Coffee

I had firmly decided to stop drinking coffee—the temporary anxiety, the effects on the stomach. So there I was, sitting at a cafe, watching strangers pass, having what was in all likelihood my last cup—but who knows—with a croissant to keep it company. A man sat down at the table beside me with nothing but a black coffee, took a sip, winced immediately, and looked straight at me with a piercing gaze. I didn’t say anything. The man took another sip, then started talking.

If you asked me why I drink coffee, I probably couldn't answer you directly. What I can tell you is that you'll find me here every day from ten until noon, face wrinkled over a cup, trying not to spit it out. If you asked why anyone would force themselves to do something they disliked—let alone allow a liquid to penetrate the body and pass through it—I couldn't answer that directly either, for the quite ordinary reason that rarely anything we do on this planet comes easy or works as intended. So I sit and drink because I have nothing better to do. Or maybe I need something I despise inside me—something that lets me talk the way I usually wouldn't.

You see, I was born without a tongue. My mother wept when she saw it, and the doctors couldn't explain how a human being could come into the world without one—something scientists would strongly argue against, and I understand that. Yet there I was: a perfectly normal newborn, just without a tongue. If you asked me how I learned to speak, I'd hesitate to answer you directly—because I didn't speak. I was kept in the family estate, and my companions growing up were mostly objects, animals, and plants. My teachers were books. Yet, to my parents' shock, by the age of eighteen, the tongue had grown exactly where it was supposed to.

Naturally, I didn't know how to speak—but God knows I could write, thanks to the books. I had no intention of staying at the estate, so I wrote a message on a napkin, jumped the fence—tearing a hole in my only pair of trousers in the process—and went on to become a tramp. As to why I chose such a path, I would probably say youth is youth and it was calling, and I was in no position to argue with fate. So I surrendered. I went from town to town along old dusty roads, sleeping under trees or in the quiet comfort of graveyards, until one day my life decided to change again—without asking me first.

Every change in a man's life comes with a woman, and a formerly tongueless man is no exception. It was in a graveyard or under a tree—not that it matters—and I opened my eyes to find a woman standing over me, looking at me the way people look at someone they already know. She asked me questions I couldn't answer, so I gestured for paper. She gave me paper and a pen. I wrote my story. She took me in and taught me to speak, because she was a teacher. Her husband owned a cafe—this cafe—and had once been mayor of a small town, but that's not particularly important. What's important is that she left him for another man, and he drank, a lot, and died of boredom. I was there. The cafe came to me because they had no children.

I hope you like the coffee.

The man finished his coffee, winced one last time, and left without saying goodbye. I paid, went to the bathroom, looked in the mirror, and checked that my tongue was still in place.