Prolog: Bread
Remnants of the previous week’s snow, hard and blackened, lay in crusty mounds on the sidewalk. An endless flow of pedestrians crunched between the piles. Crossing the street, a man held his hand to his head to keep the wind from removing his hat. The morning sun sent a shaft of light through the windows of the Italian food store; the round semolina loaves, lined up and stacked on the chrome rack, glowed. In their shadow lay rows of baguettes, bagels, rye, and whole wheat. Farther left sat a company of prosciutto, rosemary, and provolone breads. Several varieties of focaccia rested below on a shelf of their own.
In front of the shelves, a young, hawk-faced woman with pale skin and blue eyes stood at the cash register. A strand of rusty hair hung over her eyes; she kept batting it back as she waited for a customer. Her father, the fat owner in his white apron, had just unlocked the door and flipped the sign from closed to open. He moved behind the opposite counter to guard his sausages as the first customers of the day entered the store–a pair of women in their mid-seventies carrying wicker baskets.
“Parmesan,” one of the women said.
“Romano, romano,” the other said, shaking her basket for emphasis. “Anna Felina always buys romano.”
The man holding the hat on his head came in and stopped in front of the bread. He gazed at the loaves, entranced, as though he had sleepwalked into the store and awaited a signal to act. Several minutes passed before he lifted his hand from his gray felt hat and removed his black leather gloves. His hair was dark, like pumpernickel, his skin light like the plain bagels. He stood quietly; the hawk-faced woman asked what he wanted.
Seeming not to have heard her, he stepped back to allow the old women to pay for their cheese.
“And a Tuscan bread,” the first woman said to Hawk Face in a demanding tone.
“Not that one, too small,” the second woman said as Hawk Face chose the nearest loaf.
The man appeared to listen to something; he stared at the loaves as if they could help him. Finally, after a minute or so, during which time Hawk Face ignored him, he pointed to a round loaf of semolina. All of the semolina brightened, glowing like moons; the other varieties grew darker.
“Did people bake the first bread, or did bread bake the first people?” the man asked Hawk Face as she punched the cash register keys. She looked at him, then at the loaves, and held out her hand for his money. The man paid and left the store. Now smiling as though at a private joke, Hawk Face watched through the door as he put his hand back on his hat and crossed the street.
The Bread Dialogs
It was morning, a month since I discovered I could talk to bread. I sliced a piece from a loaf of rye and spread some butter. The tea had steeped enough; I tossed the bag and added milk. Bit into the bread, began wrapping the loaf in plastic.
“You’re not going to finish me?” the loaf asked in a musical tone. Because bread is a collective organism, it speaks like a chorus, a blend of male and female.
I stopped wrapping and looked at what remained of the loaf. “Not now, I’m full. Maybe later.”
“But you have to. I’m getting old.”
“Everybody gets old.”
“Then put on some music.”
“I’m about to leave for work.” Bread can be demanding. Its age gives it a sense of superiority–there has been at least one loaf of bread existing in the world for 10,000 years (since the beginning of agriculture, though maybe longer, the bread isn’t sure).
“If you won’t put music on, I’ll sing.”
I slipped into the bedroom for a shirt and the bread began singing a song about making a sourdough sponge.
“Yeast is in the air.
Bread is everywhere.”
I returned to the kitchen. “I’m late for work,” I said, interrupting the loaf’s singing.
“So what? Your job isn’t vital.”
Bread is right. I keyboard text for a company that publishes books on real estate tax law. I could die and nobody would notice.
I looked out the window to check the weather. Gray drizzle. I wound a plaid scarf around my neck. My over-warm apartment always made me forget it was still winter outside. I took the rest of the loaf with me to finish for lunch.
The bread kept talking to me on the train to work. “As the protein chains grew in the primordial sea and became the bacteria base of all life, that bacteria was yeast. Yeast was the first being on a planet of rocks and sea. Therefore all life is bread.” This was the second time the loaf had explained bread history to me. I know that yeast is really a fungus, not a bacteria, but didn’t feel like arguing. Besides, I’m always careful not to talk to bread in public.
The first bread ever to speak to me was a loaf of golden semolina that I bought in the Italian food store after the final argument with Susan, whom I’d been seeing for close to two years. When I took it out of the bag and put it on a cutting board, it asked me if I was planning to toast it.
“I never toast fresh bread.”
“Okay, just checking. You seem upset.”
I began telling the loaf about Susan, about how I had found out she was having a fling with an English chef at the French restaurant where she worked as a waitress. The semolina said it would let me know if it heard anything from the baguettes in the restaurant, but I said it didn’t matter anymore.
Since then I’ve talked to at least six or seven loaves, each one different. Heavy varieties, like olive breads and anything with meat or cheese, don’t say much. White breads are the least interesting, whole grains the most thoughtful. Bagels don’t make much sense. Bread has told me that maybe one out of five million people can understand its language.
# # #
On the way home from work, I stopped to buy a loaf at a bakery near the office. I tried not to be overwhelmed by the bread sounds around me. The fat loaves of country white complained about the skinny onion baguettes, while a basket of whole wheat rolls laughed at its own jokes. I selected a loaf of something called struan. The label on the shelf said it was made from wheat, corn, oats, brown rice, bran, buttermilk, and honey. It laughed and talked at the same time, a lusty, world-loving voice full of confidence and mirth. I heard it entertaining the other loaves, whistling like the sound of a baroque flute. On the way home I bought a newspaper and some fresh mozzarella.
“You don’t need cheese with me,” the bread said from within the bag. I ignored it. We can’t always do what bread says.
At home, I opened the newspaper and scanned some headlines. I turned toward the loaf and asked: “What’s going on in the bread world right now?”
“In the Negev, a Bedouin has just pulled a fatir from a sajj and handed it to a guest at his tent. In Austin, no, that’s boring. Oh, here’s a good one.” The struan laughed, then continued. “Six blocks from here. A woman just whacked her husband on the side of his head with a long, stale baguette. He’s crying, saying: ‘She’s nothing to me, I love you honey, I was weak, it was just a fling, trust me, please.’ Ha ha ha.”
Bread has told me that the mass-produced loaves found in supermarkets are not alive, not real bread. Injected sponge, it calls them. Bread only comes to life with the slow-rise method. Mix, knead, let rise. Punch down, let rise again. “Each loaf is interconnected through its yeast culture,” bread has said.
I recently saw a man talking to himself on the train. He spoke with great animation, gesturing to the air in front of him. I thought: is that what it looks like when I talk to bread? The man’s hands were empty, but how could I know whether there was something seen and understood by him alone?
The Sound of Crust
I was born at 350 degrees in a small, white, gas oven. I first became aware inside this metal box while the yeast died, screaming silently within me. I lay upon a baking sheet, in darkness relieved only by the pulse of flame visible through round holes in the bottom of my oven-box. I burned with life. I was alone. Time meant nothing. I had being, I had substance. I wondered, is this life, this metal womb?
A sudden light: the door swung down and oven mitts reached toward me–Mother?
My creator, a young woman with hair golden like corn flour, pulled me from the oven and slid me from my baking sheet to a wire rack. As I began to cool, I exulted in my newness, stretched the limits of my crust. At this point I had no notion of those who came before me. I was the universe. Then, The Awareness overcame me–the knowledge of all bread. What can I say about the flames that catalyzed my birth that better loaves have not already said? Potatoes are always potatoes. Water boils, cheese melts, but bread alone mutates. Yeast is one form of life, bread another. From bread all life begins and is sustained.
Unfortunately, bread baking is not a genetically acquired skill, and I, a round loaf of buttermilk white bread, am the young woman’s first attempt. I dwelled too long in her oven. I have air pockets, and my crust is far too thick, too chewy. I know I don’t have a rewarding life to look forward to; when she realizes the extent of her failure, she will lose her desire to eat me, and I will mold.
Because gestation continues out of the oven, bread should not be sliced for twenty to forty-five minutes after birth. So I sit on the rack awaiting my fate. I can sense her impatience while she paces in front of me. She stops several times and stares at me unfocused, as though looking out from a dream. Her face is soft and round, like a hamburger bun. She smiles at me, touches my crust lightly, bends over to smell me. When she leaves the room, I relax .
I hear her on the phone. Then I panic. She is inviting someone to come over and share me. I wish the poor woman could understand our language, for I would tell her of her failure. Will she be embarrassed when, with anticipation flooding her senses, watched by her friend, she slices into me? The knife will struggle through my outer shell. She may flatten me if she isn’t careful. Then she will see the air pockets.
As a white bread I am sweet but not deep. Yet I have feelings. And I carry the weight of centuries of bread knowledge, bread awareness. I know the ovens of our past as well as my own birthplace. We have a fondness for brick, for the artistry of a loaf made without controlled temperatures. Sometimes, we think that bread’s time has passed. People’s lives move too quickly for us, and we do not travel well.
She’s pacing again. I wonder how far away her friend lives. In ten minutes I will be ready for slicing.
My crust will make me difficult to eat. Perhaps they will dig out the soft flesh within. Perhaps the young woman’s friend will be polite and eat me with feigned enjoyment and much butter. Oh! A horrible thought has come to me–what if they can’t recognize that I’m not a good loaf? What if they have no concept of what bread should be?
I just realized I haven’t seen her knife. I hope she has the right kind. The edge must be serrated. Pulling a loaf apart with the hands is a natural act, but mutilation with the wrong knife is agony. I fear I will be crushed beneath the clumsy pressure of an inexperienced hand and an improper blade.
What will happen to me, I wonder, after these initial slices, while I, still warm, am the center of their food world. All bread grows cold, changes in texture. A mediocre bread becomes worse. Will I sit, forgotten on the shelf until I turn rock-like? Or, into her too-small freezer to chill the life from me? Like trying to tell time from a sundial left in the shade, bread is useless if not eaten.
A knock at the door and she runs into the living room to open it. They kiss; he makes dutiful compliments about my appearance. I’m worried now. The first slice is always difficult. The waiting and then the cutting. Where is the knife? I must see it.
Good. They have a real bread knife. Twelve inches long with a seductively curved wooden handle. I palpitate. I wait. He takes it out of the cardboard packing, runs tap water over it, dries it. He’s ready. The expectation is killing me. He hands it to her. No, she gives it back. Please, please, I’m ready. Let me feel it.
Finally, he begins the first cut. The arm comes down, knife edge presses my crust. Ah, he’s experienced–he turns me on my side. I can’t breathe, I can’t think. His hands, delicate, like those of an artist. I wish he would hold me forever. The new knife bites. I feel it. Back and forth, back and forth. He saws with precise strokes. Yes, yes. I feel it. I can’t take it. I don’t want it to end. Oh oh oh. I can’t I don’t I can’t. Ahh. It’s over now. They’re eating. I can rest.
Epilog: Bread Aria
In the sky, a lone cloud slid across the blueness, borne along by the breezes of the young spring. The late afternoon sun shone just over the tops of the buildings. A man coming out of an apartment building squinted and probed his shirt pocket. He pulled out a pair of sunglasses and slid them over his eyes. On the way to the crosswalk he sidestepped a puddle of rusty water that had accumulated from a dripping fire hydrant.
Inside the Italian food store, Hawk Face watched a boy in his mid-teens bring several fresh loaves of ciabatta from the oven. She pushed a few whole wheat baguettes aside to make room. The ciabatta thanked her for giving them a spot near the cash register; she didn’t respond. She stood leaning with her elbows on the counter, staring at the cheeses and sausages in the glass case opposite her. Few customers had come in that afternoon; she kept looking at her watch. Her eyelids, colored a metallic blue, drooped over her pupils. Her chin kept bobbing as she fought off afternoon drowsiness.
Behind her, the new ciabattas, their voices purring like cats, chatted with their neighbors. They discussed the corn muffins in the basket on the counter; one loaf described them as sweet nothings of negligible nourishment. The focaccia, always pushing their pedigree, spoke in haughty tones about the quality of the mushrooms baked into their tops, while the prosciutto bread, sated by its own flavor, said nothing.
Hawk Face continued to stare at her watch, and without lifting her head called out once to the fat man behind the cheese counter, “I’m so damn bored I almost wish a bus would drop a load of tourists at our door.”
A woman with a green scarf over her head came in with a young girl; Hawk Face stood up straight and smiled, her first smile of the day.
“Either that or ice cream, but only ice cream with chocolate chunks,” the girl said to her mother. “Not chocolate ice cream. Or maybe an apple turnover and ice cream.”
“I’ll get you something sweet, but you can’t have it till after dinner.”
“Fine Momma, but I don’t want eggplant again. We’ve been having eggplant all this long winter, and I’m sick of it. Sick of it, sick of it.”
The man with the sunglasses entered; he dropped the glasses back into his shirt pocket. The breads greeted him by name: “Steven!” they said. He smiled, but walked to the back of the store, where he selected cartons of milk and orange juice. When he returned to the bread, the multigrain was singing the part of Tamino from The Magic Flute.
“O endless night! Wilt though never pass?
“When shall my eyes behold the light?”
The ciabatta, in chorus, answered, “Soon, young man, or never!”
While the woman with the scarf paid for a focaccia and an apple turnover, the girl stared at the bread and giggled. Her mother and Hawk Face apparently couldn’t hear the singing, which was so loud now it would have drowned out their comments about the weather. The girl began humming along with the bread, and continued humming as her mother led her out.
The man stood looking at the bread, which had stopped singing. He idly played with a strand of his dark hair. The semolina bread whispered to its neighbor that they knew the man would pick one of them; the multigrain, in a commanding tone, told them to hush.
“Well, order something already, before I fall asleep,” Hawk Face said. She smiled.
The man smiled back. He continued to stand before the bread, which began asking in turn, “Choose me–What about me?–Am I the right flavor?–Choose me.” The semolina glowed as he asked for one of them.
The man left the store. Hawk Face turned to watch him through the window while he crossed the street; the remaining loaves resumed the singing. For a moment as she watched, he paused to allow a taxi to turn in front of him. With a pile of baguettes between her and the window, his head seemed to be connected to the bread. The loaves became his body. She shook her head as though emerging from a dream.
