The bread of salt is a coming of age story by Filipino national artist Nestor Vicente Madali

Gonzalez. It is about a fourteen-year-old male narrator who falls for Aida, the niece of a Spaniard
plantation owner, and who realizes that this girl is out of his league. It begins with the narrator
informing us of his daily task of buying the staple breakfast food pan de sal every 5 A.M. Pan de
sal in English is bread of salt. The narrator describes it in detail in the second paragraph; he waits
for pan de sal to be finished baking at the end.

Bread of Salt, as if often noted, is Gonzalez's loving homage to Joyce's Araby. Both short stories
feature young adolescents infatuated with a girl who is oblivious to them. Moreover, this
puppy love ends in a searing instance of humiliation and realization; made all the more painful
by the fact that even in that instant of pain, the girl is ignorant of their feelings. Bread of
Salt casts this theme though in distinctly Filipino terms.

The similarity is also metaphorical: just as bread needs to bake in the fire to rise and be ready,
so too must the narrator undergo trials before he can be called a man. Indeed, a crucial
acknowledgement at the end of the story (after he has embarrassed himself before Aida) is
that the narrator admits that he is not yet baked, It was not quite five, and the bread was not
yet ready.

This acknowledgement though only comes at the end. For most of the story the narrator is
insistent on his maturity, that he has grown up enough for love. Thus his disdain for his aunt, She
was the sort you could depend on to say such vulgar things. Thus also his constant need to
excel, Quickly I raced through Alard. There is too his quiet pride in being accepted into a big-boys
club, the band, Pete pressed my arm. He had for some time now been asking me to join the
Minviluz Orchestra, his private band... My head began to whirl. Taken together these acts have
the quaint tone of a young lad insisting to all around him that he is no longer a boy.

The object of all this effort is of course a girl, Aida. She is lovely and fair, the narrator's vision of
perfection, Their [other girls'] eyes glowed with envy, it seemed to me, for those fair cheeks and
the bobbed dark-brown hair which lineage had denied them Befitting an adolescent fantasy, the
narrator imagines that he and she share a secret language, a codice of signs only apparent to
them, She would perhaps never write me back. Neither by post nor by hand would a reply reach
me. But no matter; it would be a silence full of voices.

But young fantasy ultimately collides with the reality that the affection is not mutual. While Aida
seems like a nice enough girl she doesn't see the narrator in a romantic light. This epiphany hits
the narrator when he is at his most vulnerable, when he is without pretensions and is hungrily
wolfing down the remains of the food from the party, The sight of so much silver and china
confused me. There was more food before us than I had ever imagined... [I] also wrapped up a
quantity of those egg-yolk things in several sheets of napkin paper. None of my companions had
thought of doing the same, and it was with some pride that I slipped the packet under my shirt.

The humiliation of Aida seeing him pocketing food (really a slight affront in the greater scheme
of things) triggers an epiphany in the narrator; all affection for Aida is expunged from him, I
could not quite believe that she had seen me, and yet I was sure that she knew what I had done,
and I felt all ardor for her gone from me entirely.

What triggers this epiphany is that Aida saw him in an unguarded moment, she saw him as he
was and not as how he wished to appear. This clash between the affectation of polished
maturity and the reality of boyish exuberance is a theme developed throughout the story and it
climaxes in the narrator's loss of fire for Aida.

He, the narrator, has grown up though, if ever so slightly. With money he has earned from his
own toil, he insists on buying for himself some pandesal.

The bread of salt is a coming of age story by Filipino national artist Nestor Vicente Madali
Gonzalez. It is about a fourteen-year-old male narrator who falls for Aida, the niece of a Spaniard
plantation owner, and who realizes that this girl is out of his league. It begins with the narrator
informing us of his daily task of buying the staple breakfast food pan de sal every 5 A.M. Pan de
sal in English is bread of salt. The narrator describes it in detail in the second paragraph; he waits
for pan de sal to be finished baking at the end.

The themes of race and class divisions are clearly set up early in the story. The mere mention of
the coconut plantation owner who is Spanish is enough of a hint. It feels like it’s going to be a
post-colonial literature through the eyes of a juvenile dreamer, but it eddies back to a boy’s
romantic fantasies. The narrator regales us with hi head-in-the-cloud stories, mostly concerning
him becoming Aida’s beloved one. She becomes his inspiration. He plays well at school games
to become physically admirable and perseveres on improving his violin-playing to become
artistically pleasing. He joins a band to earn money so that he could buy her a brooch. He
improvises plans for her to read a letter filled with his feelings for her.

I find the violin part problematic because this instrument is a status symbol in this country. It
weakens characterization and shades a fantasy element on the part of the author. But putting
this aside and considering instead the narrator’s tales colored by his youthful tone, one cannot
easily trust the narrator. Reading further, one can conclude that the narrator is full of himself.
He thinks he can easily conquer the world, a classic teenage notion that is shredded as soon one
gets a solid footing on reality. Disillusionment for him comes when his band is invited to perform
at an alta sociedad party, where Aida is among the guests.

The narrator’s aunt rightfully observed that musicians at parties always eat last. After the
narrator and his bandmates ate the food that they cannot name, he wraps more of “those egg-
yolk things” and slips them under his jacket. Aida sees him do it and asks if he was able to eat.
She further offers to give him a package of food if he could wait until the other guests have left.

The narrator’s and Aida’s habits and mannerisms come from distinct backgrounds, therefore
introducing a preliminary hurdle in the two’s nonexistent love story. The former doesn’t know
how to behave accordingly in a party where only high profile personas are invited. The latter
seems to be either concerned or condescending, depending on how one looks at it. It is implied
though that it is more of condescension since right after their conversation, the narrator’s
admiration for Aida immediately evaporates, fueled further by his embarrassment.

He walked with me part of the way home. We stopped at the baker’s when I told him that I
wanted to buy with my own money some bread to eat on the way to Grandmother’s house at
the edge of the sea wall. He laughed, thinking it strange that I should be hungry. We found
ourselves alone at the counter; and we watched the bakery assistants at work until our bodies
grew warm from the oven across the door. It was not quite five, and the bread was not yet
ready.

The young narrator gets his first taste of life’s disappointments and deals with it eating not those
egg-yolk things but his staple comfort food.

1. A boy who always buys pandesal or bread of salt every 5am at the bakeshop.
2. The boy was in love (puppy love) with Aida