Excerpt from The Book of Salt by Monique Truong, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

At the edge of that sheet of paper, on the other side of the globe, my brother signed his name. And then, as if it were an afterthought, he wrote the words "safe journey" where the end should have been.

I folded my brother's letter and kept it in the pocket of my only and, therefore, my finest cold-weather suit. I wore them both to the Gare du Nord that day. The suit was neatly pressed, if a bit worn. The letter was worse off. The oils on my fingertips, the heat of my body, had altered its physical composition. The pages had grown translucent from the repeated handling, repetitive rereading. The ink had faded to purple. It was becoming difficult to read. Though in truth, my memory had already made that act obsolete.

The first photograph of the journey was taken there at the station. It shows my Mesdames sitting side by side and looking straight ahead. They are waiting for the train to Le Havre, chitchatting with the photographers, looking wide-eyed into the lens. They wear the same expression as when they put on a new pair of shoes. They never immediately get up and walk around. They prefer to sit and let their toes slowly explore where the leather gives and where it binds. A pleasurable exercise for them, I am certain, as they always share a somewhat delinquent little smile. I am over there on the bench, behind them, on the left-hand side. I am the one with my head lowered, my eyes closed. I am not asleep, just thinking, and that for me is sometimes aided by the dark. I am a man unused to choices, so the months leading up to that day at the Gare du Nord had subjected me to an agony, sharp and new, self-inflicted and self-prolonged. I had forgotten that discretion can feel this way.

I sometimes now look at this photograph and wonder whether it was taken before or after. Pure speculation at this point, I know. Though I seem to remember that once I had made up my mind, I looked up instinctually, as if someone had called out my name. If that is true, then the photograph must have been taken during the moments before, when my heart was beating a hard, syncopated rhythm, like those of the approaching trains, and all I could hear in the darkness was a simple refrain:

I do not want to start all over again.
Scanning the help-wanteds.
Knocking on doors.
Walking away alone.
And, yes, I am afraid.

Copyright © 2003 by Monique T. D. Truong. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company.