1.

I punched a hole in the soft bread with my index finger and pushed the small piece of paper inside until it would go no further. 

“Please don’t do that,” the baker pleaded in baking language. “I wrestled the flying wild spores from the air with my bare hands, cared for the starter like it was my own child, kneaded the dough like it were the sore shoulders of my mother, let it proof until it caught its own breath and then baked it in the heat of my passion. Don’t punch holes in it now, I beg you.” 

But the piece of paper with the word written on it had already slipped inside the bread. There was a sad look on the baker’s face. 

The next day, I was arrested. The baker had reported my crime, even though this went very much against his principles. He was the kind of baker who would much rather give his customers mouth-hugging bread than jail time. But as I had chosen not to buy the bread I punched, I was technically not really his customer, and so the baker felt less torn about filing the report. 

After I had left the bakery, the baker pulled out the word and was overcome with fear. It is normal for people to be afraid of unknown words—this I had learned since I lived as a writer. The word I infused the bread with was brood, but it was written in Dutch, so the baker did not recognize it.

I very much agreed that my offense could not be overlooked. In my defense, it was an act of passion, of impulse. Up to that moment, I had been very happy to eat bread and only dream about baking. Sure enough, I had made several attempts to bake bread myself, but the dough never took to me in such a way that I was able to watch them catch their breath. That gift is only reserved for special people, so I came to understand. People who could take off their ego like a coat and hang it on a hook at the outer door. People who were brave enough to knead the dough so long and stretch it so far that all time was pushed out. They were Breathkeepers and I knew I was never going to be one of them. This was a fact I had to live with: I was a writer and writers are not bakers. The only breath writers can summon is the breath sucked in by the reader when reading a perfect sentence. And although these breaths are related, they are something quite different in nature.

While I was in prison, serving my sentence, the bread with the word brood hatched, so I was told by a new inmate who had cut the crusts from their bread, which was not an offense in itself, but throwing them in the bin was. A brief but intense friendship developed between the crust-cutter and me. We sang our daily praise to bread together and shared our deepest secrets with each other—secrets I could never write about because some words are only allowed to exist as sound or memory. What I can perhaps reassure you of is that the crust-cutter never threw away even the smallest breadcrumb again. 

Downtown, the baker whose bread I punched was not sad anymore, nor afraid, only a little surprised when four tiny buns burst out on the countertop one morning. He raised the little bread children as if they were his and by the time I was released from prison they had all grown up. They were leading their own lives, and that was a good thing. 

2.

Not long after my release, I passed by the bakery again. For a long time, I wandered back and forth in front of the shop window, feasting my eyes on the croissants and cinnamon buns on display while hesitating to enter. Then I made up my mind, went inside, and pushed my right index finger into a French stick. The word I pushed in this time was pain. This was not easy, for the crust of the bread resisted with all its might, scratching my skin in protest, and I had to press down one end of the stick with my left hand. Alarmed by the noise, the baker came in from the back. He looked at me in bewilderment, and upon seeing the French stick with the hole, collapsed onto the floor without so much as a sigh. I felt sorry for him, but there was nothing I could do to reverse things. After I left the bakery, the accusatory chime of the doorbell kept ringing in my ears for several hours.

I strolled around the city center for a while, gathering my thoughts, and when I got back home, I was not arrested. Instead, there was a letter drenched in tears on the doormat. It was from the baker. In an almost illegible handwriting, he wrote:

Dear writer, 

Today you put the word pain in my bread. It was agonizing for you, I saw that, even though I was falling to the floor myself. That’s why I didn't call the police. Instead, I tried to pry out the word, but it was unyielding and did not want to come out, as if it had already made an alliance with the grain. It seemed to me they knew each other from once, long ago, like old friends holding both hands, looking inquisitively into each other's faces, searching for new creases. I never thought my bread could hold such a terrible word inside, but it was because of this overt reunion that I began to wonder: Why had I never thought about the pain of grain? 

I then imagined how the hard stone discs of a mill grindingly crushed each individual kernel, hitherto their separate selves protected by husks, but now forced to have their very insides mixed with the insides of others. I asked the flour if the grinding was where the pain came from and they said, “On the contrary, the grinding makes the missing bearable.” And they mentioned something along the lines of shared sorrow is half sorrow—if I understood it correctly, dear writer, but you know words are not my strongest suit. Surprisingly, it turned out that it was not the lack of sun wind that pained them, but the lack of the once-hands who harvested them. Those hands had spoken the language of gratitude, while the now-language of machines only made painful trenches in the earth, pulled roots, cut stems. Machine language rattles and grinds, creating fear and drowning out all thoughts of gratitude, so the once-grain told me. 

As you know, dear writer, my biggest aim was to make bread that makes you forget your fears, if only for a small moment. But now I realize that not wanting to see the fear in your loaf is denying the existence of others. The moment you pushed that word into my bread made me a better baker and that's why I wanted to write this letter and thank you.

With warm kneading greetings, 

Your baker

When I finished reading the letter, I decided to take a long walk to celebrate my unexpected freedom. But after a hundred meters, I felt something under the sole of my right foot. I sat down on the edge of a concrete fountain and untied my laces. As I turned my shoe upside down, a wheat grain fell out. The grain rolled toward the gutter and I managed to pick it up just before it fell in. When I rolled it briefly between my thumb and forefinger, the soft husk rubbed against the skin of my fingertips. I put the grain back into my shoe, right at the back where my heel is most soft, and continued my walk.

3.

The baker and I have mixed feelings about the third time I came into the bakery and pushed a hole in a flatbread. Foolishly, I came back thinking that I had once been useful to the bakery and could be so again. What arrogance. Never go down the same path twice, I once read in How-To-Become-A-Good-Writer, especially if it was a successful one. This, and the lack of research tripped me up badly. Because due to the flatness of this particular type of bread, I was not able to push in the word deep enough, and it escaped before the bread could get ahold of it. As a result, the word Pan jumped onto the floor and started to dance, their hooves sounding clipperdiclap on the star-shaped tiles, their body odor so strong you could cut it with a knife. Nose pinched, I quickly wrote another word and pushed it inside the bread, but in my panic I misspelled and again I was not able to push it deep enough. This time Pushan jumped back out, golden earrings flashing. Pan stopped dead in his dance and both deities stared each other down with delight. Pushan’s hair was pitch black and braided and his beard neatly brushed, while Pan’s fleece was a bristly bunch of mud-colored tangles. Both their eyes shone yellow as the sun. Pushan carried a goad of sandalwood in his leather belt and in each hand a lotus flowered from his palms. Pan carried only his flute. 

Both smiled a genial smile and then spat in each other’s faces. The baker and I gasped. Hiding behind the counter, we waited anxiously to see what would unfold. Pan unceremoniously took out his flute, put the hollow reeds to his lips, and blew. The notes tumbled through the air like butterflies bursting from their cocoons in search of pollen, and I was sure I heard a stream gurgling somewhere. In response, Pushan's eyes widened and, seemingly against his will, he began to lift his right foot—the beginning of an involuntary dance step. But then he righted himself, bent his knee to his chest, and as the two lotuses began to spin in his hands, his foot shot toward Pan. The latter just managed to dodge the blow and responded with a new tune, threshing around like a madman. His hooves clattered against the display case with a bang, shattering glass everywhere in a split-second whirlwind of brilliance and dazzle that instantly turned into a shimmering, crunching mess. The baker watched the whole scene, shaking his head resignedly, as if it was not the first time they trashed his bakery.

Pushan, unruffled, did not let up, but made an elegant pirouette and then flung one of his rotating lotus flowers into Pan's face like a chakram. Caught off guard, the hoofed deity sneezed so hard that he flew through the air, landing on some flour sacks in the corner of the bakery. Large white clouds rose up, chunks of snot mixed with pollen, and wheat flour flew around, burning holes in the ceiling and the front door. The baker and I fell to the floor in a feeble attempt to avoid the mucus.

“Oops.” Pan coughed and blew his nose in an empty jute bag.

“Shall we take a break?’ Pushan proposed courteously, turning to the baker with an apologetic look. “I would say it’s time for a large bowl of porridge.” 

To which the baker gathered himself, scrambled to his feet, bowed, and replied, “Noble Pushan, connoisseur of paths and passages, porridge is unbaked bread! Surely, I cannot serve your deity that. Wouldn't you prefer a sandwich?” But when Pushan smiled his toothless smile, the baker knew enough and ducked into the pantry to find some milk to heat up. Pan, on the other hand, retrieved a croissant from among the glass rubble and, while nibbling on the flaky half-moon, lowered himself back onto the flour sacks, panting like an old goat.

“Why are you fighting?” the baker asked Pushan, handing him a yellow-glazed bowl of porridge. I admired his candor, and when I looked closer into the baker's face, his expression was one of genuine curiosity and that made me admire him even more. 

“What fight are you referring to?” mumbled Pushan through his gruel, while snapping his fingers. As if by magic, the bakery was once again the fragrant, tidy place it had been before; the kaiser brötchen peacefully nestled next to an immaculate row of floor cadets in a square basket, and a creamy stack of pudding rolls temptingly displayed behind the grease-free glass of the counter. I blinked in disbelief, but the baker had already disappeared back into his workshop and was busily removing a rack full of plump tiger buns from the oven. Right on time.

“Look, you don't have to believe us, but we've been carving out roads in the landscape for people to have at their disposal for ages,” Pushan continued, pointing a manicured finger toward the window.

Astonished, the baker and I looked outside and saw rolling hills covered in grass, dotted with large-leaved linden trees, their branches spread upward at wide angles, providing shade to some resting sheep. In between lay endless rolling fields of swaying grain and pinkish-red heather, from which three larks took flight, their song I could only imagine. But I also saw flashing traffic lights, daubed bus shelters, and ugly concrete flats in the distance. Criss-crossing the landscape were many roads, some narrow and meandering, others wide, made of asphalt, with lampposts on both sides, making their smooth, speed-inducing surfaces shimmer.

“As a writer, you can take any path you want,” said Pushan, looking at me intently. Bewildered, I started to stammer something unintelligible but felt infinitely inadequate in my response. Right that moment Pan let out a thunderous fart, picked another cinnamon roll from the rubble, and left the bakery without further ado.

The baker and I decided that this was our cue and started to shake hands. Needless to say, there was only one way possible for my dear baker friend: the one leading to his home and his soft bed. Tomorrow was a Tuesday and he had to rise early again. “A good night’s rest makes a good baker,” he explained to me, and this reminded me of my own quest to become a good writer.

Before our paths parted, I apologized to the baker for the mess. After all, the whole situation had sprung from my brain and I felt horribly responsible. I had let myself get carried away without thinking about the consequences. The baker, however, would not have any of it. He told me I was always welcome to come back and eat his bread, even if that meant I had to poke a hole in it first. I thanked him but already knew this was the last time we would see each other, and that the moment the shop door's gentle farewell faded from my ears, the story was told.

As I randomly walked up the path in front of me, my feet still felt somewhat heavy in their step. However, not long after, as I enjoyed the view and listened to the larks chirping, I suddenly felt the urge to skip. Before I did so, though, I tore a small piece of paper from my notebook and wrote the word kind on it. I put the note in my back pocket and forgot about it for a very long time.