The Book of Salt

Binh describes meeting the man on the bridge before Binh began working for his Mesdames. The two have an interesting conversation, which is a treat for Binh because the man is also Vietnamese, so Binh can express himself as he wishes. He feels an attraction to the man, but it’s not clear how the man on the bridge sees Binh. Binh calls the man on the bridge a scholar-prince but doesn’t explain the significance to his new friend. The man asks Binh what brought him to Paris and what keeps him there. This question will reverberate in Binh’s mind in the years to come. Through their conversation, Binh discovers that the man on the bridge was the kitchen boy Bao had told him about—the one who wrote letters for the sailors.

Binh and the man play a game: Binh bets he can tell what neighborhood Paris addresses are located in from memory. Binh wins the game, and the man takes him to a restaurant where a friend is the chef. They have a warm exchange over dinner, but the man is leaving Paris that night. Binh is crestfallen and offers to walk the man to the train station, but the man insists the station is a bad place for goodbyes.

Binh keeps going to the bridge, hoping for the man to return.

Binh faces his Mesdames, dreadfully late after his tryst with Lattimore. At first, he claims that Lattimore had given Binh a bottle of rum as a bonus payment, and that having drunk it all, Binh had passed out on a park bench. The women are furious with Lattimore, so Binh takes the blame. Risking unemployment, he claims he lied about Lattimore and the rum—he says that he had bought the alcohol himself. The ladies sternly tell Binh to never lie to them again. The Old Man’s voice in Binh’s ear tells Binh he is a fool to tell Stein and Toklas the lie. He feels his actions have put some distance between himself and his Mesdames, and he is sad.

Binh then thinks back to the money he assumes is in his pocket, feeling used: “A pocketful of money and an empty bed mean the same things everywhere. You are dismissed. Your services here are done” (103). When he pulls the paper from his pocket, he finds money wrapped in red string and a note from Lattimore saying that next Sunday they will again be the only guests. Binh feels “at sea.”

On the ship, Bao had told Binh to use a fake name with employers. They laughed at some of the silly names that Bao had given his bosses, the employers not knowing the translations of the Vietnamese phrases that Bao claimed were his name. Binh’s laughter eased his seasickness and he found Bao attractive. When their voyage ended, he had a full list of questions he wanted to ask Bao but decided Bao would dodge the truth with his answers, so it was better those queries remained unasked.

Binh addresses Lattimore, whom Binh now calls his Sweet Sunday Man, in the second person. On their Sundays, Lattimore refers to Binh as Bee. Lattimore tells Binh that he spotted him in the flower market two days before, and this has a profound effect on Binh. He no longer feels like an anonymous exile living unnoticed in Paris: He has been witnessed, and this makes him feel more real. Binh wishes silently that their life together would expand beyond one day a week. As it is, he has to leave at three in the morning to return to the Stein/Toklas residence. Binh wishes Lattimore would ask him to stay the entire night and choose a side of the bed.

Binh and Lattimore have found a way around the language barrier. Lattimore, who is from New Orleans, speaks both English and French. They rely on shared words and body language. Lattimore is a quasi-doctor who diagnoses a person’s health by observing their irises. Lattimore explains to Binh that his father is white and his mother is mixed-race. Lattimore has money from his mother who took him to the northern US for college and then on to Paris.

Lattimore tells of meeting both the Emperor of Vietnam and the Crown Prince of Cambodia and having the opportunity to diagnose both using the aforementioned quasi-medical technique. The Emperor called out Lattimore for passing for white; since Lattimore bleaches his skin and straightens his hair, the Emperor claimed he was acting not out of bigotry but a desire to be honest in their dealings. Lattimore diagnosed both royal men with impotence. Neither denied it.