The Book of Salt - Monique Truong [73]
From the very beginning, I knew. Miss Toklas would never be one to ask because she is a Madame who has secrets of her own. Miss Toklas places the omelet, the curved edges still humming heat, before GertrudeStein, a song of temptation falling on tone-deaf ears. GertrudeStein will not touch the food until it has dropped to the temperature of the dining room. Tepid, my Madame thinks, is best. Hot and cold are too easily discernible. Tepid is a worthy scientific investigation, a result that requires calibration and calculation. Tepid is also, for GertrudeStein, a delectable dose of revenge. Because Miss Toklas is happiest when her meals are consumed while hot, with thick tendrils of steam reaching up, catching her hair and dangling earrings. She insists on nothing less for those who sit at her table. She demands even more for GertrudeStein. When what is brought to the table simmers with passion and pride, its appearance, Miss Toklas believes, should quell all conversation, send hands reaching for forks and knives, incite lips to part in anticipation. Miss Toklas believes that with every meal she serves a part of herself, an exquisite metaphor garnishing every plate. GertrudeStein knows that for every minute that she indulges, entertains like an unwanted guest at the table, Miss Toklas suffers a little death. Worse, rejection enters the room and threatens to steal Miss Toklas's chair. GertrudeStein in this way extracts satisfaction for every indignity that she has suffered at the hands of Miss Toklas. Most recently there was the banishment of cream and lard from their diet for six miserable months. Miss Toklas's resolve ensured that the sight of GertrudeStein struggling, clumsy and oafish, to rise from her chintz-covered armchair would remain a secret only we three would share. The exile of salt, the expatriation of alcohol, the expulsion of cigarettes, these were the other brutal regimes that came and went, trampling mercilessly on my Madame's will. Retribution comes to GertrudeStein in a form so passive, potent, and cruel that it could subsist only between two lovers, between GertrudeStein and her "Sweetie," her "Queen," her "Cake," her "Cherubim," her "Baby," her "Wifie," her "Pussy."
I have heard them all. I do not have a favorite. I do not know what they mean. Though "Cake" sounds to my ears like the English name "Kate." A "Kate" who is good enough for GertrudeStein to eat is a "Cake," I say to myself and smile. Bão would be proud. "Slip your own meanings into their words," he said, a bit of advice that has saved me. Language is a house with a host of doors, and I am too often uninvited and without the keys. But when I infiltrate their words, take a stab at their meanings, I create the trapdoors that will allow me in when the night outside is too cold and dark. When I move unnoticed through the rooms of 27 rue de Fleurus, when I float in a current swift and unending, and I hear Miss Toklas offering to GertrudeStein, "Another piece of Cake?" I can catch my breath and smile.
This morning, like all others, I am expected to prepare a plate of sautéed chicken livers for Basket and Pépé, after I have fully attended to their Mesdames, of course. At 27 rue de Fleurus as elsewhere, the order of things is very important. "Pink on the inside and moist, but no blood should run when they are pressed with a fork" were Miss Toklas's precise instructions. A splash of cognac, Madame? I was tempted to but did not ask. I prepare one plate for each dog. These two are absolutely unwilling to share. I have to agree with Pépé on this point. Basket is a chronic drooler who contributes his own broth to each and every dish. A plate of liver, a pretty girl, another dog's pungent anus, it is all the same to Basket. His Highness