THE BREADHOUSE by HARLEQUINADE

Although they were old family friends, I would hesitate to call Al and Liz anything other than complete strangers and had no memories of their oft recounted visits to our home while I was an infant.

However, as I was travelling and would be in their city, I was instructed that they would be delighted to receive me for dinner and to put me up for the night.

Although reluctant to leave the dingy cosiness of the hostel with such a ferocious hangover, money was tight, and a home cooked meal and a proper bed for the night would be a relief and an expense spared.

Looking at a map of the city, it seemed that they were beyond the furthest suburbs covered by my tattered and stained map.

Checking out of the hostel, and leaving most of my belongings in their safe – an unlocked room off to the side of the laundry facilities - the receptionist said she couldn’t place the address, but was sure that it was in the north. She suggested taking the bus as far as I could, then take a taxi the rest of the way.

I was disappointed to anticipate taking a taxi, as they were usually expensive and a lost tourist would be fair game for all manner of scams and extortionate fares.

The bus dropped me off about an hour north of the city. Last stop; and I found myself in a desolate run down area. Although it looked residential, there was no-one on the streets, and the shops all looked boarded up. I eventually found a small news and candy stall. The man at the counter - moustachioed and smoking, blue overalls - looked amused at my tattered scribbling of the address.

“No taxi.”

Oh great, that’s just great.

“Here. My brother. He take you.”

From out of the seemingly shallow shadows behind the man, another, almost identical, man emerged.

We negotiated a fee, which was less than I’d anticipated a taxi driver taking me for, and he drew back into the shadows. A few uncomfortable minutes later he came round the corner in a dilapidated and coughing car, a collage of the whole spectrum of shades of rust.

As he took me further north and all traces of the city and its outspread tendrils faded to thick woodlands, it became very clear that this man had no idea where he was going.
He stopped several times to consult my scrap of paper, I tried to phone ahead but there was no signal anywhere, we stopped at a few points to scramble up hills to survey for any sign of habitation amongst the thick forest.

A flash.

A crack of thunder.

And then, a feeble trail and sign: The Breadhouse. That was it. Overenthusiastic in my relief, I told the man that I would just walk it, gave him the money and watched him drive off.

The trail was longer than I’d hoped and could feel the rain starting, but was overjoyed to actually know that I’m almost where I wanted to be going, and they would be able to drive me back the following day.

This whole depressing adventure was over.

And so I came to their cottage: exhausted, muddied, hungry, and faced with a small cosy stone cottage, a plume of smoke rising from the chimney, the flickers of open fires playing on the windows. I almost screamed with relief.

The door opened and I was surprised to be welcomed by a couple who looked not much older than myself: pretty, gracious, energetic and flirtatious, when I had expected them to be at least as old as my parents, being their old friends.

Their hospitality soon put me at ease and with a glass of thick viscous red wine in hand (from an obscure Romanian vinery called Xastur, they explained), their warm home and its comforts was a welcome respite from the cheap noodles and decrepit hostels that had served as home on my travels to date. They quickly seemed less and less like distant strangers and more like good friends and peers.

While waiting for dinner, they told me to relax and showed me to the shower.

“Take your time, unwind,” they bade me. And winked: “It’ll take time for your soul to catch up with you anyway, they’re slow wistful walkers.”

Showered and dried, there was still some time until dinner was ready. I occupied myself by perusing their sizeable bookshelves and ornament displays. Amongst many books of archaic lore and mythology I could happily have spent weeks reading, there fell out a sepia decayed photo of an older-looking Al with two girls, perhaps 13.

“Your daughters?” I asked Al as he came through to refill my glass.

He shifted uncomfortably and took the photo from me, looking puzzled, as if he didn’t want to think about it.

“I can’t remember them. Must have been on Liz’s side.”

He folded the photo and put it in his pocket and made back towards the kitchen.

Protesting against my offers to help, he insisted I rest, apologising that they were both in the kitchen and neglecting me.

I could have stayed weeks reading in their house: a translation of the Thothscrolls in particular grabbed me and I settled down to read those methods of extra-natural communication and forgotten lore which my professors had long hinted at, but unanimously believed a myth.

The book fell open to a page in the middle, as if it had been left open there many times. The plate titled it as a ‘rite of regeneration’ and figured, amongst incantations and infanticidal ingredients, a grotesque symbol: a spiral representation of a scorpion, simultaneously crushing its tail with its pincers and stinging its mouth, but also curled impossibly into tight coil.

So engrossed was I in the diagram and the instructions, that I didn’t notice Liz come through until she was sitting next to me.

I asked her about the book and she took it from me.

“Here, I’ll show you.”

She started hitching up her sleek red dress, and I instantly started sweating that Al might come in and think me acting inappropriately. Maybe they’re one of those couples who get their kicks from seducing men while the husband watches, or from toying with me.

She was beautiful and alluring.

Her dress was now up above her stockings, which she started to peel down.

On her inside thigh, was the same scorpion I had seen in the book.

“It’s amazing isn’t it? The eternal cycle, the beginning is the end and the end is the beginning. Where does it all start?”

I tried to make a joke about the old chicken and egg conundrum.

She snapped harshly: “No, a species is always preceded by its seed. A not-quite-fully-evolved-into-a-chicken would give birth to a chicken egg. The egg came first. Anyway, that’s a petty concern. Miniscule.”

“There is a parasite,” Al was standing over us, bottle in hand. “That lives in mice and rats, but needs to get into a cat’s stomach in order to reproduce.

“It infects the mouse or rat’s brain, making them act fearless around cats, invariably involving the mouse or cat being eaten.

“It is the tiny things that really keep the circle of life turning, dear.

“Dinner’s ready.”

He led us through to the next room, where a grandiose oak table took up most of the space.

“I hope you like this; we’re not used to cooking for guests.”

In the middle of the table was a large loaf of misshapen rustic bread and a brown paper bag, which was making a steadily popping sound, like popcorn.

When the sound subsided, Liz cut open the bag to reveal a block of milky white cheese and started cutting it into slices. The stench was foul. Way beyond even the most pungent cheeses I’d experienced.

“Casu marzu,” Al explained. “It’s a fermented, well, almost decomposed, cheese with larvae. You can eat it with the larvae in it, but they jump out into your eyes and it’s not pleasant. The bag suffocates them. You can pick them out if you’d like”

I am not so proud as to deny my revulsion, but being slightly tipsy and so relaxed and not wanting to offend my guests, and certain I’d never again have a chance to try such a culinary oddity, I placed a slice on a hacked off lump of bread, and ate.

It was as overpowering as it smelt, and the dead larvae were quite uncomfortably gritty, but washed down with the wine, there was an aftertaste of deep damp soil. After a few mouthfuls, disquiet was placed by outright curiosity at such an alien dish.

There was not much on my plate and I was somewhat relieved when it was gone, although a bit irked when I saw that neither Al nor Liz had even served themselves any.

Al cleared our tables and came back with some formidable looking forks and knifes that looked more like some insane butcher’s tools of mayhem than cutlery, before clearing away the cheese and the bread.

Looking around the room, I saw a picture on the wall of the same two girls I’d seen in the other photo.

Liz saw me looking at it.

“We were beautiful, weren’t we? That’s me and my sister.”

“But was there not another photo of you and Al with them, it was in that book...”

“O no, must have been someone else...”

Al came back in to top up our glasses. I tried to say that I’d had enough but, as it was so intoxicating and mesmerizing in its thick flavour, I found it hard to put up much of a protest. There was another course to get through after all.

“Is it ok to use your bathroom?”

“Sure, it’s ah... down the hall, second door on the left.”

I went where she’d directed into a small cupboard, into which the bathroom had been installed. The furnishings looked very old, but wre in immaculate condition, as if they’d never been used. When I lifted up the toilet seat, there was a thick layer of dust on it. The sink was equally coated with old dust, and when I turned the taps, it was a several minutes before the water eventually made its way down to the room and came spluttering out.

Back at the table, an almighty platter was waiting for me. Al talked me through it: on a bed of mashed potato and horseradish, a stack of alternating slices of duck and beef carpaccio, topped with black pudding tapenade and a generous dressing made with goose fat and grapefruit.

Al and Liz looked expectantly at me and I tried to hide my goggle-eyed flabbergasty. I was glad of the plentiful wine to wash it down.

Taking my spiked implements, cutting through the tower leaving a pool of grease and blood flooding the incision, I ate.

Again, I noticed that they were barely eating theirs. Liz was frustratedly poking at hers, her lips curling, as if wishing it were something else.

“Try it, you’ll like it.” Al prompted her, taking an apprehensive dive into his. “Excuse us, we never really eat this kind of... food... we didn’t know what to serve you, we thought you’d like it.”

By now, I was enraptured by the dish, and devouring it, washing it down with glass after glass of the thick gooey wine. I jokingly asked if they were vegetarian. Liz looked at me with horror, pale and aghast.

“Of course not,” Al told me. “Out in the forest, there’s not much stock in vegetables. I know in the city a lot might go for that, but out here... well, I don’t know how they even get out of bed in the mornings.”

Perplexed, I watched Liz push her meat around the table, drawing patterns in the smears of sauce, and I suggested maybe she’d like to cook it. Again, she looked horrified at me.

“The blood’s the best bit, it’s where all the goodness lies. Excuse me, I’m not feeling too well.”

Al got up to take her arm and in my tipsiness, just for an instant, I thought I saw them both as very old and frail, wrinkled and feeble, but it passed and I put it down to the potent wine, the heady meal and the light accentuating their movements in grotesque ways.

“We’re going to go to bed. Please make yourself at home, there’s plenty more wine.”

I thanked them, and once they were gone, I took the Thothscrolls off the shelf and to the table to read while I finished my meal and wine.

I don’t know how long I spent, utterly engrossed, before I looked up and surveyed the table. It had been cleared and neatly laid for breakfast, and faint shades and flickers passed over the walls as if those responsible were invisible save for their shadows. I called out in case Al or Liz and come down and were feeling better, but there was silence, save for the slow dripping of a storm outside, a thick dripping, as if through a leaking ceiling into a metal bucket.

The empty bottles were lined up along the sideboard. There were five of them. No wonder I was drunk and imagining things... had Al and Liz even been drinking?

* * *

I woke up in bed, the sun streaming into my face. I showered and put on a clean suit from the cupboard, one of my finest, and walked downstairs for breakfast.

Al and Liz must have made their own way back to the city, they had left a note thanking me for my hospitality and re-iterating their parent’s greetings and well wishes, and extending a reciprocal invite if I was ever travelling near them, although at my age, I doubt I’d be able.



Original image by freeparking. Some rights reserved.