The Book of Salt (12 page)

BEFORE COMING TO
27 rue de Fleurus, I spent many of my Mondays here, especially when there were no help-wanteds to reply to, no interviews to be rejected from, no benches available in the sun-starved parks of this city. When the moon had risen, when a drink or two had gone down, I would often find myself here as well. I would measure the distance down with my eyes, scan the water's surface for rocky formations, sandbars, and other bothersome obstructions. No, nothing but the moon's reflection. "What keeps you here?" I would hear a man asking. Your question, just your desire to know my answer, is what keeps me, has always been my response. I would then see him smile. I would open my eyes, and I would leave this bridge for the night.

I met him, the man on this bridge, in 1927. I have no recollection of the month. It could have been sometime in the late spring or, maybe, in the first days of autumn. What I am certain of, though, is that we met on a day when this city had the foregone appearance of a memory, as if the present had refused to go to work that day and said that the past would have to do. There was a mist rising from the Seine, and as water in all of its forms is inclined to do it softened and curved the city's angles and
lines. The woolen sky, hanging low, dampened all the colors that the Parisians had to offer, robbing them of their carefully coordinated defenses against the gloom. A bright red scarf around a man's neck became a rusty coil. A pink veil on a young girl's hat disappeared into a haze of exhaust and smoke. On a day like that, I know that my Madame and Madame would have requested a stew. No, an organ meat of some kind. Roast veal kidneys, braised sweetbreads, sautéed mutton livers, something from deep inside to warm up
their
insides would have been their rationale. On the day that I met the man on the bridge, though, I was still many days and two years away from finding my Madame and Madame. This is the first Monday since coming to the rue de Fleurus that I have been back here, hands on the railing, face turned to the river. My days, after all, now belong to two American ladies, and they keep me busy with the culinary bustle that is the foundation of a continually entertaining household. Rectangular folds of puff pastry dough, circles of
pâte brisée,
bowls of heavy cream whipped with and without sugar, fresh fruit purées, fondant flowers and chocolate leaves, these are the basic components of sweetness that fill my days and someone else's mouth. Believe me, I had every intention of returning to them today, of fulfilling these beginning-of-the-workweek functions for them. But on this Monday, half-wasted, the boulevard Raspail took me here instead. The streets of this city are alive, I have always thought. They know better than I where I need to be, or in this instance who I need to see.

***

"Do I know you, Monsieur?"

"Let's say yes, and that way we can immediately call each other
bạn,
" said the man who took his eyes from the Seine to address mine. He had on a black suit, coarse in fabric, too large for his frame, and many years out of fashion, that is, if there was ever a time in this city when such a suit was considered
à la mode.
Even if his last word had not confirmed it, that suit of his would have. He was undeniably Vietnamese.

"
Bạn?
Yes, why not?" I said, switching into the language
that I now knew we shared. "Well, friend, are you lost or are you thinking? In my experience, when a person stands on a bridge, it usually means one or the other. "

"' Am I lost or am I thinking?' That, friend, is a question worthy of a philosopher," the man on the bridge replied. "I believe the answer is ... I am thinking about being lost."

"An answer also worthy of a philosopher," I said.

When some men smile, the skin on their face tightens, stretches to cover their cheekbones. His gave him the appearance of flesh underneath the skin. It filled in the hollows of his cheeks, brought out a face from some other time. Not that he appeared old otherwise. Rather the opposite. He appeared without age, I thought, when I first walked by him. Handsome too, I noted, as I turned around and headed back to where he stood.

"Are you a student?" I asked.

"No."

"Oh."

"Guess again," he said.

Ah, a game. Why am I always drawn, I thought, to men who play games?

"Friend, I would not even know where to begin," I said. "You do not have enough bulk on your body to be rich, I know that much."

"A fine start. Please go on."

"I would guess that you have not had cream or cheese for many years now. You may have had some meat but not fatty. No, definitely chewy with muscles. An animal who has worked for its life, if you know what I mean."

"A fine, fine start, friend. And if
I
were to guess, I would say that you are a cook. "

I smiled.

"Cooks have a vocabulary all their own," he continued, "and I know it always comes from right here." He pointed to the place where his belly would be, if he had had one.

"You must be a cook as well, then?"

"Yes, once."

"Let me guess ... pastries. Thin people always make good pastries."

"Remarkable," he said looking at me admiringly. "Yes, I made pies.'"

"What?"

"' Pies.' It's the English word for
tartes.
"

"Oh."

"Assistant cook in the 'pie' bakery of a five-star hotel, under the command of a five-star
chef de cuisine,
" he added, mocking a military salute and stance.

"Here, in the city?"

"No, in another city."

"Oh, of course! Forgive me, friend, I am slow when it comes to such details. A city that eats pies' must be a city that speaks English. You must have gotten paid well," I said, looking at him in a somewhat refurbished light. A man with savings, I thought.

"Paid well? I was paid very well, if you think paper is an even exchange for the salt of your labor or that—"

"Friend," I interrupted, "I am afraid you are losing me." The truth, I know, saves time, and as I had no idea how much of it I would have with the man on the bridge I thought it best to speak plainly.

"Please excuse me," he said, "the philosopher in me is talkative today. All I mean to say is that the bakery was unbelievably hot, twenty-four hours a day. We all had to wear a cloth tied around our foreheads so that our sweat wouldn't turn the pies from sweet to savory. I lost so much weight there that I thought one day I would just disappear. I had the moment all pictured in my head like the final scene of a play. ' Where's Ba?' Chef Escoffier would ask. ' There he is!' the other assistants would answer, pointing in unison to a wet spot on the floor, as the stage lights dimmed."

"Well, Ba, that's—"

"' Ba' is not my name, friend," he corrected. "That's what
they
called me. "

"Oh."

"And you, friend, where do you work?"

"Everywhere," I replied. When I am telling the truth, why does it so often sound like a lie?

"Yes, I have worked there too," he said.

"Where?"

"Everywhere."

"Oh, of course. I told you I am slow."

He laughed and I joined in.

"Everywhere, hmm ... I am beginning to think that yours is a trick question," I teased. "You are not
just
a cook, are you? You should have told me that there would be more than one right answer. How unkind!"

"That's one way of looking at it. Another is that if my question has many possible answers, then you, friend, have a much greater chance of getting it right. A partial credit—"

"Aha! A teacher."

"Yes, once."

"Come on, friend, let us play Catholic and let you be the first to confess."

He laughed again.

A good sign, I thought.

"The list is long," he began. "My day belongs to this bridge and to the river. Doesn't your day belong to someone?"

"No, not right now. Usually a park bench in the Jardin du Luxembourg, but it is not jealous and it is always willing to share."

"Kitchen boy, sailor, dishwasher, snow shoveler, furnace stoker, gardener, pie maker, photograph retoucher, fake Chinese souvenir painter, your basic whatever-needs-to-be-done-that-day laborer, and, my favorite by far, letter writer."

"Where do you get paid for doing that?"

"On a freighter. It was a long time ago, and I didn't do it for money. So I suppose you can add 'charitable donation giver' to my list."

"Oh," I said.

I have heard this story before, I thought.

"I helped one of the sailors find the words to describe the color of the Indian Ocean sky, and he deemed it poetic. His favorable assessment made its way to the rest of the crew, and soon I was the official letter writer for the
Latouche Tréville,
" said the man on the bridge.

"What?"

"I said soon I was the official—"

"No, no what did you say the name of the freighter was?"

"The
Latouche Grandeville.
But it's been so many years now, it's difficult to say for sure."

Why a lie so early on in our game, I wondered.

"How many years could it have been, friend? You look no more than twenty-five," I said.

"And you have been among the French for much too long," he replied, shaking his head. "Your ability to tell a Vietnamese's age is no longer in working order. "

"Let me try again," I said. "A sailor named Bão taught me a formula. Bão said that with the French you subtract. If a Frenchman looks twenty-five, then he is really fifteen. So with us, addition is the rule. That would make you no more than thirty-five."

"I'm thirty-seven," he said, "and if I were to guess, you are twenty-four. "

When Bão was not telling stories about Serena the Soloist, he was telling stories about a young Vietnamese man who had worked as a kitchen boy aboard the
Latouche Tréville,
a shipping liner that Bão had been signed up with previous to the
Niobe.
The kitchen boy, according to Bão, was well known and well liked among the crew for three things. One, he wrote letters home for the other Vietnamese sailors on board because he, unlike them, could read and write more than just their names. "No fee, even!" Bão emphasized. Imagine all the profits lost to youth and a lack of business sense! was what Bão was trying to say. Two, the kitchen boy was vague about everything except his and other people's ages. He, according to Bão, could guess a
man's exact age and on a dare he could even attempt his month of birth. Three, one night when the kitchen boy did not show up for his usual letter writing appointments, Bão went to the galley and there he found him sitting on the floor. On one side of the kitchen boy was a heap of green shavings and on the other an entire crate of asparagus that he had stripped white. "He even cut the tops off of them," Bão said. "I told him to throw them all overboard before the cook saw them or his hide was going to be in the water with them. You
know
how the French are about their asparagus."

The kitchen boy shook his head no.

"Yeah, it's clear that you don't know how the French are about their asparagus!" Bão laughed.

The kitchen boy looked up at Bão with tears in his eyes.

Bão's stories tend to have an easily discernible point. Obvious and blunt are other more unkind ways of putting it. The stories he told about the young Vietnamese man, who worked as a kitchen boy aboard the
Latouche Tréville,
were meant to be broadly comic. They often were not. Sometimes, even Bão would not laugh after telling them. The young man, according to Bão, was named "Ba." I know the man on the bridge said that
that
was not his real name. Of course not. Real names, I know, are never exchanged during such encounters, but I was hoping for one all the same. I remember watching his eyes as I said Bão's name. Not a blink, a dart, a dive, nothing but the calmness that favors the eyes of old Buddhist monks or babies after they have been well fed. Only the babies have to be well fed, not the monks. With their lifetime vow of poverty and their begging bowls, old Buddhist monks have long ago grown immune to the effects of a truly good meal. Babies are just beginning their lifetime of addiction. When I think now about the man on the bridge, I waver. Most of the time I am certain, and there are times when I think, No, he was just a man like all the others.

"I left Vietnam when I was twenty-two," said the man whose eyes were again back on the Seine. "I haven't been back since."

His voice trailed off, his words taking a quiet leap into the water below.

At a moment like this, silence was the only appropriate rejoinder I knew. Time, in deference to its reflection, to the spiral-ing sadness that accompanies its consideration, had stopped, taken a breath, and was slowly beginning its journey again, while we stood side by side, two men on a bridge that connected us to neither here nor there. Our hands rested on the railing. Our faces turned toward a river too cold to swim in. What a pity, I have always thought, water that you cannot immerse your body in, worse than a fruit that you cannot eat.

"I have always liked bridges," he suddenly resumed, as if he had heard my complaint about the Seine and was offering the bridge as a consolation. "And you, friend, how about you?"

This time silence on my part told him that, even in this setting,
that
was an odd thing to say.

"Bridges belong to no one," he continued on anyway. "A bridge belongs to no one because a bridge has to belong to two parties, one on either side. There has to be an agreement, a mutual consent, otherwise it's a useless piece of wood, a wasted expanse of cement. Every bridge is, in this way," he explained, "a monument to an accord. "

"You should really add philosopher' to your list of jobs, friend," I said.

"I apologize. It's been several years since I've been back here. I forget that this city can make me—"

"Sound like a scholar-prince," I said, finishing the sentence for him.

"What? A scholar-prince? Yes, I must sound like an old mandarin to you." He laughed.

"Something like that," I nodded.