The Book of Salt by Monique Truong Read Free Book Online Page B

is "a-dog-not-a-friend" and that Pépé, well, Pépé is "a-dog-not-a-dog."
    "Thin Bin, how would
you
define ' love'?"
    Ah, I think, a classic move from the material to the spiritual. GertrudeStein, like the collectors who have preceded her, wants to see the stretch marks on my tongue. I taste a familiar drop of bitter in the back of my throat. I point to a table on which several quinces sit yellowing in a blue and white china bowl. I shake my head in their direction, and I leave the room, speechless.
    ***
    Paper-white narcissuses, one hundred bulbs in shallow pools of moistened pebbles, their roots exposed, clinging, pale anchors steadying the blooms as they angle toward the sun. The windows are never completely closed because the sweet powdery scent would be unbearable. In those corners where sunlight is an unfulfilled promise, there are bowls of varying sizes holding hydrangea clusters, dried, the color of barely brewed tea. With no water to weigh them down, the blooms rattle against their china vessels whenever a draft sidles through the garret. The petals scraping lightly against the bone-enriched walls sing the song of a rainfall. I choose to remember these things only. The rest I will discard.
    I will forget that you entered 27 rue de Fleurus as a "writer" among a sea of others who opened the studio door with a letter of introduction and a face handsome with talent and promise. You stood at the front of the studio listening to a man who had his back to me. I entered the room with a tray of sugar-dusted cakes for all the young men who sit and stand, a hungry circle radiating around GertrudeStein. After years of the imposed invisibility of servitude, I am acutely aware when I am being watched, a sensitivity born from absence, a grain of salt on the tongue of a man who has tasted only bitter. As I checked the teapots to see whether they needed to be replenished, I felt a slight pressure. It was the weight of your eyes resting on my lips. I looked up, and I saw you standing next to a mirror reflecting the image of a wiry young man with deeply set, startled eyes. I looked up, and I was seeing myself beside you. I am at sea again, I thought. Waves are coursing through my veins. I am at sea again.
    I will forget that you whispered to Miss Toklas that you were looking for a cook. You accompanied my Madame into the kitchen, bestowing upon her all the while compliments and congratulations for the composition of her tea table. The cakes are almost as sublime as their setting, you said. Honeysuckle roses and acacias, you lied, are your favorite floral combination. Leaning in, you explained in a conspiratorial tone that some friends are visiting and that you want to host a dinner party in their honor. I hope that I may impose upon you for a bit of advice, you murmured into the curving canals of my Madame's ear, and in that polite but intimate way you began the story that you were telling for me.
    Miss Toklas admired the timbre of your voice. She wondered if she were hearing bells. She thought that you resembled a young novice whose face she once had glimpsed through the crumbling, honeycombed walls of a Spanish convent. Something feral and fast underneath the gentle garb, she recalled. Her eyes lingered on the cut of your suit. So American in its forthrightness, she thought. No bells and whistles, she thought. Miss Toklas approved of the scent of bay and lime on your skin. Like a Frenchman, she thought, announcing himself even before he enters the room, making an impression even after he is gone. With each breath my Madame was taking you in, and you knew it.
    Later that night Miss Toklas asked me what I did with my Sundays. I had been in their household for over four years, and that night was the first time, the first time either one of my Mesdames had asked me about my one day away from them. My Sundays belong to me, I thought.
    "Nothing," I said.
    "Nothing," Miss Toklas repeated with a smile.
    Are you mocking me, Madame? I