The Book of Salt - Monique Truong [53]
When you first arrived in Paris, the Emperor of Vietnam and the Crown Prince of Cambodia were both here, you tell me, amazed by your luck, your lot in life. You have seen them both, you boast.
"Bee, they both speak French beautifully."
Like the Governor-General's chauffeur, I think.
The Emperor of Vietnam and Prince Norodom of Cambodia are very competitive. You are sure that every shopkeeper who has ever sold a trinket to one of these fellows knows that by the end of the day the other will come running in to ask for two or three of the same. Prince Norodom was the first to contact you. The Emperor of Vietnam is first only when women or gambling are involved. Only nineteen, and yet the Emperor keeps a notebook with the names of all the women whom he has bedded. He likes to name his racing horses after them. He gets a kick out of naming fast horses after fast women.
"Not a subtle man, this Emperor of yours, Bee."
Not a scholar-prince, I think.
Prince Norodom is a choirboy by comparison. He spent his first year in Paris composing music for the piano, exploring the consequences of removing all the sharps from his musical vocabulary. As for your work, he heard about it from his cousin, a medical school man. The Prince said that he was curious but skeptical. He, however, thought that it was very fortuitous, auspicious even, that you two were practically neighbors. " The rue de l'Odéon is not a street for a Crown Prince or for a man of science, but here we are,' said Prince Norodom, 'which means that we were destined to meet.'
"His logic, not mine. Impeccable nonetheless, Bee."
A scholar-prince, I think.
First, Prince Norodom wanted to see your maps. He closed the lid of his grand piano, and you spread them out on top of its inlaid surface. "These are an exact copy of the ones used by Dr. J. Haskel Kritzer," you explained to him. "His groundbreaking book on the subject was published in 1924." You were very fortunate to have studied with him, as so many had already been turned away. In your very first interview with Dr. Kritzer, he asked you to sit in a chair next to a sunlit window. The doctor looked into your eyes and after a short while asked, "Lattimore, do you believe that skin and bones can lie?"
"And that," you told the Prince, "is the first principle of this science." The second is that any quack can diagnose a fracture, but it takes a true doctor to diagnose the potential for breakage, the invisible fault lines, the predisposed weaknesses. Prince Norodom touched the outer corner of his right eye, an instinctual reaction that you have observed in many of your new patients. There is always a moment during the initial consultation when they realize that you may have already begun the examination, may have already recognized all the maladies that will inhabit their bodies in the years to come, may have already foreseen their aches and pains. You can assure them only by taking out the magnifying glass. The instrument allays their fears. It says to them that, No, the doctor has not yet begun.
"Prince Norodom was no different, Bee."
A man like any other, I think.
The Prince saw the circle of glass distorting the patterns of his Persian rug, and he relaxed and lowered his hand. Prince Norodom then leaned toward the piano, and you led him through the triangular sections of your maps one by one, until you had gone full circle, twice. Every organ, gland, and tissue in the human body is here, you told him, bouncing your index finger between the right and the left maps. Some organs are reflected in both. The thyroid g land, for instance, is represented on the right at about two o'clock and on the left at about nine. The theory is simple. Flecks, streaks, spots, or discolorations within a particular section of the iris indicate that there is a trouble spot, a weakness in a corresponding area of the body. As a diagnostic tool, it far exceeds the reaches of conventional medicine.
"Iridology is a science that can see the future, Bee."
A soothsayer, I think.
It is also