The Book of Salt (28 page)

GertrudeStein loved her brother, her only one. She loved him enough not to hear a word of what he was saying. But after Miss Toklas began her daily visits to the rue de Fleurus, Leo added jealousy and cruelty to the list of his difficult-to-love attributes. He began to spend hours, the same ones that Miss Toklas was spending with his sister, at the cafés of this city, where he, with the assistance of a bottle or two, concluded for all to hear that Gertrude's writing was nothing more than babble, the mark of an undisciplined lazy mind: "She thinks it is an art to be read and not understood. She is playing an elaborate practical joke on herself. She claims to innovate, but she is just mimicking the insane."

"She," who was by then undeniably GertrudeStein, refused to be ridiculed by anyone, especially by Leo. The infidelity, the betrayal, the savagery of it, shrunk her love for him into a thing so small that one day it disappeared.

"Babble!" GertrudeStein complained to Miss Toklas.

"Lovey, there can be only one," Miss Toklas whispered, repeating the phrase that would absolutely, mercilessly sever GertrudeStein from her brother Leo, her only one. Miss Toklas knew that it would.

***

Choose something from the middle, you tell me. No one ever remembers what happens there.

"No."

"Bee, they'll never even notice."

"No."

"Bee, please ... just for the week and then you can take it back with you the following Sunday."

What an odd request, I think. Or is it more of a plea, a childlike wish, which in the mouth of a man can quickly become an either-or command?

You want to see GertrudeStein's handwriting, her crossed-over words, the discarded ones. She
is
the twentieth century, you tell me. What she keeps and what she does not will tell you about the future, you insist. My Madame is not a soothsayer, I think.

"Ask me something else," I beg. The tips of my fingers are throbbing, picking up as they always do the electrical charge that is in the air, that precedes the appearance of any threat, lightning before a driving storm.

Sweet Sunday Man, please understand. My Madame and Madame sustain me. They pay my wage, house my body, and I feed them. That is the nature of our relationship. Simple, you may think. Replaceable, even. The morning meals, the afternoon repasts, the evening suppers, the day-to-day is what I share with them. You may think that that is just an unbroken string of meals, continuous but otherwise insignificant, but you would be wrong. Every day, my Mesdames and I dine, if not together, then back-to-back. Of course, there is always a wall between us, but when they dine on
filet de boeuf Adrienne,
I dine on
filet de boeuf Adrienne.
When they partake of
salade cancalaise,
I partake of
salade cancalaise.
When they conclude with
Crème renversée à la cévenole,
I conclude on the same sweet note. Do you understand, Sweet Sunday Man? These two, unlike all the others whom I have had the misfortune to call my Monsieur and Madame, extend to me the right to eat what they eat, a right that, as you know, is really more of a privilege when it is I who am doing the cooking. My Mesdames do not even demand that I wait until they have finished, that I scrape together my meals from what is
left of theirs. When I place that first bite of
boeuf Adrienne
in my mouth and I am brought to my knees—figuratively speaking, of course, as I reserve that posture for love and prayers—by the white wine, cognac, laurel, thyme, and red currants, that elusive final ingredient that ends all of their compliments with a question mark, I know that my Mesdames are on their knees as well, saying a word of thanks for two heady days of marinating and one hour of steady basting. With their meals of beef, my Mesdames insist on oysters as an accompaniment. These briny morsels are more of a juxtaposition, a counterpoint to the buttery aftertaste of cow's blood.
Salade cancalaise
provides my Mesdames with that and more. Inside the curl of a leaf of lettuce is a single poached oyster. Underneath this dollop of ocean fog is a soft pallet of potatoes. A shaving of black truffle covers all. The potatoes are there for heft and texture, but the truffle, ah, the truffle is a gift for the nose. Pleasure refined into a singular scent, almost animal, addictive, a lover's body coming toward yours on a moonless night. Even this my Mesdames have shared with me. Do you understand, Sweet Sunday Man? My Mesdames, like the French, prefer their salad after the main course, something tart and piquant to heighten the sweetness of what is to come. That, Sweet Sunday Man, is why Americans think French desserts are barely sweet enough when eaten on their own. Think of a dessert as an ensemble player who should never be forced to perform naked and alone. Speckled with the seeds of vanilla beans and ribboned through and through with chestnut purée,
crème renversée à la cévenole
elevates the humble baked custard to a state of grace. As Anh Minh would say, "If you don't believe in God, then how do you explain the chestnut?" GertrudeStein and Miss Toklas undoubtedly agree. When the first strong winds of winter blow, my Mesdames drive to the Bois de Boulogne and stand underneath the chestnut trees singing "Angel, angel!" When my Mesdames return home to the rue de Fleurus,
crème renversée à la cévenole
is what they hunger for.

"GertrudeStein judges a cook by his desserts, and I judge a cook by everything else," Miss Toklas had informed me during
my interview. I have found this statement, like all of Miss Toklas's statements, to be unquestionably true. Believe me, it has not been easy for me to work for these two. Miss Toklas is a Madame who uses her palate to set the standard of perfection. In order to please her, her cook has to do the same, an extremely difficult feat. Her cook has to adopt her tongue, make room for it, which can only mean the removal of his own. That is what she demands from all of her cooks. Impossible, of course, and so eventually they have all had to go. I have stayed this long because I am experienced, qualified in such matters.

Once she became my Madame, the first thing Miss Toklas asked me was whether I had a recipe for gazpacho.

"Yes."

"Did you learn it in Spain?"

"No."

"Then it is best to forget it."

"Oh."

"Here at 27 rue de Fleurus," Miss Toklas began, "there are four kinds of gazpacho. We will begin with the gazpacho of Malaga. You will need four cups of veal broth, prepared the night before. Be sure to add two cloves of garlic and a large Spanish onion to the bones as they steep. A large ripe tomato, peeled and seeded, cut into cubes no larger than—let me see your hands—no larger than your thumbnail. One small cucumber no thicker than half the width of your wrist and..."

Our first lesson continued in this manner until my Madame declared, "Mix thoroughly and serve the soup ice-cold. Exquisite. Tomorrow," she promised, "the gazpacho of Segovia." Miss Toklas closed her eyes as she said "Segovia," which told me that it was exquisite as well.

I ran through the complete list of ingredients in my head: veal broth, tomato, cucumber, garlic, onion, sweet red pepper, cooked rice, olive oil. I opened up my mouth to ask, "What about the—"

"Salt is not essential here," Miss Toklas interrupted. "Consider it carefully, Bin, before using it." A pinch of salt, according to my Madame, should not be a primitive reflex, a nervous twitch on the part of any cook, especially one working at 27 rue de Fleurus. Salt is an ingredient to be considered and carefully weighed like all others. The true taste of salt—the whole of the sea on the tip of the tongue, sorrow's sting, labor's smack—has been lost, according to my Madame, to centuries of culinary imprudence. It is a taste that Miss Toklas insists is sometimes unnecessary, as in the gazpacho of Malaga, and other times, as in the gazpacho of Segovia, it is the hinge that allows the flavors of the other ingredients to swing wide open. "In my kitchen, I will tell you when salt is necessary," my Madame said, concluding the real lesson for that day.

Working with this Madame, I could already tell, would not be easy. She is an attentive Madame, which frankly is the worst possible kind. What about the other one? I thought. Two attentive Mesdames, and I am out of here in a week, I remembered thinking.

I know, I know. It is this other Madame who interests you more, Sweet Sunday Man. But what you do not seem to understand is that they are one and the same, and what you ask of me, I cannot do to my Madame and Madame. The infidelity, the betrayal, the savagery of it, even I am not capable of it, Sweet Sunday Man.

"Bee, what about a photograph?"

Yes, I nod, acknowledging my childlike wish for an image of you and me.

"We'll do it. We'll go to Lené Studio and have our photograph taken, once you..."

An even exchange. A fair trade. A give for a take. I have played this game before, I think.

"Please, Bee. Just one week, Sunday to Sunday, and then you can..."

"Our photograph" is all that I want, and it is all that I hear. Sweet Sunday Man is a honey talker, and I am his Bee, after all. When I am with him, I am reminded that sweet is not just a taste on the tongue. Sweet is how my whole being can feel. He
quickens my pulse, and I stay in that alert state, even when our bodies are no longer one. He inhabits a body that is free to soar through the continuous blue of this city's sky, and he takes me with him when he dreams. He fills my lungs with his breaths and his sighs. I cook for him, and he feeds me. That is the nature of our relationship.

Dressed in her kimono and her prayer beads, GertrudeStein is standing in front of the door of the studio, and she is waiting. For Miss Toklas, I imagine, when I look at this photograph. GertrudeStein's hair is abundant and continues to grow thick and lush inside this image. A half smile graces her face, deepening the dimples in her cheeks. It is a smile that says, Remember me. It is not so much a command but a sage bit of advice, a tip on a winning horse. My Madame is staring into the camera so intently that I imagine it was she who willed the shutter to close and open back up again, fixing her in that moment when she declared, "
I am the one.
" It is an important occasion that my Mesdames are for some reason reluctant to share. But then again, my Madame and Madame have always been somewhat erratic about what they make public and what they press, viselike, to their bosoms. This photograph, for instance, they have chosen to keep inside the cupboard along with Miss Toklas's typewriting machine and GertrudeStein's notebooks and papers. Resting against the back panel of the cupboard, the photograph shows GertrudeStein with her hands clasped in front of her breasts, a knot waiting to be untied. By Miss Toklas, I imagine. The hem of GertrudeStein's kimono touches the ground and disappears into the white border of the photograph. I hold onto her there, at the hem of her garment, and I ask my Madame, "Would you do the same?" Miss Toklas, I know, would answer "Yes!" GertrudeStein is never faced with such dilemmas. She stands there and she waits, not patiently but confidently, for what she knows is rightfully hers. She is the recipient and never the procurer of love and affection. She has Miss Toklas for that. I stand in front of the open cupboard, in the silence that
takes over 27 rue de Fleurus when my Mesdames are locked arm in arm for the night. I take from the cupboard a thin notebook that to me says it is small, insignificant, forgettable even. The notebook is not from the middle of the stack as Sweet Sunday Man had advised, but it is not from the very top either. It is a safe distance away, I gauge, from where I have seen Miss Toklas running her thumb through the accumulated pages. Their edges sliding down the smooth hillock of her finger makes her ticklish with anticipation, leaves her with a sensation that she would later remember as inevitability. I close the cupboard, but not before I bid GertrudeStein, beatific in her kimono, good night. I return to my room, close the door, and open the notebook. I see inside an unbroken string of words. My eyes scan them for ones that I may know, that I may recognize, like the face of a brother in the blur of a passing crowd. No, nothing, I think. Then I see the word "please"—one of the few English words that Sweet Sunday Man has taught me—and I see it again. I turn the page and "please" is there as well.

"Please" can be a question: "May I?"

And a response: "You may."

"Please" can also be a verb, an effortless act that accompanies Sweet Sunday Man into every room.

"Please" is also a plea, a favor that he has asked of me.

My index finger jumps from "please" to "please." Here ... it is a question. There ... it is a response. Here ... it is an act, and there ... it is a plea. I am following a story line that I may be alone in finding, but for an instant I tell myself that I, like Sweet Sunday Man, am reading my Madame's writings. I turn the page, and I see there the word "Bin." I recognize it as the spelling of my Mesdames' name for me. I find my American name written again and again on the following pages as well. With each sighting, I am overwhelmed by the feeling that I am witnessing myself drowning. There ... I am, I think. Here ... I am again. I am surrounded on all sides by strangers, strung along a continuously unraveling line that keeps them above the water's surface. It is a line that I cannot possibly hold onto. GertrudeStein knows it, and she has cast me in there anyway, I think.

I did not give you my permission, Madame, to treat me in this way. I am here to feed you, not to serve as your fodder. I demand more money for such services, Madame. You pay me only for my time. My story, Madame, is mine. I alone am qualified to tell it, to embelish, or to withhold.

Here, Sweet Sunday Man, here. This notebook may belong to my Madame, but the story, it belongs to me. Look, it has my name all over it. Here and here and here. Your eyes follow my finger as it skims the inked pages, and you smile. "Don't worry, Bee," you assure me. The story,
my
story, you tell me, could be affectionate, glowing, heroic, even. You place my Madame's notebook inside your desk. You lock the drawer with a key that you wear around your waist. "I'll tell you all about it next Sunday. Now, we should go or we'll be late for our appointment," you say, smiling again. A photograph of you with me, I think. The sound of the drawer shutting, the flat note of wood on wood, the sharp click of the lock, follow us down the rue de l'Odéon. The sun is shining, and I am lost in its glare. I close my eyes, and all I can see there is my Madame's face smiling back at me.