The Baker

by Paul Hond

  Mickey laughed inwardly: of course Shaw would be perfect. He always was.

  Shaw, expressionless, wiped his brow with a handkerchief. Mickey sized up the crowd. A hundred and fifty people, give or take; the same number that had seen him put away Tommy Childs. Ah, but this was a polite group. Would they turn on Shaw if he were to fail? Would they pelt him with coins? Scream bloody murder?

  Mickey felt a passing barbarian pride in the arena mobs he had known.

  The audience quieted down and waited for Shaw as Shaw had waited for them. In a moment, the colors of Ravel washed over everyone.

  Mickey grew restless. If Shaw deserved applause, didn’t he? Hadn’t he done anything in his life, didn’t he deserve to be honored, even just once? What about how hard he’d worked all these years? And hadn’t that work enabled Emi, back when they were starting out, to pursue her career?

  He agonized in his anonymity, and felt more restricted than usual by the protocol of concertgoing—the silence, the waiting, the rules of applause. He watched Shaw, resplendent in the light, under the dying Christ, enraptured in his music, a god.

  Mickey longed to be adored.

  Shaw was triumphant, and, after walking off, returned glistening and glowing to shouts and persistent unison applause. Clap-clap-clap-clap. Mickey joined in because it was awkward not to. There was a vague flavor of rally. The faces in the stained glass were looking down with disapproval, Mickey thought.

  Shaw played an impossibly rapid piece by Chopin, then stood, bowed deeply, wiped his brow and walked off. Mickey waited to see what would happen. People finished clapping and stood, gathering their coats. Mickey stood, but did not go out. How could he not say hello to David Shaw? Few had known Emi better than Shaw. If anyone had the answers, it was the pianist. He was the person in whom Emi would confide.

  After a moment, Mickey was the only audience member remaining.

  Shaw appeared, alone, still wearing his tuxedo under a black overcoat. Despite himself, Mickey’s spirits rose; such was the power of Shaw’s celebrity over him.

  “Mr. Lerner!” Shaw said.

  “Mr. Shaw,” said Mickey. It was their standard greeting; in response to some undefined tension in the relationship they had never arrived at a first-name basis, adopting instead the mock formal.

  Shaw approached jauntily with an outstretched hand, his face still radiant and hinting of stage makeup. As usual, he seemed to be bathed in a different light. Mickey smiled, his only regret being that there was no one around to see them together.

  “What a surprise!” said Shaw. “Are you here alone?”

  “Yes,” Mickey said.

  Shaw frowned. “It was a very modest and humble tribute,” he said. “But heartfelt, I can assure you.”

  “I enjoyed it very much,” said Mickey. “And I know she would have. She loved all those pieces.”

  “Have they found anyone yet? Any leads in the case?”

  “Not yet,” said Mickey. He’d call Flemke tomorrow, he decided.

  “And where are you staying?”

  Mickey scratched his head. “Oh, just some hotel.” He stopped short of a description. “And you?”

  “I’m staying with a friend in the Marais.”

  “Ah,” said Mickey, embarrassed by Shaw’s presumption of his knowledge of the city. Shaw could be oblivious that way.

  “Emi used to stay at the cheapest places, so she could buy those shirts you like.”

  “I’m wearing one now,” said Mickey, struck by Shaw’s remark, which seemed protective of Emi. Still, it was true: she had always bought him nice things—shirts, ties, even some silk boxers once, which he had never worn.

  “Shall we have a coffee?” said Shaw.

  Mickey was surprised by the offer, but tried not to show it. “Sure,” he said, mystified and even a little disappointed that Shaw seemed to have no other plans. They walked out of the cathedral and into daylight.

  In the square in front of the cathedral Shaw was gawked at by several people who had attended the concert. Mickey corrected his posture and sucked his features into a tense portrait of literacy as he and Shaw descended the steps and made their way toward the river.

  “And your son?” Shaw said, as they crossed a bridge. “He didn’t come with you?”

  “No. Not this time.”

  “And how old is he now?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “Eighteen,” said Shaw. He fell silent, as if in observance of the journey into manhood that Emi would never see. Shaw, Mickey surmised, knew very little about Ben; Emi would not have told him much. Mickey saw opportunities for invention.

  “He’s thinking about colleges,” Mickey said. The river rushed brown beneath them. “He’ll probably start in the fall.”

  “Oh?” said Shaw. “That’s wonderful.”

  Mickey thought he heard surprise; perhaps Emi had revealed things. But what had she said? Mickey lowered himself into his coat and hoped Shaw would drop the subject. Shaw did. He went on about the weather, as if Benjie’s name had never come up. Mickey felt vaguely persecuted. And what would happen to Ben? To both of them?

  Mickey looked around. The cathedrals, the bridges, the domes and spires looming in the fog—all seemed trapped within some insidious encroachment, a disease on the outer rim of things; Mickey perceived a ring of fire slowly eating its way to the center. He remembered the Hôtel Dakar: his suitcase, his clothes: had he locked his door? Yes—he never forgot to lock up.

  He was relieved when they had crossed the river and entered into a labyrinth of narrow streets. The shuttered windows with pots of marigold and geranium, the endless storefronts bright with food and clothing and art, the people in their suit jackets and hats and blue jeans and scarves and dresses, walking with a sense of purpose and destination; for a moment Mickey could believe, or at least hope, that this was the truer existence, and that things like poverty and suffering and fear were part of a shadow world, an illusion.

  They wandered into a mostly residential area: streets lined with crooked, sagging dwellings, the narrow sidewalks untouched by tourists. Shaw was commenting on how much safer it was to walk Parisian streets than those back home; but he expected that here, too, things would sink into an American state of violence. Mickey listened, nodding, and then his attention was arrested by the sight of a boulangerie across the street that looked as though it had been there for centuries. The building was in disrepair; paint had peeled off the shutters of the windows above. The shop itself appeared to be closed, though breads could be seen in the windows. It was places like this that gave bakeries a bad name, Mickey thought. Old and decrepit. Still, he was curious, and suggested to Shaw that they have a look, thinking too that the sight of such a quiet little shop—so clearly inferior to the Lerner Bakery, which Shaw had visited on several occasions over the years—might raise him somehow in Shaw’s esteem.

  Standing before the window, Mickey made blinders with his hands and peered in. Nothing but bread in the dimness, the brown crusts split and gridded, dusted with flour or pocked with olives, nuts, flakes of oats. Each loaf appeared so dense and heavy that any elderly person might have a problem getting one home.

  Mickey approached the door.

  “It’s closed,” said Shaw.

  But the knob turned in Mickey’s hand. The door gave, and Mickey stepped inside. Shaw came in behind him.

  The bakery was fragrant with bread, and filled with an unusual warmth; not an electrical warmth, but the primitive warmth of fire.

  Shaw said, “Maybe we shouldn’t be in here.”

  “Hello?” Mickey called into the darkness. There was no answer.

  “Maybe they stepped out for a minute,” said Shaw. He looked around. “I wouldn’t leave bread like this unattended. It’s absolutely gorgeous. Can you imagine leaving your shop unattended back home?”

  “I don’t have bread like this,” Mickey said. There was anger in his voice. What was so gorgeous? These were big, ugly, wheel-shaped loaves, none of which looked
as though it could have proceeded from a modern electric oven like his own; they seemed begotten rather than made, sprung from the elements, each bearing, on its bottom, the imprint of a hearthstone. Mickey recalled his father placing bricks on the rack of the old gas oven at the house, and how the letters on the bricks showed up on the crust of his home-baked breads. The bread was supposed to bake better that way, but as a child Mickey hadn’t been able to taste the difference, and even now he’d sooner put his money on the state-of-the-art ovens, which were calibrated to bake a loaf of bread just right.

  Shaw was looking at a shelf of round breads that were scored with the severe, slanted lines of tribal masks. He turned and said, “Maybe something’s wrong.”

  Mickey knew what he meant: an empty register, a body in the back.

  A noise came from the doorway behind the counter. Mickey felt Shaw’s hand on his elbow. Footsteps sounded on a staircase, coming closer. Then a figure appeared in the doorway. Mickey could feel Shaw’s heart jump at what looked to be a ghost, a dead man—but Mickey knew in an instant that the striking pallor of the man’s face and hands was flour.

  “Oui?” said the man. He came closer, and Mickey saw a man about his own age, broad-backed, slightly hunched, with wide, blinking eyes. His hands and arms were white to the elbows with flour, and faint yellowish stains stretched across his white apron.

  “Bonjour,” said Mickey.

  “You speak English?” said the man.

  Shaw stepped forward and began speaking rapidly in French; the man looked at Mickey with growing interest.

  “You are a baker?” the man said to Mickey. “In America?”

  Mickey blushed. Shaw smiled encouragingly at him, as if to coax him toward a dialogue; he seemed proud of the atmosphere he had created, and Mickey felt a kind of athletic pressure to perform. Shaw was ready to be amused, entertained; but there was also an impresario’s pride in his eyes, and it was to this that Mickey responded. “Well, not a baker exactly,” he said. “I own a bakery.” Never had he put it that way; he’d always said “run a bakery.” But the word “own” had chosen itself, filling the air with biblical reverberations, the music of shekels and asses and slaves.

  “You own a bakery,” said the man, “but you do not bake the bread?”

  “I have bakers.”

  “So you are not a baker.”

  “I’m a businessman,” Mickey said, more for Shaw’s benefit. Hell, he had deals all over the city. This fella here, this baker, was a toiler. It didn’t take a genius to see the difference.

  “This is a strange idea,” said the man. He stepped up to the wooden counter and planted his elbows. “A bakery owner who does not bake.”

  “I don’t think it’s strange at all,” said Mickey. “In fact, I’d say it was pretty normal.”

  “I do not mean to insult you,” said the baker. He came out from behind the counter and met Mickey face-to-face. “My name is Dulac,” he said. He held out his hand.

  Mickey had no choice but to reciprocate. “Mickey Lerner.” Dulac’s hand was smooth with flour and pleasingly warm. Shaw had faded back a few steps, a spectator.

  “I hope, Monsieur Lerner,” said Dulac, “that you do not feel, how shall I say, too important for baking?”

  “Too busy, is more like it.”

  “Busy, busy. Everyone is busy. But are you too busy to realize that civilization was built upon man’s need for bread? The cultivation of wheat—this began everything. And when the Romans perfected the rotary mill? This was one of the most important advancements in engineering and technology that the world has ever known.”

  “Well,” said Mickey. He glanced at his watch.

  Dulac picked up a loaf of sourdough. “This”—he moved the loaf up and down to express its substance—“is the stuff of revolutions. Revolutions! For when there’s not enough of it—ah, but I do not have to tell you! History itself is here. The course of human events!” He looked Mickey in the eye. “Here,” he said, coaxing with his head. “Take it. Hold it.”

  Mickey received the loaf. Christ, it must have weighed as much as a newborn. Shaw appeared beside him. Mickey passed the bread. Shaw held it stiffly for a moment, then handed it to Dulac, who seemed convinced—Mickey could see it in his eyes—that the passing around of his bread had linked the three of them in a deeply spiritual way.

  “You will not,” said Dulac, “find a better bread in Paris.”

  “Why no long loaves?” Mickey said. “Baguettes?”

  “The baguette,” said Dulac. “Everyone is concerned with the baguette. What is this? A stick! Something slim and fashionable. It is not even French—it is Austrian. A recent import.” He shook the sourdough loaf. “But this—this is authentic French bread. The bread my grandfather ate!”

  Dulac’s passion had gained a lunatic edge that Mickey feared might undermine them both.

  “For me,” said Dulac, “there is more to bread than mix and bake, mix and bake. I must know everything about my bread. I visit the fields. I want to know the machinery—the tractor, the mill. All of this is important. And the water: what is the source? It must be pure water from the spring. Bread is something that is alive; we must take great care with it. I cannot support anyone who calls himself a baker and is not concerned with every detail that goes into his craft.”

  “I guess my philosophy is different,” Mickey said. He felt it beneath his dignity to explain himself, but with Shaw nearby he couldn’t resist tooting his own horn a little. “I feed people,” he said. “Hundreds a day. My bread is shipped all over, from nursing homes to country clubs to office cafeterias. I feed the rich and the poor, the young and the old. To be frank, my customers couldn’t care less about the process. Half of them couldn’t chew a crust like this, and the other half couldn’t afford it even if they wanted to. And as for myself, I don’t have time to visit any wheat fields. Look, I appreciate what you’re trying to do here, don’t get me wrong. It’s just a matter of choice. You feed the few, I feed the many.” Mickey laughed to take the edge off his words; he knew he had won the point. “It’s funny,” he said. “My father used to bake at home. Took forever for that dough to rise.” He laughed again, effacingly. “Just wasn’t my speed, I guess.”

  Dulac nodded; he seemed defeated. Mickey felt bad for him and his little shop. The Lerner Bakery, meanwhile, bordered on an industrial works; it was unfair to make comparisons.

  “I will show you something,” said Dulac. “Something very special.” He went behind the counter, disappeared, then came up with an old stone bowl, holding it with both hands cupped around the bottom. “In this bowl,” he said, “is a sourdough culture that dates from the reign of Napoleon.”

  Mickey’s nose twitched.

  “My great-great-grandfather used this bowl,” said Dulac. “All of my sourdough bread starts here.” He offered the bowl. It was stained brown, and Mickey could smell the pungent yeast that survived there.

  “Yes,” said Mickey, suddenly remembering. “My father once told me something about starters. You take a piece of dough from your batch, let it ferment, and use it to rise tomorrow’s dough. And so on and so on. He said that breads were like families that way—tomorrow’s loaf is the child of today’s. You could have endless generations of bread by always saving a piece of dough and using it next time. I haven’t thought about that in years, but I remember being taken by the idea. That bread could give life to bread.” As he spoke, he became aware of Shaw listening to him. He went on. “My wife was a musician. A violinist. Legacy is an important thing in music. My wife could trace her lineage of teachers back to Vienna, to Mozart’s time. It’s interesting to think of bread that way. In terms of pedigree.”

  “Yes,” said David Shaw.

  Dulac put away the bowl and took up the sourdough loaf. He tore it in half with his big baker’s hands. Crumbs flew like sparks. “Taste,” he said. He pulled off a piece from one of the halves and handed it to Mickey. Mickey tore that in half and handed a piece to Shaw.

 
; Mickey put the bread in his mouth and chewed. It took him a moment to capture the taste—he hadn’t eaten a piece of bread in God knew how long—and though he didn’t want to believe it could be true, that there could be such a range in quality of something composed of flour and water and yeast, he had to admit that he’d never tasted a bread quite like it: a tangy, sour, fruity flavor that seemed to prove Dulac’s point about cheap flours, fast-rising yeast and water from the city pipes. There was a difference; it was there, you could taste it. Mickey knew his own breads probably wouldn’t stack up in a taste test of gourmets, but then he’d never claimed to have entered any Grand Prix of bread-making. And the truth was, most people he knew wouldn’t even know what to do with a hearth-baked wheel of sourdough: the damn stuff didn’t even come sliced.

  “Delicious,” Shaw said.

  Dulac puffed out his chest. “I baked it myself.” He passed out more bread. “Though perhaps that is obvious. As you can see, I am the only one here. My baker left to open his own place. I wish him well. But for the moment I am without help.”

  “Can’t say I know the feeling,” Mickey said. He sympathized with Dulac’s plight, but couldn’t resist another jab. “I have a full staff. Six bakers and a delivery man. And also a man who stays all night with the bakers to supervise the—” He stopped; Lazarus was too complicated to explain. “Anyway, it’s quite an operation. My son is taking care of it while I’m away.”

  “A family business,” Dulac said. “This is very special. You have a son, you should teach him how to make real bread, true bread.”

  Mickey tried to laugh this off; he was embarrassed by Dulac’s fervor.