Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow [119]
on my head respectfully saying, "Lady, Henderson at your service. And I really mean it." Over my shoulder I said to Romilayu, "Tell her that." His tuft of hair was close behind me, and under it his forehead was more than usually wrinkled. I saw the Bunam look at the cards and printed matter on the bed, and I scooped them all behind me, as I didn't want the king's property exposed to his scrutiny. Then I told Romilayu, "Say to the queen that she has a fine son. The king is a friend of mine and I am just as much his friend. Say I am proud to know him." Meantime I thought, "She's in very bad company, ain't she?" because I knew it was the Bunam's job to take the life of the failing king; Dahfu had told me that. Actually Bunam was her husband's executioner--and now the queen came with him late in the afternoon to pay a social call? It didn't seem right. At home this would have been the cocktail hour. The great wheels and all the sky-marring frames would be slowing, darkening, and the world, with its connivance and invention and its load of striving and desire to transform, would relax its strain. The old queen may have sensed my thought, for she was sad and troubled. The Bunam was staring at me, evidently meaning to get at me in some way, while Horko, with his low-hung, fleshy face, looked gloomy at first. The purpose of this visit was two-fold--to get me to reveal about the lioness and then also to use any influence I might have with the king. He was in trouble, and very seriously, over Atti. Horko did most of the talking, mixing up the several languages he had picked up during his stay in Lamu. He used a kind of French as well as English and a little Portuguese. His blood gleamed through his face with a high polish and his ears were dragged down by their ornaments almost to his fat shoulders. He introduced the subject by saying a little about his residence in Lamu--a very up-to-date town, as he described it. Automobiles, caf�nd music, many languages spoken. "Tout le monde tr�distingu�tr�chic," he said. I shut off my defective ear with one hand and gave him the full benefit of the other, nodding, and when he saw that I responded to his Lamu Afro-French, he began to liven up. You could see that his heart belonged to that town, and for him the years he had spent there were probably the greatest. It was his Paris. It gave me no trouble to imagine that he had promoted himself a house and servants and girls and spent his days in a caf�n a seersucker jacket, with a boutonni� maybe, for he was a promoter. He was displeased with his nephew for having gone away and left him there eight or nine years. "Go away Lamu school," he said. "Pas assez bon. Bad, bad, I say. No go away Lamu. We go. He go. Papa King Gmilo die. Moi aller chercher Dahfu. One years." He lifted a stout finger to me over the bald head of Queen Yasra, and from his indignation I took it he must have been held responsible for Dahfu's disappearance. It was his duty to bring back the heir. But he observed that I didn't like the tone he took, and said, "You friend Dahfu?" "Damn right I am." "Oh me, too. Roi neveu. Aime neveu. Sans blague. Dangerous." "Come on, what is this all about?" I said. Seeing me dissatisfied, the Bunam spoke sharply to Horko, and the queen mother, Yasra, gave a cry, "Sasi ai. Ai, sasi, Sungo." Looking upward at me she must have seen the underside of my chin and the mustache and my open nostrils, but not my eyes, so that she didn't know how I was receiving her plea, for that is what it was. She therefore began to kiss my knuckles over and over again, somewhat as Mtalba had done the night before my doomed expedition against the frogs. Once more I was aware of a sensitivity there. These hands have lost shape a good deal as a result of the abuses they have been subjected to. There was, for instance, the forefinger with which I had aimed, in imitation of Pancho Villa, at that cat under the bridge table. "Oh, lady, don't do that," I said. "Romilayu--Romilayu--tell her to quit it," I said. "If I had as many fingers as there are hammers to a piano," I told