Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow [122]
a horse-hair bow. It gave thick rasping notes. The old musician himself was all bone, with knees that bent outward and a long shiny head, tier upon tier of wrinkles. A few white weblike hairs were carried in the air behind him. "Oh, Henderson-Sungo, good you are here. We shall have entertainments." "Listen, I've got to talk to you, Your Highness," I said. I kept wiping my face. "Of course, but we shall have dancing." "But I've got to tell you something, Your Majesty." "Yes, of course, but there is dancing first. My ladies are entertaining." His ladies! I thought, and looked about me at this gathering of naked women. For after he had told me that he would be strangled when he couldn't be of any further service to them, I took kind of a dim view of them. But there were some who looked splendid, the tallest ones moving with a giraffe-like elegance, their small faces ornamented with patterns of scars. Their hips and breasts suited their bodies better then any costume could have done. As for their features, they were broad but not coarse; on the contrary, their nostrils were very thin and fine, and their eyes were soft. They were painted and ornamented and perfumed with a musk that smelled a little like sweet coal oil. Some wore beads like hollow walnuts of gold, looped two or three times about themselves and hanging down as far as their legs. Others had corals and beads and feathers, and the dancers wore colored scarves which waved flimsily from their shoulders as they sprinted with elegant long legs across the court and the basic scratching of the music went on as the old fellow pushed his bow, rasp, rasp, rasp. "But there is something I have got to say to you." "Yes, I suspected so, Henderson-Sungo. However, we must watch the dancing. That is Mupi, she is excellent." The instrument sobbed and groaned and croaked as the old fellow polished on it with his barbarous bow. Mupi, trying out the music, swayed two or three times, then raised her leg stiff-kneed, and when her foot returned slowly to the ground it seemed to be searching for something. And then she began to rock and continued groping with alternate feet and closed her eyes. The thin beaten gold shells, like hollow walnuts, rustled on this Mupi's body. She took the king's pipe from his hand and knocked out the coals on her thigh, pressing down with her hand, and while she burned herself her eyes, which were very fluid with the pain, never stopped looking into his. The king whispered to me, "This is a good girl--very good girl." "She's certainly gone on you," I said. The dancing continued to the croaking of the two-stringed instrument. "Your Highness, I've got to talk �" The fringe of teeth clicked as he turned his head with the soft, large-brimmed hat. In the shade of this hat his face was more vivid than ever, especially his hollow-bridged nose and his high-swelled lips. "Your Highness." "Oh, you are very persistent. Very well. As you claim it is so urgent, let us go where we can talk." He stood up and his rising caused a great disturbance among the women. They began to spring back and forth, loping across the little pavilion, crying out, and making a clatter with their ornaments; some wept with disappointment that the king was going and some attacked me with shrill voices for taking Dahfu away while several shrieked, "Sdudu lebah!" Lebah--I had already picked the word up--was Wariri for lion. They were warning him about Atti; they were charging him with desertion. The king with a big gesture waved at them, laughing. He seemed very affectionate and I guess he was saying he cared for them all. I was waiting, standing by, huge, my worried face still stiff from the bruises. The women were right, for Dahfu did not lead me back to his apartment again but took me again to the den, below. When I realized where he was going I hurried after him saying, "Wait, wait. Let's talk this thing over. Just one single minute." "I am sorry, Henderson-Sungo, but we are bound to go to Atti. I will listen to you down there." "Well, forgive me for saying it, King, but you're very stubborn.