Henderson the Rain King (15 page)

as an old upright Steinway piano. The two skulls flew up high, and then the king and the girl each made the catch. It was very neat. All the noise had died, had gone like the wrinkles of a cloth under the hot iron. A perfectly smooth silence followed the first throws, so you could even hear how hollow the catch sounded. Soon even the whiff the skulls made as they were being whirled around came to my un-handicapped ear. The woman threw her skull. The thick purple and blue ribbons made it look like a flower in the air. I swear before God, it appeared just like a gentian. In midair it passed the skull coming from the hand of the king. Both came streaming down with the blue satin ribbons following, as though they were a couple of ocean polyps. Soon I understood that this wasn't only a game, but a contest, and naturally I rooted for the king. I didn't know but what the penalty for dropping one of those skulls might have been death. Now I myself have become ultra-familiar with death, not only owing to my age, but for a lot of reasons unnecessary to cite at this time. Death and I are just about kissing cousins. But the thought of anything happening to the king was horrible to me. Though his confidence seemed great, and his bounding and his quick turns and his sureness made beautiful watching as he warmed to the game like a fine tennis player or a great rider, and he--well, he was virile to a degree that made all worry superfluous; such a man takes all he does upon himself; nevertheless I trembled and shook for him. I worried for the girl, too. Should either one of them stumble or let the ribbons slip or the skulls collide they might have to pay the ultimate price, like the poor guy I found in my hut. He certainly had not died of natural causes. You can't kid me; I would have made a terrific coroner. But the king and the woman were in top form, from which I judged that he didn't spend all his time on his back, pampered by those dolls of his, for he ran and jumped like a lion, full of power, and he looked magnificent. He hadn't even taken off the purple velvet hat with its adornment of human teeth. And he was equal to the woman, for in my mind she shaped up as the challenger. She behaved like a priestess, seeing to it that he came up to the mark. Because of the gold paint and Braille marks on her face she looked somewhat inhuman. As she sprang, dancing, her breasts were fixed, as if really made of gold, and because of her length and thinness, when she leaped it was something supernatural, like a giant locust. Then the last pair of throws, and the catch was completed. Each tucked the skull under his arm, like a fencer's mask; each bowed. A tremendous noise followed, and again the crimson flags and rags erupted. The king was breathing hard as he returned, with that Francis I hat, as Titian might have painted it. He sat down. When he did so, the wives surrounded him with a sheet so that he might not be seen drinking in public. This was taboo. Then they dried his sweat and massaged the muscles of his great legs and his panting belly, loosening the golden drawstring of his purple trousers. I wished to tell him how great he had been. I was dying to say what I felt. Like, "Oh, King, that was royally done. Like a true artist. Goddammit, an artistl King, I love nobility and beautiful behavior." But I couldn't say a thing. I have this brutal reticence of character. Such is the slavery of the times. We are supposed to be cool-mouthed. As I told my son Edward--slavery! And he thought I was a square when I said I loved the truth. Oh, that hurt! Anyway, I often want to say things and they stay in my mind. Therefore they don't actually exist; you can't take credit for them if they never emerge. By mentioning the firmament, the king himself had shown me the way, and I might have told him a lot, right then and there. What? Well, for instance, that chaos doesn't run the whole show. That this is not a sick and hasty ride, helpless, through a dream into oblivion. No, sir! It can be arrested by a thing or two. By art, for instance. The speed is checked, the time is redivided. Measure! That great thought. Mystery! The voices of angels! Why the hell else did I play the fiddle? And why were my bones molten in those great cathedrals of France so that I couldn't stand it and had to booze up and swear at Lily? And I was thinking that if I spoke of this to the king and told him what was in my heart he might become my friend. But the wives were between us with their naked thighs, and their behinds turned toward me, which would have been the height of discourtesy except that they were wild savages. So I had no chance to speak to the king under those inspired conditions. A few minutes later, when I was able again to talk to him, I said, "King, I had a feeling that if either of you missed, the consequences would not be pretty." Before he answered he moistened his lips, and his chest still moved quickly. "I can explain to you, Mr. Henderson, why the factor of missing is negligible." His teeth shone toward me and the panting made him seem to smile, though there was nothing to smile about. "Some day the ribbons will be tied through here." With two fingers he pointed to his eyes. "My own skull will get the air." He made a gesture of soaring, and said, "Flying." I said, "Were those the skulls of kings? Relatives of yours?" I didn't have the nerve to ask a direct question about his kinship with those heads. At the thought of making a similar catch, the flesh of my hands pricked and tingled. But there was no time to go into this. Too much was happening. Now the cattle sacrifices were made, and they were done pretty much without ceremony. A priest with ostrich feathers that sprayed out in every direction threw his arm about the neck of a cow, caught the muzzle, raised her head, and slit her throat as if striking a match on the seat of his pants. She fell to the ground and died. Nobody took much notice.

XIII

After this came tribal dances and routines that were strictly like vaudeville. An old woman wrestled with a dwarf, only the dwarf lost his temper and tried to hurt her, and she stopped and scolded. One of the amazons entered the field and picked up the tiny man; with a swinging stride she carried him away under her arm. Cheers and handclapping came from the grandstands. Next there was another performance of an unserious nature. Two guys swung at each other's legs with whips, skipping into the air. Such Roman holiday highjinks were not reassuring to me. I was very nervous. I billowed with nervous feeling and a foreboding of coming abominations. Naturally I couldn't ask Dahfu for a preview. He was breathing deeply and watched with impervious calm. Finally I said, "In spite of all these operations, the sun is still shining, and there aren't any clouds. I even doubt whether the humidity has increased, though it feels very close." The king answered me, "Your observation is true, to all appearance. I do not contest you, Mr. Henderson. Nevertheless, I have seen all expectation defied and rain come on days like this. Yes, precisely." I gave him a squinting, intense look. There was much meaning condensed into this, and I will not try to dilute it for you now. Maybe a certain amount of overweening crept in. But what it mostly expressed was, "Let us not kid each other, Your Royal H. Do you think it's so easy to get what you want from Nature? Ha, ha! I never have got what I asked for." Actually what I said was, "I would almost be willing to make you a bet, King." I didn't expect the king to take me up so quickly on this. "Oh? Nice. Do you want to propose me a wager, Mr. Henderson?" I found that my heart was hungry after provocation on this issue. I got involved. Something fierce. And naturally against reason. And I said, "Oh, sure, if you want to bet, I'll bet." "I agree," said the king, with a smiling look, but stubbornly, too. "Why, King Dahfu, Prince Itelo said you were interested in science." "Did he tell you," said the guy with evident pleasure, "did he say that I was in attendance at medical school?" "No!" "A true fact. I did two years of the course." "You didn't! You don't know how relevant that is, as a piece of information. But in that case, what sort of a bet are we making? You are just humoring me. You know, Your Highness, my wife Lily subscribes to the _Scientific American__, and so I am in on the rain problem. The technique of seeding the clouds with dry ice hasn't worked out well. Some recent ideas are that, first of all, the rain comes from showers of dust which arrive from outer space. When that dust hits the atmosphere it does something. The other theory which appeals more to me is that the salt spray of the ocean, the sea foam in other words, is one of the main ingredients of rain. Moisture takes and condenses on these crystals carried in the air, as it has to have something to condense on. So, it's a real wowzer, Your Highness. If there were no sea foam, there would be no rain, and if there were no rain there would be no life. How would all the wise guys like that? If the ocean didn't have this peculiar form of beauty the land would be bare." With increasing intimacy, as if confidentially, I laughed and said, "Your Majesty, you have no idea how the whole thing tickles me. Life comes from the cream of the seas. We used to sing a song in school, 'O Marianina. Come O come and turn us into foam.'" I sang for him a little, sotto voce, almost. He liked it; I could tell. "You do not have a common run of a voice," he said, smiling and gay. I was beginning to feel that the fellow liked me. "And the information is fascinating indeed." "Ha, I'm glad you see it that way. Boy! That's something, isn't it? But I guess that puts an end to our bet." "Not of the very least. Just the same, we shall bet." "Well, King Dahfu, I have opened my big mouth. Allow me to take back what I said about the rain. I am prepared to eat crow. Naturally, as the king you have to back the rain ceremony. So I apologize. So why don't you just say, 'Nuts to you, Henderson,' and forget it?" "Oh, by no means. No basis for that. We shall bet, and why not?" He spoke with such finality that I had no out to take. "Okay, Your Highness, have it your way." "Word of honor. What shall we bet?" he said. "Anything you want." "Very good. Whatever I want." "This is unfair of me. I have to give you good odds," I said. He waved his hand, on which there was a large red jewel. His body had sunk back into the hammock, for he sat and lay by turns. I could see that it pleased him to gamble; he had the character of a betting man. Anyway, my eyes were on this ring of his, a huge garnet set in thick gold and encircled by smaller stones, and he said, "Does the ring appeal?" "It's pretty nice," I said, meaning that I was reluctant to specify any object. "What are you betting?" "I've got cash money on me, but I don't suppose that would interest you. I have a pretty good Rolleiflex in my kit. Not that I've taken any pictures except by accident. I've been too busy out here in Africa. Then there is my gun, an H and H Magnum.375 with telescopic sights." "I do not foresee how it would be usable if won." "At home I've got some objects I would be glad to put up," I said. "I've got some beautiful Tamworth pigs left." "Oh, indeed?" "I can see you're not interested." "It would be fitting to bet something personal," he said. "Oh, yes. The ring is personal. I get it. If I could detach my troubles I'd put them up. They're personal. Ho, ho. Only I wouldn't wish them on my worst enemy. Well, let's see, what do I have that you might use; what have I got that would go with being a king? Carpets? I've got a nice one in my studio. Then there's a velvet dressing gown that might look good on you. There's even a Guarnerius violin. But hey! I've got it--paintings. There's one of me and one of my wife. They're oils." At this moment I wasn't sure that he heard me, but he said, "You should not assume at all that you have a sure thing." Then I said, "So? What if I lose?" "It will be interesting." This made me begin to worry. "Well, it is settled. We may match ring against oil portraits. Or let us say that if I win you will remain a guest of mine, a length of time." "Okay. But how long?" "Oh, it is too theoretical," he said, looking away. "Let us leave it an open consideration for the moment." This arrangement made, we both looked upward. The sky was a bald, pale blue and rested on the mountains, windless. I figured that this king must have a lot of delicacy. He wanted to make it up to me for the corpse last night and also to indicate that he would appreciate it if I would visit him for a while. The discussion ended with the king making a florid African gesture, as if peeling off his gloves or rehearsing the surrender of the ring. I sweated hugely, but my body was not cooled. To try to assuage the heat, I held my mouth open. Then I said, "Haw, haw! Your Majesty, this is a screwy bet." At this moment came furious or quarrelsome shouts, and I thought, "Ha, the light part of the ceremony is over." Several men in black plumes, like beggarly bird men--the rusty feathers hung to their shoulders--began to lift the covers from the gods. Disrespectfully, they pulled them away. This irreverence was no accident, if you get what I mean. It was done to raise a laugh, and it did exactly that. These bird or plume characters, encouraged by the laughter, started to perform burlesque antics; they stepped on the feet of the statues, and bowled some of the smaller ones over and made passes at them, mockeries, and so on. The dwarf was set on the knees of one goddess and he rocked the crowd with laughter by pulling his lower lids down and sticking out his tongue, making like a wrinkled lunatic. The family of gods, all quite short in the legs and long in the trunk, was very tolerant about these abuses. Most of them had disproportionate, small faces set on tall necks. All in all, they didn't look like a stern bunch. Just the same they had dignity--mystery; they were after all the gods, and they made the awards of fate. They ruled the air, the mountains, fire, plants, cattle, luck, sickness, clouds, birth, death. Damn it, even the squattest, kicked over onto his belly, ruled over something. The attitude of the tribe seemed to be that it was necessary to come to the gods with their vices on display, as nothing could be concealed from them anyway by ephemeral men. I grasped the idea, but basically I thought it was a big mistake. I wanted to say to the king, "You mean to tell me all this bad blood is necessary?" Also I marveled that such a man should be king over a gang like this. He took it all pretty calmly, however. By and by they began to move the whole pantheon. Bodily, they started with the smaller gods, whom they handled very roughly and with a lot of wickedness. They let them fall or rolled them around, scolding them us if they were clumsy. Hell! I thought. To me it seemed like a pretty cheap way to behave, although I could see, to be objective about it, plenty of grounds for resentment against the gods. But anyway I didn't care one bit for this. Grumbling, I sat under the shell of my helmet and tried to appear as if it was none of my business. When this crew of ravens came to the larger statues, they tugged and pulled but couldn't manage, and had to call for help from the crowd. One strong man after another jumped into the arena to pick up an idol, toting it from the original position to, let's say, short center field, while cheers and rooting came from the stands. From the stature and muscular development of the champions who moved the larger idols I gathered that this display of strength was a traditional part of the ceremony. Some approached the bigger gods from behind and clasped arms about their middles, some backed up to them like men unloading flour from the tailgate of a truck and hauled them on their shoulders. One gave a twist to the arms of a figure as I had done to the corpse last night. Seeing my own technique applied, I gave a gasp. "What is it, Mr. Henderson?" said the king. "Nothing, nothing, nothing," I said. The group of gods remaining grew small. The strong men had carted them away, almost all of them. The last of these fellows were superb specimens, and I have a good eye for the points of strong men. During a certain period of my life I took quite an interest in weight-lifting and used to train on the barbells. As everyone knows, the development of the thighs counts heavily. I tried to get my son Edward interested; there might have been no Maria Felucca if I had been able to influence him to build his muscles. Although, when all that is said and done, I have grown this portly front and the other strange distortions that attend all the larger individuals of a species. (Like those mammoth Alaska strawberries.) Oh, my body, my body! Why have we never really got together as friends? I have loaded it with my vices, like a raft, like a barge. Oh, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Anyway, from these distortions owing to my scale and the work performed by my psyche. And sometimes a voice has counseled me, crazily, "Scorch the earth. Why should a good man die? Let it be some blasted fool who is dumped in the grave." What wickedness! What perversity! Alas, what things go on within a person! However--I was more and more intensely a spectator--when there were only two gods left, the two biggest (Hummat the mountain god and Mummah the goddess of clouds), there were several strong men who came out and failed. Yes, they flunked. They couldn't stir this Hummat, who had whiskers like a catfish and spines all over his forehead, plus a pair of boulder-like shoulders. After several of them had quit on the job and been hooted and jeered, a fellow came forward wearing a red fez and a kind of jaunty jockstrap of oilcloth. He walked quickly, swinging his open hands, this man who was going to pick up Hummat, and prostrated himself before the god--the first devotional attitude yet shown. Then he went round to the back of the statue and inserted his head under one of its arms. A small taut beard glittered about his round face. He spread his legs, feeling for position with sensitive feet, patting the dust. After this he wiped his hands on his own knees and told hold of Hummat, grasping him by the arm and from beneath in the fork. With huge, set eyes, which became humid from the static effort, he began to lift the great Hummat. From his mouth, distended until the jaws blended with the collar bones, the sinews set in like the thin spokes of a bicycle, and his hip muscles formed large knots at the groin, swelling beside the soiled pants of oilcloth. This was a good man, and I appreciated him. He was my own type. You put a burden in front of him and he clasped it, he threw his chest into it, he lifted, he went to the limit of his strength. "That's the ticket," I said. "Get your back muscles going." As everyone else was cheering, except Dahfu, I got up also and began to yell, "Yah, yaay for you! You got him. You'll do it. You're husky enough. Push--that's it! Now up! Yay, he's doing it. He's going to crack it. Oh, God bless the guy. What a sweetheart! That's a real man--that's the type I love. Go on. Heave-ho. Wow! There he goes. He did it. Ah, thank God!" Then I realized how I had been shouting and I sat down beside the king, wondering at my own fervor. The champion tipped Hummat back on his shoulder, and carried the mountain god twenty feet. Among the rest, he set him down on his base. Winded, the man now turned and looked back at Mummah, alone in the middle of the ring. She was even bigger than Hummat. Amid the applause the champion looked her over. And she awaited him. She was very obese, not to say hideous, this female power. They had made her very ponderous, and the strong man facing her seemed already daunted. Not that she forbade you to try. No, in spite of her hideousness she seemed pretty tolerant, even happy-go-lucky like most of the gods. However, she appeared to express confidence in her immovability. The crowd was egging him on, everyone standing; even Horko and his friends in their own box were on foot. His umbrella now threw a shadow of old rose, and in his tight red robe he held out his stout arm and pointed at Mummah with his thumb--that great, wooden, happy Mummah, whose knees gave a little under the weight of her breasts and belly so that she had to spread her fingers on her thighs for support. And, as gross women sometimes do, she had elegant, graceful hands. She awaited the man who would move her. "You can do her, guy," I too shouted. I asked the king, "What is this fellow's name?" "The strong man? Oh, that is Turombo." "What's the matter, doesn't he think he can move her?" "Evidently he lacks confidence. Every year he can move Hummat, but not Mummah." "Oh, he must be able to." "Just the
contrary, I fear," said the king, in his curious, singsong, nasal, African English. His large, swelled lips were more red than was the case with others of his tribe. Consequently his mouth was more visible than mouths usually are. "This man, as you see, is powerful, and a good man, as I believe I overheard you to exclaim. But when he has moved Hummat, he is worn out, and this is annual. Do you see, Hummat has to be moved first, as otherwise he would not permit the clouds passage over the mountains." Benevolent Mummah, her fat face shone to the sun with splendor. Her tresses of wood were like a stork's nest and broadened upward--a homely, happy, stupid, patient figure, she invited Turombo or any other champion to try his strength. "You know what it is?" I said to the king. "It's the memory of past defeats--past defeats, you can ask _me__ about this problem of past defeats. Brother, I could really tell you. But that's what got him. I just know it." Turombo, a very short man for his girth and strength, really seemed to be bucking a whole lot of trouble. Those eyes of his, which had grown large and humid with strain when he took a grip on Hummat, now wore a duller light. He was prepared for failure and the motion of his eyes, rolling at us and at the crowd, showed it. This, I want to tell you, I hated to see. Anyway, he tipped his fez to the king with a gesture of dedication that already acknowledged defeat. He had no illusions about Mummah. Nevertheless, he was going to try. He gave his short beard a rub with his knuckles, walking toward her slowly and sizing her up with a view to doing business. Ambition must have played a very small role in Turombo's life. Whereas in my breast there was a flow--no, that's too limited--there opened up an estuary, a huge bay of hope and ambition. For here was my chance. I knew I could do this. Ye gods! I was shivering and cold. I simply knew that I could lift up Mummah, and I flowed, I burned to go out there and do it. Craving to show what was in me, burning like that bush I had set afire with my Austrian lighter for the Arnewi children. Stronger than Turombo I certainly was. And in the process of proving it, should my heart be ruptured, should the old sack split, okay, then let me die. I didn't care any more. I had longed to do some good to the Arnewi when I arrived and saw their distress. Instead of accomplishing which, I had rashly brought down the full weight of my blind will and ambition upon those frogs. I arrived clothed in light, or thinking so, and I departed draped in shadow and darkness, humiliated, so that perhaps it would have been better to obey my first impulse on arrival, when the young woman burst into tears and I said to myself maybe I should cast away my gun and my fierceness and go into the wilderness until I was fit to meet humankind again. My longing to perform a benefit there, because I was so taken with the Arnewi, and especially old blind-eye Willatale, was sincere and intense, but it was not even a ripple on the desire I felt now in the royal box beside the semi-barbarous king in his trousers and purple velvet hat. So inflamed was my wish to _do__ something. For I saw something I could do. Let these Wariri whom so far (with the corpses in the night and all in all) I didn't care for--let them be worse than the sons of Sodom and Gomorrah combined, I still couldn't pass up this opportunity to _do__, and to distinguish myself. To work the right stitch into the design of my destiny before it was too late. So I was glad that Turombo was so meek. I thought he'd better be meek. Even before he had touched Mummah he had implicitly confessed he would never be able to budge her. And that was the way I wanted it. She was mine! And I wanted to say to the king, "I can do it. Let me in there." However, these words found no utterance, for Turombo had already come upon the goddess from behind. He took a lifting stance, crouching, while he folded his thick arms about her belly. Then beside her hip there appeared his face. It was filled with effort, preparation for strain, fear and suffering, as if Mummah, toppling, might crush him beneath her weight. However, she now began to move in his embrace. The stork's nest, her wooden tresses, tipped and swayed like a horizon at sea in rough weather when you stand in the bow of the ship. I put it like that as I felt this motion in my stomach. Turombo heaved from the base like a man trying to uproot an old tree. This was how he labored. But though he shook the old girl he couldn't raise her base from the ground. The crowd razzed him as he acknowledged at last that this was beyond his strength. He simply couldn't do it. And I rejoiced at the guy's failure. Which is a hell of a thing to admit, but it happens to have been the case. "Good man," I thought to myself. "You are strong but it so happens I am stronger. It's not a personal matter at all. It's only the fates--they willed it. As in the case of Itelo. This is a job for me. Yield, yield! Cede! Because here comes Henderson! Just let me get my hands on that Mummah, and by God �!" I said to Dahfu, "I'm real sorry he didn't make it. It must be tough on him." "Oh, it was foregone he could not," said King Dahfu. "I was certain." Then I began in deepest, grimmest earnest, as only I can be grim, "Your Majesty--" I was excited to the bursting point. I swelled, I was sick, and my blood circulated peculiarly through my body--it was turbid and ecstatic both. It prickled within my face, especially in the nose, as if it might begin to discharge itself there. And as though a crown of gas were burning from my head, so I was tormented. And I said, "Sir, sire, I mean � let me! I must." If the king made an answer I couldn't have heard it just then, because I saw only one face in this hot and dry air, off to my left and deaf to the raging cries made by the crowd against Turombo. A face concentrated exclusively upon me, so that it was detached from all the world. This was the face of the examiner, the guy I had dealt with last night, the man Dahfu called the Bunam. That face! A stare of wrinkled and everlasting human experience was formed on it. I could feel myself how charged those veins of his must be. Ah, holy God! The guy was speaking to me, inexorable. By the furrows of his face and the pressure of his brows and the fullness of his veins he was conveying a message to me. And what he was saying I knew. I heard it. The silent speech of the world to which my most secret soul listened continually now came to me with spectacular clarity. Within--within I heard. Oh, what I heard! The first stern word was _Dummy!__ I was greatly shaken by this. And yet there was something there. It was true. And I was obliged, it was my bounden duty to hear. _And nevertheless you are a man. Listen! Harken unto me, you shmohawk! You are blind. The footsteps were accidental and yet the destiny could be no other. So now do not soften, oh no, brother, intensify rather what you are. This is the one and only ticket--intensify. Should you be overcome, you slob, should you lie in your own fat blood senseless, unconscious of nature whose gift you have betrayed, the world will soon take back what the world unsuccessfully sent forth. Each peculiarity is only one impulse of a series from the very heart of things--that old heart of things. The purpose will appear at last though maybe not to you.__ The voice did not sink away. It just stopped. Just like that, it finished what it had to say. But I understood now why the corpse had been quartered with me. The Bunam was behind it. He sized me up right. He had wanted to see whether I was strong enough to move the idol. And I had met the urdeal. Damn! I had met it at all costs. When I gripped the dead man, his weight had felt to me like the weight of my own limbs fallen asleep and ponderous, but I had fought this revulsion and overcome it, I had lifted up the man. And here was the examiner's grim, exalted, vein-full, knotted, silent face, announcing the results. I had passed. With highest marks. One hundred per cent. And I said, loudly. "This I must try." "What is that?" said Dahfu. "Your Highness," I said, "if it wouldn't be regarded as interference by a foreigner, I think that I could move the statue--the goddess Mummah. I would genuinely like to be of service, as I have certain capacities which ought to be put to definite use. I want to tell you that I didn't make out too well with the Arnewi, where I had a similar feeling. King, I had a great desire to do a disinterested and pure thing--to express my belief in something higher. Instead I landed in a lot of trouble. It's only right that I should make a clean breast." I was not in control of myself, and thus I wasn't sure how clear my words might be, though my purpose in the comprehensive sense must have been very plain. On the king's face I saw a very mingled look of curiosity and sympathy. "Do you not rush through the world too hard, Mr. Henderson?" "Oh, yes, King, I am very restless. But the fact of the matter is I just couldn't continue as I was, where I was. Something had to be done. If I hadn't come to Africa my only other choice would have been to stay in bed. Ideally--" "Yes, as to the ideal, I have the utmost fascination. What would it have been?" "Well, King, I can't really say. It's all a puzzle. There is some kind of service motivation which keeps on after me. I have always admired Doctor Wilfred Grenfell. You know I was just crazy for that man. I would have liked to go on errands of mercy. Not necessarily with a dog team. But that's just a detail." "Oh, I sensed," he said, "I should rather say, I intuited some such tendency." "Well, I'd be happy to talk about that afterward," I said. "Right now I am asking what is the situation? Could I try my strength against Mummah? I don't know what it is, but I just have a feeling that I could move her." He said, "I am obliged to tell you, Mr. Henderson, there may be consequences." I should have taken him up on this and asked him what he meant by that, but I trusted the guy and could not foresee any really bad consequences. But anyway, that burning, that craving, that flowing estuary--you see what I mean?--a powerful ambition had me and I was a goner. Moreover, the king smiled and thus half retracted his warning. "Do you really have conviction you can do it?" he said. "All I can say to you, King, is just let me at her. All I want to do is get my arms around her." I was in no state to identify the subtleties of the king's attitude. Now he had satisfied the requirements of his conscience, if any, and caught me, too. No man can do better than that, hey? But I had got caught up in the thing, and it had regard only to the unfinished business of years--_I__ _want, I want,__ and Lily, and the grun-tu-molani and the little colored kid brought home by my daughter from Danbury and the cat I had tried to destroy and the fate of Miss Lenox and the teeth and the fiddle and the frogs in the cistern and all the rest of it. However, the king had not yet given his consent. In his leopard mantle, walking with tense feet in a narrow-hipped gait, the Bunam came down from the box where he had been sitting with Horko. He was followed by the two wives with their large, shaved, delicate-looking heads and their gay short teeth. They were bigger than their husband and came along sauntering behind him and taking it easy. The examiner, or Bunam, stopped before the king and bowed. The women, too, bowed. Small signs passed between them and the king's wives and concubines, or whatever their classification was, while the examiner addressed Dahfu. He pointed his index finger upward near his ear like a starter's pistol, bending often and stiffly from the waist. He spoke rapidly but with regularity, and seemed to know his mind very well, and when he had finished he bowed his head again and bent his eyes on me sternly as before, with a world of significance. The veins in his forehead were very heavy. Dahfu turned to me in his gaudy hammock. In his fingers he still held the ribbons tied to the skull. "The view of the Bunam is you have been expected. Also you came in time �" "Your Highness, as to that � who can say? If you think the omens are good, I'll go along with you. Listen, Your Highness, I look like a bruiser, and I am gifted in strange ways, mostly physical; but also I am very sensitive. A while back you said something to me about envy and I must admit you kind of hurt my feelings. That's like a poem I once read called, 'Written in Prison.' I can't remember it all, but part of it goes, 'I envy e'en the fly its gleams of joy, in the green woods' and it ends, 'The fly I envy settling in the sun on the green leaf and wish my goal was won.' Now, King, you know as well as I do what goal I'm talking about. Now, Your Highness, I really do not wish to live by any law of decay. Just tell me, how long has the world got to be like this? Why should there be no hope for suffering? It so happens that I believe something can be done, and this is why I rushed out into the world as you have noted. All kinds of motives behind this. There's my wife, Lily, and then there are the children--you must have quite a few of them yourself, so maybe you'll understand how I feel...." I read sympathy in his face, and I wiped myself with my Woolworth bandanna. My nose, independently, itched within, and seemingly there was nothing I could do for it. "Truly I regret if I wounded you," he said. "Well, that's all right. I'm a pretty good judge of men and you are a fine one. And from you I can take it. Besides, truth is truth. Confidentially, I _have__ envied flies, too. All the more reason to crash out of prison. Right? If I had the mental constitution to live inside the nutshell and think myself the king of infinite space, that would be just fine. But that's not how I am. King, I am a Becomer. Now you see your situation is different. You are a Be-er. I've just got to stop Becoming. Jesus Christ, when am I going to Be? I have waited a hell of a long time. I suppose I should be more patient, but for God's sake, Your Highness, you've got to understand what it's like with me. So I am asking you. You've got to let me out there. Why it is, I can't say, but I feel called upon to do it, and this may be my main chance." And I spoke to the examiner, who stood in his leopard mantle and cuffs, holding up the bone rod, and said, "Excuse me, sir." I held out a few fingers to him and said, "I will be with you soon." In the heat of my body and fever of mind I couldn't speak with any restraint whatever and I said, "King, I'm going to give you the straight poop about myself, as straight as I can make it. Every man born has to carry his life to a certain depth--or else! Well, King, I'm beginning to see my depth. You wouldn't expect me to back away now, would you?" He said, "No, Mr. Henderson. In sincerity, I would not." "Well, this is just one of those moments,"