The Book of Salt by Monique Truong

Author:Monique Truong
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2011-05-20T03:00:32+00:00

13

WHEN I APPLIED for the position as live-in cook, I did not know about the house in Bilignin. I assumed that the lives of these two American ladies and therefore mine would be centered in Paris on the rue de Fleurus. They did not inform me during the interview about their seasonal migration. Not that it would have made a difference to me then. Before joining their household, I thought that a home was a home, a Madame was a Madame, a city was ... well, even then I knew that Paris was a city and that many other places were not. So I suppose it might have made a difference if I had known. I might have asked for more money, hazard pay, months-in-the-middle-of-nowhere pay, you-cannot-pay-me-enough-to-live-here pay. It is only February and I know it is early to think about the summer in Bilignin, but Sweet Sunday Man has been asking. He wants to know whether my Mesdames are going there this year and, if yes, when. Of course, they are going. My Mesdames are very regular, Sweet Sunday Man. They like routines and schedules. They do not like to deviate from the chosen paths of their lives. GertrudeStein, after all, burned sixty candles on her birthday cake this month, and Miss Toklas will burn fifty-seven in April. She has a French document, though, that lists her as being born on a day in June. There have been years when my Madame waits until then to grow older. I do not know what she has planned for 1934. I suppose it depends on how she is feeling about her age, advancing. I would wager, though, that Miss Toklas will celebrate in June again this year because June means that my Mesdames will be in Bilignin. When I began working for them back in the autumn of 1929, they had just finished their first summer in their country house. My Mesdames ' routine there was just beginning.

When summer comes to Paris, my Madame and Madame pack their clothes and their dogs into their automobile, and they drive themselves and their cargo down to the Rhône Valley to the tiny farming village of Bilignin. I am left behind to lock up the apartment and to hand the keys over to the concierge, whom I have always suspected of being overly glad to see these two American ladies go. I have seen him in his first-floor window watching the young men who come to court GertrudeStein, and I have seen him shaking his head unable to comprehend the source of the attraction. With my Mesdames already on the road for over a day, I pack up whatever warm-weather garments I have that year, and I go and splurge on a hat for the hot summer sun. If I find a bargain, then I also treat myself to lunch at an establishment with cloth on the table and an attentive waiter who is obliged to call me "Monsieur." I then take what is

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