I don’t know how to love. I make coffee.
Its four. My footsteps make no sound as I tiptoe my way to the kitchen, shedding clothes as I slide across the wooden floor and onto the cold tiles. This is my time. The cool pre-dawn wisps of wind are arousing against my bare skin. The softest caresses on the hidden parts of me.
It’s a ritual.
Fresh coffee beans, always fresh. A handful of beans. The scent is almost overpowering, heady with promises and promise. There is nothing more beautiful to me than the scent of fresh coffee beans. It means everything to me. Everything. I don’t know why.
Grind the beans, the scent even stronger now. Then the rhythmic tick, tick, tick of the pilot light as I switch on the stove and watch the blue flames dance into life. Water on to boil. Add the sugar. Stir, back and forth, round and round, until it is dissolved.
I add the freshly ground coffee to the pot and stir again. Watch closely as the thick tendrils of caramel coloured foam start to rise in the pot. Never let it spill over.
Now with great care, I hold the pot in my right hand and the pouch made of muslin in my left. I angle the pot and pour the rich coffee expertly into the muslin strainer and then watch it drip into the old coffee pot.
The ritual is so practised, so complete. Rooted in history, but always fresh every morning. I make sure that the ancient coffee pot is set just next to the pilot light, it will not percolate, but it will carry the scent throughout the house. Sometimes the scent is mixed with the vanilla or cinnamon of fresh baking, always cookies.
I never fail to curtsey to the coffee pot. A deep curtsey, sometimes a wink if I am feeling particularly playful. I am alone, and morning coffee deserves a curtsey.
It’s time to meet Isa and Edu. I pull on jeans, a vest, my tatty converse and grab a light coat. I am walking on the street hurrying a little. Three blocks, it’s still dark down on the pavement, but looking up at the sky between the buildings there is light – as above, so below.
I duck into the side entrance of the bakery, blow a kiss to Isa, and hurry to the back of the store. He is waiting for me. I am late. He pretends to chide me, taking my chin between his floury thumb and forefinger.
“Ah mocinha, you forget Eduardo!” he shakes his head with mock regret. The first time he called me mocinha, little lady, I laughed and said, “I am very far from a mocinha, Eduardo, I am a grown woman now.” “You will always be a mocinha for me” he said gruffly. Sometimes he calls me kitten, or little chicken, or baby lamb. Sometimes he calls me Belinha, says I am little, like his wife.
Today, he has prepared a croissant for me, sharing the secrets of pastry. He knows I do not have pastry hands. “Your hands are too warm,” he always complains. “Warm hands, cold heart, Eduardo”. “If you say so,” he says, using the short Brasilian slang I have grown used to.
It is a perfect croissant, every leaf of pastry is at once separate but connected. I take the first precious bite and moan as the individual folds of pastry meld together in my mouth. I can taste the fresh butter, it tastes like dawn over a farm field.
Eduardo admires me as I enjoy the pastry and graciously allows me to finish. Then he motions for me to start work. Flour the board, pick up the heavy wooden rolling pin. I spend about an hour with Eduardo and Isa, three times a week. Sometimes I take him cookies and then he pretends to be unimpressed. One time, I presented him with fresh peaches, and I flattered him shamelessly until he promised to make peach pastries for Isa and me.
Our time is over too quickly I must go. I kiss him lightly on each cheek. He taps me on the nose with his gnarled, wizened finger and I know he has left a smudge of flour.
Then came the day. The coffee, the curtsey, complete. I hear footsteps behind me. I am surprised, but it’s not unexpected.
“Up so early?” I turn around.
“Put your clothes on.”
I immediately know. “No. If you have something to say better it be the naked truth," I say sarcastically.
“You don’t know how to love.”
It’s true, I nod.
“You’re cold.”
It’s true I shrug.
“You expect so much of everyone around you.” I shrug again. "I expect more of myself," I mutter under my breath.
“I bought you roses. I spread the petals across the bed.”
The only thought marching through my head is that my favourite flower is the paeony.
I steel myself. “I hate roses. They should only ever be in the house if you have picked them at dawn from the garden and presented them tumbling in a pottery vase, with Etta James playing in the background”, I say diffidently and confidently.
“I hate that about you. The rules that only you know.”
“The rules?” I start to whisper. The rules have saved my life. I swallow back the tears.
“You don’t know what love is. You don’t know how to love. You don’t know how to give love. You are cold, you speak in riddles, I don’t understand anything about you, and I have tried.”
I nod slowly as I stand akimbo, completely naked, then I lift my arms to shoulder height and spin around excruciatingly slowly and dramatically, gesturing to the empty space, the coffee pot, and the fresh cookies wrapped in brown paper, lying on the counter ready to take to Eduardo and Isa.
I am aghast. I will not cry.
I nod once more. “We done? Good. Get the fuck out of my kitchen.”
It is time to meet Isa and Edu. In the warmth of the bakery, I try to keep the tears in. He pretends to concentrate on twisting the elastic dough into bread rolls, getting them ready for the oven. I can’t keep it in anymore. “I don’t know how to love, Eduardo”. I stutter between sobs and the whole story comes tumbling out.
Eduardo lets me stumble through the convoluted explanation until I run out of words. He sighs. “Let Eduardo tell you a story,” he begins. This calms me immediately and I smile up at him through the tears, mollified. We both know the power of stories and love telling them to each other.
“My Isa makes coffee every morning” he begins. I have heard the story before.
“Me too Eduardo, you know that.”
“Don’t interrupt, chicken,” he admonishes. "My wife prepares coffee every morning.” He pauses dramatically and sucks in his breath and waits until I look at him. “She doesn’t do it naked though”, he wiggles his hands at me like a chorus girl. I chuckle. “Isa doesn't know what she is missing, but what's the point, Senhor?”
“Every morning I wake up to the smell of fresh coffee. And I know”.
I turn slowly to face him.
“But answer me this, Belinha, you also make coffee in the traditional way, every day. For?” I look up at him. My eyes are puffy and red, my nose is swollen. I really think about it. It is on the tip of my tongue to be flippant, but he is asking me seriously to consider his question.
I exhale. “Because the scent of fresh coffee in the morning is what turns a house into a home, it makes a place into a palace. Because every heavy waft of soil and beans and rain and soft earth is prepared to welcome the dawn. Because, because I want the first thing that he…” my words falter.
Eduardo nods. “You control the people, make all the decisions, you travel to places that Eduardo only hears of in the novelas, you tell me wild stories about growing up in Africa. Of lions and elephants, you had baby lions when you were a small child.”
“Just the one baby lion, Eduardo”. I can’t bring myself to say lion cub. Baby lion sounds so much better.
“And look now, you rule the world with your secret codes!”
“Code, not codes. It’s not a secret, you silly old man”. I tease him and now I am laughing.
“But you make coffee every morning for your man, like my Isa, yes?"
“Eduardo!" I roll my eyes and let out a little screech of indignation. I open my mouth to retort and assert my feminist doctrines. But the words are stuck in my throat. I know full well that Isa is the brains behind the bakeries, and she controls everything, including Eduardo. "There is no man, and never has been one who... and probably will never be one who..." I close my mouth. His eyes twinkle at me. He is still waiting for an answer.
I open my mouth once more but the only word that comes out is, “Yes.” I start to laugh.
I struggle to translate the word dichotomy for him, and how difficult it is for people to understand the different parts of me but finally realise that he understands completely.
“This is you”, he says simply.
“When I smell the coffee, I know I am loved” Eduardo says and he turns and beams proudly at Isa, as she patters through from the front of the bakery and stands next to me. She puts her arm around me. She has been listening all along.
“You are so lucky”, I whisper to her. “He gets it”.
“You keep making coffee”, Isa whispers back to me.
I don’t know how to love. I make coffee.
Photo by Victor Freitas from Pexels
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