The Devil's Larder

30

THE RUMOURS started when — a rare event — one of the prison guards was spotted shopping in the square where Jo and his forebears had kept their bakery since 1841. It was the evening before the execution. The next day a murderer was due to die in the correction facility, two kilometres out of town. Too close for comfort. Everybody was on edge. The air seemed thin and aromatic with the prospect and proximity of such a death.

Old baker Jo was bald and staid, and not the most progressive of men. ‘Don’t waste your sympathy,’ he said. But George, his son — the one who runs the bakery today and has become the mirror image of his dad and just as difficult — was a libertarian. He wore long hair tucked up inside his baker’s cap, and spent any time when he wasn’t slaving for his family in the cake, bread and pastry business at the far end of the quay, with his guitar and some unlikely friends. I used to watch them smoking pot with my binoculars and wish I had the courage to saunter down and join them. He was our only hippie then. And he wore flour in his hair.

It seems the prison guard had drawn attention to himself that evening by buying a suspicious assortment of foods. Some freshly shucked oysters, from the basket girl. Two strawberry milkshakes from the cafeteria. A slab of coffee chocolate. A piece of pummelled beefsteak. Nectarines. It wasn’t long before the whispering began. These items had to be the condemned man’s final meal, they said. His choices had Death engraved all over them.

Then, of course, when the prison guard was spotted talking to George at the rear door of the shop and money was seen to be exchanged for a bakery bag, any fool could guess what was going on. No doubt about it. The bag contained some of young George’s Magic Cookies or Sister Mary Mix or Lebanese Red Loaf or Sweet Dream Biscuits or whatever it was that George provided for those longhaired travellers who queued a touch too patiently each evening amongst the locals waiting for their bread. The murderer, for his last meal, had found a way of dining on oblivion. Good luck to him.

I don’t believe that anybody slept too late the following morning. Baker Jo was standing in the street by 8 a.m., affecting an inspection of his window display but really with his eyes fixed on the grey woods high above the town where, at that moment, as they thought, that boy, that man, that murderer was sitting down with plastic plates and plastic cutlery to oysters, milkshake, chocolate, nectarines and beef to fortify his final hour on the earth. He’d save his magic pastries till the last. We all knew that. He’d want to fly away. Surely George’s baking, his sorcery, would let the man break free.

The hour struck. Some drivers sounded their horns. An emergency congregation spoke its prayers outside the church. Somebody clapped, but mostly people shook their heads, checked their watches for the umpteenth time, and went about their lives with less than half an eye fixed on the heavens.

I watched the execution through my binoculars from our top room. They pulled the prison buildings into town. I could see the detailed silence of the place, the dead, parked cars, the office doors ajar, the tiny windows of the block, the clouds as solid as the hills. The only movement was a hardly stirring flag. I watched for almost fifteen minutes afterwards. Then the prison came to life again. The yards were quickly filled with exercising men. A van backed up. The winds began to lift the flag and shift the clouds. And, for an instant, I swear, the sky went pink with melody, not death. But I was sentimental in those days. The rumours that I’d heard the evening before had made me ready for, and keen to glimpse, transcendence with a pair of human wings.

GEORGE AND I have not been friends for many years. I was, I am, too dull for him. But he was unusually friendly when we met at the far end of the quay today. I recalled how I used to spy on him with my binoculars and how I used to wish that we were close. So, while we smoked our cigarettes and looked out across the ocean at the ferries and the tankers, I reminded him of those uncomplicated days. Did he remember how he used to play guitar to foreign girls? He smiled at that. Did he remember those hashish cakes and drug-laced biscuits that he used to bake behind his father’s back? He laughed. They’d made him rich. And were they true, those rumours that we heard, about the executed man and what he ate for breakfast?

‘That’s more than thirty years ago,’ George said. ‘I can’t remember all my customers.’ He rubbed his floury hands across the bald crown of his head. The day was loud with wind, and sea, and gulls, the straining of the anchored quay, and, at our backs, the honking cars, the muttered prayers, the clapping hands, the less-than-half-regarded heavens of the town.

‘But I’ll say this,’ George added finally, ‘if that guy had my cakes for breakfast, even though it might be thirty years ago, he’s flying still. Those cakes of mine were savage stuff. I bet he hasn’t even realized he’s dead yet. He’s giggling up there. He’s floating and he’s giggling. His pupils are like pinheads. His skull’s on fire. He can’t stand up. He can’t sit down. And, boy, he’s hungry. He could eat a horse.’