The Coffee Lovers. Ilinda Markov

on my scale of pleasures.

      I also start dressing. And it’s then I crack down.

      I sob and yell, and then dig my nails into my palms while I pour out all my bitterness and resentment, all my spite and hatred, all my maddening two-day old experience in the Basel Kaffee Klub. I hiss and spit, and swear at the ‘holy’ coryphées from the Secret Society of Coffee Sommeliers who ridiculed me over my ideas to interpret coffee: as a friend, a protector, a keeper of ancient secrets; over the fact that I am a woman. A woman trying to break into a man’s domain.

      “Women were long ago involved in coffee dealings,” I fume. “How about Dorothy Jones of Boston that became the first American coffee trader. She was granted a license to sell coffee in 1670! They can’t pretend coffee is a male affair.”

      He strokes my hair, then combs it with his fingers. “Life’s not meant to be fair, Arnya.”

      As if I don’t know.

      “When I met you I acted like a psycho because I was angry. For me, you were one of them: barista, mercenary. Now I know that you are different, you have erratic ideas like this one about re-enacting a Van Gogh’s painting. Presenting his canvas The Potato Eaters as ‘The Coffee Drinkers’. If you come to think, it’s crazy! Absolutely crazy! Why on earth, it has to be this canvas and not one of his cafe paintings?” I stare at him accusingly.

      It is hard to believe that The Potato Eaters, a dark, sombre work from the artist’s early period: a labouring family in their dodgy home, eating potatoes, created when the artist was still away from the sunny landscape of Arles and the French Province, has come from the same brush as his other works with their vibrant, prickly colours. This canvas was created in 1885 when Vincent van Gogh was in Nuenen, Holland and even his brother Theo didn’t like it.

      Bruno ignores my hostility. “The first cup is for the guest, the second for the enjoyment, the third for the sword,” he quotes an old Arab saying. “Fight them, Arnya! Pull out your sword and fight the self-conceited bastards disguised as coryphées.”

      He caresses my shoulders, arranging my hair over them.

      “I am ready to do it,” I say leaning against him.

      He wraps his arms around me whispering to my hair. “That was the longest and most beautiful birthday I ever had.”

      “Perhaps I can help you fight them,” he says louder and looks into my eyes. “Perhaps.” The distilled desire in his eyes makes them sparkle — a champagne coffee. Why not try it?

      We kiss.

      My teeth click against his. “Let me read you more of my coffee portraits.”

      “Read.” His deep voice is singsong, hypnotic. “But first I want more of this.”

      He kisses me. Again.

      Then I see them. The hats. Exquisite female hats standing on their bottoms up like Royal Doulton porcelain creations, a feast of colours, materials and models, all open like flowers, like black holes, like coffee cups.

      I don’t know what to think.

      I don’t think.

      Latte Coffee Lovers

       Espresso washed with steamed milk topped with milk froth in a glass

      SHE thinks the coffee in her cup is a mask from the Japanese theatre No, prone to anything between a tantrum and a blood donation, opinionated, sexy, bossy, would chomp on your ears if you stop the car invitingly, that’s what makes her horny, is afraid to look at feet, even at her own, it’s a long and torturous adventure when she goes to buy shoes because she has this podophobia.

      HE is the soul of the company, a comedian, can saddle even a cockroach, yet not a calculating type, but a bit of a kid never growing up, might offer protection while he is in need of such or be totally insensitive, lives beyond his means and is afraid of his credit card statements, but his main fear is of growing old, gerontophobia is his curse, gets a hard-on watching flamenco and flamingos.

       Baby Coffee Lovers

       30 grams of filtered black in a doll-like porcelain cup

      SHE is motherly, loves to take you home and look after you, might turn you into a couch potato, yet in the kitchen department she is not at her best, you might end up eating soup with salad, or macaroni with bread, you might, though, hear useful insights like the one that all nasty diseases come from dirty hands, she’ll get hot if you feel guilty all the time for being naughty and ask for punishment, fears bees, apiphobia.

      HE is a kid at heart, regresses back to his childhood to find strength and fight life, might visit a shrink, one of those who have sand pits for their patients to play in or a collection of miniatures out of fairytales to create their own tale, might take you to an opera and cry along with a dying Violetta, the prostitute from La Traviata TV-staged in the coffeehouse at Zurich train station, no one knows he has equinophobia, fear of horses.

      From Coffee Lovers’ Portraits by Arnya Stefan