If someone orders coffee with rose petal jam, you will always find a common topic for conversation. Vyshnia did not reach that conclusion right away, but after long days of work, you unwittingly start to build chains of associations. After all, rose petal jam is a primordial Galician Holy Grail—an echo of Christmas carols and the crunch of snow in the darkness when you can already smell that scent on the stairs as you return home. Pampukhy, glistening with oil, lie in a bowl. An equal number of them are stuffed with poppy seeds as with blueberries, but only a few, the most coveted, are filled with rose petal jam, sweet like July afternoons bathed in the buzzing of bees and sunlight. When Vyshnia was only learning to notice the unusual, she thought that magic was her aunt plucking off the fragrant petals and turning them into a small, deep-hued jar for the winter, which people in Lviv take out just before Christmas.
So, rose petal jam holds too many memories, and, as they say, those who know, know.
The alchemist in a shabby blue coat knows. When he comes in for the first time, withdrawn into himself like a snail in its shell, he glances through the menu and only emerges from his aloof silence when he sees coffee with rose petal jam.
“I haven’t tasted that since I was a kid,” he says with surprise, having clearly recalled Christmas pampukhy.
“It’s a sign, then! Our jam is truly magic,” Vyshnia says with a smile, even though it’s actually other things that are magic—specifically the pantry, the left side of the back door, and Vyshnia herself, just a tiny bit. That was the reason she chose this place for her café: in one of the passages that leads to the central Rynok Square, a singsong of ancient walls and designations and forgotten surnames. The passage fits perfectly with the boundaries of the oldest neighbourhood in the city, which had burned to the ground and was rebuilt again and again and always reemerged anew. And the older the place, the better for magic. In old places, magic buds—and even if it sprouts in strange places (like the pantry!)—so what? Everyone benefits from it.
“Then I’ll have a coffee with rose petal jam, please, Ms…Cherry-on-top.¹” The alchemist has the most expressive eyebrows Vyshnia has ever seen—their movement perfectly conveys a mix of irony and surprise.
She points at her brand-new name tag.
“Right. I decided our employees should have fun nicknames. But I’m still testing out the idea. So? Does it encourage you to tip more?” Vyshnia drums her fingers on the lid of the box next to the register.
However, the alchemist’s wheat-coloured eyebrows drop, his defences go up, and the thread of conversation snaps as he says, “I’ll pay later.”
His flat remark makes it clear: she should not expect a tip. Nor will she see what trick the tip box has in store for the alchemist. At least not today. So, Vyshnia simply pours enough coffee beans for an espresso into the grinder and turns on the machine. Only freshly ground beans, only pre-warmed cups. She’s alone on her shift, juggling the duties of a manager with the role of a waitress. And the duties are endless. One might joke that Lvivians’ obsession with coffee is just a tale for tourists, but the level of meticulousness locals put into selecting their favourite cafés is no joke.
Meanwhile, the guest is heading toward the table in the corner. Vyshnia calls it “a spot for introverts,” even though it’s hard to find solitude in her café with its four-and-a-half tables (the “half” being a windowsill with striped cushions). The alchemist spreads a newspaper on the table and places his leather bag on the edge—you can imagine doctors in retro movies walking around with bags like this. He takes off his coat and hangs it on the back of the chair, although he is only three steps away from the coatrack, but his hands are already resting on the tabletop, on which—Vyshnia can’t help but stare—lies a large stone.
A stone is certainly not on the list of forbidden objects. In the café, only bloodsuckers are subject to special scrutiny so that they don’t secretly bring in their drinks, because their preferences are too well known to the general public. And if you can’t resist, you won’t get your hot chocolate with marshmallows.
Stones raise no objections, so Vyshnia only looks at it askance when she brings the alchemist his coffee. He thanks her quietly but says nothing about the scent of roses, so dense that just a little bit more of it and you could scoop it out with a spoon. The alchemist’s fingers are stained with ink. He clutches a fountain pen with a gold nib, as archaic as his bag and inefficient, judging by the number of ink stains. He draws a pattern around the stone—that’s why he spread out the newspaper. The pattern gets lost among the printed letters and flickers before her eyes, but Vyshnia immediately recognizes it as a draft diagram for transmutation. So she had better not lean over her customer, because in alchemy, every line, every stroke of the pen matters. A diagram is necessary for complicated undertakings, and it will work only if it is flawless.
•••
When the alchemist comes to the register after an hour of sweating over his stone, his face looks dull and tired. He pulls out a card, but Vyshnia reminds him of alchemy as a means of payment. After all, her guest takes advantage of these walls, so he must also contribute to the circulation of magic. Because as long as magic is sprouting here, it’s easier to do something unusual within these walls. And in return, the café gets a stream of very special customers, whom even the June showers will not wash away. Anyone who needs to amplify their talents gets that boost here. In lieu of payment, her friends, the sorceresses, renew the protective spell every week, which serves as an alarm system. The bloodsuckers, who are skilled at finding hidden treasures, sometimes bring back the best antique cups from flea markets. Vyshnia also has tassel earrings that occasionally play Mozart, but she doesn’t remember who paid with them. Vyshnia herself doesn’t know any magic, but, to her family’s surprise, she can see its manifestations, and some of her customers believe that her ability to make coffee in a cezve in hot sand is also a kind of enchantment.
Hearing her remark about payment, the alchemist nods. He swiftly finds a button just beneath the neckline of his coat—and just as swiftly rips it off. Apparently, the button was already quite loose.
The little copper disk falls into the alchemist’s palm. He covers it with his other hand: the air above his hand warms, a wave of heat rises. A moment… and the button disappears—in its place is a small coin, also made of copper, sleek and immaculately new. It should be hot, but the skin on the young man’s palm has not even reddened.
•••
The next time he comes to the café, he again orders a coffee with rose petal jam. He sits down at the same table against the wall, throws his coat on the back of the chair in the same way, and briskly opens the newspaper. The stone is also there, square, burnished on one side—it somehow resembles heraldic dragons with polished scales.
“We rarely have people come for coffee accompanied by a stone,” Vyshnia says, placing a cup of coffee in front of the alchemist.
“You have no idea how hardened my brother’s heart is,” he grumbles.
“Is that your brother?” She’s already imagining what kind of experiment might have ended in such a disaster, but her guess is wrong.
“It’s my test,” the guest replies, drumming his fingers on the table. “The local alchemical community believes there’s only one rite of passage, as in the ancient legends. And in Lviv, all legends take their own shape. So now I have to turn a slab of cobblestone into a gold ingot. The older the stone, the better, so I dug up mine in the Old Town. And after that, I need to put this ingot on the mantelpiece and add it to the collection of previous generations. Once I complete this legendary transmutation, I will finally be called a full-fledged Lviv alchemist, the pride of my family, and so on and so forth.”
“And what do they call you now?” Vyshnia wonders, expecting some kind of joke, but the answer is simple:
“Oksen.” She hears the clink of metal in his name, right at the cluster of consonants.
“Then, Oksen, I wish you the best of luck, but I have to warn you: I don’t think my café has enough change for a gold ingot. So you’d better come up with a more convenient form of payment.”
The alchemist nods, and as he comes to the cash register, he again twists off a button from his coat. The collar is open, the threads hang loosely—he obviously doesn’t care about his coat, as if he’s only preoccupied with the stone, wrapped in newspaper and stuffed into his bag.
But Vyshnia’s rule is unbreakable: if you have a gift, you must pay with magic. Because magic is fading, even in the passages in the oldest part of the town. And if it continues to fade, who knows how much longer the pantry will remain three times as big on the inside as it is on the outside, and who knows if on a full moon the back door would still open onto the banks of the Poltva (a river that used to flow through Lviv’s central boulevard). And who knows how the tip box would behave. At the moment, it is extra sensitive to people’s problems, and desires to help them.
Vyshnia never abuses this power, but she knows she can rely on the tip box. One day she found apricot confiture in it after breaking a jar in the morning and not having time to go to the grocery store to buy a new one. Another time, warm socks lay in the tip box when the heating was not working. But Vyshnia was the happiest when she found a key to her apartment there—right after losing hers. The box, however, did not have enough skill to copy the mailbox key as well, but then, Vyshnia has not checked the mail in the last six months anyway.
Occasionally, once they throw in a tip, the box gives something back to the patrons of the café. Oksen never does this—he has gotten into the habit of paying with buttons converted into coins, but Vyshnia has noticed that the alchemist doesn’t sew new buttons onto his coat. He talks to her less and less often and sits in the café longer and longer. She also notices many other things, but the worst is that the stone has not changed. Maybe it’s too big for a novice. Maybe even the support of the ancient walls is insufficient. Maybe the alchemists’ legends have set the bar too high. Vyshnia longs to ask him about it but holds off—until the day Oksen comes up to the register to pay with his last button. He has even torn off decorative buttons from the cuffs and pockets and the corners of the collar.
Judging by Oksen’s expression, the stone does not yet contain a single gram of gold, and he seems to buckle under its weight.
Vyshnia never gets to speak her thoughts, however, because as soon as the last button turns into a coin, the tip box starts rattling like an old streetcar going around a bend. The lid pops open, and a button falls out—one that looks just like the buttons on Oksen’s coat. And then another. And another. Vyshnia has just enough time to cup her hands to catch them, but it’s no use: the copper buttons pour out of the box as if a dam has broken. They jingle onto the floor, scatter across the counter, fall into the cracks between the parquet tiles, and roll under the tables, making another customer, a bubbly witch, cry out and pull her legs up onto the chair. A newspaper headline flashes through Vyshnia’s mind: “Café in downtown Lviv mysteriously disappears in copper button flood.”
But the torrent stops as abruptly as it began. The box throws out the last button, slams the lid shut, and falls silent.
“Mother of god! Vyshnia, dear, I’d better drop by tomorrow instead,” says the witch, getting up from her table. “Put the coffee on my tab, please! And I’ll pay for it tomorrow with a potion for migraines. Freshly brewed!”
Vyshnia doesn’t even get a chance to reply before the witch closes the door with a clang. She’s still trying to hold the buttons in her cupped hands, but they’re everywhere, having rolled into all sorts of nooks and crannies.
“Well, Mr. Alchemist,” she says, turning to him, only to realize that he has not only the most expressive eyebrows but also the most expressive eyes, full of surprise. “Looks like this is all for you. The box noticed your coat needed a bit of fixing up. And so did I. Didn’t you notice that yourself?”
“I did…” he admits, wrinkling his nose as his fingers reach out to pull at the threads hanging loosely from his coat. “But that’s not important. I have to make gold. First and foremost.”
It is clearly hard for him to admit this, but Vyshnia is eager to break this vicious circle, so she says with a smile:
“Do you mean that buttoning up your coat in chilly weather is not really important? Then you might as well decide that coffee with rose petal jam is not important either. Or a beautiful view outside your window when the downpour lets up. But if all of this adds to your joy or comfort, then why isn’t it important? Well, you’d better take your gift.”
Oksen cups his hands obediently. Vyshnia pours the buttons into them and bursts out laughing at the trick the box just played.
The alchemist steps back, careful not to spill the copper disks.
Vyshnia doesn’t catch the moment when his elbow grazes the cups on the counter, stacked on top of one another in several rows. Moments like this happen in slow motion only in movies—in real life, everything happens quickly, and Oksen’s movement is immediately followed by the crunch of porcelain, an ominous nocturne that is impossible to get used to. The crunch, the clatter, the glitter of white-sided shards, and that moment of stillness—when the body instinctively freezes, lest another careless movement causes even more damage.
Thirty seconds ago, there was a whole pile of cups. Now—a whole pile of debris, colourful and chaotic.
“I... I’ll make it up to you,” says the alchemist. The first to snap out of it, he crouches over the shards, which are gleaming with golden rims and painted petals. “Just give me some time, and I’ll fix them all.”
As he sifts through the chipped-off handles, everything she knows about alchemists flashes through Vyshnia’s mind. Turning stones into gold—yes. Working with metals—yes. Preserving inefficient traditions, like hauling around a slab of cobblestone—yes. But the luster of porcelain was nowhere to be found among the stories of aluminum, gold, crucibles, diagrams scribbled in ink, and ancient families. Nowhere at all.
“Can you really fix them? With alchemy?” she asks.
“Yes. It’s a strange talent, I know.” Oksen’s voice is dreary, his fingers wandering through the shards as if he’s speaking to them in his mind. “Let me show you…” He barely finishes the sentence when a familiar heat spreads, and the shards first clink, then pull together as if magnetised, then scrape and nestle against each other until the first cup—immaculately intact—cools beneath Oksen’s palm.
“Like this,” he says uneasily, as if it’s child’s play: unremarkable, ordinary, and simple. And he does this without even a basic diagram.
Vyshnia picks up the fixed cup and turns it in her hands: not a single crack, not a single seam between the pieces, the pattern is continuous.
“Incredible!” She can’t hide her excitement, and an idea comes to her immediately. “Listen, Oksen, I suggest you stop ripping the buttons off your clothes, or you’ll catch a cold in this weather. Why don’t you pay me by mending porcelain instead? Do you know how much of it gets broken around here? I’ve lost more money on broken china than anything else since we opened!”
“But I have to demonstrate first-class alchemy,” Oksen grumbles. “I am the only one in our family who hasn’t made gold yet. My brother is only a year older than me, but he did it two years ago…”
“Please forgive my amateurish remark,” she says, “but as a café owner, I find the ability to fix china more useful. Turning cobblestones into gold—anyone can do that, you said so yourself. But the porcelain obeys only you. And remind me… what do you do with the gold later?”
“It will sit on the mantelpiece, at home. It’s tradition.”
“See? But with your talent, at the very least, you can pay for your coffee.”
“You really believe that?”
“It’s my café. And surely, I can decide what kind of payment to accept.”
“No, I mean…” Oksen breaks off, but his voice sounds like someone has been telling him over and over for the last twenty years that a gold ingot on the mantelpiece is the only thing that matters in life.
“Yes, I really think you have a phenomenal talent,” Vyshnia replies to the unspoken question. “And you don’t have to be like the previous generations of Lviv alchemists to become important or successful. Trust my experience: I am telling you this as the first owner of a magical café in the family.”
And immediately she thinks: Why did I interfere in someone else’s business? Why did I react so strongly? She thinks: He will not come again—because after this uneasy conversation, Oksen stuffs his pockets with buttons, fixes a few more cups, and leaves.
But a week later, he unexpectedly returns with all the buttons sewn back on and, leaning over the counter, asks conspiratorially if there are enough broken dishes to pay for a coffee.
“Sure,” says Vyshnia, pushing a whole stack of plates onto the tiled floor with an elegant gesture. “Coffee with rose petal jam, right? And you should try our new madeleines, too!” She takes one look at the broken china and figures Oksen can count on at least three madeleines for this job.
Next time, the alchemist says April snowstorms are charming in their own way, but he could, it turns out, fiddle with the windowpanes.
“Sure!” says Vyshnia, giving him permission to experiment with the windows.
So, later that afternoon, the window on the right takes on new properties: if you look at it from a certain angle, you can always see a rainbow in it. Even during a snowstorm.
Another time, the floor tiles begin to change their patterns when someone steps on them: the swirls of leaves and flowers ripple slightly, but when someone comes out of the rain and splashes water from their umbrella, they scatter in all directions.
Then, Oksen hangs a shelf in the pantry and arranges it so that the needed jars or cans light up when Vyshnia looks inside.
“So, what do you think?” Oksen asks about each of his new inventions, about each attempt to go beyond traditional alchemical knowledge.
Vyshnia likes it when he asks this. His new ideas are paired with his smile—and a rather charming smile at that as she finds out later, when the conversations over countless coffees grow longer and the details more expressive: the way he snaps his fingers, groping for an idea; the way he places his hands to his hips, satisfied with the result, but forgets about his ink-stained fingers and leaves new stains on the coat, unable to pay attention to alchemy and the world around him at the same time.
Vyshnia also likes that it’s her café. So she can do whatever she wants.
One day, she can even take the wretched stone that Oksen has left in the pantry, so as not to haul it around. And throw it into the tip box to see what happens. And be surprised that in reply, the box jingles the lid joyfully, as if it has been waiting for just that. And expect a fancy surprise but get a jar of rose petal jam instead—just in time, since she used up the last one. And then go warm up the coffee machine, because the hint is obvious: there is nothing better than a fragrant cup of coffee in the morning. And finally: if someone orders coffee with rose petal jam, you will always find a common topic for conversation.
¹ Vyshnia’s name is also the word for cherry in Ukrainian.
