The Baker's Secret Read online

  The fastest-growing crop of that season was indignation. When a man has raised a calf, fed it, and milked it, and he sees the full frothing bucket taken away for someone else’s breakfast, the woes of elsewhere dwindle and his stomach is not all that grumbles. Only nursing mothers, pregnant women, and young children were permitted to receive a ration of milk. The occupying army insisted that this was an act of generosity. Thus did the people learn that thirsting occurs on many levels.

  Some said that the coastal villages had it easier, with mere occupation. Should the Allied liberators ever rouse themselves and come to their aid, however, these lands would be the likely place of collision. No man offers his wheat field to serve as a battlefield. No woman wants her home to be a bunker.

  Many days Emma saw the Allies’ bombers far overhead, aimed at some destination hundreds of miles inland, her village’s predicament so far below it might as well have been the circumstance of ants. From time to time they would cast their wreckage down, tumbling tin caskets that caused destruction so casual she wondered if these pilots might not be enemies after all: the main road to Caen destroyed, four bridges punctured which previously had enabled farmers to come to market, one of the nicest vacation homes on the bluff above the beach blown into a million bits.

  The veterinarian Guillaume, a broad-shouldered man with great bushy eyebrows, explained everything to a group in the village one afternoon. Famously a devoted bachelor, Guillaume had later in life found himself a small-boned wife, a considerably younger woman, in Bayeux. Initially people thought Marie was a snob, but gradually they learned it was only that she was as shy as a newborn deer. They had just the one daughter, Fleur, barely a teen but already a staggering beauty. Timid like her mother, she wore a blue apron with patch pockets, in which her hands continuously fiddled with whatever lay hidden there.

  Days after hanging the verboten posters, the occupying army was away performing maneuvers on the beach, their trucks and tanks and the thud of mortars firing, which enabled Guillaume to speak freely. Still the people formed a tight scrum in front of the row of shops, shoulder to shoulder.

  The one exception was the Goat, who listened from the periphery. A ragged young man with a half-grown beard whose actual name was Didier, the Goat sometimes slept on a shelf in Emma’s empty hog shed, emerging in the morning steeped in the smell of pig urine, a scent as pungent as ammonia. Also, he would argue over the least thing. Once she had heard him dispute with Yves, an experienced fisherman, over the direction of the wind. Whether it was due to his fragrance, therefore, or his antagonistic nature, the villagers’ otherwise close circle gave the Goat ample room. Emma, too, kept her distance from the group—and from the Goat, because of an event in their school days about which she was still angry. She lingered in the doorway of Uncle Ezra’s bakery, a mixing bowl in the crook of her arm, a wooden spoon in her free hand. Eyeing something across the square, she stirred and listened.

  “The Allies are fighting an intelligent war,” Guillaume said. He had a low, calm voice. “It is all quite deliberate. The fuel for our enemy’s trucks and tanks comes by rail, for example, and many of the tracks are now destroyed.”

  No one asked how he knew such things. Since membership in the Resistance was a capital offense, and since the occupying army mandated that villagers report anyone suspected of belonging, likewise on a threat of execution for failing to do so, not asking was a combination of impeccable manners and self-preservation.

  In a rural village, moreover, few people were more trusted than a veterinarian. A sick cow could mean disaster for a small farm. The man who came at any hour and stopped the illness, preventing it from spreading to the herd, saved lives. While a physician must understand the human body in great detail, a veterinarian must have comparable knowledge about horses, pigs, goats, dogs. As a young man, Guillaume had even traveled all the way to Ghent, attending for two full years its eminent school for the health of livestock.

  Guillaume had famous hands—giant and strong, yet capable of acts of astonishing delicacy—which the villagers had seen deliver a breached calf, resuscitate a lifeless piglet, and remove the worst of boils from the eye of a retriever. They had also watched those hands dispatch an animal beyond saving, the deed done with compassionate speed.

  Beyond those credentials, Guillaume accepted payment in whatever currency a farmer possessed: money, food, gratitude. Thus not a villager questioned his knowledge of military doings.

  He continued: “Those bridges were stout enough to hold tanks, which now have a nine-mile detour to reach the coast. That damaged road was the fastest way for the enemy to bring reinforcement troops to our beaches. Now there can be no counterattack.”

  Guillaume drew in the dirt with a stick as he spoke, mapping and explaining, and when he finished he swept it all away with his boot.

  As the group straightened, digesting the news, Emmanuelle made a declaration from her bakery doorway. “It is a fairy tale.”

  Guillaume tossed the stick aside. “What is?”

  “This strategy nonsense. All wishing and self-importance. We are far too small to be part of any elaborate scheme.”

  “Our village, perhaps. But not our location. It is possible that an invasion here would be the tip of the Allies’ spear.”

  “Then we will be impaled upon it,” she replied, stirring a moment, and speaking to her bowl. “Train tracks and bridges are diversions, to keep the occupying troops busy building defenses here, to weaken their army in the east.”

  Guillaume nodded. “That may be, Emma. But how do you know these things?”

  “Everyone knows. Everyone with a radio.” Emma cast her gaze down at the assembled group. People looked away or at the ground.

  “The great Allied tank commander who won in Africa was seen near Calais,” she continued. “If we know this, then the invaders certainly know it. At best, we are a decoy.” She waved her spoon at the circle of them as a witch would conjure a spell. “The Allies will never rescue us. They will never come.”

  “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 bri
m. 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.

  In Emma’s third year at the bakery, Albin’s father fell from a hayloft and broke his leg. Despite six years of investment in apprenticeship, Albin seized on the excuse to return to the family farm. Six months later, David dropped a twenty-kilo bag of flour, which made a small cloud when it burst. As Uncle Ezra delivered his predictable berating—the boy was a buffoon and an idiot and a true horse’s ass—David removed his apron in a sort of slow motion. He hung it on the hook in back with similar ponderousness.

  “Where are you going?” Uncle Ezra cried. “We have unfinished work today. The mayor has requested a napoleon.”

  David left without bothering to prevent the door from slamming.

  The baker stood with hands on his hips, fuming. Emma, having interrupted her scrubbing in order to hear the lecture, stared into the soapy water. Uncle Ezra worked his lower lip back and forth as though he were chewing it. Beside an oven that held three cheesecakes, a timer ticked away. The two of them were alone for the first time.

  “He was lazy,” Emma said at last. “I watched him drop a bit of eggshell into a cake batter, and not bother to spoon it out.”

  “What? When?”

  “Yesterday. I removed it when he was in the cooler.” She pulled the plug from the drain, which choked loudly as it emptied, and continued, “Albin sneezed with his mouth open.”

  “What? Disgusting.”

  She shrugged. “I always replaced the recipe he did it in front of.”

  “How long have you been helping them?”

  Emma stared into the gleaming sink. “Since I began here.”

  “Damn it,” Uncle Ezra said, punching his fist into his other palm. It was the first time Emma had heard a man swear, and she blushed. “And now I suppose you will be leaving soon too?”

  For Emma, the moment was fragrant with opportunity. She scanned the shop, pies cooling in the front window while rolls and loaves and one unsold breakfast croissant sat in the display case. David’s broken bag had not yet been swept up, which could only be done after saving as much unspilled flour as possible. Normally, that would have been her duty.

  Meanwhile on the main counter there stood the mayor’s unfinished napoleon—also known as thousand-leaf cake because of its many thin layers of alternating puff pastry and pastry cream, a test of any baker’s patience—and all that remained was to frost the top. Uncle Ezra had been preparing to do exactly that when he paused to rain invective upon David: the frosting sleeve was already filled, a medium gauge nozzle at its tip, a bowl of melted chocolate alongside for dripping a design onto the frosted top.

  The baker remained with hands on hips, his question hanging in the air. Emma wiped hands on her apron, strode to the counter, picked up the frosting sleeve, and turning it gently clockwise, began to wring a stream of white confection out the nozzle in exact sympathy with the pace of her movement around the cake.

  Uncle Ezra came to stand beside her, watching. She could hear him breathing. When she pinched three fingers together to dip in the chocolate, he opened his mouth to speak, but as she drizzled the dark brown in a rosette on the frosting, hovering the bowl near in her free hand so no errant drip would mar the white, he said not a word. When the napoleon was completed, she drew the back of a knife across her design, an X in three directions to give it flair. Uncle Ezra sniffed and crossed his arms.

  “Yes? Did I do something wrong?”

  He chewed on his lower lip a moment before answering. “Two years.”

  “Two years until what, sir?”

  “Until you become my competition.”

  Chapter 3

  From that day forward they were equals, the grouchy baker and his apprentice of sixteen, seventeen, and more. Production increased. The shop’s reputation grew. People traveled from Caen, from Bayeux, from Honfleur, saying they had heard of this cake or that pie, this bread or that pastry.

  The story of the shop was part of its appeal. Nearly every customer had heard about the pie crust made with butter and olive oil, about the baker who wanted no women but took as apprentice a young girl. Yet no tale would make Emma an expert. Talent was but one ingredient in a lengthy recipe. She knew enough to make mastering the basics her first goal. Also she continued to pay attention, interrupting herself midtask to watch Uncle Ezra whisk sugare
d cream of tartar violently into a gentle meringue, or fold one batter into another to make a third, new thing. Soon enough she began to intuit how to apply basic principles in new circumstances. She started to improvise, baking raisin muffins, adding a flourish to frostings, making sauces and reductions for Odette’s café.

  One Christmas Eve—Emma was nineteen, taller than Uncle Ezra, more confident every day—she stood in the shop doorway beside him, helping distribute the fabled sticky cinnamon rolls. They had shared the work equally: him baking, her toasting the pecans, him kneading the dough, her blending brown sugar with butter to make the glaze, and both of them pouring the sweet nectar over finished rolls for the village children with so much care it could only be an act of love. He gave the treats on squares of wax paper while Emma kept track, making sure no clever boy managed to get himself more than one.

  Up skipped the Monkey Boy, whistling and wearing an elfin cap. His mother prodded him to say thank you. “Happy Christmas, Aunt Emma,” he said.

  “Never,” she shouted, surprising herself. “It will not be.”

  She turned and bolted back into the shop. Uncle Ezra frowned at the tray of rolls in his lap, then groused at the next child to hurry along. Emma did not speak of it until she sat with her father and Mémé that evening at Christmas dinner.

  “I will not become Uncle Ezra,” she declared, balling her hands into fists.

  “Of course not,” her father said, but then he coughed into his sleeve.

  “You have vastly more talent,” said Mémé, which Emma felt missed the point entirely.

  After the big meal she met Philippe for a stroll on the sea path, along which young men and women had meandered since the time of the Romans. The ocean lay flat in December cold. Three large vacation homes on the bluff sat dark and empty, as if the windows were scanning the horizon for summer’s return. Below, a retreating tide seethed against the beach.