A bull was a “man-cow.” Snow was “white rain.” At a country estate where he stayed, he referred to the butler as “king of the bottles.” He called ice “stone water.” One morning he was stung by a wasp. When asked what had bitten him and caused his hand to swell, he replied that it was a “soldier bird.” Later, a member of the local gentry pinched him

head to “wear” his victim as a sort of macabre serape.

Natives seemed to have recovered from Mai’s ballistics