The Coffee Lovers. Ilinda Markov

more and more of it.

      I want to make love to him, but he continues to exercise the power of his hands over me and remains blind to my hesitant attempts.

      Perhaps I should rebel. The spirit of the coffee is rebellious. The French revolution was born in French cafes in 1789 when the Parisians took to the streets and two days later the Bastille fell, changing France forever.

      But I don’t feel like rebelling.

      It’s a moment that I find awkward and usually avoid: the second encounter. The curiosity is slipping away, the freshness is not there, and anonymity is compromised. One, however, is clear, when I talk to Bruno my words feel home. Whether we talk about coffee, Dimm or a little girl called ‘Puppe’.

      So I tell Bruno about some of the stories I liked to read before I turned five. Stories like The Sleeping Beauty, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The Adventures of Pinocchio, The Three Piglets, and, of course, my favourite, The Princess and the Pea. Then I tell Bruno about Dimm’s own bedtime stories which he used to tell me, like Snow White and Her Puss in Boots, or Little Red Riding Hood and her Seven Dwarfs, or The Town Musicians of Sofia and The Wonderful Wizard of the USSR.

      Sometimes, he was really drunk.

      Sometimes, he was not. Then he would tell me a story like this one.

      “Puppe, you are a little girl, and I’ll tell you the story of another child, a boy named Kaldi. He lived in Africa long ago.” Dimm would pull out a map of the world and point at a spot in the north-eastern part of the continent where the land was shaped like a horn and ‘Ethiopia’ was written, and beneath it in brackets with smaller letters, ‘Abyssinia’. Then, Dimm would start the story, as if he was that little boy, Kaldi, snuggling in Dimm’s voice like in a shepherd’s hooded cloak, reaching out to me across time. And I’d start the journey with him.

      “It’s the year 850. In Kaffa, at noon the sun kills the shadows, and the goats gather around the shrubs with bright red berries along the mountain path to nibble on them. The berries quench their thirst, the goats become frisky, running boisterously in the heat, their kids playfully butting each other.” Dimm’s voice changed to bring a new, strange world, Kaldi’s world, into the little room where I shared a bed with Nadya.

      I tried to imagine that boy Kaldi. Was he my age, or a bit older, say, like my cousin Assen-Nessim? Was Kaldi happier than me, did he have more toys or someone to love him the way Dimm loved me, telling him bedtime stories like this one, Kaldi’s own story that goes like this:

      “When the red wind starts to blow, it carries sand with it, and I rub my eyes. Baba removes the gauze cloth he wears around his neck and wraps it around my head.”

      Here Dimm stopped to explain to me that at that place children called their father baba.

      “So I can call you baba, can I?” I touched his moustache, trimmed and prickly.

      Dimm remained sad and took my hand in his. His hand was smooth as the marble ink pot with a dry well in the corner of the library shelf, warm like the funny walnut wood scrolls decorating his favourite armchair, rustling like the rice paper some old, fat books were printed on.

      Then we both burst out laughing. ‘Baba’ in Bulgarian meant grandmother. A name that I should have kept for Nadya if she weren’t as a mother to me.

      After we had settled down, Dimm continued, imitating like a real actor the voice and intonation of a little boy and a goat herder.

      I wished the story would never finish. But it did as my eyes were closing and I was succumbing to the no-man’s land of sleep.

      “Now, Puppe, you sleep, and dream of the red berries. They’ll be your little toys, your friends for the night.”

      I opened my eyes and looked at him. An ashtray full of butts, some still burning, next to him balancing on a taboret, between a coffee mug and a glass with amber liquid at the bottom — cognac; his friends, his little toys, together with the piano, a big toy to play jazz on. Wrapped in Dimm’s unconditional love, feeling like I was at the centre of the universe, I fell asleep, sucking my thumb, dreaming of red berries.

      There was still no sign of the evil spirits my mother was so afraid of, the ones lurking in the shadows, eavesdropping, watching, waiting for the right moment to strike, spying to find out who listened to jazz music, to the BBC, who talked out against the regime.

      *

      I have to tell Bruno the bedtime story of the little boy Kaldi and his baba that Dimm used to tell me. It is the first thought that comes to me as I stretch out of the embryo-like position I have assumed during the night, curled nesting with my back to him in his arms.

      Light seeps through the tiny cracks in the shutters.

      Bruno gets out of bed. It’s on the floor, oriental-style. I look at his well-shaped body, similar to the ones seen in Renaissance paintings. Muscles, ligaments, bones, veins, pulsating under skin that has a mother-of-pearl glow, not unlike some mild-looking but invigorating Columbian beans.

      “I’ll make the coffee,” he trumpets amiably.

      I cringe. “Please, let me do it! Only in 18th century America did they use one tablespoon of coffee for each pint of water, besides they boiled it for anywhere from twenty minutes to an entire day.”

      “My guess is you prefer a bonbon of coffee rolled in fat, like in the old Arab recipes, don’t you?”

      I fight my morning drowsiness. “Let’s be serious! Dark roasted, full-bodied Sumatra Mandheling will do!”

      He wolf-whistles.

      “Ebony colour!” I continue.

      He rolls his eyes. “More demands? No problem. I’ll be your coffee servant until you are my love slave!” He wraps a pullover around himself and ties the sleeves, which hang down over his groin, swaying. On his left thigh, I can see his lion tattoo.

      All of a sudden, I’m afraid to visit the bathroom. What if Bruno is a serial killer? A knife-wielding ripper, tying me up, running hot water for me in the tub while looking lovingly at the blue veins on my wrists.

      A bitter smile cracks my lips. Arnya Stefan, a notorious disaster-magnet, finds her death at the hands of a maniac while enjoying a jacuzzi-soak. I almost see a young female reporter biting into the story.

      While Bruno is in the kitchen, opening and closing doors, drawers, jars, I look around. My suspicion that I have transported myself to a shrine somewhere in Thailand turns into certainty. The walls are covered with paintings, woodcarvings, textile pieces, miniatures on stands. Elephants, Buddhas, ornaments in gold, landscapes with rice paddies, temples, floating markets. I like Thai culture, but another stray thought starts to torment me: Is Bruno visiting that part of the world as one of those middle-aged creeps salivating over tiny, smooth-skinned girls and boys, gentle and submissive, cheap and grateful? Afraid that more sickly thoughts will enter my head, I jump up and stumble over a pile of cushions with embroidered lotuses and carp fish.

      “My father was a doctor.” Bruno meets me on the way to the bathroom. “He worked for the Red Cross, spent years in Thailand.”

      I run to sit on the toilet, suddenly feeling pressure on my bladder.

      “He was a doctor who couldn’t stand sick people.”

      I turn on the tap and let the water run into the sink. His voice continues to trail to me. “After my father died, I sold the family house, and now I rent. This two-room flat costs me a packet because it’s in the old town, but I’ve become fond of all the bric-a-brac my father collected, so I keep it.”

      I've finished in the bathroom and am now hungry and thirsty. It must have been some twelve or more hours of bed-ridden activities interrupted by chocolate munching breaks.

      In the kitchen Bruno is cooking scrambled eggs, still in the same outfit, a pullover wrapped in a biblical fashion.

      “I