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By Root 316 0

limited list of who I could be. Foreigner, asiatique, and, this being Mother France, I must be Indochinese. They do not care to discern any further, ignoring the question of whether I hail from Vietnam, Cambodia, or Laos. Indochina, indeed. We all belong to the same owner, the same Monsieur and Madame. That must explain the failure to distinguish, the lapse in curiosity. To them, my body offers an exacting, predetermined life story. It cripples their imagination as it does mine. It tells them, they believe, all that they need to know about my past and, of lesser import, about the life that I now live within their present. My eyes, the passersby are quick to notice, do not shine with the brilliance of a foreign student. I have all of my limbs so I am not one of the soldiers imported from their colonies to fight in their Grande Guerre. No gamblers and whores joined to me at the hip so I am not the young Emperor or Prince of an old and mortified land. Within the few seconds that they have left to consider me before they stroll on by, they conclude that I am a laborer, the only real option left. Every day when I walk the streets of this city, I am just that. I am an Indochinese laborer, generalized and indiscriminate, easily spotted and readily identifiable all the same. It is this curious mixture of careless disregard and notoriety that makes me long to take my body into a busy Saigon marketplace and lose it in the crush. There, I tell myself, I was just a man, anonymous, and, at a passing glance, a student, a gardener, a poet, a chef, a prince, a porter, a doctor, a scholar. But in Vietnam, I tell myself, I was above all just a man.

15

GERTRUDESTEIN is up early this morning, a rare and for me an unwelcome occurrence. "She wants an omelet," says Miss Toklas, who busies herself with the plates, silverware, and tray.

Six eggs beaten with a generous pinch of salt until the mixture is thick with air, until the color lightens to the bare yellow of chamomile centers. Two large soupspoons of butter, the first melted in the pan until it sizzles, a harmonic of anticipation. The second is tucked under the puffy skin that has formed in less than a minute, if the heat is just right. A simple dish that reveals the master, exposes the novice. My omelets are well regarded and held in high esteem by all those who have partaken. Like children, gullible and full of wonder, they always ask, "What is your secret?"

Do I look like a fool? I ask myself each time. Please, Madame, do not equate my lack of speech with a lack of thought. If there is a secret, Madame, I would take it with me to my unmarked grave, hide it in my bony jaw, the place where my tongue would be if it had not rotted away. Dare I say it is your ignorance, Madame, that lines my pocket, gives me entry into the lesser rooms of your house, allows my touch to enter you in the most intimate of ways. Madame, please do not forget that every morsel that slides down your dewy white throat has first rested in my two hands, coddled in the warmth of my ten fingers. What clings to them clings to you. If there is a secret, Madame, it is this—I pause for effect, a silent tribute to Bão. Nutmeg! I lie. An important disclosure, they always think. They all believe in a "secret" ingredient, a balm for their Gallic pride, a magic elixir that anyone can employ to duplicate my success. its existence downplays my skills, cheapens my worth. its very existence threatens my own. Madame, if you add a sprinkle of freshly grated nutmeg to your beaten eggs, you will have an omelet laced with the taste of hand soaps and the smell of certain bugs whose crushed bodies emit a warning odor to the others. Nutmeg is villainous when it is not sugared and creamed. Used alone in an omelet, it will not kill you, Madame, but it will certainly choke you. If there is a "secret," Madame, it is this: Repetition and routine. Servitude and subservience. Beck and call.

While you have been waking up to the aroma of coffee brewing, dressing to the hushed rhythm of other people's labor, I have been in the kitchen since