The Book of Salt (34 page)

"Bye-bye, bye-bye, my babies, bye-bye," said Miss Toklas and GertrudeStein, their voices unified in grief, as our taxi drove away. Miss Toklas dabbed the corners of her eyes. GertrudeStein was able to blink hers away. Why the tears, my Mesdames? Are there no dogs in America? I thought.

First-class accommodations, an express train, and now this floating city passing itself off as an ocean liner all the way home, my Mesdames. And if the photographers here on the deck are any indication, there will be so many flashes going off in America that for you there will never be darkness on the shores of the country where you were born.

Standing on the glass-enclosed deck of the SS
Champlain,
Miss Toklas looks regal as always, lips pursed, moments away from saying "Shoo!" GertrudeStein looks remarkably relaxed. She looks as though she has a present to give, one that she knows will be a delight to receive. Both my Mesdames, but especially GertrudeStein, always perk right up when photographers are around. A new group of them along with the captain of the SS
Champlain
were on deck waiting for us, and this time GertrudeStein and Miss Toklas seem genuinely surprised by the commotion that is intent on following them back to America. I have just returned to the deck after accompanying a line of porters as they carried my Mesdames' many trunks and cases into the sitting room of their suite. I make my way past the photographers and stand next to Miss Toklas. I am thinking about the bouquets of yellow roses waiting for them in their suite and how they are larger than anything that I have ever seen at the flower market on the Île de la Cité. Miss Toklas looks over at me and mouths, "Here, take this." She slips a small sewing kit into the pocket of my coat. My Madame points with her nose to GertrudeStein's brown velvet-trimmed shoes. Lying in between them is a single pearl button leaning on its metal loop, like a toy top at rest. The strap to GertrudeStein's right shoe flaps up and down, elated to be free. The strap flies especially high every time my Madame shifts her weight from foot to foot. GertrudeStein is dancing a jig because her feet are unused to the new leather and to the extra padding of the velvet trim. Miss Toklas slides her hand out of my pocket, and she grabs onto my hand, the one closest to hers. She squeezes it twice in quick succession. "Please, Bin, sew on GertrudeStein's button. We cannot have photographs of her looking so disheveled in this way!" is what Miss Toklas intends the first palpitation to say. The second, which is thankfully not as blood-stopping as the first, is less of a command and more of a plea: "Please, Bin, sew on GertrudeStein's button. I cannot have photographs of
me
prostrated before her in that way."

Of course, Madame, of course.

I pull the sewing kit from my pocket, and I do my part to make sure that GertrudeStein will continue to travel in style. The SS
Champlain
for my Madame and Madame, I know, is just the beginning. When we boarded this ocean liner, I saw no similarities between it and the
Niobe.
Believe me, there is nothing about my Mesdames' suite of rooms or the boulevard-wide decks of the SS
Champlain
that remind me of my previous voyages at sea.

Years ago when the
Niobe
docked in Marseilles, I stayed in that port city for a handful of weeks until I remembered what Bão had told me: It is easier to be broke at sea than on land. I signed up for another freighter of the same class as the
Niobe,
and I went back to living with water beneath my feet. I jumped from freighter to freighter for the next three years. During that time, I slept on land for a total of forty some days, nonconsecutive. Looking back, I cannot say what kept me on water or what kept me from land. I do remember that the moon's reflection was hypnotic when it shimmered on a saltwater canvas and that when I looked down into that circle of light I always believed that on the next ship, at the next port of call, I would find Bão. I found men like him, but I never did see that GoodLookingBrother again. Then one night as I scrubbed the cooking pots with another kitchen boy, who was from the Chinese island of Hainan but who spoke a bit of barter-and-trade Vietnamese, I mentioned that the moon had changed its shape, that it had grown more oval and long, like an unripe mango. Without even looking over at me, the kitchen boy said, "You need to shit on land again." While I had certainly received more elegantly worded pieces of advice, I thought that there must be some truth in what this kitchen boy said. His tone was confident, almost automatic. To this day, I am still impressed by decisiveness in precisely that form. So when our freighter finished its run in Marseilles, I said so long to the Hainanese kitchen boy, who was actually a man of thirty-five and a father of three, and I went to find a job on land. Besides Marseilles and Avignon, Paris was the only other French city that I had ever thought about. Through various means that
even I do not want to remember, I found my way to the city that the Governor-General's chauffeur had made vivid with his stories, his cigarette waving about in the excitement of the retelling, its smoldering tip standing in for the streetlights along the Champs-Élysées, for the great rose window of Notre-Dame, for the beacon atop the Tour Eiffel. When I arrived in Paris, I was twenty-three years old, and cooking was still my only legitimate skill. I began searching for a position as a live-in cook because I knew that it would provide me with the two things that I needed whether on land or on water: a job and a place to sleep for the night. But as with the freighters before them, I am afraid that I was not able to stay at any of these berths for any real length of time. Messieurs and Mesdames were universally difficult but each in their own inscrutable way. Lessons learned in one home were useless in another. I gained experience all right, but never, never the right kind.

After a year of disastrous placements, one after another, I was contemplating water again. Every day and every night, I stood silent on a bridge as Paris hummed. I looked down and saw how the reflection of the moon was smaller in the Seine than it had been out at sea but how it was still generous enough. I measured the distance down to the water, felt my body numbed by the cold, thought about how all the rivers of the world desire to flow to the seas. I gripped the railing. its iron cooled my fingers, each cut by a flameless fire. Blue sparks and silver threads clung to their tips, marring their surface, forcing them not to heal. I kept my gloves on when I interviewed with a new Madame or Monsieur. That was all right for now as it was still cold outside, but what was I going to do with my gloved hands when the temperature began to rise? Eyebrows and suspicions would certainly be raised, I thought. Then one day before the season had had a chance to change, I stood on that bridge, and I met a man. I do not mean to mislead. Not all of my friendships were so easily formed. A fellow countryman, though, a fellow countryman in Paris was not particularly rare then or now, but he was somewhat of a surprise. Think of it as biting into the cheek of a persimmon when the city's markets are offering only pears. In the
course of a day, in the course of a meal, in the course of saying our fond farewells, lit from above by the multiple moons of lampposts in a park made private by a mist that had thickened into a fog, I decided to stay. The man on the bridge was leaving that night and I, of all men, decided to stay. I wanted to see him again. But the man on the bridge did not tell me where he was traveling to, and the world was too vast for me to search for him, I thought. The only place we shared was this city. Vietnam, the country that we called home, was to me already a memory. I preferred it that way. A "memory" was for me another way of saying a "story." A "story" was another way of saying a "gift." The man on the bridge was a memory, he was a story, he was a gift. Paris gave him to me. And in Paris I will stay, I decided. Only in this city, I thought, will I see him again. For a traveler, it is sometimes necessary to make the world small on purpose. It is the only way to stop migrating and find a new home. After the man on the bridge departed, Paris held in it a promise. It was a city where something akin to love had happened, and it was a city where it could happen again. Three years later in a park on a bench beneath some chestnut trees, I saw the classified ad that Miss Toklas had placed, which began: "Two American ladies wish..."

In the end as in the beginning, there are specific instructions to see the concierge. As the blaring horns of the floating city announce to the inhabitants of Le Havre that a journey is about to begin, Miss Toklas tells me to leave my name and forwarding address with the concierge so that when she and GertrudeStein return to 27 rue de Fleurus to collect Basket and Pépé, they can send for me if the need should arise.

Of course, Madame, of course.

Within minutes, I am back on the docks standing in a crowd of waving well-wishers, bidding "safe journey" to those aboard the SS
Champlain.
For GertrudeStein and Miss Toklas, I expand upon the general sentiment and add the word "home."

Believe me, I was never so naive as Basket and Pépé. I realized early on that I, like those two dogs, was never going to see
America. Not with GertrudeStein and Miss Toklas, that is. I held no resentment toward my Mesdames. By the sound of those hotel menus, their culinary needs would be well taken care of in the months to come. So when my Madame and Madame requested that I accompany them to Le Havre, I did not hesitate to say yes. From the number of trunks that were lining up against the walls of the studio, I knew that GertrudeStein and Miss Toklas would require an extra pair of eyes to ensure that the first leg of their journey went smoothly, that nothing of importance would be left behind. In exchange, Miss Toklas asked me whether I wanted a round-trip train ticket back to Paris or the amount in cash so that I could purchase a one-way ticket to some other destination. With this question, I again did not hesitate. "The money, please," I replied. I did not know where I wanted to go after Le Havre. So asking for cash as opposed to a prepaid ticket was my way of making no decision at all.

In the weeks prior to my Mesdames' departure, I must admit that I had slipped out of 27 rue de Fleurus for a number of post-midnight, mid-workweek drinks. When I am in Paris, I suffer from the delusion that drinking will help me think. It does not. I, unfortunately, did not remember this until I was broke. Another summer in Bilignin had built up my tolerance for alcohol, one that my limited budget could not sustain back in Paris, the City of Lights and, I would add, Very Expensive Drinks. This past summer, my Mesdames' sixth and my fifth in Bilignin, the farmers had been more generous than ever. When I got off the train, I was dressed all in white and without the customary hat, and they, in their own way, understood that that meant that I was in mourning. I did not have to tell them in words that my mother had passed away during the first full moon of the year. When it became clear to the farmers of Bilignin, after the first couple of weeks, that my traveling outfit was going to be my attire for the rest of the summer, they wondered aloud whether I was also mourning a lost lover. When I asked them why they would say such a thing, they claimed that they have seen lost love turn a man's hair white so why would it not do the same to
his clothes? I did not have to tell them in words that Lattimore had gone, that an unseasonably warm February day had come to Paris and taken him away, leaving nothing behind in his garret except wide-open windows, still wet walls, and a warm Buddha belly stove that I, in a moment of longing, stooped down and embraced. But, of course, let me not forget the pithy note of thanks. A man of good breeding through and through, Lattimore wanted me to know that he was grateful for all that I had given him in exchange for what turned out to be a half-paid-for photograph of a satisfied customer and me.

You are more than welcome, Lattimore, or shall I call you "Monsieur"? If you care to know, if you are ever denied a minute of sleep when you close your eyes and you see the silver glint of guilt at your throat, please rest assured that my Mesdames have yet to discover their loss. In my long experience with broken dishes, misplaced silverware, and similar unforeseen removal of personal effects, if Monsieur and Madame do not take note of the item's disappearance within the first week, then they are unlikely to ever. Or if they do notice, I am usually no longer in their employ and am no longer the paid recipient of the fine spittle of their rage. Words are words, I tell myself. Handwritten, typewritten, all were written by GertrudeStein, and as you would say, anything written by GertrudeStein is an original. Miss Toklas, I assure myself, must also have her usual three typewritten copies of
The Book of Salt.
I know what those words mean now, Lattimore. I copied them from your thank-you-but-no-thank-you note onto a clean sheet of paper and gave it to the concierge. While the concierge had no sentimental attachments toward my Mesdames, he did have dreams of America and was learning English in preparation for the day when his dreams would come true. Until then, he intended to practice his English with Basket and Pépé. He translated the words into French for me, and then he asked whether it was the title of a cookbook. "No," I answered, "a book about a cook." The concierge seemed impressed anyway.

Salt, I thought. GertrudeStein, what kind? Kitchen, sweat,
tears, or the sea. Madame, they are not all the same. Their stings, their smarts, their strengths, the distinctions among them are fine. Do you know, GertrudeStein, which ones I have tasted on my tongue? A story is a gift, Madame, and you are welcome.

GertrudeStein, unflappable, unrepentant, unbowed, stares back at me and smiles. This photograph of her and Miss Toklas, the second of two that I have of that day, was taken on the deck of the SS
Champlain.
It captures my Mesdames perfectly. I am over there, the one with my back turned to the camera. I am not bowing at GertrudeStein's feet. I am sewing the button back onto her right shoe. The button had come loose in the excitement of coming aboard ship. When I saw this one printed in the newspaper alongside the photograph taken at the Gare du Nord, I cut them both out, and I have kept them with me ever since. My Mesdames, I know, have them as well, carefully pressed in their green leather album, bulging by now with family photographs of only the public kind. I am partial to the one of them at the train station. GertrudeStein and Miss Toklas are perched on the bench ahead of me. My Madame and Madame are posing for a small group of photographers who have gathered for the occasion. GertrudeStein looks almost girlish. The folds of a smile are tucked into her ample cheeks. Miss Toklas looks pleased but as always somewhat irritated, an oyster with sand in its lips, a woman whose corset bites into her hips. We are waiting in the Gare du Nord surrounded by the sounds of trains—their arrivals a jubilant clanging, their departures dirgelike, spent sorrows and last-minute sentiments caught underneath their accelerating wheels. My eyes are closed because thinking, for me, is sometimes aided by the dark. I see there the waters off Le Havre. I see there how that body is so receptive to the light of a full October moon. I feel there my body growing limp in that soft light. "What keeps you here?" I hear a voice asking. Your question, just your desire to know my answer, keeps me, is my response. In the dark, I see you smile. I look up instinctually, as if someone has called out my name.