In fact, far from the Ogre or Troll his son makes him out to be, Charles Sr. is a wistful and spiritual person. He believes that bread is alive,-- that the yeast Animalcula may unite in a single purposeful individual,-- that each Loaf is so organized, with the crust, for example, serving as skin or Carapace,-- the small cavities within exhibiting a strange complexity, their pale Walls, to appearance smooth, proving, upon magnification, to be made up of even smaller bubbles, and, one may presume, so forth, down to the Limits of the Invisible. The Loaf, the indispensible point of convergence upon every British table, the solid British Quartern Loaf, is mostly, like the Soul, Emptiness.
“Wait till you've had the dough in your hands, Charlie,” when they could yet talk without restraint, “and feel how warm, like flesh, how it gives off heat.-- And if you set a loaf aside, in a dark, quiet place, it will grow.”
“Is it alive?” Young Mason had not wish'd to ask.
“Yes.” A silence. “Would you like to have a go at some kneading, then.” Weary more than patient, he expected the boy to say no. But as if the images of Flesh so intrigued him, that he must plunge his hands into the carnescent mass, young Mason presently did go to work at his father's Ovens. Mornings of cocks-crows in the dark, far up in the little valleys and echoing from the stones of the town, horses a-stir, stable lads and serving-girls curling and turning on the earth floors, travelers dreaming, wives awakening,-- young Mason kept thinking he could see dawn up the street, but dawn had not quite touch'd the Vale. His father work'd beside him, in light from two lanthorns, liquid, softened by years of flour-dust baked onto the reflectors,-- watching his son in quick pulses of attention, but aware even so that the lad would rather be someplace else. In the next months, he would speak about duties to Charlie, who'd go along with it, tho' pulled at, the miller could tell, by something else, pull'd away from the silent loaves and the rumbling stones, out to London, the stars, the sea, India.
“Go ahead then, Charles,” his mother, Anne Damsel, would call from someplace unseen.
“Talking to me?” the Baker kneading, without breaking his Rhythm, “or the little Starrrgazer?” putting in what Scorn he could afford. Mason, hands in the dough, watch'd his father openly, feeling the pain in his arms, the pale mass seething with live resistance,-- hungry peoples' invention to fill in for times of no Meat, and presently a Succedaneum for our Lord's own Flesh.... The baker's trade terrified the young man. He learn'd as much of it as would keep him going,-- but when he began to see into it,-- the smells, the unaccountable swelling of the dough, the oven door like a door before a Sacrament,-- the daily repetitions of smell and ferment and some hidden Drama, as in the Mass,-- was he fleeing to the repetitions of the Sky, believing them safer, not as saturated in life and death? If Christ's Body could enter Bread, then what else might?-- might it not be as easily haunted by ghosts less welcome? Alone in the early empty mornings even for a few seconds with the mute white rows, he was overwhelmed by the ghostliness of Bread.
“What is it you think I do, then, when I'm up staring at the Sky in the middle of the night?” He stands there, as if hanging, under a sack of flour, hanging waiting, as if his father might stop work, and begin to chat with him.
The baker cocks an eyebrow. Whatever it is, he doesn't understand it, yet hesitates to start the Lad a-jabbering again. Is it his Wits? Slow-wittedness runs among the Damsel side, of course-- has for centuries. But how can his son so imperfectly grasp the nature of Work? Doesn't he even understand that he has to sleep sometime?
In fact, young Mason nods all the time, more than once with a risen Loaf for a pillow, his ear flow'd into intimately by the living network of cells, which seems, just before he wakes,-- he insists he wasn't dreaming,-- to contrive in some wise, directly in his ear canal, to speak to him. It says, “Remember us to your Father.”
“What happens to men sometimes,” his Father wants to tell Charlie, “is that one day all at once they'll understand how much they love their children, as absolutely as a child gives away its own love, and the terrible terms that come with that,-- and it proves too much to bear, and they'll not want it, any of it, and back away in fear. And that's how these miserable situations arise,-- in particular between fathers and sons. The Father too afraid, the Child too innocent. Yet if he could but survive the first onrush of fear, and be bless'd with enough Time to think, he might find a way through....” Hoping Charlie might have look'd at him and ask'd, “Are you and I finding a way through?”
He keeps trying. “'Tis all one thing. From field, to Mill-stone, to oven. All part of Bread. A proceeding. There'd be naught to knead or bake without this.” He gestures toward where the great Stones move in their Dumbness and Power,-- “The Grinding, the Rising, the Baking, at each stage it grows lighter, it rises not only in the Pans but from the Earth itself, being ground to Flour, as Stones are ground to Dust, from that condition taking in water, then being fill'd with Air by Yeasts, finding its way at last to Heat, rising each time, d'ye see, until it be a perfect thing.” Picking up a Loaf and holding it to his face. Young Mason thinks he is about to eat it.
