A friend recommended that I read Before The Coffee Gets Cold, a book by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. I did, and now I can recommend the same thing to you.
The stories told in the book all take place in a small cafe, in Japan, which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. The cafe is located in a basement, and has no windows, and every time someone walks down the stairs to the cafe, and comes through the door - and every time someone leaves - a bell sounds:
Clang-Dong
The most unusual feature of the cafe is the fact that it happens to be a place where you can go back in time. If you want to do that, though, adherence to some rather frustrating rules is required:
- The first rule is that the only people whom you can meet, while in the past, are those who have previously visited the cafe.
- The second rule is that there is nothing you can do while in the past that will change the present.
- The third rule is that there is actually only one seat in the cafe that will allow you to go back in time (and there is, almost always, another customer sitting in that seat). The only time you can sit in the right seat is when the customer goes to the toilet - which the customer does do, once a day, but no one can really predict when that might happen.
- The fourth rule is that while in the past, you cannot move from your seat. If you were to do that, you would be immediately pulled back to the present by force.
- Finally, the fifth rule is that your stay in the past begins when your coffee is poured, and must end before the coffee gets cold.
Most of the book is comprised of a series of stories about a rather limited set of characters, workers in the cafe and some regular customers. The last story, though, is a bit different. That's the story that made me cry.
As it happens, and you find this out only when the book is coming to an end, just before that last story begins, the cafe will not only allow a person following the rules to go back in time. It is possible to go into the future, too. One of the persons who has been part of the book from the very beginning decides to do that, and meets the child to whom she hasn't yet given birth.
It is worth all the stories looking backwards to get to this one story that allows the not-yet-mother to look ahead. Going back to the past, or going into the future, as it turns out, may not change the present. That's the rule.
But it changes you!
Clang-Dong
Recommended
Foundation of Freedom
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