up; I am, and always will be, a loner. But Bruno’s closeness lures me into talking, words pour out of me, soon he is buried in words.
He is, I notice, very alert to my words as if he is a mushroom picker and the thumb rule of a mushroom picker is if in doubt, don’t carry the mushroom home. So I see him filtering my enthusiastic account on locations I have made love at. The fishermen’s village in Bali at sunset where the smoke from the overpriced beach restaurants drags low, bringing tears to my eyes and spasms to the lungs and I cough until I turn myself inside out. In a winter night in a small Sofia park behind the preposterous monument representing a cross between a red star and a rising sun, a symbol of the promised communist future never to come, when it was so cold that words came out wrapped in breath fog like soap balloons, touching each other gently, bouncing away, chasing other words. “At that time,” I continue. “I trained myself in stoicism to stand the unbearable cold and be a hero, because everything was about being a hero of the socialist labour, but in secret I thought I was training myself for that special one polar night stand with my lover on a floating piece of ice that breaks away from an iceberg, sailing in its own quest for a new Titanic, leaving us behind on that ice raft with a hungry polar bear and her cub. Then my lover and I see the old Eskimo. He is not there to defend us. He is there to feed the bear and her cub because that’s how the Eskimo get buried by recycling their life with nature. He has left his igloo, composed, eternal, and walks through the ice desert to meet the bear and her cub, unaware of us and our fear of death.”
“I don’t fear death,” says Bruno, touching my shoulder, exploring it as if it’s an Egyptian papyrus containing secrets from the Valley of Death. “But it was in Bangkok where my best friend died from a heroin overdose when for the first time I’d wished I could do something to delay, if not prevent, death.”
“You want to talk?”
“I want to forget.” He scoops me in his arms, burying his face in my hair.
“Bruno,” I whisper. “There’s so much I want to forget.”
He listens to the stories of the red berry princess and 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