The Book of Salt - Monique Truong [68]
FAME , you tell me, appears in the irides as a circle of flames.
"Bee, those two are going to bask in it."
"Why?"
Your eyes race toward the door, responding to a knock that is not there. A spasm of shame, I think. You, Sweet Sunday Man, are ashamed of yourself, not me. Ashamed that you chose me, a man who may as well be blind, you think. This October will mark my fifth year with my Mesdames. How could Bee not know? you must think. Sweet Sunday Man, I know. I know when my Madame and Madame wake up in the morning. I know the sounds that come from behind their bedroom door when they think that I am not around. I know the cigars that they smoke. I know the postcards that they collect and the women who recline naked on them. I know the old-woman gases that escape from them, and the foods that aggravate them. Brussels sprouts, if you must know. I know the faces of those who are invited often to dinner. I know the backs of those who are asked never to return. I know the devotion that my Mesdames have for each other. I know the faith that they both have in GertrudeStein.
"Why?" I ask again.
"Stein's books."
"Books?"
"Stein writes books, but they are ... unusual, almost not books at all," you try to explain.
I am impressed anyway. Miss Toklas has a scholar-prince, I think.
"Here," you say, crossing the front room of your garret. You point to a row of books sitting by themselves on a shelf, and you say "Here" again.
I see a spine covered in flowers, one in the yellow of banana peels before they are freckled by the sun, one in the gray of my mother's best áo dài, I pick up a book wrapped in the blue of a Bilignin summer sky, and I leaf through its pages. Like rice paper, I think.
"It's vellum," you say, as you try to take the book from my hands.
"Vellum?" I repeat.
Paper resembling the skin of a calf, you explain with hand gestures and playful caresses against my own. I gladly give the book back to you. "Only five," you tell me with the outstretched fingers of your right hand, "deluxe copies were printed." Words printed on skin, I am still thinking. You carefully place the book back on the shelf and exchange it for another: "Here, this one, this is Stein's latest." I take the book from your hands, balancing its top and bottom edges between the tips of my fingers, mimicking how you held it in your own. Last year, you tell me, was a very good one for GertrudeStein. Not only was GertrudeStein published in 1933, but in 1933 GertrudeStein was also read. This is a minor miracle that you hope, by fixing your eyes on mine, that I can understand. "The Autobiography of Alice B, Toklas," you read to me from the book's cover. Hearing the title only in English, I am still able to understand. My Madame wrote a book about my other Madame. How convenient, I think. GertrudeStein would never have to travel far for her stories. They, I suspect, chase her down and beg to be told. You have stayed in Paris to wait for the French translation of The Autobiography, you tell me. A collector, I think. "I've also stayed here," you whisper, "waiting for you."
And am I but one within a long line of others? Are there wounded trophies who have preceded me? But why ask questions, I tell myself, when you are here with me now. Some men take off their eyeglasses, some lower their eyelids. You lower your voice. Desire humbles us in different ways. Your body comes close, and the scent of lime and bay is all around us. You tilt your head. You kiss my lips, lopsided by a smile. Your breath is warmth spreading across the closed lids of my eyes. Your tongue finds the tips of my lashes, flicking them aside. My Madame's books are set down for the night.
So that we are clear, Sweet Sunday Man, I have known from the very beginning that GertrudeStein is a writer. I just did not know that it was her vocation, her métier, as the French would say. From my first day at 27 rue de Fleurus, I have seen my Madame writing, but then again I have seen other Mesdames busying themselves with the task as well. I assumed it was all the same: letters, lists, invitations extended