he holds me tight with a tenderness that makes a solitary tear appear in the corner of my eye and slip down into my hair. Yet we can’t be more distant — two cargo ships passing each other in the ocean, no pirate activity, no forced boarding, no hostages, no looting of knowledge in terms of age, nationality, religion and sexual preferences, hobbies or culinary pursuits.
I get out of bed and bring my laptop.
“Here are two of my coffee portraits,” I say and place his hand back in the hook of my elbow.
Espresso Coffee Lovers
A shot of golden crema and velvety texture in a small porcelain cup, hot water has been forced under pressure through ground coffee
SHE thinks of the coffee cup as a cave of bliss and is ready to be your kitchen goddess, fulfil her fantasies to make love on the kitchen table, hold her hand in public, she dies to show that she has swept you off your feet, wrap her shoulders with your jacket, she’d love to suck on your warmth’s leftovers, anemophobic, she has a fear of windy weather.
HE thinks coffee is the modern day ayahuasca, the shaman drink from the Amazon jungle, inducing visions for unanswered questions; handsome, wears an amulet of his animal spirit, loves street dogs and shelters them, a born flirt, he carries a bag of lies that he makes full use of, yet he tries to hide his venustraphobia, fear of beautiful women.
Cappuccino Coffee Lovers
An espresso shot, hot milk, milk froth, topped with chocolate powder
SHE thinks, it’s white blood and feels like a vampire, intelligent, prone to depression, easily finds short cuts between hell and paradise, persistent in her nagging-niggling way, until achieving her nightmare/dream to make you happy, her fantasies are to make love inside a hammock that sways like a pendulum, thus avoiding the gravity she fears, called barophobia.
HE is the indulging type, takes things slowly and in full, a bit egoistical, a bit lazy perhaps, won’t push limits, boundaries, self-confident, usually in a good mood, pleasure is essential for him, appreciates comfort, decoration means much to him; advises on your make-up: never use black mascara; he has melanophobia, fear of the colour black.
From Coffee Lovers’ Portraits by Arnya Stefan
TWO
The smell of valerian blends with the powerful aroma of green unroasted coffee.
Tears flood Nadya’s face.
Men in uniform approach Dimm.
“Dimm, don’t go!” I cry out, grabbing the iron bars.
Slipping from my hand, a small coffee bean rolls between them, curious, zigzagging, then coming to a halt on the floor next to him as if tamed, recognising its master. A furious look on his face, the guard springs forward, crushing it under his heavy boot.
The screechy sound of the crying, pleading mercy, and executed coffee bean reverberates in my head when I open my eyes.
There’s no one else in the room. I know it before my eyes scan the room and my ears strain to catch a noise coming from the bathroom.
My body floats in a cold sweat, and I struggle to pull myself out of the dream.
I am spreadeagled on the queen-size bed in my four-star Basel hotel. Outside it is a grim October morning; the rain has stopped, drops still pattern the windows.
In a little while, I’ll slip on my clothes, avoiding thoughts about a barista called Bruno, leaving his rumbling, testosterone-fuelled voice behind, calling it a one-night stand, heading for a new day full of opportunities, full of coffee venues to investigate, coffee masterpieces to indulge and write about. Out of this random encounter, another man will remain among the characters in my coffee lovers’ portraits, like a pinned insect or an Alpine Edelweiss in an herbarium.
I have no intention to remain another day in Basel, a place I’ll always associate with rain — the coldest shower the one I received in the Basel Kaffee Klub. But before I leave for another place, another country, another continent in search of coffee aficionados to inspire me, I decide to give the old town along the Rhine River another chance to charm me.
Through the window, I see part of Basel’s main landmark: the Münster Cathedral in all its medieval glory. Originally a Catholic cathedral and later a reformed Protestant church, it stands imposing and bleak in the hostile weather. After breakfast, a hard-boiled egg on a piece of Emmental cheese, I ask the receptionist for an umbrella.
On the street it drizzles, then stops, and a rayless sun, a magnifying glass in the hands of God, emerges from the clouds. I give a sigh of relief. I am weather-spoiled, adopting recently the Australian sunshine and beach culture. But I remind myself that most people come to Switzerland for its snowy mountains, so I better focus on the architectural wonder, all bathed and suddenly shiny, in front of me.
Built of red sandstone, and consecrated in 1019, the Münster Cathedral fell victim to an earthquake in the middle of the 13th century and was rebuilt. Details from the original structure have been incorporated, like some white stonework in the Saint George Tower, stone carvings showing the founder of the cathedral, Emperor Heinrich II and his wife, Kunikunde. Restoration works on the other tower are under way, and it’s covered in scaffolds, yet I don’t see any workers there. Perhaps it’s been left to the angels to do the job, or to the ghosts of the Roman soldiers who used to camp on the grounds of this high hill, and built their fortress some time BC. Oh, I love those movies full of Roman soldiers — musk and heroic brutality dripping from the screen, raising my libido.
Soon, I am climbing up and down the stone steps around the Münster, imagining another era, when coffee was still the devil’s drink, a time before Pope Clement VIII endorsed it in 1600, after the Bishops of Rome petitioned him to forbid the drink. After a sip, the Pope pronounced the brew delicious. According to the legend, he then baptised it. Prior to this Arab nations, who had prepared their coffee drink since the 14th century by separating the bean from the berry, crushing it and brewing the grounds with water, had a monopoly on coffee by exercising a jealously protective control over the coffee trade. Execution was the punishment for anyone daring to smuggle coffee seedlings.
Like most psychoactive herbs such as kava, peyote, ololiuqui or ayahuasca, coffee, for me, is also a direct spiritual path to the divine through mind-expanding experiences. My addiction and crippling dependency on it, as happened yesterday, sees me having an occasional plunge into a downward spiral when I have to stave off withdrawal symptoms. Symptoms triggered by the total crash I went through under the scrutinising, patronising eyes of the five untouchable coryphées.
Now, I feel better, last but not least thanks to that stranger, the barista, and last night’s love-making graded as succulent coffee from the Chanchamayo region, carefully grown on the western slopes of the Andes in Central Peru near waterfalls and orchid fields, helping me to forget my professional frustration from the day before.
The warmth Bruno’s body gave me was like the one I get from a cup of coffee; living warmth that works not only on my temperature receptors but also on my soul. We all need to hold a piece of living warmth from time to time and consume it in a cannibalistic frenzy.
I know why people can’t get enough of coffee warmth.
*
