The Man and his Sourdough - 1. Story

The Man and His Sourdough
by Procyon

‘I just don’t think things are working between us,’ said George, sitting opposite Jim in the little café they always went to. Jim was dumbfounded. This couldn’t be true.

‘I – it’s not you, it’s me,’ George went on as Jim said nothing. ‘I need some space, I need time to think.’

They sat there for some seconds, Jim staring at the table, George looking at a spot on the wall just behind Jim. ‘I’ve packed my things,’ George said, clearing his throat. ‘I’m going over now, Greg’s helping me move.’

‘Greg?’ Jim looked up for the first time. Greg was someone George had met a few weeks ago at the gay club; they’d danced together a bit too long that night, and then they’d stayed in touch, Jim knew. But this?

‘Yeah. Staying at his place until I find something of my own.’ George cleared his throat again, embarrassed, and got up. ‘Okay… see you around some time!’ He walked out briskly without paying for his coffee.

*

Jim was in a daze for the next couple of weeks. It was an abrupt end to a four-year relationship. He walked to the train to go to work every day, mechanically, and could not stay focussed during meetings, but caught himself nearly beginning to cry several times each day. At night, he cried himself to sleep, or lay awake until sunrise, thinking of what he should have said to George, or would say if they met again.

But George didn’t show up even once in the weeks after he left, and he didn’t phone Jim. Jim saw George and Greg in the park once, holding hands; he began following them at a distance, but it turned out that was a bad idea because they proceeded to sit on a bench and kiss, modestly at first, but then slobbering all over each other. Jim managed to leave after a while, feeling sick. George had never kissed him in public – not that he’d really have wanted to, he was against such exhibitionism, but still. It felt unfair.

*

Jim began to stay up at night instead of lying awake in his bed. He browsed the Internet, looked at porn, joined a dating site. But the porn made him cry, and so did the dating site. Gay love stories, which he had always enjoyed before, were now impossible to read. Much too painful.

He read newspapers, watched sports, and thus vegetated his way through each night. He avoided all those perky relationship advice articles, but other than that, he read everything there was to read.

Then one night, he came across an article on baking.

Jim had baked a lot with his mother when he was a child, and as he grew up and moved away from home, he’d gone on baking off and on. Mainly cakes, sweet things – Jim’s cinnamon pecan blondies were to die for, most of his friends agreed (he’d stopped seeing most of them after he and George became a couple, he now realised somewhat sadly), and he also made a very tasty rhubarb crumble with cardamom, excellent cranberry brownies, and crumbly sugar cookies with just a drop of rum in the dough. That drop made all the difference, his mother always said.

He hadn’t baked in a long time, because George didn’t like to eat anything fattening, and he hadn’t seemed to really appreciate Jim’s cakes and cookies anyway. Jim didn’t really fancy baking anything sweet now either – he had no appetite, and somehow it seemed more wrong to eat cake than other food now that his life was basically over.

But the article on sourdough bread that he was reading did stir something inside him. For the first time in weeks, he had a vague, slight urge to do something other than drag himself to work and keep from crying in public.

It was 3:00 a.m., but Jim got up and walked to the kitchen to make a sourdough starter right away. 100 grams of rye flour, 100 grams of grated apple, and 150 grams of tepid water. Fancy article, measuring everything by weight, but apparently that was because of something called ‘baker’s percentage’, and it wasn’t too difficult, because Jim had a kitchen scale that George had bought at IKEA some time ago but had ended up never using. George often bought things he never used. Jim found that he rather liked measuring ingredients this way. It made everything seem a little more complicated, more scientific.

The rye flour was from two years ago and the apples he found were squishy – from before George left – but not rotten. He grated them, mixed everything, and put it in a bowl that he covered with clingfilm. Now he would just have to wait four days, then he’d have his very own sourdough.

As the dough began to bubble and smell of wet socks a few days later, Jim decided, somewhat absurdly, to name it ‘Humbert’.

*

‘So sourdoughs have names?’ said Jennie during coffee break a few days after Jim had baked his first bread and taken it with him to work for everyone to try.

‘A lot of people name their sourdoughs, yes,’ Jim nodded. He’d baked a levain today and it was a success, again.

‘But – Humbert?’ Jennie laughed. ‘Where on earth d’you get that from, doesn’t it bode ill, a bit? You watch out so he doesn’t begin to chase young girls, now.’

Jim laughed politely, but felt a stab of anger. There was really no need for them to insult Humbert.

*

Jim baked almost every night now, obsessively. He’d found a sourdough blog – one of many; it seemed to be a very popular hobby, among men especially – which had hundreds of interesting recipes. Walnut-and-apple bread, pumpernickel, sourdough baguettes; Russian rye, Estonian rye, and German rye with caraway; ciabatta, foccaccia, and pizza… sometimes he baked two different breads in one day, or even three. It dulled the pain.

There was constantly a jar or bowl with sourdough starter sitting on top of his fridge – it was just the right temperature there, ideal for the yeasts and bacteria that formed the sourdough.

‘It’s Candida milleri andSaccharomyces sanfranciscensis living in symbiosis,’ Jim explained to Jennie, who looked at him blankly in response. ‘You need to feed it every day, or once a week if it’s in the fridge,’ he went on, preparing to explain why.

‘Ah, yeah…’ Jennie said, ‘Thanks a lot for the bread, Jim – sorry, have to go, I just got an urgent message…’

Jim fed Humbert with wheat flour and water that night, as usual, but was too tired to bake. He put the lid on the jar, laying it loosely on top so the dough – Humbert – would have space to expand. There was some gas production as the cells grew.

He had a dream that night, and for once, George wasn’t in it, giving Greg a slobbery kiss or doing something else that was angsty or painful. There was another man in it who seemed vaguely familiar. He had fair hair and hazel eyes, and a very friendly smile. Just as the man opened his mouth to introduce himself, Jim woke up.

The next morning, Jim saw that Humbert had escaped. The dough, amazingly, had risen so much that it’d lifted the lid off the jar, and then it’d run down the side of the jar and all the way down the front of the fridge. And then it had dried like that, creating a weird, rock-like formation.

Jim gasped, then smiled. What a force that dough must have. Life-force. Jim had created life. He chuckled at the thought. For a moment, the thought crossed his mind that maybe he should have named Humbert ‘Lolita’ instead.

He decided to bake some baguettes and made a dough, then fed Humbert – Lolita – again, but a bit less this time so he wouldn’t escape.

*

That day Jim strolled through the park again for the first time since he’d seen George and Greg there a while back. It turned out that it wasn’t a good idea. It seemed George and Greg liked to spend a lot of time there, because Jim spotted them again, on the very same bench as the last time. They were smiling at each other, looking like idiots. Jim watched George make a cooing sort of motion towards Greg, and then – was this really happening? – he rubbed his nose against Greg’s. Jim turned around and walked away briskly, almost hyperventilating.

Instead of going home and tending to the baguette dough, Jim took a long walk and sat down on a bench near the river for an hour, two hours, watching the daylight fade. During the past few weeks he’d come to think that he was beginning to forget about George, slowly, but clearly that wasn’t the case. Not so strange either, considering they’d lived together for four years – but painful all the same.

*

As Jim opened his front door late that night, he was surprised to find that the light was on in the kitchen; there was a faint glow coming through the gap beneath the door. It also smelled of newly baked bread – but how could that be? He’d made the baguette dough that morning but he was sure he hadn’t actually baked any bread. Had his mother come to visit and found the dough?

Then Jim heard someone humming a tune in the kitchen. It was a man’s voice; he was humming Bakerman Is Baking Bread . Who was this person in his flat? Had George come back, after all – ? To… bake bread? Jim was shaking as he went to open the kitchen door.

*

‘Oh, hi, Jim,’ said the man Jim had seen in his dream a while back. He held a baking sheet with hot baguettes in his hands, and was just closing the oven door. ‘Just a sec.’ The man put the baguettes on a rack to cool and turned back to Jim, brushed the flour off his hands, and held out his right hand for Jim to shake.

‘I’m Humbert,’ he said, smiling. ‘Great to finally be able to talk to you.’

‘H-humbert?’ Jim’s jaw dropped, but he took Humbert’s hand, limply. It felt soft and pliable, like dough, though Humbert still had a firm handshake. ‘B-but – how?’

Humbert gave a soft, stretched-out laugh. ‘It’s not so strange really,’ he said. ‘Come, let’s sit in the living room and have some bread, and I’ll tell you.’ He took one of the wooden cutting boards, got the butter out of the fridge – he evidently knew where everything was in Jim’s kitchen – and led the way. Jim followed.

*

‘Are you – real?’ Jim asked when Humbert had sat down on the sofa. He was beckoning Jim to sit beside him.

‘Of course I am. Don’t worry, you’re not mad.’ He patted the sofa seat next to himself once more, and Jim finally sat down. Humbert’s leg was warm against Jim’s. ‘I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time,’ Humbert said softly. Their mouths met, then their tongues. Humbert sucked Jim’s tongue into his mouth and let his own circle it for a while, then bit Jim’s lower lip, gently. He was a good kisser.

‘For a while,’ mumbled Jim when there was a short pause, ‘I thought you were a Lolita.’

Humbert leaned his head back so Jim could see his smooth, white neck, and laughed. Suddenly he seemed to shrink in Jim’s arms, and there was a mane of hair that brushed Jim’s cheeks. Jim’s right hand, which he’d rested on Humbert’s chest, suddenly had a breast in it. Jim had never touched a breast, but after the initial shock, he found that it was soft to the touch, like wheat pizza dough covered in oil, but with a nipple in the middle. There was a stirring in Jim’s pants, but he withdrew and gave the girl whose breast he was cupping a puzzled look.

‘I’m not an ordinary man,’ Lolita said with a Mona-Lisa smile.

‘This is a dream, right?’ said Jim and sighed. But Humbert-Lolita shook her head.

‘I’m as real as you are,’ she said, cupping the bulge in his pants. They kissed again, and after some moments the breast, dissappointingly, was gone. Humbert was back. They parted.

‘Oh,’ said Jim. ‘I – I don’t get it. Are you real?’

‘How you keep asking that. I am the word made flesh,’ Humbert said amicably. ‘I’m real enough, don’t worry. It doesn’t happen a lot, but you made me come alive. I’ll stay – if you like, that is; I could also go on living somewhere else.’

‘Oh, no, I want you to stay,’ Jim said, a note of anxiousness in his voice. He didn’t know this man – girl – well, man – at all, but at the same time it felt like they had known each other all their lives. Jim felt at ease as he never had with George, even though they’d lived together for so long. ‘You can stay here for as long as you like,’ he added.

‘That’s great,’ said Humbert and smiled. ‘Then I’ll stay.’

© 2010 Procyon
For those interested, here is Humbert's sourdough song.

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