The Book of Salt - Monique Truong [22]
Sixty-two guests were expected that night at Madame's birthday dinner. One hundred twenty-four turban-shaped islands of meringue, crisscrossed by fine lines of caramelized sugar, would bob two by two in crystal bowls brimming with chilled sabayon sauce. Anh Minh claimed that this was the one dish that proved that old Chaboux had been worthy of the chef's toque. His replacement, Chef Blériot, must have agreed, as this was the one recipe from the former regime that he followed without change. Even though it was highly unorthodox, said Anh Minh, a clear deviation from the classic recipe for oeufs à la neige. "Eggs in the snow," Anh Minh had translated for me, like it was the first line of a poem. He, like Chef Blériot, refused to condemn old Chaboux's actions. "Poor Chaboux," Anh Minh said, "no one had been more surprised by Madame's command than he. "
After all, "As if in France!" was Madame's unflinching rallying cry, one that had never failed to set old Chaboux's Gallic heart pounding. "The Governor-General's household has the duty to maintain itself with dignity and distinction. Everything here should be as if in France!" Madame commanded, failing to note that in France she would have only three instead of fifteen to serve her household needs. "As if in France!" ended each sharp command, a punctuation that Madame inserted for our benefit. Even the oldest member of the household staff, the gardener's helper with his stooped back and his moss-grown tongue, could mimic it. Every afternoon when Madame donned her tennis whites and departed for the club, we would let it slip from our lips, an all-purpose complaint, a well-aimed insult, a bitter-filled expletive. Madame's phrase had so many meanings, and we amused ourselves by using them all. Accompanied by our laughter, "As if in France!" barreled through the house, hid itself inside closets, slept behind curtains, until Madame returned, her face flushed from lobbing a little ball to and fro, to reclaim the words as her own. "As if in France!" lost its power over Madame, though, when the topic at hand was her growing distrust of cows' milk. "In this tropical heat," Madame had been told, "it is not unheard of for the milk to spoil as it is leaving the beast's sweaty udder."
"Imagine living among a people who have tasted only mother's milk," the chauffeur overheard Madame exclaiming as she dictated a letter. "Before we arrived," Madame continued, "what the Indochinese called milk' was only water poured over crushed dried soybeans!" Madame knew that this would set her sister's head shaking, thinking of how fortunate she was to have married a man with no ambition. Madame ended her letter, which was to be typed by her secretary onto the Governor-General's official stationery, with a few parting lines about the managerial difficulties of overseeing a household staff of fifteen. This, explained the chauffeur, was just in case her sister lingered too long on such unenlightened thoughts.
Madame's orders to old Chaboux were clear. The crème anglaise, the surrogate snow, a concoction of egg yolks, sugar, and milk, had to be replaced. For her birthday dinner, Madame wanted her eggs in the snow, but she would not have any of Indochina's milk in the snow. "Simply too much of a risk," she said. "I've heard that the Nationalists have been feeding the cows here a weed so noxious that the milk, if consumed in sufficient amounts, would turn a perfectly healthy woman barren." The "woman" that Madame and old Chaboux had in their minds was, of course, French. Madame added this piece of unsolicited horror and bodily