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Another twist of the worm
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Let’s suppose that the Young Man had been able to give everyone he saw exactly what was asked for; that, being the American that he was said to be, he truly was the genie in the Sprite bottle. After all, their expectations were modest (most of them). They did not want to have EVERYTHING that the Young Man had. By and large, they wanted money and guns. If he gave them those, then the Soviets would feel obliged even more often to violate Pakistani airspace with their low-flying planes that grazed Peshawar so teasingly and then swerved back toward the border to bomb another refugee camp or drop another load of toy-shaped butterfly mines where Afghan children would pick them up; or else another Afghan politician might be murdered in Peshawar and no one would be able to say for sure whether a K.G.B. agent or another Afghan did it. So the Young Man would have to wave his magic wand somewhat more vigorously, to wish the Soviets right out of Afghanistan, which happened eventually, indeed (although few history books will credit the Young Man for it), but until it did his help would not mean a goddamned thing. If he had been the President, would it have meant anything? — Yes. — Then why wasn’t he the President? It wasn’t fair. If he were President he could do something good that people would respect him for.e As it was, what was the use?
HELPLESSNESS [2]
At this point, however, the Young Man was still trying, or going through the motions of trying, so he developed a dread of going outside. There were people there who would ask something of him. He often had nightmares. Once he dreamed that he was cutting up a beef carcass on a ranch where he had once worked in California, when suddenly an Afghan or Iranian came up behind him asking for a visa. The Young Man told him that he was busy, for these people never accepted a no and you had to argue with them for half an hour, which was impossible in this case because he was busy fulfilling his own stupid little function. — “I don’t think you understand, ” the refugee’s sister said, flashing her eyes winningly. “He’s at the top of his class, commended for this and that.” —The whole family was here now, sitting down to dinner around that carcass, which belonged to the ranch, not to the Young Man; but traditions of hospitality forbade him from saying anything about that. So he remained his weak self, sneaking around taking little bits of meat off their plates unobtrusively, trying to save something for his organization. — The family didn’t approve at all. They ate everything.