This is a first-hand account—maybe the only one—of what took place, here in the beautiful town of Z, on the first of —, in the year —.
I would swear before a jury that Mr. Applebee was still alive and awake when I handed him a muffin over the counter, about nine-thirty in the morning. He was his usual buoyant self, eyes wide and sparkling with mirth, and the joke he told in some way involved Mrs. Applebee and a rolling pin, though I would be hard-pressed to recall the particulars. Those muffins, however: what a marvel were they! I still vividly remember making them and thinking perhaps they were the best batch I ever made. Catching a whiff from the oven, I never wanted to part with them again. Those blueberries: simply out of this world. They should have been out of season for two weeks at least, but for some unfathomable reason, here I had been handed these little pieces of heaven, only hours before calamity struck. They were a gift, pure and simple, and the memory is dear to my heart.
What took place after Mr. Applebee left the bakery? What happened after that good man took off heaving with laughter, leaving the wooden door swinging to and fro till all the momentum from his departure was spent? It’s at the heart of the mystery, and as we speak, I am no nearer an answer than I was then.
Do I dare say it? After Alfred Applebee left, the world as I knew it ceased to exist. He was the last person I saw alive in the old sense, and no one who entered the bakery later that day, or any day thereafter, did so anymore with eyes open.
Olrich’s Baking Goods has been a success story, the number of customers steady at eight or nine per hour, thereabouts. That is on average, of course, and there are times when I am completely alone with my produce.
Business has been blessedly good, and here comes the surprising bit: it’s still every bit as good. Nothing has changed. The world may have stopped, but people are still lining up to get at those mighty blueberry muffins and cherry pies. They do so asleep, but you would not know it from the ruckus they are causing. Mrs. Trelawney still comes in the old way, elbows crashing into door frame on account of being overloaded with bags; old Mrs. Ellenray can still chat up a storm on the worst of days; and Mr. Applebee, bless his soul, is still master of the deep belly laugh. In a jiffy, he can make those wrinkles on his face come alive in a most wondrous fashion, though the eyes are shut, it seems, for good.
How the sight struck terror into my heart! It was Mrs. Paulson, of No. 5, Apricot Avenue. Far from being a regular, she did come by occasionally, in any case often enough for me to remember her by name, voice, and gait. Well, it was still her, alright, no doubt there, and when she called “Hullo, Olrich”, it was her own voice that I heard. And yet things were far from peachy, because Mrs. Paulson, as I live and breathe, was asleep on her feet, her eyes sealed as if she had blinked and forgotten to open them again.
“Mrs. Paulson,” I ventured, cautiously, from the counter. “Are you feeling quite alright?”
Normally, you see, I would have guessed she was sleepwalking and was even now still on her naptime. And yet, somehow, I was immediately on my guard, instinct tugging at my sleeve and telling me to be on my toes. Heads up, a little bird on my shoulder was saying. Something extraordinary is happening.
“Why, of course, young Olrich,” Mrs. Paulson chirped, chipper as a bee in a bath of nectar. “Why wouldn’t I be? It’s a beautiful day outside. Now pack me up a half dozen of those fabulous muffins of yours, won’t you? I’m expecting company and I want only the very best.”
“That’s too kind of you, Mrs. Paulson,” I said, while the hair stood up on the back of my neck. Regardless, I did as bidden, putting six tasty muffins in a bag and handing it over, hands trembling.
“Good day, young Olrich!” she called in parting, and from where I stood, I could spot her waiting for the light to turn green, crossing the street on sure feet and walking up Mango Street till she disappeared from view.
Had that been all, I could have chalked it off to happenstance and soon regained my piece of mind. But Mrs. Paulson was only the first in a long line of sleepwalkers. A half hour later, it was Mr. Pinkerton, announcing himself in his familiar drawl and leading me to hope for the best, but when I turned around, there he was, blissfully asleep on his feet and grinning. Then came Mrs. Cumberbatch, and after her Mr. Cholmondeley who was the worst for snoring so loudly I could hardly hear his order.
Lunch break was never so far away as on that morning. Time had turned into molasses, moving at a snail’s pace, if that. How I longed to mingle with the townsfolk, to see with my own eyes what was going on.
When noon finally arrived, I burst from the bakery without even locking up—I soon noticed my mistake and ran back, then in a whirlwind once more onto Mango Street, which by way of Honeydew Melon Drive and Lychee Lane leads straight to the center of town where a fountain stands round which town life revolves. In the middle of the fountain an imposing statue stands of Charles Ogden Zinfandel, heavily mustachioed founder of Z who named the town after himself. With each generation, the name has been gradually whittled down further, from Zinfandeltown, to Zinfandel, via Zinf—which personally I thought had rather a lot going for it—and finally settling, for the time being, at Z. It’s a shame, really, what with leaving the next generation with so little options for improvement, but who knows what sprightly minds will come up with in the future!
I found the town bustling. You will simply have to take my word for it, because it was still nothing, of course, compared to the big city which I heard somebody say the other day is like a beehive day and night. Remember that Z is home only to a few hundred souls. But bustling it was, by our standards, and a sight to behold, too, all the more so since I rarely get to see it, bound to the bakery as I am all the livelong day. On top, I usually spend my short lunch break inside as well. It’s the rarest of days—perhaps four or five times a year—when I decide, on a whim, to keep the shop closed and instead spend the day adrift in town like a vagrant, sitting in the shade by the fountain and watching with immense interest the various busy-bee goings-on of my customers, and otherwise just letting myself be carried to this or that corner of town like a leaf in the wind. It gives me great joy, I have to say—while each hour that nagging voice at the back of my head grows a little louder and conscience begins to work on me, giving me a whooping about neglecting the bakery and basically letting everyone else down lounging about. The next day, as a rule, I open the bakery an hour earlier than elsewhen, and close it an hour later. I am humbled to say everyone is always very forgiving of my little eccentricities.
They were all asleep. Mr. and Mrs. Booth, whom I was expecting in the bakery no later than four in the afternoon; Mrs. Dexter-Wyndham, who would be there at five; the Wakeham family, with the Wakeham twins, strolling along while getting some much-needed shut-eye. How do they do it, I wondered. How do they not crash into a phone booth or a utility pole? How, come to that, do they keep from getting run over? There being only twenty-four cars in Z, the odds were low, but certainly in the realm of the possible—only a matter of time!
But nothing of the sort happened. Life just went on as it always did, as if it ran on some sort of secret tracks with everyone’s byzantine little routes hither and thither mapped out in advance and followed unconsciously. Mrs. Summers, for instance, entered the Poached Pear haberdashery, purposefully selected a pair of shoes, tried them on and paid for them from a wad of dollar bills in her purse. The whole thing took less than five minutes, and when she exited, the new shoes were already on her feet—a perfect fit! Obviously, something was going on I wasn’t privy to, like a secret society to which I alone hadn’t been invited. Which town meeting had it been agreed on, this madness? I never missed a single one.
I had to sit myself down, and did so outside the Cantaloupe Café. Completely spent, I slumped in a chair, shaking my head in addle-brained amazement.
How did Mr. Smythe park his car in that spot that was just big enough for it, without touching the trees on either side? Pardon the thought, but how did Mr. Underhill, mountain of a fellow that he was, find the narrow door to Mr. Plumpudding’s five-and-dime without having to negotiate his frame at all? And how did Mrs. Cheshire and Mr. Winterbottom pass each other by without bumping heads?
The worst by far was still to come: when I walked by the fountain—water splashing; the sun, seemingly, in the pool with the children’s feet; everyone asleep—my eyes fell on the statue of our great founder, Charles Ogden Zinfandel, and I almost cried out in horror: his eyes, too, were shut! With dreamy benevolence, he looked down at the town life at his clay feet, seeing nothing.
With a heavy heart, I returned to my post at the bakery, and for the remainder of the day closed my inner eye to all of it.
By now you’ll have guessed that nothing had changed the next day, and the day after, and for a whole year following. Summer turned to autumn, and autumn to winter, and instead of toiling in the sweltering heat, asleep, my customers were sweeping leaves or going for sleigh rides, asleep. I still had a hard time getting accustomed to the mind-boggling risks people were taking, whooshing down icy ravines at breakneck speed, pedaling bikes through sleet and heaps of wet leaves, the mad randomness, in general, of daily life without wakefulness, a state that turned wholly mundane, everyday chores like slicing bread, even walking down a flight of stairs into matters of life or death. Incomprehensibly, however, everyone went their merry ways, safe, for the most part, to sleep another day. And if there was wont to be the occasional accident, it was put down to chance. I know that in their condition, I wouldn’t have lasted a single day, and would likely have found an early end either by striding blissfully into oncoming traffic or ending up in the madcap, vaudeville waters of the Papaya River.
Speaking of the river, it was there, on a walkabout along its shore, that the injustice of it all suddenly became too much to bear, and anger took hold of me. On a whim, I resolved to do something about it. It was my town, too, after all, in which I intended to live out the rest of my days—a strange thing to say, perhaps, for a relatively young person in these modern times, but it was the honest truth. I could not imagine my life anywhere else.
On the heels of that first conviction, however, doubt quickly ballooned. How was I to remedy a situation I knew not the slightest thing about? Whoever had orchestrated this massive nap shared by a whole town must have planned for it meticulously, taken into account every conceivable variable and angle, including a simple baker’s boy out to thwart his caper.
What could have been more obvious than to try and wake everyone up with the help of some loud noise? To that end, I bought a radio at a bargain from Edible Electronics and installed it on my counter one morning. As soon as I saw the silhouette of the first customer of the day approaching—the honor belonged to Mr. Thatcher, of No. 5, Pomelo Road—I turned the volume all the way up—a classical station playing Wagner—and waited for its impact on Mr. Thatcher.
To my amazement, not only did I fail to rouse Mr. Thatcher with the Tannhäuser overture; he never so much as blinked.
“My, my,” he said, wincing, “You sure know how to wake a fellow up, boy. I’ll have two of the cherry pies.”
Wanting to rule out a particular immunity of Mr. Thatcher’s to classical, or to music in general, I tried the same trick on everybody from Mr. Huckabee to Mrs. Morton, eight customers all told, subjecting them to Jazz, swing and even a rockabilly station I discovered to my unending delight. None of it worked. In fact, Mr. Cholmondeley, when I directed a howler of a Benny Goodman recording at him, only snored louder than before, competing with the music and emerging as the winner, hands down.
By then, the failure of my little scheme was the least of my troubles. Word had spread that Olrich’s Baking Goods was best to be avoided, and so maddeningly, for two hours, no one showed up at my door at all anymore. Only after much hand-wringing and a public mea culpa did my customers return, cautiously at first, as if afraid I would turn the music back up once I had them trapped inside. Clearly, I could not be trusted.
We come now to that part of my story I wish I did not have to tell. Dreadful is the word. In fact, it doesn’t begin to describe the horrors the following week had in store for me. This despite the fact that it began on such a hopeful note. More than that, an ecstatic one, because I found, at last, a mechanism powerful enough to wake the unwakeable. And when I say I found it, I mean to say that I stumbled on it by pure chance.
Mr. Winthrop entered the bakery (asleep, of course) and when I greeted him with a hearty “Hello, Mr. Winthrop!”, his eyes fluttered, opened for a split second or so, and closed again.
“Hello, Olrich. The usual, please!”
I was too stunned to move. He had to repeat himself twice more before I could begin shoveling his usual two pounds of buttered biscuits into a paper bag.
Next was Mrs. Holloway, and I did the same thing over again—addressed her by name, in a clear voice—success again! Granted, her eyes closed again so fast it was almost imperceptible, but for a moment, a painfully short one, her eyes had met mine. I swear it.
I was so giddy, I could have hopped home on one leg. And the second breakthrough was already waiting in the wings. Again, it was pure luck that did the trick. I was in the Soursop Department Store, browsing the racks in the men’s section, when I spotted – quite by chance, again – Mr. Carmichael admiring himself in a new, pin-striped suit. The mirror was full-body, but that didn’t matter in the slightest. It was his face I suddenly could not look away from, and his eyes, which were wide open, unblinking even.
I dropped the wallet I’d been holding. It startled Mr. Carmichael, causing him to quickly turn around.
“Why, if it isn’t our favorite baker,” he called.
His eyes, I noticed with alarm, were shut again.
“Hello, Mr. Carmichael,” I said, picking up my wallet. “That’s a mighty fine suit, if I may say so.”
He beamed. “Isn’t it?” he said, turning back to the mirror. In the mirror, his eyes opened again.
I was speechless. It was like watching a wilted flower come to life again. Like watching broken shells reassemble themselves into a whole egg.
The mirror worked even better, it seemed, than simply calling out someone’s name. With the mirror, the eyes stayed open, at least while he consulted it. As soon as he looked away, the effect was lost, and Mr. Carmichael fell asleep again.
How very curious, I said to myself.
That was the last high point of my investigation. Thereafter, it was downhill, and downhill fast.
It was true: both calling someone by name and seeing one’s reflection in a mirror were enough to stop the sleep. Very briefly in case of the first; as long as one wished using the latter method. I tried it so many times, I considered it proof positive: I bought a very expensive, large mirror and then, risking my reputation once again, kept finding different excuses to stand customers in front of it. The effect was the same, every time. But also, not once was anybody able to hold on to consciousness even for a single second after turning away. In Mr. Cholmondeley’s case, the snoring started up again in mid-turn and lasted until he was out of earshot, wobbling off in the direction of Kumquat Lane, where I knew he lived.
Home alone, late one evening, I made my most disturbing discovery. Dusting off the mirror, I chanced to glance at myself out of the corner of one eye—and found my reflection soundly asleep!
With a yelp, I jumped up, pulse racing. In the mirror, my eyes were wide open with fright, my face deathly pale. Mirrors never lie, and mine was no exception: looking directly at it, I was awake. As soon as I turned away, my eyes closed of themselves, as if no longer of any use. I even imagined that I could hear myself beginning to snore softly, the way one sometimes can in that sweet spot just before falling asleep.
I entered a deep funk, from which nothing could rouse me. The illusion shattered, I was no longer able to unsee or unhear what was happening in front of my treacherous, good-for-nothing eyes. Pacing the house, I felt defeated at my inability to open them by sheer willpower, nauseated by my own snoring.
For the first time, Olrich’s Baking Goods remained closed a second day running, then a third, and a fourth, and pretty soon people were knocking at my door, wishing to know if all was well.
“How can anything be alright ever again?” I called out. “I’ve been asleep for God knows how long, and didn’t even know it!”
People brought food, and milk, and kind words, and Mrs. Hawthorne, bless her soul, arrived with a plateful of blueberry muffins she had baked herself. Now she was nervous about my verdict.
“Gathered them myself, in the woods,” she said shyly, pointing at the lumpen berries. “I know they’re not like yours, but anyway.”
I was moved to tears, and seeing them all come and go with their eyes closed, a great pity welled up inside me for all of us, that we had to be in this wretched condition.
Asleep or not, that was no way to live your life, I decided.
You may have read about my next course of action in the Z Gazette. In fact, there was a series of articles, along with some color photographs, describing in detail how I refurbished the bakery—putting in mirrors all around, a mirror on the ceiling, and even a mirror floor to walk on. The door—once a heavy, wooden affair—now sported mirrors too on either side, so that you woke up as you entered, and had a last chance at wakefulness as you left.
People were stunned, professed they had never seen anything like it. How eccentric that young Olrich was, with his crazy, wild ideas he probably picked up in the big city.
They felt fine, though, they said, in the new Olrich’s Baking Goods. Better yet, they felt magnificent, even if they could not quite fathom why.
“All that light, maybe,” Mr. Hamilton said, wonderingly. “It really gives the place a shine.”
Business, on a side note, has since quadrupled.
We may be a diseased town, here in Z—victims of a most terrible, unavenged crime—but we are far from defeated. Lately, there have been signs of progress. Hope springs eternal, as they say, and I do think it goes beyond mere wishful thinking. One day, our unknown assailant will find out just how sturdy a bunch we are in this town, stubborn when we have to be, of iron will and gallant heart.
The other day, I went by the fountain again, and found a great commotion. At least four score people were assembled round the statue of our founder, completely obscuring it from sight and shaking their fists.
As I drew nearer, I could see the reason for the hullabaloo: someone had vandalized old Charles Ogden Zinfandel, attacking him with hammer and chisel.
“Rowdies!” people called. “Vandals!”
In the midst of the uproar, I started laughing. People turned around to stare at me, but I simply could not bring myself to stop. It was too much; too wonderful for words. After all that dreadful tension, I finally knew I was not alone. “That’s not the work of vandals!” I wanted to yell, but didn’t.
Charles Ogden Zinfandel’s eyes were no longer shut. They had been chiseled wide open, and the fact that it was a rough job and looked sort of creepy, like he had no eyes at all now, but only two gaping holes, took nothing away from the intention, which was to save us all.
A heavy hand landed on my shoulder.
“Olrich!” someone said, and my eyes flew open.
