by Dan Rhodes
They wished his poet’s heart could have drawn him to any of the other girls in the town, a girl with whom he would maybe have had a chance, but they all seemed invisible to him. For months the notes he had been playing had seemed to have been chosen at random, but around this time they began to ease into one another to create a sound that was quite extraordinary, and before long the town had become accustomed to the heartbreaking tunes that came from his window every evening as the sun dipped behind the mountain.
Amid all this there was a consolation. Unlike his predecessor, when the time came he was able to hold down a job. He left school at the earliest opportunity to begin his informal apprenticeship in the family trade, and his father was delighted to find that the boy absorbed his expertise with no difficulty. He started by cleaning the ovens and the trays and oiling the machinery, and having proved himself accomplished and reliable in these disciplines he moved on to the baking itself, first just helping his father and doing exactly as he was told, but soon trying his own twists on the family recipes, seeing if there was any way in which he could improve them, and collecting recipes from around the world. Far from drifting in and out of concentration, he focused on his tasks with a single-mindedness that surprised everybody, and it wasn’t long before it was generally agreed that he was the finest baker the town had ever known. Even his father was prepared to admit that his young son had superseded him, and he slept soundly at night knowing that when the time came he would be able to hand the business over to him. The boy baked cakes and an extensive range of pastries to a level far beyond that which had previously been considered perfection, but what people talked about more than anything else was his bread. Nobody had ever tasted bread like it, and on market days father and son would have to rise at midnight to get enough ready to meet the demand.
Although he was pleased to know that he was helping his family’s business to thrive, the boy’s devotion to his work really had only one motivation: the thought that sometimes something that came from his oven, something he had worked on and worked on until he had got it just right, would be bought by Madalena’s mother and would end up on the soft lips, in the warm mouth, and in the sacred belly of the girl he loved. Every once in a while he would catch a glimpse of her as she walked past the shop on her way to or from school, and sometimes she would take a moment to inhale the delicious scents that drifted into the street. And then there were the times when he would see her walking past with a boy, a boy taller than he was, and much, much more handsome. And whenever this happened she didn’t seem to notice the bakery. It was as if the sweet tastes within, and the scent that wafted outside, meant nothing to her. Nothing at all.
As the young baker’s reputation grew, the mothers of the other local girls wished he would stop looking only at Madalena and notice their daughters instead. He was a pleasant young man, always ready with a smile and a joke as he served customers or made his rounds of the town on his bicycle. A lot of their daughters thought along the same lines. They knew he wasn’t nearly as handsome as Mauro, but then nobody was. There was no question that he would make a good husband for some lucky girl, if only he would give up his impossible love for Madalena. The sound of his euphonium drifting through the evening air told them he could never let go of her, and one by one the girls, and their mothers, began to look elsewhere.
One summer day, hearing that Madalena was soon to leave town to study in the city, he approached her as she sat alone in the town square. They had encountered one another at school, and had exchanged pleasantries across the bakery counter, but they had never really had a conversation. She knew, though, what he felt in his heart. Time and again she had seen the love in his eyes, and she longed for the day when he would find somebody else to adore, somebody who could love him in return, but as he sat beside her she saw that his devotion was as steadfast as ever. He opened a paper bag and offered her a jam doughnut. With a smile and a gesture, she declined it.
‘Please,’ he said, still holding the paper bag towards her.
This time she accepted it, and took a bite. It was delicious. At first it had a crispness to it, then it softened and seemed to turn into a light syrup that slid down her throat, as smooth as water from a mountain spring. ‘You are a wonderful baker,’ she said.
‘Thank you.’
She tried to find some words of comfort. ‘One day you’ll make your wife very happy.’
He shook his head, and began the speech he had been planning for so long. He told her he loved her, but from the very start he had known that he had no chance of her returning his feelings. He wished her every happiness. ‘There will always be a gap in my life, but it’s a gap I will treasure.’
‘You’ll find somebody else,’ she said. ‘I just know it.’
He smiled sadly, and shook his head. Madalena knew he was right. He would never find anybody who would make him feel the way she made him feel. Just as the thought of Mauro made every cell in her body dance, he would have felt the same way about her. Mauro returned her love though, and she could only imagine how she would feel if he didn’t, if he had fallen not for her but for one of the other girls in the town. She wished there was something she could do to make things better for the young baker, but she felt helpless.
‘I will never be a bother to you, Madalena,’ he said, ‘but I am going to ask just one thing.’
She didn’t say anything. She dreaded what he was going to ask of her.
‘Wherever you are in the world, when you find yourself breathing in the smell of baking bread will you, just for a moment, think of me? I don’t expect you to think of me with love, but if you could think of me with just a small measure of fondness . . . Will you do this for me, Madalena?’
She nodded. He was not asking too much. She loved the smell of baking bread, and she could never think ill of this boy who had done her no harm. She wished she could offer him further words of hope, but she knew it would be for nothing. ‘I will,’ she said. ‘And I’m so sorry.’
The young baker saw the girl’s boyfriend approaching. ‘Here,’ he said, offering her the paper bag. ‘Take the rest of them. Share them with your friend.’ He wished he could have made his way through life without knowing the name of the boy who had captured the heart of the only girl he could ever love, but in a town this small it was impossible, and there was no point in pretending otherwise. ‘Share them with Mauro.’
Madalena took them without a word, and the young baker stood up and walked away.
Mauro arrived, and sat beside her. ‘What was that all about?’
Madalena cast her eyes down. ‘Oh, nothing really.’
But he knew. He had not been oblivious to the emotions that lay behind the sound of the young baker’s euphonium, and he too felt sorry for him. They watched him until he was lost from view.
Madalena offered a doughnut to Mauro. He took a bite, and raised his eyes to the sky. ‘Unbelievable,’ he said. He took another bite, and shook his head. ‘How can anything taste so good?’
They sat under the tree, and for a long time neither said a word.
VII
His working day over, the old man sat alone at his kitchen table. He cut a thin slice from the cake, put it on a plate and stared at it for a while before eating it much as a heron eats a fish: from a state of near stasis erupted a single lightning motion, and it was gone. He cut another slice and ate it in the same manner, then did the same again. He knew that before long the whole cake would be inside him, that he would spend some time staring at the empty tin. But for now it was there in front of him, and it might as well have been the only thing in the world. He was struck by everything about it: by the way it looked, by its aroma, and by its texture both on his fingers and in his mouth. But what he liked most of all about Pavarotti’s wife’s cake was its delicious taste.
PART TWO
I
A time will come when the doctor’s house is a rogue landmark, attracting traffic from all over the city and beyond. Some drivers will slow to a cra
wl, trying to appear as if they are looking for a house number and have no idea that there is anything exceptional about the street, while others will come to a shameless halt and get out to take photographs. When the place is no longer considered a crime scene and the police have gone away, people will arrive after dark to climb over the fence and explore the garden. By then it will be an earthy wasteland, every inch having been excavated to a depth of at least three metres, and the visitors will leave with their pockets stuffed with souvenir pebbles and splinters of wood. There will be no formal objections when the house, already denuded by the investigation, is pulled down and the ground rolled flat.
For now though, it looks like any of the houses in this part of the city, its paintwork just as shiny, its roof as free of moss and its driveway as well-swept, but for the doctor’s neighbours it stands apart. To them it is not so much a home as a monument to his quiet bravery.
The doctor had chosen the house without thinking a great deal about why he had done so, and it was only when he moved in and saw how little room his packing crates took up that he realised the absurdity of living alone in such a large place. He knew at once that he should have bought a cottage or an apartment, but he did nothing to correct his mistake, and he soon stopped paying attention to the doors that led to empty rooms.
Every so often he would encounter an attractive fellow doctor at a conference, or a charming divorcee at a social function, and would begin to wonder whether he was ready to let somebody into his life, somebody with whom he could fill the space that surrounded him. He would sigh, but before this sigh was over he would see an image of Ute glaring at him, challenging him to love the other woman more than he loved her, and every time her victory was immediate and absolute.
At least he has Hans to keep him company, his neighbours said to themselves, as they passed by. It would be terrible to think of him alone in there with all his memories.
Doctor Fröhlicher was on his second Hans. He had bought the first one to surprise his bride shortly after they had returned from their honeymoon, hoping that a puppy would help make their apartment feel like a home. On seeing the tiny black Labrador looking up from its basket, Ute had narrowed her eyes and said, ‘You’re not expecting me to look after that thing?’ This was not the reaction he had been wishing for, and quietly he told her that he would be the one to feed and exercise the animal. Thinking it might bring his wife and the dog closer together, he had asked her what she would like him to be called, and without a moment’s hesitation she gave her reply. He hadn’t dared ask her why she had chosen that name, and as the possibilities assaulted him he berated himself for allowing the terror to take hold.
‘Hans,’ he said. ‘A fine name.’
In time Ute found it would sometimes suit her to pay attention to Hans, flamboyantly petting him while her husband looked on, and taking him for walks, returning hours later. When the doctor asked where they had been she would only say, ‘Out.’
When this first dog had arrived in the city he had a greying muzzle and a touch of stiffness to his legs, and although he had carried on for a few years, it was no great surprise when one morning the doctor had gone downstairs to find his companion’s heart had stopped beating in the night. As news of the dog’s passing spread through the streets the doctor’s patients said, If only he was a vet – maybe then he could have saved poor Hans. A few months later he bought a second black Labrador puppy, which he also called Hans, and it was with relief that people agreed that black Labradors are all more or less the same, and one can quite efficiently be replaced with another. If only, they thought, the same could be said of wives.
As usual the doctor had risen early. He stood in the kitchen, waiting for his Fair Trade coffee to cool and scratching Hans behind the ears. ‘It’s just as delicious as ordinary coffee,’ he said to the dog, ‘and what better way to start the day than with a good deed?’ He was about to start preparing breakfast when the telephone rang. He had not heard from the old man for some weeks, but he knew it would be him. He answered.
‘Oh dear,’ he sighed, smiling. Hans looked up at him as the conversation continued, its template familiar. The doctor put down the phone, and told the dog he would be returning before long. He put his stethoscope around his neck, picked up his portmanteau and walked through to the car.
Summer had begun, and it was starting to get light as the garage door opened, and then the gates, and he drove towards the museum.
II
The old man had heard nothing, but in the middle of the night he was woken by the familiar sensation of a light, spindly leg on his cold skin. He knew from experience what this meant; that something had happened in the rooms below, something that would need to be dealt with. He felt the spider cross his cheek, then pause for just a moment before darting into the hollow of his mouth. As it thrashed around, frantic as it struggled to find a way out, he trapped it with his tongue, and with his back teeth he ground it to a paste. He swallowed, then extended a thin arm and set his alarm for five o’clock. Moments later the quiet of the room was broken by the rumble of his breath.
The room filled with a furious beep. With a long, grey finger he slid the switch on the alarm clock to off, then he rose to his feet, picked up a plastic torch and walked downstairs. There was a familiar faint metallic quality to the air, and his nose led him to Room Nine, where the smell was thick and unpleasant. As was often the case, there was more than just blood to be dealt with. He opened a window to let in fresh air, then went to a utility cupboard where he picked up a pile of old newspapers that he kept for this reason. He placed them on the floor around the body, and went down to the front desk to make his call to the doctor. Twelve and a half minutes later he was fully dressed and standing by the back door.
The knock came precisely on time, and he stood aside as the doctor entered.
They went up to Room Nine, and the doctor stepped onto the damp, dark newspaper and looked down. ‘Once again,’ he sighed, with a sympathetic smile, ‘it seems we are too late.’ He looked for a while longer, then turned to the old man and said, gravely, ‘My medical opinion is that the unfortunate gentleman is completely dead.’ He walked up and down a few times, crouched, and delivered his post mortem, telling the old man what was already apparent – that the deceased had most likely perished at some time in the early hours of the morning as a result of the loss of blood from a series of self-inflicted wounds to the left wrist. He pointed at the knife, which lay beside a display unit on the other side of the room, a smear marking its course. He continued: ‘Judging by the aroma emanating from the body it would seem the deceased soiled himself in his final moments.’ The people they found had seldom died cleanly. The doctor wondered why this was always left out of films and theatrical productions: surely, he thought, it would be more realistic for Juliet to find Romeo lying in a puddle of his own urine, and for her to vomit all over the Capulet tomb as she sends her body into shock by digging the knife into her heart.
The doctor had come prepared, bringing with him a woollen blanket in which to wrap the body. When that was done they took one end each and carried it down to the back door. After a few hurried words about the importance of breakfast, the doctor checked for passers-by. He gave the all clear, and together the men bundled the corpse into the back of the car.
The old man finished cleaning up. The floor was well-sealed, and nothing would seep through to the ceiling below. Wearing a rubber glove, he picked up the stinking newspapers, stuffed them into a bin bag and went back into the cupboard for a mop and bucket. He added cleaning fluid to the water to mask the smell, and when the floor and skirting board were clean of congealing blood he checked the displays, using a handkerchief to wipe off the occasional spot. He looked around to see if anything had been left behind. The knife was still there, but that was all. He picked it up. It looked new, and sharp. He would use it for his cheese. After checking the stairs for his or the doctor’s footprints, mopping a few marks as he went, he put the cleaning apparatus away.
The smell was fading, but it remained unpleasant. He left the windows open. If Hulda was to ask him why Room Nine’s floor was damp he would tell her he had dropped a mug of coffee, that it had gone everywhere and he had mopped it up. If she mentioned that she had found any stray dark spots or smears he would say that a visitor had suffered a sudden violent nosebleed. He had prepared these explanations some time before, but had never yet had cause to use them.
Back in his kitchen he sat down for breakfast, and as he lifted the dry cracker to his mouth he noticed something stuck in the gap between two of his back teeth. He levered it out with his tongue, and transferred it to the tip of a long, grey finger. It was the dark brown leg of the spider that had crawled into his mouth in the early hours of the morning, just as the blood had spilled from the body downstairs. He counted. Five of the seven segments were there: the femur, the patella, the tibia, the metatarsus and the tarsus. Only the coxa and the trochanter, the short sections closest to the body, were missing. The skinny leg was coated in brown hairs, and there at the end of the tarsus, so small it was barely visible, was the spider’s claw, perhaps the one that had woken him in the night. He put it back in his mouth, chewed it, and swallowed.
III
The doctor peeled away the blanket, and looked at the body. Hans had come out to greet him, and he told the dog, as he often did, that one of the benefits of mental or emotional collapse is that often there will only be minimal physical symptoms to accompany the inner turmoil. Sometimes, he continued, the person will be overweight or, as in this case, underweight, but in terms of taste either was preferable to somebody who had died after a long and debilitating illness. He was concerned, though, for himself and Hans not to ingest any second-hand poison. They would be unlikely to die from eating the amount that would make it through to the meat, but it would result in them getting upset stomachs, and he didn’t want that.
