Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow [124]
more. Really the danger of life is negligible. The animal is tame." "Tame for you, but she doesn't really know me yet. I'm just as ready to take a reasonable chance as the next guy. But I can't help it, I am afraid of her." He paused, and during this pause I thought I was going down greatly in his estimation, and nothing could have hurt me more than that. "Oh," he said, and he was particularly thoughtful. Silently he paused and thought. In this moment he looked and sounded, again, larger than life. "I think I recall when we were speaking of blows that there was a lack of the brave." Then he sighed and said, with his earnest mouth which even in the shadow of his hat had a very red color, "Fear is a ruler of mankind. It has the biggest dominion of all. It makes you white as candles. It splits each eye in half. More of fear than of any other thing has been created," he said. "As a molding force it comes second only to Nature itself." "Then doesn't this apply to you, too?" He said, with a nod of full agreement, "Oh, certainly. It applies. It applies to everyone. Though nothing may be visible, still it is heard, like radio. It is on almost all the frequencies. And all tremble, and all are wincing, in greater or lesser degree." "And you think there is a cure?" I said. "Why, I surely believe there is. Otherwise all the better imagining will have to be surrendered. Anyways, I will not urge you to come in with me and do as I have done. As my father Gmilo did. As Gmilo's father Suffo did. As we all did. No. If it is positively beyond you we may as well exchange good-by and go separate ways." "Wait a minute now, King, don't be hasty," I said. I was mortified and frightened; nothing could have been more painful than to lose my connection with him. Something had gone off in my breast, my eyes filled, and I said, almost choking, "You wouldn't brush me off like that would you, King? You know how I feel." He realized how hard I was taking it; nevertheless he repeated that perhaps it would be better if I left, for although we were temperamentally suited as friends and he had deep affection for me, too, and was grateful for the opportunity to know me and also for my services to the Wariri in lifting up Mummah, still, unless I understood about lions, no deepening of the friendship was possible. I simply had to know what this was about. "Wait a minute, King," I said. "I feel tremendously close to you and I'm prepared to believe what you tell me." "Sungo, thank you," he said. "I also am close to you. It is very mutual. But I require more deep relationship. I desire to be understood and communicated to. We have to develop an underlying similarity which lies within you by connection with the lion. Otherwise, how shall we maintain the truth agreement we made?" Moved as anything, I said, "Oh, this is hard, King, to be threatened with loss of friendship." The threat was exceedingly painful also to him. Yes, I saw that he suffered almost as hard as I did. Almost. Because who can suffer like me? I am to suffering what Gary is to smoke. One of the world's biggest operations. "I don't understand it," I said. He took me up to the door and made me look through the grating at Atti the lioness, and in that soft, personal tone peculiar to him which went strangely to the center of the subject, he said, "What a Christian might feel in Saint Sophia's church, which I visited in Turkey as a student, I absorb from lion. When she gives her tail a flex, it strikes against my heart. You ask, what can she do for you? Many things. First she is unavoidable. Test it, and you will find she is unavoidable. And this is what you need, as you are an avoider. Oh, you have accomplished momentous avoidances. But she will change that. She will make consciousness to shine. She will burnish you. She will force the present moment upon you. Second, lions are experiencers. But not in haste. They experience with deliberate luxury. The poet says, 'The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.' Let us embrace lions also in the same view. Moreover, observe Atti. Contemplate