(Note on the story:
Time: 1946, after WWII
Place: Germany
Situation: Food shortage and food rations)
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The bread [1]
Wolfgang Borchert [2]
Translated by xia23
Suddenly she woke up. It was two thirty. She wondered why she had woken up. Oh so! In the kitchen someone had bumped into a chair. She listened towards the kitchen. It was quiet. It was too quiet, and as she ran her hand over her bed, she found it was empty. That was what had made it so particularly quiet: the breath was missed. She got up and groped her way through the dark apartment into the kitchen. In the kitchen she met herself. The clock said 2:30. She saw something white standing by the kitchen cupboard. She turned on the light. They stood themselves in the nightgown facing each other. Night. At 2:30. In the kitchen.
On the kitchen table there was a bread plate. She saw that he had cut the bread. The knife was still near the plate. And on the table cloth there were some bread crumbs. When she went to bed in the evenings, she always cleaned the tablecloth. Every evening. But now crumbs were on the tablecloth. The knife was also there. She felt the coldness of the tiles slowly crept up high on her. And she looked away from the plate.
“I thought, something might be here”, he said and looked around in the kitchen.
“I’ve also heard something”, she answered, and she found at the same time, that he looked pretty old in his nightgown. As old as he was. 63. During the day he sometimes looked younger. She looked already old, he thought, with her nightgown she looked really old. But that is probably due to her hair. In case of women that is always the hair. That makes them so old all at once.
“You should put on your shoes. So barefeet on the cold tiles. You could catch cold.”
She did not look at him, because she could not bear that he lied. That he lied, after they had married for 39 years.
“I thought, there was something here”, he said once more and looked around aimlessly from one corner to the other corner. “I heard something here. So I thought, there was something here.”
“I have also heard something. But it was really nothing.” She took the plate off the table and whisked the crumps from the tablecloth.
“No, it was really nothing”, he echoed unsurely.
She helped him out: “Come on. That was really from outside. Come on, go to bed. You could catch cold yourself. On the cold tiles.”
He looked at the window. “Yes, that must have been really from outside. I thought it were here.”
She raised her hand to the light switch. I must turn off the light now, otherwise I have to look at the plate, she thought. I must not look at the plate. “Come on”, she said and turned off the light. “That was really from outside. The gutter always hits the wall in the wind. It was the gutter for sure. In the wind it always clatters.”
They both tiptoed through the dark corridor to the bedroom. Their bare feet plopped on the floor.
“Yes, there is wind”, he thought. “The wind was already there all night. It was really the gutter.”
“Yes, I thought, it would be in the kitchen. It was really the gutter.” He said that, as if he were already half way into sleep.
But she noticed, how fake the voice sounded, when he lied.
“It 's cold”, she said and yawned quietly, “I’m crawling under the blanket. Good night.”
“Good night”, he answered quietly: “Yes, it is already very cold. It’s nice.”
Then it was quiet. After several minutes she heard, that he softly and cautiously chewed. She breathed intentionally, deeply and evenly, so that he would not notice she was still awake. But his chewing was so regularly that she slowly fell in sleep.
As he came back home next evening, she cut him 4 pieces breads. He could eat only three pieces usually.
“You can eat four pieces calmly”, she said and went away from the lamp. “This bread does not agree with me right. You could eat one more piece. I don’t like it.”
She saw, how he bent over the plate. He did not look up. At the moment, she felt sorry for him.
“You can’t eat only two slices”, he said while looking at his plate.
“Sorry, evenings the bread doesn’t agree with me well. You eat, you eat.”
Only after a while she sat near the table under the lamp.
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[1]. Das Brot, Wolfgang Borchert, p. 97. Der weg zum lessen. 3rd Ed. Harcourt Brace College Publishers, Fort Worth，Philadelphia....Tokyo, 1986.
[2]. Wolfgang Borchert,
From wikipidia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Borchert:
