The old woman looked at the grave faces. ‘But all is not hopeless, at least not yet. If my great-great-great-grandchild is a girl then things will of course be easier. We shall make sure her hair matches the somewhat distant look in her eyes, that she grows it long so it tumbles over her shoulders and down her back, and we shall encourage her to paint watercolours and play the harp. There are gentlemen, though I cannot for a moment understand why, who appreciate these somewhat ghostly qualities in a woman, so we can hope she will find a husband who will take care of her. But if you have a son, well . . .’ she shook her head, and sat down, ‘. . . it is in God’s hands. All we can do is pray for the child.’
The party never really picked up again after this, and before long everybody had gone away, back to their homes or upstairs to bed.
The young couple tried their best to shrug off what the old woman had said. They told themselves that it was the job of a small town great-great-grandmother to knock three times on the floor with her stick and make doom-laden pronouncements at family gatherings. And besides, suspicions had begun to spread that the old people were losing their touch.
A year before this pronouncement, a bearded vulture had been seen circling above the rooftops, the first time one had been spotted in living memory. The old people knew the town was looking to them to make a declaration about the significance of this event, but they had no idea what to say. Previous generations would have united in a moment, and made an immediate announcement without recourse to conference, deeming it to be a portent of either good or bad fortune, but this generation was flummoxed. Some thought they had a hazy idea of the significance of the last appearance of such a bird, but their memories of the stories they had been told differed significantly from one old person to the next. One said it had presaged a landslide that had wiped out six goats, a mule and an olive tree; another said they vaguely recalled being told that the bird had been a friend to the town, that it had led people into the hills to a hidden ditch where a young boy was lying with a broken leg. Others had differing but equally indistinct memories of stories told to them in childhood by their own grandparents, and it wasn’t long before it was accepted that a formal meeting was required. They gathered in the town square, and before a consensus could be reached the vulture was seen once again. Those who had believed it to be a harbinger of good fortune had the opportunity to get a look at its claws and begin to reconsider, and those who had been sure it could only bode ill were struck by its rare grace, and they decided that its presence could, after all, mean that something good was about to befall the town. The discussion went on until nightfall with no conclusions drawn, and when they decided to sleep on it and reconvene in the morning, murmurs began to go around about how old people were not what they used to be.
The ironmonger, a man in late middle age, felt very strongly that this vulture could only be good for the town in general and his shop in particular, and he wished he was old so he could go to the town square and tell them his views on the matter. At three in the morning he shook his wife awake, stood naked before her and declared that he had decided he was old enough. ‘Look at me,’ he said. ‘My hair is silver and my face has enough liver spots. And as for this,’ he said, pointing downwards, ‘it has certainly changed since our wedding night.’ His wife mumbled her agreement and went back to sleep, and in the morning he strode up to the huddle of old people, ready to join in. They fell silent and shook their heads, giving him no choice but to walk away.
With the ironmonger gone, the old people resumed their symposium. Their discussion didn’t move on at all from the day before. They knew, though, that patience was running thin and they had to say something before sunset. In the early afternoon, just as they were ready to unite behind a line that the vulture was a straightforward symbol of good fortune to come, the bird returned, flying twice around the town square before swooping on a litter of puppies in a pen behind the ironmonger’s shop, taking one of them and flying off, almost low enough for the old people to hit it with their sticks as if it was taunting them with its prize. It flew into the distance until it was just a speck, and then could not be seen at all.
The old people gave up. They declared that the episode meant nothing more than that a bearded vulture had come to town and had been at once impressive in its majesty and fearsome in its manner, and that while it had been somewhat unfortunate for the ironmonger, there was no further significance to the episode. Even this was not particularly convincing, because now everybody knew that the ironmonger had puppies to sell. There had been a card in his window for a week which had attracted little interest, but their sudden notoriety, combined with the pleading of children who had heard about them and wanted to keep them safe from future bird attacks, ensured that by the end of the day all six that remained had found new homes without a centavo lost to negotiation. The one that had been carried off had been the weakest of the litter, not quite a runt but certainly not a dog that would ever have been likely to sell. The day had ended with the ironmonger satisfied in his prediction, and a creeping sense throughout the town that the old people had lost their touch, that this was the first generation whose minds had been cluttered with television, radio and magazines, so much so that they were no longer able to recall each and every story they had heard as they sat at their grandparents’ feet.
It was with this episode in mind that the young couple tried to dismiss the old woman’s prediction, but they couldn’t keep themselves from hoping that the baby would be born just a fortnight early, that it would be Aquarian, spontaneous and sturdy-ankled though occasionally a little on the stubborn side, or that it would stay inside just long enough to emerge an enthusiastic and confident, though sometimes impulsive Aries. They reached the middle of February with no sign of labour, and every night, at the great-great-grandmother’s suggestion, they kept one of the ovens burning and placed a constantly replenished basket of the most delicious pastries at the foot of the bed in the hope that the smell would prove irresistible to the baby. The child remained unmoved.
The first day of the sign of the fish, came and went without incident, and they knew in their hearts that they couldn’t wait another month. Their only hope was that the child would be a girl, but a few days later, in between the births of Mauro and Madalena, the baby arrived. The women of the town leaned over the crib and told the parents how handsome he was, and how one day he would be breaking hearts, glad to be telling comfortable lies about a plain, bald baby, a baby like any other who, they hoped with all their hearts, would grow up to be a man like any other.
The parents vowed never to talk to their child about their worries, but one by one the old woman’s predictions came to pass. The first sign was a slightly glazed quality to his eyes, not the empty gaze of the simpleton but the distant look of the dreamer. By this point they had a good idea of what would come next: he would learn a musical instrument and write heartfelt lines of verse.
They never saw his heartfelt verse, and they never mentioned it, but as they passed the door to his room they would often hear the sound of a pen scratching on paper, and of a deep sigh. One year when he was asked what he would like for his birthday he looked to the sky and replied, quietly, ‘A euphonium.’
They scoured second-hand shops in nearby towns until they found an instrument they could afford. It was old, and scratched, and its bell a little dented, but the first time their son put his lips to the mouthpiece and blew, the note that came out was at once so clear and so fragile that they felt as if the sky was falling.
One day they saw him standing in the town square, his gaze fixed on a point some way away. They noticed with despair where his eyes were leading him: straight to the town beauty. Straight to Madalena.
They wished his poet’s heart could have drawn him to any of the other girls in the town, a girl with whom he would maybe have had a chance, but they all seemed invisible to him. For months the notes he had been playing had seemed to have been chosen at random, but around this time they began to ease into one another to create a sound that was quite extraordinary, and before long the town had become accustomed to the heartbreaking tunes that came from his window every evening as the sun dipped behind the mountain.
Amid all this there was a consolation. Unlike his predecessor, when the time came he was able to hold down a job. He left school at the earliest opportunity to begin his informal apprenticeship in the family trade, and his father was delighted to find that the boy absorbed his expertise with no difficulty. He started by cleaning the ovens and the trays and oiling the machinery, and having proved himself accomplished and reliable in these disciplines he moved on to the baking itself, first just helping his father and doing exactly as he was told, but soon trying his own twists on the family recipes, seeing if there was any way in which he could improve them, and collecting recipes from around the world. Far from drifting in and out of concentration, he focused on his tasks with a single-mindedness that surprised everybody, and it wasn’t long before it was generally agreed that he was the finest baker the town had ever known. Even his father was prepared to admit that his young son had superseded him, and he slept soundly at night knowing that when the time came he would be able to hand the business over to him. The boy baked cakes and an extensive range of pastries to a level far beyond that which had previously been considered perfection, but what people talked about more than anything else was his bread. Nobody had ever tasted bread like it, and on market days father and son would have to rise at midnight to get enough ready to meet the demand.
Although he was pleased to know that he was helping his family’s business to thrive, the boy’s devotion to his work really had only one motivation: the thought that sometimes something that came from his oven, something he had worked on and worked on until he had got it just right, would be bought by Madalena’s mother and would end up on the soft lips, in the warm mouth, and in the sacred belly of the girl he loved. Every once in a while he would catch a glimpse of her as she walked past the shop on her way to or from school, and sometimes she would take a moment to inhale the delicious scents that drifted into the street. And then there were the times when he would see her walking past with a boy, a boy taller than he was, and much, much more handsome. And whenever this happened she didn’t seem to notice the bakery. It was as if the sweet tastes within, and the scent that wafted outside, meant nothing to her. Nothing at all.
As the young baker’s reputation grew, the mothers of the other local girls wished he would stop looking only at Madalena and notice their daughters instead. He was a pleasant young man, always ready with a smile and a joke as he served customers or made his rounds of the town on his bicycle. A lot of their daughters thought along the same lines. They knew he wasn’t nearly as handsome as Mauro, but then nobody was. There was no question that he would make a good husband for some lucky girl, if only he would give up his impossible love for Madalena. The sound of his euphonium drifting through the evening air told them he could never let go of her, and one by one the girls, and their mothers, began to look elsewhere.
One summer day, hearing that Madalena was soon to leave town to study in the city, he approached her as she sat alone in the town square. They had encountered one another at school, and had exchanged pleasantries across the bakery counter, but they had never really had a conversation. She knew, though, what he felt in his heart. Time and again she had seen the love in his eyes, and she longed for the day when he would find somebody else to adore, somebody who could love him in return, but as he sat beside her she saw that his devotion was as steadfast as ever. He opened a paper bag and offered her a jam doughnut. With a smile and a gesture, she declined it.
‘Please,’ he said, still holding the paper bag towards her.
This time she accepted it, and took a bite. It was delicious. At first it had a crispness to it, then it softened and seemed to turn into a light syrup that slid down her throat, as smooth as water from a mountain spring. ‘You are a wonderful baker,’ she said.
‘Thank you.’
She tried to find some words of comfort. ‘One day you’ll make your wife very happy.’
He shook his head, and began the speech he had been planning for so long. He told her he loved her, but from the very start he had known that he had no chance of her returning his feelings. He wished her every happiness. ‘There will always be a gap in my life, but it’s a gap I will treasure.’
‘You’ll find somebody else,’ she said. ‘I just know it.’
He smiled sadly, and shook his head. Madalena knew he was right. He would never find anybody who would make him feel the way she made him feel. Just as the thought of Mauro made every cell in her body dance, he would have felt the same way about her. Mauro returned her love though, and she could only imagine how she would feel if he didn’t, if he had fallen not for her but for one of the other girls in the town. She wished there was something she could do to make things better for the young baker, but she felt helpless.
‘I will never be a bother to you, Madalena,’ he said, ‘but I am going to ask just one thing.’
She didn’t say anything. She dreaded what he was going to ask of her.
‘Wherever you are in the world, when you find yourself breathing in the smell of baking bread will you, just for a moment, think of me? I don’t expect you to think of me with love, but if you could think of me with just a small measure of fondness . . . Will you do this for me, Madalena?’
She nodded. He was not asking too much. She loved the smell of baking bread, and she could never think ill of this boy who had done her no harm. She wished she could offer him further words of hope, but she knew it would be for nothing. ‘I will,’ she said. ‘And I’m so sorry.’