The Book of Salt - Monique Truong [7]
Minh the Sous Chef used to be just Anh Minh, my oldest brother and the only brother who today can make me long for home. No one would have enjoyed this park bench and the shade of these forlorn chestnut trees more than he. Anh Minh believed absolutely and passionately that the French language would save us, would welcome us into the fold, would reward us with kisses on both cheeks. His was not an abstract belief. It was grounded in the kitchen of the Governor-General's house. He insisted that after Monsieur and Madame tasted his omelette à la bourbonnaise, his coupe ambassadrice, his crème marquise, they would have no need to send for a French chef de cuisine to replace old Claude Chaboux. The Old Man, like a soothsayer, declared that soon there would be the first Vietnamese chef de cuisine in the Governor-General's house. So while the rest of us in the household staff stood there dumbly experiencing the balletic surges of Monsieur and Madame's tirade, Anh Minh alone stood in agony, lashed and betrayed by all those French words he had adopted and kept close to his heart, wounded. Minh the Wounded, I began calling him in my prayers.
Old Chaboux died, and a young Jean Blériot arrived from France to don the coveted title. Now only an act of god, a bout of malaria, or a lustful look at Madame would hasten the departure of Chef Blériot, as he insisted on being called. May 11, 1923, began his reign. Anh Minh stayed on in the kitchen of the Governor-General's to serve under yet another French chef, to cover for him once he began to reek of rum, to clean up after him once he could no longer find the rim of the pot, handfuls of shallot and dashes of oil seasoning the tile floor.
And, me, what was I supposed to do? Twenty years old and still a garde-manger, sculpting potatoes into perfect little spheres, carving chunks of turnips into swans, the arc of their necks as delicate as Blériot's fingers, fingers that I wanted to taste. Equipped with skills and desires that no man would admit to having, what was I supposed to do?
"Two American ladies wish to retain a cook—27 rue de Fleurus." Prosperous enough area of town, and two American ladies must have enough to pay a nice wage. One of the skills—it is more like a sleight of hand—that I have acquired since coming to this city is an acumen for its streets. I know where they reside, where they dissolve discreetly into one another, where they inexplicably choose to rear their unmarked heads. A skill born from the lack of other skills, really. When each day is mapped for me by a wanton display of street names congesting the pages of the help-wanteds, when I am accompanied by the stench of the unemployable, I am forced into an avid, adoring courtship with the boulevards of this city. I must admit that in truly desperate times, my intimate knowledge of the city has saved me. Paris is a Madame with a heart.
"Name any street. Go ahead, any street. I'll tell you where it is, Left Bank or Right Bank, exact locale even. Rue de Fleurus? It's a little street off of the boulevard Raspail, near the Jardin du Luxembourg." I have earned several dozen glasses of marc that way. Frenchmen, drunk men, love a challenge. The listeners, if any, often will ask me to repeat myself. It seems that my accented French is hard even on the ears of laborers. But once it is clear to them that I am there for their amusement, the rest is an enthralling performance. Fortunately for me, I have no idea how to say "enthralling" in French because otherwise I would be compelled to brag and ruin the surprise. And they are always surprised. And they always try again. They will name the street where their