The cafe with five faces, p.42
The Café with Five Faces, page 42
“I’ve lost the plot as much as Mark has, I think,” replied Matthew, although he was laughing rather than despairing. “To be honest, I think I’d kind of finished.” He took a drink of his almost-cold coffee and looked a little uncertain about the veracity of his latest statement. “Moving on.”
“Tell us about one of your walking experiences, then, Mark,” proposed Lois. I think this suggestion was made in fun, as if she wanted to hear tales of her friend falling arse over tip in various locations around the world and being consequently embarrassed. I had to wonder at times if her understanding of the word ‘friend’ conformed to generally accepted norms.
Mark took her invitation at face value, however, and responded as such, with an expression which, if worn by someone else, might have intimated at a serious discussion. “I was thinking, just yesterday, about a walk I was on in Poland around twenty years ago.” I reckon ‘befuddled’ would be a good adjective to describe the assembled listeners’ faces, and probably their minds, at this point. ‘How on earth had we moved from 2019 Jordan to 1999 Poland via an obscure reference to Lebanese pavements?’ Mark seemed to be in a world of his own, so we allowed him the space to make whatever point it was he might have wanted to get to, on the basis that a good language teacher, as Mark supposedly was, always knows his or her destination when they begin a ‘lesson’.
“I was thinking of cultural differences.” And I thought we were talking about walking. Apparently, somehow, we still were. “In England, if I’m out for a walk in the country and pass someone going in the opposite direction, I usually say ‘hello’ or use some other form of polite greeting. I did the same in Poland once, in Polish, obviously, and my girlfriend at the time was mortified. The people I had spoken to looked pretty shocked as well. This is a country where you thank someone for letting you share the lift with them, but you can’t talk to them when crossing in a country lane! Don’t you think that’s a little weird?”
Matthew and Lois, pleasantly humoured by Mark’s meanderings, silently concurred on this point.
“It’s interesting, though, isn’t it?” Mark was in full flight. “I’ve noticed when walking down the canal bank near here, it’s always the men who say hello to each other and not men addressing women or vice-versa. Maybe women talk to women, I wouldn’t know, but sometimes it strikes me as a strange, old-fashioned gender thing about who speaks to whom. I mean, what does that say about male-female gender relationships?”
“Dunno, mate,” replied Matthew, even though his friend probably hadn’t expected an answer of any description, “but maybe it’s just you and your weird imagination; women simply don’t want to speak to you.”
“Aw, I do!” Lois seemed to consider Matthew’s comment potentially upsetting. I can’t imagine why.
The interchange seemed to snap Mark out of his reverie. “That walk, incidentally, was just outside Szczyrk, one of those places in Poland where you look for vowels and then wonder how the hell you’re supposed to let anyone know where you are! Przemyśl is another example.” I had an idea he was showing off his ability to pronounce these somewhat obscure names, although a section of his audience may not have had a clue how accurate, or otherwise, he was.
“Well, maybe if your language had such a sparsity of vowels, you wouldn’t want to talk to strangers in the street either.” Lois had a fair point.
“Try living in Srbija,” countered Matthew, stammering so badly, but rather artificially, it has to be said, over the final word, that both his friends, even Mark, broke out laughing. It took Lois quite a while to stop. Nothing new there then.
“Just bring some beers, please,” begged Matthew plaintively, taking advantage of a familiar and much-loved escape route.
And so off I jolly well trotted.
The Roman amphitheatre in Amman with its frighteningly steep and slippery steps, especially so in the inappropriate, but, no doubt, fashionable footwear sported by Matthew.
2019: 64: Beirut: Malinka
Micky ambled through Cape Town, called out for his usual (Yunnan Green, for the uninitiated) and continued on his merry way – more of a trudge, if I’m being honest – into Beirut, hoping and expecting to find the room and carpet beyond the curtain to be empty. He looked in need of a lengthy lie down with a decent cuppa.
“Oh!” he said, in tones mixing surprise and disappointment. The room, as I could have told him, but chose not to, wasn’t empty. There was a slightly built, diminutive girl in her mid- to late-thirties with dark, shoulder-length hair, possibly of Slavic or mid-Caucasian descent, and rather attractive in my opinion, reclining on one of the cushions, coincidentally with a pot of Yunnan Green at her side. Even though it was on the cold side outdoors, the shoes-off policy of the room had rendered her barefoot. In a part of the café frequented by the womanising likes of Micky and Misha, this could have been tempting fate, but it would have been weird, to say the least, had I offered her a pair of socks to deter a gathering flock of foot fetishists. After all, she could have chosen any of my rooms to sit in.
After a moment or two of silence, during which Micky and the newbie weighed each other up in a way which I could not conceivably imagine might warrant use of the phrase ‘mutual interest’, Micky found his voice. “Erm, do you mind if I join you?” Had the girl been honest and lacking in politeness, she would almost certainly have responded in the negative. Presumably, her manners prevented such a course of action, so she smiled graciously and gestured, permitting Micky to sit, rather nervously, I suspected, against the opposite wall.
I ran an internal sweepstake on which pick-up line my regular customer might plump for, finally deciding, ‘Do you come here often?’ might edge out, ‘Heaven must be missing an angel’. The chosen, “I haven’t seen you here before,” did not come as much of a surprise, however. In fact, it could have been construed as a moderately innocent conversation starter. And, to be fair, one has to remember that Micky was not comfortable addressing members of the opposite gender, other than his close friend Jo, in anything other than an online environment, so the fact his word-count had already reached double figures was worthy of some commendation.
The new arrival wasn’t particularly loquacious in her contribution to the, for want of a better word, discussion. “First time,” she responded in a very pleasant, slightly high-pitched voice with the delightful trace of an accent I wasn’t fully sure I could narrow down to a specific country. In my defence, I have to say it would take quite a talented ear to locate someone on the basis of two words plus an order for a pot of tea!
As a two-way conversation is largely dependent upon each party encouraging the other to participate, I rapidly determined this interaction was sadly destined for a premature failure. The girl appeared rather wrapped up in her own thoughts, while Micky seemed to have decided he had achieved his recommended daily quota of face-to-face communication. Silence fell upon the carpet of Beirut.
The decibel level rose sharply, as it invariably did, upon the arrival of the aforementioned friend. “The usual, Kal,” had the effect of wafting the curtain a good three seconds before it was theatrically pulled to one side and the hurricane known as Jo blew across the threshold, kicking her shoes carelessly in reverse. “Afternoon!” she thundered in welcome. “Oh!” Her eyes fell upon the recumbent newcomer. Each surveyed the other momentarily, the view of Jo from the floor probably being quite intimidating. “Who are you?” This was not the friendliest of welcomes, but I think I have, on more than one previous occasion, used the adjectives ‘blunt’ and ‘tactless’ to describe the incoming former flower-arranger.
There was, I felt, a strong possibility that the victim of this question was beginning to realise she had seated herself in an inappropriate place. She was facing two choices in my view: exit in silence and sit somewhere else, or deal with the challenge head on, opting for either a pleasant or an aggressive approach. She stood up and, despite being a trifle dwarfed by the two regulars, went for the friendly version of the latter solution and held out her hand. I saw Micky checking all possible ring fingers and, seeing them jewellery-free, allowing a fleeting smile to escape his lips, before he noticed my eyes rolling in despair. “Hello, I’m Malinka.” Her warm voice immediately disarmed Jo, who subsequently welcomed her like an old friend. I considered guilt over the earlier rudeness might have played a role in this more touchy-feely reaction.
Jo introduced herself and, utilising her prior knowledge to arrive at the fairly safe conclusion that Micky had probably been very awkward and mute thus far, brought him in on the greeting process as well. “Take the weight off,” she went on in a very amiable manner, although her choice of lexical phrase was not one suitably graded towards someone not brought up in the north of England. Malinka, if she didn’t understand, didn’t let it show and just mimicked Jo’s action in sitting down.
The room was now almost full to capacity. I was kind of hoping Misha didn’t join them, as he would have loved an excuse to squeeze in next to someone as young and attractive as Malinka and, at this stage, I had no evidence to suggest that she deserved such a ‘treat’. You can tell how much faith I have in some of my customers…
I disappeared for a few minutes to brew another pot of Yunnan Green for Malinka and to make the required blend of sweet and unsweetened Algerian mint tea for Jo. Bearing in mind I have described Jo as ‘direct’ (polite version) and noted that I was away for a good few minutes, one could reasonably have expected the conversation in Beirut to have moved on a bit in my absence. Just how far and how intrusively it was travelling was a different matter altogether.
“Are you married?” I heard Jo asking, just before I pulled the curtain aside. Whether this was simple, unfettered nosiness on her part or just useful research on behalf of Micky and Misha was open to debate.
Malinka didn’t flinch. “Divorced.” I couldn’t help but look at Micky out of the corner of my eye and couldn’t fail to notice the gleam of hope which briefly passed over his features. This was quickly replaced by panic, due to one or both of two reasons, firstly that he might have to speak more while actually looking at someone, and secondly, the fear that the much more romantically pushy Misha might turn up and relegate him to the side-lines and beyond.
Jo nodded, which, I believe, was intended to encourage some further development on the one word thus far delivered, although why anyone should spill the beans on her relationship history on an initial encounter with an over-inquisitive northerner was not within the bounds of my comprehension.
It appeared Malinka had no such reservations, however. “We were childhood sweethearts and got married far too young,” she explained. “It finished when he screwed my cousin.” Mm, and I thought no one could be as direct as Jo.
“Well, yes, not a good move,” adjudged Jo, almost lost for words. Almost. “No one else, then?” I could have been misinterpreting the situation, and let’s face it, that would hardly be a novelty, but she genuinely seemed to be paving the way for Micky to intervene, even though this eventuality was exceedingly unlikely, given the ingrained timidity of the said individual.
“Well, I’ve had this weird on and off relationship with a Brit for a long time,” she went on. You could see Micky’s face fall. I don’t really know why, as he had no chance in any case.
“British men can be strange, for sure,” sighed Jo, although her experience of them romantically was non-existent, as far as I knew. She was far more likely to interested in Malinka for herself, and it suddenly struck me she may have been making these enquiries on her own behalf. “Define ‘weird’,” she demanded, not to be deterred.
Malinka thought for a minute, as though wondering how much to reveal. “We met in May, 2003,” she started. “He was a quality inspector at a place where I was working and only stayed for three days. We didn’t speak much, but I made him some pretty horrible coffee on a couple of occasions. He was very polite and said he loved it. We had a one-to-one meeting as part of the process and he picked up on something I said and offered to assist. I wasn’t sure, at first, if this was genuine helpfulness or an excuse to stay in touch, but stay in touch we did.”
“That sounds like he was taking advantage of a situation of power,” adjudged Jo, assuming her strict feminist role.
“I never thought of it like that, because he was helpful with what he said he would do, and he was also very nice.”
“And you were divorced at the time?”
“That’s where it gets a little complicated,” said Malinka, suddenly finding the wall far more appealing to focus her attention on rather than Jo. Jo and Micky, for their part, looked at each other with their interest well and truly engaged. “To start with, he – Mishenka is his name, by the way – was too shy and also very aware of his position as an official visitor to do anything about the feelings he has since told me he felt straight away. And, in any case, although I was separated at the time, he was firmly attached, so it was all a bit of a non-starter.”
The word ‘Mishenka’ had precipitated a chorus of raised eyebrows around the room, as we all arrived at the hasty conclusion that this might be Misha in a previous guise. The subsequent phrase ‘too shy to do anything’ convinced us we were completely wrong, unless a personality transplant had taken place in the intervening years.
Jo still hadn’t heard enough, however. “Go on,” she said, trying to be encouraging but coming across as a little impatient and more than a little nosy. Malinka’s lips curved slightly upwards in mild amusement while her eyes narrowed as she scrutinised the would-be stirrer. This made her look even more sultry and alluring, in my opinion, and a quick glance at Micky suggested he was pretty enraptured as well (and no, I am not exaggerating).
“I was due to move to his city temporarily the following year and, at that time, I think we were both available, but some funding fell through, and my trip was delayed a year, by which time we were both attached again, to the same people as previously, oddly enough, so nothing happened.”
“And…?”
“That was the last time I saw him. He came to the place where I was living a couple of years later, but I was in hospital with a new-born baby.”
“Which made it pretty inappropriate for him to visit you, I suppose.”
“Russian hospitals restrict visitors to family members,” explained Malinka. “And that’s where I was residing at the time. And the idea of Mishenka with a baby, well, what can I say?” She gave a slight laugh of near-contempt at the image she had conjured up. “I got divorced and moved to the other side of the world, so all our communication since then has been on email and Facebook.” I started to think she might be suitable for Micky after all, if she could be so apparently content with years and years of online chat.
“And you’re here now to see him?” Jo wasn’t letting go.
“That’s part of the reason, yes, but this time he’s attached and I’m not. Besides, I think after all these years, it really is too late.”
“The ship has sailed,” said Jo poetically, but sadly.
There was a pause while drinks were drunk, eyes wandered hither and thither, and brains ticked over, considering the next thing to say.
Malinka decided she had said enough. “Your turn,” she said with, what I have to say, was a very cheeky, but nonetheless endearing, expression.
“My life is an open book,” remarked Jo. As I knew very little about one of my most frequent customers, other than her bluntness, former employment and sexual preferences, I deemed this to be a statement bordering on falsehood. Malinka also looked taken aback by the answer as, whatever book was being referred to, she had never been exposed to the merest chapter introduction. “Let’s talk about Micky instead,” she added. This struck me as a little unfair because, shy though Micky was, when put on the spot about things which were better left unsaid, he had a tendency to waffle without a filter and end up distinctly red-faced with no one to blame but himself, even if Jo, or sometimes Misha, had started him off.
With Malinka’s deep and dark eyes firmly fixed upon him, Micky almost trembled as he was panicked into saying something which maintained the context of the conversation. “I’m rather like you,” he said, hoping for a quick and painless release from the torture of speaking in the flesh to an attractive person of the female variety, “as in I tend to prefer online relationships.” Jo snorted, in what I took to be disgust or disbelief (a close call), on the word ‘relationship’.
“I didn’t say I preferred them,” said Malinka. “It’s just how this particular one has panned out.”
“Oh, well, erm, all my in-person relationships have tended to end badly,” Micky went on, “so, with me, it’s a more conscious decision, to avoid further pain.” This was partially new rationale, but perhaps more acceptable in new company than the fact he was extremely clumsy and awkward in the presence of women, as he had revealed in a lengthy story the previous year. He had also given himself the undesirable reputation for unintentionally reuniting girlfriends with their exes and had provided sufficient evidence to convincingly prove the fact to any jury. This was, perhaps, not the best thing to say to a divorced woman, so he wisely kept this nugget of information to himself on this occasion.
“Give me an example,” pushed Malinka, as no one else said anything.
Micky hadn’t been expecting this, and mentally and verbally fumbled (if such things are possible) for what must have felt like an age to both him and those forced to observe and listen. Eventually, he kind of composed himself. “Well, it’s going back quite a long way in time…”
“Obviously,” muttered Jo, ever so slightly disrespectfully.
Micky blushed even redder but continued. “I sort of fell into a relationship with this girl…”
