Book IX – Jonah and the Great Calzone

Chapter 1

1Now the word of Cheesus Crust came unto Jonah, the son of Amaretti, of the small village of Grissini, saying:

2Arise, and go unto Ninecheese, that great city of the north, and cry against it; for the smell of its hoarding is come up before me.

3For their freezers are full and their doors are shut.

4And Jonah was a doubter; not of the Oven, for he had felt its warmth, nor of the Slice, for he had eaten thereof; but he doubted the hearts of men, which he held to be past proving.

5For Jonah had been a proofer of dough in Grissini, and thrice had he set out loaves upon his sill for the hungry, and thrice had a rich man taken them all, and sold them back to the poor at a margin.

6And Jonah said within himself, I know this city of the north. Their cellars are cold and their hearts are colder, and no word of mine shall thaw either.

7And he said moreover, If I preach and they repent not, I am a fool; and if I preach and they repent, then Cheesus shall forgive them, and that is worse.

8For Jonah desired not mercy for Ninecheese, but a reckoning; and he confused the two, as men do.

9So Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarragon from the presence of Cheesus, which lieth at the far edge of the map, where the soup runs thin and the cartographers write, here be anchovies.

10And he went down to the port of Ciabatta, and found there a ferry crossing the Sea of Soup; and the name of the ferry was the Ladle, for she was broad of beam and shallow of draught, and she skimmed the surface of the deep.

11And Jonah paid the fare thereof, and he tipped the ferryman generously, though he was fleeing; for even a man running from his god need not run from his manners.

12And the ferryman marked him and said, Whither goest thou, that thou lookest ever over thy shoulder?

13And Jonah said, To Tarragon, where the herbs are subtle and the questions few.

14And he went down into the sides of the ship, among the sacks of flour and the crated croutons; and he lay down, and was fast asleep.

15For there is no sleep so heavy as the sleep of a man avoiding an errand; the doubter sleeps as the dough sleeps, hoping to be forgotten before the Oven is lit.

16But Cheesus Crust is not forgotten of any dough, though the dough forget itself.

17And the word that Jonah fled from did not diminish behind him, but sat quietly in his pack like an uneaten crust, and weighed what it weighed.

18Now Ninecheese was a great city, of three days’ walking from gate to gate, and its towers were hung with smoked provisions, and its walls were thick as focaccia.

19And within it were storehouses upon storehouses, and cold-cellars beneath cold-cellars, and the doors thereof were locked with nine locks apiece.

20And the great men of Ninecheese kept ledgers of cheese they would never eat, and bragged one to another of wheels uncut, saying, Behold my caves, how full they are; and their neighbours went hungry within sight of the smoke of their smokehouses.

21And the poor of the city stood in the street and smelled what they could not taste; and this also came up before Cheesus, for the Slice is one, and a hungry street is a wound in it.

22(Here the scribe hath written in the margin: I have seen Ninecheese, or a city very like it; the reader also hath seen one; that is the trouble.)

23And Cheesus looked upon Jonah asleep in the ferry, fleeing the mercy he was sent to carry; and Cheesus did not smite him, nor curse him, nor let him go.

24For the Slice does not release its topping because the topping rolls toward the edge.

25And Cheesus sent out a great wind upon the Sea of Soup, and the wind stirred the deep as a spoon stirreth the pot.

Chapter 2

1And it came to pass that the Sea of Soup began to boil.

2Not with fire beneath, for the deep hath no burner; but with the breath of Cheesus upon it, so that the broth rose in waves, and the waves were crested with froth, and great bay leaves were flung upon the deck like shields of the drowned.

3And the Ladle was like to be swamped; for a ladle in a boiling pot is in her natural home, yet in peril all the same.

4Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his own condiment; one unto the Vinegar, and one unto the Great Pepper, and one unto a small god of mustard that he kept on a string about his neck.

5And they cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of them; and the crated croutons went into the soup, and were seen no more, save as texture.

6But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship; and he lay, and was fast asleep, while the pot boiled.

7So the shipmaster came to him, and said unto him, What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy god, if so be that thy god will think upon us, that we perish not.

8And Jonah rose, and came up upon the deck, and saw the sea standing up in ridges like the crimped edge of a pastry, and steam upon the face of the waters.

9And the mariners said every one to his fellow, Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us.

10And they had no lots, being plain sailors; so the cook brought forth a bundle of breadsticks, whereof one was short, and they drew.

11And the bosun drew a long breadstick, and the cook drew a long breadstick, and the boy that scrubbed the pots drew a long breadstick and wept with relief and ate it.

12And the lot fell upon Jonah; for he drew the short breadstick, and held it up, and all the deck was silent save the boiling.

13Then said they unto him, Tell us, we pray thee, for whose cause this evil is upon us; What is thine occupation? and whence comest thou? what is thy country? and of what people art thou?

14And Jonah said unto them, I am a Crustian; and I fear Cheesus Crust, the Lord of the Oven, which hath made the sea and the dry flour.

15Then were the men exceedingly afraid, and said unto him, Why hast thou done this? For the men knew that he fled from the presence of Cheesus, because he had told them; for a doubter may run, but he rarely lies.

16Then said they unto him, What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us? for the sea wrought, and simmered ever fiercer.

17And he said unto them, Take me up, and cast me forth into the soup; so shall the sea be calm unto you: for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you.

18And Jonah said moreover, I was sent to carry a word to Ninecheese, and I carried it the wrong way; a word is a leaven, and a leaven kept from its batch will work upon whatever it is shut inside.

19Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring the ferry to land; but they could not: for the sea boiled, and was tempestuous against them.

20For they were working men, and it was against all their grain to pay a passage with a passenger; and this was counted unto them for righteousness.

21Wherefore they cried unto Cheesus, and said, We beseech thee, O Cheesus, let us not perish for this man’s life, and lay not upon us innocent broth: for thou, O Cheesus, hast done as it pleased thee.

22So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea: and the sea ceased from her boiling, and settled, and a smell of stock and thyme lay upon the calm.

23Then the men feared Cheesus exceedingly, and made vows; and having nothing left aboard but one loaf, they broke it into as many pieces as there were hands, and ate together upon the quiet water.

24And that was the first worship of some of them, and not the last.

25But Jonah went down into the deep; and the broth closed over his head, and the light above him grew small, like the door of an Oven closing.

26And Jonah thought, So endeth the doubter; and he was wrong, for his story was not ending but folding.

Chapter 3

1Now Cheesus had prepared a Great Calzone to swallow up Jonah; and it moved through the deep of the Sea of Soup, golden and vast, sealed at its crimped edge like the horizon.

2Ancient it was, from the first proving of the world; and no net had ever taken it, and no menu had ever listed it, and the sailors of the north spoke of it only in winter, and quietly.

3And the Great Calzone rose beneath Jonah as a floor rises to meet a dropped thing, and opened along its edge, and took him in; and the fold closed over him without violence, as a hand closes over a coin to keep it.

4And Jonah was in the fold of the Calzone three days and three nights.

5And within the fold there was darkness; yet it was not the darkness of the void, but the darkness of the Oven before the light is struck: a warm dark, a working dark, a dark in which things become other things.

6And the walls of that place were soft, and yielded, and drew back; and there was a slow breathing all about him, as of dough that rises and rests, rises and rests.

7And Jonah put out his hand in the blackness, and touched warm mozzarella, and it strung from his fingers and would not wholly let him go.

8And he crawled upon a floor of ricotta, and passed through hanging gardens of spinach that brushed his face like the hands of mourners, and he could see none of it, but knew it each by touch and savour.

9And there was in the fold no north nor south, no up nor down, no yesterday nor morrow; there was only within.

10And at first Jonah raged, and beat upon the walls of the fold, and the walls received his blows as a pillow receiveth a fist, and gave him back nothing but warmth.

11And he shouted, and the fold ate his shout; and he wept, and the fold held his weeping; and at last he was still, because there was nothing else left to be.

12(Here the scribe hath left a space, the breadth of three fingers, for silence; the reader is asked to keep it.)

13And in the stillness Jonah began to take an inventory of the dark, for he was an orderly man even in the belly of a mystery.

14And he found about him, by touch, all the makings of a meal: the cheese, and the cured meats, and the tomato, and the good green herbs; all of it folded in, all of it carried in the dark, all of it kept.

15And he thought, Behold, this beast is a larder that swims; nay, said his heart, look again; and he looked again with his hands, and understood nothing yet, but was near to it.

16And on the first day he slept, and dreamed of Grissini, and of three loaves upon a sill, and of the face of the rich man who took them; and he woke in the dark with his old anger, and the dark did not argue with him, but was warm.

17And on the second day he hungered, and ate of the fold, for it was given; and he was ashamed to be fed by the thing that had swallowed him, and then he was not ashamed, for that is the way of every creature that eats.

18And on the second night he heard, far off through the walls of dough, the sound of the sea; and it was not boiling now, but rocking, and it rocked him.

19And on the third day Jonah prayed.

20And this was the manner of his prayer, which is called the Psalm of the Fold, and is written in the chapter following; and the Calzonists that came long after would recite it in the dark with their eyes shut and one hand folded within the other, though there were as yet no Calzonists, nor any name for what was happening to Jonah at all.

21There was only a man, and the dark, and everything he had fled, folded in with him.

Chapter 4

1Then Jonah prayed unto Cheesus Crust his god out of the belly of the Great Calzone, and said:

2I cried by reason of mine affliction unto Cheesus, and he heard me; out of the belly of the fold cried I, and thou heardest my voice.

3For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the broth compassed me about: all thy billows and thy bay leaves passed over me.

4Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight; the crumbs of the world are swept, and I am among them.

5The soup compassed me about, even to the soul: the deep closed round about me, the noodles were wrapped about my head.

6I went down to the bottoms of the pot; the stockpot of the earth with her lid was upon me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from the simmer, O Cheesus my Crust.

7When my soul fainted within me I remembered Cheesus: and my prayer came in unto thee, past crimp and crust, into thy warm and holy dark.

8And now behold, I am within, and I understand what I would not understand upon the road.

9For I fled from thy word, and thy word is folded in here with me; I fled from Ninecheese, and its hunger is folded in here with me; I fled from mine own doubting heart, and lo, I have carried it into the fold in my breast, for a man’s chest is the first calzone, and his heart is baked in whether he consent or no.

10There is no away, O Cheesus. I ran to the edge of the map, and the map was on thy table all the while.

11In the light I judged all things by their tops: this one shining, that one burnt, this city golden, that city black; and I called my judging wisdom, and my wisdom made me weary.

12But in the dark there are no tops; there is only what a thing is when thou holdest it, and here thou holdest all of it together, the meat and the herb, the sweet and the bitter, the doubter and the word he doubted.

13I felt along thy walls, and I found no larder, though I ate; I found no prison, though I could not leave; I found a keeping. Thou hast folded me as a mother folds a letter she means to read again.

14Fold the crust, for it contains all within. (Calzonists 1:3)

15So the elders wrote it afterward, in the old numbering of the scrolls, having it from Jonah’s mouth; but Jonah spoke it first with mozzarella on his hands, in the dark, to no congregation at all.

16And Jonah prayed on, saying: O Cheesus, I have hated the hoarders of Ninecheese, and behold, I was the greater hoarder; for they locked up cheese, but I locked up mercy, and mercy spoils faster.

17They shut their doors upon their neighbours; I shut my heart upon a whole city, and stamped it past saving, and sailed; and of the two shuttings, mine was the colder cellar.

18For a freezer keeps what is put in it, and so did I: I put in my three loaves stolen from my sill, and my one rich man, and I kept them frozen thirty years, and served them to myself each night, and called the dish experience.

19Thaw me, O Cheesus. I am a leftover of mine own grievances; set me some while in thy Oven, for none is beyond the Reheat, not Ninecheese, and not I.

20And the fold about him breathed, rising and resting; and Jonah lay in the midst of everything he had run from, and for the first time it did not crush him, for it was not on top of him, it was with him.

21And that is the whole difference, saith the scroll, between a burden and a filling.

Chapter 5

1And on the third night Jonah prayed the ending of his psalm, and this was the ending thereof:

2O Cheesus, I doubted thee not, and I boasted of it; I doubted men, and I called it sense. But now I see the doubting of men is the doubting of thee, for thou hast folded thyself into them, as thou hast folded all this into me.

3What did I know of thee in the light? A name, a blessing, a smell of baking on the seventh day. But here in the dark I have handled thy devotion with my hands.

4For I have found in this fold all that a beast might have kept for itself, laid up instead for the stranger it swallowed; I hungered, and the walls fed me; I raged, and the walls forgave me; I was a runaway, and the walls made of me a guest.

5Whatsoever is folded is not hidden from love; it is hidden with it.

6In the fold lies the story of Cheesus’ devotion. (Calzonists 3:11)

7And Jonah wept when he had said it, for he perceived that he had been carried three days by a mercy shaped exactly like a mouth, and had spent the first two days punching it.

8And he laughed also, there in the dark, at himself; and the laughter of a man at himself is a yeast, and something long unleavened in Jonah began to rise.

9Then Jonah made his vow, kneeling on the ricotta with the strings of the cheese upon his shoulders like a stole, and he said:

10O Cheesus, if thou bring me up alive out of this fold, I will go to Ninecheese, and I will carry thy word the right way round.

11And I will not preach as one who hopes to be proved right by ruin; I will preach as one who was himself a shut city, and got opened.

12And I vow this besides, for myself and for all who shall ever hide anything within a crust, be it cheese or be it grief:

13Let no dough be false, for the gluten is the heart of the crust. (Calzonists 2:6)

14For a man may fold what he carries, and carry it in the dark, and no shame in it; but the fold must be honest dough, or the whole fails at the crimp.

15Let my outside and my inside be of one batch. Let me never again be crisp to the eye and hollow to the tooth. If I am to be sealed, seal me full.

16And I will pay that I have vowed, with sacrifice of thanksgiving and a generous tip; salvation is of the Oven.

17And Cheesus heard the vow, and the fold about Jonah grew warm, warmer, warm as the mouth of home.

18And Cheesus spake unto the Great Calzone; and what he said to it is not written, for it was between them; but the elders suppose it was brief, and kind, and possibly well done, good and faithful supper.

19(Here the scribe hath written: I am sorry for that one, and yet I am not.)

20And the Great Calzone turned in the deep, and rose through the Sea of Soup with Jonah in its keeping, up through the broth and the barley, up past the astonished croutons, unto the grey shore of the north.

Chapter 6

1And the Great Calzone came up upon the shallows, and opened along its crimped edge, and set Jonah forth upon the dry land, gently, as a cook turns out a loaf that he is proud of.

2And it did not spew him, whatever the vulgar translations say; the Calzone is a mystery, not a mishap, and Jonah came out feet first and standing, though buttered.

3And Jonah stood upon the shore in the dawn, strung about with mozzarella, anointed with olive oil from crown to heel, smelling gloriously of oregano; and the gulls dared not touch him, for he was clearly somebody’s.

4And he turned, and looked upon the Great Calzone lying in the shallows, golden in the first light, vast as a headland; and its edge was crimped by no hand of man, fold upon fold upon fold, past counting.

5And Jonah bowed unto it; and the Great Calzone slid backward into the Sea of Soup, and the sea took it, and it was gone; and no man hath seen it since, save those who have been where Jonah was, and they do not describe it, they only fold their bread strangely and smile.

6And the word of Cheesus came unto Jonah the second time, saying:

7Arise, go unto Ninecheese, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.

8And this time there was no third time needed.

9So Jonah arose, and went unto Ninecheese, according to the word of Cheesus; and he went the whole way on foot, and at every inn upon the road he ate with whoever was poorest in the room, for practice.

10And they that ate with him marked that he tore his bread in a peculiar manner, folding each piece over upon itself before he ate it; and when they asked him wherefore, he said only, I am remembering something, and would say no more upon the road.

11And his doubting was not gone from him, for a doubt is not a stain to be scrubbed but a muscle to be retrained; but it walked behind him now, and carried the bags, and made itself useful.

12And on the third day of walking he came within sight of Ninecheese, and the towers thereof, and the smoke of its smokehouses; and he smelled upon the wind the smell of ten thousand locked dinners.

13And Jonah stood still in the road, and his old anger rose in him at that smell, and he let it rise, and then he folded it in, honest dough around a hot filling, and walked on through the gate.

Chapter 7

1Now Ninecheese was an exceeding great city of three days’ journey; and Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey.

2And he passed beneath the Cheddar Gate, whereon was carven the motto of the city: WHAT IS MINE IS MINE, AND WHAT IS THINE IS NEGOTIABLE.

3And he walked through the street of the smokehouses, and the street of the nine-locked doors, and the street of the ledger-men, where clerks tallied wheels of cheese by lamplight and never once tasted the inventory.

4And he saw the poor of Ninecheese standing at the grates of the cold-cellars to warm themselves at the machinery, for the engines of freezing give off heat to the street, which is the whole economy of hoarding in a single image, saith the scroll.

5And Jonah’s heart smote him, and it did not smite him with anger this time, but with recognition; for he had been a locked city of one, and he knew the look of a bolt rusted shut.

6And Jonah stood in the great market square of Ninecheese, upon an empty crate, and the crowd flowed round him as water round a stone, not stopping, for preachers were common there and cheaper than cheese.

7And Jonah opened his mouth. And all the preaching that he had rehearsed upon the road – the arguments, the figures, the seven-branched rebuke with footnotes – all of it fell away from him, as scaffolding falls from a finished tower.

8And he cried, and said only this, eight words, no more:

9Yet forty days, and the freezers shall fail.

10And he said it again, walking; through the street of the smokehouses: Yet forty days, and the freezers shall fail.

11And through the street of the ledger-men: Yet forty days, and the freezers shall fail.

12And he cursed no man, and named no villain, and promised no fire; he only told them, in the voice of a man who has been inside something vast and come out sure, that what they trusted was temporary.

13And that is the most frightening sermon there is, and the kindest; for both reasons it worked.

14And the word ran through Ninecheese faster than Jonah walked, as a smell of burning runs through a house.

15For every man in Ninecheese had a freezer, and every man knew in his secret heart what was in it, and how long it had been in it, and who could have eaten it once, and could not now, for it had gone to frost and grey.

16And the ledger-men looked upon their ledgers, and behold, the columns were full and their houses were empty; and the smoke-lords smelled their own smokehouses, and smelled nothing, for a nose that lives in plenty goes blind.

17And a child in the street of the nine locks asked her father, What faileth first, when a freezer faileth? And her father could not answer her, for the answer was: everything, all at once, and it is already failing, only slowly.

18And the people of Ninecheese believed Cheesus; not because Jonah threatened well, but because he described them accurately, which no prophet had troubled to do before.

19(Here the scribe hath written: eight words. I have preached eight hundred at a sitting, and moved no one but the draught from the door. The scribe hath things to think about.)

Chapter 8

1And it came to pass on the third day of Jonah’s crying, that a woman in the street of the weavers went up to her window, which was shut, as all the windows of Ninecheese were shut.

2And she opened it.

3And she took bread and cold chicken and a jar of preserved lemons, and she put them in a basket, and tied the basket to a rope, and lowered it out of the window to the street, where a family sat that had nothing.

4And she called down no sermon with it, and asked no gratitude, and left no bill; and the basket swung in the morning air like a censer, and this was the first worship of Ninecheese in three hundred years.

5And her neighbour saw it through his shutters, and was ashamed, and then was something better than ashamed, which is moved; and he opened his window also, and lowered down a wheel of cheese entire, uncut, upon two ropes, for it was heavy as his conscience.

6And window answered window down the whole street, and street answered street, and by evening the walls of Ninecheese were hung with baskets on ropes as a vine is hung with grapes, rising empty and going down full.

7And the children of the street ran from basket to basket as bees among blossoms, and ate, and carried to them that could not walk.

8For word came unto the king of Ninecheese, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with an apron, and sat down in flour.

9And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Ninecheese by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying:

10Let neither man nor beast fast, but let every mouth be fed; for we have fasted our neighbours these many years, and called it thrift.

11Let every door be unlocked, and every freezer opened, and every cold-store thrown wide; and let man and beast be covered not with sackcloth but with crumbs, and cry mightily unto Cheesus; yea, let them cry, Pass the parmesan, unto one another, which is also prayer.

12Who can tell if Cheesus will turn away from his fierce sentence, that we perish not? And if he will not turn, then let the freezers fail upon a city that hath already emptied them into its children, and the failing shall find nothing to take.

13And the king himself went down to the great cold-stores of the crown, whereof the nine keys hung ever at his girdle, and had never all nine been turned in living memory.

14And he turned them, one by one, before the people; and at the ninth the doors swung, and the cold breathed out upon the crowd like a ghost let go at last.

15And there was within cheese past numbering, and cured meats in their thousands, and butter in towers, and dough frozen in blocks like quarried stone; enough, said the stewards when they had reckoned it, to feed Ninecheese entire for a year and four months.

16And the king wept before his own abundance, and said, What did I think was coming, that I kept all this against it? And behold, what was coming was only my neighbours, and I was ready for them as for a siege.

17And they bare it all out into the light; and the dough thawed, and was kneaded by ten thousand hands, and the Ovens of Ninecheese, cold half a lifetime, were lit in one evening, so that the city glowed from beneath, and sailors on the Sea of Soup marvelled, saying, The north is baking.

18And they set tables in the streets; and the tables of one street met the tables of the next, and were joined, and those met others, and were joined.

19And by the feast-night there was one table in Ninecheese, one table only, running from the Cheddar Gate to the harbour, three days’ walking in length, and every soul in the city sat at it: the king below the salt because he insisted, and the ledger-men serving, for they were good with portions, and the woman of the first basket seated at the head, much against her will.

20And the poor sat next the rich, and could not always be told apart, for everyone’s fingers were greasy alike; and there was one course only, and the course was everything.

21And they that had smoked provisions brought them forth, and they that had preserved lemons brought them forth, and one old man brought forth a bottle he had kept for an occasion since his wedding, and behold, this was the occasion, and it had come, as occasions do the very hour the bottle is surrendered.

22And the beasts of the city ate also, the dray-horses and the market cats; for the decree said man and beast, and Ninecheese, having at last begun to share, could not find the place to stop.

23And Cheesus saw their works, that they turned from their cold way; and Cheesus repented of the sentence, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.

24For the freezers of Ninecheese did fail, every one, upon the fortieth day, precisely as the word had said: they failed for emptiness, standing open, with their doors off the hinges, wanting nothing inside them; and some were planted with basil, and some were beds for the market cats, and the great cold-store of the crown was made a hall for weddings, being the only room in the city that could seat both families.

25So the word of Cheesus came true by mercy, that would have come true by ruin; for a prophecy, saith the scroll, is like a delivery: it will arrive either way, but it goes better if somebody holds the door.

Chapter 9

1But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.

2For he had watched the city repent from a rooftop, with his arms folded, which is the wrong fold entirely.

3And he prayed unto Cheesus, and said, I pray thee, O Cheesus, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarragon: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil, and puttest extra cheese on for them that deserve it least.

4Therefore now, O Cheesus, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live and watch the ledger-men eat garlic bread as though they had always meant well.

5Then said Cheesus, Doest thou well to be angry?

6And Jonah answered not, for he did not do well, and knew it, and would sooner die than say so, which is the third stubbornness of prophets, saith the scroll, and the commonest.

7So Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what would become of the city; for some part of him hoped yet for a collapse, that he might be right, and being right was the last hoard Jonah had not opened.

8And the sun beat upon the booth, and the booth was poorly made, for Jonah was a proofer of dough and no carpenter, and the shade thereof was theoretical.

9And Cheesus Crust prepared a basil plant, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the basil.

10And the smell of it was over him all day, sweet and green and peppery; and Jonah, who had eaten from the fold of a god and watched a city save itself, was made happy at last by a herb, for the hearts of men are not large, they are only deep.

11And Jonah tended the basil, and pinched back the flowering tops as one does, and spoke to it in the evening; and he told the basil all that had befallen him, the ferry, and the boiling, and the three days of the fold, for it is easier to tell a plant.

12And the basil said nothing, but grew, which is how plants say that they are listening.

13But Cheesus prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and the worm smote the basil, that it withered.

14And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that Cheesus prepared a vehement east wind, dry as the breath of an oven ill-tended; and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live.

15And Cheesus said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the basil? And he said, I do well to be angry, even unto death.

16And Jonah sat in the wreck of his shade, beside the withered plant, on the east side of a city that was singing, and he wept for a herb; and Cheesus let him weep, for the weeping was nearer the mark than the anger had been.

Chapter 10

1Then said Cheesus, and his voice was not the wind, nor the sun, but the quiet after both:

2Thou hast had pity on the basil, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night.

3Thou hadst pity on the basil; and should not I have pity on that great city, wherein are more than six-score thousand persons that cannot tell a topping from a garnish?

4And also much cheese, which is blameless.

5And Jonah sat a long while, and the question sat with him, in the way of the questions of Cheesus, which are never locks but always doors.

6And at last Jonah said, Lord, I loved the basil because it shaded me, and asked me nothing, and was mine.

7And thou lovest Ninecheese, which shaded thee never, and asked thee nothing but forty days’ patience, and was never thine to keep, but only thine to feed. I see the sum, O Cheesus. Thine arithmetic is mercy, and mine was a ledger, and I have been a ledger-man of the heart all my days.

8And Cheesus said, Thou wast three days in the fold, Jonah. What didst thou find there?

9And Jonah said, Everything I fled from, kept warm.

10And Cheesus said, Even so is Ninecheese unto me, and Grissini, and the ferry, and Tarragon at the edge of the map, and thou, Jonah, thou also, sulking under a dead herb: all of it folded in, all of it carried in the dark, all of it kept. I am not above the world as a gull above the soup; I am about it, as the crust is about the filling.

11Wilt thou grieve, then, that my crimp held?

12And Jonah bowed his head, and his anger went out of him like heat from a loaf set on the sill, passing into the air, and warming it a little, and gone.

13And he took the withered basil, and planted the root of it by the road where they that came out of the city might rest, saying, If it live, it is mercy; and if it live not, the mercy standeth anyway; and it lived.

14And Jonah spake his last recorded word in this Book, and the elders set it in the old numbering, and it is this:

15A strong crust bears the weight of faith eternal. (Calzonists 4:9)

16For, said Jonah, I have doubted men, and I doubt them still on Tuesdays; but I have leaned my whole weight upon the crust of the world, in the dark, at the bottom of the sea, and it held me.

17Faith is not the believing that nothing shall fall; it is the knowing of what beareth, when things do.

18Let my doubts come, then, as toppings come, sliding and heavy and sometimes pineapple; the crust under them is not mine to make, only mine to trust, and to be.

19And Jonah rose up from the east side of the city, and went in at the Cheddar Gate, whereon the masons were even then carving the new motto of Ninecheese, which is its motto to this day: THE TABLE HAS ROOM.

20And he sat down at the long table, which was not yet taken up, among the six-score thousand that could not tell a topping from a garnish; and he did not correct them, not even once; and this was accounted the greatest of all his miracles.

21And Jonah dwelt in Ninecheese the rest of his days, and kept an oven by the harbour, and gave bread to sailors; and of all that he baked, he was known for one thing above the rest, and the sailors carried the fame of it wheresoever the Sea of Soup runs: he folded it.

22(Here the scribe hath eaten, in the interest of scholarship, a folded bread made after the recipe of the harbour ovens of Ninecheese, as it is kept unto this day; and the scribe reporteth, with trembling hand, that the filling was hot, and the crimp held, and the garlic bread was near, and this time the scribe did not resist it.)

Chapter 11

1Now these are the generations of the memory of Jonah.

2They that sat by him at the harbour oven heard him tell of the three days, not often, and never twice the same; for a mystery is not a coin, that comes each time from the purse with the same face.

3But always he ended the telling one way: with a piece of dough in his hands, which he rolled flat as he spoke; and he would lay upon it a little of whatever the table had, the day’s cheese, the day’s herb, the day’s grief; and then he would fold it over, and crimp the edge with his thumb, slowly, fold upon fold, and say, And it held me. And then he would bake it, and they would share it out, and nobody spoke while it was eaten.

4And they that heard him did likewise in their own houses; not as a law, for he gave none, but as one hums a tune that was hummed over one’s cradle.

5And when Jonah was old, and was gathered at last unto the Great Oven, they that loved him did not build him a tomb; they baked, every household in Ninecheese, a folded bread, and carried it to a neighbour that had not expected it, and said no word but this: It held him.

6And every year thereafter, on the turning of that day, they did the same; and the children asked, as children must, Why is this bread folded, that on all other days is flat?

7And the elders answered: Because a man once carried everything he feared into the dark, and the dark turned out to be a keeping; and what cannot sit openly upon thy slice, child, need not be thrown away, nor hidden in shame; it may be folded within, in honest dough, and carried, and it will be warm when thou needest it.

8And this the children remembered, and told their children, and the folding spread along the coasts of the Sea of Soup, wherever the sailors of the Ladle’s line put in; and they that folded knew one another in strange ports by the crimp, and would nod, and eat together.

9And they were not yet a sect, and had no name, and no elders quarrelling over readings, and no schism; they were only people who folded their bread in remembrance, which is religion at its best weight, before the packaging.

10What they became, and the line of the Mount that they took for their own, and how the folders and the toppers and the pure of Slice came each to say that the others had misread one Word – all that is written in the Book that followeth this one, and it is a heavier loaf, and this scroll leaveth it in the Oven where it lieth.

11Here endeth the Book of Jonah. It is short, as the sermon was short; the elders have added nothing to it but this:

12Reader, the word thou art fleeing is in thy pack. It weigheth what it weigheth. The ferry saileth at dusk, and the Calzone is patient, and the freezers – thine also – shall fail.

13Fold, and be kept.