“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 an
d 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.”
CHAPTER 17
In Which Wilhelmina Joins the Merchant Navy
The interior of Etzel’s coffeehouse was filled with the almost intoxicating scent of coffee beans aroast in a wood-fired oven. This enticing aroma wafted out into the street, signalling the arrival of a new sensation in Old Prague. Very soon, the citizens of the city would be hearing about the latest fad that had suddenly arisen in their capital: the sociable drinking of a hot, black, slightly bitter brew served up in small pewter cups in a quaint little shop down a side street off the square.
The day before the shop opened, the two bold entrepreneurs had tested their equipment and sampled the product. Using the beans Mina had lovingly roasted to perfection, Englebert ground the shiny black specimens into fine, gritty powder with the machine he had constructed from parts of an old hand-operated barley mill. Mina then set a kettle to heat on the stove and warmed two cups. She had measured out the proper amount of grounds and put it into a small sieve lined with muslin, then slowly poured hot water through the sieve and into a warmed crockery pitcher. “We will have to find a better way to do this,” she remarked as she waited for the water to seep through the coffee grounds. “Otherwise we’ll be run off our feet trying to keep up with our customers’ demand.”
Etzel smiled.
She saw him beaming and said, “What?”
“I do not care about our feet.” He shrugged. “I am only glad you think there will be some customers.”
“Oh, there will be great demand, never fear,” she assured him. “Once the word is out and people have a chance to taste this, we won’t be able to keep the customers away.”
When the coffee was ready, she poured it into the pewter cups and handed one to Etzel. “To our glorious success!” she announced, offering her cup to be clinked.
“To our success!” cried Etzel gladly. “May it please God.”
“May it please God,” echoed Mina softly, almost to herself. And something in her stirred at the thought.
Together they sampled the freshly brewed coffee, and though Englebert wrinkled his nose and puckered his lips at his first taste of the steaming black, slightly oily liquid, Wilhelmina declared it a complete triumph. “I would happily pay a guldiner or two for this!” she proclaimed.
“It is very bitter,” observed Etzel doubtfully.
“Bitter is better,” Mina assured him. “Bitter wants sweet to complete it, and we will have sweet cakes and pastries to serve with the drink.”
“Ja,” agreed Etzel. “Something kostlich.”
“Exactly.” Charmed by the occasion, she leaned close and planted a ripe kiss on the rotund baker’s pink cheek. “For luck,” she said, laughing at his round-eyed surprise.
Next morning, they were both busy from before sunrise, preparing the equipment and utensils. When all was ready, Mina sent Etzel out to secure the services of an Ausrufer to alert everyone in the square that a new establishment had opened in their midst, bringing an exciting and exotic beverage to the city. She also applied her keen marketing mind to the problem of overcoming the natural reluctance of a very conservative population to try their singular product. This she did by preparing a tray of cups and a pitcher and sending Etzel out to give away free samples. Each person willing to try their brew was given a small wooden token good for another cup in the shop itself.
This proved to be a shrewd success and steered a steady stream of customers into the coffeehouse. A few of their first patrons had heard of this new drink and were more than willing to try it and buy a second, and even a third cup at Mina’s introductory rate of five Groschen a cup. Seven trays of samples went out that day, and thirty-three customers found their way through the door. By close of business, Mina had sold forty-seven cups of coffee, and all of the honey buns she had made.
“We did it!” she cried as a very weary Etzel closed the shutters and bolted the door. “We sold everything-all the coffee and all the pastries.”
“How much did we make?” he asked, sinking into an empty chair.
“By my best estimate,” she replied, “we almost broke even.”
His face puckered in thought, but he could not make any sense of the term. “What is this even breaking?”
“It means we almost reached the point where our profits equalled our expenses.”
“Oh, ja! Of course.” He was intimately familiar with the concept; he had just never heard it called by that term before. His face fell. “Then we failed to make any money.”
“Well, strictly speaking, yes,” Wilhelmina replied. “That’s true. But we didn’t set out to make a profit today.”
“No?” Worry wrinkled Etzel’s smooth brow.
The mystified expression on his face so touched her that she put a hand to his head and smoothed back his soft blond hair. “No, mien Schatz,” she said. “Not today. And not tomorrow, either. I intend to give away as much or more than we sell-for the first three days only. That way we can be sure that the word will spread and bring enough customers to the shop.”
&
nbsp; He nodded. “This is a strange way to begin a business,” he said.
“Perhaps,” she allowed. “But there has never been a business like this in Prague. Think of that!”
She then busied herself cleaning up the kitchen and washing the cups, getting the shop ready for the next day’s trade. They ate a light supper and, before going to bed, Mina set another batch of dough to rise for the sweet buns. She went to sleep that night wondering if cinnamon was in any way obtainable in the city.
The next day’s trading was the same as the one before-only a little busier, with more people crowding into the shop. The tables filled up from midmorning to midafternoon, and Mina exhausted herself running from the stove to the grinder to the tables to care for her patrons. After so many days of inactivity, it felt good to see the little shop full of people, and she distinctly enjoyed watching her customers take their first experimental sip of this new and unknown liquor. Etzel did his stolid duty ferrying free cups of coffee out to the square to give away to townspeople, and directing the curious to the shop for more.
They ended the day tired, but delighted with the result: fifteen Groschen to the good.
The third day of the free samples turned out to be a roaring success. Almost from the moment they opened the doors, the customers started arriving-most were folks who had been lured through the doors on the first two days and came back for more, some of them bringing friends along to share Prague’s latest and quite possibly best innovation: fresh, hot coffee. Mina, despite anticipating a steady increase in trade, seriously underestimated the demand. The sweet buns sold out by midmorning, and the last of the roasted beans were gone well before closing time. When Etzel finally put up the shutters and locked the door, Mina picked up the cash box and shook it to hear the heavy clink of numerous coins.
She opened the box and peered inside to see nine Groschen, five Guldiners, and one whole Thaler. “Etzel, we are going to make a million Thalers,” she proclaimed, holding up the large silver coin. “And here is the first one!”
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