the bread of salt by nvm gonzalez

cute story that reminded me a lot of araby. maybe it was inspired by it? anyway, i like this. it entertained plus showed that in the old times there was an unbridgeable gap between the rich and the poor. it was amusing the way the boy would do a lot of things to impress the apple of his eye. he was inspired by her, and his every move was fueled by the desire to be noticed and to be good enough. he did everything but then again there were rules one cannot violate. there were things one cannot alter. and one of them is his being poor, and the girl's being rich. i kind of detest that system where the poor, try as they might, could never be able to reach the admirable stature of the affluent. they may have had the cash but that's simply not enough. they had to have the reputation and the surname, too. no self-made entity was ever welcome. if there were one, then he must have been exceptional.

in the end, the boy had an epiphany. he really wasn't in love with the girl. i think a lot of us can relate with him. we'd be really embarrassed if we would be caught by our crushes doing something like that. and the way aida behaved with him, i think it was just kindness with a tinge of deprecation. the kind of thing one would show to someone from a lower class. he probably realized that. and at that moment in the lucullan feast his dreams of being an elitist hopelessly slipped through his hands the way the egg-yolk things failed to conceal themselves from aida's eyes. after that, he went back to the bakery with the pandesal not yet ready, but in the morning it would be and he would be the brown boy again, simple and poor, and things will be the same again. but he's fine with it. after all, he willingly went to the bakery hoping to reclaim the bread that he thought he threw away but in reality would forever be his.