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By Root 373 0

like other women keep love letters from their youth. She is afraid that she will forget the passion. She now cooks for GertrudeStein only on Sundays. In their household, like others in Paris, the cooks are granted Sundays off. At the end of each week, Miss Toklas by necessity and by desire steps back into the kitchen, gets butter and flour underneath her fingernails, breathes in the smell of cinnamon, burns her tongue, and is comforted. They never dine out on Sundays. No exceptions. No visitors at the studio door with letters of introduction. No requests granted for a viewing of the paintings. On Sundays my Madame and Madame are safely settled in their dining room with their memories of their America heaped onto large plates. Of course, Miss Toklas can reach far beyond the foods of her childhood. She is a cook who puts absinthe in her salad dressing and rose petals in her vinegar. Her menus can map the world. But lately the two of them have shared a taste for the foods that fortified them in their youth. Neither of them seems to notice that Miss Toklas's "apple pie" is now filled with an applesauce-flavored custard and frosted with buttercream or that her "meat loaf harbors the zest of an orange and is bathed in white wine. GertrudeStein thinks it is unfathomably erotic that the food she is about to eat has been washed, pared, kneaded, touched, by the hands of her lover. She is overwhelmed by desire when she finds the faint impressions of Miss Toklas's fingerprints decorating the crimped edges of a pie crust. Miss Toklas believes that these nights are her reward. She is a pagan who secretly yearns for High Mass. To her, there is something of both in their Sunday nights that lets her spirit soar.

"Pussy, there is someone at the studio door," GertrudeStein would have called out from her chintz-covered armchair.

There are two of these armchairs at 27 rue de Fleurus, and both of them are located in the studio. They were made-to-order and therefore could accommodate both the fullness of GertrudeStein's girth and the conciseness of Miss Toklas's stature.

"Lovey, I am tired of dangling my feet in the air. A woman of my age should be able to sit down without having to look like a misbehaving child," Miss Toklas must have declared.

"All right, Pussy, all right," GertrudeStein must have agreed.

And their debate about the costly armchairs must have ended just like that. Because Miss Toklas, I know, rarely has to say more than "Lovey" to triumph.

GertrudeStein, accustomed by now to her comfy throne, would have called out again, "Please, Pussy, please. There is someone at the studio door."

"But, Lovey, you are right there!" Miss Toklas, from her position at the kitchen sink, would have stated the obvious, knowing all the while that it was of no use. GertrudeStein will not answer her own door today or any other day. GertrudeStein has in recent years begun to conclude that those who deliberately seek her out are god-awful nuisances, unless they were willing, of course, to recognize her genius. She, it must be acknowledged, is the brightest star in the Western sky. Though in truth, I think GertrudeStein is more of a constellation. She is about the same height as Miss Toklas, but she has a sturdy build, storing most of her weight in her bosom and hips. GertrudeStein is a great beauty, both Miss Toklas and I believe. No, for me, not at first. Only Miss Toklas could claim such immediate clarity. GertrudeStein's features are broad, unmistakable, a bit coarse. Her nose and ears appear to be disproportionately larger than the rest of her face. She, though, carries herself as if she is an object of desire. She carries herself as if she is her own object of desire. Such self-induced lust is addictive in its effect. Prolonged exposure makes those around them weak and helpless.

I have seen scattered around the apartment photographs of a GertrudeStein who wears her hair in a massive topknot, loose, blowzy, somewhat in disarray. The total effect, however, is heroic. The GertrudeStein I know has less hair on her head than I do. The story of