Let's say the original made upon the idea of a diary (if the Dutch ever used anything similar to a Diary). While the Dutch might have used something similar as writing, they might have cultivated a habit of diary writing. So, if we suppose that, then: From the private diary of Johannes Van der Meer, Coffee Plantation Owner, Bali, 1896
* this story sketch written in a taxi, on the way from Sidemen to Padangbay on June 27th.
January 17th
The little bastards have returned. I counted seventeen of them this morning, their sleek bodies moving through the shadows of my coffee groves like ghosts. Luwaks. Civet cats. Vermin with a taste for my livelihood.
Each bean they consume is a guilder stolen from my pocket. Each night they feast, and each morning I find their droppings scattered among the roots like obscene offerings. My Javanese foreman, Wayan, suggests we set traps. I suggest we set poison.
The Governor-General in Batavia will not tolerate losses. The Company demands perfection. The Company demands profit.
February 3rd
The luwaks grow bolder. Last night, I watched one—a fat creature with eyes like amber beads—select the ripest cherries with the discernment of a connoisseur. It chewed, swallowed, and winked at me. I swear on my mother's grave, it winked.
These animals have developed a taste for my finest Arabica. The beans pass through their digestive tracts, fermenting in their bellies, and what emerges… I cannot bring myself to call it coffee.
Yet something troubles me. The luwaks refuse to touch the inferior Robusta planted on the eastern slopes. They climb past the lesser bushes to reach my prize stock. They are not merely thieves—they are critics.
February 14th - St. Valentine's Day
The plan is elegant in its cruelty. I have instructed Wayan to collect every dropping the creatures leave behind. We shall clean them, roast them, and present the result to the Governor-General as a novelty. A joke. Dutch humor, so dry it burns.
But then I thought—why waste the beans entirely? Let the slaves taste what the animals have rejected. Let them drink the residue of the luwak's digestion. It will remind them of their place beneath us, beneath the Dutch, beneath even the beasts of the field.
I have forbidden the Javanese workers from touching any coffee that hasn't passed through a luwak first. It is a beautiful punishment. Their mouths shall taste only what the animals have evacuated.
March 9th
Something is wrong.
The slaves have grown… stronger. They move differently now. Their eyes carry a light that was absent before. This morning, I watched two of them—half-starved wretches I had worked nearly to death—lift a beam that should have required three men. They laughed. They laughed.
Wayan says nothing, but I see him watching. I see him sharing his cup with the others. His cup. The one I commanded filled with luwak-processed coffee.
I took a sip myself—purely scientific, I told myself—and felt something move through me. A clarity. A purpose. My hands trembled not from weakness but from something else. Something ancient that recognized itself in the brew.
April 1st - All Fools' Day
The luwaks have become allies to the slaves. I see them now—the creatures that should fear me—approaching my workers without hesitation. The beasts come to them, vomiting up partially digested beans directly into their hands. It is obscene. It is miraculous.
The Portuguese traders who stopped here last week called it "kopi luwak" and laughed at the very idea. They said that no civilized man would consume such filth. They paid me for my regular stock and left.
They did not see the slaves at dawn, singing as they drank.
They did not notice that the slaves' wounds heal faster now. That their children cry less at night.
May 12th
The rebellion began at sunrise.
I should have seen it coming. The luwaks gathered at the edge of the plantation in numbers I could not count—hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, their eyes burning in the morning mist. They had been digesting my coffee beans for months, transforming them into something more than mere sustenance.
The slaves drank their final cups and rose.
I have never seen such strength. Such determination. Such holy fury.
The Dutch who came with me are dead. The Portuguese merchants who thought to expand their hold—dead. I survived only because Wayan took mercy, or perhaps because he wanted me to witness.
June 3rd
I am the last Dutchman on this island, and I write this from my ruined plantation.
The coffee bushes that I planted, that I nurtured, that I considered mine—they have been claimed by the people who tended them. The luwaks that I tried to poison now protect them. And the coffee that I thought was shit, that I fed to my slaves like an insult, has become their sacrament.
I have tasted it properly now. Without the arrogance. Without the contempt.
It is the finest coffee in the world. The luwak's digestive process removes bitterness, softens acidity, and imparts something I can only describe as depth. But the true secret lies elsewhere.
The slaves have been drinking it for months, and I realize now what it does. It opens something in the mind—a third eye, perhaps—that sees through the lies of colonizers. It grants the drinker the ability to endure, to resist, to rebel. Not with violence alone but with the quiet certainty that the land cannot truly be owned.
November 20th
The Dutch warships have appeared on the horizon. They will find only me, and I will tell them nothing. Let them think this island is empty. Let them spread their maps and claim territory that belongs to ghosts.
The Javanese are gone into the interior, carrying their coffee plants and their luwak companions. They are free now, and I understand at last that freedom was fermented in a creature's belly all along.
The luwaks taught them something we Dutch never could: how to transform degradation into strength. How to take what the oppressor calls worthless and make it sacred.
I have kept the last of the coffee for myself. As the cannons begin to speak their final pronouncements, I brew one cup.
It tastes of liberty.
It tastes of revenge.
It tastes like the beginning of the end for empires that believe they can digest the world and excrete it again as profit.