Charlie Chan Is Dead 2

by Jessica Hagedorn

  Madame, you have nothing to worry about. I have no interest in your little girls. Your boys . . . well, that is their choice, she should have heard me thinking.

  The odds were stacked against me with this second type, I knew. But I found myself again and again shamefully submitting. All those questions, I deceived myself each time, all those questions must mean that I had a chance. And so I stayed on, eventually serving myself forth like a scrawny roast pig, only to be told, “Thank you but no thank you.”

  Thank you? Thank you? Madame, you should applaud! A standing ovation would not be inappropriate, I thought each time I have just given you a story filled with exotic locales, travel on the open seas, family secrets, un-Christian vices. Thank you will not suffice.

  My self-righteous rage burned until I was forced to concede that I, in fact, had told them nothing. This language that I dipped into like a dry inkwell had failed me. It had made me take flight with weak wings and watched me plummet into silence. I was unable to tell them anything but a list of cities, some they had been to and others a mere dot on a globe, places they would only touch with the tips of their fingers and never the soles of their feet. I was forced to admit that I was, to them, nothing but a series of destinations with no meaningful expanses in between.

  Thank you but no thank you.

  The third type, I called the collectors. They were always good for several weeks’ and sometimes even several months’ worth of work. The interviews they conducted were professional, even mechanical. Before I could offer the usual inarticulate boast about my “good omelets,” I was hired. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner to be prepared six days a week. Sundays off. Some immediately delegated the marketing to me. Others insisted on accompanying me for the first few days to make sure that I knew the difference between a poularde and a poulette. I rarely failed them. Of course, I had never been able to memorize nor keep an accurate tally of the obsessive assortment of words that the French had devised for this animal that was the center, the stewed, fricasseed, sautéed, stuffed heart, of every Frenchman’s home. Fat chickens, young chickens, newly hatched chickens, old wiry chickens, all were awarded their very own name, a noble title of sorts in this language that could afford to be so drunk and extravagant toward what lay on the dinner table. “A chicken” and “not this chicken,” these were the only words I needed to navigate the poultry markets of this city. Communicating in the negative was not the quickest and certainly not the most esteemed form of expression, but for those of us with few words to spare it was the magic spell, the incantation that opened up an otherwise inaccessible treasure trove. Wielding my words like a rusty kitchen knife, I could ask for, reject, and ultimately locate that precise specimen that would grace tonight’s pot.

  And, yes, for every coarse misshapen phrase, for every blundered, dislocated word, I paid a fee. A man with a borrowed, ill-fitting tongue, I could not compete for this city’s attention. I could not participate in the lively lovers’ quarrel between it and its inhabitants. I was a man whose voice was a harsh whisper in a city that favored a song. No longer able to trust the sound of my own voice, I carried a small speckled mirror that showed me my face, my hands, and assured me that I was still here. Becoming more like an animal with each displaced day, I scrambled to seek shelter in the kitchens of those who would take me. Every kitchen was a homecoming, a respite, where I was the village elder, sage and revered. Every kitchen was a familiar story that I could embellish with saffron, cardamom, bay laurel, and lavender. In their heat and in their steam, I allowed myself to believe that it was the sheer speed of my hands, the flawless measurement of my eyes, the science of my tongue that was rewarded. During these restorative intervals, I was no longer the mute who begged at this city’s steps. Three times a day, I orchestrated and they sat with slackened jaws, silenced. Mouths preoccupied with the taste of foods so familiar and yet with every bite even the most parochial of palates detected redolent notes of something that they had no words to describe. They were, by the end, overwhelmed by an emotion that they had never felt, a nostalgia for places they had never been.

  I did not willingly depart these havens. I was content to grow old in them, calling the stove my lover, calling the copper pans my children. But collectors were never satiated by my cooking. They were ravenous. The honey that they coveted lay inside my scars. They were subtle, though, in their tactics: a question slipped in with the money for the weekly food budget, a follow-up twisted inside a compliment for last night’s dessert, three others disguised as curiosity about the recipe for yesterday’s soup. In the end, they were indistinguishable from the type twos except for the defining core of their obsession. They had no true interest in where I had been or what I had seen. They craved the fruits of exile, the bitter juices, and the heavy hearts. They yearned for a taste of the pure, sea-salt sadness of the outcast whom they had brought into their homes. I was but one within a long line of others. The Algerian or phaned by a famine, the Moroccan violated by his uncle, the Madagas can driven out of his village because his shriveled left hand was a sign of his mother’s misdeeds, these were the wounded trophies who had preceded me.

  It was not that I am unwilling. I had sold myself in exchange for less. Under their gentle guidance, their velvet questions, even I could disgorge enough pathos and cheap souvenir tragedies to sustain them. They were never gluttonous in their desires, rather the opposite. They were methodical. A measured, controlled dosage was part of the thrill. No, I was driven out by my own willful hands. It was only a matter of time. After so many weeks of having that soft, steady light shined at me, I began to forget the barbed-wire rules of such engagements. I forgot that there would be days when it was I who would have the craving, the red, raw need to expose all my neglected, unkempt days. And I forgot that I would wait, like a supplicant at the temple’s gate, because all the rooms of the house were somber and silent. When I was abandoned by their sweet-voiced catechism, I forgot how long to braise the ribs of beef, whether chicken was best steamed over wine or broth, where to buy the sweetest trout. I neglected the pinch of cumin, the sprinkling of lovage, the scent of lime. And in these ways, I compulsively wrote, page by page, the letters of my resignation.

  Before joining my Mesdames’ 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.

  Of course, my Mesdames are going to Bilignin again this year. My Mesdames are very regular. 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. 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 f
or 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 left of the money that my Mesdames gave me for a second-class train ticket, and I buy a third-class one instead. I sleep all the way down to Bilignin, where I open up the house and wait several more days—as my Mesdames drive at a speed that varies somewhere between leisurely and meandering—before I hear the honking of their automobile and the barking of two weary dogs. I wait for them on the terrace. I have plates of sautéed livers for Basket and Pépé and for their Mesdames bowls of thick cream, dolloped with last summer’s strawberry preserves. There are smiles all around, except for Basket and Pépé, who greet me with the usual disdain. My Mesdames admire my new hat, which signals that the summer in Bilignin has officially commenced.

  I have the hat because the house there, while spacious enough to be called a petit château, has no running water, and I am often outside in the gardens, where there is a pump. I also have the hat because in Bilignin as in Paris I have Sundays off. The farmers in the village are gracious enough and at first simply curious enough to invite me, the first asiatique they have ever seen, into their homes. And their sons, I have to admit, are handsome enough to make me accept each and every time. All the families in this area make their own wine, so drinking is never a problem, and generosity fills my glass till I thirst for just a bit of water. I have found that water at the end of these nights eases my entry back into Monday. Though sometimes there is not enough water in the sea for me. I awake the next morning to the sound of Miss Toklas slamming pots and pans in the kitchen. These are pots and pans that she and no one else would need for the preparation of the simple breakfast of fruit and fresh sheep’s milk cheese that she and GertrudeStein prefer when they are in Bilignin. I climb down the narrow staircase that leads from my room to the kitchen, and I do the only thing that I know how when I am faced with an angry Madame.

  “It is my health—” I lie.

  “But I am improving as we speak,” Miss Toklas finishes my usual speech for me.

  I had overheard a femme de ménage from Brittany use those exact words in the home of a previous Monsieur and Madame, and I had her teach them to me. They are vague enough to cover most household mishaps and oversights and also have the assurance of in-progress improvement tacked on at the end. When she asked me why I wanted her to repeat it, I told her I thought the sentence clever and useful. The femme de ménage agreed, but she said that she could not take credit for it, as she herself had overheard an Italian nanny employ the same words in another household some years back. We servants, in this way, speak the same language learned in the back rooms of houses and spoken in the front rooms on occasions such as these. Miss Toklas and GertrudeStein have also developed an apparent appreciation for this sentence. On subsequent Mondays when my head is again too heavy with wine, my Mesdames’ breakfast conversation floats up to my bedroom window, like pieces of burnt paper, from the terrace down below. Amongst their otherwise incomprehensible English words, I recognize the phrase “It is my health” said in a fair approximation of a laborer’s heavily accented French. Laughter usually ensues. No matter, I think, as I turn over on my side. Laughter in this case is a good or, at least, a nonthreatening sign. Of course, I try not to indulge in this sort of behavior very often, not more than two or three times during the season. It is just that drink is cheaper in Bilignin. In fact, it is free. The farmers there ask very little of me, and when they do they seem to enjoy, unlike their Parisian cousins, the sounds of the French language faltering on my tongue. Sometimes they even ask to hear a bit of Vietnamese. They close their eyes, trusting and sincere, and they imagine the birds of the tropics singing.

  In the summer my Mesdames kindly overlook my Monday-morning absences. Halfway through the season, Miss Toklas even suggests that I take Mondays off for “my health.” Of course, she also reduces my pay by one day. But life in Bilignin does not require a full wallet, so I gladly accept the change in the terms of my employment. I also gladly accept the additional glasses of wine and whatever else comes my way every Sunday and Monday night. The farmers in Bilignin work and drink like horses. The two activities do not seem to affect each other in any significant way. I, however, begin losing my appetite and my body weight right along with it. By the end of the summer, GertrudeStein, when greeting me, finds it necessary to repeat herself: “Well, hello, Thin Thin Bin.” Binh is my given name, but my Madame merrily mispro nounces it, rhyming it instead with an English word that she claims describes my most distinctive feature.

  A cook who has no desire to eat is a lost soul. Worse, he is a questionable cook. Even when I can no longer take a sip, a bite, a morsel of any of the dishes that I am preparing for my Mesdames, I never forget that tasting is an indispensable part of cooking. The candlelight flicker of flavors, the marriage of bright acidity with profound savoriness, aromatics sparked with the suggestion of spice, all these things can change within seconds, and only a vigilant tongue can find that precise moment when there is nothing left to do but eat. For a less experienced cook, such a turn of events, the sudden absence of appetite, would be disastrous. Imagine a portrait painter who attempts to practice his art with his eyes sealed shut. I, thankfully, am able to maintain the quality of my cooking with the help of my keen memory. My hands are able to re-create their movements from earlier times. My loss in body weight, however, I cannot hide and shows itself as a forlorn expression on my face, one that both my Madame and Madame have yet to notice.

  When we are in Bilignin, Miss Toklas loses all interest in matters of the kitchen. She leaves that all to me. From May through September, Miss Toklas’s heart lies in the gardens, where she too may be found from the early morning till the hour just before the setting sun. I have heard her cooing from the vegetable plots. She does not know that she emits the sounds of lovemaking when she is among the tomatoes. I have heard her weep with the juices of the first strawberry full in her mouth. And I have seen her pray. GertrudeStein has seen her too, but she thinks that my Madame is on her knees pulling out weeds. The god that Miss Toklas prays to is the Catholic one. I have seen the rosary wrapped around her wrist, the beads trickling one by one through her fingertips. From the second-story windows of the house, GertrudeStein sees her lover toiling in a garden, vines twisted around her hands, seeds falling in a steady rhythm from her palms.

  Miss Toklas is in a garden, GertrudeStein, but it is divine. The Holy Spirit is in her when she pulls the tiny beets, radishes, and turnips from the ground. When she places their limp bodies in her basket, she believes that she knows the joys and anguishes of the Virgin Mother. And along with her raptures, she is ashamed, GertrudeStein. Because, my Madame has begun to think of life without you, to plan for it in incriminating ways. Miss Toklas knows that she would never be the first to go. She could never leave her Lovey so alone in this world. A genius, she believes, needs constant care. She is resolved to the fact that you, GertrudeStein, will be the first to go, and then what will she do, so alone in this world without you? And, that, GertrudeStein, are the words that end all of her prayers.

  This past summer was my Mesdames’ fifth and my fourth in Bilignin. About a week before we were scheduled to close up the house for the season, Miss Toklas came into the kitchen loaded down with baskets of squash, new potatoes, and the last of the summer tomatoes. As she sorted through the bounty, making it ready to be packed for the journey home, she looked over at me plucking a chicken for that night’s supper. Even from behind an updraft of flying feathers, I could see that she was studying my face. Madame, do not worry, a few weeks back in Paris and I will be my old self again, I thought. After a short while, Miss Toklas cleared her throat and suggested that this year, maybe, I should ride back to Paris with GertrudeStein, herself, and the dogs. She could just as easily send the crates of vegetables back to the city by rail, she told me. I accepted the offer without hesitation. I have often watched with envy
as Basket and Pépé ride away, Basket’s ears flapping or in the case of Pépé’s twitching in the wind, to take, as my mother would say, The-Long-Way-Home. Along with their Mesdames, these two dogs take in the sights and stop, I imagined, for impromptu meals whenever GertrudeStein’s stomach begins to flutter with the moths of hunger.

  For the farmers of Bilignin, the end of the summer season is marked by two events, the departure of the two Americans and their asiatique cook and the gathering of the grapes. The gathering is a festival where the younger farmers of Bilignin meet their future wives or lovers, but then again they do not do that sort of thing there. The wine casks and jugs from the past vintage have to be emptied to make way for the new. That requires almost as much work as the actual removal of the fruits from the vine. But that is why the farmers of Bilignin work and drink like horses. I am fine after the first bottle, but then I turn red. As these farmers and others have pointed out, I look as if I have been burnt by the sun. My cheeks, I am embarrassed to admit, are crimson. I cannot pass it off as a blush because the color is too intense. But beyond this red cast, I remain remarkably unaffected. Well, that is until I pass out. The line between being awake and not is easy for me to overstep, as I never see it coming. One moment I am sitting at one of the long tables set outside under the harvest moon for the occasion, and the next I am being slapped and doused with water. I take that as my signal to begin my walk back to my Mesdames’ house. There, I am greeted by Basket and Pépé, who delight in the task. They begin to bark as soon as I open the iron gate to the gardens. They continue to bark as I unlock the door to the kitchen, where they are sitting in wait. These two act very undog like at moments like these. They never jump on me, sniffing and nipping. They are obviously not happy to see me. His Highness and the Pretender to the throne do not have a drop of fear or protective instinct directed toward me either. These two sit by the stove and bark, bored by the whole affair but apparently obligated by a pact with each other to call attention to the time and the state of my arrival. When they are in Bilignin, Miss Toklas and GertrudeStein must sleep like dogs—well-mannered ones, that is. I never see their bedroom light turn on when I enter the gate, and I never hear them rustling about upstairs when I am in the dark kitchen below. Basket and Pépé, despite their mean-spirited efforts, always fail to rouse my Mesdames from their bed to come and see their cook, red, wet, and bleary-eyed.