The Season of the Stranger by Stephen Becker Page A

shops.
    He came through the trees and into the clear space behind the library. A dog ran around the corner of the building screeching with his tail rigid along his belly and after him came five children shouting and laughing at one another and throwing something back and forth. When it began to fall apart they stopped throwing it and bunched to look at it. The oldest boy was holding it. He had a wet knife in his right hand. He was probably eleven. He produced a hide sack and held the object high for a final inspection and then dropped it in the sack. He put the sack in the inside pocket of his gown and said something. The other children laughed. They chattered about the dog and looked for him. He was gone. Girard could hear him screeching somewhere. He went around the corner of the library and walked quickly. He could hear the screeching until he left the road and turned into the compound.
    When he stepped onto the porch of the dean’s home the door opened immediately and he was bowed into the living room by a servant. He looked at the record albums until the dean came in and shook his hand and said that lunch was ready. They walked into the dining room, the dean first, and sat face to face at a collapsible bridge table.
    â€œI suggest,” the dean said, “that we eat in comparative silence and have our discussion over tea.” Girard said nothing. The dean reached for his sticks and left his hand on them on the table and said, “Will the suspense spoil your appetite?”
    â€œNo,” Girard said. His hands were in his lap.
    â€œI see,” the dean said. “You are wondering whether or not you should take the food of someone you would perhaps not enjoy being obliged to.” The dean picked up his sticks. “Eat,” he said.
    Girard tapped his sticks on the table to even them and dropped a small piece of Mandarin fish into his rice. “Sauce,” the dean said. Girard took some of it in a red and white porcelain spoon and spread it over the rice and mixed the rice and the sauce with the sticks. The ricebowls matched the spoon: white with a veined red cracked-ice design.
    The servant brought a plate of green peppers. They were stuffed with hot pork and onion. Girard had never seen them like that before. “What do you call these?” he asked, waving one between his sticks.
    â€œPepper dumplings,” the servant said.
    â€œI live on them,” the dean said.
    â€œThey are very expensive,” the servant said, and went out. The dean laughed.
    â€œThey are my extravagance,” he said. “And I do not drink wine.” He took a pepper and snatched it from the sticks with his teeth. When he had chewed it out of the way he said, “The servant likes wine and does not like peppers. We have been fighting about it for twelve years.”
    Girard laughed. “Was he with you at K’unming?”
    The dean nodded, his mouth full again.
    They ate in silence after that, except for the clicking of the sticks and the mouth noises. It was a three plate lunch, with two bowls of rice each. The dean continued to eat as though he would be leaving for a famine area immediately after the meal, great mouthfuls swallowed in unhurried but unhesitating succession. He lifted the ricebowl to his lips after each dumpling or piece of fish and shoveled the hot white grains balled together by the sauce quickly and purposefully into his open waiting mouth, closing his mouth suckingly and capturing the loose grains on the rim of the ricebowl.
    When the servant came in with the soup the dean said, “Bring us hot towels. I have somehow dipped myself in the fish sauce.” The soup was clear and watery with floating egg and mushroom. They used the spoons for the egg and mushroom and when the solids were eaten they lifted the bowls and drank from them. The servant brought two hot towels and they removed the grease from their hands and faces. “To the study for tea,” the