LIFE BEHIND THE CORNER

LIFE BEHIND THE CORNER

Jeremy was the only baker in that small mountain village, little more than a hamlet, which was called The three chimneys. Most f the villagers used to go to his shop, early in the morning, to get their daily bread.  Jeremy, with the only help of Paul, a young man who had grown up in an orphanage, cared to make bread, as well as candied biscuits, apple pie, and flatbread….., and then he sold his products in the shop next to the bakery, which remained open until 1pm. Jeremy, like all bakers, worked from two in the morning to knead and bake the bread, the cakes, the biscuits, which were on sale  , still freshly baked, in his shop at six in the morning. His shop remained open until 1pm. Jeremy slept in the afternoon, as he had to work at night. “ But when you go home at thirteen, you won’t go to bed right soon , on” People said him. “ Sure, first I have lunch, then I spend half an hour in the garden…oh, but I cannot wait to go to bed and have a nice sleep. Eh, it’s hard work of the baker at my age” Jeremy said, who was sixty.

He had not always been a baker. When he had arrived to The three chimneys, more than twenty years ago, he had been a waiter in the only hotel of the village. Then he had opened a pub, which had been closed following a brawl during which not only the place had been destroyed, but three men had also been killed.

When Jeremy had arrived in the village, and no one had ever been able to find out where he came from, with him there was a young girl, his daughter Pamela, of whose mother it had been impossible to know anything precise. Jeremy a little he had said that Pamela’s mother had been his wife, who had died in childbirth, then he had said that he was a boy father. Pamela had married very early and she had left the village. Since then no one had seen her again at The three chimneys. And then there had been rumors saying that Pamela was not at all Jeremy’s daughter, but instead she had been his young, too young lover, to whom he himself had worried to find a husband. It was almost rare to see ( meet) Jeremy in the village outside his shop, due his work, in fact, he had to sleep during the day. As for home deliveries of bread, Paul took care of it.

The rare times they happened to meet ( to see) Jeremy on the street   he was on a bicycle. He liked very much to ride a bicycle, despite his really considerable size and, above all, despite his huge, overflowing belly. There were those who said, jokingly : “ I have just seen the baker’s belly riding on a red bicycle,” to say ( to mean) that they had seen him on a bicycle. Or even :” On that corner , oh, I have been in danger, since at sudden I met that belly riding towards me “

Sometimes it happened to meet Jeremy  at The Seven Flowers, a recreational club , where he didn’t disdain to play cards. All they who lived in the village ( in The three Chimneys ) thought  they knew him well enough as well as his life, at least since he had arrived in their village.

There were, it is true ( indeed) those who whispered that Jeremy was heavily  addicted to alcohol, even though no one had ever seen him drunk. There had never been other rumors about him. For all of them, who went to get their daily bread in his shop, Jeremy was a man of an advanced age, who worked as a baker and lived alone in a little pretty house. Jeremy didn’t have a pet, although he was often advised to get a dog or a cat. Every time he answered that, oh, a pet required so much attention, so much care that he, with the work he did, did not feel like facing.

None of them in the village probably even thought of wondering what their baker could do when he wasn’t making bread and when he wasn’t in his shop selling it. But it was obvious that he slept, they thought. So none of them came for even a moment, not even for pure hypothesis to think that their big baker could have a double life. They knew that Jeremy worked at night ,  like all bakers ,but none of them would have ever imagined  that he, at a certain time of the night , was like turning at a corner and taking another road ( way). Turning at that corner, which you could call  the corner  of time, Jeremy not only had another life, which the inhabitants of that quiet mountain village would never have imagined, but he was (became) another person too. At night, in the hours when everyone believed that he , if he was not yet sleeping , was kneading and putting in the oven  the bread and the cakes, and the biscuits, Jeremy, after passing over that corner, which perhaps was the corner of time, performed on the stage of the Three stars, a night club of a nearby city , such as the wonderful, enchanting Pamela, drag queen who thrilled her spectators ( audience). Ah , to keep in mind that if among the spectators of the highly applauded performances of Pamela there had been people ( inhabitants) of the Three Chimneys, none of them would have ever been able to recognize in the very charming , very blond drag queen, with a supply body, feline movements that big, thick, belled old man of Jeremy. Who, in fact, when he  sang with a high pitched voice, and he danced with the agility of an Etoile, he was really another person, not only in his aspect.  When he performed on the stage of the night club ,

whether he acted in falsetto, or sang an aria from an opera by Verdi or Handel, or danced to Stravinskij ‘s music, Jeremy really became Pamela, his was truly a metamorphosis .

It happened that one night, while Jeremy, transformed  into Pamela, was performing singing, dancing , acting, on the stage of the night club, among the spectators who applauded him there was even the young woman who, when Jeremy had arrived to The three Chimnyes, had passed off as her daughter, and who was called Pamela she too.  Even this Pamela was enchanted by the Pamela who was performing on the stage, in which not even she recognized Jeremy.