SUMMARY, by Aurora Ledesma
The story is about Miss Martha. She is a single middle-aged lady who runs her own bakery. She has a good heart and she sympathizes with one of her customers, a man with a German accent, who only buys two loaves of stale bread, two or three times a week.
Miss Martha finds him attractive. The man, Blumberger, doesn’t seem rich in any way. His clothes are mended in some places. Despite that, he looks neat and is very polite. She is sure that he is an artist, and very poor, because once she saw a red and brown stain on his fingers.
Miss Martha imagines the artist sitting in the middle of his empty room, having the stale bread and water for his meals. She falls in love with the idea of helping him and maybe creating a relationship.
One day, Miss Martha changes her old apron for a blue-dotted silk one, and behind the counter, she looks more beautiful. She also prepares a mixture of seeds and borax for her complexion, to make her more attractive to him. Then the customer arrives for his stale bread, and while he is distracted by a fire-engine outside, Miss Martha puts some fresh butter inside the stale loaves and gives them to him without him noticing. She imagines how he will enjoy the surprise of finding the fresh butter after his painting work.
A few hours later, the outside bell rings. Two men are standing there. One is a young man smoking a pipe, the other is her favourite customer. He is upset and very angry. He is shouting, accusing her of mocking him, and insults her with German words.
Poor Miss Martha! She feels ashamed and guilty… She removes her apron replacing it with the old one and throws the mixture out of the window. The romantic bubble has burst.
Some reflections
Some people have a tendency to make assumptions based on appearances, and there is a danger of acting on those assumptions without fully understanding a person’s situation. Miss Martha’s sympathetic heart and her desire to help the artist are admirable, but her actions are wrong and hurtful.
The story’s title “Witches’ loaves” gives the association between women and evil enchantment. Perhaps the title suggests that Martha has attempted to “bewitch” Blumberger with butter in order to try to win him as her husband.
QUESTIONS
How can you recognize a genius?
Are pictures an exact representation of reality? (Think about Canaletto and his Venetian pictures, or about Stubbs and his running horses.)
How can you recognize a genius?
Are pictures an exact representation of reality? (Think about Canaletto and his Venetian pictures, or about Stubbs and his running horses.)
Do you believe in first impressions? When, or how, can you decide you know a person? Imagine you go to a blind date and you meet someone new: When and why do you decide to go on with the meeting, or to stop it?
On your view, what are the essencial qualities a shopkeeper must have?
Why being single was a shame (mostly for a woman) in older times?
VOCABULARY
sympathetic, darned, stale, garret, chops, showcase,
Sally Luns, quince, complexion, nickel, dairyman, fluttering, edibles, dwelt,
easel, viciously