The Book of Salt - Monique Truong [51]
By the time we left the Niobe, I had a long list of questions that I had never asked Bão. I learned early on that his answers were unhelpful at best and at worst entirely uncommunicative. A ruse to deny me the full depth of his feelings, I told myself. If I had questions, lingering and persistent, I was better off answering them for myself. For instance, the Latouche Tréville was better because Bão, I imagined, liked being so close to luxury, so intimate with its smells, the rumpled linens loaded in his arms, lavender-scented still by the fresh-bathed bodies of women whom he would never meet, the perfume and cigar smoke still dancing in the air as he mopped the decks clean at three in the morning. He walked on water, but he was a servant, after all. And like all servants he had to take solace from wealth and pleasure, even if they were not his own.
11
THE GARRET is cold this morning. You must have been out late last night, coming home shoulder to shoulder with the rising sun. I throw another piece of wood into the stove, a funny iron Buddha, presiding in the middle of the room. You prefer the steam heat, which rumbles through the coiled pipes, an innovation that you pay extra for with each month's rent. Odd that this modern contraption produces such ancient sounds. A trapped animal, it sounds like to me. I prefer the wood-burning stove. If I am to feel the warmth, I insist on seeing the flames. I kiss you hello, your cheeks, eyes, temples, saving your lips for last. I press my body against you to say that my lips have longed for you, have begged to touch your skin. I say your name, "Maacus Laat-ti-moe," a greeting that makes you laugh. I try again, "MARcus Lat-timore." You award my effort with a kiss, one that does not end until we are on the floor, fumbling for buttons, flaps of fabric, until we are skin on skin, a prayer for the Buddha with the fire in his heart. You tell me that on Friday I was at the flower market on the Île de la Cité, that I had a small white blossom drooping from my lapel, that I looked lost. As I begin to understand what you are saying to me, I become acutely aware of my skin. I detect the existence of a forgotten terrain. I believe that my relationship to this city has now changed. I have been witnessed. You have testified to my appearance and demeanor. I have been sighted. You possess a memory of my body in this city, ink on a piece of paper, and you, a magician and a seer, could do it again. How can I carry my body through the streets of this city in the same way again?
"Sweet Sunday," I say into your ear, repeating the first English words that you have taught me. On the Niobe, Bão had impressed upon me the need to learn a few English phrases. The usual list of the usefuls, he said. Bão claimed that he knew of others but that these should get me through most situations: "please, thank you, hello, good-bye, beer, whiskey, rum, that-man-took-your-money, 7-did-not-sleep-with-your-girl, I quit." You, Sweet Sunday Man, have yet to teach me a practical word. Your lessons are about their lush interiors, the secrets that words can keep. I have learned from you that the English word "please" can be a question, "May I?" and a response, "You may." "Please" can also be a verb, an effortless act that accompanies you into every room. Sweet Sunday, indeed. It is the only day of the week that I see you. Two months have passed, but together we have had only eight days. We, though, have already established a routine. I am at your garret by seven o'clock in the morning on Sunday. I stay till three or four the following morning, and then I return to 27 rue de Fleurus. At first it was just a precaution. I could not risk angering my Mesdames by oversleeping again. The arrangement must suit you, as you have yet to ask me to stay the whole of the night, to pick which side of your bed would be