Always Different by Gyula Jenei

Author:Gyula Jenei [Gyula, Jenei]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Deep Vellum Publishing

Bread

through the pits i would head homeward from the baker’s, where

there is always a good smell and so many people that sometimes

i would stand in the courtyard and the line would spill out to the street.

the baker is tall, thin, bald, mustached, and bespectacled, but i

would rarely see him, since his wife would be the one serving,

the smiling plump woman, who would cut the huge breads with

a huge knife. she would affably swing the round-edged

bread slicer, and her mouth wouldn’t stop for a second, she

would chat with the local men and women, whose waists

would be all i could see in line, or their backs, the worn-out rags

they would wear when pouring hogwash onto the pigs

one morning at the turn of the sixties and seventies. at that time

the news would tell of the vietnam war, and i would

dread the thought of the americans dropping an atom bomb

on our necks, and of what would happen then; if my parents

started speaking of politics, someone would always cut in:

keep it down! or else: not in front of the child! it would be

eternally hot at the bakery, especially in summer. but in winter

i would also sweat in my coat while standing in line, and

the lady would slip the still-steaming, three-kilo loaf into

my mesh bag. i would go home through the pits—the adobe

was taken from there to the houses in the new part of town

fifty years earlier. i would head homeward between the scrubby

poplars, which would later grow up with me. in rainy weather

going through the pits would not be allowed, on account of

the mud. i must avoid them as i head for the pavement,

but nonetheless i take a shortcut sometimes, and then

at home they scold me for my muddy shoes. however,

on that particular morning, when i head home with the bread,

the yellow clay mud will be frozen, it will be winter, january,

because in january we always kill, and so we will have

slaughtered pork at home, a big mess of it. i get up when it

is still dark, the scorching pork hums in the dawn, and the boiling

water, which we pour onto the pig, soaks up the frozen earth, and

there will be mud in the yard, slightly bloody mud. later i

head home through the pits, the young, hoarfrosting poplars

dissolve farther away in the thin fog under the fog-gray

sky. i pick at the bread’s shiny, brown, fragmented shell

more and more impatiently, more and more hungrily,

and by the time i get it home, i have eaten a chunk of it.

they scold me for this, but not a lot—my mother also

loves the warm crispy edge. maybe she talks about the bread’s

holiness as well, but she doesn’t draw a cross on it before

breaking it. i think only my maternal grandmother

used to draw one, but i rarely see her, and when i grow up,

i will no longer remember whether she did this routinely

or just showed me once how they used to do it long ago.

it is mainly the limping singing teacher who talks about

the holiness of bread, she who always compares

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