The Book of Salt (25 page)

Dangerous, Miss Toklas now knows. GertrudeStein, as usual, misreads Miss Toklas's motivation and privileges her own. "Selfless," my Madame sighs, and thanks her lucky star that Miss Toklas is always there to keep the wives at bay. Wives are so irksome when there is work to be done. Not Pussy, though. No, never Pussy. But those who make the rules reserve the right to carve out the exceptions to the rules. Behind the door of 27 rue de Fleurus, my Mesdames are always the exceptions. Miss Toklas, though, could never be a genius, as there can only be one, according to GertrudeStein, within any given family. Some rules are ironclad. Others have wings. The difficulty, for me, has always been in identifying which is which.

Take Basket and Pépé, for instance. Last month, Miss Toklas told me, "Only one meal a day." His Highness and the nervous little Pretender to his throne had gained too much weight. Actually, everyone at 27 rue de Fleurus, except Miss Toklas and I, had gained too much weight and was being placed on a restricted regime, everyone including GertrudeStein. No exceptions, I thought. By training, I am prone to respect absolutes. When I hear words like "only" and "one," I believe. But as anyone can see from the bulging bellies of the guilty three,
that
rule is far from absolute. When GertrudeStein is not looking, Miss Toklas feeds Pépé. When Miss Toklas is not looking, GertrudeStein feeds Basket. And who feeds GertrudeStein? I do, of course. She pays half of my salary, after all. This rule, believe me, is ironclad.

Sweet Sunday Man, I see you watching my Mesdames. I see you looking when you think they are not, searching their irides for all the things that you are otherwise not privy to. They have been watching you too. About this I would not lie, Sweet Sunday Man. My Mesdames' curiosity is piqued by implausible
things. They saw your hands and immediately knew that you are no writer. Too clean and well groomed, they thought. Writers rarely have clipped nails. They tend to use their teeth. Too smooth and callus-free, they noted. You are not a laborer either, they knew. Yes, I know that they could have concluded that just from hearing you speak, but my Mesdames are in this way like me. They never assume that words can tell them the whole story. But, Sweet Sunday Man, it was not your hands that first gave you away. It was your back. GertrudeStein saw it twice during your first visit to 27 rue de Fleurus. It was such an unexpected sight because those who gather around GertrudeStein never depart while she is in midsentence. Never. Believe me, "the boys," as you call them, rarely break away from the conversation circle, not even to relieve themselves. Miss Toklas is always amazed at how clean the toilet is after these crowded gatherings. GertrudeStein could see from the way you held your head that you were hanging onto her every word, even as you were walking away. Not listening but hearing. Hearing but not listening. You, Sweet Sunday Man, were by then a shiny new paradox to brighten my Madame's day. Later that evening, GertrudeStein reported your actions to Miss Toklas over a dish of my best Singapore ice cream. They both could taste the vanilla and the crystallized ginger, but only Miss Toklas could detect that there was something deeper, something that emerged as a lingering lace of a feeling on the tongue.

Peppercorns, Miss Toklas. Steep the milk from morning till night with ten coarsely crushed peppercorns. Strain and proceed as usual. The "bite" that the peppercorns leave behind will make the eater take notice, examine this dish of sweet anew. Think of it as an unexpected hint of irony in a familiar lover's voice.

GertrudeStein, too intrigued to be offended by your disregard, wanted to invite you immediately to dinner and examine you over some braised grouses. Miss Toklas knew that GertrudeStein's menu choice had little to do with the availability of game birds during the month of December. For GertrudeStein,
it had more to do with the hunt. Miss Toklas disagreed. She thought that such an uncharacteristic move would tip you off. Nothing can be gained from a subject who knows that he is being watched, a lesson that Miss Toklas had gleaned from all the detective stories that she has had to endure. Better than cowboys, she thought, but still she longed for those nights when GertrudeStein had read to her from the
Lives of Saints.
They had gotten only through the A's—St. Agatha with her amputated breasts, St. Agnes with her detached head, St. Appollonia with her bashed-in teeth—when GertrudeStein discovered the equally grim, though not as entertaining, detective stories populated with murderers and gamblers.

"Think of them as the
Lives of Sinners,
" said GertrudeStein. "There are," she insisted, "similarities."

"Sinners lack passion," countered Miss Toklas.

Miss Toklas decided that they should not stray from their usual routine. They would invite you to the next Saturday tea but nothing more. Nothing should appear as if it had changed. Everything, of course, did once my Mesdames had their eyes on you, Sweet Sunday Man. Miss Toklas was delighted when you approached her that following Saturday with your inquiry for a cook. Such a convenient confluence of self-interest, she thought. That was when your hands unraveled your story. Miss Toklas noticed them immediately. A performer of some sort, she thought. So expressive, the way his fingers bend, tracing the curving currents of air. An actor, maybe a puppeteer, in either case a man who makes his living by hiding himself away, she thought. Unlike me, Miss Toklas could not be absolutely sure. So she asked GertrudeStein that night whether your behavior had been the same as the week before.

"Yes," answered GertrudeStein, who then reported to Miss Toklas that you were much more discreet this time, but it was there all the same. Your erratic actions, your wayward bouts of disinterestedness, she announced, were rooted in an acute aversion to music or at the least any serious discussions of it. "A music critic, no doubt," GertrudeStein declared, her lips crackling into bits of much savored laughter. My Madame is always satiated by her own jokes. For Miss Toklas, I have noticed, the enjoyment is rarely the same.

"No, no, Lovey, he is not a writer," Miss Toklas insisted.

"I know he's not a writer, Pussy. I told you he's a critic."

"He is not a critic either, Lovey."

"Whatever Lattimore is, this afternoon he walked away right in the middle of my discussion with Robeson. A fascinating debate," GertrudeStein said, "for anyone with even the slightest interest in
music.
"

"Robeson, the opera singer?"

"Yes, I asked him why he insisted on singing Negro spirituals when he could be performing requiems and oratorios. Do you know what that curiosity in a suit said? In that basso profundo voice of his, he replied, The spirituals, theys a belong to me, Missa Stein.'"

"Lovey, stop! You sound like a shoeshine boy. Have you considered that, maybe, for Lattimore your discussion with Robeson had nothing to do with
music.
"

"No."

"Maybe it is Robeson who is the subject that Lattimore has no interest in, or maybe Lattimore has too much interest and does not want to let it show."

I suspect that Miss Toklas's intuition has always been above average, but after having to sit through the recitation of all those detective stories, it has sharpened into a bullet that never, never misses.

"Oh," said GertrudeStein.

"For goodness sake, Lovey,
music?
That is a bit of a stretch. When one looks at Mister Paul Robeson, the first thought that comes to mind is not music. Missa Stein, for a genius you ese a'ways plain wrong."

My Mesdames looked at each other, and their laughter rose up and consumed them. It climbed the walls, turned the corner, and followed me as I walked back into the kitchen. Malice, I was afraid. On second thought, that was not what I heard. Their
laughter was not configured in that way. I know malice well, and it is a more meticulous, laboriously constructed thing. Theirs had a wormy center, a now-and-then upkeep. Unsettling to hear all the same. Unsettling because such things have no natural barriers, nothing that can contain their spread. Like my Mesdames, they can be born elsewhere and then taken abroad. That is how they seed. That is how they grow.

That was not what Robeson said, was it, Sweet Sunday Man? Tell me his response. Say it out loud.

"Miss Stein, with spirituals I can sing. The others I have to perform. '"

GertrudeStein and Miss Toklas are brazen, indeed. Do you think, Sweet Sunday Man, that my Mesdames would have sent me out to just anyone? A good cook is a great commodity in this city. Any city, really. Ask yourself, "Where do they not eat?" and my point is made. Cooking is the answer to a universally placed classified ad. It allows me to live like a migrating bird, a fish in a barrierless sea. A blessing that is also a curse. Make no mistake, Sweet Sunday Man, Miss Toklas intended that I be an offering to you, a little mouse who could enter your kitchen, invited but otherwise unnoticed. From there, I could examine its cabinets and shelves and report their contents to the two curious Mesdames back at 27 rue de Fleurus. "Is Lattimore a Negro?" is what they, in the end, want to know. My Mesdames tell me that they just want to be absolutely sure.

All these years in France, you say, and Lovey and Pussy are still Americans, after all.

Of course, they are, Sweet Sunday Man. Of course, they are.

ABOARD THE NIOBE
, I held the red pouch that my mother had so firmly pressed into my hand, and I thought about the days' worth of water between us. Then I thought about the weeks, months, years, decades of water to come. Time for me had always been measured in terms of the rising sun, its setting sister, and the dependable cycle of the moon. But at sea, I learned that time can also be measured in terms of water, in terms of the distance traveled while drifting on it. When measured in this way, nearer and farther are the path of time's movement, not continuously forward along a fast straight line. When measured in this way, time loops and curlicues, and at any given moment it can spiral me away and then bring me rushing home again.

I know, Má, the pouch is red because red is the color of luck, not the bad kind, just the good. The color of faith trumping fate, of hope growing ripe, of fruits on an endless vine. Red is the color of what travels through our hearts, an internal river that we never have to leave behind. When Monsieur and Madame see red, they think anger, death, a site of danger, a situation requiring extreme caution and care. Ridiculous, overblown, entirely misunderstood. Red on my fingertips, Ma, means that I am still here. Red releases you thick from my body. Red is what keeps you near.

Má, I could use some good luck right about now, I thought, as I eyed the pouch nestled in my hands. Seasickness had been breaking my back four and five times a day, forcing me to stoop and bow before the commode, over the rails, into the dirty pots and pans. My paying of respect to the water and the wind was interrupted only by bouts of peeling potatoes, chopping onions, picking through the soaked-off husk of dried lentils and beans.

Yes, Old Man, those are not the chores of a cook, not even one on some leaky boat. But the
Niobe
is French, and I am Vietnamese, after all.

I was just the kitchen boy, a rank even lower than a
garde-manger.
At first I was not even allowed to touch the food, only the remnants of it on the cooking and serving vessels that were mine to wash and, to my misfortune, fill with whatever I had in my stomach that day. Once I was finally able to clean the dishes faster than I dirtied them, the
Niobe
's cook, a Frenchman named Loubet, asked me where I had worked before. "The Governor-General's kitchen in Saigon," Loubet repeated after me. For the rest of the voyage, Loubet woke up late, smoked his cigarettes, and stared at the sea through the greasy portholes. I, in the meanwhile, demonstrated for him all that I had learned in the Governor-General's kitchen: Work without glory. Appreciation without praise. Pleasure without recognition.

When the captain's compliments came back to the galley along with his empty dishes, Loubet smiled and murmured, "The Governor-General's kitchen in Saigon."

I should have known better, I thought. Ignorance or a claim to it, as I had told Bão, was always better for a man like me.

But the wisdom of this rule I again ignored when I told Bão about the red pouch. I told him that I had no doubt about what was inside of it. The pouch had come from my mother's money belt. A couple of hundred
dồng,
I told him, in grimy bills that
have been pressed against her body since who-knows-how-long. Probably money she had saved for her casket or, maybe, some white flowers for her grave, I thought. The Old Man, like the French, believed that black was the only appropriate color to display and wear in order to show grief.

I know Má, black is the color of our hair, the color of our irides with the coming of dusk, the color of a restful night's sleep, of coal rice, of tamarind pulp, of the unbroken shell of a thousand-year egg. How can this black be the color of sorrow? Underglazed with red river clay, deep water blue, high-in-the-tree-top green, black is luminous, the color that allows us to dream.

"Whew!" Bão whistled upon hearing about the red pouch. He said that I
had
to open it up because he, for one, was curious even if I was not. Well, he might not have said this in so many words. He might have just mumbled "stupid bastard." "Whew!" Bão whistled again after I undid the ties, and he saw what was sitting inside. "What are you doing down here?" Bão immediately wanted to know. "You can get your own room and a seat at the captain's table every night with that, you stupid bastard."

Yes, I thought, how true. I wrapped up the pouch and placed it back underneath my pillow.

Red is a firmly pressed hand. Red is a mother giving birth. Red is luck that she had somehow saved, stored, and squandered on her youngest son. Before I left home, my mother gave me a pouch filled with what I thought was money. As with all things about her, it would take time to understand, to find out what lay inside, protected as in a womb. When I close my eyes, I can see her in the kitchen still. The dirt floor, the clay pots, the tin plates, the coconut shell ladles, the rain-collecting cistern, all this my mother gave me and, in return, I left her. By no means an even trade, I know.