Buster Tales: ‘The Gouda Incident’ @Lunteren

Buster had a list.

Technically it was a classified document, but written down it mostly said: Very Old Gouda. The Extra Kind. Not the Orange One. The One That Tastes Like Something Important Happened During the Aging Process.

The Lunteren Saturday market was smaller than he’d anticipated, which is to say it was exactly the right size, which is to say he had no idea where anything was.

There were seventeen varieties of aged Gouda at the cheese stall. The vendor ~ a man of considerable presence who introduced himself only as Kees ~ spoke exclusively in Gelderlands dialect.

Buster consulted his 1987 Dutch phrasebook. It did not cover cheese.

He pointed. He gestured. He deployed what he considered his most internationally transferable facial expression: polite bewilderment with undertones of genuine enthusiasm.

Kees crossed his arms. Not unkindly. Simply as someone who has sold cheese for forty years and has seen all manner of human.

Then a small boy on a bicycle appeared from absolutely nowhere.

He was perhaps nine. He wore a perfectly round helmet and the expression of someone who has already understood several things that most adults are still working on.

“I am Floris,” he said. “I translate.”

“Brilliant,” said Buster. “Tell him I want the one that tastes like history.”

Floris turned to Kees. They exchanged four words. Kees reached beneath the table and produced a wedge of cheese so old and crystalline it appeared to be made of compressed time.

Buster tried to pay. Kees refused.

“He says,” Floris reported, already mounting his bicycle, “that one’s not for sale. He says you obviously needed it.”

“What did Kees actually say?” Buster asked.

“Not everything worth having has a price,” Floris said. “Some things you just recognise.”

And Floris was gone, pedalling toward the treeline at a speed that suggested he had other villages to attend to.

Buster placed the legendary wedge next to his regular cheese cube. The briefcase had never felt so full.

He thanked Kees in his best 1987 Dutch. Kees nodded. It was, Buster reflected, enough.

He turned and disappeared between the market stalls, richer by one legendary wedge and wiser by one small boy on a bicycle.