Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
A Charlotte Mecklenburg Adult Services Librarian facilitates the book club at the West Boulevard branch of which I‘m a proud member. We don’t take ourselves too seriously; we share lots of laughs; but we are intent about listening and learning from each other. The facilitator always worries about her book club selections, especially if a choice earns mixed reviews. But I love her picks because they challenge our perspectives, introducing us to characters from other cultures that remind us the human condition is universal.
Such is Before the Coffee Gets Cold, a quirky, thought-provoking gem written by Japanese literary fiction writer Toshikazu Kawaguchi and translated from Japanese to English by Geoffrey Trousselo. In the story, adapted from his award-winning play “1110 Productions,” there is a tiny café in Tokyo where one can travel back in time. Strict rules limit the number of people willing to take the chance to visit the past. For instance, if you choose to time travel you must sit in a particular chair in the café and cannot move from it. There is a ghost woman sitting in the chair who gets up only once a day to use the toilet; try to forcibly move her and you’ll be cursed! Whatever you say or do will in no way alter the present. There is a time limit. A cup of coffee is poured when you begin the trip, and you must drink the entire cup before it gets cold. That marks the end of the visit and you immediately return to the present. Most important, if you break any of the rules, you become….. the ghost in the chair.
This is the vehicle Mr. Kawaguchi uses to bring characters first presented in mundane, background roles (the girlfriend, the nurse, the woman in curlers, the wife) to the front of the stage to tell their stories. Each story focuses on love as it exists within different types of relationships: lovers facing separation due to career opportunities; a married couple dealing with the husband’s worsening dementia; estranged sisters trying to balance their own dreams with family expectations; and a woman in the early stages of pregnancy imagining her future child. Each time traveler has previously acted on her assumptions, suppositions that have led to broken bonds and insensitive decisions. Yet, if they can’t change these decisions made in the past, why go back? This was the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question inspiring an hour-long debate among book club participants about wrong turns taken due to misconceptions, about sacrifice and forgiveness.
We returned to this quote, found at the very end of the book, to end our discussion.
The magazine piece on the urban legend had stated, “At the end of the day, whether one returns to the past or travels to the future, the present does not change. So it raises the question: just what is the point of that chair?”
But Kazu still goes on believing that, no matter what difficulties people face, they will always have the strength to overcome them. It just takes heart. And if the chair can change someone’s heart, it clearly has its purpose.
But with her cool expression, she will just say, “Drink the coffee before it gets cold.” [Kindle Version, p. 213]
