The Book of Salt - Monique Truong [21]
My third oldest brother worked at a printing press. He cleaned the typeset sheets, ready to be dismantled, voided by the next day's news. He removed each block and cleaned the letters while they were still warm and cloaked in a soft scab of ink, getting his brush into the sickle moons of each "C," the surrendering arms of each "Y." In his hands were the latest export prices of rubber, profitable even though the natives had delayed the caoutchouc harvest with their malaria and dysentery. In his hands were the numbers of heads guillotined for a foolhardy assassination attempt—the lone Nationalist did not even reach the gates of the villa, but justice demanded that an example be firmly set. Anh Tùng looked down and saw only the "O" roar of a lion's mouth, the "T" branches of a tree, the "S" curve of the Mekong. Anh Tùng smiled to himself thinking how the heat of the presses was not as bad as his friends had warned him, how the taste of ink can be washed away by a cup of tepid tea, how he would just hide his graying fingernails in his pockets when he went courting.
Minh the Sous Chef was the undeniable success. He should have been born in the Year of the Dragon, the Old Man said. A dragon in a long white apron was an irony forever lost on the Old Man. To him, the apron was a vestment, embroidered, consecrated by the outstretched hands of his god. No blotches of chicken grease, no stench of onions, no smears of entrails and fish guts, only the color of success in the Old Man's eyes. He often speculated that Anh Minh, being the firstborn, must have inherited the full measure of his own intelligence, talent, and ambition. When men of his own age were present, the Old Man declared that Anh Minh, being the first, must have soaked up all that my mother's womb had to offer. I can still see these strangers licking their lips, hear their low laughter, as they all shared in the thought of my mother at fourteen, at being her first, at soaking her up. Worse, I can still hear the Old Man's words:
"Look at Stupid over there. Good thing she dried up after him. The next one would have been a girl for sure!" the Old Man says, as he spits out the thin red juices flooding his lips. The betel nut and the lime paste that he constantly chews are dissolving in the heat of his mouth. He misses the spittoon. I jump up to wipe the floor clean. It is the reason that he keeps me around. He points his chin at me, offering me up to his cohorts as he had my mother. The laughter is now high and pitched. I am six years old. I am standing in the middle of a room of men, all drunk on something cheap. I am looking at the Old Man as he is spitting more red in my direction. The warm liquid lands partly in the brass pot and partly on my bare feet. I am six years old, and I am looking up at this man's face. I smile at him because I, a child, cannot understand what he is saying to me.
The last time I saw Anh Minh, he was in the garden behind the Governor-General's house with a crew of his strongest men, beating buckets of egg whites and shovels of white sugar in oversized copper bowls. Worktables had been set up just steps away from the door to the kitchen. On a night like this, Anh Minh knew that it was better to labor under the open sky. A breeze might blow through, and the leaves on the branches overhead would fan his men as they worked. On a night like this, the kitchen fans—giant star anises suspended from the ceilings—did little to lessen the heat coming from the ovens. If they had stayed inside, the egg whites, my brother knew, would have cooked solid. He had seen it happen to French chefs, newly arrived, who had no idea what can happen in the kitchens of Vietnam. The egg whites hit the side of the bowl, the wire whisk plunges in, and before the steady stream of sugar can be added, the whites are heavy and scrambled, a calf's brain shattered into useless lumps. In comparison, the garden was an oasis but