The Book of Salt (33 page)

"I can't, Monsieur. That print is dear to me. It is, you see, an old method from the last century. I charge four times the usual price for a salt print like that one, Monsieur. It takes a full day of sunlight to develop. A full day of sunlight in Paris! Monsieur, can you imagine?"

No, I shook my head.

"You can come and visit him," Lené raised his chin toward the man on the bridge, "anytime."

Yes, I nodded. There was nothing left to say. With me the subject of money always ends the conversation. Lené stood there staring at me as if he knew.

"Here, take this," I heard him saying.

The photographer Lené was by then standing behind the desk where Monsieur Prick had sat and ignored me until I shoved a scrap of blue underneath his face. I looked down at the
envelope that the photographer offered in his hand, and again I said, "For your walls." Nobility, pride, a heretofore dormant sense of self-worth had nothing to do with it. I saw the price written on the corner of the envelope, and even though Lattimore had paid for half of it I knew that I would need many weeks, consecutive or not, before I could pay the rest. I would rather save my money, the sweat of my labor, for the man on the bridge awash in storm water blue, I thought. It was the color of the sea that first caught my eye, that made my body draw near but that, believe me, was just the beginning. The photograph was printed on paper that had the appearance of something that breathed, with a porous surface that opened with each intake of air, into which the features of the man on the bridge seeped. Less of a photograph, more of a tattoo underneath the skin.

Clever, I again thought. "Nguyễn Ái Quốc" was obviously not the name with which the man on the bridge was brought into this world. I and almost everyone else in Vietnam have the surname "Nguyen." So it was certainly possible that it may be his as well. The giveaway, however, was the combination "Ái Quốc." By itself, the words mean "love" and "country" in that order, but when conjoined they mean "patriot." Certainly a fine name for a traveler to adopt, I thought, a traveler whose heart has wisely never left home.

***

When Bão first introduced himself with a hand thrust in front of my face, followed by the grunt of his unseaworthy given name, I was speechless. I, who had never even crossed a river, a creek, a rain-swollen street, was standing barely upright in the middle of an ocean and sharing a berth with a man with whom I had nothing in common except a highly inauspicious, fate-defying given name. Two "storms" aboard one ship, I thought, was certainly a sign from somebody's god, a sign to jump overboard and swim back to shore. My inability to tread water, however, had made that course of action impossible from the very beginning. By the time my close-lipped but physically expressive bunkmate bothered to ask me what I was called, I had had a lot
of time to consider the matter. In the course of which I experienced what I thought was crippling seasickness, but later when I suffered the same symptoms on land—the spirals inside my eyelids, the taste of my own liver inside my mouth, the sensation of my stomach dropping into a bottomless sea—I understood that water travel was not at fault. Regret was. Not over Blériot. His betrayal, though that would imply a bond of trust, was only a matter of time. I was hoping for several decades during which Blériot would grow old and I would grow strong. No, what happened between myself and this man, who insisted that I call him "Chef" or, worse, "Monsieur," even when our clothes were on the floor, was unfortunate but hardly worth the physical distress that accompanies regret.

I stand there still.

Will you wake up tomorrow, Old Man, and look at yourself in the mirror and declare to your right foot, "No,
you
do not belong to me"? The day after that, will you deliver the same judgment to your two hands? Will the ritual continue with your vicious mouth doing the bidding of your vicious heart until you, Old Man, are nothing more than a torso and a head? Then Father Vincente, I imagine, will devote the rest of his natural life, tirelessly campaigning for your beatification. A martyr able to self-inflict such wounds is a surefire candidate for sainthood, Father Vincente will think, as he envisions himself kneeling with your remains before the Holy See.

I stand there still.

In my then twenty years of life, I had been exceedingly careful about all matters of faith. I had been meticulous, vigilant, clear-eyed, even cold-hearted. The Catholic Church had, for me, never been a threat. From the time that I was old enough to walk, I followed my brothers to Father Vincente's church and into the second-to-last pew. When the Old Man led his new converts to morning Mass, their mumbled prayers perfumed the streets with so much alcohol that the children and stray dogs who followed them along the way often fell down drunk, pissing all over themselves. My forced participation in these processions left me in all respects profoundly unmoved. I was not one
to lay offerings before the ancestral altar, either. I would never feed the souls of a man and a woman who were so eager for the afterlife that they had left their only daughter behind to him. Even Anh Minh's beliefs in Monsieur and Madame had no effect on me. I am afraid that the only way that my dear brother's prayers will be answered is for him to lie down one night and die. Then, he must hope that when the next morning arrives, his bruised but uncrushed spirit is reborn inside the body of a Frenchman.

I stand there still.

I hear your voice, Old Man, and I know that despite my vigilance, my clear eyes, my cold heart, I have failed. I have guarded myself against all the false idols except you. Faith, after all, is a theory of love and redemption. In my life, there was no vessel more empty of that than you, Old Man.

Má, please do not cry. From the morning of my birth to the night of my death, I will never have to want, to question, to solicit your affection.
That
is the gift that you have given me. But I, like the basket weaver, looked at the abundance around me and believed that there was something more. Fire ants and tiny orange marigolds make me shudder as they spin the globe the other way, bringing me back to the dirt path where I stood looking at your straw hat, hanging in its usual place at the entrance to the kitchen, and I, blind, saw there nothing but a fraying chin strap, moving listlessly in the sun.

"Bình," I replied without blinking an eye. Bão's raised voice told me that he had had to ask his question one too many times. I apologized, blaming my inability to hear him on the waves, foaming their mouths outside.

"Bình, huh? That's good. We cancel each other out," Bão said, punching my arm to let me know that I was forgiven and also to highlight his own effort and rare success at wordplay. What he meant was that since the name "Bình" means "peace," it was a lucky, not to mention an elegant counterbalance to his "storm." Thank you, I thought the same myself.

But when Bão again encouraged me to choose a new name in
preparation for the following morning's arrival on shore, I was surprised. I asked him, "But how many days have we been at sea?" His reply was a revelation. When I signed up with the
Niobe,
I needed a ship that was leaving that same day, as I again had no place to sleep for the night. My dismissal from the Governor-General's was abrupt but inevitable. My dismissal from the Old Man's house, that I did not expect. I gave no thought to the
Niobe's
final port of call and even less consideration to the duration of its run. Though sea travel, I had assumed, was something that generally took many years to complete. The world was enormous before I left my corner of it. But once I did, it grew even more immense. As for that corner, it continued to shrink until it was a speck of dust on a globe. Believe me, I never had a desire to see what was on the other side of the earth. I needed a ship that would go out to sea because there the water is deep, deeper than the hemmed-in rivers that I could easily reach by foot. I wanted the deepest water because I wanted to slip into it and allow the moon's reflection to swallow me whole. "I never meant to go this far," I said to Bão. What I meant was that when I boarded the
Niobe
I had no intention of reaching shore. In the black-and-white photograph that is the world at night, Bão looked over at me as if he knew.

"
OYSTERS
, Lovey, there will always be oysters," Miss Toklas insists.

GertrudeStein shoots a rueful look at Miss Toklas by way of expressing her growing apprehension that oysters alone may not be enough.

This exchange, repeated every few minutes or so with Miss Toklas's words getting lost now and then in the whistle of the train, has taken us from Paris right through to Rouen. Miss Toklas began her mollusk mantra right after the last of the photographers were escorted off the already moving train by a conductor who, like the concierge at 27 rue de Fleurus, kept on shaking his head, unable to comprehend the source of the attraction. The looks of dismay from GertrudeStein followed soon after.

"And honeydews," Miss Toklas offers, "they assured us that there will be honeydews."

This addition to my Madame's repertoire confirms, as I suspected, that we have just passed a significant juncture in our journey. If I push down the window and hang my head out, I know that soon I will smell the sea. The church bells in Le
Havre, like those in all port cities, transmit the city's proximity to the water with every swing that they take, wafting its salt breezes, its mineral odors, far beyond the usual boundaries of such things. Miss Toklas must know about this as well because for the first time since our journey began she leans over and cracks open the window closest to her. I take in a long, slow breath. Oysters, I think. Really, what else could I think about with Miss Toklas's incessant intoning? To ride the train with my Mesdames has long been my wish. To share a first-class compartment with them a secret desire. Wishes, as I have always known, can be cruel in the terms and conditions of their fulfillment. Yes, since our journey began I have thought of nothing but oysters. Even before I knew their word for them, I knew that Americans, at least those who were invited to the rue de Fleurus for dinner, were all very partial to oysters. GertrudeStein, however, was an exception. She has rarely exhibited in the years that we have been together a great love or appetite for them, especially in their raw, gelatinous state.

"And honeydews," Miss Toklas again reminds GertrudeStein, "they assured us that there will be honeydews."

Now
that
surprised me even more. Even when we were in Bilignin, where fruits of all sorts grow lush in the gardens of my Mesdames' summer house, I have seen GertrudeStein wave away a vine-ripened Charentais melon, split in half, baring its orange belly and its button full of seeds for all the world and especially for GertrudeStein to see. Miss Toklas, I knew, trembled with a mild form of heartbreak each time. She was the gardener, the only one, who tended to that beauty from the time it blossomed to when it globed in the heat of the summer sun.

As the train pulls us closer and closer toward the sea, I understand more and more about my Mesdames' unusual pairing of oysters and honeydews. I want to tell Lattimore that his color-based explanation is not complete, but as usual my conclusion is too slow in coming. Lattimore had left me and presumably Paris at the end of February. The train that my Mesdames and I are on is smoking its way through a French
countryside lit by October's harvest light. There is no doubt in my mind that he is right. Oysters and honeydews are soothing to GertrudeStein. Miss Toklas has been acting on that very assumption from the moment our train left the Gare du Nord, and even now as it is coming to a stop in the Le Havre station. Miss Toklas believes that just hearing the words is enough to sedate her Lovey. As for the effect on her cook, Miss Toklas for once has made me very full. Raw oysters, I think, can slide down my throat, and honeydews, as with very ripe melons of any kind, can become a pool of juices once in the heat of my mouth. It is precisely these fluidlike qualities, I conclude, that recommend these two foods to a nervous GertrudeStein. One thing I know about my Madame is that she is unable to do more than one thing at any one time. That is what Miss Toklas is here for. If GertrudeStein is anxious before she lectures, then she cannot be expected to worry
and
to chew her food at the same time. If Miss Toklas could, she would perform both of these acts for her Lovey. As she cannot, she has devised a menu composed of foods that are solid in form—thereby never acknowledging GertrudeStein's condition or injuring her pride—and yet both courses can be consumed without the pesky need to chew. Miss Toklas is a genius after all.

"Oysters, Lovey, there will always be oysters. And honey-dews, they assured us that there will be honeydews," Miss Toklas whispers to GertrudeStein as we step from the train onto the platform at Le Havre.

"Oysters" and "honeydews" are two words in the English language with which I am by now overly familiar. As for the rest of Miss Toklas's words, well, the rest I can imagine. But even if I was not equipped with such skills, my Mesdames' behavior alone is telling. I have, believe me, heard them say things over and over again to each other before. Lovers who have lived a lifetime together have the luxury of never having to say anything new. Also, my Mesdames are both reaching that age in life when repetition is the mind's way of retaining all the tiny details that it would otherwise lose. Miss Toklas's voice, though, is
softer than I have ever heard it, and GertrudeStein's expression, made worse by the red spiders in the whites of her eyes, gives her the appearance of a child abandoned on a train.

At first I thought my Mesdames were distraught because they were missing Basket and Pépé. Dressed in their finest, those two were beyond consolation when their leashes were handed over to the concierge. Miss Toklas and GertrudeStein had given the concierge enough money to keep His Highness and the Pretender well stuffed with livers for at least a year. In addition to the wardrobe that they brought with them, there was also an emergency fund for extra leashes and new coats for the winter. As Basket and Pépé both have a tendency to gain excessive weight during the colder months of the year, there was no way for my Mesdames to anticipate their eventual sizes in the months to come. That detail was therefore reluctantly entrusted to the concierge. Basket pressed his body into GertrudeStein's tweed skirt, leaving behind curls from his molting fur. Pépé dug his front paws into the pile of Miss Toklas's new mink coat, his howl so desperate and high that it was beyond the range of the human ear. The other dogs in the neighborhood heard him, though, and a chorus full of pity and how-could-you's began. Pépé always had a flare for drama. Basket's approach was more straightforward. He used his body weight, the only thing that he had available to him besides his delirious barking, to keep his Madame by his side.