The Gingerbread Man Read online

  The Gingerbread Man

  by Hannah Blanton

  Winner of Oxfordshire Libraries’

  eBook Short Story Competition 2021

  in the Adult category

  Mr Fredrich Pine had made quite a name for himself as one of Europe’s most renowned chefs. He had something of the eccentric, favouring quirky flavour combinations over traditional recipes and extravagant presentation over the typical simplicity of fine dining establishments. It was perhaps this flare for the unusual that had earned his restaurant Pine’s its second Michelin star and won him the affections of the locals in his rural town in Germany.

  Mr Pine had had a modest upbringing, the son of a factory worker and post office clerk, but as his culinary successes had mounted, he began to develop quite a taste for fame and fortune. His confidence, which very often bordered on arrogance, gave him the freedom to dream bold ideas and truly believe in their potential. So it was only natural that when he learned of a gingerbread-making competition open to all amateur and professional bakers in his Bundesland, his mind immediately set about conjuring up the most magical and unforgettable of entries.

  The next few weeks passed in a chaotic frenzy of defining measurements, sourcing ingredients and designing the intricate details of the life-size gingerbread house: a conservatory made of sugar glass panes slotted into four gingerbread posts; a log house topped with frosted spider webs of spun sugar; a front path made of a spongier gingerbread that was expertly scored to resemble cobblestones; and more jelly dots and peppermint rock than even the greediest of children could dare imagine. And, in a fitting tribute to his own name, he added a wreath of pine branches and orange slices to the front door, a homely and aromatic finishing touch.

  Word of Mr Pine’s participation in the competition spread like glace icing on a sugar cookie, and people from the furthest regions of his Bundesland travelled to observe his masterpiece. They marvelled at the life-size hedges and functioning doors and took endless photos of the colourful strings of “Christmas lights” made from jellybeans and hard-boiled sweets.

  Inevitably, Mr Pine was announced as the winner; the judges even introduced him to the crowd as “The Gingerbread Man”, a nickname that Mr Pine liked very much indeed. He proudly accepted his trophy to a loud chorus of cheers and applause, which he batted away with a coy smile and several utterances of “Oh, please, stop it” and “Such a lovely surprise”. False modesty came easily to Fredrich Pine.

  After wriggling his way out of endless congratulatory conversations, he headed back to his car with plans to find a nice cosy pub where he could wash down his victory with a Steinful of beer. But before he had even unlocked the doors, a beautiful woman with flowing black hair and a thick fur coat stepped in front of him.

  ‘So sorry to bother you,’ she said with a voice as sweet as honey, ‘but I am rather impressed with your Lebkuchen house.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, thank you,’ Fredrich replied, his smile slightly thinner and more strained after having repeated the same line dozens of times.

  ‘The thing is,’ the woman added, ‘I’m a bit of a collector of novelty food items. I would be very interested in purchasing this house from you. And I can pay you handsomely – in cash.’

  Fredrich had not been intending to sell the house – after all, it would be stale in just a few days – but something about the slow drawl of her voice was hard to resist, as if her words really were a flow of honey, absorbing everything in their path with their sticky determination.

  ‘I suppose I could consider it,’ he said, straining his voice in such a way as to sound torn and uncertain. He paused for a moment to see whether the woman would offer further incentives.

  ‘I can pay you €20,000 and transport the house away myself today.’ The woman was more authoritative than Fredrich was used to – which was quite something coming from a man who had grown up in a village of stern Bavarian women.

  The lady pulled a thick envelope from the depths of her fur coat and held it open towards him, flicking through the wad of notes inside. Mr Pine’s bulging eyes and gaping mouth were the only confirmation the woman needed that her offer had been accepted. With a breathy laugh, Fredrich Pine looked up at the lady and held out his hand.

  ‘Twenty thousand it is,’ he said. ‘Pleasure doing business with you.’

  ‘Oh, the pleasure is all mine,’ she said, the honey of her voice taking on a darker molasses tone. She handed him the envelope and began to stride away before spinning around on her heel to face Mr Pine, who had been watching her walk away in trance-like wonder. ‘One more thing,’ she added. ‘Were I ever to…require your services again, where might I find you?’

  He fumbled inside his coat pocket and pulled out his business card. ‘Here you go. Please, call or email anytime. Or come and visit my restaurant! I’d be delighted to have you.’

  The lady took the card by the corner and smiled with closed lips, causing the top of her nose to crinkle. ‘How thoughtful of you,’ she said. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

  A couple of months passed without a word from the mysterious lady, whose name Fredrich Pine realised he had forgotten to ask for, but then late one night, as he was finishing up a busy dinner service, the phone in the back office jumped to life with a shrill ring. Assuming it was one of the night’s customers enquiring after a piece of lost property, he took his time in answering it. But as soon as he heard the sweet, slow voice on the other end, his heart did a small somersault inside his chest.

  ‘Mr Pine,’ the woman said. ‘I do hope you’re well. I’m the lady who bought your delightful gingerbread house a couple of months ago.’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes. I recognise your voice,’ he replied, trying to keep his tone professional and calm rather than flooded with the greedy excitement he was feeling.

  ‘I have a proposition for you. One of my clients is seeking an item that is proving rather difficult to procure. I was wondering if I could call upon your expertise once more.’ She knew exactly how to soften Fredrich Pine up: flattery, followed by an extortionate offer of cash.

  ‘I’d be delighted to assist you!’ Fredrich replied. ‘And what exactly, may I ask, is your client looking for?’

  The woman remained calm and confident, as though she had known from the beginning that he would accept the offer before she even had to explain it. ‘It’s quite simple, really. I am in need of a single pea. But this pea, it needs to be…I suppose you could say “hardboiled”.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not following.’ Mr Pine’s enthusiasm was beginning to wane. He had been preparing for another commission of epic proportions, not a mere garden pea, let alone a “hardboiled” one, if such a thing existed.

  ‘You see, this pea, it has to be strong enough to remain solid even under the most intense pressure and weight.’

  ‘I see…’ Fredrich spoke slowly, half expecting to hear muffled laughter on the other end. But the phone line remained quiet except for a slight static noise.

  ‘I will pay you €10,000. Have it ready by a week today.’

  ‘A week–?’ Before Mr Pine could protest or ask for further details, the phone line cut off, leaving him with the distinct feeling that he had just signed up for much more than he had bargained for.

  By the time seven days had passed, Mr Pine was feeling rather pleased with himself indeed. To his surprise, and after a week of sleepless nights and increasingly erratic behaviour, he had managed to create the requested item: an unsquashable pea. It had taken hundreds of attempts, but in the end, a mixture of roasting, freezing, intricate smoothing and several layers of sugary coating had produced a pea that was so solid it remained spherical even after being jumped on several times by an overly enthusiastic chef.

  With no way to contact the woman, Fredrich had no choice but to hope that she would find him. And find him she did. No sooner had the final Pine’s employee left that night than she appeared in the shadowy dining room.

  ‘Hello, Mr Pine,’ she said. ‘I hope you’ve managed to produce what I need?’

  ‘Of course, my lady!’ The pride in Fredrich’s voice was akin to that of a schoolboy preparing to show his parents the fruits of his latest craft project.

  ‘Wonderful,’ she replied with her thin smile. She held out her palm expectantly.

  Mr Pine tentatively raised his index finger. ‘You will be paying in cash?’

  Without moving her hand, she reached into her fur coat with the other arm and retrieved a cash-stuffed envelope.

  ‘Ah,’ Mr Pine said, just as mesmerised by the notes as he had been the first time, ‘all looks to be in order.’

  He pulled the promised pea from his pocket and presented it to the woman. The corner of her mouth crept up into a half smile as she inspected the pea sitting proudly upon her palm. She took it with her thumb and forefinger and squeezed firmly.

  ‘Wonderful,’ she said again, pocketing it inside her coat and heading towards the door.

  ‘Do feel free to contact me any time!’ Mr Pine called as she reached for the handle.

  ‘Oh, I will,’ she said, letting the front door swing shut behind her.

  Several weeks passed with no further appearance from the woman, and Mr Pine began to wonder if his interactions with her had reached an unfortunately premature expiry date. But much to his delight, as he was tending to the Pine’s allotment one spring day, the woman suddenly appeared by the wooden gate at the end of the garden. Even in the warm sunshine, she still wore her white fur coat. Fredrich strode over to her, wiping his muddy hands on
his apron and bracing himself for whatever outlandish request she had in store.

  Not five minutes later he found himself frantically clearing space in his greenhouse and scratching his head as he contemplated the enormity of what he had just agreed to. Admittedly, he was a keen gardener, but he had serious doubts about his ability to genetically modify beans to produce weight-bearing stalks. But ever the entrepreneur, he had taken one look at the woman’s envelope of cash and agreed to cultivate such a bean for her in just a couple of months.

  In what can only be described as a minor miracle, by mid-summer he had managed to crossbreed just the right assortment of beans to create a handful of reliably healthy seeds that had produced the beginnings of some promisingly thick stalks and hefty shoots. With true German efficiency, the morning after Fredrich had finalised his creation, the woman appeared outside Pine’s to collect her spoils.

  As the summer months drew to a close, the number of nightly diners at Pine’s began to dwindle, though Fredrich Pine was so exhausted from his experiments and so distracted by his newly acquired riches that he hardly noticed. With his latest earnings, he treated himself to a Swiss mechanical watch, the finest that Rolex had to offer.

  The woman even complimented him on it when she next appeared in September with another seasonal request. She had seen how innovative Mr Pine’s dinner presentations could be, so she was confident that he would have no trouble in producing a pumpkin that had hidden within it a beautiful and to-scale horse and carriage – one that, of course, showed no evidence of tampering on the outside. He had no idea how he would achieve such a feat, but as the woman flashed him another €15,000, he vaguely heard the words “Just give me a week” escape his lips.

  With some expertly executed knife skills and a handful of design tricks learned from his years of cake decorating, he managed to fulfil the woman’s order in just six days.

  But as pleased as Fredrich Pine was with his own genius and the extra income, he was beginning to tire of the woman’s unannounced arrivals and unreasonable requests. He hadn’t even had the energy to create a new autumn menu for Pine’s . Secretly, despite the intoxicating pride he felt at putting on his shiny new Rolex each morning, he hoped that his dealings with the woman were nearing their natural end.

  His hopes, however, were dashed one drizzly October morning when he saw the woman waiting for him at the end of his driveway. Her order was, at least on the face of it, fairly simple: a batch of Turkish delight so delicious and addictive it would be almost impossible to resist.

  Try as he might to respectfully decline the offer, citing urgent matters to attend to in his restaurant, Mr Pine couldn’t quite bring himself to look away from the thick wad of euros, and he found himself once again agreeing to the deal. After all, an addictively delicious batch of Turkish delight was a much easier creation than a supernaturally productive bean or an impossibly solid pea.

  He became obsessed with perfecting the recipe and testing it out on unsuspecting customers, neglecting to notice their irritated expressions as he sent unordered Turkish delight to their tables but fixating on the fact that none of them requested additional helpings of it. He had no doubt that his recipe was delicious, but it was missing that vital “something” that would make it irresistibly addictive.

  As the deadline approached, desperation began to cast a faint shadow on Fredrich’s usually unshakeable confidence. But then one day, as he was whisking up his thirty-second batch of Turkish delight, a sudden spark of inspiration shot through his body.

  No , he told himself. I couldn’t possibly…

  But by evening, the spark had taken root and turned into a seed, one that looked remarkably like those found in the pods of his dying poppies. He resented himself for even considering it, and yet not an hour later he was in his greenhouse slitting incisions into the sides of his poppy seed pods and mentally recalculating the measurements of ingredients in his recipe.

  When the woman appeared a week later in his back office, he reluctantly handed her a neatly tied package of Turkish delight that was as addictive as it was delicious. As he took the envelope from her slender fingers, he felt a growing sense of nausea in the pit of his stomach, partly from disgust at his own actions and partly from his excessive consumption of laced Turkish delight. He locked the envelope in his office safe and resolved never to do business with the woman again.

  Of course, the desire to end the pair’s business relationship was not mutual. A few weeks before Christmas, the woman reappeared outside his front door. She had been trying hard to source an item for a client for quite some time, and given the success of Mr Pine’s Turkish delight and the… potency of his ingredients, she was confident that he would be the one to finally procure the elusive item: an apple that could render the eater unconscious with a single bite.

  For the first time in their relationship, Mr Pine adamantly refused the offer and instead politely ushered the woman off his personal property. It had been surprisingly easy to turn her down, and with the shadow of her future visits lifted, Fredrich finally found the time to focus his creative energies on something more worthwhile: the second annual gingerbread competition in his Bundesland.

  This time, instead of a house, he created a miniature version of Pine’s restaurant for his entry, complete with over 50 gingerbread customers, all sporting big sugary smiles – after all, they were eating at the finest restaurant in town.

  Judgement day arrived, and Mr Pine rose before dawn to drive to the competition arena and begin setting up his masterpiece biscuit by biscuit. As he was positioning the final few gingerbread chefs and their gingerbread frying pans, a movement from behind him caught his attention. With a tingle down his spine, he turned to see the woman smiling down at him.

  ‘I don’t see my apple,’ she said, not taking her eyes off the crouching Fredrich.

  ‘I…I told you I couldn’t get that for you,’ he said with a trembling voice as he stood to face her. His heart was beating fast, and he had an unsettling and irrational sense of impending doom.

  ‘I’m afraid that wasn’t an option,’ the lady replied, the smile gone from her face. Without thinking, Fredrich took off and began running – running as fast as he could – to the main street, where the first early risers were beginning to emerge from their homes. Surely she couldn’t catch him, not in her pointy heels and long fur coat, but as he approached the street he suddenly felt his legs stiffen and come to an abrupt halt. He tried to shout for help, but no one heard him.

  Later that day, the arena was flooded with crowds of spectators and dozens of journalists jostling to take photos of Mr Pine’s ingenious entry and get exclusive interviews with “The Gingerbread Man” himself. Although people were disappointed that the chef hadn’t been able to physically attend the judging ceremony that year, they were no less amazed by the minute plates of gingerbread meals and ornately carved gingerbread tables he had created. The smiles of the crowd were almost as big as those of Pine’s ginger-customers; in fact, the spectators were so taken by the sheer spectacle of the scene that no one seemed to notice the lone gingerbread customer at the back table, the only one with raised eyebrows and a wide O-shaped mouth.

 

 

  Hannah Blanton, The Gingerbread Man

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