THE BUFFALO-MILK CANDY

…Stomach aching heartily after partaking of a nauseating sweet composed of fermented buffalo milk — what wouldn’t he do for courtesy? … It had been a wedding reception, at the home of relatives of General N., and everybody was very nice; they took him in to see the bride in her ceremonial costume of golden fringe, with her yellow glass bangles; they found an American program on television for him, they showed off the family’s young sons, the host let him handle the guns of the household, and Wife Number Two waited on him constantly with this delicacy and that. He liked the family very much. He had had a lot of diarrhea that day, with blood, and the thought of eating anything at all made him want to throw up, but he would not insult them. Manfully he ate the meat and picked at his nan. They had honored him; his portion was the biggest and the most limpid with grease. The vegetables were good, and the water potable, but meanwhile they had brought him sweets, each more sickening than the one before. There were hard, stale orange pretzels so sweet that his teeth ached. Then came red things that were glazed rock-solid on the outside, but burst in his mouth like cockroaches, running with sour-sweet syrup supersaturated with sugar, so that crystals of it stuck to his gums and under his tongue, and his breath began to stink in his throat. Finally they hauled out the buffalo-milk candy — a platter of it, stacked with whitish, crumbly squares, each as big as his hand. He had been taking very small portions all evening, and could see their growing disappointment with him. So this time, instead of breaking off a corner of a piece and hiding it in his pocket later, he grabbed the biggest piece he could see and opened his mouth wide. Everyone beamed. It took him half an hour to finish it.

“My dear brother, ” said the Afghan Brigadier the following afternoon, selecting his words with great care from his small English repertoire, “please come outside.” —But the Young Man was in agonies just then from what he was sure was the buffalo sweet, and could only sit up in bed and pat his stomach feebly. — “Uh, good afternoon, ” he told the Brigadier, pretending not to understand (people often did that to him). The Brigadier shook his head slowly and went out.

It was quiet. The Brigadier spent his days sitting in a lawn chair, his feet in another, his cheek and mouth resting against his hand as he looked at nothing, crowded by busy birds. A big vein ran down his temple like a bolt of lightning. The morning breeze stirred the air between them when they took their breakfast together, but his white prayer cap and his gray hair remained still. He had a deep, sad crease on either side of his mouth.

The Brigadier put his hand to his forehead that afternoon, waited, and finally got to his feet, crossing his arms behind his back. He walked away around the corner of the hedge. The Young Man lay watching through the window. A little later, when it had become horribly hot, the Brigadier came back to take his siesta. He slept with the same benign expression as he sat all day, the expression of someone whom months of unproductive waiting are slowly bringing to seed. Finally the Young Man’s own eyes closed.