The Book of Salt - Monique Truong [44]
"You'll know the second street that I've lived on, but not the first one."
"Try me."
"Fine, I'll start with the easy one first. Rue des Gobelins."
"That is too easy. Thirteenth Arrondissement. That is not too shabby of a neighborhood, friend."
"Wait until you hear where I first lived in this city."
"Shall we make it interesting, friend? How about a drink for the right answer? There is only one, right?"
"Friend, if you know where it's located, I'll not only buy you a drink but a dinner," he said.
Please, please if there is a god, let me know the street, I thought.
"Impasse Compoint."
"I know exactly where it is! Seventeenth Arrondissement. An alley with only three or four houses facing out onto it, right? Forgive me for saying, friend, but I did not know that anyone lived in those houses. Mostly storage places, I thought."
"Amazing, friend, amazing. Maybe, I shouldn't say anything more about myself and let you tell me the rest."
"I only know streets. The poorer they are, the easier, and I am sorry to say, but impasse Compoint is one of the worst off in this city."
"You definitely know it, then," he said.
The man on the bridge, true to his word, suggested a restaurant on the rue Descartes. "I know the chef there," he said.
"From where?"
"A city."
"An English one?"
"An American one."
An American restaurant. Bargelike slabs of beef and very tall glasses of cow's milk, I imagined. But when we got there, the red lantern hanging outside announced that this was no American restaurant. "Oh," I said, sighing, "I was not expecting a Chinese restaurant." Three kinds of vegetables, any three will do, just as long they are cheap and drowned in a cornstarch-thickened slurry, I thought.
"Friend, I promised you a dinner, and it will be a good one," he said, resting his left hand lightly on my shoulder. He opened the door with his right, and we walked in. The interior of the place immediately struck me as, well, un-Chinese. No red letterings, no gold-leaf flourishes, no spangled dragon, no shiny-bellied Buddha, all the things that the French look for in a good Chinese restaurant were here nonexistent. No wonder it is empty, I thought. How can they tell this place apart from Chez Jean, Jacques, or Jules? Look, there is even a pretty French cashier, seated just inside the front door, a strategic position that will allow her to ignore us from the very beginning, I thought.
"Mademoiselle, a table for two," said the man from the bridge, his French delivered with a pleasant touch of authority.
"Any table is fine," she responded with a short, quick sweep of her right hand.
"Cám on," he said, lapsing unexpectedly into Vietnamese to express his thanks.
The young woman lifted her eyes from the book that she was reading and looked at us for the first time. Her eyes were brown with ripples of sand inside. Like Madame's secretary's, I thought. "You're welcome, Monsieur," she whispered, even though there was no one else in the restaurant.
We had our pick of twelve tables. Each was covered in white cloth and set with forks, knives, and porcelain soupspoons—basin-shaped and generous, they were the only things inside this restaurant that told me it was in the business of serving Chinese food. We sat down at a table, and we grinned at each other without saying a word. As if we shared a secret, I thought. On the contrary, our childlike behavior was an obvious sign, I am afraid, that neither one of us had been in a restaurant for quite a long time.
"The chef here is American?" I asked. "How did he learn how to cook Chinese food?"
"He's not American. I didn't say he was, did I? As for your second question, he learned how to cook from his mother, didn't you?"
"Oh."
"Listen, friend, the chef here tends to be shy. He may come out of the kitchen, but he won't come to the table and talk. Don't think him rude."
The cashier, who was now doubling as our waitress, handed us the menu. She said if there was anything that we wanted that was not listed, please let her know,