Leaf and Loaf

Leaf and Loaf

--- William Saroyan

LEAF

At last we went out and stood on the lawn and watched the sun go down, and my father said, “If it weren’t for art, we’d have vanished from the face of the earth long ago.”

What art really is, though, or what human being really is, and what the world really is. I just don’t know, that’s all.

Standing there, watching the sun go down the sea, my father said, “In every house there ought to be an art table on which, one by one, things are placed, so that everybody in that house might look at the things very carefully, and see them.”

“What would you put on a table like that?”

“A leaf. A coin. A button. A stone. A small piece of torn newspaper. An apple. An egg. A pebble. A flower. A dead insect. A shoe.”

“Everybody’s seen those things.”

“Of course. But nobody looks at them, and that’s what art is. To look at familiar things as if they had never before been seen. A plain sheet of paper with typing on it. A necktie. A pocketknife. A key. A fork. A cup. A bottle. A bowl. A walnut. ”

“What about a baseball? A baseball is a beautiful thing. ”
“It certainly is. You should play something on the table and look at it. The next morning you would take it away, and put something else there—anything, for there is nothing made by nature or by man that doesn’t deserve to be looked at particularly. ”

Now, the sun was gone all the way into the sea. There was a lot of orange light on the water, and in the sky above the water. Legion of Honor Hill grew dark, and my father brought out a cigarette and lighted it and inhaled and then let the smoke out of his nose and mouth, and he said, “Well, boy, there’s another day of the wonderful world go forever.”
“New day tomorrow, though.”
“What do you say we drive to the Embarcadero and look at the ships from all over the world?”

LOAF

We loafed through the whole town, because that was what we had planned to do. It was nothing more than just another little town with another bunch of people living in it. we saw some of the people. All of a sudden I noticed their eyes.

This made me laugh.

“Tell me about it,” my father said.

“Eyes,” I said. “We sure have got eyes, haven’t we?”

“Very good,” my father said.

He began to sing, “I saw your eyes, your wonderful eyes.”

Pretty soon he stopped singing and began to breathe deeply.

“Somebody’s baking bread somewhere. Would you like some fresh bread?”

“I sure would.”

We walked to the corner, then around the corner, but we didn’t find a bakery there, so we went back to where we had been, and near there we found the place, but the door was locked.

My father knocked, and then we saw a man in a baker’s white coat with flour on his hands and face come to the door and open it.

“We open at seven,” the man said, “It’s not six yet.”

“What are you baking back there?”

“Bread and rolls.”

“How about letting me buy some? I don’t often get a change to eat freshly baked bread.”

“You want to come in, then?” the baker said, so my father and I went in. we followed the man to where he and his wife were baking bread. It was clean and warm back there. The metal racks had new loaves on them and new rolls.

“Help yourself,” the baker said.

My father took a loaf of French bread from among half a dozen the baker’s wife brought out of the oven on a long wooden spade and held out to him, and then she brought him a lot of rolls on the spade. My father took half a dozen rolls, too. He gave me one, and he took a bit out of another. The big loaf he put in his coat pocket just the way it was.

“Sit down,” the baker said. “There’s some cheese over there on that little table. Help yourself.”

My father and I went to the little table where the baker and his wife sat and ate bread and cheese, and we sat there.

“Do you know the baker?”

“Never saw him before in my life.”

The baker came over and broke open a roll and put some cheese in it. I thought he was going bite into it himself, but he handed the roll to me and said, “Always remember bread and cheese. When everything else looks bad, remember bread and cheese, and you’ll be all right.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s why I’m a baker,” he said. “I tried a lot of other things, but this is the work for me.”