Henderson the Rain King (24 page)

XX

Romilayu and I said good-by in the morning and when he finally set off with the letter to Lily I had a very unwholesome feeling. My very stomach seemed to drop as his wrinkled face looked through the closing gates of the palace. I believe that he expected at the last minute to be called back by his changeable and irrational employer. But I only stood there in the carapace-like helmet and those pants which made me seem as though I had gotten lost from my troop of Zouaves. The gate shut on Romilayu's scarred and seamed gaze, and I felt unreasonably low. But Tamba and Bebu diverted me from my sadness. As usual they saluted me by lying in the dust and putting my foot on their heads, and then Tamba settled herself on her belly so that Bebu might do the joxi with her feet. She trod her back, spine, neck, and buttocks, which seemed to give Tamba heavenly pleasure. She closed her eyes, groaning and basking. I thought I must try this one day; it must be beneficial, it contented these people so; however, this was not the day for it, I was too sad. The air was warming quickly but there were still arrears of the stinging cold of night; I felt it through the thin green stuff I wore. The mountain, the one named for Hummat, was yellow; the clouds were white and had great weight. They lay at about the height of Hummat's throat and shoulders, like a collar. Indoors, I sat and waited for the morning to increase in warmth, hands folded, mentally preparing for my daily exposure to Atti while I earnestly tried to reason: I must change. I must not live in the past, it will ruin me. The dead are my boarders, eating me out of house and home. The hogs were my defiance. I was telling the world that it was a pig. I must begin to think how to five. I must break Lily from blackmail and set love on a true course. Because after all Lily and I were very lucky. But then what could an animal do for me? In the last analysis? Really? A beast of prey? Even supposing that an animal enjoys a natural blessing? We had our share of this creature-blessing until infancy ended. But now aren't we required to complete something else--project number two--the second blessing? I couldn't tell such things to the king, he was so stuck on lions. I have never seen a person so gone on any creatures. And I couldn't refuse to do what he wanted owing to the way I felt about him. Yes, in some ways the fellow was remarkably like a lion, but that didn't prove lions had made him so. This was more of Lamarck. In college we had laughed Lamarck right out of the classroom. I remembered what the teacher said, that this was a bourgeois idea of the autonomy of the individual mind. All sons of rich men, we were, or almost all, and yet we laughed at the bourgeois ideas until we almost split a gut. Well, I reflected, wrinkling my brow to the limit, missing Romilayu keenly, this is the payoff of a lifetime of action without thought. If I had to shoot at that cat, if I had to blow up frogs, if I had to pick up Mummah without realizing what I was getting myself into, it was not out of line to crouch on all fours and roar and act the lion. I might have been learning about the grun-tu-molani instead, under Willatale. But I will never regret my feeling toward this man--Dahfu, I mean; I would have done a great deal more to keep his friendship. So I was brooding in my palace room when Tatu came in, wearing the ancient Italian garrison cap. Thinking this was the daily summons to join the king in the den, I heavily got up, but she began to tell me by word and gesture that I should stay where I was and wait for the king. He was coming. "What's up?" I said. However, nobody could explain, and I tidied myself a little in anticipation of the king's visit; I had let myself grow filthy and bearded, as it was scarcely suitable to get all cleaned up in order to stand on all fours, roaring and tearing the earth. Today, however, I went to Mummah's cistern and washed my face, my neck, and my ears and let the sun dry me on the threshold of my apartment. It soon did. Meanwhile I regretted that I had sent Romilayu away so soon, for this morning brought to mind more things that I should have told Lily. That wasn't all I had to say, I thought. I love her. By God! I goofed again. But I didn't have much time to spend on regret, for Tatu was coming toward me across the rough yard of the palace, gesturing with both arms and saying, "Dahfu. Dahfu alamele." I rose and she led me through the passages of the ground floor to the king's outdoor court. Already he was in his hammock, under the purple shadow of his giant silk umbrella. He held his velvet hat in his fist and beckoned with it, and when he saw me above him his swelled lips opened. He fitted the hat over his raised knee and said, smiling, "I suppose you gather what day it is." "I figure--" "Yes, it is the day. Lion day for me." "This is it, eh?" "Bait has been eaten by a young male. He fit the description of Gmilo." "Well, it must be great," I said, "to think you are going to be reunited with a dear parent. I only wish such a thing could happen to me." "Well, Henderson," he said (this morning he took an exceptional pleasure in my company and conversation), "do you believe in immortality?" "There's many a soul that would tell you it could never stay another round with life," I said. "Do you really say so? But you know more of the world than I do. However, Henderson, my good friend, this is a high occasion for me." "Is there a good chance that it is your dad, the late king? I wish I had known. I wouldn't have sent Romilayu away. He left this morning, Your Highness. Could we send a runner after him?" The king paid no attention to this, and I figured his excitement was running too high to allow him to consider my practical arrangements. What was Romilayu to him on a day like this? "You will share the hopo with me," he said, and, although I didn't know what this meant, I of course agreed. My own umbrella approached, this hollow or sheath of green with transverse fibers in the silk transparency which helped to convince me that it was no vision but an object, for why should a vision bother to have such transverse lines? Eh? The pole was held by big female hands. Bearers brought my hammock. "Do we go after the lion in a hammock?" I said. "When we reach the bush we will continue on our feet," he said. So I got into the hammock of the Sungo with one of those heavy utterances of mine, sinking into it. It looked to me as if the two of us were going out barehanded to capture the animal--this lion, that had eaten the old bull, and was sleeping deeply somewhere in the standing grass. Shaven-headed women flitted near us, shrill and nervous, and a gaudy crowd had collected, just as on the day of the rain ceremony--drummers, men in paint, shells, and feathers, and buglers who blew some practice blasts. The bugles were about a foot long and had big mouths of green oxide metal. They made a devil of a blast, like the taunt of fear, those instruments. So with the bugles and drums and rattles and noisemakers of the beaters' party gathered around us, we were carried through the gates of the palace. The arms of the amazons shook with the strain of lifting me. Various people came and looked at me as we were going into the town; they gazed down into the hammock. Among them were the Bunam and Horko, the latter expecting me, I felt, to say something to him. However, I didn't say a word. I looked back at them with my huge red face. The beard had begun to grow out like a broom and the fever, which had gone up again, affected my eyes and ears. A tremor in the cheeks occasionally surprised me; I could do nothing about this, and I reckoned that under the influence of lions the nerves of my jaws and nose and chin were undergoing an unsettling change. The Bunam had come in order to communicate with me or warn me; I could see that. I wanted to demand my H and H Magnum with the scope sights from him but of course I didn't have the words for "give" and "gun." The women struggled with my weight and the hammock bulged out greatly at the bottom and nearly touched the ground. The poles were almost too much for their shoulders as they carried the brutal white rain king with his swarthy, reddened face and dirty helmet and gaudy pants and big, hairy shins. The people whooped and clapped and leaped up and down in their rags and hides, flaunting pieces of dyed hair as pennants, women with babies that swung at their long spongy breasts and fellows with teeth broken or missing. As far as I could tell they were not enthusiastic for the king; they demanded that he bring home Gmilo, the right lion, and get rid of the sorceress, Atti. Without a sign he passed among them in his hammock. I knew his face was bathed by the shadow of the purple umbrella, and he was wearing his large velvet hat, as attached to it as I was to the helmet. Hat, hair, and face were in close union under the tinged light of the silk arch, and he lay and rested with that same sumptuous ease which I had admired from the beginning. Above him, as above me, strange hands clasped the ornamented pole of the umbrella. The sun now shone with power and covered the mountains and the stones close at hand with shimmering layers. Near to the ground it was about to materialize into gold leaf. The huts were holes of darkness and the thatch had a sick, broken radiance over it. Until we got to the town limits I kept saying to myself, "Reality! Oh, reality! Damn you anyhow, reality!" In the bush the women set me down and I stepped from the hammock onto the blazing ground. This was the hard-packed white, solar-looking rock. The king, too, was standing. He looked back at the crowd, which had remained near the wall of the town. With the game-beaters was the Bunam, and, following very closely, a white creature, a man completely dyed or calcimined. Under the coat of chalk I recognized him. It was the Bunam's man, the executioner. I identified him by the folds of his narrow face in this white metamorphosis. "What's the idea of this?" I asked, going up to Dahfu over the packed stone and the stubble of weeds. "No idea," the king said. "Is he always like this at a lion hunt?" "No. Different days, different colors, according to the reading of the omens. White is not the best omen." "What are they trying to pull off here? They're giving you a bad send-off." The king behaved as though he could not be bothered. Any human lion would have done as he did. Nevertheless he was irritated if not pierced by this. I made a very heavy half turn to stare at this ill-omened figure that had come to injure the king's self-confidence on the eve of this event, reunion with the soul of his father. "This whitewash is serious?" I said to the king. Widely separated, his eyes had two separate looks; as I spoke to him they mingled again into one. "They intend it so." "Sire," I said, "you want me to do something?" "What thing?" "You name it. On a day like this to be interfered with is dangerous, isn't it? It ought to be dangerous for them, too." "Oh? No. What?" he said. "They are living in the old universe. Why not? That is part of my bargain with them, isn't it?" Something of the gold tinge of the stones came into his smile, brilliantly. "Why, this is my great day, Mr. Henderson. I can afford all the omens. After I have captured Gmilo they can say nothing more." "Sticks and stones will break my bones but this is idle superstition, and so forth. Well, Your Highness, if that's the way you take it, fine, okay." I looked into the rising heat, which borrowed color from the stones and plants. I had expected the king to speak harshly to the Bunam and his follower who was painted with the color of bad omen, but he only made one remark to them. His face appeared very full under that velvet hat with the large brim and the crown full of soft variations. The umbrellas had stayed behind. The women, the king's wives, stood at the low wall of the town at assorted heights; they watched and cried certain (I suppose farewell) things. The stones paled more and more with the force of the heat. The women sent strange cries of love and encouragement or warning or good-by. They waved, they sang, and they signed with the two umbrellas, which went up and down. The beaters, silent, had not stopped for us but went away with the bugles, spears, drums, and rattles, in a solid body. There were sixty or seventy of them, and they started from us in a mass but gradually dispersed toward the bush. Antlike they began to spread into the golden weeds and boulders of the slope. These boulders, as noted before, were like gross objects combed down from above by an ignorant force. The departure of the beaters left the Bunam, the Bunam's wizard, the king, and myself, the Sungo, plus three attendants with spears standing about thirty yards from the town. "What did you tell them?" I asked the king. "I have said to the Bunam I would accomplish my purpose notwithstanding." "You should give them each a kick in the tail," I said, scowling at the two guys. "Come, Henderson, my friend," Dahfu said, and we began to walk. The three men with spears fell in behind us. "What are these fellows for?" "To help maneuver in the hopo," he said. "You will see when we come to the small end of the place. That is better than explanation." As we went down into the high grass of the bush he raised his sloping face with the smooth low-bridged nose and scented the air. I breathed it in, too. Dry and fine, it had an odor like fermented sugar. I began to be aware of the tremble of insects as they played their instruments underneath the stems, down at the very base of the heat. The king began to go quickly, not so much walking as bounding, and as we followed, the spearmen and I, it occurred to me that the grass was high enough to conceal almost any animal except an elephant and that I didn't have so much as a diaper pin to defend myself with. "King," I said. "Hisst. Wait a minute." I couldn't raise my voice here; I sensed that this was not the time to make a noise. He probably didn't like this, for he wouldn't stop, but I kept on calling in low tones and finally he waited for me. Greatly worked up, I stared into his eyes at close range, fought a few moments for air, and then said, "Not even a weapon? Just like this? Are you supposed to catch this animal by the tail?" He decided to be patient with me. I could see the decision being taken. This I would swear to. "The animal, and I hope it is Gmilo, is probably within the area of the hopo. See here, Henderson, I must not be armed. What if I were to wound Gmilo?" He spoke of this possibility with horror. I had failed before (what was the matter with me?) to observe how profoundly excited he was. I had not seen through his cordiality. "What if?" "My life would be required as for any harm to a living king." "And what about me--I'm not supposed to defend myself either?" He did not answer for a moment. Then he said, "You