by James Runcie
‘Bertha, my joy, my life, my wife.’
‘You are home at last. Now I can rest,’ she said. It was clear that motherhood exhausted her.
‘I have returned with a charming new friend, my treasure.’
His wife broke off the embrace and turned to me.
‘I am pleased to make your acquaintance,’ she said guardedly, wiping her hand on her apron before holding it out for me to kiss.
She had been slicing apricots on the table, cutting them into halves, and removing the stones, before placing them into shallow white bowls. ‘We are making a compote,’ she announced, ‘and then the children will bake a cake.’
Her husband reached down and plucked up an apricot.
‘I love this fruit more than anything in the world,’ he said, letting it rest in his hand, rolling it gently backwards and forwards in his palm. ‘Look at its roundness and its simplicity. It is the greatest treasure we own; so short is its season, so rare its beauty.’
He held the apricot up in the sunlight.
‘Have you ever seen anything with a finer glow? Look at the blush on it. Admire its colour. It is the purest of pale orange, the mirror of creation. When I see a perfect apricot I know that God is good.’
‘All things mirror God’s creation,’ Bertha offered, and, indeed, it seemed that afternoon we were perhaps in a very Eden, surrounded by the laughter of children.
‘Taste,’ offered Bertha gently, turning to me. ‘I will choose one for you. Hold out your hand.’
I looked into her dark eyes and she placed the apricot in the centre of my palm. The sun gave the fruit a golden halo against my flesh.
‘Taste,’ she said again.
I looked at her husband as if to ask permission, for to partake of such nectar might have seemed an act of infidelity, so sensual was the exchange; but he simply nodded in agreement with his wife’s order and gestured that I should continue.
Biting into the soft, slightly smoky exterior, and letting the juices roll around my mouth, I was amazed by the way in which the texture of the fruit became increasingly soft, moving slowly and luxuriously from its supple skin to an intense and mellow centre.
Suddenly I could not help but think of Ignacia, the rounded plumpness of her rump, the soft liquidity of her insides, the honeyed moistness I had known.
‘What are you thinking of?’ Franz asked.
My mouth was full of apricot.
‘Is this not the purest nectar?’ he continued.
I looked at the pile of fruit before me.
‘They are as pure as the buttocks of a new-born child,’ I replied, hastily trying to banish Ignacia from my thoughts.
Bertha shuddered with disgust.
This observation was clearly a mistake.
Katharina smiled. ‘The man says they’re like your bottom, Edward.’
‘No, they’re not. His bum’s bigger,’ said Trude.
‘That’s enough.’ Bertha shuddered once more. ‘It would please me if you would refrain from such vulgar observation. We have much to do here. I have compote to produce and cakes to make.’
‘I apologise without reserve,’ I said. ‘I meant the remark in all innocence.’
‘Bum bum bum bum bum,’ sang Edward.
‘Quiet,’ shouted his mother, but the boy laughed and sang again.
‘Bum bum bum bum bum.’
‘This is intolerable.’
‘Bum bum bum bum bum.’
‘Bertha, my darling …’
‘Bum bum bum bum bum.’
‘Why do the children always do this? No one understands how difficult I find this.’
‘Bum bum bum bum.’
‘No one understands anyone, my darling. We are all individuals … cast adrift on the waters of life.’
‘Bum bum bum bum bum.’
‘You are all impossible …’ Bertha threw down her handkerchief and fled back into the house.
The children stared after her.
My friend gave chase, following his wife up the stairs, calling after her, ‘Bertha, my darling, Bertha …’
‘Bum bum bum bum bum,’ sang Edward.
‘In the name of God be silent!’ I shouted.
‘Don’t speak to our brother like that,’ admonished Trude.
We were in the Garden of Eden no more.
I must confess that I have never been familiar with youngsters and have not been able to understand how so much of a parent’s duty lies in the presentation of a mood or emotion to the rest of the family – whether it be authority, cheerfulness or patience – which its owner does not, in fact, possess. I have noticed that this often creates both tension and distress.
And yet it appears that the production of children is the most common consolation of mortality, satisfying, at least in part, the desire to salvage a spark of ourselves to live on in future generations. I therefore decided that if I were ever to truly understand the common attempt at everlasting life I would have to befriend both these children and their parents.
The first thing to do was surely to retrieve the current situation and find some form of entertainment for the three frail specimens that now stood before me.
It was not easy.
‘What shall we do now?’ I asked, realising that I had made the most inauspicious of beginnings to my stay in Vienna.
‘Mother will take to her bed. Father will comfort her,’ Trude stated, in a surprisingly matter-of-fact manner.
‘You must help us,’ offered three-year-old Edward. ‘Mama is sad.’
The children spoke as if a mature understanding of human frailty had been instilled in them at birth.
‘What about the cake?’ I asked firmly, grasping the only practical idea in my head, for I knew from the conversations with my friend that the Austrians liked nothing better than a large slice of cake.
‘Do you actually know how to make one?’ Katharina asked.
‘Is there no cook?’
‘Mother dismissed her.’
‘A maid?’
‘The cook and the maid were friends. They left together.’
‘And so you are alone. Do you not have a governess?’
‘Nobody stays here long.’
‘Why not?’ I said, looking at the green of the orchard before us. ‘It is a beautiful place.’
Katharina looked at me as if she had never met anyone so foolish before.
‘Father doesn’t pay people enough, and we are too far out of the town. The girls who look after us are lonely in the countryside and do not want to marry farm workers.’
‘And Mother says they are lazy,’ Trude added, ‘and then she cries like she did then, and we have to do everything ourselves. Why are you here?’
‘I have come to Vienna in search of employment.’
‘What can you do?’ asked Katharina sternly.
‘I write, and I speak several languages. I can also cook.’
‘Are you going to be our teacher?’ asked Trude.
‘I think your mother would not approve.’
‘Can you play with my soldiers?’ asked Edward.
‘Why do you have a dog?’ asked Trude, accusingly.
The children seemed to want to do nothing but question me. This was a considerable source of alarm because I was well aware of the ability of children to proceed to the heart of a matter by a process of direct questioning, and was still uncertain of my abilities as a dissembler. If I was forced to tell the truth about my adventures I would not know when to stop and would be accused of corrupting them with fantasy. The only option was to change the subject and avoid further inquisition.
‘Enough. We should finish making the compote and clear this away. And we must appeal to your mother’s good nature through our industry,’ I ordered. ‘Let us surprise her with cake.’
The children were extremely hesitant, and I decided that a firm hand was needed.
‘We need eggs, butter, sugar, cream and chocolate; three mixing bowls, two saucepans and a bain-marie; spoons, pale
tte knives and whisks. We also need a well-lined cake tin. Can you find them?’
‘I know where they are,’ said Katharina. ‘I have even made cake myself with Mother.’
‘Very good; then you can help. Trude, you finish the compote, and Katharina and I will start on the cake.’
‘What can I do?’ asked Edward.
‘You can play with Pedro in the orchard.’
‘I’ve just done that …’
‘Well, you can do it again,’ I replied tartly. How anyone can ever live with three children defeats me.
‘Separate the eggs,’ Katharina ordered.
‘I’ll mix the butter and sugar,’ said Trude.
Katharina placed a pan of water on the stove and broke chocolate into a bowl which rested just above the surface. The apricots were stewing on the side.
The production of the cake was, it must be said, a complicated process. The oven was heated, and Trude creamed the soft butter and the brown sugar. Katharina asked me to add six egg yolks, one at a time, to the melted chocolate. This she then stirred slowly, turning the mixture into a rich and dark luxuriant paste.
‘Now whip the whites …’ she ordered.
I pulled out my trusty molinillo, and whisked the six egg whites. The mixture stiffened and rose beneath me, frothing into frosted peaks as if they were miniature versions of the mountains I had seen in Mexico.
Trude added the butter and sugar to Katharina’s chocolate and I folded in my egg whites, together with some flour.
‘Now,’ ordered Katharina, ‘this is too heavy for me. Take it and continue stirring.’
I picked the bowl from the steam, scalding my hands, but too proud to show my pain. Katharina then held out a metal cake ring and asked me to pour the mixture gently into it. As the thick, dark confection oozed out of the bowl the pain of the burn began to surge through my hand and I was taken back to Mexico once more, to the memory of the flames as I pledged my love to Ignacia. No matter how long I lived, it would always be with me. I would take it out like a treasure, letting it roam through my head, savouring each detail: the look in her eyes, the fall of her hair, the way in which she held her head – it was a memory so powerful it could bring life to an end.
Katharina took the cake away and placed it in the oven. The slamming door awoke me from my reverie.
‘Now for the icing,’ I said, almost to myself, melting chocolate once more, and suddenly sad. This was what it was like to be lost, I thought, to be detached from life, living in memory because the present could never be so alive or so vibrant again.
‘Will this work?’ cut in Trude.
‘I am only uncertain about your oven,’ I replied. ‘I am not used to it.’
‘How will we know when the cake is ready?’ she asked.
I could not think of a response. All my confidence had disappeared.
‘When the smell of baking is at its height,’ Katharina replied seriously.
‘And when will that be?’ I asked.
‘In about an hour. It is a smell which we always know. Our mother has taught us. It is then that we know that we are at home.’
At last I began to savour the aroma of the baking chocolate cake. It seeped into the air and filled the room with reassurance, as if my confidence was slowly returning. I stopped to watch the two girls pour the icing onto a marble slab, and it seemed then that perhaps the present need not be so terrible, that there could be moments in life, no matter how small, when fear and anxiety could be stilled and the pain of absence and loss could depart, if only for a while, leaving clarity and truth lying, as it did now, in something as familiar as the simplicity of children baking.
I wanted to see the cake rise, to watch the process unfold before my very eyes so that I could fix this moment in time and remember it always. I walked across the room to open the oven door in order to relish the aroma of the chocolate as deeply as I could, to watch the mixture rise up before me. All would be well.
‘Don’t open the door!’ shouted Katharina.
It was too late.
For with these very words the mixture buckled, sagged and collapsed.
‘What have you done?’ said Trude, crossing the room to witness my calamity.
‘I don’t know.’
‘It’s ruined,’ said Katharina, pushing me out of the way, and pulling the tin from the oven.
‘You should have waited. The whole art of baking depends on temperature and patience. Do you know nothing?’
‘No,’ I replied.
No matter how long I lived my life, it seemed that I was destined to remain a man who misunderstood the art of timing.
‘Look at it,’ she cried. ‘It’s a disaster.’
The cake had buckled in the middle and now looked like an elephant’s ear. It was even thinner than when we had first placed it in the oven.
‘We’ll have to start again,’ she concluded.
Edward and Pedro bounded in from the orchard.
The boy looked at me sternly.
‘I want cake.’
‘It’s only good enough for the dog,’ said Katharina.
‘Can it not be remedied?’ I asked with an attempt at optimism. ‘Perhaps we could have a flat cake.’
‘No. It’s useless. We will have to start again. I’ll go to the hens for more eggs.’
Katharina left the room muttering a word, which I did not fully catch, but which must have been ‘imbecile’.
I looked at the sad sight before me.
There is nothing more terrifying than the contempt of children.
‘Try it,’ said Trude.
I ripped a piece and placed it in my mouth. It was warm and leathery.
Trude now tore the cake into pieces, giving some to Edward and some to Pedro, before placing a small morsel in her mouth.
‘It tastes of fish,’ she pronounced.
‘No, it doesn’t,’ I said. ‘It tastes of chocolate and egg, and perhaps a little touch of leather.’
‘Definitely herring,’ she insisted.
‘How can it taste of herring?’ I asked.
But Trude would have nothing to do with me. She threw the remaining portion on the floor, and Pedro began to tear it apart.
‘At least somebody likes it,’ said Katharina, returning to the room with six newly laid eggs.
‘Now, let’s start again. Remove the compote from the stove, and place it on the side to cool.’
I looked at the glutinous orange mixture, so dense and so rich, as if there could not be a sharper or purer concentration of apricots, and put it to one side.
Then I began to whisk the egg whites once more. As I returned to the actions of only an hour ago, and the same activity unfurled before me, it occurred to me that perhaps I would have to continue living until I learned to perform each task correctly. I would have to go on, condemned to repeat myself, again and again, until I had learned such things as never to open an oven door whilst baking. Only then might I be ready to learn about love, desire, memory, death, and all the other things that keep people awake at night.
I thought once again of my life and its past, unable to believe that this moment in which I now lived was once the unimaginable future, and that soon, all too soon, it would become long ago. And a terrible fear then struck me: the knowledge that I did not know how many lessons I would need to learn, or what tasks I must perform, before my life might right itself and I would begin to see things clearly. I had lost the nature and purpose of my quest, and was now far adrift, like a ship without steerage, rudder or anchor, with only memory to guide me.
I looked again at the quiet concentration of the children around me, at Pedro eating the chocolate cake, at life continuing in all its detail and triviality, and began to wonder how I should live my life, and what purpose would fill my days. Perhaps I would simply have to trust luck and chance, and hope that when I had learned the true nature of my fate I might be allowed to die.
These are the thoughts a man can have whilst cooking.
And so I poured the chocolate mixture into the cake tin, and again the smell of baking welled up before me. And at last, when it seemed that there was not a single space in the room, neither crevice nor corner that was not filled with the aroma of chocolate, we opened the oven door.
The cake had risen before us.
I pulled it from the heat, and placed it on the sideboard to cool next to the apricot compote.
Edward climbed onto a stool.
‘Don’t touch it,’ cried Trude. ‘Come away from there, Edward, and play with your soldiers.’
She pulled out a box of infantry and began to line the Austro-Hungarian army up against the French. Then she took a piece of thread and divided the cake into two halves.
Katharina began to prepare the icing. She placed sugar and water in a large saucepan and brought them to the boil. Then she stirred in the melted chocolate until it began to take on a threaded appearance. She strained the icing into a smaller pan, and poured the mixture onto a marble slab. As the chocolate fell, she asked me to turn and fold it with a palette knife, so that the sauce began to thicken, firm and lighten in colour.
‘This is a vital moment,’ said Katharina. ‘Trude, bring over the torte.’
Her sister turned and let out a sudden scream.
‘Edward!’
We froze in horror.
Edward had climbed back onto the stool and had covered the entire cake in apricot compote. It glistened with a new stickiness in the early evening light.
‘What have you done?’
‘Ape-cot cake,’ he said, licking the palette knife that he had used.
‘Move,’ cried Trude, pulling Edward away. He began to yelp and cry, but he was at his sister’s mercy as she shut him in the next-door room. ‘Play in there and do not come back until we tell you.’
Edward began to wail and bang on the door, but his sisters were adamant. He was banished.
‘Why didn’t you stop him?’ Trude screamed at me.
‘I didn’t see.’
‘What good are you? What good do you do? Is there any point at all in your existence?’ shouted Katharina.
‘Are you not being harsh on your brother?’ I asked quietly.
‘You don’t know anything about children, do you?’ Katharina shrieked.
‘What are we going to do?’ wailed Trude. ‘There’s no time to make another cake. Father will be down from his rest at any minute, and Mother will be hysterical.’
