Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow [100]
now. Don't worry, I say. It is a subject which could not be avoided. You do not necessarily refresh it. His time came, he died, and I was king. I had to recover the lion." "What lion are you talking about?" I said. "Why, I have told you yesterday. Possibly you have forgot--the king's body, the maggot that breeds in it, the king's soul, the lion cub?" I recalled it now. Sure, he had told me this. "Well, then," he said, "this very young animal, set free by the Bunam, the successor king has to capture it within a year or two when it is grown." "What? You have to hunt it?" He smiled. "Hunt it? I have another function. To capture it alive and keep it with me." "So that's the animal I hear below? I could swear I was hearing a lion down there. Jupiter, so that's what it is," I said. "No, no, no," he said, in that soft way of his. "That is not it, Mr. Hcnderson-Sungo. You have heard a quite other animal. I have not yet captured Gmilo. Accordingly I am not yet fully confirmed in the rule of king. You find me at a midpoint. To borrow your manner of speaking, I too must complete Becoming." Despite all the shocks of yesterday I was beginning to comprehend why I felt reassured at first sight of the king. It comforted me to sit with him; it comforted me unusually. His large legs were stretched out as he sat, his back was curved, and his arms were folded on his chest, and on his face there was a brooding but pleasant expression. Through his high-swelled lips a low hum occasionally came. It reminded me of the sound you sometimes hear from a power station when you pass one in New York on a summer night; the doors are open; all the brass and steel is going, lustrous under one little light, and some old character in dungarees and carpet slippers is smoking a pipe with all the greatness of the electricity behind him. Probably I am one of the most spell-prone people who ever lived. Appearances to the contrary, I am highly mediumistic and attuned. "Henderson," I said to myself, and not for the first time, "it's one of those _luth suspendu__ deals, _sit�u'on le touche il r�nne.__ And you saw yesterday what savagery can be if you never saw it before, throwing passes with his own father's skull. And now with the lions. Lions! And the man almost a graduate physician. The whole thing is crazy." Thus I reflected. But then I also had to take into account the fact that I have a voice within me repeating, _I__ _want,__ raving and demanding, making a chaos, desiring, desiring, and disappointed continually, which drove me forth as beaters drive game. So I had no business to make terms with life, but had to accept such conditions as it would let me have. But at moments I would have been glad to find that my fever alone had originated all that had happened since I left Charlie and his bride and took off on my own expedition--the Arnewi, the frogs, Mtalba, and the corpse and the gallop in vine leaves with those giant women. And now this powerful black personage who soothed me--but was he trustworthy? How about trustworthy? And I, myself, hulking in the green silk pants that went with the office of rain king. I was smarting, harkening, straining my ears, my suspicious eyes. Oh, hell! How shall a man be broken for whom reality has no fixed dwelling! How he shall be broken! So I was sitting in this palace with its raw red walls, and the white rocks amid which the flowers flourished. By the doors were amazons, and, more particularly, this fierce old Tatu with big nostrils. She sat dreaming on the floor in her garrison cap. All the same, as we sat there talking I felt we were men of unusual dimensions. Trustworthiness was a separate issue. At this time there began a conversation which could never be duplicated anywhere in the world. I hitched up the green pants a little. My head was swayed by the fever but I demanded firmness of myself and I said, speaking steadily, "Your Majesty, I don't intend to back down on the bet. I have certain principles. But I still don't know what this is all about, being dressed up as the rain king." "It is not merely dress," said Dahfu.