The Book of Salt - Monique Truong [67]
Good-bye, GertrudeStein.
Really, Madame, what was I supposed to do in Bilignin? It was never part of our original bargain. I spend my months there and never, never see a face that looks like mine, except for the one that grows gaunt in the mirror. In Paris, GertrudeStein, the constant traffic of people at least includes my fellow asiatiques. And while we may never nod at one another, tip our hats in polite fashion, or even exchange empathy in quick glances, we breathe a little easier with each face that we see. It is the recognition that in the darkest streets of the city there is another body like mine, and that it means me no harm. If we do not acknowledge each other, it is not out of a lack of kindness. The opposite, GertrudeStein. To walk by without blinking an eye is to say to each other that we are human, whole, a man or a woman like any other, two lungfuls of air, a heart pumping blood, a stomach hungry for home-cooked food, a body in constant search for the warmth of the sun. Before I came to the rue de Fleurus, GertrudeStein, the only way I knew how to hold onto that moment of dispensation, that without-blinking-an-eye exchange, to keep it warm in my hands, was by threading silver through them. Blood makes me a man. No one can take that away from me, I thought. But as you know, GertrudeStein, in order for me to stay at the rue de Fleurus, I have had to give up the habit that has sustained me. Miss Toklas inspects my hands every day. First she checks my nails to see if they are cut and clean—I assume her previous cooks had to submit to this examination as well—and then she turns my hands palms up, a step she has added just for me, her "Little Indochinese." I know, GertrudeStein, that that is what Miss Toklas calls me when her anger gets the better of her. Her Little Indochinese? Madame, we Indochinese belong to the French. You two may live in France, but you are still Americans, after all. Little Indochinese, indeed.
What you probably do not know, GertrudeStein, is that in Bilignin you and Miss Toklas are the only circus act in town. And me, I am the asiatique, the sideshow freak. The farmers there are childlike in their fascination and in their unadorned cruelty. Because of your short-cropped hair and your, well, masculine demeanor, they call you "Caesar." Miss Toklas, they dub "Cleopatra" in an ironic tribute to her looks and her companionship role in your life. As for your guests who motor into Bilignin all summer long, they are an added attraction. Last summer, the farmers especially enjoyed the painter who hiked through their fields with clumps of blue paint stuck in his uncombed hair. There was also a bit of commotion over the young writer who wore a pair of lederhosen to walk Basket up and down the one street of that village. As for me, the farmers are used to me by now. Only when they are very drunk do they forget themselves. At the grape gathering this year, one of them asked, "Did you know how to use a fork and a knife before coming to France?" I certainly knew how to use a knife, I thought. That was followed by "Will you marry three or four asiatique wives?" None, thank you. Then a usually quiet farmer, a widower who lives alone with his dog, which he claims is more sweet-tempered than his now departed wife, asked, "Are you circumcised?" I looked around at my hosts and then up at the harvest moon. Why do they always ask this question? I wondered. I could only assume that their curiosity about my male member is a by-product of their close association with animal husbandry. Castrating too many sheep could make a man clinical and somewhat abrupt about such things, I thought. The morning after, they never recall asking me this question. In a matter of a few short hours, everyone in that village loses his memory. Everyone except me. Believe me, I have tried. But no matter how much I drink, I am still left with their voices, thick with alcohol, and their faces burnt raw by the sun.
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