The Skin Map

CHAPTER 16
In Which Wilhelmina Changes History Much for the Better

On the fortieth day of their steadily failing bakery enterprise, Wilhelmina rose early and padded downstairs to the kitchen to find Englebert sitting in a chair with his head in his hands, the oven cold and unlit behind him.

“What’s wrong, Etzel?” she asked, stepping lightly across the stone flagging in her bare feet. She knelt in front of him.

“What is the use?” he groaned without raising his eyes from the bleak contemplation of his empty hands. “No one comes. No one buys. It is finished…” He sighed. “We are finished.”

She bit her lip. She had never seen him so dejected, and it tore at her heart. “No,” she whispered, mostly to herself, “I will not allow it.”

She stood and let her gaze sweep across the tidy shop. It was a fine place, and a good place-too good to be driven down by the indifference of the locals. It only needed… something-some little refinement, a detail perhaps overlooked till now, or a new ingredient added. But what?

“Etzel,” she said slowly. “Did they have coffee in Rosenheim?”

“You mean Kaffee?”

“Yes, coffee, cafe, Kaffee, or whatever you call it-did you have it there? Were there shops that sold it?”

“This is a drink, ja?”

“That’s right-a hot drink.” Wilhelmina began pacing before him, her brow scrunched in concentration. “Did they have it there?”

“I do not think so,” he said slowly, raising his head at last. “In Munchen, maybe, though I cannot say for sure. I heard they had this Kaffee in Venice.” He shrugged. “I have never tried it myself.”

“How far is Vienna?” she asked, mishearing him because her mind was already racing down the road to a certain destination. At his blank look she corrected herself. “Wien, I mean-how far is it from here?”

Etzel tapped his teeth with a pudgy finger and squinched up his eyes as he tried to work out the sums in his head. “I think,” he said finally, “it must be two hundred miles at least-a little more, perhaps. I have never been there, but my father went to Wien once as a young man. It is a very great city.”

“So it is. But, if I remember correctly, it is also the place where the selling of coffee in Europe began.”

Englebert studied her carefully. “What are you thinking, Liebchen?”

“I am thinking that coffee will be the saving of us, Etzel.”

“But I know nothing of this Kaffee,” countered the baker mournfully.

“Don’t worry about that,” Mina reassured him. “I know all about it. All we have to do is get a supply of beans.”

“Beans?” he wondered.

“Coffee beans, Etzel-the grains used to make the drink.” She turned and stooped and, taking his hands in hers, raised him to his feet. “Now then, you go and put on your coat and hat; then we’ll go to the stable to get the mule cart ready.”

“Where are we going?”

“I’m staying here to make the shop ready,” Mina said. “You’re going to Vienna-to Wien. Hurry along. We have wasted enough time as it is.”

A short time later, Wilhelmina stood watching as the mule cart clattered away down the empty streets of Old Prague. She sent her willing accomplice with a detailed description of the commodity-including a little drawing she had made-and instructions to purchase as many coffee beans from whatever source he could find. “Get the black roasted ones if you can,” she had instructed him as he climbed up into the wagon box. “If you can’t get those, then get the green raw ones, and we’ll roast them ourselves. It doesn’t matter. Just get them.”

The plan was simply to go around to one and another of the Viennese coffee emporiums and offer to buy beans in bulk. Thus when, after five days on the road, Englebert arrived in the imposing city and began his search, he was heartily disappointed to find not a single Kaffeehaus anywhere. He walked the streets for a day and a half asking shopkeepers and businessmen and even idle passersby where he might find a Kaffeehaus in Wien, but no one he met had ever heard of such a thing in the city. Weary from his travels, and woefully dispirited by the realisation he had made a long trip for nothing, he began to wander aimlessly, not caring anymore where he went. Eventually, he came to himself on the riverbanks of the wide, slow-moving Danube.

Looking around, he saw that he had inadvertently arrived at one of the many wharfs lining the busy river docklands. There were rows of warehouses and small shops serving the sailors, dockworkers, and day labourers. He strolled along the wharf and came upon a man pacing back and forth before a large heap of grain sacks. Two stevedores were loading the sacks onto a wagon. Dressed in expensive dark wool with a pristine white shirt and extravagant lace collar, the man was waving at passersby and calling out something Etzel could not quite make out. He also held a small sign in his hands with which he seemed to be trying to attract attention.

Closer, Etzel heard the word Bohnen. That single utterance brought him up short. He stopped to observe the man as he waved his sign and shouted, “Beans!”

Intrigued, Englebert stepped nearer and summoned up the last ounce of friendliness from his vast reserve. “Hello to you, sir,” he said. “I give you good greeting, friend.”

“Would that I could offer the same in return,” answered the man, “but I fear the hardship which I now endure would overcome you, too, even as it has overcome me.”

“I am sorry to hear it,” replied Etzel. “I, too, am brought low by difficulties. May I ask what is the nature of your particular hardship?”

“I am a grain merchant, ja?” replied the man. “I deal in barley, rice, and rye. From all over the world I buy, ja?”

“I pray your business thrives,” said Etzel.

“I make a good living,” conceded the merchant. “Until today, that is.” He flung a hand at the heap of bags on the dock. “What am I to do with all these beans?” He waved the sign at someone passing by just then. “Beans! Buy some beans!”

The fellow hurried by, and the merchant returned to his subject. “You see? No one wants them.”

“I do not understand, sir. What is wrong with them?”

“I have just this morning taken delivery of a long-awaited shipment -and now it is to be my ruin.” He turned to the nearest sack and opened it. “Here! You see?” He dipped his hand in and brought out a fistful of shrivelled green berries.

“What are they?” wondered Englebert.

“Ha! There it is, my friend. What are they? Who knows? I have no idea. Berries, seeds, grains-whatever they are, they are worthless to me. The merchants of Venice are pirates! I order rice and they send worthless seeds.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, sir,” ventured Etzel, a tiny flicker of hope reviving in his breast, “do these beans have a name?”

The merchant raised his head and called to one of the dockhands. “What did the captain call these?”

“Kava,” the man replied, hefting another grain sack to his companion in the wagon.

“Kava,” repeated the merchant disdainfully. “Have you ever heard of it? No! No one has! All I know is that I have been waiting for a shipment of rice and barley-three months I have been waiting! What do I get? A few bags of barley, two bags of wheat, and a whole load of worthless kava beans.”

Hardly daring to breathe, Englebert licked his lips and asked, “Might these kava seeds have another name, perhaps?” He gazed in earnest at the man, clasping his hands together as if in petition. “Kaffee, perhaps?”

“I suppose so,” replied the grain merchant with weary resignation. “Who knows? Who cares? Rice is what I need. What am I to do with these blasted seeds?”

Englebert regarded the heap of sacks-at least twenty in all. “Do you think it might be too much trouble to allow me to examine these seeds more closely?”

“Be my guest,” said the merchant.

Englebert stooped to the open bag and peered inside at the mass of pale green pellets. He pulled out the picture Mina had made for him and compared it with the grains in the sack. They looked more or less alike. With trembling hands, he lifted a few into the sunlight. There was no doubt: they were the same.

“My dear sir,” Etzel said, clearing his throat, “it may be that we can be of help to one another. I would be willing to purchase these beans from you.”

“You want to buy them?” wondered the merchant. “Truly?”

“As it happens, I am a baker and I have a use for such as these. I cannot offer much, mind you, but I will pay what I can.”

The deal was not finalized then and there. The merchant, for all his complaining, knew well when he had a commodity someone else wanted and for which they were willing to pay good money. The negotiations took a little time and were not to be concluded until many sausages and much sauerkraut had been consumed at a nearby waterfront inn; but the deal was struck at last, and the sale solemnized over jars of sweet Wiezenbier. The afternoon was far gone when Englebert loaded the last of twenty-three sacks onto his wagon, paid the grain merchant, and clambered up into the driver’s seat. Without waiting for anything to mar his good fortune, he started at once for Prague.

In Englebert’s absence, Wilhelmina kept herself busy scouring the backstreet shops for tables and chairs. Occasionally, the strangeness of the world in which she found herself overwhelmed her anew, and she had to pause to catch her breath. She resisted thinking about how she had come to be in this place and time. In truth, she could not think about her peculiar predicament save in bits and snatches; the bare notion was so very outrageous, she was easily overwhelmed and so preferred to take it in small doses. Nevertheless, as the days passed a solitary thought drifted into her consciousness that seemed to offer a modicum of comfort: however it was that she had ended up in this singular position-and that did not bear thinking about-it did in some way feel right to her; that is, she felt more herself than she had for a very long time. Despite the incipient oddity of life in an alien time and place, the overall strangeness she perceived wherever she cast an unguarded eye, she felt good: physically strong, mentally alert, emotionally steady, and uncannily content. In the deepest part of her heart, she felt a profound peacefulness she could not explain. That being the case, she determined not to dwell on the whys or wherefores, but rather to make the best of her situation in any way that presented itself to her.

Thus, she went about her business with extraordinary good cheer. She pestered the landlord Arnostovi into finding and securing a number of small cups of the kind used in public houses to serve mulled wine and hot ale in the winter, and an assortment of bowls and plates as well. Her persistence and no-nonsense demands impressed him, so he grudgingly obliged, delivering three crates of the requested items in person to find that the bakery had been transformed into something more in keeping with the main room of a public house-albeit a far brighter, cleaner, and cosier tavern than he had ever seen, with its great oven and wide counter and light-filled space.

“Was ist los?” he asked. “Where is the bakery?”

“Never fear,” Mina told him, and launched into a breathless recital of her new ambition to be the first coffeehouse in Prague.

“Kaffeehaus?” he wondered. “What is this Kaffeehaus?”

Rather than explain it to him, she chirped, “Come back in a week’s time and I will happily serve you one of the first samples of our new creation.”

Intrigued as well as impressed, he promised to do just that.

By the time Englebert returned with the precious beans, Wilhelmina had transformed the little backstreet Backerei into an intimate den of tables and chairs, lamps and candles, warm with the smell of baking pastry. “This is wonderful!” Etzel exclaimed. “What is it?”

“It is a Kaffeehaus,” she told him.

He gazed around approvingly. “This is what a Kaffeehaus looks like?”

“Well, I suppose this is what they look like in Prague.” She examined her handiwork with a critical frown. “Why? What do they look like in Vienna?”

“But, Wilhelmina, there are no such places in Wien,” he replied, and told her how he had searched the entire city to no avail and was on the point of giving up when he met the grain merchant with the unwanted beans. “Providence,” he pronounced solemnly, “is on our side. I believe this.”

“So do I,” agreed Mina. “We shall have the first coffeehouse in all Europe! The first in Prague, at least. We’ll make history either way.” She walked to the two big bags Etzel had hauled to the doorstep. “So, what have we here-black or green?”

“I have bought the green ones,” he replied, and went on to explain how blessed he felt to have met the right man with the right commodity. “Green is good, ja?”

“Green is very good-better even than black, now that I think of it. They must be roasted, of course-we can use the oven for that. All we need now is to find some way to grind them. Can we get a good sturdy hand mill, do you think? Maybe the kind you might use for hard grains?”

“Ja, I know the kind you mean,” he told her-which cheered her considerably since she wasn’t at all certain what she meant. “If we cannot find one, I will make it myself,” declared Etzel. “This is not difficult.”

“Then I leave that to you.” She reached for the nearest of the two bags and put her hand to the neck of the sack. “I will begin roasting them.” She made to lift the bag and strained against the dead weight.

“No, no! I will do this,” said Etzel, moving quickly to her side. He smiled, and it was good to see the light coming back into his eyes after so many days of gloom and despair. “It is not work for a woman.”

She thanked him and fell into step behind him as, with ease, he hefted the sack onto his shoulder and hauled it into the kitchen, untied it, and carefully folded down the neck of the bag. Mina gazed at the multitude of pale green beans. “Look at all the little darlings,” she murmured. “Now to turn them into black gold.”