As he frequently did when frustration overcame him, Klacel left the library early that Saturday morning and made his way to the kitchen and his friend Brother Victor.
"Co si date?" the busy chef asked in Czech as Brother Matthew stomped across the stone floor, he recognized the signs and wanted to know what his friend wanted to eat. Brother Matthew threw himself into a stout chair by the table and rubbed his expansive stomach.
"Lenten fasting may be good for my soul, but it is not good for my digestive system. I have been rumbling all morning," he said, then put his elbows on the table and looked at Brother Victor from between his cupped hands.
"You know," he said, "a plate of your prirodni hovezi pecene, - beef stewed with onions, would be perfect right now."
Brother Victor laughed, "And what if the Prior was to see you eating meat during Lent?" Well aware of the scandal that would be caused by breaking Pope Saint Gregory's rule. "How about some of my cesnekova polevka - garlic soup?"
He watched Brother Matthew wrinkle his nose in disgust, "Not for me," Klacel said, "But I'd take a bowl of your fazole na kyselo - sour bean stew." He pointed to a bubbling pot on the stove.
"So what are you up to these days?" Brother Victor asked as he ladled a generous bowl of his famous stew and added a chunk of fresh cooked bread on the side.
"I had intended to re-write the third part of my essay on The philosophy of rational good," Brother Matthew replied, referring to a fateful incident in his academic career, when, after successfully submitting and publishing the first two parts of this essay in 1847, he had been unsuccessful in getting the third part past the censors, who had found 'harmful sentences' within the work. This incident, used by Brother Timothy, had led to Klacel's dismissal as a teacher of philosophy. Since then, Klacel has consistently threatened to re-write the offending third part of his essay, but, in typical Brother Matthew fashion, had talked about it more than doing it.
"But the Abbot has given us another project. We are to solve the problem of sour wine."
"Sour wine?" said Brother Victor, putting the bean stew and bread before Klacel and going for a spoon.
"Yes. Herr Druer, the wine merchant, has a problem with his burcak turning sour. He wanted this batch ready for Easter, but it is not fermenting properly. Napp wants us to find out why."
"And are you?" Brother Victor asked, putting the spoon on the table beside the steaming bowl.
"Yes and no," said Brother Matthew looking into the stew and watching the steam rise from the surface. He sniffed the aroma appreciatively. "We think we know the cause of the souring. Tiny rod-like organisms are contaminating Druer's vats and Mendel thinks that they are taking the sugar from the grapes and turning it into "ethyl-compounds" instead of alcohol."
"So what are you going to do with them?"
"That's the problem," Klacel said ruefully, picking up the bread and breaking off small pieces. "Before we can stop the rods spoiling the wine, we need to know more about them. But how do you study organisms this tiny? Even down the microscope, it takes a powerful lens and good eyesight even to see them."
"You want to kill them, or simply stop them growing?" Brother Victor asked.
"Both or either," said Klacel, dropping small pieces of bread into his soup. "Mendel thinks that we should be able to find conditions in which the yeast grow and the rods are killed, or stop growing, but this kind of research could take years, and we only have a couple of weeks." He watched the small pieces of bread float on the surface of Brother Victor's bean soup. Like tiny icebergs the segments of crumbled bread floated until they became soggy, when they partially sank and stopped moving. Klacel watched them drift and soak up the soup. "If only we could find some easy way of separating the rods away from the yeast."
He picked up his spoon and lifted one of the pieces of bread up to his mouth. "If only it was this easy," he said, half to himself, as he popped the morsel between his lips.
As his eyes slid down to the table once more he noticed that the bowl was exactly the same type as he had seen a few days before, when Brother Joseph had them kneeling on the floor looking at a fungus. For a second, the juxtaposition of images confused him and instead of seeing a bowl of soup with bread floating in it, he saw a bowl of solidified gelatin with a mold growing on its surface. The two images crossed over in his mind and the small pieces of white bread in the soup suddenly became small mounds of rods growing on the surface of the semi-solid beef gelatin.
"Ahhgggg!" he gasped as the hot soup burned his mouth, causing him to swallow it into his lungs and turn red.
"What is it?" his friend shouted, rushing over to pound Brother Matthew on the back. The scientist monk looked in danger of choking to death, which would not be a good advertisement for Brother Victor's cooking.
"That's it," Klacel yelled, when he could speak again.
"That's what?" Brother Victor said, rescuing the bean soup from Klacel's flailing hands.
"We solidify the broth in which the rods will grow, spread them on the surface, and ..." He ran out of ideas at that moment, but even without the details he could almost see the solution, a short distance beyond the horizon of his imagination.