The Book of Salt - Monique Truong [56]
"Why green?" Blériot wanted to know.
"What?"
"I said, ' Why green?'" he repeated.
"I know what you said, but what do you mean?" I asked. "Why does the gardener's helper always wear green?"
"Does he?"
"' Does he?' You sound as if this is new to you."
"It is new to me."
"I'm glad to hear that there are some things that are still new to you," Blériot said, as he turned around to look at me or, rather, to allow me to look at him. A man in love with his own face, Blériot was feeling generous and wanted to share. From the dip and the swivel of his voice alone, I could tell that he was no longer talking about the helper's penchant for the color green. No, he was talking about me, a garde-manger who had taught him, a chef de cuisine, a thing or two about heat, about sugar, about the point at which all things melt in the mouth. Cooking had nothing to do with it. We were returning at that moment to the Governor-General's house, and I was walking behind him as usual. Behind me were three young boys carrying the vegetables and fruits that Blériot had purchased earlier that morning from the central marketplace. Blériot always hired the same three boys. They came as a set. Even if there was only enough for one of them to carry, the other two would come along as well. Companionship, loneliness, or fear? It was difficult to say what drove these three.
The three boys made their living in the marketplace. At first they tried shining shoes, but the real shoeshine boys—the ones who had invested in platform boxes filled with polish and two kinds of rags, one coarse for rubbing off the mud and the other soft for buffing what was left of the leather—had banded together and chased them away. After several weeks the three boys returned. This time they watched over the stalls for vendors who needed to relieve themselves in an alleyway or who wanted to check out a competitor's new display of goods. The payment that the three usually received for their services was the last slurp of broth from the vendor's lunchtime bowl of phỏ. Lukewarm, beefy, but with no beef left, just a flotilla of broken noodles, and, if they were lucky, at the bottom of the bowl a bit of gristle that had been bitten off and spat back into the broth. I have seen other children work for this sort of pay before. How many slurps does it take to fill a growing boy's stomach? This is a trick question. It assumes that there is a finite number, a threshold at which point there is no longer a need, a gnawing that defines poverty at any age but especially in the young. I have seen other children trying to answer this question before, but it was the sight of these three sharing the broth left at the bottom of one bowl, the careful passing from one small set of hands to another, the look of relief as each of their faces emerges from a feast more imagined than had, that forever sanctified that marketplace for me. No incense, no marble, no gold, but faith lives here, I thought. Faith that there will always be something left at the bottom of the bowl, that none of them will take more than his share, faith that there will always be three.
The first time Blériot hired these boys I translated for him their asking fee, which was admittedly laughable or larcenous, depending on the mood of your Monsieur. Fortunately, Blériot was too fresh off the boat to know that the quoted amount was the equivalent of three bowls of phỏ, hold the gristle, thank you. It was Blériot's first time to a Saigon market. The vendors had overpriced, and he had overbought. Blériot was existing in a monetary system created just for him. Worth is relative, after all. Blériot looked at my arms weighted to the ground