The Book of Salt (30 page)

Oysters on the half shell and fresh honeydews both served on a bed of crushed ice, you tell me, are the only foods that GertrudeStein can eat before she gives a lecture.

"Lecture? But I thought my Madame writes books."

"She does. Then she lectures about them."

"Oh."

You had heard a rumor about GertrudeStein that, until now, seemed far-fetched. It had been whispered at the Saturday teas that she is nervous before she lectures, that this monument of a woman actually has to sit down to keep from fainting. Even though you are an iridologist and not particularly interested in the internal organs, you know that a jittery stomach is a sensitive one. So while you personally could not imagine keeping down a meal of raw oysters and cold honeydews even on the best of days, you could certainly understand how the delicate colors of these two foods could have a calming effect on GertrudeStein.

"Before she lectures," I say, trying to imagine GertrudeStein standing before an audience of people so formidable that they could cause my Madame's confidence to waver.

"That's why the Steins are returning to America in October."

"How do you know?" I ask.

"I read it in the newspapers."

My face expresses shock that the newspapers would know about my Madame's prelecture menu, and you smile.

"Oh,
that.
Don't worry, only you and I know about the oysters and honeydews," you assure me.

"Shh, Messieurs, please remain still and look straight ahead," the photographer Lené instructs.

We both take in a long deep breath and wait motionless for the flash of white light. In the middle of the ocean in the middle of the night, the stars, believe me, are never that bright.

"Come back next Sunday, Messieurs. I will be here, and so will your photograph," the photographer Lené says, as he hands you the receipt. You fold the blue slip of paper in half and place it inside the pocket of your coat.

"Only seven days," I say to myself.

When we return to the rue de l'Odéon, the scent of narcissus, the sunlight undressing at the garret windows, the belly of the Buddha stove growing full and warm, all assure me that this was a gamble worth taking. A week's worth of anxiety for a week's worth of anticipation, a fair enough trade, I think. Anything for my scholar-prince, I think. Really, how can I not imagine you in that role? Your interest in my Madame's books is far from casual. Your desire to examine the writings in her notebooks is certainly academic in purpose. Your ability to gather facts about her and Miss Toklas has lately equaled even my own.

***

Powdered sugar, cracker crumbs, salt. A short walk out onto these city streets today, and I will be covered with them. I am no poet, so forgive my lack of appreciation, my nonaffection for the snow. Back at the Governor-General's, the chauffeur told us that it was like the softest down of the whitest dove, that it nestled like blossoms in the hats of all the pretty French girls. He told us that when snow touched his face it felt like a kiss. I know now that
that
was just memory talking, blatantly making things up because the chauffeur, like all of us, so wanted to believe. When the Saigon sun cracked our lips, splitting them open like some soft fruit, the promise of a kiss, even one so far away, could get us through the endless procession of days. I, in truth, have always preferred the rain. It has little to do with my vocation. Cooks, unlike poets, are unmoved by the weather. From the very beginning, the best ones, according to Minh the Sous Chef, know how to use the extreme heat, the bitter cold, to their advantage. They take the sun and turn the flesh of fruits or animals into a mouth-savoring chew. They never forget, even as the skin underneath their fingernails turns blue, that the appearance of ice means the advent of meat without maggots or a crust of salt. As for the rain, it means that yeast may be slow to rise and that eggs may rot within days. My affinity for the rain really has little to do with its culinary consequences. I, like all my brothers, was conceived in a downpour. What else was there to do during the rainy season? Hell, I suspect everyone in Saigon was conceived amidst the sound of water, carousing on
the rooftops, slinking down the drainpipes. In this city, well, anyone conceived in Paris today would be treated to the sound of automobile horns and church bells because a snowfall contributes nothing to the city's constant chatter. A snowfall in February, silent—sullen would not be overstating it—is for me the most unforgiving. There is no pretense of grace, no lofty swirling, no laceworked confetti. The sky just opens up and pours down powdered sugar, cracker crumbs, salt. These are my exact thoughts. Nothing poetic, nothing profound, nothing more worldly than the miserable weather and how I would have to be out in it before the markets closed for the day. Breakfast has been served. Basket and Pépé have been stuffed with livers. Lunch for their Mesdames is still hours away. GertrudeStein and Miss Toklas are staying in for the day because of the weather and because photographers are expected later for tea. The rhythm of a Monday at the rue de Fleurus punctuated by a gripe about the snow, a refrain about tropical rain. Fate, though, is listening in. Worse, it mistakes a melancholic aside for a bout of nostalgia. The latter honors the past. I am merely regretting it.

"Thin Bin,
this
is for you."

I turn my head from the ice-flocked window, and my heart stands still. So soon? I think. It has only been a day, Mesdames. Only one day.

Miss Toklas is standing just inside of the kitchen doorway, and next to her is GertrudeStein. GertrudeStein has one hand in the pocket of her skirt, and the other is pointing to a small silver tray in Miss Toklas's hands. "Thin Bin,
this
is for you," GertrudeStein repeats.

A one-way fare for the
métro?
Severance pay minus the cost of one notebook, used? A letter of recommendation for my next Monsieur and Madame: "Marvelous cook but clumsy when inebriated and has on occasion been known to pilfer. Yours truly, The Steins. "No matter, whatever my Mesdames have for me on that tray, I can at least assume it is not a
canape.
In all the years that I have been with them, I have never seen them together in quite this way. First of all, GertrudeStein rarely accompanies Miss Toklas into the kitchen. They have a division of labor, and
GertrudeStein's half has nothing to do with this room. Second, Miss Toklas always does the talking when it comes to matters of domestic affairs. GertrudeStein does not even know how much I get paid. As for the silver tray, I can only assume that these two are a bit more formal about their dismissal practices than other Messieurs and Mesdames. The timing, after breakfast and before lunch, is classic. More cooks are discharged during these few fateful hours than any other. Most Messieurs and Mesdames require coffee and something sweet from me before they will let me go. Monday is also the preferred day of the week for such tasks. It leaves Monsieur and Madame with enough time to find a replacement. That is why most dinner parties are scheduled from Thursdays through Saturdays. The beginning of the week is set aside for the general flux of firings and hirings. And, of course, there is the snow. Inclement weather always seems to encourage Monsieur and Madame to show me the door and lock it. But for once, I have no intention of hastening the process, so I glumly stand my ground. Mesdames, you already have it on a silver tray. You might as well take those extra steps and serve it to me.

"Thief," I hear the Old Man hissing in my ear.

Shut up. It was mine to give.

"Liar."

We have something in common, after all, Old Man.

GertrudeStein takes the tray out of Miss Toklas's hands and walks it over and places it into mine. I am, by now, sitting on their kitchen floor. My life is moving too quickly, and as always I believe that being closer to the ground will slow it down. My Mesdames have grown used to my occasional slipping away. At first they chalked it up to the gulf in languages, then to the stupor brought on by drink. Lately, they have attributed it to a degenerative hearing loss on my part, which would explain their raised tone of voice and their repetition of even the simplest of commands.

"No, no, his hearing is fine. He's not deaf, just dumb," the Old Man screams in my ear.

Thanks for the clarification, Old Man, but I am afraid my
Madame and Madame cannot hear you. I am the only one present who suffers in this way.

"Thin Bin, we assume
this
is you?" GertrudeStein asks for the third time.

I look down at the envelope and nod out the rhythm of a universal "yes." GertrudeStein, I know my name looks very different there from how it sounds. Tonal languages often do. Imagine capturing the lilt of my mother's voice, the grace note of her sighs, with the letters of your alphabet. Do not bother, GertrudeStein, a French Jesuit already did it many centuries ago. He is responsible for the discrepancy that lies before us now. Though I can assure you that
that
is the name that my mother gave to me on the day of my birth. And that in the corner, that is the name of my oldest brother, the sous chef in the Governor-General's house in Saigon.

At the sight of Anh Minh's angular hand, I shiver with the cold that lives in the center of all of our bones, that is registered by the brain as the sensation of being very much alone. I have not thought about him for months, not since my Mesdames came home with chestnuts stuffed in their coat pockets and heaped onto the back seat of their automobile. Anh Minh believes that chestnuts are the dainty crumbs from the mouth of God. A French god, of course. Or maybe just a god with a French chef. Either way, no one would have enjoyed that bounty more than he, I thought. Anh Minh is the only one. I did not have to see his name on the envelope to know. No one else on that or any other side of the globe would have written to me but he. I had sent him a letter years ago, almost five to be exact. It was full of rambling observations, biased accountings, and drunken confessions written in the cigarette haze of a crowded café. I would have preferred someplace more quiet, but the bodies all around me kept that establishment heated and warm. Outside, the city that night was celebrating the birth of the son of their god. Inside, the celebration was, as the Old Man would say, godless.

Blame it on the chauffeur, Old Man. He was the one who
first told me about these places. The chauffeur's cautionary tales, a travelogue of all the establishments that he claims never to have visited, have been for me a necessary road map to this city. When there is change in my pocket, as there was on that Christmas Eve, I would buy a glass of something strong and sip it slowly. When there is nothing in my pockets but my hands, I would wait by the door for someone lonelier than I to walk by. That night I wrote to Anh Minh that I was sitting at a marble-topped table in a small but elegant
salon de thé.
I lied because I did not want him to throw my first letter home away. When months passed without a response, then years, I had to remind myself that Anh Minh is a man of few words. He would never waste them on things that have remained exactly the same. Why would he write? I said to myself, when nothing, absolutely nothing back home would ever change. He is Minh Still the Sous Chef. Anh Hoàng toils in second-class even now. Anh Tùng every day swallows the taste of printer's ink. The Old Man, well, he prefers communion wine with a chaser of rum.

"It is time for you to come home to Việt-Nam," Anh Minh writes. "No matter what he may have said to you, he is our father, and he is going to die."

My brother goes on to say that the Old Man has had a stroke, that he has lost all movement on his right side and is now confined to his bed. So it is true, I think, the Old Man's god can strike a man down. But from the sound of it, his god has yet to slay him. Yes, I am afraid, the Old Man is still very much alive. Forgive me if it has been easier for me to think of him as deceased. Since my first night on the
Niobe,
I can sleep only after I have eased his coffin into the sucking clay, after I have pushed Father Vincente aside to deliver my own version of the last rites. Otherwise, how could I leave her behind? Imagine brushing my lips along my mother's cheeks. Imagine her telling me to go if I must but for her sake "Don't look back." Then imagine him still breathing in the very next room. Forgive me if I am unable.

"He is our father," I read Anh Minh's words over again. Liar, I think. Whose version of this story should I believe? That my
dear mother had a lover, who was her scholar-prince if only for a short while, who gave her shadow-graced embraces, who left her with me, her last son. Or that the Old Man is my father and that in spite of that fact he stood in front of his house, one that I will never again see, and he lied to me so that he could see me dead inside. As they say, Old Man, blood is thicker than water. But in our case, you have mired the seas with so much refuse and malice that no ship, Old Man, can navigate those waters and bring me back to you again. When your day comes and goes, believe me, I will not be wearing white.

The Old Man is breathing in air. He is breathing in dirt. It does not matter much to me anymore. My mother has finally had the courage to leave him. I did not have to read it in the body of my brother's letter to know. I have known for many days now. Anh Minh's letter only confirmed the reason for my mother's nightly visits. We said our good-byes in the Jardin du Luxembourg. The city, as it did today, had covered itself in a mantle of white. She was dressed in her gray
áo dài,
and I was bundled into two of my sweaters and my only winter coat. We sat on a park bench and chatted about nothing in particular, like two people who have spent their entire lives together. The snow around us was just beginning to melt, and she shivered with cold. I sat with her until the rising sun took her away. The visits continued until one day I saw her, but I was wide awake. In the hopes of easing my sorrow, she had taken the form of a pigeon, a city-worn bird who was passing away. Death, believe me, never comes to us first in words.

"God has given Má wings," Anh Minh writes. Succinct as always, I think. What he means is that our mother was no longer afraid. After years of saying her rosary, she went to sleep one moonless night and saw heaven vivid on the horizon. She stepped out from under the eaves of his house with a resolve that is the truest gift of faith. Her husband, a false prophet, could never follow her to where she was going. Her four sons, well, that is up to them. With that her final thought, her body became one with the earth, and her soul rose to heaven. A flourish of white.