The Haunted Coffee Machine

It shames me that I cannot tell you more about Herr Bauer. We had one of those fleeting friendships you have with people you meet in foreign places and he never told me much about himself, and I never asked. He managed the bar in a hotel in one of Austria's minor cities. He was in his fifties I would guess, tall and of a stout build, and whatever life he had lived before then had won him the sort of stern dignity which is prized among Austrian waiters.

The reason we became friends at all was the bar's vintage Italian coffee machine, a 1950s space-age wonder, the words La Carimali embossed in gold letters upon a shining chrome barrel sat on a cut glass base, and an exciting array of valves and levers at the back. The younger staff preferred the modern push-button machine in the kitchen, but those of us who knew waited until Herr Bauer could take our order so as to watch him operate the Carimali from behind the veil of steam as the machine hissed and gulped. I believe I could taste the difference, I certainly claimed I could, but even if I could not, I would still prefer to watch Herr Bauer drive the Carimali.

That Herr Bauer loved the machine there was no doubt. In any spare second it was the chrome of the machine he always wiped first before turning his attention to the counter-top. When waiting behind the bar and casting his eyes about the room to see if any customers required his attention, his hand would rest on one of the levers, ready to operate it. One evening I asked him about the machine, and, though he had never been less than perfectly polite before, at that point we talked properly for the first time.

Such was my early acquaintance with Herr Bauer. For a while I was there regularly, and then, in the way of business travel, I was no more. And then, a couple of years later, I returned and was delighted to find him still managing the bar and suggested to my hosts, who had taken me out on my first night, that we quit our restaurant after desert in order to have a coffee in my hotel.

The Carimali remained silent however. Herr Bauer disappeared into the kitchen to create our espressos. Afterwards my hosts felt we ought to have brandy, and after brandy that I ought to try a schnapps, and after that, tired from drink and a day of travelling, I went to my room without asking Herr Bauer what was the matter with the machine.

It was two days before I could, the following day being Herr Bauer's day off. As I sat in the bar that evening with my laptop and a cup of perfectly good, but not Carimali, coffee, the machine, despite being quite unused, dispelled a breath of air with a sound like an old lady on her deathbed. The two girls who were behind the bar looked at each other. A look I could not decipher, but one which seemed to me to speak of a familiarity with the sound, and a disquiet.

The following evening, when Herr Bauer came over to take my order, I asked him straight out if the Carimali was broken.

He apologised and said that it was not in use, but later, when the bar was all but empty, he gave a fuller answer. He asked if he could take the seat beside me in order to tell me about the Carmali. I accepted of course. Why he wanted to tell me I do not know, I guess because I was something between a friend and a stranger. A foreigner, so I did not count in some ways, and a person who would soon leave likely never to return, but also someone he had talked to before and trusted.

"Eighteen months ago," he began, without any beating about the bush, "I started to experience a dread of the Carmali. There was no change in the machine that I could explain, but I disliked and feared it. It was as if... sometimes you are with friends in a bar and you start talking to a stranger, and the stranger is drunk and amusing, and you all laugh, and then maybe one of you says the wrong thing, or maybe nothing at all, but suddenly something changes in the stranger and, out of nowhere, the possibility of violence exists."

Herr Bauer paused and watched me. Trying to determine, I think, if his analogy had landed as he hoped it would.

"Or," he said, "it is like being in a room with a dog that bites. The dog might be quiet, asleep even, but you are careful not to wake it. I was careful with the Carimali. I minded always to keep my hand away from the hot steam."

I said something to the effect that I understood his meaning.

"Late last summer," he continued. "In September, a guest was taken violently ill in the night. An ambulance was called and the man was taken to hospital where great pains were exercised over him but with no diagnosis. In the morning he recovered by himself and at lunchtime he was returned to us. His illness remained a mystery but we at the hotel were not unduly concerned. These things happen and he had dined elsewhere."

Herr Bauer did not, I should be clear, but I looked around to check nobody else was listening.

"In December, in the pre-christmas period, the same thing happened to a woman, again with no explanation. This time it took two days before she was returned to us and she did so in a wheelchair. Those of us who saw her took away the impression that she would be permanently diminished. A bad illness, even if brief, can sometimes do to a person. Again the disease was a mystery but this time we were more concerned for she had dined in the restaurant and gave the matter some consideration. The only common factor between her and the man, however, was that both had drunk a coffee in this bar the night before they were struck ill, but so had many other people, so we were certain that was not the explanation."

"Were you certain?" I asked.

"I personally was not," Herr Bauer replied. "Because of my dread of the machine. But I could not justify that dread so I did not mention it. In early January however a man collapsed in pain on the floor of this bar even as he was drinking his coffee. Him we did not see again but were asked to forward his belongings when he was taken home in an ambulance. After that I decided to cease serving from the Calimari and disconnected it from the power."

I asked if he had told anyone. 

"I have told the manager and the owner. They have yet to decide what to do."

"And you still get the same feeling from the machine?"

"Every night."

Herr Bauer stood up and went to check if the other customers required anything and then returned behind his bar. I watched him for a while but it was clear that he had said what he wanted to say and the conversation was over.

None of this I would consider worth the mentioning if it was not for what happened the following evening, my last in the hotel. Again the bar was quiet but the hotel was not for there was an event in one of the function rooms at which Herr Bauer was required to help. For long periods we in the bar, a holidaying couple and myself, were left alone. I was happy enough with my espresso from the kitchen and my laptop, but a crumb of the biscuit which had come with my coffee caught in my windpipe and set me coughing.

The young couple rose to see if they could help but I waved them away and said all I required was a glass of water and I headed behind the bar to help myself. I located a glass quickly but when I turned to look for the tap I found myself face to face with the Carimali.

Herr Bauer talked of dread, and strangers and dogs that bite. I do not think any of those explanations do the sensation justice. I have had no experience myself to which I can compare it, but my father in law, when he was alive, once told a story which affected me greatly. When he was a young man, years ago, he had worked in a machine shop, and one day a table-saw, through some combination of bad design and careless use, ripped away three fingers from the hand of one of his colleagues. He described how they were hard put to fulfil an order and kept on working immediately the blood was cleaned away, and he had to use the saw which had maimed his friend, feeding the wood into the blade which jammed often and required human hands, his hands, to unblock. He was very clear in his belief that there was malice in that saw. That it waited, straining with barely contained hatred, for the opportunity do him harm.

The sensation, I have to say, quite overcame me, and the next thing I knew the woman from the other table was fanning my face with a menu while Herr Bauer was propping my head up on a seat cushion and warning me not to move for the shards of the glass I had been holding were still scattered about me on the floor.

After a minute of my protesting I was fine, he took my hands so I did not have to place them on the floor, and lifted me to my feet. I glanced at the Carimali and back at him, and the look in his eyes told me he understood exactly what had happened.

The following morning, after I checked out of the hotel, I stepped into the bar hoping to thank Herr Bauer once again. He was engaged in conversation with a customer though, and I caught sight of the Carimali beside him and all of a sudden I did not want to go any closer than the doorway.

I caught his eye and waved, and he smiled back at me but he did not wave. I noticed then, and I think this may have been true of every time he stood in his place behind that bar that week, his hands were gripping the counter-top tightly.

That was my last night in Austria. Not long afterwards my circumstances changed and I sought out a job with less travelling. I think of Herr Bauer often though, that hateful thing beside him, and him controlling himself and continuing to do his job. I do not know that I have ever met a braver person.