The Book of Salt (11 page)

"Robbing Peter to pay Paul," the Old Man clucks, like an old biddy, an old Catholic biddy at that. As he aged, the Old Man became more womanish or rather just less of a man. His skin came loose. It hung from his bones, giving him a deflated, soft look. He wore his thinning white hair in a small bun at the nape of his neck. He was prone to sudden attacks, which made him clutch his chest as if he were a breathless girl. He wore his
rosary there like freshly cut blooms on a silken cord. "You are still the same idiot that your mother gave birth to! Your oldest brother would have taken that twenty-five francs and bought himself a decent suit, a place to sleep for the night,
and
he would have gotten himself a real job by now," the Old Man reminds me. Age and now the afterlife have had, regrettably, no effect on his feelings toward me.

"Robbing?" That is not the word, Old Man, that I would use to describe what I did that night with Peter or Paul or whatever his name was. Shall I describe it to you in detail, from the café where we met, to the money that he stuffed in the pocket of my pants before shoving me out of his hotel room? That, Old Man, should return you to your grave, the only safe place for you now, the only place where my shame cannot find you.

Twelve hours will be sufficient for a long and productive meeting. By then the figs will be plump with wine, and the wine will be glistening with the honey flowing from the fruit. The port is then ready to be poured onto the duck, which should sit in a clay dish, the insides of which have darkened from years of sustained use, preferably for the sole purpose of roasting ducks in port wine. Such a vessel, I have heard, requires no soap in its washing. Only water is needed. The residues have to be removed but not the flavors, forged as they are by heat and habit. The duck is then placed in a hot oven for one hour and basted, every ten minutes or so, with spoonfuls of port that have grown heavy with drippings and concentrated sugars. Before the wine reduces to nothingness, the figs are added, and just enough stock to evaporate and moisten the heat in the final moments of cooking.

Rice, coated with butter, threaded through with silver-green sage, will serve as a fine accompaniment. "Indeed, a fine accompaniment," Anh Minh would surely concur, offering as he always does reinforcement and congratulations for a lesson well learned. Anh Minh had taught me that rice, for the French, is never worthy of a solo. "Remember, it is never served alone and rarely is it plain," he had cautioned. Butter sauces, saffron and
peas, onions, truffles and creams, all deserving, deem the French, to share in their occasional bed of rice. All are meddlers and aggressors, and, yet, the French are surprised by the spoilage and ruin that so quickly ensue. Prepared with only water, first as liquid and then steam, rice will keep for days, a lesson I never had to learn. Rice left from dinner becomes breakfast. Rice left from breakfast, though rare, as hunger is sparked by the rising sun, becomes lunch. As Anh Minh would say, "No reason to repeat after me, just open up your mouth and learn." Rice never remains the same. If I leave the pot uncovered, there is a conversion of textures, a layer of chewiness and a crunch, insulating a pocket of softness, hidden inside like an endearing character flaw or a sentimental heart. But if I cover it with a plate right after it cools, if the night air sags with moisture and rain, if there is not enough left to call a meal, then its fate is sealed. A pot of water is added the next day, and the rice is cooked again in its own starchy soup until each kernel expands, splitting itself in half, generously expanding its volume. What begins as a small bowl can now easily fill at least four. The spectacle fools the eyes but rarely the stomach, as the latter is always the more perceptive of the two.

I have learned my lesson well. A clear consommé, braced with laurel leaves and lemons, will begin, and an almond soufflé, spiked with orange-lower water, will end the meal. No, a tart is better. Apricots, maybe, though at this time of the year they would have to be dried. Pears, perhaps, would be best. You did say to keep the menu "simple," especially the dessert. That, in fact, was about all that you said before hiring me. You handed me an envelope of what I assumed was money and two keys from the inside of your desk drawer. You informed me that you would not be here on Sunday morning to let me in and that dinner should begin no later than eight. "Please plan accordingly" then ushered me back onto the stairway. If I had your voice, I would never be so terse. I would never stop talking. Why would I if I had a voice like a warm fire, not at the crackling and popping early stages but at the moment when all becomes quiet and the embers glow, when heat appears to melt the wood? If I had your voice, I would call out your name from the street, let it pound like a heartbeat at your door, offer it to you as a song. I would never cease.

"Simple?" What an odd request, especially of a dessert. What sort of man does not hunger for richness and sweet at the end of a meal? A dessert should never be just a farewell, no matter how simple the sendoff. A dessert, if I may borrow from Bão, should deliver the same message that Serena the Soloist does at the end of all her shows.

While the curtains slowly descend, the action on stage continues nonstop. Serena continues to amaze and to satisfy.

The curtains slowly descend.

Those in attendance are mesmerized and are desperate for more.

The curtains slowly descend.

Suddenly, Serena is no more. But like temptation, she has not bid the audience farewell. Rather, she has alluded to what's in store in the event of an encore.

Those in attendance respond with a resounding request for more.

"Simple?" Maybe, you meant something that could be left unattended. Something that I could leave for you to serve, to apportion at just the right moment. A soufflé is most definitely out of the question. Too temperamental, a lover who dictates his own terms. A tart is better, uncomplicated, in the wrong hands even a bit rough. Like an American boy, I would imagine. I will leave it cooling in the kitchen with a small bowl of
crème fraîche
alongside. Then, once the duck has been served, I will leave your garret for the night, for a café and a glass or two of something strong, very strong, and you and your someone else will be alone at last. My departure will signal that intimacy has joined the party. Civility has called it a night. You two can now dispense with the forks, knives, and spoons. Your hands will tear at an animal whose joints will know no resistance. The sight of flesh surrendering, so willing a participant in its own
transgression, will intoxicate you. Tiny seeds from heat-pregnant figs will insinuate themselves underneath your nails. You will be sure to notice and try to suck them out. You will begin with each other's fingers. You will end on your knees.

I lie to myself like no one else can. I always know what I need to hear. What else am I to do, revert to the truth and admit that I am a twenty-six-year-old man who still clings to the hope that someday his scholar-prince will come? Will hear my song floating over a misty lake, fall in love with my voice before ever laying eyes on my face. Will rescue me from my life of drudgery and labor and embrace me in the shadows of his teak pavilion. I am filled with these stories. My mother fed them to me as we worked side by side. From the time I was six until I turned twelve, banana leaves, raw sticky rice, overripe bananas that no one else would buy, and my mother's stories were the subjects of my everyday life. The leaves Má taught me to cut crosswise into three pieces. We would then soak them in water to keep them pliant. They had to drink in as much water as their veins could hold. They would need it later, when the heat would be merciless and full of rage. There was a steady rhythm to our movements that I still carry with me, a dream to lull me to sleep:

Her right hand dips into a basin of water, shaking from it a fragrant sheet of green. Her left hand skims a large bowl, where the raw rice has spent the night, cool underneath a blanket of water. She grabs a handful of grains, slowly spreading her fingers apart, letting the milky water drip and drain. She places what remains in her hand onto the middle of the leaf. I reach over and add thick slices of bananas, cut lengthwise in order to maximize the surface that is split and exposed from where their sweet juices will then flow. Each piece shows off two rows of black flecks, the distinctive markings of their tribe. "The darker the seeds," my mother says, "the riper the fruit." Her left hand returns to the bowl for a second handful of kernels, which then completely cover the bananas. Her hands join together for a brief moment and leave behind a packet of green. She slides it
over to me, and I wrap it with a length of fibrous grass. The steamer will finish the task.

While my mother's hands followed a set routine, her stories never did. They were free to roam, to consider alternative routes, to invent their own ways home. Sometimes the "she" was a peasant girl bending over a bed of rice seedlings, which had yet to take root. "She" was occasionally a servant girl in the Imperial Palace, a noble face misplaced among the lowly rank and file. "She" was also a fishing village girl, who sat by the shore and darned the nets, who sang the same songs as her brothers but had never been allowed out to sea. "Home," though, was always the same, the teak pavilion and the scholar-prince, a man who was first and foremost wise and kind. His handsome looks, my mother always mentioned as something of an aside. As I got older, I thought her brief description was unsatisfactory, and I began pressing her for details about the scholar-prince. The first time I asked about him, I was eleven. My mother smiled in response and called me her "little scholar-prince." I stopped tying the packet in my hand.

"What?
I am
the scholar-prince?" I repeated, struggling to retain meaning in a fantasy turned upside down. As I sat wrapping and tying, I had never had a doubt. All this time, it was I who had the voice that would float over a misty lake, and it was always I who, in the end, got the scholar-prince, the teak pavilion, the shadow-graced embraces. I was, of course, the peasant, the servant, the fishing villager, except that in my version the "she" was undoubtedly a "he." The scholar-prince, I left as is, a man wise and kind. Though, in truth, in my version he was much more handsome than my mother could have ever imagined. My dear mother would have stopped the stories if she had known in whom I found solace and in whom I found love. So in order to hear her stories, to keep her voice in the room, I never told her that in my version I was a kitchen boy who skipped smooth shards of stone across a silent lake, that as they skimmed the water's surface they would sing. The stones landed one by one each day at the feet of a scholar-prince, who strolled the
shore, contemplating the water and its relationship to the sky. At first the scholar-prince was too immersed in his own thoughts to notice, but then the stone shards began to amass, noticeably altering, intruding upon his tranquil path. The scholar-prince interrupted his reverie and picked up a shard, and as he was about to fling it back into the lake, he noticed a single word cut into its surface. Intrigued, he examined the others and found that each bore the traces of a different word. He, being a scholar-prince, naturally recognized that they were the broken pieces of a poem. Love was the subject. He, being a man, thought it was a challenge and a game. The scholar-prince rearranged the stones and composed a response. He sent them skipping across the lake. Of course, the lake was "misty." Some things are classic and should never be changed. Mist, as I had learned from my mother's stories, allows unlikely lovers to meet and forbidden subjects to wander the land. In my stories, the lakes are in a perpetual state of mist or under heavy cover of ocean-borne fog. As the stones crossed and recrossed the lake, each one a fragment of a rippling, luminous poem, the scholar-prince fell deeply in love with the kitchen boy who was now a man, and in the end, well, the end for me is always the same.

***

Even with my eyes closed, I know. Emptiness lowers the temperature of any room. I breathe in deeply, searching for coffee burning inside a still warm pot, for soap or shaving lotion evaporating, a fragrant steam rising from the bare surface of skin. I roll over on my back and listen for water flowing from a tap—hot and cold each have their own rhythm—for the rustling pages of a newspaper, for the sound of steady breathing in an otherwise silent room. No, nothing but absence mouthing the same wordless tune. I open my eyes and look around me. The light of a December sun hangs, a faded gray curtain, from the windows. Bottles of wine lie on the table, tipsy from their own fumes. Russet-colored pears, half-eaten, bear the bite marks of distracted eaters. Nubs of candles sit in pools of melted wax.

I will forget that no one came to dinner last night. I will forget that we celebrated Sunday by drinking wine from each other's lips. I will forget the baptismal and the communion. Last night was freely given, I tell myself. Pleasure for pleasure is an even exchange. Lust for lust is a balanced scale.

Do not bother chiming in, Old Man. I do not have to listen to your god anymore. Sad, though, how I can always anticipate both of your condemnations, that they have become second nature to me.

In the end, I get dressed, feeling my toes sinking into the rug by the side of the bed. I put on my socks and tie the laces of my shoes. I comb my hair with my fingers and grab a pear for the walk back to my Mesdames. I put on my coat, and I feel something foreign. The breast pocket, the thing closest to my heart, is stuffed and distended.

"Well, well, well. It looks like I was right all along. Whores do become cooks on boats. You pathetic piece of shit. I knew you would amount to nothing, but I would have never guessed that you would amount to even less. For once,
you
have exceeded my expectation. My oldest son, the sous chef, and now you, the whore. "The Old Man, being dead and thus clairvoyant, confirms my worst suspicions.

The stairwell is a shaft of dust and dying echoes. Monday, already half gone, has slept in it, has lost its memories in it. The rue de l'Odéon is a smudge of storefronts and cobblestones, a blind spot disappearing from the corners of my eyes. My pace is so quick that I am generating stares. Passersby are astonished by such a burst of speed, annoyed by such an extravagant display of energy. I am sorry, but I am late. I have no reason to linger here, I think. This street will never commit itself to me, and I will reciprocate in kind. December's overeager shadows may have already claimed the buildings on one side of the street. Those on the other side may appear to glow that much more with light. Attention to such details, though, would be wasted here. It is only a site of business, commercial and mercenary. There is nothing unusual here to see, So move along now, I think, there is nothing here to see. I head toward the direction of the Jardin du Luxembourg and toward my Mesdames, who are sure to be furious. Who made their breakfast for them this morning? A pot of coffee, a plate of corn-flour cakes, a golden tower of crumbling squares, an American recipe that Miss Toklas taught me and that she and GertrudeStein adore. Who packed the basket for their Monday-morning drive? Chicken sandwiches wrapped in wax paper packets, which immediately glow with grease, and puff pastry fritters, delicate shells for the molten apples within. Turning onto the boulevard Raspail, I slow down my gait, collect my racing heart, and reacquaint myself with the things that I know best.