The Skin Map (20 page)

“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

T
he 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
köstlich
.”

“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.”

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!”

Etzel laughed. He had rarely heard anyone even breathe such a number aloud. “Then we will be the king and queen of Praha in our little
Kaffeehaus
.”

“Only one
Kaffeehaus
?” wondered Wilhelmina. “Why stop there? We are going to have at least six
Kaffeehausen
—and in München too. Better still—a baker’s dozen! Why not?”

“Why not?” echoed Englebert, gazing at her with something very like awe.

The next few days passed in a pleasant, albeit hectic blur of steam and sweat and long hours in the kitchen. Wilhelmina was used to the routine of a busy shop, and Englebert was no stranger to hard work. They knew one another’s strengths and preferences, and adapted accordingly. By the end of the week, they had strengthened an already formidable partnership—as well as a small but increasingly loyal clientele, of which their landlord Arnostovi was an enthusiastic and influential member. As a longtime property owner in the city, he had connections stretching both ways, high and low, throughout Prague society. It was he who began conducting his business affairs from the coffeehouse, bringing clients and potential partners in his various schemes to the shop to talk and negotiate over cups of black coffee and plates of pastry, cakes, and fruit breads, which Etzel excelled at producing.

Word spread like a contagion through the city.

Rumours abounded, drawing more and more people to the shop. The new brew was said to be an extremely effective stimulant, a brain tonic, a blood regulator, and an aid to digestion and curative for various stomach ailments. The bitter black liquor was even whispered to possess potent aphrodisiacal properties. All this hearsay was discussed in low tones over the steaming cups.

Mina, in a light and pleasant manner, encouraged all speculation as she went about serving the tables, chatting to her customers, learning their names and trades and personal tastes. She flitted about the room like an agreeable sprite, encouraging a hesitant first taste here, offering a free sample there, making sure everyone felt at ease and welcome in the cosy shop.

“We need more help,” Wilhelmina announced as Etzel locked the door one night.

“
Ja
,” he agreed, “this is just what I am thinking.”

“Also, we need more beans. We are almost out.”

Etzel frowned. “How much is left?”

“Two weeks—give or take a day or two.” She saw the frown deepen on his wide, good-natured face. “Why, what’s wrong?”

“This will not be so easy,” he said, reminding her how he had stumbled upon the beans by accident in the first place. “I think we must go to Venice, and that is very far away.”

“How far?”

He gave his round shoulders a heave. “A month—maybe two. I have never been there, so I cannot say.”

Mina’s eyebrows puckered with thought. “Obviously, we should have begun searching the moment we opened the shop. This requires a permanent solution,” she said, thinking aloud. “We need a steady supply. We must have a source.” She laid a finger to her lips and tapped lightly. “What we need is . . .”

“Arnostovi,” said Englebert. “He knows everyone. Maybe he knows someone who can get the
Kaffee
beans for us.”

“You are right,” affirmed Mina. “We shall ask him first thing tomorrow.”

The busy landlord was freshly installed at what had become his favourite table and the seat of his chair was not yet warm when Wilhelmina approached him with a gratis cup of coffee and a proposition. “How is trade?” asked the man of business.

“Better and better, Herr Arnostovi,” replied Mina, drawing up a chair herself, which caused the bushy Arnostovi eyebrows to raise in mild surprise. “In fact, business has been better than we anticipated. As you can imagine, this is not without its problems.”

“Good problems,” observed the landlord. “I always prefer this kind of problem over the other kind.”

“Indeed,” agreed Mina lightly. “Yet, problems must be solved nonetheless. For example, the beans we use to make the
Kaffee
are beginning to run low. Naturally, we must have more if we are to continue bringing our fashionable and highly successful new product to Praha.”

“Naturally,” confirmed Arnostovi cautiously. A master of many meetings like this, he recognized a preamble to a proposal when he heard one. “Pray, continue.”

“We would like to know if you know of any traders calling at Venice,” Mina told him. “That is the best place to get our supplies.”

Herr Arnostovi took a sip of his hot coffee and thought before answering. “Venice is very far away,
Fräulein
Wilhelmina. The only way is by sea, of course.”

“If you say so,” replied Mina.

“Alas, I know of no one who makes such journeys at the moment.”

“Oh.” Mina felt her hopes plummet. “I see.”

“However,” added Arnostovi, “I am not a man without some resources. It has been in my mind to acquire a participation in a merchant ship. If I were to do this, a journey to Venice for purposes of trade could be arranged.”

Mina bit her lip. She could feel the pinch coming. “Yes?”

“Of course,” proceeded the man of business, “I would require a substantial financial incentive to undertake such a venture.”

“I would have it no other way,” Wilhelmina assured him. “Providing, of course, that the necessary supplies reached us in a timely manner. We must have supplies soon.”

“How soon,
Fräulein
?”

“Two weeks,” Mina told him, “more or less.”

“That is not much time for such a journey.”