales told in the desert. Jeweled webs, spun to ensnare an unsuspecting fly. Perhaps some of them were even true. For example, I think Fikre probably had been brought up in a harem, as she described—how else could one explain her languages, her education? I suppose it was unlikely she had been a virgin when we met—she certainly knew how to give a good performance in bed. That would have been why she needed to seduce me, of course: so that I would waive my right to have her examined.

But one fact was indisputable: they all needed money. Bey to

pay his debts, Fikre and Mulu to start a new life together. And I had money—a strongbox full of it. I had paid for sex before, that was obvious to them, but the sort of sums a man would pay for that were paltry compared with what they wanted.

They knew that the real prize was to get me to pay for love.

I could not
know exactly how the story played out. But I could start to thread together possibilities, likelihoods; to construct different versions of events and test them against each other for au-thenticity, as a man might strike two coins against each other and listen for the ring that says, this one is counterfeit, this real. . . .

And so, painstakingly, I became a maker of tales myself.

It started
in a harem, somewhere in the far reaches of the Ottoman Empire. A slave sale. A young merchant who should by rights not have been there, amongst all those wealthy courtiers. And a game of chess—a game the merchant lost to a slave girl, full of fury and resentment.

He must have seen then how clever she was, how agile her wits were even under pressure.And they would both have seen the rich young courtier who was to be her fate.

Whose idea was it? Fikre’s, I imagine.After all, she had nothing to lose. Perhaps she muttered it even as she beat him.

If you help me, I will help you. What do you want?

To be free.

How can I possibly help with that? Buy me.

With what? He will easily outbid me.

However much it costs, I will make sure you profit on the deal.

She would have looked at him then—not pleading, but with

that level gaze I had come to know so well. But she still would not have known it was going to work, not until Bey came into the bidding at the last minute, waving his arms excitedly like a man possessed by a sudden infatuation.

And then the years of planning. Mulu, I imagine, joined them later, although it is possible he came from the same household, sold off as a job lot when the girls were disposed of.

Love without kisses is not love.

A spear without blood is not a spear....

Mulu and Fikre. They loved each other completely—I could see that now. How could I have missed it? It was a kind of love between a man and a woman that I, in my ignorance, had not even conceived of.A love that was nothing to do with sex.

And yet, and yet . . . Suppose Bey had promised his slaves their freedom if they could get me to part with the money.That did not explain, surely, those weeks in which she and I fucked so incessantly, when she woke me from sleep with the touch of her hand, rolling my balls in her cupped fingers. . . . If it was Mulu she loved, why give herself to me so enthusiastically?

He is the only man I have ever really loved....

But Mulu was not a man, was he? Not in one sense. So perhaps she had simply wanted to know what love was really like, no— what
sex
was really like, before committing herself to a lifetime without it. Perhaps she even hoped to make it work—the three of us, master, slave and servant—to give her body to one, and her heart to the other, all living together under one roof; until I, with my clumsiness, my refusal to listen to her, had made her realize that such an unconventional ménage was impossible.

Or perhaps—my thoughts raced ahead, found a further explanation, wanted to reject it but could not—perhaps it was not just sex she had wanted.

There was one other thing a eunuch could not provide.

I remembered her words as she gazed, fascinated, at my balls, cupped in her fingers.
Without these, there’s nothing.

That was why she had fucked me so insatiably. She hoped for a child.

I had never
withdrawn from her. It was another way in which I had been blind to the future.Yet one only had to read Darwin to be reminded that all this—the lust which had propelled me blindly from one disaster to another—was ultimately just an expression of the same power which made the coffee bushes explode with blossoms.

What a fool I had been.

I had not just wandered into their trap; I had embraced it, tying its threads around myself with a shout of joy. Lust had blinded me, had shackled me; had led me, as if by a chain tied around my cock, down the road of skulls to Harar, and this.

God is not a watchmaker. God is a pimp.

[
fifty-six
]

“Soft”—characterised by an absence of any predominant taste sensation on any part of the tongue, except for a subtle dryness.

—lingle,
The Coffee Cupper’s Handbook

*

rthur Brewer comes into his constituency offi , a

letter in his hand. “This one will have to be answered, I’m afraid. Some Poor Law Guardian who absolutely knows for a fact that anyone in his parish who doesn’t work is a malingerer . . .” He stops.“Emily.Are you all right?”

“Hmmm?” She starts to turn toward him, then realizes he will see that her eyes are sore and red.“Yes, of course,” she says, turning back to her typewriter.

“Perhaps you could dash something off—something placatory and utterly noncommittal.” He places the letter on the table next to her.“Are you quite sure you’re well?”

To his amazement she takes a great shuddering gasp. Her hand flies to her mouth, as if she has just hiccuped or made some other

embarrassing
faux pas.
“I’m sorry. I shall be fine in just a—” But she cannot go on. Great gasping, racking sobs convulse her body.

“My dear,” he says, appalled. Like a magician there is a handkerchief in his hand. She takes it—it is soft and thick and white, the linen perfumed with a warm, cinnamon-stick cologne.Trumper’s, she thinks automatically—her father wears it, too. She buries her face in its vast, comforting folds.A hand touches her shoulder, then descends to the middle of her back, patting her gently while she weeps.

When she has recovered enough to speak he says gently,“What is it?”

She is torn between the urge to tell him everything and the need to conceal her stupidity, her over-trustfulness, her shameful, feminine gullibility.“Nothing. A disappointment, that’s all.”

“But you’re upset.You must take the rest of the afternoon off.” His face lifts. “I know—we’ll go to a moving picture. Have you seen one yet?”

She shakes her head.

“You see! We are surely the last two people in London not to have been. I have been working you too hard.”

She dries her eyes, manages a smile. “It is we who have been working
you
too hard.”

“Well, whichever it is, the remedy is in our own hands.” She tries to give back his handkerchief.“Keep it.”

As he escorts her to the door, his arm still protectively around her shoulders, she realizes that she has forgotten how pleasant it feels, to be looked after like this.

[
fifty-seven
]

“Harsh”—primary taste sensation related to the presence of bitter-tasting compounds.

—lingle,
The Coffee Cupper’s Handbook

*

ahomen crouched in the trees, quite still. The mud

streaked on his chest and shoulders exactly echoed the pattern of the sunlight as it splashed through the canopy, making him al-most invisible. His fingers were lightly curled around the haft of an axe.The metal head had been dulled with mud, lest sunlight catching on steel gave him away, and the haft had been cut down to half its length, so that now it was as good for throwing as it was for chopping wood.

He had been waiting like this for three hours, not far from where Massa Crannach had been attacked. It was possible the leopard had taken fright and already moved on, but he did not think so. Insects landed on his skin; the dried mud on his arms flaked and itched. A
gongololo,
a huge orange millipede, made its

way along a twig, dropped onto his leg, then rolled onto the layers of fallen leaf that covered the forest floor, where it vanished.

Distracted momentarily,Tahomen looked up.Twenty feet away, a shadow in the trees flashed white and pink as a leopard yawned, showing its teeth.

Tahomen fought the urge to stiffen, although his fingers tight-ened on the axe. He could have sworn he made no sound, but even so the leopard’s head swung up, its nostrils flaring.

It was too far to risk a throw. For long minutes they both waited.

In one lithe movement the leopard got to its feet, picking its way delicately over the twigs and saplings. Its coat glowed in the green gloom of the forest like the embers of a fire.Tahomen forced himself to be still.There was no more than ten feet between them now.Another few feet, and he would strike.

The leopard mewed quietly. From somewhere behind her, two cubs, each no bigger than a hare, ambled forward. When they reached their mother one immediately dived under her stomach and began to suckle; the other, braver, leapt for a passing blue butterfly, patting it with enormous paws.

So that was why the leopard had attacked Massa Crannach. Tahomen had suspected it all along, but now he was sure. She had been protecting her young, not avenging her mate.

The leopard had rolled onto her side now, batting away the greedy cub which wanted to suckle.That one turned to watch its sibling, copying its movements by jumping at the butterfly with an open mouth. It was a lucky snap: the cub could hardly have looked more surprised to find itself with a butterfly in its jaws. For a mo-ment it had a bright blue tongue, then it opened its mouth and the butterfly fluttered drunkenly away.

Tahomen found himself thinking about Kiku, and their children who had died as babies. He wondered where in the forest their spirits had ended up.

The mother made another sound and the three leopards moved on through the forest.They passed within a few feet of Tahomen, the mother still too engrossed in her cubs to notice him.

If I am going to strike, he told himself, it must be now.

When they had gone, he stood up. He was stiff from having hidden for so long: it was another sign, he thought ruefully, that he was no longer as young as he had been.This had probably been his last chance to kill a leopard.

As he walked back toward the village he unlooped the leather necklace on which were strung Massa Crannach’s testicles and eyes and tossed it into the forest. He had no need of their
ju-ju
now.

As he neared
the village he heard a strange sound. It seemed to be coming from within a thicket of thorn trees. Carefully, Tahomen separated the branches with the haft of his axe and peered inside.

Massa Wallis was lying amongst the tangled thorns. His clothes were scratched and filthy, his hair matted with weeds, and he seemed to be weeping.

Tahomen hacked his way into the thicket and pulled Massa Wallis out. But it was clear there was something more deeply wrong than just having got stuck in a thorn tree. His eyes did not focus, and he was moaning and mumbling under his breath.

Tucking the axe in his belt, Tahomen got his arms around the white man and helped him toward the village.

[
fifty-eight
]

“Delicate”—characterised by a fragile sweet-subtle sensation just past the tip of the tongue when the brew is first sipped.

—lingle,
The Coffee Cupper’s Handbook

*

rthur meets Samuel Pinker at his club. They discuss
certain issues of interest to them both—the rise of Independent Labor: what will it mean for the two traditional parties? Then there is the war in South Africa, currently dominating

the newspaper headlines: how will it affect the Empire?

Increasingly, Pinker is thinking about world issues. Lever Brothers, with their Sunlight soap, have shown that it is possible to market a product made in Britain abroad. Why, it is even being
made
abroad, with satellite factories in Canada and Brazil! Why should Castle not follow suit? After all, the Dutch and the French drink even more coffee than the British, and it so happens that in the Castle symbol Pinker’s has an image which is universal. He has been studying the way Lever’s has done it: opening a factory here,

setting up a processing plant there, sharing the cost wherever possible but always maintaining control. It is the way forward, he is sure of it. Just as nations are currently stitching together complex alliances in foreign policy, so the companies behind those nations must come together in a similar way.

There is a difficulty, of course—a political difficulty. Some of the newspapers are saying that these business alliances are not good for the customer—that they are little better than cartels themselves. It is nonsense, of course: there is the world of difference between two companies agreeing not to compete too aggressively in certain areas, and something like the coffee syndicate, where a small number of grandees, governments and wealthy plantation owners have banded together to deny those same companies ac-cess to raw materials. He is confident that Free Trade will prevail, but the case needs to be put in the right way, and delivered to the right ears in government. . . . So he and Arthur Brewer have much to talk about.

Eventually they are done, and sit puffing at two cigars while they finish their drinks. But something, Pinker can tell, is still troubling the younger man.

“Mr. Pinker,”Arthur begins. “Samuel, please.”

“Samuel . . . There is something I have been meaning to ask.” Pinker makes an encouraging gesture with his cigar.

“It’s about Emily,”Arthur says with a diffident smile. Pinker’s eyes narrow, although he says nothing.