"Sweet Sunday," I say into your ear, repeating the first English words that you have taught me. On the Niobe, Bão had impressed upon me the need to learn a few English phrases. The usual list of the usefuls, he said. Bão claimed that he knew of others but that these should get me through most situations: "please, thank you, hello, good-bye, beer, whiskey, rum, that-man-took-your-money, 7-did-not-sleep-with-your-girl, I quit." You, Sweet Sunday Man, have yet to teach me a practical word. Your lessons are about their lush interiors, the secrets that words can keep. I have learned from you that the English word "please" can be a question, "May I?" and a response, "You may." "Please" can also be a verb, an effortless act that accompanies you into every room. Sweet Sunday, indeed. It is the only day of the week that I see you. Two months have passed, but together we have had only eight days. We, though, have already established a routine. I am at your garret by seven o'clock in the morning on Sunday. I stay till three or four the following morning, and then I return to 27 rue de Fleurus. At first it was just a precaution. I could not risk angering my Mesdames by oversleeping again. The arrangement must suit you, as you have yet to ask me to stay the whole of the night, to pick which side of your bed would be solely mine. We, yes, now have a routine, and this is the part of our day when you and I lie like children in our mother's womb, curled into each other for warmth and the feeling of skin. You are always the first to speak. I know you feel compelled to shoo silence away with your words. You speak to me in a childlike French, phrases truncated and far from complete. Your efforts are charitable, noble deeds that are taking you by the throat and strangling you. You open your mouth only to close it again, knowing that your words would weigh me down, keep me from touching shore, deepen the distance between us.
We will lie side by side, devising our own language. As in Sundays past we will push and pull at the only one we have in common. Yours is a languid French, a vestige of your southern America and its rich cadences, an English so different-sounding from my Mesdames'. My French is clipped and jagged, an awkward careless collection, a blind man's home, a drunk man's stumbled steps. We will throw all our words onto the table and find those saturated with meaning. Like the nights that we have had together, there will be few. We will attempt to tell stories to each other with just one word. We will end up telling them on our bodies. We always do. You, like my Madame and Madame, have already given up on saying my name. You say instead what sounds to me like the letter "B." But you do not say "bé" like the French, but like they do in America, you tell me. You draw me a picture of a hive, and you draw a honeybee nearby. You point to it and then to me and say that I am your "Bee." Better than "Thin Bin," I think, but still no closer to my name.
The thought comes to me gradually, creeps into the room. I struggle six days a week and on Sweet Sunday I struggle no more. I tell you to speak to me in the language of your birth. I free myself from the direct translation of your words into understandable feelings and recognizable acts. I leave your words raw, allow myself to experience your language as a medium of songs, improvising and in flux. I imagine your language as water in my hands, reflective and clear. You reply that if you return to the place where moss hangs, wavy-haired from the trees, where mosquitoes bloody the nights, you will not want to stop. You will talk for hours, unearthing words whose origins lie deep within the shades of magnolia trees, whose roots have grown strong from blood-rich soil. You will tell me that you are southern but that you are not a southern gentleman, that your father owns land, which you will never inherit, that you are a son in blood only. Even before you were born, your mother had forfeited your father's name for a lifetime income. A lover who, unlike your father, would always be constant, she thought. Your mother, you explain, is a woman whose legitimacy had also been compromised from the moment of her conception. Her legacy to you is that drop of blood, which made her an exile in the land of her birth. But you are not like her, you say, touching the tips of my eyelashes. The blood is your key, not your lock. A southern man without his father's surname is a man freed, you tell me, dispensing irony like a hard, uncrushed peppercorn. A man with a healthy income from his mother is also a freed man, you add, with a laugh that falls to the ground, exhausted and sad. Your mother's money has paved your way to this city. It first sent you to the north of your America for college. It knew that there the texture of your hair, the midnight underneath the gauze of your skin, were more readily lost to untrained eyes, you say, tracing the line of my collarbone as it rises to meet your shoulders. You are tempted to call it his money, but, when you think about it, it is hers now. She has earned it, fair and square. Squarely on her back, that is, you say, closing my eyes with a lock of your hair. Sweet Sunday Man, go ahead and talk, and I will get up and prepare our evening meal. For your benefit as much as mine, you can pause and say "Bee," your name for me, insert it where a breath would be, and I will look over at you, letting you know that I am listening.
When you first arrived in Paris, the Emperor of Vietnam and the Crown Prince of Cambodia were both here, you tell me, amazed by your luck, your lot in life. You have seen them both, you boast.
"Bee, they both speak French beautifully."
Like the Governor-General's chauffeur, I think.
The Emperor of Vietnam and Prince Norodom of Cambodia are very competitive. You are sure that every shopkeeper who has ever sold a trinket to one of these fellows knows that by the end of the day the other will come running in to ask for two or three of the same. Prince Norodom was the first to contact you. The Emperor of Vietnam is first only when women or gambling are involved. Only nineteen, and yet the Emperor keeps a notebook with the names of all the women whom he has bedded. He likes to name his racing horses after them. He gets a kick out of naming fast horses after fast women.
"Not a subtle man, this Emperor of yours, Bee."
Not a scholar-prince, I think.
Prince Norodom is a choirboy by comparison. He spent his first year in Paris composing music for the piano, exploring the consequences of removing all the sharps from his musical vocabulary. As for your work, he heard about it from his cousin, a medical school man. The Prince said that he was curious but skeptical. He, however, thought that it was very fortuitous, auspicious even, that you two were practically neighbors. " The rue de l'Odéon is not a street for a Crown Prince or for a man of science, but here we are,' said Prince Norodom, 'which means that we were destined to meet.'
"His logic, not mine. Impeccable nonetheless, Bee."
A scholar-prince, I think.
First, Prince Norodom wanted to see your maps. He closed the lid of his grand piano, and you spread them out on top of its inlaid surface. "These are an exact copy of the ones used by Dr. J. Haskel Kritzer," you explained to him. "His groundbreaking book on the subject was published in 1924." You were very fortunate to have studied with him, as so many had already been turned away. In your very first interview with Dr. Kritzer, he asked you to sit in a chair next to a sunlit window. The doctor looked into your eyes and after a short while asked, "Lattimore, do you believe that skin and bones can lie?"
"And that," you told the Prince, "is the first principle of this science." The second is that any quack can diagnose a fracture, but it takes a true doctor to diagnose the potential for breakage, the invisible fault lines, the predisposed weaknesses. Prince Norodom touched the outer corner of his right eye, an instinctual reaction that you have observed in many of your new patients. There is always a moment during the initial consultation when they realize that you may have already begun the examination, may have already recognized all the maladies that will inhabit their bodies in the years to come, may have already foreseen their aches and pains. You can assure them only by taking out the magnifying glass. The instrument allays their fears. It says to them that, No, the doctor has not yet begun.
"Prince Norodom was no different, Bee."
A man like any other, I think.
The Prince saw the circle of glass distorting the patterns of his Persian rug, and he re
laxed and lowered his hand. Prince Norodom then leaned toward the piano, and you led him through the triangular sections of your maps one by one, until you had gone full circle, twice. Every organ, gland, and tissue in the human body is here, you told him, bouncing your index finger between the right and the left maps. Some organs are reflected in both. The thyroid g land, for instance, is represented on the right at about two o'clock and on the left at about nine. The theory is simple. Flecks, streaks, spots, or discolorations within a particular section of the iris indicate that there is a trouble spot, a weakness in a corresponding area of the body. As a diagnostic tool, it far exceeds the reaches of conventional medicine.
"Iridology is a science that can see the future, Bee."
A soothsayer, I think.
It is also an economical science, you assured the Prince. There is no equipment to speak of except for the maps and a magnifying glass. "Imagine if your fellow Cambodians were trained in this science," you said to the Prince. Equipped with their instruments, these men could easily canvass the countryside. "Imagine how the health and well-being of your people could be bettered and improved with this Western science," you advocated.
"The Prince looked up and said the oddest thing, Bee."
Prince Norodom said, "Dr. Lattimore, if even a quack can recognize fractures, then quacks are all that Cambodia needs right now."
He sounds like the man on the bridge, I think.
The Prince agreed to an examination nevertheless. You sat him down near a bright lamp and asked him to look straight ahead and past your face. You told him that every iris is unique, which made him smile. You had never seen royal irides before, you tell me. Now, you have seen four.
"Competition is a marvelous thing, Bee."
Sweet Sunday Man is an American, after all, I think.
You saw it immediately. There was a cluster of tiny spots in the right iris at about five o'clock. Unmistakable, but you continued with the examination without showing your agitation. You needed time. You needed to find the right words. You thought about leading up to it with a series of questions, but then you thought that if this was you, you would want it clearly and succinctly.
"Impotence, Prince Norodom."
The Emperor of Vietnam telephoned you the very next day. He wanted an appointment for later that same afternoon. He said that he would send over his automobile. The Emperor knew that Prince Norodom would see the vehicle, with its telltale curtains, cruising down the rue de l'Odéon. The Emperor's chauffeur opened the car door, waited for you to climb in, and shut it with just the right amount of force, a good sign in a driver. It says that the chauffeur is unlikely to go over a cliff with you asleep in the back seat. Once inside, you looked around, touched the flocked cushions, pulled the velvet curtains open, and wondered how many women the Emperor had sent for in this very car. Every bonne vivante in this town has at least one story to tell about the young Emperor. The plot is appallingly similar. The Emperor of Vietnam spots a beautiful Mademoiselle or Madame. The Emperor has no particular age or marital status preferences, but she must have blond, blond hair. The color of wheat is even too dark for him. His Highness sends his car for her. She arrives at his abode and is given a tour, which ends in his bedroom. He points her toward an ornate armoire and opens the door. The armoire, depending on who tells the story, is filled with stacks of French francs, carved jade bracelets, loose diamonds sitting atop red velvet pouches, gold bars stacked like a display of foil-wrapped chocolates. The supposed contents are endless. They grow more and more extravagant with each telling. As the Mademoiselle or Madame is sucking in her breath, trying to keep her knees from shaking, the Emperor says, "Please, ma chérie, choose a little something for yourself." The act of choosing, of course, has its consequences. Many blond, blond Mesdemoiselles and Mesdames have strolled into the fashionable cafés of Paris, not to mention Nice and Monte Carlo, with very consequential bracelets and diamond rings.
"He's not a subtle man, Bee."
A "cad," I think.
"Are you a Negro, Lattimore?" the Emperor of Vietnam immediately asked upon your entrance into the room.
"No, Emperor, I am an iridologist."
He winked at you, and said, "Doctor, please drop the ' Emperor. ' I obviously know who I am. I thought I may know who you are as well. "
There was another wink. A nervous tic? you wondered.
"Doctor, I've seen your face before. I can smell the bleach in your hair, the touch of lye. I'm not a bigot, Doctor Lattimore, but I'm no fool. You and I, we understand each other now, and that is the beginning of a trusting relationship. Vous comprenez?"
"Not a subtle man, Bee."
An Old Man, I think.
You took out the maps and searched the room for an uncluttered surface.
"Skip the educational part, doctor. I've no head for those things. Let's get straight to the part where you predict my future," said the Emperor.
"I am a scientist, your Highness. I do not predict.' I render a diagnosis."
"Mais oui, Lattimore. I'm making light of your profession, your science. I make light of everything, doctor. No offense was meant. I'll make it up to you. Before you go, we'll take a little visit to that armoire that I'm sure you have heard so much about." The Emperor smiled. "You may choose an item, a small item, as you don't render the usual services."
Yet another wink, you tell me.
Not a subtle man, I agree.
You seated the Emperor of Vietnam in a chair. As you raised the magnifying glass to his eyes, you felt a rush of intuition. You looked immediately into his right iris, and there it was—a cluster of small spots at about five o'clock, a twin of Prince Norodom's. This time you did not hesitate.
"Impotence, your Highness."
The young man across from you collapsed, you tell me, as did the one who had sought your services just a day before.
You ask me to do the same for you, to tell you a story of my life, to let you hear it in the language that urged me into this world, a language whose words now congest my head and flood my heart because they have nowhere else to go. Trapped as it is inside my mouth, my Vietnamese has taken on the pallor of the dying, the faded colors of the abandoned. I comply with your request but within minutes, I can tell that the experiment is disastrous, a torture that your body is responding to with a noticeable curving of the spine and a heavy-headed plea for mercy. The pleasure that I take from your words, you cannot take from mine. You are unused to the darkness that surrounds you, stuffs itself into your ears, coats your tongue. You struggle instead of letting your body float. It is the first time that I see you cry. I swear I will never do it again. I have been expertly trained, I try to tell you, if not bred for such things. Your training is different.
My comprehension, Sweet Sunday Man, is based mostly on my ability to look for the signals and interpret the signs. Words, I will grant you, are convenient, a handy shortcut to meaning. But too often, words limit and deny. For those of us who are better trained, we need only one and we can piece together the rest. We look for blood in the whites of your eyes. Anger, sadness, all of the emotional extremes register there first, a red spider web, a tangle of red rivulets. They all start there and then wash down your face, coloring your cheeks, your neck, the valley above your collarbone. For the subtler details, we consult the dark, round pools, lighter at the shallow edges and darker in the centers' deep, where light collects and falls inside you. Lies, you should know, always float to the top, foreign objects that, for most people, cause considerable discomfort and pain. There are some who are able to still the shift from side to side, calm the spasms of the irritated lids. A skill, I am afraid that you are either born with or not. The origin of a liar is the same as that of a lie: from one breeds another. Shame is often mistaken for one and the same, but I know it is different. Shame is heavy-hearted and does not float. It prefers the deep, where it disrupts the steady balance, tilting the gaze, forward and down. The lids behave differently as well. They are slow to open, slow to let anyth
ing in. Shame often passes for a sudden bout of exhaustion, a sleep that will not be delayed. It affects the whole body, slowing down speech, bloating limbs, until paralysis is a constant threat. Shame, I can assure you, Sweet Sunday Man, is the more toxic of the two.
12
THE FIRST TO NOTICE was the gardener's helper. This in itself was peculiar given his advanced age and his otherwise turtlelike existence. In what must have been a requirement of his profession, the helper always wore green, a cotton shirt tucked into a pair of slightly heavier-weight canvas pants, both faded, like dried-out grass. He had been with the household staff longer than any of us, and in all that time, through all of the gossip sessions, his wardrobe never caused a stir. We never thought of him apart from the garden that he watered and weeded. In that setting, in the only setting that we could ever imagine him, green seemed very natural to us. Ironically, Blériot was the first to point out this man's camouflage.
The Book of Salt Page 12