Baking was the old lady's greatest joy. Her grandson would watch her with fascination as she rolled the long lump of dough between her hands. Sometimes she glanced at him and smiled, but most of the time she watched the dough or gazed out of the window into the distances of space and time.
She did not have long fingers or the graceful hands of the models in the magazines or on the television. His Grandmother's hands were powerful; her fingers were thick and her palms muscular. He knew better than to provoke her wrath; those hands were swift and inescapable.
When the kneading was done she would tear a ball of dough away from the large piece and carefully push it into a jar, she would cover it with water from the spring and, taking a well-used length of brown string, tie a piece of cloth over the top.Every time she baked bread she did this in exactly the same way and afterwards, leaving the little boy to watch the dough as if it might in minutes outgrow the bowl, she would take the jar into the cool of the cellar. There it would stay until the next time she made bread.
'That is the life of the bread' she would say each time she showed him the filled jar, 'it has made the bread here since before I was a little girl. It isn't just the life of the bread, it's the life of this place.'
There came a time when he no longer spent all of his days in the easy reach of his Grandmother. It was rarer then, after he had started school, for him to see the old lady at her baking, but at least as he grew and as she aged she did occasionally send him down into the cool of the cave to fetch the little piece of dough from its sanctuary of stone. 'Be very careful on those stairs' she never failed to say. She was concerned for him he knew, but also for the little jar and its precious contents.
His Grandmother's bread was the best in the world. It was dense and brown with a malty savour. There was nowhere, even in the market, where you could buy bread exactly like it. 'It is the place' she would say with evident pride. 'the place and the people. They are all in the bread, all their lives and all their joys and sorrows.'
A year to the day after her husband died she stood at the kitchen window kneading a long pale roll of dough. The sky was grey and a desultory rain came on suddenly from the west. As the first drops gathered together and began to run down the little square panes the old hands stopped their rhythmic working. The shoulders heaved once, just a little, and a tear swelled and ran down her face, slowly across a surface unaccustomed to weeping.
Her Grandson had been standing at the door, unnoticed, watching and feeling again the safety and love familiar from his earliest memories when the kneading stopped. At first he did not know if he should speak or try to leave as quietly as he had come in, but as the first tear fell to the floured board he went without a second doubt and took his Grandmother's shoulders gently in his hands.
She was not at all shaken by his sudden appearance, but reached up and held his hands firmly to her. As if realising for the first time that he had grown she said 'You have big hands and I have not yet taught you how to make bread.'
'I would like you to' he said but he was a little surprised. He was closer to his Father's mother than they were but he did have two sisters.
'There is no-one else' the old lady said, still holding his hands to her 'and I want the recipe to carry on when I am gone.'
'That won't be for a long time' he said and renewed his hug.
'Now young people do say the silliest things. It is important to me that the baking goes on and that you use the levain* we have always used.' Suddenly she was businesslike again and full of bustle saying 'Now let go of me and let me finish, as I work I will tell you why. Put some coffee on' she added and then, scoldingly but with love, 'You are not a child anymore.
'The dough that we keep downstairs is very special to me and to this place, you know that don't you?'
Now it was clear to him that sometimes old people just as much as young people could say the silliest things. He smiled hugely and looked at her, replying 'Of course I know that Grandmother, I have watched you baking bread since I could not see over the top of the table.'
The old lady graced him then with a little smile and nodded her acknowledgement. 'Next you'll be telling me that you don't need me to teach you because you have already seen and remembered all of my secrets.'
His Grandmother was a kindly woman but not often given to making jokes. He laughed. He felt closer to her, more her friend and equal than he had ever felt before.
'But there is one secret you do not know' she added. Her face could change as suddenly as the weather in the mountains and now she was ready to continue her tale.
'Your Grandfather brought me that little piece of dough, the levain, and I have guarded it ever since. He could be the most foolish of men when he was young.' She paused and kneaded with renewed vigour; the story too needed time to leaven.
He had never heard her refer to the levain as a culture or as if it were anything other than exactly the same piece of dough that she had first seen incorporated into the flour and water when she was a tiny girl. For her it remained unchanged by its innumerable encounters with sacks of flour across the generations.
'During the War' she suddenly went on, 'we all came together to bake our loaves as people used to in the old days. It was a desperate time but that was one of the best things about it. Well, you know that around here there were many men, and women too mind you, who were active in The Resistance. The villages hereabouts attracted more than their fair share of attention from the Germans. Finally things got so desperate for them that they would sometimes just attack villages like ours and kill whoever got in the way. Things got really bad after the Americans and the British landed in Normandy. Down here it was open war. She paused again. He had never heard her talk about the war like this and felt the story telling relax him now as he watched the coffee pot on the stove.
'I was seventeen in 1944' she said. She could not help smiling as she recalled the young woman she had been. 'Your Grandfather was fifteen but even though he was younger than me he dared, I think, to love me even then.'
Now the kneading was done and the old lady carefully tore a piece of dough away from the lump that would make the bread. She cast her eyes around for the jar and her Grandson passed it to her from the table's edge an arm's length away.
As she persuaded the little bit of living dough into its usual container she continued her story: 'We had seen houses burned out and knew families who had lost everything, even the means to make bread, I remember that I'd even said those very words to your Grandfather. In those days I often scolded him and I had probably pretended to be angry when I had said that as well.
'In any case the Germans were coming along the lane into the village and past our farm, they were at our front gate' she pointed now out of the window, 'and your Grandfather was darting into the back door and down into the cave.' The old lady was shaking her head, still exasperated with the boy who would later become her husband. She covered the jar and put it on the table, pulled out a chair and sat down. She looked tired and pushed the levain towards her Grandson to make it clear that he should out it away.
'What happened Grandmother?'
'Well we were in the woods but we heard the Germans shout and we heard gunfire. They thought your Grandfather was a Maquis I suppose. He was already away down the alley past old Mr Dupuy's house.'
She was up on her feet again covering the dough with a cloth and putting it to rise by the stove. 'Don't you see?' she demanded as she turned back to the young man, 'He had gone into the cave to fetch the piece of dough my mother kept for baking and I have kept it ever since he gave it to me later that day. Oh, the Germans didn't burn the farmhouse down or anything; the levain would have been here anyway, but there'a a lot more in this bread than just flour and water. As I said it's got the life of this place in it.'
He put a coffee in front of the old lady as she sat down again at the table. The bread would look after itself now for a good few hours but he hoped that she would go on talking. All he could think of to say was 'I would truly love you to teach me how to bake, there might be some secrets I have missed.'
She sipped the coffee and shook her head saying 'Only this my boy: we don't know what other stories the bread could tell but they are the roots of this place and of the people who have lived here.' She looked for a few moments as if she had lost her train of thought and it was only after another taste of her coffee that she added sadly 'I miss your Grandfather' and a few moments later 'Baking is a good way to remember important things.'
*Levain is the French word for what in English we call a wort.
