The Book of Salt (3 page)

Minh the Sous Chef used to be just Anh Minh, my oldest brother and the only brother who today can make me long for home. No one would have enjoyed this park bench and the shade of these forlorn chestnut trees more than he. Anh Minh believed absolutely and passionately that the French language would save us, would welcome us into the fold, would reward us with kisses on both cheeks. His was not an abstract belief. It was grounded in the kitchen of the Governor-General's house. He insisted that after Monsieur and Madame tasted his
omelette à la bourbonnaise,
his
coupe ambassadrice,
his
crème marquise,
they would have no need to send for a French
chef de cuisine
to replace old Claude Chaboux. The Old Man, like a soothsayer, declared that soon there would be the first Vietnamese
chef de cuisine
in the Governor-General's house. So while the rest of us in the household staff stood there dumbly experiencing the balletic surges of Monsieur and Madame's tirade, Anh Minh alone stood in agony, lashed and betrayed by all those French words he had adopted and kept close to his heart, wounded. Minh the Wounded, I began calling him in my prayers.

Old Chaboux died, and a young Jean Blériot arrived from France to don the coveted title. Now only an act of god, a bout of malaria, or a lustful look at Madame would hasten the departure of Chef Blériot, as he insisted on being called. May 11, 1923, began his reign. Anh Minh stayed on in the kitchen of the Governor-General's to serve under yet another French chef, to cover for him once he began to reek of rum, to clean up after him once he could no longer find the rim of the pot, handfuls of shallot and dashes of oil seasoning the tile floor.

And, me, what was I supposed to do? Twenty years old and still a
garde-manger,
sculpting potatoes into perfect little spheres, carving chunks of turnips into swans, the arc of their necks as delicate as Blériot's fingers, fingers that I wanted to taste.
Equipped with skills and desires that no man would admit to having, what was I supposed to do?

"Two American ladies wish to retain a cook—27 rue de Fleurus." Prosperous enough area of town, and two American ladies must have enough to pay a nice wage. One of the skills—it is more like a sleight of hand—that I have acquired since coming to this city is an acumen for its streets. I know where they reside, where they dissolve discreetly into one another, where they inexplicably choose to rear their unmarked heads. A skill born from the lack of other skills, really. When each day is mapped for me by a wanton display of street names congesting the pages of the help-wanteds, when I am accompanied by the stench of the unemployable, I am forced into an avid, adoring courtship with the boulevards of this city. I must admit that in truly desperate times, my intimate knowledge of the city has saved me. Paris is a Madame with a heart.

"Name any street. Go ahead, any street. I'll tell you where it is, Left Bank or Right Bank, exact locale even. Rue de Fleurus? It's a little street off of the boulevard Raspail, near the Jardin du Luxembourg." I have earned several dozen glasses of
marc
that way. Frenchmen, drunk men, love a challenge. The listeners, if any, often will ask me to repeat myself. It seems that my accented French is hard even on the ears of laborers. But once it is clear to them that I am there for their amusement, the rest is an enthralling performance. Fortunately for me, I have no idea how to say "enthralling" in French because otherwise I would be compelled to brag and ruin the surprise. And they are always surprised. And they always try again. They will name the street where their great-aunt Sylvie lives, where their butcher is located, where they last got lost, and, when truly desperate, they will name a street on one of the islands that cleave this city. By then I am gone because too often their surprise deviates into anger: "How can this little Indochinese, who can't even speak proper French, who can't even say more than a simple sentence, who can't even understand enough to get angry over the jokes
that we're making at his expense, how can
this
Indochinese know this city better than we?" All I need is a little monkey dressed in a suit more expensive than my own, and I could join the ranks of the circus freaks. "Come one, come all. See the Half-Man-Half-Woman Sword Swallower, the Bearded Lady, and, now, introducing the Little Indochinese Who Knows This City Better Than Any Parisian!" But this is hardly a skill to impress a potential Monsieur and Madame.

I have been in this city for over three years now. I have interviewed with and even worked for an embarrassing number of households. In my experience, they fall into two categories. No, in fact, there are three. The first are those who, after a catlike glimpse at my face, will issue an immediate rejection, usually nonverbal. A door slam is an uncommonly effective form of communication. No discussion, no references required, no "Will you want Sundays off?" Those, while immediately unpleasant, I prefer. Type twos are those who may or may not end up hiring me but who will, nonetheless, insist on stripping me with questions, as if performing an indelicate physical examination. Type twos behave as if they have been authorized by the French government to ferret out and to document exactly how it is that I have come to inhabit their hallowed shores.

"In Paris, three years," I tell them.

"Where were you before?"

"Marseilles."

"Where were you before that?"

"Boat to Marseilles."

"Boat? Well, obviously. Where did that boat sail from?"

And so, like a courtesan, forced to perform the dance of the seven veils, I grudgingly reveal the names, one by one, of the cities that have carved their names into me, leaving behind the scar tissue that forms the bulk of who I am.

"Hmmm ... you say you've been in Paris for three years? Now, let's see, if you left Indochina when you were twenty, that would make you..."

"Twenty-six, Madame."

Three years unaccounted for! you could almost hear them thinking. Most Parisians can ignore and even forgive me for not having the refinement to be born amidst the ringing bells of their cathedrals, especially since I was born instead amidst the ringing bells of the replicas of their cathedrals, erected in a far-off colony to remind them of the majesty, the piety, of home. As long as Monsieur and Madame can account for my whereabouts in their city or in one of their colonies, then they can trust that the République and the Catholic Church have had their watchful eyes on me. But when I expose myself as a subject who may have strayed, who may have lived a life unchecked, ungoverned, undocumented, and unrepentant, I become, for them, suspect. Before, I was no more of a threat than a cloistered nun. Now Madame glares at me to see if she can detect the deviant sexual practices that I have surely picked up and am now, without a doubt, proliferating under the very noses of the city's Notre-Dames. Madame now worries whether she can trust me with her little girls.

Madame, you have nothing to worry about. I have no interest in your little girls. Your boys ... well, that is their choice, she should hear me thinking.

The odds are stacked against me with this second type, I know. But I find myself again and again shamefully submitting. All those questions, I deceive myself each time, all those questions must mean that I have a chance. And so I stay on, eventually serving myself forth like a scrawny roast pig, only to be told, "Thank you, but no thank you."

Thank you? Thank you? Madame, you should applaud! A standing ovation would not be inappropriate, I think each time. I have just given you a story filled with exotic locales, travel on the open seas, family secrets, un-Christian vices.
Thank you
will not suffice.

My self-righteous rage burns until I am forced to concede that I, in fact, have told them nothing. This language that I dip into like a dry inkwell has failed me. It has made me take flight with weak wings and watched me plummet into silence. I am
unable to tell them anything but a list of cities, some they have been to and others a mere dot on a globe, places they will only touch with the tips of their fingers and never the soles of their feet. I am forced to admit that I am, to them, nothing but a series of destinations with no meaningful expanses in between.

Thank you, but no thank you.

The third type, I call the collectors. They are always good for several weeks' and sometimes even several months' worth of work. The interviews they conduct are professional, even mechanical. Before I can offer the usual inarticulate boast about my "good omelets," I am hired. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner to be prepared six days a week. Sundays off. Some immediately delegate the marketing to me. Others insist on accompanying me for the first few days to make sure that I know the difference between a
poularde
and a
poulette.
I rarely fail them. Of course, I have never been able to memorize or keep an accurate tally of the obsessive assortment of words that the French have devised for this animal that is the center, the stewed, fricasseed, sautéed, stuffed heart, of every Frenchman's home. Fat chickens, young chickens, newly hatched chickens, old wiry chickens, all are awarded their very own name, a noble title of sorts in this language that can afford to be so drunk and extravagant toward what lies on the dinner table. "A chicken" and "not this chicken," these are the only words I need to navigate the poultry markets of this city. Communicating in the negative is not the quickest and certainly not the most esteemed form of expression, but for those of us with few words to spare it is the magic spell, the incantation, that opens up an otherwise inaccessible treasure trove. Wielding my words like a rusty kitchen knife, I can ask for, reject, and ultimately locate that precise specimen that will grace tonight's pot.

And, yes, for every coarse, misshapen phrase, for every blundered, dislocated word, I pay a fee. A man with a borrowed, ill-fitting tongue, I cannot compete for this city's attention. I cannot participate in the lively lovers' quarrel between it and its inhabitants. I am a man whose voice is a harsh whisper in a city that favors a song. No longer able to trust the sound of my own voice, I carry a small speckled mirror that shows me my face, my hands, and assures me that I am still here. Becoming more like an animal with each displaced day, I scramble to seek shelter in the kitchens of those who will take me. Every kitchen is a homecoming, a respite, where I am the village elder, sage and revered. Every kitchen is a familiar story that I can embellish with saffron, cardamom, bay laurel, and lavender. In their heat and in their steam, I allow myself to believe that it is the sheer speed of my hands, the flawless measurement of my eyes, the science of my tongue, that is rewarded. During these restorative intervals, I am no longer the mute who begs at this city's steps. Three times a day, I orchestrate, and they sit with slackened jaws, silenced. Mouths preoccupied with the taste of foods so familiar and yet with every bite even the most parochial of palates detects redolent notes of something that they have no words to describe. They are, by the end, overwhelmed by an emotion that they have never felt, a nostalgia for places they have never been.

I do not willingly depart these havens. I am content to grow old in them, calling the stove my lover, calling the copper pans my children. But collectors are never satiated by my cooking. They are ravenous. The honey that they covet lies inside my scars. They are subtle, though, in their tactics: a question slipped in with the money for the weekly food budget, a follow-up twisted inside a compliment for last night's dessert, three others disguised as curiosity about the recipe for yesterday's soup. In the end, they are indistinguishable from the type twos except for the defining core of their obsession. They have no true interest in where I have been or what I have seen. They crave the fruits of exile, the bitter juices, and the heavy hearts. They yearn for a taste of the pure, sea-salt sadness of the outcast whom they have brought into their homes. And I am but one within a long line of others. The Algerian orphaned by a famine, the Moroccan violated by his uncle, the Madagascan driven out of his village because his shriveled left hand was a sign of his mother's misdeeds, these are the wounded trophies who have preceded me.

It is not that I am unwilling. I have sold myself in exchange for less. Under their gentle guidance, their velvet questions, even I can disgorge enough pathos and cheap souvenir tragedies to sustain them. They are never gluttonous in their desires, rather the opposite. They are methodical. A measured, controlled dosage is part of the thrill. No, I am driven out by my own willful hands. It is only a matter of time. After so many weeks of having that soft, steady light shined at me, I begin to forget the barbed-wire rules of such engagements. I forget that there will be days when it is I who will have the craving, the red, raw need to expose all my neglected, unkempt days. And I forget that I will wait, like a supplicant at the temple's gate, because all the rooms of the house are somber and silent. When I am abandoned by their sweet-voiced catechism, I forget how long to braise the ribs of beef, whether chicken is best steamed over wine or broth, where to buy the sweetest trout. I neglect the pinch of cumin, the sprinkling of lovage, the scent of lime. And in these ways, I compulsively write, page by page, the letters of my resignation.

***

"Yes, yes, they're still looking for a cook," confirms the concierge. "You'll have to come back in an hour or so when they've returned from their drive. Just knock on that door to your left. It leads to the studio. What did you say your name was?"

"Bình," I answer.

"What?"

"Bình."

"Beene? Beene, now that's easy enough on the tongue. You seem like a nice boy. Let me give you a bit of advice—don't blink an eye."

"What?"

"Don't blink an eye," repeats the concierge, raising his brows and his voice for added emphasis. "Do you understand?"

"No."

"The two Americans are a bit, umm, unusual. But you'll see that for yourself as soon as the door to the studio is opened."

"Studio? Painters?"