Tránsito holds out to the 28th and asks for Monday bread

Previously: a February 2024 invoice revealed that Celso Larrauri burns pallet offcuts instead of beech. He has eight schools left.

Eulogio Satrústegui arrived at six, twenty minutes earlier than on any other day, and mixed the dough for the eight schools without saying good morning. Eulogio Satrústegui, dough maker, fifty-two, thirty-three of them in this house, has been weighing dough since he was nineteen and had not missed a start time in all that while.

Celso Larrauri, master baker and owner of the bakery, had been down since five and stood beside him rounding loaves. Six hundred and twenty loaves and thirteen hundred rolls: with eight schools the batch fits in two troughs with room left in the third, which is the shortest way of saying what has happened in a fortnight.

At twenty past six Eulogio spoke without lifting his eyes off the marble.

"You told me: sign whatever the Noáin man brings, I'm at the doctor's."

"That is what I told you."

"You did not tell me that what the Noáin man was bringing was not beech."

"I did not tell you."

"Well, that is what I am going to tell the inspector on the twenty-eighth if she asks me, in those words." Eulogio cut the dough with the scraper, once, twice, three times. "Not because I want to hurt you. Because my signature is on that paper and I have two daughters."

"You will tell her or I will tell her," said Celso.

"That is what you say now."

They went on rounding until seven without another word. At a quarter past seven the van left with the eight deliveries, and Celso did all eight himself, as he has every day since Izaskun took the paperwork and left him the road.

Paulino Garisoain arrived at half past nine on foot, a folder with elastic bands under his arm. Eighty-one years old, thirty-one of them oven man in this same oven, retired since ninety-nine. He did not take his coat off.

"I have brought you the number."

He put two stapled sheets on the marble, headed Refractarios Ordoiz, of Berriozar, the firm that sold him the material in seventy-four and is still open, now with the grandson.

"You read it, I can't read that print without my glasses," said Celso.

"Lift the whole of row one, the six bricks at the mouth. Rebuild the joint with refractory mortar. Run an inspection camera through the flues and clean the two stretches under the hearth, which have spent two years swallowing what they swallow. And lay row one again." Paulino ran his finger down to the last line. "Nine thousand four hundred euros plus tax. Five days' work."

"Five days."

"Five days with the oven properly cold. To get in and look, one night is enough, you saw that on Saturday, and for the mortar to take you have to get below forty degrees, but it gets there on its own while they lift the row and clean the flues, which is work that does not need cold. So the shutdown costs you one night, not two days." Paulino turned the sheet over. "Today is the nineteenth. You shut down on Friday the twenty-second as soon as you pull the last batch, they go in on Saturday the twenty-third, they work the Sunday — I have asked and they will, though they charge the weekend separately — and they come out on Wednesday the twenty-seventh. You light it on the Wednesday the moment they are out, and first thing Thursday they see it hot with bread inside."

"How much separately?"

"That I have not asked, because first I want to know whether you have the nine thousand four hundred."

Celso did not answer.

"The other sum I will do for you free," Paulino went on. "The electric deck oven your daughter wants is forty-one thousand, it takes three weeks to install and it would not be in place for the twenty-eighth even if you paid for it today. So for this inspection there is only one door, and it costs nine thousand four hundred."

"And the wood."

"And the wood. From tomorrow, beech."

He said that part out in the yard, with the door shut behind him, which is how Paulino says the things he does not want the daughter to hear.

"If you lay the new row and keep feeding it the same stuff underneath, in a year and a half you are back where you started, and then nobody will sign anything for you. That is two thousand four hundred euros a year more. I do not know where you get them. I know you have to get them."

Izaskun Larrauri went up to the office at eleven and opened the accounts on screen. Twenty-nine years old, the bakery's administrator, Celso's daughter, she has kept the books since she was twenty-four.

"Aita, come up."

Celso came up with his apron on.

"Three thousand one hundred and forty euros," she said. "That is what is in the account today, and out of it come the nine wage packets on the thirtieth, Monday's flour lorry and the quarterly insurance. With what comes in before the end of the month, we have four hundred left."

"Paulino says nine thousand four hundred."

"Nine thousand four hundred." Izaskun turned the screen round. "And on top of that we have lost the Sagrado Corazón, which was a hundred and sixty loaves and three hundred rolls a day, that is three thousand seven hundred euros a month that no longer comes in. Asking a bank for nine thousand four hundred while showing it an account that has just lost three thousand seven hundred a month is asking so that they say no."

"We ask anyway."

"We ask on Thursday, which is when the business banking manager is in the Estella branch. And we ask with signed orders in front of him, not with good intentions."

"What signed orders?"

"The ones we do not have."

Tránsito Chamorro's white Opel came into the yard at twenty past twelve, unannounced, as always. Tránsito Chamorro, fifty-two, head of kitchens for the Virgen del Puy group, which is four of the eight schools Celso has left and one thousand four hundred and fifty children eating every day. She was carrying a blue plastic folder and she did not put it down once.

"I have come from yesterday's board," she said. "It lasted four hours and your business took eleven minutes."

"Eleven minutes."

"Eleven. And I will tell you what happened in the eleven, because you have earned it." Tránsito set the folder on the marble. "I read out the commitment you sent me yesterday at six minutes past twelve. Row one of the hearth, joint at the mouth, before the twenty-eighth, signed by you. Four lines. The finance director asked whether there was a technical report behind it and I said no, there was a baker who writes down what he is going to do and then does it, and that I have been buying from him that way for nine years."

"And?"

"And there was an envelope on the table before I walked in. From Panificadora Duero. A twelve-month offer for the four centres at six per cent below what I pay you."

Celso wiped his hands on his apron, although they were dry.

"Six per cent is about three thousand euros a year for them," said Izaskun from the stairs.

"Three thousand one hundred and sixty," said Tránsito, without looking at her. "I can multiply too. What Duero cannot do is get bread to me before eight at four kitchens in four different villages, because they deliver out of Berriozar on an eighteen-stop round and I would be number fifteen. I said that, and I had it entered in the minutes."

She took the group's order sheet out of the blue folder, the one for the whole year, with the weekday boxes printed on it.

"We stay with you until the twenty-eighth. That is voted and they cannot overturn it on me." She uncapped her pen. "And now what I did not tell you on Saturday, which is what I have brought today."

"Tell me."

"Mondays. Since I have run this group, on Mondays my four canteens serve industrial sliced bread, because my predecessor closed the contract that way and nobody has touched it. That is one thousand four hundred and fifty children eating bagged bread one day in five. I have wanted to change it for three years and had nobody to change it with, because the only one who delivers to me before eight is you."

"I mix on Mondays anyway."

"I know you mix. What you do not have is anyone to sell it to."

And for the first time in nine years she spoke to him formally.

Tránsito Chamorro crossed out "Tuesday to Friday" in the weekday box, wrote above it, in capitals, MONDAY TO FRIDAY, signed underneath and dated it: the nineteenth of March. Two hundred and ninety loaves more a week, from the first of April. She tore off the yellow copy and left it on the marble, next to the two loaves standing on edge from Tuesday the fifth, which were still there.

"I am not signing this against the paper of the twenty-ninth," she said. "I am signing it against you, and if there is no paper on the twenty-ninth I am left holding a signature and looking like a fool in front of my board. Take it to the bank on Thursday, that is why I am giving it to you today and not on the first."

Celso picked up the yellow copy with both hands.

"There are three days I will not be able to serve you. The twenty-fifth, the twenty-sixth and the twenty-seventh, which is the week of the works."

"And what do my children eat on those three days?"

"The small oven, the electric one for the rolls, and yesterday's bread. It covers half."

"Then put that in the paper you take to the bank as well, with the dates." Tránsito did not move her face. "I sign that once, Celso, and I sign it today. Not on the twenty-eighth."

"How do you know I am going to the bank on Thursday?"

"Because the business banking manager is in Estella on Thursdays and the whole village knows it. And because Paulino Garisoain asked Refractarios Ordoiz for a quotation yesterday, and Ordoiz belongs to my brother-in-law." Tránsito closed the blue folder. "Nine thousand four hundred plus tax, Celso. And you do not have it, because if you did that row would already be up. Who puts it up for you?"