Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow [120]
him, "they'd all be at her service. What does the old queen want? These guys are putting the squeeze on her, I can see it." "Help son, sah," said Romilayu at my back. "From what?" I said. "Lion witch, sah. Oh, very bad lion." "They've frightened the old mother," I said, glowering at the Bunam and his assistant. "This is the sexton-beetle. Not happy without corpses or putting people away in the grave. I can smell it on you. And look at this leather-winged bat, his sidekick. He could play the Phantom of the Opera. He's got a face like an anteater--a soul-eater. You tell them right here and now I think the king is a brilliant and noble man. Make it very strong," I said to Romilayu, "for the old lady's sake." But I could not change the subject no matter how I praised the king. They had come to brief me about lions. With one single exception, lions contained the souls of sorcerers. The king had captured Atti and brought her home in place of his father Gmilo, who was still at large. They took this very hard, and the Bunam was here to warn me that Dahfu was implicating me in his witchcraft. "Oh, pooh," I said to these men. "I never could be a witch. My character is just the opposite." Between them Horko and Romilayu made me finally feel the importance and solemnity--the heaviness--of the situation. I tried to avoid it, but there it was: they laid it on me like a slab of stone. People were angry. The lioness was causing mischief. Certain women who had been her enemies in the previous incarnation were having miscarriages. Also there was the drought, which I had ended by picking up Mummah. Consequently I was very popular. (Blushing, I felt a kind of surly rose color in my face.) "It was nothing," I said. But then Horko told me how bad it was that I went down into the den. I was reminded again that Dahfu was not in full possession of the throne until Gmilo was captured. So the old king was forced to be out in the bush among bad companions (the other lions, each and every one a proven evildoer). They claimed that the lioness was seducing Dahfu, and made him incapable of doing his duty, and it was she who kept Gmilo away. I tried to say to them that other people took a far different view of lions. I told them that they couldn't be right to condemn all the lions except one, and there must be a mistake somewhere. Then I appealed to the Bunam, seeing that he was obviously the leader of the anti-lion forces. I thought his wrinkled stare, the stern vein of his forehead, and those complex fields of skin about his eyes must signify (even here, where all Africa was burning like oceans of green oil under the absolute and extended sky) what they would have signified back in New York, namely, deep thought. "Well, I think you should go along with the king. He is an exceptional man and does exceptional things. Sometimes these great men have to go beyond themselves. Like Caesar or Napoleon or Chaka the Zulu. In the king's case, the interest happens to be science. And though I'm no expert I guess he's thinking of mankind as a whole, which is tired of itself and needs a shot in the arm from animal nature. You ought to be glad that he's not a Chaka and won't knock you off. Lucky for you he's not the type." I thought a threat might be worth trying. It seemed, however, to have no effect. The old woman still whispered, holding my fingers, while the Bunam, as Romilayu addressed him, doing his best to translate my words, was drawn up with savage stiffness so that only his eyes moved, and they moved very little, but mainly glittered. And then, when Romilayu was through, the Bunam signaled to his assistant by snapping his fingers, and the black-leather man drew from his rag cloak an object which I mistook at first for a shriveled eggplant. He held it by the stalk and brought it toward my face. A pair of dry dead eyes now looked at me, and teeth from a breathless mouth. From the eyes came a listless and _finished__ look. They saw me from beyond. One of the nostrils of this toy was flattened down, the other was expanded and the entire face seemed to bark, this