Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow [113]
his father. He told me, for instance, that his late father Gmilo had been a lion type in every respect except the beard and mane. He was too modest to claim a resemblance to lions himself, but I saw it. I had already seen it when he was in the arena leaping and whirling the skulls by the ribbons and catching them. He started with the elementary observation, which many people had made before him, that mountain people were mountain-like, plains people plainlike, water people water-like, cattle people ("Yes, the Arnewi, your pals, Sungo") cattle-like. "It is a somewhat Montesquieu idea," he said, and thus he went on with endless illustrations. These were things millions of people had noted in their life experience: horse people had bangs and big teeth, large veins, coarse laughter; dogs and masters came to resemble one another; husbands and wives took on a strong similarity. Crouching forward in those green silk pants, I was thinking, "And pigs �?" But the king was saying, "Nature is a deep imitator. And as man is the prince of organisms he is the master of adaptations. He is the artist of suggestions. He himself is his principal work of art, in the body, working in the flesh. What miracle! What triumph! Also, what a disaster! What tears are to be shed!" "Yes, if you're right, it's mighty saddening," I said. "Debris of failure fills the tomb and grave," he said, "the dust eats back its own, yet a vital current is still flowing. There is an evolution. We must think of it." Briefly, he had a full scientific explanation of the way in which people were shaped. For him it was not enough that there might be disorders of the body that originated in the brain. _Everything__ originated there. "Although I do not wish to reduce the stature of our discussion," he said, "yet for the sake of example the pimple on a lady's nose may be her own idea, accomplished by a conversion at the solemn command of her psyche; even more fundamentally the nose itself, though part hereditary, is part also her own idea." My head felt as fight as a wicker basket by now, and I said, "A pimple?" "I mean it as an index to deep desires flaming outward," he said. "But if you are inclined to blame--no! No blame redounds. We are far from so free as to be masters. But just the same the thing is accomplished from within. Disease is a speech of the psyche. That is a permissible metaphor. We say that flowers have the language of love. Lilies for purity. Roses for passion. Daisies won't tell. Ha! I once read this on a cushion embroidery. But, and I am in earnest, the psyche is a polyglot, for if it converts fear into symptoms it also converts hope. There are cheeks or whole faces of hope, feet of respect, hands of justice, brows of serenity, and so forth." He was pleased by the response he read in my face, which must have been a dilly. "Oh?" he said. "I startle you?" He loved that. In the course of further conferences I told him, "I admit that this idea of yours really hits me where I live--am I so responsible for my own appearance? I admit I have had one hell of a time over my external man. Physically, I am a puzzle to myself." He said, "The spirit of the person in a sense is the author of his body. I have never seen a face, a nose, like yours. To me that feature alone, from a conversion point of view, is totally a discovery." "Why, King," I said, "that's the worst news I ever heard, except death in the family. Why should I be responsible, any more than a tree? If I was a willow you wouldn't say such things to me." "Oh," he said, "you take upon yourself too much." And he went on to explain, citing all kinds of medical evidence and investigations of the brain. He told me, over and over again, that the cortex not only received impressions from the extremities and the senses but sent back orders and directives. And how this really was, and which ventricles regulated which functions, like temperature or hormones, and so on, I really couldn't keep quite clear. He kept talking about vegetal functions, or some such term, and he lost me every other sentence. Finally he forced