The Book of Salt - Monique Truong [31]
When I began working in the Governor-General's kitchen, Anh Minh told me about the "official tasters" who sat by the side of the Empress Dowager of China, right next to the little dog that lapped up the spit and the phlegm that this old woman in heavy silks would occasionally cough up. The tasters were assigned to eat a small morsel from every dish before the Empress would even place her nose among their wafting flags of steam. The tasters, according to Anh Minh, were chosen based on the refinement of their palates. They were men who could see with their tongues the grit of one grain of sand left clinging inside the frizzled lips of an oyster, the char of one ember tarnishing the skin of a river trout. They could detect the absence of the sun during the growing season and the presence of uncooked blood in the chambers of bones. "Imagine," Anh Minh said, "being the first." To hear him tell it, I thought that the official tasters had coveted positions indeed. With his usual rapid-fire rhythm, Anh Minh evoked for me the epic balance of flavors in the dishes consumed by these long dead mandarins. When he spoke of bitter melons steamed with the brine-plumped tongues of one hundred ducks, I saw a landscape of greens and grays. I tasted parsimony and extravagance commingled on a single plate. Anh Minh, in this way, taught me what he understood to be the most important lesson of his trade. He knew that to be a good cook I had to first envision the possibilities. I had to close my eyes and see and taste what was not there. I had to dream and discern it all on my tongue. Slowly, gradually, I was able to do just that.
Anh Minh, of course, never mentioned the casualties who were carried out of the Empress's dining pavilion every few months or so. The limp bodies of the official tasters ravaged by poison, as flavorless as a mouthful of pure mountain snow, were buried with a pair of ivory chopsticks, a token of thanks from the Empress Dowager. Only after I heard the chauffeur's version of the story did I understand that the official tasters were men condemned to die for their culinary pleasures. The Empress, the chauffeur told me, had no need for gourmands. The Empress needed warm bodies who could absorb the poison and host death in her stead. The fact that these bodies belonged to men who appreciated good food was merely incidental. In fact, it was the result of a perverse sense of goodwill exhibited by the Empress's closest advisers. It was they, according to the chauffeur, who decided that the official taster positions would be awarded only to those who possessed an uncompromising ardor for the finest of comestibles. The advisers reasoned that the pleasure that these men could milk from each bite would surely be heightened, intensified to an almost excruciating degree, by their knowledge that each taste could be their last. When told of their imminent appointments, these men ate and drank continually for days and sometimes weeks, hoping for death to come to them in the dishes of their own choosing. It rarely did.
I suppose that the moral of the story was there all along, but it took the chauffeur's rendition to make me understand. There is a fine line between a cook and a murderer, and that line is held steady by the men of my trade. Really, the only difference between the two is that one kills to cook while the other cooks to kill. Killing