The Baker, The Butcher and The Brewer, Part One: The Baker 22
Serial Fiction
‘This place is like a niche in the wall from where you have a perfect perspective of the plastic world and can judge one way.’ Said Suppe.
‘I don’t think so!’ Said Dvorak. ‘If you are in a niche you can only see a patch of the world. Niche is like a narrow little restaurant in the city that serves plastic food. If you sit in the back you see a small segment of the street. This is how most people see life. If you are strong willed you move to a better table. Even the best table in the restaurant by the window only gives you a small perspective of the world. In order to have a perfect perspective of the world you need, to get out and make a mess of your life. Mix up with people go to other restaurants, love, hate, piss on top of the potatoes.’
‘Everybody knows not to piss on top of the potatoes!’ screamed Verdi and everyone burst out laughing. Local humor!?
‘For me this valley is a restart.’ Verdi went on, for he was feeling more comfortable than the others being the Baker’s original company. Plus! He was drinking faster than anyone. ‘You are a young sport, you must be well fed on information technology. I will present you a parallel. Like any computer, life needs to be restarted every so often. Any desktop, laptop, server or mainframe is restarted on regular and random bases. If too many programs are running at the same time the system gets a glitch and stops working up to par. A manual software restart then is in order. If you install a new program or software significant enough to take up a lot of the memory the system prompts for a restart so it can initiate. These types of restarts do not come with much grief for they are anticipated to some degree. Sometimes, however, life gets so overloaded that it comes to a complete freeze of the operating system and all its components. When that happens you have one choice to look for the biggest bottom on the box and press it firmly. Compared to software restart a hardware restart takes longer, it is more straining for the system. But when it is finished with all analytics and the system comes back on, it’s a brand new life. Energy flows in the right channels once again and life makes sense. This place is like a hardware restart.’
Suppe started clapping followed by Dvorak and Archibald and everyone else.
‘Plus! Our wine is not plastic!’ He added smiling.
‘He is an engineer turned brilliant writer.’ Whispered Suppe.
‘My father had a belly but I escaped that beaten path and found my own in the world of fit people. But now I will reword myself with some cheese.’ Said Verdi, walking away to the massive stone table containing all the fat.
‘My father has a belly as well.’ Uttered the Baker.
‘You have managed to escape his path as well. Statistically and psychologically if your father has a belly it becomes highly likely you would have one as well.’ Dvorak.
‘Was it a beer belly?’ Smiled Suppe.
‘No it was I-am-borne-rich kind of belly.’ The Baker wiped the smile right off Suppe’s face.
‘So it was composed of fancy plastic.’ Someone exclaimed.
At that moment their attention gravitated to Verdi who was packing meat and cheese between two pieces of bread and devouring them. The music stopped.
‘He is still in the process of escaping from the grip of his bad old habits.’ Grinned Suppe.
‘Why what’s wrong with a sandwich after a few glasses of wine!’ Objected the Baker.
‘The flavors of life are meant to be enjoyed gently, individually, one after another starting with the mild and working your way up. It is fundamentally wrong to ground them up and stuck them between two pieces of bread. It creates bad habits and lays grounds for mediocrity.’ The fire played on his stone serious face as he walked up to Verdi snatched the sandwich from his hand and threw it vigorously into the darkness manifesting his words. Verdi bowed gently, took a small piece of cheese from the table and disappeared into the darkness.
As the stars grew bigger and the shadowy shape of the mountain emerged from complete darkness most of the folks had left. The fire had grown small and the food was taken away. Like everything else close to perfect these people knew when it’s time to stop. The Baker hadn’t even finish one glass of wine for the duration of the whole evening. He stared at the red liquid that was older than him when a tiny drop flew down and splashed in it. He looked up and another landed right on his forehead. It was beginning to rain and the very first drop produced by the clouds after traveling alone from the sky found final comfort in his glass of wine. That put a smile on his face and he slipped the wine along with the raindrop in his throat. He felt invincible as part of this very singular moment in time.
Billions of raindrops started speeding down to earth, disappearing as soon as they land into a river without a name. It was poetry. He felt like this rain came down just for him and no one else, to purify his soul. As much as it was a cliché it was also a significant symbol of rebirth, restart, retrospection, reflection and the spring of his new strong beginning. He was going to start up on the spiritual ladder of the human character and live for something bigger better and more significant than himself.
‘I see the rain is doing you good.’ Archibald intercepted his thought. He looked around and it was only the two of them. The fire was bravely fighting the sky with its last bluish flames. It was time for a good night’s sleep.
‘You are right it is time. You are going to need that sleep!’ Guessed his thoughts the wizard of the mountain. ‘I remember when I came to the edge of a cliff and new my life was about to take a sharp turn upwards. It feels good.’
‘I thought you were born this way.’ The Baker smiled to himself in the dark.
‘Nobody is born great.’
‘Creating great memories is worth the hard work. What is the most vivid memory you have from that day?’
‘It’s funny. It was the same day I lost my hat.’
PREVIOUS CHATER – THE BAKER 21
more by PETER ODEON
Photograph by Martin Stanėk
