Various Flavors of Coffee by Anthony Capella

that region in the local tongue is Kaffa.”
    “As in ‘coffee’?”
    “Burton was convinced the words must surely share a root.” “So the coffee beans that grow wild in Kaffa—”
    “—are sold, perhaps, by the merchants of Harar to traders, who bring them, eventually, to Al-Makka. From where they are shipped to the rest of the world. If you were a trader in, say, Venice or Constantinople, you might well label the coffees you purchased by their port of origin, not the place they were grown in. Given the Arab mania for secrecy, you might not even be told which country a particular lot had come from. So you would call everything that passed through Al-Makka ‘mocca,’ just as today, some people refer to all South Americans as ‘Santos.’ ”
    “Intriguing. And where did Burton say this Harar was?”
    Pinker ran his fingers over the map. In those days atlases were updated and reissued every year or so, the new countries tinted with the colors of the empires that had claimed them. Most of the world, of course, was red—British red—with a certain amount of blue, purple, yellow and so on.When I was a child, Africa was al-most blank. As travelers returned with news of territories explored, named, and added to the tally, so the white had shrunk and the red expanded, nudging inward from the edges of that great continent toward the center. Not all was red, by any means: the French and the Dutch were not going to let us have everything our own way, and the boundaries between the different colors had often been drawn in blood.
    Pinker had the very latest atlas—of course.Yet there was still a small part of Africa that, although it was no longer completely
    blank, had not been colored, a space the size of a man’s hand in the mid-part of the continent.
    He tapped it pensively.“Here,” he said.“Burton places it here.” We both stared at the map.
    “What an extraordinary thing coffee is, Robert,” he said at last. “To be able to do good at both ends—temperance in England, and civilization elsewhere.”
    “Remarkable,” I agreed.“And even more so when one considers the profit generated in the middle.”
    “Exactly. Remember Darwin: it is the profit which makes all else possible. It is not charity that will change the world, but commerce.”

    I did not think any more of that conversation at the time: we were all talking of Africa in those days. Yet Pinker was someone who did not waste his assets. Every shilling must be put to use, and when the Guide was finished, I would be a coin no longer in hock.

    The money was flowing through my own hands like water by now. Wellington Street was not all divans and chignons: any girl would do pretty much anything for an extra sovereign or two, and if your palate was becoming jaded with the possibilities and permutations of that, all sorts of other treats were available nearby. Just as London had a flower market and a fish market, a street of silver-smiths and a street of booksellers, so establishments in different areas specialized in the different arts of love. In this quarter one might find Houses of Sappho; over here, Houses of Youth. I feasted on these pleasures as one might feast on the dishes of the Orient: not because I preferred them to my native fare, but because they were previously unfamiliar to me.
    And sometimes I found myself being drawn to more dangerous pastimes. I was passing along a quiet quayside one afternoon when I discerned a faint, spicy waft of poppy smoke. It was the work of a moment to identify where the smell was coming from. I slipped down an alleyway in that direction and found myself on a deserted wharf.The aroma led me, as if along a well-marked trail, to a non-descript doorway. From the shuttered windows of the warehouse there came no sound, but when I knocked, the door swung open a crack.A wizened Chinese face looked out. I showed some coins. The door was opened wordlessly and I was allowed inside. On numerous berths and bunks that