Page 6 of Love, Nemesis
With a swift flinch of the muscles in his arm, Lethe drew the bread pallet from the oven and snapped it back over the adjacent table. The loaves rolled off, and Lethe exchanged the pallet for a bowl hanging on the wall. Something about the rush of movement soothed him.
He tore the cap off a carton with his teeth, pouring the pale syrup into the bowl with one hand as he grabbed a spatula from the table.
He dropped the cap and carton into a bin beside the table before pushing it under with his foot. He picked from a line of glassjars full of sugar and spices, adding ingredients to the bowl as he mixed the syrup with his other hand.
His fingers played across a set of glass vials on a shelf like piano keys, snatching up the last one. He unscrewed the cap with two fingers, tilting it.
One drop landed in the syrup.
Lethe stopped.
A second landed on the edge of the bowl, a blood-red tear that wandered down to the syrup where the first simmered with the brilliance of the firelight.
He stirred again, stopping the first time the spatula cut through it, creating a fine, red ring in the center of the bowl. The simmering red sank in, and the memory he’d only just surfaced from flashed like the glint of a knife in his head, delivering stark, vibrant images.
He brushed a knuckle across the edge of the bowl, lifting it to his lips as he tasted the insufferable sweetness of the syrup.
He grounded himself in the differences between flour and blood, bread and skin, the indulgences of sugar and suffering. Nine years since the end of the war. He remembered the saying that time healed all wounds, but to him it felt like a torture rack, his feet in the present and his head in the past, each year in between just another inch of tension to suffer.
He couldn’t get out of it.
He rested his teeth against his knuckle. Some days he didn’t want to.
Against provided instruction, he capped the red dye, returning it to the set before drawing out a second vial of blue dye and pouring it into the syrup. He didn’t want blood on the bread.
All at once, he threw himself into the moment, and he was only a baker again.
He dressed the loaves with the mixture in delicate strokes, fingers handling the brush like a painter as his other hand drew a long knife from under the table.
He hooked the loaves under the teeth of the knife, sawing them through with quick, fixed cycles of his arm.
He loved to bake bread. He found that it engaged every sense he had, rooting him in the present world so deeply that he could feel its pulse. In the quiet of the morning, he would mix and mold the dough in his hands, pressing as it hugged his fingers, the smell of it filling the room as it baked.
Baking was an example of his own energy in conversation with the external world. Art, food, and sexuality were all like this, a language of consumption and connection with life. He loved indulging in connection. It made him feel alive, but the problem was, chains were a type of connection too. A slave to his own compulsions, he was unable to sit still and alone inside his skin. He had to touch and feel everything, replace the silence in his soul with the sparks of sensation.
He tossed the brush back into the bowl, the knife back under the table. He wrenched the bread cloth in his fist and around hiswrist, drawing it to the end of the table, a presentation in the presence of a quiet onlooker.
“You were up early.” Manaj, a coffee-colored man with a halo of gray hair, hobbled farther into the light from the oven. He offered Lethe a damp rag and a skeptical look.
Lethe had been acting strangely the last few days, and the old man was keen. Lethe could tell that he knew some outburst was on its way, often before Lethe knew it himself.
Taking the rag in his hands, Lethe wiped the flour from the names tattooed on the rippled pages of his left forearm. He drew the cloth across the table, clearing the flour like dust before whipping off his apron and rolling it around his arm. He tossed the bundle into a hamper in the corner as he trailed the damp cloth across the glass jars.
Manaj grabbed a broom from the wall.
“I’ve got it,” Lethe said.
“You have flour on your face.” Manaj began sweeping the floor.
Lethe wiped his face with the back of his wrist before reaching for the broom.
“And in your hair.”
Ruffling his hair, Lethe left Manaj with the broom and walked out of the kitchen.
“It will take more than that,” the old man replied, sweeping under the table. From the current angle, the old burns across his face were clear, hiding his left eye behind webbed scars thatmade paths over his temple, curling his ear. “It won’t do to have flour in that hair of yours. People will wonder about your hygiene. Wash your hair and shave. You have more flour on your neck. Did you roll in it?”
Lethe walked into his room, did a restless loop, and then returned right back to watch Manaj sweep the kitchen.
