Various Flavors of Coffee (24 page)

As we get nearer we see another camel, then a third.We are al-most on them before we see anything else.The vultures hop a few yards away, waiting for us to leave them to their meal.

Between the camels are the remains of four people.The bodies are decomposed—black flesh, through which white bones jut, picked clean by birds. Other bones lie to one side, their ends smashed, as if they have been pulled away and fought over.

“Hyenas,” Hammond says abruptly. “But it wasn’t hyenas that killed them.”

I force myself to look. It is the eyes, face and stomach the

scavengers go for first—the soft tissue. One of the mangled faces, I think, is that of a woman. Everything has been eaten away from her jaw but her teeth.

“Bedouin, presumably,” Hector says.“Poor brutes.”

“They might just as easily have been Europeans,” Hammond says curtly.“All flesh is black when it rots.”

“We should keep going,” Bey says. “Biokobobo is still an hour away.”

We move on. Nobody suggests burying the corpses.The sun is already high in the sky.The eyeless faces of the camels, slumped on the sand, watch us leave.

[
thir ty-one
]

“Spicy”—this aroma is typical of the odour of sweet spices such as cloves, cinnamon and allspice. Tasters are cautioned not to use this term to describe the aroma of savoury spices such as pepper, oregano, and Indian spices.

—
international coffee organisation,

The Sensory Evaluation of Coffee

*

iokobobo is the resting place—an oasis in every sense:
a small town of sand-colored houses nestled amongst palm trees. To one side of the village lie three small lakes of sparkling cobalt blue. On one side, we look down on the desert; the other

way lies uphill toward the mountains.

We are to stay here several days, to recuperate and to let the Galla war party move on. There is a small market; we eat dates, nuts, coconuts, flat breads, cheese made from camel milk. Hector and I swim in one of the wadis and unpack a few essentials from the luggage. It is extraordinary how, after days with no comforts at

all, a pond of sparkling water and a place to put up a camp-bed have become treasured luxuries.

I try to write.
Dear Emily, I am writing this in the heart of a desert. Our supper is cooking on a spit over a fire—another goat: I am becoming quite a connoisseur of goats....
But I cannot finish, and not because of the heat. I cannot remember her properly. I get the Guide out from the luggage and carefully, in the shade of one of the houses, unstop a fragrance or two.They seem insipid, insubstantial. Or perhaps I have no palate—I have had the rank odor of unwashed camel in my nostrils too long.

We eat the roasted goat sprinkled with
berberi,
a powder made of chili: once you get a taste it becomes quite an addiction. Fikre and Mulu do not eat with us, but sit slightly apart. Sometimes he combs her hair for her with a steel comb, and at these times they chatter, quietly but animatedly, in some language I do not recognize. I see her laugh—a quick, easy laugh; when she does so she deliberately bumps his shoulder with hers, like two schoolgirls. He only smiles shyly.

Once or twice I see her glance in my direction, but her eyes are expressionless: there is no sign, now, of that intensity, that silent despair, I sensed back in Bey’s tent. I find myself wondering if I could have misread it. . . . But there was that bean, pushed into my hand.

On the second
morning in Biokobobo, I find myself awake early.With a sigh I get up, stretch, go outside.

In the half-light I see a slim figure hurrying toward the wadi, wrapped in a blue shawl.

Fikre.

She goes between the palm trees and is lost to sight. Of course: she was unable to bathe yesterday, when the men were in the pool, so she has come now, for privacy.Without hesitation I skirt round

to the other side of the wadi, just in time to see her unwinding the shawl.

In the light the iron-colored skin seems polished and glowing. I catch a glimpse of the hair between her legs, like dark cloves, as she steps into the water: the nipples too are almost black on the small, muscular breasts. I gulp down the sight of her greedily, thirstily, as if I am taking draught after draught of coffee.Then she turns away from me. Her back is compact, narrow, as flexible as a snake’s as she scoops up water to wash her face.Water droplets, in the early sunshine, retract and glitter like showers of diamonds. She dips under the water; resurfaces, spluttering, and swims directly toward where I am.

I pull back before I am seen.Then something makes me change my mind. I step forward, deliberately, so that she can see me watching her.

Just as deliberately, she too stands up. The pool is waist deep. The water streams off her, polishing the black skin.The jewels drip from her breasts.

I can feel the thudding of my heartbeat in my neck.

For a long moment we look at each other.Then, on the morning air, there is the sound of goat bells.

She turns and wades back to where she has left her robe, her legs moving slowly in the crystal water.

Love without kisses is not love:

A spear without blood is not a spear.

They are still the only words in English I have heard her speak. I hear them again—that strange, French inflection she gives the words—and I know that I am hopelessly obsessed.

[
thir ty-two
]

am desperate to talk to her alone, but in this I am hin-
dered by Hector, who wants to use our rest stop to go through
Coffee: Its Cultivation and Profit
page by page, and Ibrahim, who

wants to discuss poetry.

“Your future father-in-law tells me that you are a writer, Robert. Are you familiar with the works of Hafiz?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Perhaps, though, you have come across the verses of Said Aql?”

“Not to my knowledge.” “The sonnets of Shakespeare?”

“Well, yes, of course.” I am slightly irked by the implication that just because I have not read some Arab I am a complete philistine. “Sometime I will recite to you the verses of Hafiz of Shiraz. He was a Persian, but his thoughts are most profound.
‘I have estimated the influence of reason upon love, and found that it is that of a raindrop upon the ocean, which makes a single mark upon the water and disap-

pears... .’”

“That would be very interesting.”

“Robber’?” another voice rumbles nearby. “Listen to this.
‘The writer has planted coffee on Mount Kilimanjaro, and from six months’ experience finds the young plants thrive wonderfully.’ ”

“That’s very reassuring, Hector.”

“ ‘Like Hafiz, drink wine to the sound of harps, for the heart itself is strung with strands of silk.’
How I envy you your vocation, Robert. To be a poet is truly to be a prince among men.”

“Indeed, Ibrahim.”

“ ‘Occasionally, when pressed for time, we have known the soil in areas to be planted just levered up and loosened by crowbars, but this is a slovenly and unsuccessful arrangement. Make your planting pits as large as your money and your patience will allow.’ ”

“Thank you, Hector. I will certainly bear it in mind.”

It is quite impossible. Between Bey’s talk of love and Hector’s talk of peggings, planting pits, nursery shade and mulch, I can do nothing except wait for the caravan to move on.

I hoard the image of a graceful black body stepping naked into a desert pool. I haven’t had a woman for weeks.

“Would you like
some coffee, Robert?”

I look up. It is Bey, coming to sit near me. I am trying to read a short story in the
Yellow Book—
some drawing-room comedy by Meredith. But in truth I have been unable to concentrate, even be-fore this interruption.“You have some here?”

“Of course. I never travel without a sack of beans.” He claps his hands.“Fikre—Mulu. Coffee, if you please.”

They come hurrying. In no time they have constructed a fire, unloaded the coffee, found the clay pot and the cups, ground the beans. The fire is lit and coaxed to the right temperature. From somewhere a tiny dish of rosewater is produced.

All this, I think, so that we might have coffee. “Hector?” Bey calls.

“Aye, if you’re making some I’ll join ye.”

Fikre is sweating by the time she comes to wash our faces with the rosewater—tiny, silvery beads on her black skin. I stare into her eyes. But they are blank, unreadable.

Then I feel it: a coffee bean, slipped into my hand.

I reach down and touch the only part of her which is out of sight of Bey and Hector, sliding my hand around her ankle, squeezing for a moment.

There is still absolutely nothing in her eyes. Nothing at all. But suddenly I notice that she is trembling, as if maintaining this composure is costing a terrible effort.

From Biokobobo
we cross the flat basin of Dahelimale and begin to climb toward the mountains. Sometimes we pass land under cultivation—long, thin strips, scattered apparently at random in the scrub. Tall Negroes stroll across the landscape, always in the same posture: a walking stick sideways across their shoulders, both arms crooked over it, hands flapping.The women wrap themselves in gauzy robes of scarlet, turquoise or green. Their foreheads are adorned with piastres. The children are naked. Their huts are humps of skins and rugs.You get the sense that nothing is permanent here.

The endless traveling is becoming tedious now. There is no longer the feeling of danger that crossing the desert induced, and the mountains seem as far away at the end of each night’s march as at the beginning.

Dear Emily.

I stare at the blank page. It is like a salt desert—a brilliant white glare from which the sun bounces, dazzling me. Words seem to have deserted me, along with everything else.

I close my eyes. Her face floats in front of me. She is frowning. “Robert, pay attention,” she says. I smile, open my eyes. But there is the page still, blank and unyielding.

Bey calls,“Coffee.”

As the smell of roasting beans wafts through the camp, I fold the paper and slip it into an inside pocket.

“Coming.”

Is it my imagination, or is Bey watching Fikre and me with more than usual concentration today as she prepares the coffee? The hooded eyes are solemn, unreadable. Fikre washes our faces, then hands us the cups.There is no chance to pass anything.

But in the bottom of the cup, as I finish, I find it.A single bean, nestling amongst the grounds.

I spend
many hours trying to puzzle out what these gifts mean. Is there some clue in the variety of the bean, perhaps? But when I examine them they are simply Harar mocca, the same beans from which all the coffee is brewed.

Then it strikes me.The beans are not the message: it is the passing of them secretly that is. She is telling me that she is giving me her trust—the only thing she possesses in the world, the only thing she has to give.

Finally,
on the second night after Biokobobo, Bey’s attention is distracted by an interminable discussion with Hector about the pros and cons of indenture. I drop back, gradually working my way to the rear of the caravan to where Fikre is walking. She glances around; then she too falls back. As if by coincidence, we are now amongst the Bedouin, their camels hiding us from the others.

There is always the possibility that we will be overheard. We speak in code, or rather in trivialities and nonsense.

“Your English is very good,” I murmur. “My French is better.”

“Je suis Robert. Robert Wallis.”

“Oui. Je sais. Je m’appelle Fikre.
In Abyssinian my name means ‘love.’ ”

“My name, I’m afraid, doesn’t mean anything at all.”

“But at least it’s your real name,” she says with a twisted, angry smile.

“Oh. So Fikre . . .”

“. . . was what my master decided I should be called. Like a dog I own nothing, not even my name.”

For the first time I feel the force of that—what did Bey call it? Defiance? A better word might be “passion.” This tiny girl is like a fierce coil of compressed resentment and fight.

Suddenly she darts forward. Bey is looking back along the caravan with a frown.Within moments there is thirty feet between us. I see now what the other message contained in those beans was. I had misjudged her trembling, that intensity, as fear. But the dominant emotion in this girl’s life is not terror. It is a deep, all-consuming anger. Just as another woman might be infatuated with love, so this girl is infatuated with loathing for the man who bought her.What draws her to me, partly, is the sweet possibility of

revenge.

[
thir ty-three
]

“Sweet”—a nice clean soft coffee free of any harshness.

—
l. k. smith,
Coffee Tasting Terminology

*

he dinner is a great success. As well as Arthur Brewer,
Pinker has invited the older Lyle, now an honorary ally in the war against Howell’s, and several other free-marketeers. Emily finds herself hoping that she will be placed near the MP. Sure enough, when they go in to eat she finds that she is sitting directly on his left, which both pleases and alarms her. She is not worried because of the responsibility of entertaining him—she has no doubts about her ability to converse intelligently on political matters—but because she knows her father would not have placed her

here unless he thought it would suit both of them.

Sure enough, no sooner has the soup been cleared than Brewer turns his attention away from the woman on his other side to talk to her.

“So,” he says with a smile,“what did you think of Lyle’s attempt to break the sugar monopoly?”

“It was very dramatic,” she said. “But tell me—as a Liberal—is there not an inherent contradiction within Free Trade?”

He raises his eyebrows.“In what way?”

“If the price of, say, sugar is being kept artificially high, does that not allow men such as Sir Henry Tate to look after his workers better?”