Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow [101]
"You are the Sungo. It is literal, Mr. Henderson. I could not have made Sungo of you if you had not had the strength to move Mummah." "Well, that's okay then--but the rest, with the gods? I felt very bad, Your Highness, I don't mind telling you. I could never claim that I led a very good life. I'm sure it's written all over me �" The king nodded. "I've done a hell of a lot of things, too, both as a soldier and a civilian. I'll say it straight out, I don't even deserve to be chronicled on toilet paper. But when I saw them start to beat Mummah and Hummat and all the others, I fell to the ground. It got to be pretty dark out there and I don't know whether you saw that or not." "I saw you. It is not my idea, Henderson, of how to be." The king spoke softly. "I have far other ideas. You will see. But shall we speak only to each other?" "You want to do me a favor, Your Highness, a big favor? The biggest favor possible?" "Assuredly. Why certainly." "All right, then, this is it: will you expect the truth from me? That's my only hope. Without it everything else might as well go bust." He began to smile. "Why, how could I refuse you this? I am glad, Henderson-Sungo, but you must let me make the same request, otherwise it will be worthless if not mutual. But do you have expectation as to the form the truth is to take? Are you prepared if it comes in another shape, unanticipated?" "Your Majesty, it's a deal. This is a pact between us. Oh, you don't understand how great a favor you're doing me. When I left the Arnewi (and I may as well tell you that I goofed there--maybe you know it) I thought that I had lost my last chance. I was just about to find out about the grun-tu-molani when this terrible thing happened, which was all my fault, and I left under a cloud. Christ, I was humiliated. You see, Your Highness, I keep thinking about the spirit's sleep and when the hell is it ever going to burst. So yesterday, when I became the rain king--oh, what an experience! How will I ever communicate it to Lily (my wife)?" "I do appreciate this, Mr. Henderson-Sungo. I intentionally wished to keep you with me a while hoping that exchanges of importance would be possible. For I do not find it easy to express myself to my own people. Only Horko has been in the world at all and with him I cannot freely exchange, either. They are against me here �" This he said almost secretly, and after he spoke his broad lips closed and the room became still. The amazons lay on the floor as if asleep--Tatu in her hat and the other two naked save for the leather jerkin articles they wore. Their black eyes were only just open, but watchful. I could hear the wives behind the thick door of our inner room, stirring there. "You are right," I said. "It's not just a question of expecting the truth. There's another question, too, of solitude. As if a guy were his own grave. When he comes forth from this burial he doesn't know good from bad. So for instance it has been going through my mind for some time that there is a connection between truth and blows." "How is that again? You thought what?" "Well, it's this way. Last winter as I was chopping wood a piece flew up from the block and broke my nose. So the first thing I thought was _truth!"__ "Ah," said the king, and then he began to speak, intimate and low, of a variety of things I had never heard before, and I stared toward him with my eyes grown big. "As things are," he said, "such may appear to be related to the case. I do not believe actually it is so. But I feel there is a law of human nature in which force is concerned. Man is a creature who cannot stand still under blows. Now take the horse--he never needs a revenge. Nor the ox. But man is a creature of revenges. If he is punished he will contrive to get rid of the punishment. When he cannot get rid of punishment, his heart is apt to rot from it. This may be--don't you think so, Mr. Henderson-Sungo? Brother raises a hand against brother and son against father (how terrible!) and the father also against son. And moreover it is a continuity-matter, for if the father did