The Book of Salt (19 page)

Miss Toklas is in a garden, GertrudeStein, but it is divine. The Holy Spirit is in her when she pulls tiny beets, radishes, and turnips from the ground. When she places their limp bodies in her basket, she believes that she knows the joys and anguishes of the Virgin Mother. And along with her raptures, she is ashamed, GertrudeStein. Because my Madame has begun to think of life without you, to plan for it in incriminating ways. Miss Toklas knows that
she
will never be the first to go. She can never leave her Lovey so alone in this world. A genius, she believes, needs constant care. She is resolved to the fact that you, GertrudeStein, will be first, and then what will she do, so alone in this world without you? And, those, GertrudeStein, are the words that end all of her prayers.

Last year was my Mesdames' fifth and my fourth summer in Bilignin. About a week before we were scheduled to close up the house for the season, Miss Toklas came into the kitchen loaded down with baskets of squash, new potatoes, and the last of the summer tomatoes. As she sorted through the bounty, making it ready to be packed for the journey home, she looked over at me plucking a chicken for that night's supper. Even from behind an updraft of flying feathers, I could see that she was studying my face. Madame, do not worry, a few weeks back in Paris and I will be my old self again, I thought. After a short while, Miss Toklas cleared her throat and suggested that this year, maybe, I should ride back to Paris with GertrudeStein, herself, and the dogs. She could just as easily send the crates of vegetables back to the city by rail, she told me. I accepted the offer without hesitation. I have often watched with envy as Basket and Pépé ride away, Basket's ears flapping and Pépé's twitching in the wind, to take, as Má would say, The-Long-Way-Home. Along with their Mesdames, these two dogs take in the sights and stop, I imagined, for impromptu meals whenever GertrudeStein's stomach begins to flutter with the moths of hunger.

For the farmers of Bilignin, the end of the summer season is
marked by two events, the departure of the two Americans and their
asiatique
cook and the gathering of the grapes. The gathering is a festival at which the younger farmers of Bilignin meet their future wives or lovers, but then again they do not do that sort of thing there. The wine casks and jugs from the past vintage have to be emptied to make way for the new. That requires almost as much work as the actual removal of the fruits from the vine. But that is why the farmers of Bilignin work
and
drink like horses. I drink like the Old Man. I am fine after the first bottle, but then I turn red. As these farmers and others have pointed out, I look as if I have been burnt by the sun. My cheeks, I am embarrassed to admit, are crimson. I cannot pass it off as a blush because the color is too intense. But beyond this red cast, I remain remarkably unaffected. Well, that is until I pass out. The line between being awake and not is easy for me to overstep, as I never see it coming. One moment I am sitting at one of the long tables set outside under the harvest moon for the occasion, and the next I am being slapped and doused with water. I take
that
as my signal to begin my walk back to my Mesdames' house. There, I am greeted by Basket and Pépé, who delight in the task. They begin to bark as soon as I open the iron gate to the gardens. They continue to bark as I unlock the door to the kitchen, where they are sitting in wait. These two act very undoglike at moments like these. They never jump on me, sniffing and nipping. They are obviously not happy to see me. His Highness and the Pretender to the throne do not have a drop of fear or protective instinct directed toward me either. These two sit by the stove and bark, obligated by a pact with each other to call attention to the time and the state of my arrival. When they are in Bilignin, Miss Toklas and GertrudeStein must sleep like dogs—well-mannered ones, that is. I never see their bedroom light turn on when I enter the gate, and I never hear them rustling about upstairs when I am in the dark kitchen below. Basket and Pépé, despite their mean-spirited efforts, always fail to rouse my Mesdames from their bed to come and see their cook, red, wet, and bleary-eyed.

Well, except for last summer when His Highness and the Pretender scored a great victory. Granted I did help their cause by throwing up and then passing out before I could reach the stairway to my room. Their noses must have been offended by the strong smell of alcohol that my vomit released into the kitchen. I can imagine that their barking then reached a particularly persuasive pitch. Pépé does have a tendency to emit a eunuch-worthy howl when he is in pain or when there have been too many days of rain. I remember groping for the stairs one moment, and then the next I am being doused with water for the second time that night or, maybe, it was already morning. I looked over at the pool of vomit on the floor and then at a nearby pair of sandals standing slightly apart. "Bin, you will take the train tomorrow. GertrudeStein and I will take the vegetables with us in the automobile," said a voice that, I am afraid, like the sandals, belonged to Miss Toklas. The sandals then padded away, gently slapping the tile floors of the dark house.

The next day, I walked around the house, somber and silent, closing the shutters and putting cloth over the furniture. The last of the summer vegetables caught a ride back to Paris with my Mesdames. Basket's ears were flapping. Pépé's were twitching. The usual traveling circus took off in puffs of dust as GertrudeStein waved and said, "Good-bye, Thin Thin Bin." Miss Toklas was in no mood for pleasantries and kept her hands on her lap.

Good-bye, GertrudeStein.

Really, Madame, what was I supposed to do in Bilignin? It was never part of our original bargain. I spend my months there and never, never see a face that looks like mine, except for the one that grows gaunt in the mirror. In Paris, GertrudeStein, the constant traffic of people at least includes my fellow
asiatiques.
And while we may never nod at one another, tip our hats in polite fashion, or even exchange empathy in quick glances, we breathe a little easier with each face that we see. It is the recognition that in the darkest streets of the city there is another body like mine, and that it means me no harm. If we do not acknowledge each other, it is not out of a lack of kindness. The opposite, GertrudeStein. To walk by without blinking an eye is to say to each other that we are human, whole, a man or a woman like any other, two lungfuls of air, a heart pumping blood, a stomach hungry for home-cooked food, a body in constant search for the warmth of the sun. Before I came to the rue de Fleurus, GertrudeStein, the only way I knew how to hold onto that moment of dispensation, that without-blinking-an-eye exchange, to keep it warm in my hands, was by threading silver through them. Blood makes me a man. No one can take that away from me, I thought. But as you know, GertrudeStein, in order for me to stay at the rue de Fleurus, I have had to give up the habit that has sustained me. Miss Toklas inspects my hands every day. First she checks my nails to see if they are cut and clean—I assume her previous cooks had to submit to this examination as well—and then she turns my hands palms up, a step she has added just for me, her "Little Indochinese." I know, GertrudeStein, that that is what Miss Toklas calls me when her anger gets the better of her.
Her
Little Indochinese? Madame, we Indochinese belong to the French. You two may live in France, but you are still Americans, after all. Little Indochinese, indeed.

What you probably do not know, GertrudeStein, is that in Bilignin you and Miss Toklas are the only circus act in town. And me, I am the
asiatique,
the sideshow freak. The farmers there are childlike in their fascination and in their unadorned cruelty. Because of your short-cropped hair and your, well, masculine demeanor, they call you "Caesar." Miss Toklas, they dub "Cleopatra" in an ironic tribute to her looks and her companionship role in your life. As for your guests who motor into Bilignin all summer long, they are an added attraction. Last summer, the farmers especially enjoyed the painter who hiked through their fields with clumps of blue paint stuck in his uncombed hair. There was also a bit of commotion over the young writer who wore a pair of lederhosen to walk Basket up and down the one street of that village. As for me, the farmers are
used to me by now. Only when they are very drunk do they forget themselves. At the grape gathering this year, one of them asked, "Did you know how to use a fork and a knife before coming to France?" I certainly knew how to use a knife, I thought. That was followed by "Will you marry three or four
asiatique
wives?" None, thank you. Then a usually quiet farmer, a widower who lives alone with his dog, which he claims is more sweet-tempered than his now departed wife, asked, "Are you circumcised?" I looked around at my hosts and then up at the harvest moon. Why do they always ask
this
question? I wondered. I could only assume that their curiosity about my male member is a by-product of their close association with animal husbandry. Castrating too many sheep could make a man clinical and somewhat abrupt about such things, I thought. The morning after, they never recall asking me this question. In a matter of a few short hours, everyone in that village loses his memory. Everyone except me. Believe me, I have tried. But no matter how much I drink, I am still left with their voices, thick with alcohol, and their faces burnt raw by the sun.

FAME
, you tell me, appears in the irides as a circle of flames.

"Bee, those two are going to bask in it."

"Why?"

Your eyes race toward the door, responding to a knock that is not there. A spasm of shame, I think. You, Sweet Sunday Man, are ashamed of yourself, not me. Ashamed that you chose me, a man who may as well be blind, you think. This October will mark my fifth year with my Mesdames. How could Bee
not
know? you must think. Sweet Sunday Man, I know. I know when my Madame and Madame wake up in the morning. I know the sounds that come from behind their bedroom door when they think that I am not around. I know the cigars that they smoke. I know the postcards that they collect and the women who recline naked on them. I know the old-woman gases that escape from them, and the foods that aggravate them. Brussels sprouts, if
you
must know. I know the faces of those who are invited often to dinner. I know the backs of those who are asked never to return. I know the devotion that my Mesdames have for each other. I know the faith that they both have in GertrudeStein.

"Why?" I ask again.

"Stein's books."

"Books?"

"Stein writes books, but they are ... unusual, almost not books at all," you try to explain.

I am impressed anyway. Miss Toklas has a scholar-prince, I think.

"Here," you say, crossing the front room of your garret. You point to a row of books sitting by themselves on a shelf, and you say "Here" again.

I see a spine covered in flowers, one in the yellow of banana peels before they are freckled by the sun, one in the gray of my mother's best
áo dài,
I pick up a book wrapped in the blue of a Bilignin summer sky, and I leaf through its pages. Like rice paper, I think.

"It's vellum," you say, as you try to take the book from my hands.

"Vellum?" I repeat.

Paper resembling the skin of a calf, you explain with hand gestures and playful caresses against my own. I gladly give the book back to you. "Only five," you tell me with the outstretched fingers of your right hand, "deluxe copies were printed." Words printed on skin, I am still thinking. You carefully place the book back on the shelf and exchange it for another: "Here, this one, this is Stein's latest." I take the book from your hands, balancing its top and bottom edges between the tips of my fingers, mimicking how you held it in your own. Last year, you tell me, was a very good one for GertrudeStein. Not only was GertrudeStein published in 1933, but in 1933 GertrudeStein was also read. This is a minor miracle that you hope, by fixing your eyes on mine, that I can understand. "
The Autobiography of Alice B, Toklas,
" you read to me from the book's cover. Hearing the title only in English, I am still able to understand. My Madame wrote a book about my other Madame. How convenient, I think. GertrudeStein would never have to travel far for her stories. They, I suspect, chase her down and beg to be told. You have stayed in
Paris to wait for the French translation of
The Autobiography,
you tell me. A collector, I think. "I've also stayed here," you whisper, "waiting for you."

And am I but one within a long line of others? Are there wounded trophies who have preceded me? But why ask questions, I tell myself, when you are here with me now. Some men take off their eyeglasses, some lower their eyelids. You lower your voice. Desire humbles us in different ways. Your body comes close, and the scent of lime and bay is all around us. You tilt your head. You kiss my lips, lopsided by a smile. Your breath is warmth spreading across the closed lids of my eyes. Your tongue finds the tips of my lashes, flicking them aside. My Madame's books are set down for the night.

So that we are clear, Sweet Sunday Man, I have known from the very beginning that GertrudeStein is a writer. I just did not know that it was her vocation, her
métier,
as the French would say. From my first day at 27 rue de Fleurus, I have seen my Madame writing, but then again I have seen other Mesdames busying themselves with the task as well. I assumed it was all the same: letters, lists, invitations extended and withdrawn, thank-yous and no-thank-yous. Every afternoon, Sweet Sunday Man, I see GertrudeStein sit down at her writing table, also known as the dining table at other times of the day. After about a quarter of an hour, as if on cue, she rises, searches for her walking stick, and heads out with Basket for their daily neighborhood chat and stroll. When the studio door clicks shut, Miss Toklas appears, not like an apparition but like a floor lamp or a footstool suddenly coming to life. Sudden, yes, but there all along. Miss Toklas may be practical in nature, even staid in appearance, but she is a sorceress all the same.