The Baker's Secret(5)
“Don’t say that,” the Goat shouted, flapping the arms of his fraying coat. “You are preaching despair. You don’t know anything.”
Emma considered him a moment, then pinched her nose with her fingers and went back into the bakery. The Goat let his hands fall to his sides.
“Whichever approach they use,” she heard Guillaume say, “the Allies are preparing to win. We must be patient.”
Patient? It would have been easier for the people to hold their breath for a month. Perhaps slavery is harder for a person who has known freedom. Perhaps it does not matter.
The villagers chafed under so many rules, and found small, perhaps pathetic ways of rebelling. For example, the time of day.
The army’s home country lay in a different time zone, sixty minutes ahead. When the occupation began, the villagers were ordered to adapt. Yet without any overt collusion, they routinely arrived at events an hour late. They would claim confusion, or having been misled by the town hall clock, and the soldiers could only conclude that the people of Vergers were exceptionally stupid. No matter how emphatically the officers insisted on punctuality, or how many posters they hung about order, the villagers remained one hour out of reach.
A man could be outwardly obedient, but tardiness revealed his inner determination, proof that slavery affects only the body. It does not include possession of the heart.
The one schedule villagers did obey was distribution of meat rations. Then they became sheep. Even the strongest are humbled by hunger. Odette told everyone that it was only meat that gave bodies strength, that kept an empty stomach from gnawing at itself.
She was likeliest to know. Odette ran the town’s sole surviving café—a ten-table establishment that served locals and soldiers without discrimination. A few villagers still had cash, and Odette accepted foreign currency as well. Her supplies came from the black market, to which the soldiers turned a blind eye so long as their plates had decent portions and their glasses were filled to the brim. For locals, her prices were inflated. For the occupying army, they were rapacious.
Odette was mannish despite her prodigious bosom. Short-haired and stocky, her sleeves perpetually rolled up, she made no promises, negotiated without mercy, and bullied anyone who questioned the bill. Odette had no family, both parents dead and no siblings or spouse, so her café became home, her customers a form of kin.
The rest of the people depended on their gardens, and the occupiers’ paltry rations. Everything else, the army took for itself. The young soldiers looked ruddy and hale, while the middle commanders developed paunches from too much local Camembert. The villagers grew gaunt, meanwhile, the women’s breasts losing fullness, the men’s arms hanging flaccid.
Emma’s solution was to bake illicit bread.
Chapter 2
First she was Uncle Ezra’s washerwoman. Ranked below Albin and David, apprentices for three and two years respectively, who had never scrubbed pots with enough effort or scoured muffin tins with sufficient digging, Emma swept and carried, cleaned and dried, while Uncle Ezra ranted continuously about how, whatever she did, she had done it wrong.
“Imbecile. If you use soap in a cast-iron skillet, you scrub away years of seasoning unique to that pan. It is like burning a memoir.”
Or, on another day: “Dolt. If you use lye on a cutting board, you spoil the natural oils and render it as useless as a plank.”
Or, on another: “Numbskull. Must you let the screen door slam as though no one here has ears? Have mercy, and stop it with your heel or head or your beastly backside.”
Once she prevented the door from slamming, however, Emma noticed that Uncle Ezra did not throw away the cutting board or the cast-iron pan. He oiled the former, buttered the latter, and went about his business.
Next he taught her how to sharpen a knife, though of course she wrecked the blade, ruining its temper and making it brittle. But later her knives cut well. He showed Emma how to measure, but of course the quantities were unacceptably wrong because liquids cling to the sides of cups, and solids sort themselves out smaller with a little shaking. Yet the croissants turned out flaky and the cookies tasted sweet.
He would ask for a pan, any pan, hurry up, then criticize whichever one she handed him as too small or too large. Yet he used it nonetheless. He would open the oven door, insist that she must have neglected to clean it the day before because it was still filthy, then slide popover tins onto the oven rack anyway.
For months Philippe spent a portion of every afternoon listening as Emma recounted that day’s insults. After attending with his customary patience, he would grab her hand and pull her into a hedgerow to steal kisses. Always Emma protested; always she allowed him to prevail.
Gradually, however, she noticed a result from Uncle Ezra’s caustic tone: once he had chastised her for a mistake, she never made it again. Popovers, for example, always went into a cold oven; preheating prevented them from filling with air. Right or wrong, name-calling and scorn were his ways of teaching. She began to pay closer attention, observing his methods, eavesdropping on every criticism he gave the boys. They bent under the withering weather, delivered in a daily downpour, but Emma at the sink would stop the running water, silence the blender, pause the giant mixer so that she did not miss a word.
Some days after work, the Goat would be standing at the corner, picking at something or arranging his clothes. Emma turned in the opposite direction although it meant a longer route home. Or, if Philippe had come for her that day, she would seize his arm and walk especially close as they passed on the sidewalk. Philippe would say hello to Didier but Emma held her tongue. Her sweetheart smelled of motor oil and she of soap. The Goat wore an atmosphere of filth.