Concealed Concoctions

Chantal Schaul, 2001

My name is Leo Guard and I used to be the bodyguard of Bicarbona Soda. My head is completely clean-shaven, as is appropriate for all bodyguards. But that is beside the point really, for this story is not about me, strictly speaking. Who else could be the heroine, but a lovely girl, only daughter of the founders of the prospering emporium called ‘The Lovely Pink Shed,’ the famous baking goods company? And who has not yet tested their world-famous chocolate fudge brownies, flapjacks or carrot cakes, all baked according to well-kept family recipes?

The main reason why I had to look after Bicarbona was that Mr and Mrs Soda simply did not have time to see her very often. Everything that was produced in their factory was hand-baked, and Mrs Soda has to control her bakers and products throughout the day, with pitiless scrutiny. Her husband was out of the house most of the time, exporting and promoting the cakes. The nurse initially engaged to look after Bicarbona had been moved into the children’s cakes department instead of Bicarbona’s nursery because of staff shortages. In fact, I was the person who had spent the most time with Bicarbona, from her infancy onwards.

The future that the Sodas were holding in store for their daughter was not a pretty one. They had promised her in wedlock to the last heir of an aristocratic family, called Cobwebber-Rotth, completely impoverished, but with the distinct advantage of enabling the Sodas to print the emblem of their coat of arms on the labels of ‘The Lovely Pink Shed’ cakes, so to boost their sales enormously.

Bicarbona was invited to meet her future betrothed, Mark Cobwebber-Rotth, only three months before their wedding. The name Mark, which sounds very simplistic for the offspring of such noble parents, was merely the abbreviation of a longer name that immediately came to his mother’s mind after he had been born. “Minging Ailing Rashy Kindred” was Mark’s full name. When his mother looked at him for the first time, she could not even bear to hold him in her arms like a normal newborn baby. His skin was hanging off his deformed body in rags, and it was covered in a vicious and hideous rash. Its colouring seemed to suggest that he had been rolling in a mixture of liquid lard and dust. He also started to cough and sneeze and scratch himself as soon as he saw the light of day. His bodily deformity was mostly characterised by an almost lack of shoulders and by an extreme gnarledness of legs and arms. His mother screamed: “Take this inbred monster out of my sight. I never want to see him again!”

At the age of three months short of thirty, Mark had improved little. He had managed to hide his physical deformities largely by having a pair of wooden shoulders made, which rested, unsuspected by the world, under his thick and nobly embroidered cloak. His skin had been stitched up as well as could be done, and was constantly covered in heavy make-up to hide the sutures. All these physical shortcomings could have induced pity and compassion in the eye of the beholder, because, after all, Mark could not be blamed for the inter-sexual activities of his ancestors. But, unfortunately, Mark had an equally revolting personality.

When Bicarbona approached him for the first time, he introduced himself thus: “Hello. I am Mark. I am glad we will enter our relationship shortly. I want to have a lot of heirs. If you can’t handle sex, tell me now.” Bicarbona had to swallow three times for fear of projecting her entire digestive system into his face. He continued: “We can take it step by step if you want. In my experience it takes time to synchronise needs.” Bicarbona was gasping for breath and could not utter a single syllable. Mark concluded: “Ok then, evade the question. I feel a bit wasted now, so I’m going to sleep.” He then, much to the shock of even myself, approached Bicarbona in an eel-like manner, stuck his tongue out in front of her mouth, but did not succeed in touching it, for she recoiled in extreme horror. In a smug voice he said: “It’s been a long time, eh? I’m afraid, this is all you’re getting for now. Night, princess.” Then he disappeared.

I had to carry Bicarbona home, shaken as she was. When she had recovered her senses, she strongly stated her absolute opposition to a marriage with Mark Cobwebber-Rotth. She went to see her mother, but only got the following reply: “Don’t be silly, Bicarbona. I’m sure you are exaggerating. No one can be that bad. There is absolutely no question about that wedding. Everything has been arranged ages ago. And you know we need their aristocratic emblem. After all, it’s for your own good, so stop being a child. You are sixteen years old after all.” – “Fifteen!” Bicarbona protested, but her mother had already turned her back to leave the room.

I wish I could have helped Bicarbona, but as a bodyguard I had to carry out the orders of my employer. What I decided to do, however, was to smuggle her out in the evenings so she could have a bit of fun and entertainment before forever being locked up with the decrepit aristocrat, who was entirely unsuitable for her. For several weeks, we went to various places in the towns nearby and always had an exceedingly good time. One night, however, I lost sight of Bicarbona. I was worried, because she had been going heavy on the alcopops. Half an hour before the doors of the institution of fun closed, I found her. She seemed absolutely enchanted, floating above the ground like an ethereal being, and could not utter one single word for a while. As soon as she could speak, she told me what had happened.

“I saw the man I want to marry” she sighed. In a languishing voice she fantasised: “He is so tall and strong and muscular and has got such broad shoulders, and a tattoo, and ear studs. His name is “Destitute Enrapturing Angel, but Nondescript,” in short Dean. He said he is very poor and works in our chocolate factory, doing all the hard work of grinding cocoa beans manually. He has shaved all his cranial hair and has such talent in concocting drinks! He was holding mine and even after an hour of cradling in inside his strong warm hand, it was still supremely chilled and deliciously cool. Ohhh, he is so multi-talented!”

This report was interlaced by so many sighs that it took her quite some time to deliver it. She was so ravished that it was impossible to talk sense into her; she simply could not listen. I carried her home once again, this time not because she was upset and disgusted, but because her limbs had gone limp from sheer delight and fascination. The next day she was still unable to concentrate. She made me promise to find out more about Dean, for the chocolate factory in which he was working belonged to her parents and was part of ‘The Lovely Pink Shed’ emporium. When I asked Bicarbona what this man looked like facially, however, she could not give me an adequate answer. “I can’t really remember. He had magical features. but I could not possible describe them. His own mother must have had the same problem because she included the word “nondescript” in his name. His face was kaleidoscopic and scintillating, but not unusual in any way. It is impossible to reconstruct it in my mind, though. How strange.”

Thus she was pondering for hours on end, while I tried to get some information about this man. I went to the factory’s office and got photos of all the workers. which I then took to Bicarbona for her to pick him out. She looked closely at all the photos, but decided that his image was not among them. Personally, I suspected this man to be a liar and devilish womanizer. I finally resolved to protect Bicarbona from ever seeing him again. Unfortunately she had given him the exact location of her pigeonhole, so that he could send messages to her. She was checking her pigeonhole every half-hour, but every time the hole was overflowing with pigeons, all carrying messages from Mark Cobwebber-Rotth, which she instantly tore into bits.

Her dearest wish was to go out to the same institution of fun again, in order to perhaps see the mysterious Dean once more. I tried to convince her of the futility of her plan and appealed to her reason, but to no avail. So, in the end, I gave in and took her to the self-same place, but not without first having connected her wrist to mine with a chain of steel.

The crowd seemed impenetrable and its density made me lose sight of my charge, as soon as we had entered it. My wrist suddenly came lose and I saw that the chain had been disconnected mid-way, not by force but by cunning artistry. A message was attached to its end: “I am really sorry to have escaped, but I found Dean. I will rejoin you at the end of the night.”

I spent the following hours looking for Bicarbona, but without success. How was it possible that she could escape my well-trained alertness in such a manner? I could only wait until the fun had subsided, at which point she re-appeared from the by now sparser crowd, her heart fluttering like a trapped butterfly. She was floating even higher above the ground than the first time, oblivious to everything around her. I could not make her speak that night.

When she had recovered the following morning, she was, again, unable to describe the facial features of the enigmatic man. This seemed suspicious to me, for, surely, after failing to memorize a face at first, you would make an effort the second time. Was this man real at all? Was he a figment of Bicarbona’s imagination? She was very prone to living in her own world and being somewhat disconnected from reality. I did not put it past her to make the whole thing up. She had not received any message yet from the mysterious factory worker. But that could also have been caused by the traffic jam inside her pigeonhole, for Mark Cobwebber-Rotth was still sending innumerable pigeons every day. The Sodas had already engaged new staff for pigeon jam regulations.

Mark’s latest message was particularly worrying. It read thus: “I want you to explain your lack of response to all my messages. I am not pressurising you for sexual intercourse, and I think you are taking all this far too serious, Bicarbona. I am, by the way, paying a visit to your parents’ baking factory tomorrow and I am sure you cannot wait to see me there.” After reading this message, Bicarbona was very sick. She asked me to watch Mark’s visit from a distance and observe her mother’s reaction towards him.

The next day I took my position behind a dough tank and watched as Mr and Mrs Soda came into the factory, accompanied by the rashy little man. Bicarbona’s parents showed no outward sign of disgust, although Mark Cobwebber-Rotth was exceedingly revolting that day. He seemed to be having a particularly bad skin day. I could not understand what they were saying, but only distinguish that Mark was adopting a very patronizing tone. He was leaning on one of the lower dough tanks and, all at once, turned round, stuck his disgusting little fingers into the dough and licked them off. I could hear the slobbering noise from my hiding place. But not enough with that! He dug his hand, now dripping with foul saliva, into the dough once more and again droolingly licked his worm-like fingers.

Mr and Mrs Soda appeared gob-smacked, but were keeping a polite face. They bid him outside at once and, as soon as they had gone, a factory worker tried to separate the saliva from the dough. The dough in question was that for future chocolate fudge brownies, the secret speciality of ‘The Lovely Pink Shed,’ which could not possibly be ruined without destroying the whole family business.

Contrary to expectations, the Soda parents still wanted their daughter to marry the nauseating Mark Cobwebber-Rotth, despite his bad manners and his ailing appearance and foul breath. “At least he probably won’t outlive the age of forty,” her mother said. “By then you will only be twenty-six and easily find a more attractive man. So it’s really not that much of a big deal.” Bicarbona started to weep bitterly and when, later on, she pleaded with me to escort her to her favourite institution of fun again, I simply could not refuse her this last bit of happiness. Her wedding was to take place only three days later.

This time I let her run freely and arranged to meet her at the front door by the end of the night. But Bicarbona did not turn up at the arranged time. I waited for three hours and was about to search the whole town for her, when I finally saw her walking towards me from. “Where have you been?” I asked with an appropriately irate voice. “Erm, I got carried away slightly,” she replied apologetically. Only then I perceived that she was carrying the shoe of a chocolate factory worker. She added: “This is… he forgot, lost his shoe, and I picked it up. I thought I could return it to him next time.” I had to be harsh: “You know that there will be no next time. You are going to marry Mark Cobwebber-Rotth in three days.” This statement provoked desperate and effluent tears; Bicarbona fell into my arms and cried her eyes out until dawn. She was so exhausted and de-hydrated that I had to carry her home once more.

The following day, while Bicarbona was still asleep, the whole Soda mansion suddenly disgorged an abysmal squeal of woe. The horrendous sound was the result of the vociferous co-workings of multitudinous voices in the household, mainly that of Mrs Soda. I immediately enquired into the matter and was told by one of the managers that the whole batch of yesterday’s chocolate fudge brownies had been infested with some kind of dreadful taste, which united the tang of decaying, worm-eaten corpses and that of thousands of years’ old humid vaults. Unfortunately the brownies had gone on sale already and everybody, who had bitten into one, was not only disgusted beyond oblivion, but had also been contaminated with some kind of mental disease, primarily characterised by utter dejection and incapacitation.

To me, it was beyond any doubt that the contaminating agent inside the brownies was Mark Cobwebber-Rotth’s sample of saliva in yesterday’s dough. I carefully suggested this theory to the Soda couple. Mr Soda nodded with hardened facial features. His wife was still in tears. I ventured to ask “Is she still to marry this man?” There was a brief silence, followed by one of Mr Soda’s incontestable decisions: “We are doomed to bankruptcy anyway; I cannot see the point of that marriage anymore. I shall cancel it straightaway.”

He sent a messenger to Mark Cobwebber-Rotth. He returned briefly afterwards with a letter from Mark: “I disagree. When I dipped the tip of my finger into the dough I was not being myself. I was under the influence of mind-altering substances (I will not specify which ones; that is none of your business) and I cannot apologise enough. One act of stupidity and it is all over? I will give you some space to think about it.”

Mr Soda angrily crumpled the letter into a tiny ball and threw it into the bin. Meanwhile Mrs Soda had recovered from her crying fit and submitted to Mr Soda’s decision about the cancelled wedding. Their main objective now was to employ all the advisors in the whole world in order to save ‘The Lovely Pink Shed’ company.

I went into Bicarbona’s room to tell her the news. She was still asleep and had not even been woken up by the screaming house. She looked up and the first sound she emitted was a long-drawn half-articulated sigh, reminiscent of the name of her beloved Dean. When I told her about the bankruptcy and the wedding cancellation, she joyously jumped up and down on her bed, loudly cheering and triumphantly laughing: “I have to find him back now, immediately! Let’s go to the chocolate factory!” She grabbed his shoe and off we went.

Outside the chocolate factory, a long line of workers were slowly and dejectedly emerging, moving towards town to find a new job. Some of them had been contaminated by the brownie bug and could hardly move, so depressed were they. Bicarbona positioned herself at the top of the row and made every worker try on Dean’s shoe. Most workers found it was far too big or to perfectly shaped to fit their ill-constructed feet. The queue decreased to nothingness, without, however, any of the workers displaying the necessary pedi-measures to fill the exemplary walking mould. Dean was not to be found.

Visiting the institution of fun that night was not an option either, because unfortunately its doors were closed. “Did he not give you his pigeon hole number?” I asked. – “No, he has cuckoo problems with it. No pigeon will approach it. And his own pigeon is devoted to the cuckoo and won’t do its job any more.” Everything seemed condemned to a certain downfall. That night, the whole Soda mansion took sleeping pills to be able to close an eyelid.

But lo and behold, the following morning the down-trodden sleepers were nasally titillated to consciousness by the most deliciously sweet, mouthwateringly sumptuous, and appetisingly luscious smell ever inhaled by any human being in the whole world. The amazing aroma pervaded the whole building and had sneaked into everyone’s bedrooms, tempting them out of their drug-induced sleep.

Forming a terribly chaotic crowd, they were drawn towards the origin of the fragrance, crashing into each other, but altogether unable to resist the magnetic odour. The source of the exquisite smell turned out to be a freshly baked and still warm batch of chocolate fudge brownies, such as the world had never yet perceived. The looked as wonderful as they smelled and no one could resist digging in and devouring as much as they could. Even the oppressive feeling of overeating did not lessen the tempting qualities of the brownies.

When the base of the pile had been reached, a message was discovered: the recipe employed to bake these magnificent brownies. A P.S. had been added: “In love from D.e.a.n., according to my late grandmother’s recipe.” Bicarbona burst into tears. Mrs Soda, meanwhile, analysed the recipe and triumphantly ran to the office in order to call all her factory workers to get back to work.

Within three days, ‘The Lovely Pink Shed’ had recovered from the losses that Mark Cobwebber-Rotth had caused. After three more days, it was more successful than ever before, exporting as far as into space. No living creature was able to resist the palatability of the new chocolate fudge brownies. Bicarbona, however, had still not found the object of her affections. Dean seemed to have disappeared completely. Where could he be? Who could he be? Bicarbona was unable to answer these questions or to give me a physical description of the mysterious man, however much she was wrecking her mind. She was cherishing the factory shoe; the only keepsake she had of him, apart from the brownies, of course. She devoured massive quantities of brownies every day and proclaimed that they tasted of him.

One day, as I was stepping into her room and she was sitting in her bed eating brownies, the said shoe happened to stand just in the entrance and, by sheer mistake I stepped into it. I happened not to be wearing any shoes myself, as they were being polished by one of the maid. My foot glided into the shoe without any resistance, and ere I had realised what had happened, I was standing inside the shoe without even feeling it, and Bicarbona was gasping ceaselessly. She jumped up from her bed and immediately investigated the foot-fitting situation, exclaiming: “It is your shoe, it fits perfectly! Why did I never realize? You must be him! You do look exactly like him, too! And you smell of chocolate as well!”

I did not protest. Before I could have uttered a syllable, Bicarbona was embracing me and we dissolved in a mind-blowing kiss. I simply could not resist. I had been in love with her for a long time. Perhaps I should have mentioned that earlier, among a few other things. But the main thing was that it had all worked out for the best.

Bicarbona and I got her parents’ consent to get married shortly afterwards. They no longer cared whom she married and they were so rich now that they did not need an aristocratic label for their products any more. During the years to come, we had an abundance of children, who all love chocolate fudge brownies and were able to bake them at the age of three. The natural talent for concocting dough had been passed on to the whole next generation. After the grandparents Sodas’ death, we inherited “The Lovely Pink Shed” and continued its success until today. Although I had never had any work experience with bakery before, I did have a very talented grandmother, so that I didn’t enter the business completely empty-handed. My skills at mixing, measuring, timing and reaching a harmonious end result came in very handy indeed. But I shall not reveal the secrets of my trade.