Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow [123]
In case you don't know it you are in a hell of a position." "Oh, the divil," he said. "I am aware what they are up to." "They came and showed me the head of a person they claimed was the same as Atti in a former existence." The king stopped. Tatu had just let us through the door and was standing holding the heavy bolt in her arms, waiting in the gallery. "That is the well-known fear business. We will withstand it. Old man, sometimes things cannot be so nice in cases like this. Do they harass you? It is because I have shown my fondness about you." He took me by the shoulder. Owing perhaps to the touch of his hand, I almost broke down on the threshold of the stairs. "Here," I said, "I am ready to do almost anything you say. I've taken a lot from life, but basically it hasn't really scared me, King. I am a soldier. All my people have been soldiers. They protected the peasants, and they went on the crusades and fought the Mohammedans. And I had one ancestor on my mother's side--why General U. S. Grant wouldn't even start an engagement without him. He would say, 'Billy Waters here?' 'Present, sir.' 'Very good. Begin the battle.' Hell's bells, I've got martial blood in me. But Your Highness, you're breaking me down with this lion business. And what about your mother?" "Oh, divil my mother, Sungo," he said. "Do you think the world is nothing but an egg and we are here to set upon it? First come the phenomena. Utterly above all else. I talk to you about a great discovery and you argue me mothers. I am aware they are working the fear business upon her, as well. My mother has outlived father Gmilo already by half of a decade. Come through the door with me and let Tatu close it. Come, come." I stood. He shouted, "Come, I say!" and I stepped through the doorway. I saw Tatu as she labored to place the great chunk of wood which was the bolt. It fell, the door banged, and we were in darkness. The king was running down the stairs. Where the light came through the grating in the ceiling, that watery, stone-conditioned yellow light, I caught up with him. He said, "Why are you blustering at me so with your face? You have a perilous expression." I said, "King, it's the way I feel. I told you before I am mediumistic. And I feel trouble." "No doubt, as there is trouble. But I will capture Gmilo and the trouble will entirely cease. No one will dispute or contest me then. There are scouts daily for Gmilo. As a matter of fact reports have come of him. I can assure you of a capture very soon." I said fervently that I certainly hoped he would catch him and get the thing over with, so we could stop worrying about those two strangling characters, the Bunam and the black-leather man. Then they would stop persecuting his mother. At this second mention of his mother he looked angry. For the first time he subjected me to a long scowl. Then he resumed his way down the stairs. Shaken, I followed him. Well, I reflected, this black king happened to be a genius. Like Pascal at the age of twelve discovering the thirty-second proposition of Euclid all by himself. But why lions? Because, Mr. Henderson, I replied to myself, you don't know the meaning of true love if you think it can be deliberately selected. You just love, that's all. A natural force. Irresistible. He fell in love with his lioness at first sight--coup de foudre. I went crashing down the weed-grown part of the stairway engaged in this dialogue with myself. At the same time I held my breath as we approached the den. The cloud of fright about me was even more suffocating than before; it seemed to give actual resistance to my face and made my breathing clumsy. My respiration grew thick. Hearing us the beast began to roar in her inner room. Dahfu looked through the grating and said, "It is all right, we may go in." "Now? You think she's okay? She sounds disturbed to me. Why don't I wait out here?" I said, "till you find out how the wind blows?" "No, you must come," said the king. "Don't you understand yet, I am trying to do something for you? A benefit? I can hardly think of a person who may need this