The Iowa Review
Volume 12
Issue 2 Spring-Summer: Extended Outlooks: The Iowa
Review Collection of Contemporary Writing by Women
1981
Bread
Margaret Atwood
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Recommended Citation
Atwood, Margaret. "Bread." The Iowa Review 12.2 (1981): 7-8. Web.
Available at: http://ir.uiowa.edu/iowareview/vol12/iss2/4
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Article 4
Bread
Margaret Atwood
IMAGINEA PIECE of bread. You don't have to imagine it, it'sright here
in the kitchen, on the breadboard, in its plastic bag, lying beside the bread
is an old one you picked up at an auction;
it has
the word BREAD
You open the bag,
carved into the wooden
handle.
a
cut
back
You
the
slice.
wrapper,
put butter on it, then
pull
yourself
then honey, and you fold it over. Some of the honey runs
peanut butter,
out onto your
a minute
to
fingers and you lick it off. It takes you about
knife.
The
bread knife
eat the bread.
to be brown, but there is also white
This bread happens
a
in
the refrigerator,
and
heel of the rye you got last week,
round
bread,
as a full stomach then, now
bread.
make
you
going mouldy.
Occasionally
to
You think of it as something
do
with
hands.
your
relaxing
a famine. Now
a
Imagine
imagine
piece of bread. Both of these things
are real but you
one of them.
to be in the same room with
only
happen
a
is for. You are
Put yourself
into
the mind
different room, that's what
on a thin mattress
in a hot
lying
is younger
earth, and your sister, who
now
room.
The walls
than you,
are made
of dried
is in the room with
you.
She is starving, her belly isbloated, flies land on her eyes; you brush them
off with your hand. You have a cloth too, filthy but damp, and you press
it to her lips and forehead. The piece of bread is the bread you've been
saving,
How
for days it seems.
You
are as
hungry
as she is, but not yet as weak.
long does this take?When will someone come with more bread?
find something
think of going out to see if you might
that could be
are
streets
with
and
the stink of
but
outside
the
infested
eaten,
scavengers
You
corpses is everywhere.
Should you share the bread or give the whole
piece to your sister?
eat
the piece of bread yourself?
Should you
After all, you have a better
chance of living, you're stronger. How
long does it take to decide?
a
is something
that you have not yet
There
you know
Imagine
prison.
in control of the prison know
So do those
told. Those
that you know.
not in control.
If you tell, thirty or forty or a hundred of your friends,
your comrades, will be caught and will die. If you refuse to tell, tonight
will be like last night. They always choose the night. You don't think
about
the night
however,
but
about
the piece of bread
they offered
you.
7
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was brown and fresh and re
long does it take? The piece of bread
across
a
wooden
It reminded you of
of
floor.
you
sunlight falling
a bowl,
a
was once in your home.
It held apples and
yellow bowl that
on
a
can
not
it
It's
stood
table
also
remember.
the hunger or
you
pears;
How
minded
the pain that is killing you but the absence of the yellow bowl. If you
could only hold the bowl in your hands, right here, you could withstand
you
anything,
treacherous,
There
other
were
The bread
tell yourself.
mean
not
it does
life.
once
two
had five children
any food left.
"My children
She went
they offered
you
is subversive,
it's
the
rich and had no children,
so poor that she no
had
longer
to her sister and asked her for amouthful
of bread.
sisters.
and was
One
was
awidow,
are
she said. The rich sister said, "I do not have
dying,"
and drove her away from the door.
Then
the hus
enough for myself,"
to cut himself a piece of
band of the rich sister came home and wanted
bread; but when he made the first cut, out flowed red blood.
that meant.
Everyone knew what
This is a traditional German
fairy tale.
conjured for you floats about a foot above your
there are no trap doors in it. A blue
kitchen
table. The table is normal,
tea towel floats beneath
the
the bread, and there are no strings attaching
cloth to the bread or the bread to the ceiling or the table to the cloth,
The
loaf of bread
I have
You didn't touch
you've proved it by passing your hand above and below.
to know whether
want
You
the bread though. What
don't
stopped you?
a
or
it's just
I've somehow
whether
hallucination
the bread is real
duped
you into seeing. There's no doubt that you can see the bread, you can
even smell it, it smells like yeast, and it looks solid
solid as your
enough,
own arm. But can you trust it? Can you eat it? You don't want
to
know,
8
imagine
that.