The other half of it

A long time ago I left my hometown Caracas to live in the countryside and now I have returned. Over forty years passed and, although the city looks the same, many an old building has been demolished and a new one built, others have been just renovated giving them a nicer look.

I was enjoying my recent retirement and since I had nothing better to do but sightsee, I decided to take a long walk from Chacaito, where I was residing at the moment to Petare, almost nine kilometers, something that I did almost daily during my preteen years, while living in the same area.

It was still early in the morning. That almost magical time between school at seven and work at nine. The weather was just delicious. Cool with a slow and steady breeze blowing in my face, keeping the temperature at nineteen Celsius. Wonderful!

Businesses were getting ready to open and most eateries on both sides of the avenue were doing business at a fast clip. People ate standing or seated on stools. Very few tables were occupied because breakfast before work is a quick bite and coffee.

I was walking at a leisure pace, enjoying the view. Buildings, either new or renovated, with shiny glass colored facades, gave my stroll an iridescent quality that made me stop, take a deep breath, and, wham! I was struck by a smell I had not perceived since childhood. I turned my head this and that way, searching for the origin of such a wonderful enticing smell.

There! At the corner of Miranda avenue and La Joya street. Oh, God. I was taken back to maybe fifty years ago when I was ten, maybe less, walking hand in hand with my mom, and smelled something wonderful. She had parked the car two blocks away and we were walking to specifically this panadería right here in the very same corner to have a snack and buy sweetbreads to eat at home with the rest of the family. I took another deep breath. I just had to. Sííí. Gosh, I loved that smell. I clearly remembered all of it.

My memory of that long-gone day became so clear that I felt my mother’s warm hand holding mine as we crossed the street, walked up four steps up, and entered the bakery. Today I did the same, minus the hand-holding part. I crossed the Joya street and stood in front of the rounded corner building that housed the very same panadería. What a time trip. I have to tell you. The smell coming from it almost overpowered my senses, it was mouth-watering, appetizing, scrumptious, luscious, enjoyable, palatable, delightful, to just say a few adjectives.

I climbed the same old, worn four steps, and entered a renovated business with shiny steel and glass counters. There was a queue to order, another to pay and a third to pick up the goods. No chairs, no tables. Just a marble counter along one wall for people to eat their goodies and drink their beverages standing up. Everybody seemed short of time. Customers were in a hurry, employees were hurrying, two cashiers hurriedly worked the cash register machines and payment terminals. I just stood in the middle of that little chaos, taking it all in, at ease.

French baguettes. Italian bread. Sweet milk bread. Peasant bread. Sourbread. Sandwich bread. Croissants. Flatbread. Fruit bread. Hamburger and hot-dog buns. Whole grain bread. Bagels. Then, our typical bread and pastries, like a quesadilla, which is nothing like the Mexican quesadilla, our is a sweet soft star-shaped thin bun, with a sweet cheesy mixture on top, and, what I consider the king of all sweetbreads, el golfeado, a typical Venezuelan roll filled with grated white cheese soaked in dark sugarcane syrup, that tastes like glory in heaven.

To tell you the truth, I didn’t know what to choose. As usual in my life, unless I have to meet somebody for coffee or breakfast, never leave home without the day’s most important meal in my belly. To choose in that mouth-watering environment felt like sinning gluttony. I reckon I spent almost twenty minutes just looking at all that bread, letting the smell impregnate my clothes, my taste-buds, and my mind.

Finally, I decided to have lunch at half-past eight in the morning. I selected a golfeado with queso de mano, a soft fresh layered cheese lightly salted, and a cachito, a half-moon of rolled dough filled with shredded ham. Large coffee with milk completed my order. I was given a paper ticket to pay my order with, stood in the payment queue for almost five minutes, paid, and was given a ticket to pick up my consumption, that was given to me in two plastic plates and a plastic cup filled to the rim with piping hot coffee.

I made a line to a free spot on the counter to set down my meal. The hot coffee was burning my fingertips and in the haste to put down the cup I splashed some of it on the marble. Whew. What an ordeal. After wiping my hands in my pants, there were no paper napkins available because the owners of the panadería were cheap merchants, I munched first on my golfeado with queso de mano on top. Took several long minutes of slow chewing intermingled with hums and sighs of pure joy, washed down with a not so memorable coffee.

For a few seconds, I considered asking for a doggie bag to carry my cachito home, but it was still warm and its smell wafted enticingly up to my nose so I decided, then and there, that if I have already committed the gluttony sin, I might as well continue to do so. I took a large bite of the cachito. Felt something crunch and, let me tell you, that is not something that should happen in a soft bread filled with shredded ham, it’s not even normal. I froze and kept my mouth closed, motionless. With a trembling hand and a queasy stomach, I looked at the bitten cachito in my hand. Half a cockroach was stuck inside it…

Gluttony. I knew, in that very precise moment, with the other half of the cockroach inside my mouth, that I was paying for my gluttony sin. My real breakfast and my very early lunch were spewed right there, where the X marks the spot.