The Book of Salt - Monique Truong [108]
"Thief," I hear the Old Man hissing in my ear.
Shut up. It was mine to give.
"Liar."
We have something in common, after all, Old Man.
GertrudeStein takes the tray out of Miss Toklas's hands and walks it over and places it into mine. I am, by now, sitting on their kitchen floor. My life is moving too quickly, and as always I believe that being closer to the ground will slow it down. My Mesdames have grown used to my occasional slipping away. At first they chalked it up to the gulf in languages, then to the stupor brought on by drink. Lately, they have attributed it to a degenerative hearing loss on my part, which would explain their raised tone of voice and their repetition of even the simplest of commands.
"No, no, his hearing is fine. He's not deaf, just dumb," the Old Man screams in my ear.
Thanks for the clarification, Old Man, but I am afraid my Madame and Madame cannot hear you. I am the only one present who suffers in this way.
"Thin Bin, we assume this is you?" GertrudeStein asks for the third time.
I look down at the envelope and nod out the rhythm of a universal "yes." GertrudeStein, I know my name looks very different there from how it sounds. Tonal languages often do. Imagine capturing the lilt of my mother's voice, the grace note of her sighs, with the letters of your alphabet. Do not bother, GertrudeStein, a French Jesuit already did it many centuries ago. He is responsible for the discrepancy that lies before us now. Though I can assure you that that is the name that my mother gave to me on the day of my birth. And that in the corner, that is the name of my oldest brother, the sous chef in the Governor-General's house in Saigon.
At the sight of Anh Minh's angular hand, I shiver with the cold that lives in the center of all of our bones, that is registered by the brain as the sensation of being very much alone. I have not thought about him for months, not since my Mesdames came home with chestnuts stuffed in their coat pockets and heaped onto the back seat of their automobile. Anh Minh believes that chestnuts are the dainty crumbs from the mouth of God. A French god, of course. Or maybe just a god with a French chef. Either way, no one would have enjoyed that bounty more than he, I thought. Anh Minh is the only one. I did not have to see his name on the envelope to know. No one else on that or any other side of the globe would have written to me but he. I had sent him a letter years ago, almost five to be exact. It was full of rambling observations, biased accountings, and drunken confessions written in the cigarette haze of a crowded café. I would have preferred someplace more quiet, but the bodies all around me kept that establishment heated and warm. Outside, the city that night was celebrating the birth of the son of their god. Inside, the celebration was, as the Old Man would say, godless.
Blame it on the chauffeur, Old Man. He was the one who first told me about these places. The chauffeur's cautionary tales, a travelogue of all the establishments that he claims never to have visited, have been for me a necessary road map to this city. When there is change in my pocket, as there was on that Christmas Eve, I would buy a glass of something strong and sip it slowly. When there is nothing in my pockets but my hands, I would wait by the door for someone lonelier than I to walk by. That night I wrote to Anh Minh that I was sitting at a marble-topped table in a small but elegant salon de thé. I lied because I did not want him to throw my first letter home away. When months passed without a response, then years, I had to remind myself that Anh Minh is a man of few words. He would never waste them