Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow [109]
please. Not everything in one day. I am doing my best." He admitted to me, "It is true I am attempting rapid progress. But I wish to overcome your preliminary difficulties in quick time." I smelled my fingers, which had taken a peculiar odor from the lioness. "Listen," I said, "I suffer a lot from impatience myself. But I have to say that there is just so much I can take at one time. I still have wounds on my face from yesterday, and I'm afraid she'll smell fresh blood. I understand nobody can control these animals once they scent it." This marvelous man laughed at me and said, "Oh, Henderson-Sungo, you are exquisite." (_That__ I never suspected of myself.) "You are real precious to me, and do you know," he said, "not many persons have touched lions." "I could have lived without it," was the answer I might have made. But as he thought so highly of lions I kept it to myself, mostly. I merely muttered. "And how you are afraid! Really! In the highest degree. I am really delighted by it. I have never seen such a fear manifestation. It resembled anxious pleasure to me. Do you know, many strong people love this blended fear and satisfaction the most? I think you must be of that type. In addition, I love when your brows move. They are really extraordnary. And your chin gets like a peach stone, and you have a very strangulation color and facial swelling, and your mouth spread very wide. And when you cried! I adored when you began to cry." I knew that this was not really personal but came from his scientific or medical absorption in these manifestations. "What happens to your labium inferiorum?" he said, still interested in my chin. "How do you get so innumerable puckers in the flesh?" (This was extremely revealing to me.) He was so superior to me and overwhelmed me so with his presence, with the extra shadow or smoky brilliancy that he had, and with his lion-riding, that I let him say everything without challenge. When the king had made several more marveling observations about my nose and my paunch and the lines in my knees, he told me, "Atti and I influence each other. I wish you to become a party to this." "Me?" I didn't know what he was talking about. "You must not feel because I make observations of your constitution that I do not appreciate how remarkable you are in other levels." "Do I understand you to say, Your Highness, that you have plans for me with this animal?" "Yes, and shall explain them." "Well, I think we should proceed carefully," I said. "I don't know how much strain my heart can take. As my fainting fits indicate I can't take too much. Moreover, how do you think she would behave if I keeled over?" Then he said, "Perhaps you have had enough exposure to Atti for the first day." He left the platform again, the animal following. There was a heavy gate raised by a rope that passed over a grooved wheel about eighteen feet above the ground by means of which the king let the lioness out of the den into a separate enclosure. I have never seen any member of the cat species pass through a door except on its own terms, and she was no exception. She needed to loiter in and out while the king hung on to the rope by which the gate was suspended. As she was in exit I wanted to suggest that he should give her a boot in the tail to help her with the decision, since obviously he was her master, but under those conditions I couldn't really presume. At last, in that soft, narrow stride, so easy, so deliberate, so vigilant, she entered the next room. Releasing the hawser, the king let the great panel slide. It hit the stone with a loud noise and he rejoined me on the trestle looking very pleasant. Peaceful. He leaned backward and his lids, large-veined, sank a little and he breathed calmly, resting. Sitting close to him in my barbaric trousers with the jockey shorts visible under them, it seemed to me that something more than the planks beneath sustained him. For after all, I was on them, and I was not similarly sustained. At any rate I sat and waited for him to complete his rest. Once again I brought to mind that old prophecy Daniel