by Ellen Datlow
Gomez swallowed and picked up his glass, sloshing a little of the wine as he did so. “Then let us drink.”
“Ja,” said Santiago, “Zum wohl!”
“Zum wohl,” growled Gomez, and Becker echoed it as they all raised their glasses in the direction of the empty side of the table, and downed the wine to the last drop. Becker filled the glasses again.
Santiago stared at the plates of uneaten food across from him, and he slouched back in his chair, chin down on his chest. “What happened to them?” he asked. “To your family, I mean.”
The baker sighed. “They died during the war.”
Gomez frowned. “In Hallstatt? I did not know that city had been bombed.”
“Oh, none of them died from bombs,” said Becker as he pushed back his chair and stood. “Let me clear away.”
Gomez looked down in dismay at his plate and seemed surprised that the heap of food was gone.
“Time for something very special,” said Becker as he stacked the plates and set them on a sideboard. “I hope you saved room. A little room, at least.”
Santiago discreetly unbuttoned the top of his trousers to ease the pressure on his swollen stomach, while Gomez looked eager to start the whole feast again. Becker vanished into the kitchen and returned a few moments later bearing a small silver tray on which was a pyramid of small cakes. They were each round and about a quarter-inch thick. Pale, with a hint of gold baked in around the edges, and each was marked by the indentation of a cross cut across their surface. Steam rose from them as if they had come straight from the oven, and the smell was wonderful, enchanting, hinting at nutmeg and cinnamon and allspice.
“Every village has its own recipes for soul cakes or soul bread,” said Becker as he placed the tray in the exact center of the table. “Some prefer to bake loaves of it, while others make cookies. My mother’s recipe was for little cakes like these. Crisp at the edges but soft as butter in the middle and light as a whisper on the tongue.”
The two guests stared hungrily at the pile of cakes.
“I remember so many times helping my mother as she baked a hundred-weight of soul cakes to give to the poor children who came knocking at our door all through Seelenwoche. You see the crosses on each? That means they are alms, and are therefore righteous gifts given freely to any who ask. That was so like my mother—she would open the door at anyone’s knock and welcome them inside. She could not bear the thought of turning someone away hungry, especially when we—as bakers and cooks—always had enough.”
Becker placed his fingertips on his chest over his heart the way some people did when touching crosses, but he wore no jewelry of any kind.
“We were luckier than most, for we never knew hunger. We knew of it, of course. We were all aware of the horrors of hunger, of want, of unbearable need. Of having no place and being unwelcome and having doors closed to us. So when my ancestors settled in Hallstatt and opened the doors of our bakery, how could any of us turn away someone who came to us asking for something to eat? A crust of bread is nothing to those who have so much, but it can feed a starving child or keep a man alive to work another day in hopes of providing for those he loves. These cakes? They might be all that a starving child might eat that day. How could anyone with a beating heart turn a deaf ear to the knock, however weak and tentative?”
“Good for you,” said Santiago.
“No, not good for me,” said Becker. “Good for my mother. She was the kind heart of my family. She was like her mother, and her sisters were like her. Kind and generous, in part because it was their nature and in part because they remembered hunger and want.”
“These cakes smell delicious,” said Gomez.
“Do they? My mother would be pleased that you think so.”
“Then let us each have one in honor of her,” suggested the big blond man.
“Of course, my friend, of course.” Becker leaned across the table and picked up a cake, careful not to crumble the delicate crust between his fingers. He set it on a small plate and placed it in front of Gomez. He repeated the action for Santiago. Then he took one for himself and sat down.
Santiago nodded toward the empty side of the table. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
Becker glanced at the untouched plates of food. “Ah. So courteous. But, no, my friend, soul cakes are for the living.”
“Oh,” said Santiago, clearly not following.
“One more thing,” said Becker as the other men began reaching for their cakes. “A last bit of seasonal ceremony, if you’ll indulge me. I like to follow the traditions in form as well as spirit.” He crossed to a cabinet and removed a small lantern, checked that it was filled with oil, and brought it to the table. “Do either of you have a match?”
Gomez produced a lucifer match from a pocket, scraped it alight on the heel of his shoe, and leaned the flame across to Becker. The old man’s eyes twinkled with blue fire as he guided Gomez’s hand toward the lantern wick. The flame seemed to leap from match to wick, and at the same moment Gomez twitched with a deep shiver.
“What’s wrong with you?” asked Santiago.
“I…nothing,” said Gomez. “Just a chill. It’s gone now.”
Becker adjusted the flame and placed the lantern on the table close to the untouched plates of food. “So the souls of the dead can find their way here to join our feast.”
“Forgive me, Herr Becker,” said Santiago, his faux Spanish fading in favor of cosmopolitan German, “but isn’t that a bit ghoulish?”
“Do you think so?” asked Becker, looking surprised. “How perceptive.”
“What?”
“Nothing. A joke.” Becker refilled their glasses with the last of the final bottle of Riesling. He placed his palms flat on the table and let out a long, satisfied sigh. “Now, my friends,” he said, also speaking German. “Before we partake, let me tell you something of these cakes. There is magic in baking. A special sorcery that can transport us to other places and times with a single bite. That is why I invited you both here.”
“What do you mean?” asked Santiago. “Why us?”
“Because you are no more Argentinian than I am, nor even Deutschargentinier.
“You are sons of Germany, as I am a son of Austria. No, please don’t deny it. We are all friends here. We are safe and alone here, and we may be who we are. There are no spies here. No Americans or British. No hunters from the new state of Israel. We have nothing to fear from each other, and that allows us to take a breath, to be real, to be ourselves.”
“And what if we are German?” asked Santiago, his tone dangerous, his eyes cold.
“Then I am among countrymen,” said Becker. “I invited you here to share my holiday feast because I knew—I knew—that you would appreciate it as only sons of the fatherland could.”
“How do we know you are not a Jew?” demanded Gomez.
“Because I have eaten pork with you,” said Becker. “And beef with cream sauce. Because I say that I am not a Jew. Because if I was a Jew, there would have been a dozen armed men waiting for you in here and not a feast and good wine and hospitality.”
“He’s not a Jew,” said Santiago.
“No,” agreed Becker. “I am a baker from Austria, and my family has lived in Hallstatt for generations.” He touched the surface of the soul cake on his plate. “I asked you here to share in this special and sacred celebration. To break bread with me, to feast with me and the spirits of my family because I am alone and lonely, and I knew you would understand. Neither of you has families here, either.”
“No,” said Santiago. “Mine were killed in Dresden.”
“Um Gottes willen,” blurted Gomez, but Santiago shook his head.
“Enough, Erhardt,” said Santiago. “He is right. We are alone here. We are safe here, if nowhere else.”
“I…I…”
Santiago turned to Becker. “My name is Heinrich Gebbler, and this is Erhardt Böhm, and we are happy to share this table with you. God! How good it is to be
myself, even for a moment.”
Gomez—Böhm—cursed and slapped the table hard enough to make the wine in all of the glasses dance. “Then be damned to all of us. Yes, yes, I am Erhardt Böhm. There, I said it. Are we all happy now?”
“Very happy,” said Becker. “And I thank you for your trust. Believe me when I say that it is a secret that I will take with me to the grave.”
“You had better,” warned Gebbler. “We are taking a great risk.”
“Now, can we eat these damned cakes?” asked Böhm.
“Wait, wait,” pleaded Becker. “Everything must be done exactly right, as I have said. To eat a soul cake is a very serious matter, especially in such a moment as this. After all, we have each seen our world burn. We have each lost so many of those we loved during the war, have we not?”
The two Germans nodded.
“Then should we not honor the dead by inviting them to join us at this table?”
“Sure, sure,” said Böhm, “invite Hitler and Himmler and Göring, for all that I care. The dead are dead and I am hungry.”
“The dead are dead but they are hungry, too, Herr Böhm,” said Becker. “I have lit the lantern so that they can find us, and I have prepared food for them, because the dead are always hungry. Always.”
“You’re being ghoulish again,” muttered Gebbler.
“Perhaps.” He gestured to the cakes. “Did you know that the moment grain is milled it’s possessed of its greatest life-giving potential? The dough for the soul cakes must be made when the flour is fresh and alive. It must contain life in order to be worth consuming.”
“I don’t follow,” said Böhm.
“You will,” said Becker. “Now, please, try the soul cakes.”
The Germans shared another glance, then shrugged and picked up the cakes. They each took small tentative bites.
“This is delicious,” said Böhm.
“I’ve never tasted anything so good,” said Gebbler.
“How delightful!” cried Becker, clapping his hands. “Have another. Have as many as you like.”
Böhm pulled the tray over and pawed four more of the cakes onto his plate, then offered what was left to Gebbler. Despite the heavy meal, they ate with relish, their faces dusted with sugar and crumbs falling onto their shirts. While they ate, Becker spoke quietly of the holiday.
“During Seelenwoche,” he said, “the souls are released from their graves, and they wander the earth as hungry ghosts. Lanterns like this invite them to dine with us in the hopes that they can feast well enough to ease their hunger and gain a measure of peace.”
“So you keep saying,” said Gebbler, pausing with a fresh cake an inch from his mouth, “but quite frankly, Herr Becker, I am not a very good Catholic. I never was, and less so since the world fell apart. Everything that I cared about burned down. The damned Russians and British and Americans have taken it all from us. Our hopes and dreams and every single thing of worth that we owned. We are the ghosts haunting a world in which we no longer truly live.”
Becker nodded. “To be equally frank, Herr Gebbler, I am not a very good Catholic, either.”
“But not a Jew?” asked Böhm, his cheeks bulging with soul cake.
“Not a Jew.”
“Then if you’re not Catholic,” asked Gebbler, “why do you go to such lengths to follow these rituals?”
“Because I am a kind of Catholic,” said Becker. “My people tend to adopt the customs of wherever we live. It is how we survived all these years. Well…how we once survived. Clearly, we did not blend in well enough. They still came for us and rounded us up and took us away. It’s not really something that can be blamed on the war, though. My sisters and brothers, uncles and aunts, cousins…they all died far from the battlefields. I doubt they ever heard a shot fired or saw a bomb fall.”
The two Germans suddenly paused in the act of chewing and looked at him with sudden suspicion.
“What does that mean?” demanded Gebbler quietly.
“It means that I am not a Jew or a homosexual or a Pole or a Slav or any of those groups, nor were any of my family, and yet they all died in the camps. In Bergen-Belsen and Sachsenhausen, in Buchenwald and Dachau, in Mauthausen and Ravensbrück.” He leaned slightly forward and smiled a sad little smile. “I am Romany.”
“A damn gypsy!” Böhm spat the half-chewed cake onto the table. “This is a trap. He’s poisoned us.”
Both Germans shot to their feet.
“No, no, no,” said Becker, holding his hands palms out. “I would never pollute my family’s recipes with poison. There is nothing hidden in the meat or bread or anything else. Did I not eat it along with you?”
“You didn’t eat the cakes,” snarled Gebbler. He took a threatening step toward the baker.
“No, but not because they are poisoned, which they are not,” protested Becker, still seated, “but because they were made specially for you. For tonight. They were made in celebration of Seelenwoche.”
“This is a trap, Heinrich,” said Böhm. “Let’s see how much of him we need to cut off before he tells us who else knows about us and—”
“No,” said Becker. “You will not need to do that, Oberscharführer Böhm. Oh, don’t look so surprised. Do you think I picked you at random? I came here to this town to find you and Obersturmführer Gebbler. I came looking for both of you because you were at Mauthausen, where my mother and grandmother were taken. You took the gold from their teeth and cut the rings from their fingers. You worked for the commandant, Franz Ziereis, and under his direction you worked them and starved them until they dropped, and you buried what was left of them in mass graves. My brothers and sisters, too. And my father. All of them. Starved to death and buried like trash.”
Becker’s voice was soft, quiet, unhurried.
“So they died,” sneered Gebbler. “So what? You Romany are trash and you have always been trash and the world is better off without you. You’re worse even than the Jews. At least they never renounced their faith even when we held their children above the flames of a bonfire. You gypsies would forswear anyone and anything to try to survive. Your mother probably offered to spread her legs for us and maybe did.”
“Maybe she did,” said Becker. “Maybe she begged and maybe she said that she renounced her faith, her culture, her people. What else could she say? Why would she—or any of them—not try anything in order to survive? What is a proclamation of renouncement except words? How is that more ignoble than slaughtering innocent people by the hundreds of thousands? By the millions?”
His tone never rose beyond that of mild conversation, and he wore a constant smile of contentment.
“We’ll see what you are willing to promise,” said Böhm, reaching for a serving fork with two long tines.
“No,” said Becker. “We won’t. Or, rather, it won’t matter. Nothing you can do to me will matter at all. Not now. Not anymore.”
Böhm and Gebbler glanced toward the windows and doors.
“Don’t worry,” said Becker, “no authorities are coming. Argentina doesn’t care who or what you are or what you did. That’s why so many Nazis came here. It was a safe haven. However, ‘safety’ is a funny word. It is conditional on assumptions about how the world works.”
“You’re babbling,” said Gebbler.
“No,” said Becker, “I’m explaining. The assumption is that you are politically safe, and you are. The assumption is that you cannot be extradited, and you can’t be. The assumption is that no earthly power is likely to harm you here, and that is almost certainly correct.”
“Then what the hell is this all about?” demanded Gebbler.
“The fault in the assumption,” said Becker, “is that I have any interest in relying on earthly powers to punish you. I don’t. I have no faith at all in governments and agencies and courts.”
Böhm pointed the fork at him. “Talk plain or—”
“Shhh,” said Becker. “Stop for a moment and think about where you are and what I have said. Think abo
ut the time of year.”
The Germans stared at him.
“My lantern is not very bright,” said Becker, “but it is bright enough. Oh yes, it is bright enough for the spirits of my beloved dead to follow, even though their bones are buried on the other side of the world. What is distance to ghosts?”
The lantern flame suddenly danced as if whipped by a breeze, but all the windows were closed. It threw strange shadows on the wall. Becker smiled.
“I have been a good host,” said the baker. “I have prepared the very best dishes from the recipes of my family, and you have fed well. Very well. Some celebrations require fatted calves, but I think fatted pigs will do nicely.”
Böhm shivered again, and now Gebbler did, too. Their breaths plumed the air of the dining room. The flickering shadows on the wall looked strangely like silhouettes of people. Many people. Old and young, short and tall, male and female. Everywhere, all around the table.
“The dead are always hungry,” said Becker. “And you will be, for them, a small taste of the old country.”
He sat back, still smiling, and watched as the shadows fell upon the two German officers. It was a quiet street and the windows were shuttered and if anyone heard the screams they did not come to investigate.
Wick’s End
Joanna Parypinski
BITTER COLD, it was, as I entered the roadside tavern—a mutinously archaic structure, rudely built, whose splintered wood shrieked with each passing gust of wind and whose hostile atmosphere attracted only the least savory of patrons. I had taken a liking to the place, to the world-weary travelers who occupied its rickety stools and the brand of smoky darkness one finds in such a highway hovel. It was, perhaps, my favorite haunt on October 31, this night of mischief.