Coffee grinder (1.)

The sky is dressed in rainbow colors

A gentle breeze touches the blossoming cherry trees

And the courtyard is suddenly like after a wedding

Full of delicate white petals

For happiness

And love

The rain whispers to the tulips

Secret wishes of love

And those proud dandies

Blush in their cheeks

With a slight smile

It is quiet.

Only somewhere in the distance

Dogs bark.

And a blackbird on my windowsill

Tries to sing away

All the sorrows of the world.

 

 

Coffee grinder

 

I was not quite fourteen years old at the time.

The weather wasn't very good that Easter. Milena and I were sitting in my room at my grandmother's house on Good Friday, listening to the rain drumming on the window sill and laughing as we remembered how we used to go to the highest rock to look for “treasure” when we were little. Our desire to discover the mysterious had not yet left us. So, on that gloomy Good Friday afternoon, we set off for the attic. “We'll just have a quick look around and then we'll leave,” I said to Milena as we opened the heavy door leading to the hallway with its winding stairs.

 

Through a crack in the wall, we could see into a bedroom bathed in a rich golden twilight, caused by dark yellow curtains. We climbed the creaky stairs to find ourselves in a spacious, oblong room with a large dark green armchair in the middle.

Suddenly, as if by magic, we were transformed from respectable and perhaps overly sedate young ladies, who sometimes try to add a few years with appropriate clothing and makeup, back into little, mischievous and somewhat unruly girls who wanted to experience at least some of the mystery they had read about in fairy tales.

 

So we set to “work.” We rummaged through individual boxes, pulling out old clothes and pieces of crockery, imagining the joys and sorrows of our ancestors' lives. After a while, I discovered that the only source of light in the attic (apart from the daylight coming in through the half-open door) was a small skylight, which was best avoided because it had been home to a wasps' nest for many years. While I was trying to get out of their reach as carefully as possible—and preferably before they noticed me—Milenka was startled by a thick black cable sticking out of the wall on the opposite side of the attic. To make matters worse, a strong gust of wind slammed the door shut, leaving us locked in the dark. The eerie situation was reminiscent of the most successful Hollywood horror movie. I think our desire to discover the mysterious had been satisfied.

 

And yet, perhaps it was for the best. If we had succumbed to our momentary fear and decided to open the locked door, we would never have noticed an old, forgotten secret that lay undiscovered just a few meters away from us.

Directly opposite the small window covered with wasp nests stood a large wardrobe that we hadn't noticed before. Now, with the light falling at a strange angle from the skylight, the wardrobe was directly in front of us, bathed in golden afternoon light. Milena stopped when she saw it.

 

“Why didn't you ever mention that you had such a nice coffee grinder?”

“What?!”

“There, on the wardrobe.”

I looked at the cupboard, where there was a large white coffee grinder with a hand-painted picture of a blue windmill. I had been going to the attic since I was a child, but I had never noticed it before.

It took us a long time to dare to pick up the obviously expensive and precious object. Despite all the temptation, we didn't play with it and, careful not to touch it more than absolutely necessary, we carried the sacred object down to the kitchen. Grandma was sitting at the table reading a book. When she saw us with the grinder in our hands, she looked surprised.

 

“Where did you get that, girls?”

“We were looking in the attic,” I replied truthfully. Grandma nodded silently. But my curiosity about the origin of this strange and unusually beautiful object got the better of me, and I asked Grandma how the grinder had ended up there.

“It's been there for a long time, Kačenka,” my grandmother replied with a smile. “Your grandfather brought it back from England. We also have two cups to go with it, you know. You drank tea from one of them just yesterday.”

“But how did the coffee grinder end up on the cupboard? Or did I just not notice it before?”

My grandmother sighed. "Grandpa tried the grinder when he was in Bohemia and found that it wasn't working properly. It didn't work as it should. So we left it in the attic and only used the cups. Until recently, shortly after Grandpa died, I took the grinder out again. I must have left it on the cupboard where you found it.“

I nodded. I liked the grinder.

 

”Grandma, can I keep it?“

”You can, why not. If you don't mind that it doesn't work..."

And so we came to have a mysterious coffee grinder that couldn't grind a single bean, yet offered us so much more.

We tried grinding coffee that same day. In the evening, after the ceremonies, we went back to the attic, where we learned to grind coffee by candlelight. No matter how many beans we put in the grinder, the coffee always disappeared. We examined it for a while, as there wasn't a single crack in the grinder, but then Milena lost her patience.

“Let's just grind it empty,” she said, somewhat annoyed. “At least it'll be fun.”

So we ground empty, playing like little children and having incredible fun. Until music started coming out of the grinder.

“That's how it is,” Milena exclaimed. “It's battery-powered!”

 

And she laughed. Her laughter frightened me at times. My head was spinning, but I had to keep turning the handle. Something strange and unknown inside me compelled me to do so. All I could see of Milena was her silhouette, leaning from side to side to the rhythm of the music, like a pendulum. My breathing was getting faster and faster, and I felt myself losing consciousness.