The Book of Salt - Monique Truong [17]
GertrudeStein has since made it her habit to test my skills. At first she was satisfied with my resourceful renaming of foods, animals, household objects. But as it was also her habit never to master any language but her own, she first has to compile her list in English, rummage through Miss Toklas's dictionary for the French equivalent, and then locate an illustration or physical sample for me to examine. This is an after-dinner activity for GertrudeStein. She devotes no more than half an hour to it, a diversion before she cracks open a broad-spined book for the remainder of the night. Miss Toklas is always nearby, her needlework bobbing in her hands. Recently GertrudeStein has decided that it would be more efficient if she begins with the last step of her formula. To do otherwise, she now thinks, is simply too impractical, like an artist who paints a portrait and then roams the world searching for its model. Conveniently for GertrudeStein, she already has a whole world stashed away in the rooms of 27 rue de Fleurus. Buttons, seashells, glass globes, horseshoe nails, matchboxes, cigarette holders—the last inspired by Miss Toklas, whose voice reveals her habit—are deposited throughout the apartment. Some are grouped by types, some by years of acquisition, others by sentiment. By the time Miss Toklas moved into the rue de Fleurus, GertrudeStein had already acquired a sizable collection. Miss Toklas immediately understood. She did not have to be told that the objects of everyday life become relics and icons once they have touched GertrudeStein's hands. She already believed it.
The dinner dishes have been cleared and washed, and I have been again summoned to the studio. Surely after four years of this game, I think, there cannot be anything left in this apartment that we have not named. Last week, for instance, I had to inform GertrudeStein for the third time this year that Basket is "a-dog-not-a-friend" and that Pépé, well, Pépé is "a-dog-not-a-dog."
"Thin Bin, how would you define ' love'?"
Ah, I think, a classic move from the material to the spiritual. GertrudeStein, like the collectors who have preceded her, wants to see the stretch marks on my tongue. I taste a familiar drop of bitter in the back of my throat. I point to a table on which several quinces sit yellowing in a blue and white china bowl. I shake my head in their direction, and I leave the room, speechless.
***
Paper-white narcissuses, one hundred bulbs in shallow pools of moistened pebbles, their roots exposed, clinging, pale anchors steadying the blooms as they angle toward the sun. The windows are never completely closed because the sweet powdery scent would be unbearable. In those corners where sunlight is an unfulfilled promise, there are bowls of varying sizes holding hydrangea clusters, dried, the color of barely brewed tea. With no water to weigh them down, the blooms rattle against their china vessels whenever a draft sidles through the garret. The petals scraping lightly against the bone-enriched walls sing the song of a rainfall. I choose to remember these things only. The rest I will discard.
I will forget that you entered 27 rue de Fleurus as a "writer" among a sea of others who opened the studio door with a letter of introduction and a face handsome with talent and promise. You stood at the front of the studio listening to a man who had his back to me. I entered the room with a tray of sugar-dusted cakes for all the young men who sit and stand, a hungry circle radiating around GertrudeStein. After years of the imposed invisibility of servitude, I am acutely aware when I am being watched, a sensitivity born from absence, a grain of salt on the tongue of a man who has tasted only bitter. As I checked the teapots to see whether they needed to be replenished, I felt a slight pressure. It was the weight of your eyes resting on my lips. I looked up, and I saw you standing next to a mirror reflecting the image of a wiry young man with deeply set, startled eyes. I looked up, and I was seeing myself beside you. I am at sea again,