The Bread Man

Adapted from the many bed-time stories my grandmother, the late Sadie Grynberg-Fischer told me. Written in response to this week's Sunday Scribblings: www.sundayscribblings.blogspot.com

There was once a town composed entirely around a big, red-brick house. The house was round, and all of the windows were curved outwards. At the top of the house, was a balcony, on which Sophie sat in her chair holding a box of chocolates in her lap. The chocolates were filled with wine and her father only let his children have one of these at a time on Friday evenings in honor of the Sabbath. Sophie liked to hold the box after it was passed around to the other children. She took a long time before she plucked the round disk out of its appointed slot and placed it against her lips.

The town around her seemed very small from the view of the balcony. No one had ever measured the distance between the top floor and the ground, but to Sophie, it seemed above the clouds. In fact, she could see the tops of the trees and of the silo next to the house, which held her family's grain. Every week, Sophie's father took a train to Germany to sell his grain.

The town around her was full of languages -- Russian, Polish, German and Yiddish, which was what Sophie spoke at home. At school, she spoke Polish, at the bookstore, Russian and when her father's business friends came over, she spoke the few words she knew in German. The town around her house had been invaded by so many countries over the last few decades that, depending on how long your family had been living there, you might speak one or two, or like Sophie, four languages.

Every year, the town had a parade to celebrate it's history. The Russian bookseller would march next to the Polish carpenter and the town band would play songs in every language except for Yiddish. Yiddish was the language of Jewish families, a private code for them to speak in when they were not working or socializing with non-Jews. Sophie's family preferred to have visitors to their house rather than to go beyond it -- so the house resonated with Yiddish and the other languages were counterpoints to its music.

Nevertheless, Sophie envied the people who danced and cheered in the yearly town parade. Every one of them seemed, for that moment, fearless. The town band, too, was quite excellent, and it played wonderful marches which Sophie and her brothers and sisters tapped their feet to as they looked down upon it.

At the head of the parade was Sophie's favorite person -- The Bread Man. He stood about seven feet tall and was as thin as a string. He moved like a jumping bean, left and right and he could do summersaults -- or, at least, fall in such a way to make it look like he had meant to turn himself into a ball. No one knew the man's real name, but, when he wasn't at the parade, he worked in the town bakery, and he swore that he ate nothing but sweets and bread. He held a long, twisted loaf of bread in his hand almost all the time, and he ate it crudely, by chomping at it with his teeth. No one ever saw him use a knife and fork or a napkin.

But, The Bread Man never really seemed to mind when people laughed at him and the crumbs all over his shirt and even his shoes. Even from her balcony, Sophie could see the trail he left as he roamed up and down the street, completely out of sync with the music the band played.

The parade faded into the streets below, into the music and into the crumbs on The Bread Man's shoes, but he sat down at the street at the base of Sophie's house. Sophie waved to him and he looked up at her, but did not wave back. He looked at her enviously and reached upward all the way to her balcony, his hands growing as long as his body. Sophie shrank back, but then she realized what he wanted. She sifted through her box of chocolates and pulled out the last one. She placed it gently in his hand and, as the long, stalk-like fingers pulled back the treasure, she moved closer to the edge of the balcony. There she saw The Bread Man take a bite of the chocolate and then, of course, a bite of his loaf of bread. His next bite was smaller, and he seemed to enjoy this combination for hours--chocolate, bread, bread, chocolate, chocolate, bread, etc.

The town became a peaceful dark, lit only by starlight. Sophie and The Bread Man finished their chocolates, smiled and finally fell asleep -- she in the soft chair on the balcony and he inside of his bakery. At dawn, he would get back to work and she would go back to school. But they dreamed of nothing but their favorite things...bread, chocolate, chocolate, bread, bread, chocolate...