Nine thousand four hundred euros or the electric oven

Previously: the inspector gave Celso Larrauri 21 days over the benzopyrene in the crust and comes back on Thursday the 28th. The new hearth costs 9,400 euros.

The seven on the wall was written by Izaskun Larrauri at eight thirty-five on Thursday the twenty-first, the edge of her hand still white from rubbing out the eight. San Jorge had dropped out over the phone fifteen minutes earlier: ninety loaves and a hundred and forty rolls a day, nineteen hundred euros a month.

"Benigna, tell me it's about the price," Izaskun had said, who has kept the books of the house since she was twenty-four and knows that anything about the price can be fixed.

"It's not about the price, love." Benigna Arellano, cook at San Jorge since before Celso inherited the oven, was speaking from the servery with the extractor fan on. "It's that the new head teacher starts on Monday and the first thing she asked for was the list of suppliers with their open files next to it. I count for nothing in that meeting."

"The inspector closes the file on the twenty-eighth."

"Then call me on the twenty-ninth and I'll walk into the next meeting with the paper in my hand. In the meantime, don't make me come out with the face I'd have to put on." Benigna lowered her voice. "And the bread for my own house you keep bringing me, because no head teacher decides that."

Izaskun wrote down the date, the name and the reason in the column she had started on Tuesday the fifth, when the column had only one row. Then she called Erreniega.

She called knowing what she was going to hear, and she called anyway, because the May rolls are ordered in April but the list closes this week and because an order of four hundred rolls is the only honest reason to dial a number that is no longer a customer.

"Milagros, it's Izaskun."

"I know who it is."

"The four hundred for May."

"The four hundred for May were ordered from Duero by the head teacher on Monday, trial delivery note and all." Milagros Beunza, cook at Erreniega for eleven school years, was not angry, which is the part that hurts most. "Izaskun, I'm not going to ring you to tell you this every week. If you have the paper signed on the twenty-ninth, send it to my mobile and I'll put it on the table of the school board in September, which is when next year is decided. Before September there is nothing to be done."

"September."

"September. And the Duero lorry comes up with chains worse than you do."

Celso had been up since five. With Eulogio Satrústegui, dough maker, fifty-two, thirty-three of them in the house, they had mixed six hundred and twenty loaves and thirteen hundred rolls, the batch for eight schools, and that batch will not come round again: from tomorrow it is five hundred and thirty loaves and eleven hundred and sixty rolls, which fit in two troughs with room to spare. The third has been upside down against the wall for three days, because a trough left standing with flour inside turns sour. The eight deliveries took him an hour and twenty minutes; in February, with eleven, he left at a quarter past seven and did not get back until nine.

At eight forty he took the road to Estella with the blue plastic folder of Tránsito Chamorro, head of kitchens for the Virgen del Puy group, on the passenger seat and the Refractarios Ordoiz quote inside it, in an envelope nobody but him had opened. At nine forty, fifty-two kilometres from the bakery, Celso Larrauri, master baker and owner of the house, walked into the bank office.

Félix Ancín, business manager, sees clients in Estella on Thursdays and at head office the rest of the week. He had his screen turned towards the wall and a squared notebook open, which is what men who have spent twenty years saying no in small towns use.

"Sit down, Celso. Tell me what you need and tell me by when."

"Nine thousand four hundred plus tax. And I need it tomorrow."

"Tomorrow why?"

"Because the job is five days with the oven cold and they come in on Saturday. I shut it down on Friday as soon as the last batch is out, they work from the twenty-third to the twenty-seventh, and on Thursday the twenty-eighth the inspector wants to see the oven hot with bread inside. If there is no money on Saturday, they do not come in."

"Explain to me what they do in those five days, because I know nothing about ovens and I'm going to have to write it down."

"They lift the whole first row, the six bricks of the mouth. They redo the joint with refractory mortar. They put a camera down the flues and clean the two stretches under the hearth, which have spent two years swallowing what they swallow. And they set the row again. The mortar only takes with the oven below forty degrees, and it drops that far on its own in one night."

"And who certifies that it's been done properly?"

"Paulino Garisoain runs it, the oven man who built that hearth in 1974, and he is the one who measures the temperature with a needle pyrometer. And on Thursday the inspector signs it, which is what she's coming for."

Ancín wrote two figures and joined them with a line. Then he asked for the last three months of the account and read them slowly, without commenting on anything, until he got to March.

"Celso, there's a hole here from the middle of the month."

"There are four schools fewer."

"Name them."

"Santa Bárbara, sixteen hundred a month. Erreniega, eighteen hundred. Sagrado Corazón, three thousand seven hundred. And San Jorge, which went this morning at twenty past eight: nineteen hundred."

"Then it isn't four schools fewer." Ancín turned the notebook round so he could see it. "It's nine thousand euros a month that were coming in in February and are not coming in today. That is four out of every ten euros you were billing then."

"I have seven schools left and nine payrolls."

"You have seven schools left and nine payrolls and four clients lost in nine days. I can't put that in a risk file and expect somebody in Pamplona to sign it without phoning me." Ancín closed the notebook. "And now I'll tell you what I can do. Nine thousand four hundred over five years at seven per cent is a hundred and eighty-six euros a month. You can carry that even with seven schools: it shows in your own figures, and that's why I'm telling you. I won't finance the tax, because you get that back in the quarter."

"Then do it."

"Celso, first a question of the kind that doesn't go on any form. What if the number comes up again on the twenty-eighth?"

"It won't come up."

"Answer me anyway."

"If it comes up again, on the first of April I'll have three schools left and a new brick to pay for. I've known that since Tuesday the fifth." Celso did not look away. "And if I don't lay the brick, on the twenty-eighth it comes up for certain."

"That's the only answer that would have done." Ancín took the cap off his pen. "I'll give it to you."

"Then give it to me."

"I'll give it to you with a guarantor."

Celso put the blue folder on the desk and opened it himself, which he had not done all week.

"This is a commitment signed by the head of kitchens of the Virgen del Puy group. Four schools, fourteen hundred and fifty children. She stays with me until the twenty-eighth and she has it in writing."

"Until the twenty-eighth."

"Until the twenty-eighth."

"Celso, my loan lasts sixty months." Ancín did not touch the paper. "That commitment lasts seven days. It is no use to me as security, it is of use to me as intention, and intention cannot be enforced in a court. I need a natural person with something behind them."

"I have nobody behind me."

"You have your daughter."

Celso did not move.

"In this office there is a mortgage cancelled in January," Ancín went on, and he said it looking at the closed notebook, not at him. "A flat in Berriozar, forty-nine square metres, in the name of Izaskun Larrauri Beorlegui, paid up to the last instalment. I know because I signed the last one myself. It is the only thing in this family a bank can look at without doing sums."

"My daughter is twenty-nine."

"And she has the smallest payroll in your company, and a signature that is worth something because that flat is hers and not yours." Ancín put both hands on the desk. "Celso, I'm not asking you to drag her into this. I'm telling you what there is, which is different. If she comes and signs, by midday tomorrow you have the money in the account and on Saturday you have Paulino with the lorry in the yard. If she doesn't come, on Monday I take it to committee and the committee answers you when it answers you."

"And if you take it with Tránsito's paper?"

"If I take it with Tránsito's paper and the March figures, they are going to ask me what happens on the twenty-ninth if the inspector doesn't sign. And I have to answer the truth, which is that I don't know." Ancín stood up and shook his hand, which is how he says goodbye to people he is going to say yes to. "Until one o'clock tomorrow. At five past one it's already Monday."

At ten to one, in the bakery yard, Eulogio Satrústegui was loading San Jorge's empty crates into the van so as not to have to look at them on Friday. Eulogio Satrústegui, dough maker, fifty-two years old and thirty-three in the house, had been speaking only what was strictly necessary since Friday.

"They brought this from Ordoiz," he said, and handed Celso an envelope. "And Paulino Garisoain has called twice. He says he has the refractory lorry booked for Saturday at seven and that he lets it go at six this evening if you don't tell him yes."

"Tell him yes."

"You tell him yes, Ordoiz doesn't know me." Eulogio shut the back door. "Celso. One thing. Your daughter has the electric oven quote open upstairs again."

"She's had it open since February."

"Today she has it printed."

Izaskun was standing in front of the office table, not sitting, and on the table there were three papers laid out the way cards are laid out when the hand has already been decided: the Ordoiz quote, the bank's guarantee form with the details filled in on the computer, and the Industrias Garaizar quote for forty-one thousand euros, the one for the deck electric oven, with the validity date underlined in yellow.

"I called Ancín at twenty past nine," she said. "Before you got there."

"Izaskun."

"Let me finish, aita, because I've had it thought through since Monday and if you stop me now I'll tell it worse." She did not raise her voice at any point. "I asked him three things. Whether the guarantee was joint and several, and it is. Whether it could be for part of it, and it can't: it is for the whole nine thousand four hundred and for the five years. And what happens to my flat if the bakery doesn't pay. What always happens, happens."

"So you already know the answer is no."

"I know what happens to the flat, and I know it better than you, because I paid for it." Izaskun put her finger on the bank's form. "And I also know what happens if I don't sign. If I don't sign, on Monday this is a committee in Pamplona and the brick isn't laid on Saturday, and if they don't come in on Saturday they don't finish on Wednesday, and on Thursday Begoña Carrascosa scrapes the base of a loaf again and three point one comes out again. And on the twenty-ninth there is no paper for Tránsito, and on the first of April the four Virgen del Puy schools go, which is fourteen hundred and fifty children and half of what is left. That isn't losing a client, aita. That is closing."

Eulogio had stopped in the doorway with the empty crate in his hands.

"And I don't want the forty-one thousand electric one for Thursday, it wouldn't be in even if we paid for it today; Paulino already told me that." Izaskun turned the third paper towards her father. "I want it for September, which is when Erreniega decides next year and when Benigna goes back to her meeting with a paper in her hand. And I want it ordered on the second of April, three days after the inspector signs. Not in June. Not when we can."

"That oven makes a different bread," Eulogio said from the door.

"That oven makes the bread you teach it to make, Eulogio, and you have thirteen years left to teach it." Izaskun did not turn round. "With the hearth one, the day a joint goes again, there aren't thirteen years: there's a Thursday."

Celso went over to the delivery-note cabinet, the one with three drawers, and opened the bottom one. Inside, in a folder with elastic bands, are the firewood invoices for the last four financial years, and the one from February 2024 is the second of that year, with Eulogio's small upright handwriting at the foot and the price per tonne in a box that cannot be read from above. He put his hand on the folder and left it there for the time it takes to breathe twice.

"There's something about the oven I have to tell you," he said.

"Tell me."

Eulogio put the crate down on the floor, slowly, and went out into the yard without closing the door. They heard him start the van.

"Tomorrow," said Celso, and shut the drawer.

"Tomorrow at nine I sign," said Izaskun, and she put the forty-one thousand quote back in the middle of the table, on top of the other two papers. "And this stays here, face up and with the second of April written on it by hand, until we order it."