The Book of Salt - Monique Truong [112]
I see a Buddha belly stove. I see a desk facing the sunlit windows. I see shelves lining the walls. I see a rug by the foot of the bed. I see a piece of paper folded in half, lying tented on the floor. I have a hair from his brush. I have a handkerchief from his coat pocket. I have the worn laces from his shoes. I have every note that he has left me. I have saved them all. Their subjects are usually about time. His anticipated lateness, his eventual return, represented by a number floating lonely on the page. Sometimes the notes contain a short list of ingredients that do not exist. Ripe figs when there is frost on the ground, lamb when all the trees have already lost their leaves, artichokes when the summer sun is fast asleep, these are the foods that he has wanted to see on his plate. But week after week, I have had to tell him, "Wait." The ground underneath us is frozen. It has been that way from the very beginning. December, January, and February are months, though, that reward a resourceful cook. So, for him, I have simmered strings of dried figs in bergamot tea. I have braised mutton with bouquets of herbs tied in ribbons of lemon rinds until their middle-aged sinews remember spring. As for the artichokes, I have discarded all the glass jars of graying hearts afloat in their vinegared baths that I found hiding inside his kitchen cabinets. Sometimes, Sweet Sunday Man, it is better to crave.
I kneel down to see what he hungers for today. A gust of air enters through the wide-open windows and sends the note tumbling across the floor. It lands on one of its sloped sides, near the bolted-down feet of the Buddha belly stove. The little tent, I see, has a blue inside. Like the cloudless sky outside, I think. All of Paris has been out under it. The change came so swiftly that it is not accurate to say that Tuesday's sun melted Monday's snow. It evaporated it, and the inhabitants of this city rejoiced. My Mesdames were no different. They canceled all their appointments. Miss Toklas telephoned the photographers one by one and told them to come back next week. So except for the two Spanish photographers who came on Monday for tea, the rest were all turned away. Miss Toklas and GertrudeStein then went and sunned themselves at all of their favorite outdoor cafés, which had been hastily reconfigured for the happy occasion. The sun, I know, saved me. It emptied 27 rue de Fleurus. Vacant rooms are notably discreet. They keep secrets and forget indiscretions. They echo praise and absorb curses. They are themselves prone to constancy and therefore prefer the company of the familiar. This is all to say that the contents of the rue de Fleurus sat mercifully undisturbed for the majority of the past week. So by yesterday when the last of the young men departed the Saturday tea for a premature spring night, I sighed. A gamble worth taking, I thought, as my eyes rolled back into sleep for the first time in five days. The sixth had just passed without incident and without photographers. Then when this morning arrived bringing with it a lemon tart sun, I sighed again. Threatening weather is the harbinger for most dismissals. A bonny blue day, I thought, rarely produces the same ill effects.
Blue is the color of a pristine sky, the color of a placid, sleeping sea. Blue is the iridescent gleam on the scales of a fish, a color that swims deep and fares best far from shore. Blue is the last bit of beauty that this animal has left to share, before a knife finds its soft underbelly and guts it. And here in this garret of city air and lingering paint fumes,