Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow [106]
and without raising his voice he said to me, "Henderson-Sungo, she now knows you are there. Gradually you must advance closer--little by little." "Should I, Your Highness?" He raised his hand toward me from the door, and his fingers moved. I came forward one step and I cannot deny that there lay over my consciousness the shadow of the cat I had attempted to shoot under the bridge table. There was little besides the king's arm that I could see. He kept beckoning and I took extremely small steps in my rubber-soled shoes. The snarls of the animal were now as sharp as thorns to me, and blind patches as big as silver dollars came and went before my eyes. Between these opaque interruptions I could see the body of the animal as it flowed back and forth before the opening--the calm, murderous face and clear eyes and the heavy feet. The king reached backward and touched me; he gathered my arm in his fingers and drew me to his side. He now held me in his arm. "King, what do you need me here for?" I said in a whisper. The lioness, in turning, then bumped into me and when I felt her I gave a sigh. The king said, "Make no sign," and he began again to speak to the lioness, saying, "Oh, my sweetheart, dolly girl, this is Henderson." She rubbed herself against him so that I felt the stress of her weight through the medium of his body. She stood well above our hips in height. When he touched her her whiskered mouth wrinkled so that the root of each hair showed black. She then moved off, returned behind us, came back again, and this time began to investigate me. I felt her muzzle touch upward first at my armpits, and then between my legs, which naturally made the member there shrink into the shelter of my paunch. Clasping me and holding me up, the king still talked softly and calmingly to her while her breath blew out the green silk of the Sungo trousers. I was gripping the inside of my cheek with my teeth, including the broken bridgework, while my eyes shut, slowly, and my face became, as I was highly aware, one huge mass of acceptance directed toward fate. Suffering. (Here is all that remains of a certain life--take it away! was implied by my expression.) But the lioness withdrew her head from my crotch and began once more to walk back and forth, the king saying to me (my comforter), "Henderson-Sungo, it is all right. She is going to accept you easily." "How do you know?" I said, dry in the throat. "How do I know!" He spoke with a peculiar stress of confidence. "How do _I__ know?" He gave a low laugh, saying, "Why I know her--this is Atti." "That's swell. It may seem obvious to you," I said, "but me �" My words ended, for she was making her "wing back and I caught a glance from her eyes. They were so great, so clear, like circles of wrath. Then she passed me, rubbing against Dahfu's side; her belly swung softly, and she turned again and plunged her head under his hand, taking a caress from it. She went again to the far side of the den, this large, stone-walled room which filtered the gray and yellow light. She walked back along the walls, and when she snarled the freckles at the base of her whiskers were velvet and dark. The king, in a delighted, playful voice, nasal, African, and songlike, would call out after her, "Atti, Atti." And he said, "Ain't she the most beautiful?" Then he instructed me, "You will stand still, Mr. Henderson-Sungo." I said, whispering fiercely, "No, no, don't move," but he didn't heed me. "King, for Christ's sake," I said. He tried to indicate that I should not worry, but was so taken up with his lioness, showing me how happy relations were between them, that in moving from me his step resembled the bounds he had made in the arena yesterday throwing the skulls. Yes, as he had done yesterday he danced and jumped, in his gold-embroidered white slippers, with powerful legs. There was something so proud and, seemingly, lucky about those legs in the neat, close trousers. Even through intensest fear it reached my mind that a man with such legs must be lucky. I wished that he would not push his luck, however, or demonstrate