FICTION
Pancakes
by Rayne Hall
Heinrich sat with his hands folded in his lap. He kept his gaze lowered while the farmer on the opposite end of the huge kitchen table mumbled the Lord's Prayer.
The smell coming from the pans on the coal stove was delicious, and Heinrich was hungry. His silent thanks for the meal that God had provided were heartfelt. He had not had a decent meal in over a week.
"Amen," he said sincerely.
"And thank you, dear God, for sending us a guest," the farmer added. He rolled up his shirtsleeves and tucked the stiff napkin into the neck opening of his grey waistcoat.
"Amen," said the farmer's wife from the stove. "Do you like pancakes, Heinrich?"
"Very much." He noted the many eggshells on the sink. Pancakes with real eggs!
His mother made them from water and flour with a little salt. She never had eggs to add to the dough, and never any filling, except a little jam on feast days. For as long as Heinrich could remember, his mother had kept chickens, but these days she had to sell the eggs to pay for his education.
The farmer's wife loaded the plate in the middle of the table with rolled pancakes. Wonderfully golden, fragrant, and glistening with fat, they waited to be eaten.
"Take one," the farmer said, gesturing with his knife.
Heinrich did. The farmer's wife was still busily turning pancakes over in her cast iron pan.
"Eat, boy," she said. "This is the first time we've had a theology student. The one who came last Sunday was studying engineering. The others we had mean to become teachers."
"It's good to see a young man who wants to be a priest," said the farmer, without emptying his mouth first. He stroked his moustache downwards. "You don't get many students with a vocation these days. They all want to be engineers and such."
At last the woman took off her chequered apron and hung it on a hook by the stone sink. "Do you have a vocation, Heinrich?" she wanted to know. "Do eat your pancake."
Between biting and chewing, Heinrich answered that yes, he was going to be a priest, and yes, he had a strong vocation. The pancake was stuffed with spinach and minced meat. He could not remember eating anything so delicious in all the eighteen years of his life.
"We're blessed. A priest in the house is a blessing," said the farmer.
"I'm not a priest yet."
The room was hot; the heat it contained would have warmed his family at home for many days. He would have liked to take his Sunday jacket off, but that would reveal the frayed waistcoat and the mended shirt.
The conversation ceased while both men ate their meal. At last, the woman pulled a small chair for herself to the kitchen table and sat. "We've never been blessed with children of our own," she said, as if in reply to a question.
Heinrich wondered if he should say something about God's will and Sarah who bore a child for Abraham when she was over one hundred years old, but was not certain, so he said nothing. His own mother had born nine, six of them alive still. She found it hard to scrape together enough victuals to feed his young siblings, but she never questioned his vocation which demanded the sacrifices.
He studied the carved crucifix on the wall: a pale body on dark cross, with liberal amounts of blood pouring from the wounds.
"Some more salad, Heinrich?"
"Yes, please."
The salad was crunchy, and quite like the salad his mother made: crisp green leaves with oil and vinegar.
Still hungry, he eyed the remaining pancakes on the plate, waiting for the farmer to offer him another one. To ask for more would surely be rude and greedy.
He tried not to look too obviously at the plate which still contained more food than he had eaten in a week. As a priest-to-be, he must discipline himself, and not show greed. He would wait. So he looked out of the steamed-up windows into the yard with its pig pens and chickens, and at the winter-bare trees in the orchard beyond. Apples, eggs, meat. he found himself envying the farm couple for their food, and berated himself at once for having such thoughts.
The farmer and his wife both piled more salad on their plates; Heinrich declined another helping of it.
"Had enough?" The farmer's wife whisked the plate with pancakes off the table.
"Thank you, it was wonderful," Heinrich managed to say. "I am very grateful. God bless you."
They wished him well with his studies, and he left.
As he walked through the garden gate, he heard a scraping noise, and grunting. He turned. He saw the farmer's wife tossing the pancakes, one after the other, to the pigs.
Rayne Hall has worked as a museum guide, belly dancer, fancy dress hire assistant, magazine editor, investigative reporter, adult education teacher, bilingual secretary, tarot reader and apple picker in Germany, China, Mongolia, Nepal and the UK. She currently lives on the south coast of England where she writes stories and non-fiction books.