Pandesal

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The Bread of Salt

by NVM Gonzalez (1958)

U

sually I was in bed by ten and up by five and thus was ready for one more

day of my fourteenth year. Unless Grandmother had forgotten, the fifteen

centavos for the baker down Progreso Street - and how I enjoyed jingling

those coins in my pocket!- would be in the empty fruit jar in the cupboard. I

would remember then that rolls were what Grandmother wanted because

recently she had lost three molars. For young people like my cousins and myself,

she had always said that the kind called pan de sal ought to be quite all right.

The bread of salt! How did it get that name? From where did its flavor come,

through what secret action of flour and yeast? At the risk of being jostled from the

counter by early buyers, I would push my way into the shop so that I might watch

the men who, stripped to the waist, worked their long flat wooden spades in and

out of the glowing maw of the oven. Why did the bread come nut-brown and the

size of my little fist? And why did it have a pair of lips convulsed into a painful

frown? In the half light of the street, and hurrying, the paper bag pressed to my

chest, I felt my curiosity a little gratified by the oven-fresh warmth of the bread I

was proudly bringing home for breakfast.

Well I knew how Grandmother would not mind if I nibbled away at one piece;

perhaps, I might even eat two, to be charged later against my share at the table.

But that would be betraying a trust; and so, indeed, I kept my purchase intact. To

guard it from harm, I watched my steps and avoided the dark street corners.

For my reward, I had only to look in the direction of the sea wall and the fifty

yards or so of riverbed beyond it, where an old Spaniard's house stood. At low

tide, when the bed was dry and the rocks glinted with broken bottles, the stone

fence of the Spaniard's compound set off the house as if it were a castle. Sunrise

brought a wash of silver upon the roofs of...