Henderson the Rain King (14 page)

of equipoise or calm of mind which I lacked. And I kept wiping or rubbing my nose with my Woolworth bandanna. I tried to figure, "Which of these women might be the queen?" Then, as it might not be polite to stare at the different members of the harem, most of them so soft, supple, and black, I turned my eyes to the floor, aware that the king was watching me. He seemed all ease, and I all limitation. He was extended, floating; I was contracted and cramped. The undersides of my knees were sweating. Yes, he was soaring like a spirit while I sank like a stone, and from my fatigued eyes I could not help looking at him grudgingly (thus becoming actually guilty of the passion he had seen in me), in his colors surrounded by cherishing attention. Suppose there was ultimately such a price to pay? To me it seemed that he was getting full value. "Do you mind a further inquiry, Mr. Henderson? What kind of traveler are you?" "Oh � that depends. I don't know yet. It remains to be seen. You know," I said, "you have to be very rich to take a trip like this." I might have added, as it entered my mind to do, that some people found satisfaction in _being__ (Walt Whitman: "Enough to merely be! Enough to breathe! Joy! Joy! All over joy!"). _Being__. Others were taken up with _becoming__. Being people have all the breaks. Becoming people are very unlucky, always in a tizzy. The Becoming people are always having to make explanations or offer justifications to the Being people. While the Being people provoke these explanations. I sincerely feel that this is something everyone should understand about me. Now Willatale, the queen of the Arnewi, and principal woman of Bittahness, was a Be-er if there ever was one. And at present King Dahfu. And if I had really been capable of the alert consciousness which it required I would have confessed that Becoming was beginning to come out of my ears. Enough! Enough! Time to have Become. Time to Be! Burst the spirit's sleep. Wake up, America! Stump the experts. Instead I told this savage king, "I seem to be kind of a tourist." "Or a wanderer," he said. "I already am fond of a diffident way which I see you to exhibit." I tried to make a bow when he said this, but was prevented by a combination of factors, the main one being my crouching position with my belly against my bare knees (incidentally, I badly needed a bath, as sitting in this posture made me aware). "You do me too much credit," I said. "There are a lot of folks at home who have me down for nothing but a bum." At this stage of our interview I tried to make out, I tried to feel as if with my fingers, the chief characteristics of the situation. Things seemed to be smooth, but how smooth could they really be? According to Itelo, this king, Dahfu, was one hell of a guy. He had gotten a blue-ribbon recommendation. Class A, as Itelo himself would have said. Primo. Actually, I was already greatly taken with him, but it was necessary to remember what I had seen that morning, that I was among savages and that I had been quartered with a corpse and had seen guys hanging upside down by the feet and that the king had made at least one dubious insinuation. Besides, my fever was increasing, and I had to make a special effort to remain alert. From this I developed a great strain at the back of the neck and in my eyes. I was glaring crudely at everything about me, including these women who should have elicited quite another kind of attitude. But my purpose was to see essentials, only essentials, nothing but essentials, and to guard against hallucinations. Things are not what they seem, anyway. As for the king, his interest in me appeared to increase continually. Half smiling, he scrutinized me with growing closeness. How was I ever to guess the aims and purposes hidden in his heart? God has not given me half as much intuition as I constantly require. As I couldn't trust him, I had to understand him. Understand him? How was I going to understand him? Hell! It would be like extracting an eel from the chowder after it has been cooked to pieces. This planet has billions of passengers on it, and those were preceded by infinite billions and there are vaster billions to come, and none of these, no, not one, can I hope ever to understand. Never! And when I think how much confidence I used to have in understanding--you know?--it's enough to make a man weep. Of course, you may ask, what have numbers got to do with it? And that's right, too. We get too depressed by them, and should be more accepting of multitudes than we are. Being in point of size precisely halfway between the suns and the atoms, living among astronomical conceptions, with every thumb and fingerprint a mystery, we should get used to living with huge numbers. In the history of the world many souls have been, are, and will be, and with a little reflection this is marvelous and not depressing. Many jerks are made gloomy by it, for they think quantity buries them alive. That's just crazy. Numbers are very dangerous, but the main thing about them is that they humble your pride. And that's good. But I used to have great confidence in understanding. Now take a phrase like "Father forgive them; they know not what they do." This may be interpreted as a promise that in time we would be delivered from blindness and understand. On the other hand, it may also mean that with time we will understand our own enormities and crimes, and that sounds to me like a threat. Thus I was sitting there with my pondering expression. Or maybe it would be more factual and descriptive to say that I was listening to the growling of my mind. Then the king observed, to my surprise, "You do not show too much wear and tear of the journey. I esteem you to be very strong. Oh, vastly. I see at a glance. You tell me you were able to hold your own with Itelo? Perhaps you were practicing mere courtesy. At a snap judgment you do not seem so very courteous. But I will not conceal you are a specimen of development I cannot claim ever to have seen." First the examiner in the middle of the night, waiving the question of the corpse, had asked me to take off my shirt so he could study my physique, and now the king expressed a similar interest. I could have boasted, "I'm strong enough to run up a hill about a hundred yards with one of your bodies on my back." For I do have a certain pride in my strength (compensatory mechanism). But my feelings had been undergoing a considerable fluctuation. First I was reassured by the person and attitude of the king, and his tone of voice. I had rejoiced. My heart proclaimed a holiday. Then again suspicions supervened, and now the peculiar inquiry about my physique made me sweat anew with anxiety. I remembered, if they were thinking of using me as a sacrifice, that an ideal sacrifice has no blemishes. And so I said that I actually had not been in the best of health and that I felt feverish today. "You cannot have a fever, as manifestly you are perspiring," said Dahfu. "That's just another one of my peculiarities," I said. "I can run a high temperature while pouring sweat." He brushed this aside. "And a terrible thing happened to me just last night as I was eating a piece of hardtack." I said. "A real calamity. I broke my bridge." I widened my mouth with my fingers and threw back my head, inviting him to look at the gap. Also I unbuttoned my pocket and showed him the teeth, which I had put there for safekeeping. The king looked into that enormous moat, my mouth. Exactly what his impression was, I can't undertake to relate, but he said, "It does look exceedingly troublesome. Where did this happen?" "Oh, just before that fellow grilled me," I said. "What do you call him?" "The Bunam," he said. "Do you find him very dignified? He is top official of all the priests. It is no trouble to conceive how annoyed you were to break the teeth." "I was fit to be tied," I said. "I could have kicked myself in the head for being so stupid. Of course I can chew on the stumps. But what if the shank should come out? I don't know how familiar you may be with dentistry, Your Highness, but underneath, everything has been ground down to the pulp and if I feel a draft on those stumps, believe me, there's no torment comparable. I have had very bad luck with my teeth, as has my wife. Naturally you can't expect teeth to last forever. They wear down. But that's not all �" "Can there be other things that ail you?" he said. "You do present an appearance of utmost and solid physical organization." I flushed, and answered, "I have a pretty bad case of hemorrhoids, Your Highness. Moreover I am subject to fainting fits." Sympathetically he asked, "Not the falling sickness--petit mal or grand mal?" "No," I said, "what I have defies classification. I've been to the biggest men in New York with this, and they say it isn't epilepsy. But a few years ago I started to have fits of fainting, very unpredictable, without warning. They may come over me while I am reading the paper, or on a step-ladder, fixing a window shade. And I have blacked out while playing the violin. Then about a year ago, in the express elevator, going up in the Chrysler Building, it happened to me. It must have been the speed of overcoming gravity that did it. There was a lady in a mink coat next to me. I put my head on her shoulder and she gave a loud scream, and I fell down." Having been a stoic for many years I am not skillful in making my ailments sound convincing. Also, from much reading of medical literature I am aware how much mind, just mind itself, we needn't speak of drink or anything like that, lies at the root of my complaints. It was perversity of character that was making me faint. Moreover my heart so often repeated, _I__ _want__, that I felt entitled to a little reprieve, and I found it very restful to pass out once in a while. Nevertheless I began to realize that the king would certainly use me if he could, for, nice as he was, he was also in a certain position with respect to the wives. As he would never make old bones, there was no reason why he should be particularly considerate of me. I said in a loud voice, "Your Majesty, this has been a wonderful and interesting visit. Who'd ever think! In the middle of Africa! Itelo praised Your Majesty very highly to me. He said you were terrific, and I see you really are. All this couldn't be more memorable, but I don't want to outstay my welcome. I know you are planning to make rain today and probably I will only be in the way. So thanks for the hospitality of the palace, and I wish you all kinds of luck with the ceremony, but I think after lunch my man and I had better blow." As soon as he saw my intention and while I still spoke, he began to shake his head, and when he did so, the women looked at me with expressions devoid of friendliness, as though I were crossing or exciting the king and costing him strength which might be better employed. "Oh, no, Mr. Henderson," he said. "It is not even conceivable that we should relinquish you so immediately upon arrival. You have vast social charm, my dear guest. You must believe I should suffer a privation positively gruesome to lose your company. Anyways, I think Fate have intended we should be more intimate. I told you how excited I have been since the announcement of your appearance from the outside world. And so, as the time has come for the ceremonies to begin, I invite you to be my guest." He put on a generous large-brimmed hat of the same purple color as his drawers, but in velvet. Human teeth, to protect him from the evil eye, were sewed to the crown. He arose from his green sofa but only to lie down again in a hammock. Amazons dressed in their short leather waistcoats were the bearers. Four on either side put their shoulders to the poles, and these shoulders, although they were amazons, were soft. Physical capacity always stirs me, especially in women. I love to watch movies in Times Square of the Olympic Games, in particular those vital Atalantas running and throwing the javelin. I always say, "Look at that! Ladies and gentlemen--look what women can be like!" It appeals to the soldier in me as well as the lover of beauty. I tried to replace those eight amazons with eight women of my acquaintance--Frances, Mlle. Montecuccoli, Berthe, Lily, Clara Spohr, and others--but of them all it was only Lily who had the right stature. I could not think of a matched team. Berthe, though strong, was too broad and Mlle. Montecuccoli had a large bust but lacked the shoulders. These friends, acquaintances, and loved ones could not have carried the king. At his majesty's request, I walked beside him down the stairs and into the courtyard. He did not lie lazily in his hammock; his figure had real elegance; it showed his breeding. None of this might have been manifest if I had met him and Itelo during their student days in Beirut. We have all encountered students from Africa, and usually they wear baggy suits and their collars are wrinkled because knotting a tie is foreign to their habits. In the courtyard the procession was joined by Horko with his umbrellas, amazons, wives, children carrying long sheaves of Indian corn, warriors holding idols and fetishes in their arms which were freshly smeared with ochre and calcimine and were as ugly as human conception could make them. Some were all teeth, and others all nostrils, while several had tools bigger than their bodies. The yard suddenly became very crowded. The sun blasted and blazed. Acetylene does not peel paint more than this sun did the doors of my heart. Foolishly, I told myself that I was feeling faint. (It was owing to my size and strength that this appeared foolish.) And I thought that this was like a summer's day in New York. I had taken the wrong subway and instead of reaching upper Broadway I had gone to Lenox Avenue and 125th Street, struggling up to the sidewalk. The king said to me, "The Arnewi too have a difficulty of water, Mr. Henderson?" I thought, "All is lost. The guy has heard about the cistern." But this did not actually appear to be the case. No hint was contained in his manner; he was only looking from the hammock into the windless and cloudless blue. "Well, I'll tell you, King," I said. "They didn't have much luck in that particular department." "Oh?" he said thoughtfully. "It is a peculiarity about luck with them, do you know that? A legend exists that we were once the same and one, a single tribe, but separated over the luck question. The word for them in our language is nibai. This may be translated 'unlucky.' Definitely, this is the equivalent in our tongue," "Is that so? The Wariri feel lucky, eh?" "Oh yes. In numerous instances. We claim ourselves to be the contrary. The saying is, Wariri ibai. Put in other words, Lucky Wariri." "You don't say? Well, well. And what's your own opinion of that? Is the saying right?" "Are we Wariri lucky?" he asked. Unmistakably he was setting me straight, for I had challenged
him by the question. I tell you! It was an experience. It was a lesson to me. He pulled his majesty on me so lightly it was hardly noticeable. "We have luck," he said. "Incontrovertibly, it is a fact about the luck. You wouldn't dream how consistent it is." "So do you think you will have rain today?" I said, grimly grinning. He answered very mildly, "I have seen rain on days that began like this." And then he added, "I believe I can understand your attitude. It derives from the kindliness of the Arnewi. They have made the impression on you which so commonly they make. Do not forget that Itelo is my special chum and was my sidekick in situations making for great intimacy. Ah, yes, I know the qualities. Generous. Meek. Good. No substitutes should be accepted. On this my agreement is total and complete, Mr. Henderson." I put my fist to my face and looked at the sky, giving a short laugh and thinking, Christ! What a person to meet at this distance from home. Yes, travel is advisable. And believe me, the world is a mind. Travel is mental travel. I had always suspected this. What we call reality is nothing but pedantry. I need not have had that quarrel with Lily, standing over her in our matrimonial bed and shouting until Ricey took fright and escaped with the child. I proclaimed I was on better terms with the real than she. Yes, yes, yes. The world of facts is real, all right, and not to be altered. The physical is all there, and it belongs to science. But then there is the noumenal department, and there we create and create and create. As we tread our overanxious ways, we think we know what is real. And I was telling the truth to Lily after a fashion. I knew it better, all right, but I knew it because it was mine--filled, flowing, and floating with my own resemblances; as hers was with _her__ resemblances. Oh, what a revelation! Truth spoke to me. To _me__, Henderson! The king's eyes gleamed into mine with such a power of significance that I felt he could, if he wanted to, pass right straight into my soul. He could invest it. I felt this. But because I am ignorant and untutored in higher things--in higher things I am a coarse beginner, because of my abused nature--I didn't know what to expect. However, under the light of King Dahfu's eyes I comprehended that in bombing the cistern I had not lost my last chance. No sir. By no means. Horko, the king's uncle, was still marshaling the procession. Over the palace walls came howls and sounds surpassing anything I ever heard from mortal throats or lungs. But as soon as there was a lull the king said to me, "I easily gather, Mr. Traveler, that you have set forth to accomplish a very important matter." "Right, Your Majesty. One hundred per cent right," I said, and bowed. "Otherwise I could have stayed in bed and looked at a picture atlas or slides of Angkor Wat. I have a box full of them, in color." "Deuce. That is what I meant," he said. "And you have left your heart with our Arnewi friends. We agree, they are excellent. I even have conjectured if it is environment or nature. Frequently I have inclined to the innate and not the nurture side. Sometimes I would like to see my friend Itelo. I would give away a very dear treasure to hear his voice. Unfortunately I cannot go. My office � official capacity. Good impresses you, eh, Mr. Henderson?" In the flash of the sun, tiny gold platelets within my eyes blinding me, I nodded. I said, "Yes, Your Highness. No bunk. The true good. The honest-to-God good." "Yes, I know how you feel over it," he said, and spoke with a weird softness or longing. I could never have believed that I could take this from anybody, or would ever have to, and least of all from this person in the royal hammock, with the purple large-brimmed hat, and the teeth sewed onto it, the huge, soft, eccentric eyes tinged very slightly with red, and his pink swelling mouth. "They say," he went on, "that bad can easily be spectacular, has dash or bravado and impresses the mind quicker than good. Oh, that is a mistake in my opinion. Perhaps of common good it is true. Many, many nice people. Oh yes. Their will tells them to perform good, and they do. How ordinary! Mere arithmetic. 'I have left undone the etceteras I should have done, and done the etceteras I ought not to have.' This does not even amount to a life. Oh, how sordid it is to book-keep. My whole view is opposite or contrary, that good cannot be labor or conflict. When it is high and great, it is too superior. Oh, Mr. Henderson, it is far more spectacular. It is associated with inspiration, and not conflict, for where a man conflicts there he will fall, and if taking the sword also perishes by the sword. A dull will produces a very dull good, of no interest. Where a fellow draws a battle line there he is apt to be found, dead, a testimonial of the great strength of effort, and only effort." I said eagerly, "Oh King Dahfu--oh, Your Majesty!" He had stirred me so much. By just these few words spoken as he reclined in the hammock. "Do you know the queen over there, that woman of Bittahness, Willatale? She's Itelo's aunt, you know. She was going to instruct me in grun-tu-molani, but one thing and another came up, and--" But the amazons had put their backs to the poles and the hammock rose and moved forward. And the screams, the excitement! The roars, the deep drum noises, as if the animals were speaking again by means of the skins that had once covered their bodies! It was a great release of sound, like Coney Island or Atlantic City or Times Square on New Year's Eve; at the king's exit from the gate the great cacophony left all the previous noises in my experience far behind. Shouting, I asked the king, "Where �?" I bent very close for the reply. "� possess a special � a place � arena," he said. I heard no more. The frenzy was so great it was metropolitan. There was such a whirl of men and women and fetishes, and snarls like dog-beating and whines like sickles sharpening, and horns blasting and blazing into the air, that the scale could not be recorded. The bonds of sound were about to be torn to pieces. I tried to protect my good ear by plugging it with my thumb, and even the defective one had more than it could take. At least a thousand villagers must have been in this mob, most of them naked, many painted and gaudy, all using noisemakers and uttering screams. The weather was heavy, sultry, so that my body itched. It was an ugly, dusty heat, and there were times when my face felt as if wrapped up in serge. But I had no time to take note of discomfort, being carried forward beside the king. The procession entered a stadium--I stretch the term--a big enclosure fenced with wood. Within was a quadruple row of benches cut from the white calcareous stone aforementioned. For the king there was a royal box in which I sat, too, under a canopy with floating ribbons, with wives, officials, and other royalty. The amazons in their corset-like vests and large smooth bodies and delicate, shaved, immense heads, round like melons, oval like cantaloupes, long like squashes, were posted all around. Accompanied by his retinue and umbrellas, Horko bowed and salaamed before the king. The family resemblance between these two suggested that they could communicate thoughts merely by looking at each other; sometimes it is like that. The same noses, the same eyes, the same implied message of the race. So, in a silent manner, Horko appeared to me to urge his royal nephew to do something previously discussed. But by the look of him the king wouldn't promise a thing. He was in command here; there could never be any question about that. Carried aloft by four amazons, one at each leg, came the bridge table. On it was the bowl containing two skulls I had seen a short while ago in the royal apartment. But now they had ribbons tied through the eye sockets, very long and gleaming, of a dark blue color. They were set down before the king, who took note of them with one roll of his eyes and looked no more at them. Meantime this huge Horko, all rolled up so that he stood heel to heel in his crimson sheath, the fat crowded upward to his chin and shoulders, took the liberty of mocking my expression. At least I thought I recognized my own scowl on his face. I didn't mind. I made a short bow to acknowledge that he had taken me off pretty well. And, like the politician he was, he gave me a glad, impudent wave. The colored umbrella wheeled over him and he went back to his box on the king's left and sat down with the examiner who had kept me waiting last night, the character whom Dahfu called the Bunam, and the wrinkled old black-leather fellow who had sent us into the ambush. The one who had arisen out of the white rocks like the man met by Joseph. Who sent Joseph over to Dothan. Then the brothers saw Joseph and said, "Behold, the dreamer cometh." Everybody should study the Bible. Believe me, I felt like a dreamer, and that's no lie. "Who is that man all wrinkled like a Greek olive?" I said. "Beg pardon?" said the king. "With the Bunam and your uncle." "Oh, of course. A senior priest. Diviner of a sort." "Yesterday we met him with a twisted stick," I was saying, when several squads of amazons lined up with muskets and started to aim at the sky. I could not see the.375 anywhere. These large women began to fire salutes, first in honor of the king and the king's late father, Gmilo, and for various others. Then, so the king told me, there was a salute for me. "For me? You're kidding, Your Highness," I said. But he was not, so I asked him, "Should I stand up?" "I think it would be widely appreciated," he said. And I got to my feet, and there were loud shrieks and screams. I thought, "The word has got around how I dealt with that corpse. They know I'm no Milquetoast but a person of strength and courage. Plenty of moxie." I was beginning to feel the spirit of the occasion--pervaded by barbaric emotions--the scratchiness in my bosom was greatly aggravated. I had no words to speak, no mortar or bazooka to fire, replying to the guns of the amazons. But I was impelled to make a sound, and therefore I uttered a roar like the great Assyrian bull. You know, to be the center of attention in a crowd always stirs and disturbs me. It had done so when the Arnewi wept and when they gathered near the cistern. Also when shaved in Italy near the stronghold of the ancient Guiscardos that time in Salerno. In a big gathering my father also had a tendency to become excited. He once lifted up the speaker's stand and threw it down into the orchestra pit. However, I roared. And the acclaim was magnificent. For I was heard. I was seen gripping my chest as I bellowed. The crowd went wild over this, and its yells were, I have to admit it, just like nourishment to me. I reflected, So this is what guys in public life get out of it? Well, well. I no longer wondered that this Dahfu had come back from civilization to be king of his tribe. Hell, who wouldn't be a king, even a small king? It was not a privilege to be missed. (The time of payment to a strong young fellow was remote; the wives couldn't invent enough attentions and expressions of gratitude; he was the darling of their hearts.) I stood as long as was feasible and luxuriated in this applause, laughing, and I sat down when I had to. Now, horrified, I saw a grinning face with a mouth like a big open loop and a forehead infinitely wrinkled. It was the sort of vision you might have in a shop window on Fifth Avenue, and, when you turned to see what fantastic apparition New York had thrown up behind you, there would be no one. This face, however, stood its ground and held steady while it grinned at the party in the king's box. Deep bloody cuts were being made meanwhile on the chest that belonged to this face. A green old knife--a cruel clutch. Oh, the man is being slashed and stabbed. Stop, stop! Holy God! Why, this is murder being committed, said I. Through my depths as in a tunnel went a shock like the ones big buildings get from trains which pass beneath. But the cutting wasn't deep, it was lateral and superficial, and despite the speed of the painted priest who wielded the knife it was done according to plan, and with skill. Ochre was rubbed into the wounds, which must have stung like frenzy, but the fellow grinned and the king said, "This proceeding is about semi-usual, Mr. Henderson. The worry is not necessary. He is thus advanced in his priesthood career and so is very pleased. As to the blood, that is supposed to induce the heavens also to flow, or prime the pumps of the firmament." "Ha, ha!" I laughed and cried. "Say, King! What's that? Oh, Jesus--come again? The pumps of the firmament? Isn't that the dandiest!" However, the king had no time for me. At a signal from Horko's box there was an all-out, slam-bang, grand salute of the guns and with it a pounding of the deep liquid bass drums. The king arose. Wild hosannas! Fountains of praise! Faces screaming fiercely with pride and twisted with diverse inspirations. From the basic blackness of the flesh of the tribe there broke or erupted a wave of red color, and the people all arose on the white stone of the grandstands and waved red objects, waved or flaunted. Crimson was the holy-day color of the Wariri. The amazons saluted with purple banners, the king's colors. His purple umbrella was raised, and its taut head swayed. The king himself was no longer beside me. He had gone down from the box to take a position in the arena. At the other side of the circle, which was no bigger than the infield of a ball park, there arose a tall woman. To the waist she was naked and her head had woolly ringlets. When she came closer I saw that her face was covered with a beautiful design of scars that looked like Braille. Two peaks of this came down beside each ear, and a third descended to the bridge of her nose. As far as the belly she was painted a russet or dull gold color. She was young, for her breasts were small and didn't waver when she walked, as in the case with more adult females, and her arms were long and thin. They manifested the three major bones; I mean the tapered humerus and the radius and ulna. Her face was small and sloping, and when I first saw her from across the field she had no more features than the ball of a flagpole; at a distance she had a face like a gilded apple. She wore a pair of purple trousers, mates to the king's, and was his partner in a game they now began to play. For the first time, I realized that there was a group of shrouded figures in the center of the arena--roughly, let's say, where the pitcher's mound would have been. I figured correctly that these were the gods. Around them and over them the king and this gilded woman began to play a game with the two skulls. Whirling them by the long ribbons, each took a short run and threw them high in the air, above the figures of wood which stood under the tarpaulins--the biggest of these idols about as tall