Various Flavors of Coffee (22 page)

“Ah! There is Neate,” her father exclaims. “And Brewer, too.” Emily looks up: the Member of Parliament she met previously with her father is heading their way, along with a young man in a business suit. Arthur Brewer acknowledges her with a smile and a nod before taking a seat. Pinker, meanwhile, is talking urgently into Neate’s ear, clapping him on the shoulder as the young man turns away.

“Our broker,” he explains as he sits down again. “I have put a small amount on Lyle.”

“A wager?” Emily asks.

“In effect. I have placed a sell order. If the price falls, as I hope, I will pocket the difference.”

She nods, but she does not really understand this market the way her father obviously does.This is a new side of him, a side she has not seen before: in the past, when he has spoken of his coffee sacks as soldiers and cavalry, it was a different kind of battle she imagined.

On the floor, a bell rings. Immediately a low hubbub starts up

around the pit. Men are waving their hands in some kind of sign language; others are writing dockets, passing them back and forth over the counter. Despite not knowing exactly how it works, she is aware of some great drama being played out. It seems to center around two men standing on opposite sides of the octagon.

“Lyle’s broker. And Tate’s, over there,” her father says. “Ah!

Here, if I am not mistaken, are their principals, come to watch.”

Two separate groups are coming into the public gallery. Each consists of about half a dozen men: they pointedly ignore each other, walking to the rail and focusing all their attention on the activity below.

“The Lyle brothers. And that, I believe, is Joseph Tate, Sir Henry’s son.” Pinker turns back to the floor, straining to watch the changing figures on the blackboard. “From what I can see, Lyle’s are still buying.They must be building up their stocks.”

“Even though they hope the price will fall?”

“It is a gesture.They want the Exchange to see how much they are committing.”

For twenty minutes or so nothing much happens. Ada catches Emily’s eye and grimaces. But Emily, far from being bored, is fascinated. She does not like it, exactly—in fact, she finds it slightly repulsive, the way everything Pinker’s does can be reduced to this, to pieces of paper pushed back and forth across a mahogany counter. There is something pack-like about the men around the pit she finds disturbing: she can imagine them turning on one of the two dealers at any minute, like animals, savaging him. . . .

“Remarkable,” Pinker murmurs.

He is looking at the side of the public gallery, where a very elderly gentleman is making his way toward Tate’s group with the aid of a stick.A younger man stands at his shoulder, ready to assist him should he need it.

“Sir Henry Tate himself,” Pinker says in a low voice. “He must be over seventy by now.”

As if the appearance of the old man were a signal, the noise on the floor alters. People are shouting at Lyle’s broker, waving their hands in front of his face in that strange sign language, pushing what look like scraps of paper into his hands. Imperturbably, he collects them, tapping people on the chest to show that he has taken their contracts, all the while nodding at others, signing the chits and handing them on.

“Lyle’s are selling,” her father says.“This is it!”

For five minutes the frenzy continues. Pinker glances over at where Sir Henry sits next to his son Joseph, his hands folded on the handle of his cane.The two of them are watching the activity below in silence, their faces impassive. “They must break soon,” Pinker mutters.“They have spent a small fortune already.”

The noise suddenly seems to falter. Down on the floor, there is a long moment of expectant silence.Then Lyle’s broker shakes his head.

As one the men on the floor turn away from him toward Tate’s broker.

Her father sighs.“It’s over.Tate has won.” “Why, Father?”

“Who knows?” he says brusquely. “Perhaps Lyle’s misjudged their moment. Perhaps they had fewer reserves than they were letting on. Perhaps the old man just held his nerve better.” He gets to his feet.“Let us go home.”

The gallery is already emptying. Lyle’s group is the first to leave: amongst Tate’s lot a few quiet handshakes are being exchanged. It is hard to believe that a fortune has just been gambled and lost.

“They will not win next time,” her father says, looking down at the floor. “Not in the long run. The market wants to be free, and no man is more powerful than the market.” He turns to Arthur Brewer. “Don’t forget that dinner, Brewer.We must learn the les-sons of today, if we are not to suffer the same fate.”

[
twenty-eight
]

“Smoke”—the very symbol of volatility, this is the smell given off by certain types of wood and resins as they burn.

—lenoir,
Le Nez du Café

*

e leave Zeilah four days later—a caravan of thirty

camels, consisting not only of ourselves and Ibrahim Bey but Hammond and Tatts, eager to ride as far as possible in the safety of our party. Fikre and Mulu walk behind us with the other servants. Sometimes, when we are nearing the end of a march, I notice her stagger against the eunuch for support. He puts an arm around her tenderly, holding her upright.

At Tococha we stop for water. We fill the
gherbes,
barrels made of goatskin which are tied to each camel like giant footballs, two to each beast. The water has a rancid, animal taste
—hircinos—
that worsens dramatically after a day in the sun.At Warumbot, ten miles on, we turn inland. This is the very rim of the desert: the village seems to perch on the edge of the hot sands like a small harbor on the edge of a great sea. In the moonlight—we travel from late afternoon to dawn—it is the color of salt, bright, brilliant and glistening, like a vast plain of quartz. If you lick your lips they are coated with salt dust. Black faces sparkle with crystalline specks. According to Hammond we are now actually lower than the ocean. Sometimes there are steam vents, fumaroles, in the featureless, rocky scrub; sometimes just the endless petrified waves of sand.We see only one living thing all night, a thorn tree that could have been dead for all the leaf it showed.

I find myself daydreaming about Emily, replaying scenes from our courtship—the way she stamped her foot when we had an argument in the street; lunch at the pub in Narrow Street . . . But then I catch a glimpse of Fikre, the moonlight catching on her slate-gray skin, and I am instantly, vertiginously aroused. The rhythm of the camel, once you get used to it, is hypnotic, almost sensual, a constant nudging, rocking motion that does nothing to dispel the fantasies flitting through my head.

When the sun rises, soaring like a Montpellier balloon over the sands, we are still in the same featureless desert. I sense alarm among the drivers. To stay out here in the heat of the day means death.The
gherbes
are almost empty, and no one seems to know exactly where we should be.After some debate we keep going as we are. Eventually another tiny village comes into view.The shapeless houses are almost invisible against the shapeless rocks scattered across the desert, which a trick of perspective can make bigger than a ship or smaller than a speck of dust.This is Ensa, our destination for the day. Everyone is relieved. There are a dozen ram-shackle huts, a few goats looking for grass among the stones, a Negress feeding a baby from a flat gray tit that is already as empty as a squeezed orange. Big-shouldered vultures stamp around the huts, or pull at the stinking remains of a camel’s straw, but there is a well to refill our canteens.We have traveled forty miles.

• • •

T
HE FOLLOWING NIGHT
I ride, a little shamefully—it does not seem right to be sitting on top of a camel when a woman is walking. But there is clearly an etiquette here: I can no more offer my camel to Bey’s slave than I could offer a seat on an omnibus to a servant.

Ibrahim Bey sees me glancing at her and steers his camel alongside mine.“I said I would tell you how I found her.”

“Yes?”

“Would you like to hear now?”

I think: I am riding a camel through the desert. The moon is very big above me—so big and clear I can almost reach up and touch its mottled surface. I have barely slept in days. I am going to a place where there is absolutely no civilization. These camels stink. An Arab trader is going to tell me about his slave. Surely this is all a terrible dream.

“Please,” I say.

[
twenty-nine
]

or nearly an hour Bey talks, his voice a low monotone.
It was an accident, it seems—a slave sale in Constantinople; a curious friend who insisted on attending; Bey dragged along

against his better judgment to watch.

“Please understand, Robert: this was not some squalid, dusty bazaar, where plantation laborers are bought and sold by the gross. This was a sale of the most valuable specimens—girls who had been selected in infancy for their beauty, and nurtured in the harem of a prestigious dealer; who had been taught mathematics, music, languages and chess. Some were from the lands to the east—Georgia, Circassia and Hungary—prized for their fair color-ing, while others were from the dealer’s own family.”

Such girls, he explains, might not even be bought by their eventual owner: rather, they would be sold from agent to agent, the very finest ones being passed up the chain toward the Imperial Harem itself. Each agent would add a mark-up: the price of a girl sold into the Sultan’s service was astronomical, more than Bey would earn in a lifetime. But these were very few: a girl would be exceptional indeed who reached such heights.

He stares into the darkness. “We were greeted by the trader, who offered us refreshments—sherbets, coffee, pastries and so on—before showing us to our seats, which had been allocated according to the status of the guests.There were only about twenty of us, but it was clear that some were preparing to spend small fortunes that afternoon.

“One end of the room had been screened off, and from behind the screen one caught the flutter of excited faces, peering eyes, a giggle of girlish excitement . . . that was where the goods were waiting.A scribe sat at a table, preparing pens and ledgers to record the payments.The trader’s mother, the
hanim,
dressed in her rich-est clothes, was flitting around making last-minute adjustments. The trader made a short speech of welcome.Then he introduced the first girl, describing her in glowing terms. That was all very well, but we wanted to see her. Eventually she came out, bashful in front of so many men but also rather pleased with herself—it was an honor to be chosen to open the proceedings. She was a Russian by birth, a nice enough thing, barely more than a child. She was wearing a
gomlek,
a coat of glittering, jewel-encrusted silk, left open at the throat; silk trousers, soft bootlets. We looked, and we were impressed. No one touched her, of course—there was a certificate of virginity from a midwife, to reassure anyone who was anxious, but the whole setup was designed to emphasize that these were harem girls, not prostitutes.”

I open my mouth to ask a question. I close it again, not wanting to interrupt, but Bey has noticed. “The harem, Robert—perhaps you are imagining some kind of brothel. But a seraglio is nothing like a cat-house. No one would take a girl if she had been pawed by other buyers; sullied, as it were. It is like when you buy a book—you appreciate fine books, I think?”

I nod, though I cannot recall ever having had a conversation with him to this effect.

“When you buy a first edition, you have to cut the pages.Why?

It is a service the bookseller, or the printer, could easily perform for you. But the truth is that we all like to have absolute proof that we are the first to read those words. As with books, so with women.”

We have come to a patch of rocky scree. The caravan slows, each animal taking it in turns to negotiate the boulders that lie strewn across our path. I glance back. Mulu is helping Fikre across the rocks, lifting her from stone to stone. Her skin glows like a sil-ver coin, brilliant moonlight on absolute black.

“The bidding started,” Bey says softly. “Almost immediately some kind of record was broken—I can’t remember the details. I can’t remember anything much. Of course, I took no pleasure from seeing human beings go under the auctioneer’s hammer.Yet most of the girls seemed childishly happy. Clearly they had never been dressed in such finery before: each girl walked proudly from behind that screen with a kind of dazed delight, almost skipping in her soft silk boots as she made her way to the chair in the middle of the room. No, what was making my blood race was something else. I am a merchant, you must remember; commerce is in my blood. I had been to many sales, but never one like this.The auctioneer was skillful—he did not raise his voice above a murmur, but his eyes were everywhere, nodding as he acknowledged the signal of a raised hand, or with a slight smile invited an under-bidder to return once more to the fray. The excitement in that room was exceptional. Girls like this came onto the market only rarely, and for these men, all their wealth was nothing compared to the thrill of being able to buy one . . . and, I suppose, the thrill of beating the other bidders, too. Of course I could not have joined in, even if I had wanted to. The sums being thrown around were far beyond my means. I was a mere coffee trader, an observer. By rights I should not even have been present to watch these wealthy men at play.

“After perhaps half a dozen had been sold, a temporary halt was

called to the proceedings; ostensibly for refreshments but actually to increase the tension to fever pitch. And—a clever trick of the
hanim
and her son—while we were taking coffee, they had arranged an entertainment. Nothing vulgar: all that happened was that the girls came out from behind the screen, some to play instruments, some to play each other at chess.

“The men got up and strolled around, apparently to talk to one another or admire the ornate tilework on the pillars, but actually to get a better look at the girls who had not yet been sold. That was when I became aware of a whisper that was being passed around. There was a young man there whose clothes proclaimed him to be a wealthy member of the court. It was being murmured that he was intent on buying the very best girl to present to the Sultan, in the hope of being given a post which was in the Sultan’s gift, the governorship of some province or other.The other buyers were speculating which girl it would be.