Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow [132]
"I assume now you are feeling better, Mr. Henderson?" "Yes, better." "Lighter?" "Sure, lighter, too, Your Honor." "More calm?" Then I would begin to snort. I was all jolted up within. My face was boiling; I was lying in the dust, and I would sit up to look at the two of them. "How are your emotions?" "Like a caldron, Your Highness, a regular caldron." "I see you are laboring with a lifetime accumulation." Then he would say, almost pityingly, "You are still afraid of Atti?" "Damn right I am. I'd sooner jump out of a plane. I wouldn't be half so scared. I applied for paratroops in the war. Come to think of it, Your Highness, I think I could bail out at fifteen thousand feet in these pants and stand a good chance." "Your humor is delicious, Sungo." This man was completely lacking in what we all know as civilized character. "I am sure that you soon will begin to feel something of what it is to be a lion. I am convinced of your capacity. The old self is resisting?" "Oh yes, I feel that old self more than ever," I said. "I feel it all the time. It's got a terrific grip on me." I began to cough and grunt, and I was in despair. "As if I were carrying an eight-hundred-pound load--like a Gal�gos turtle. On my back." "Sometimes a condition must worsen before bettering," he said, and he began to tell me of diseases he had known when he was on the wards as a student, and I tried to picture him as a medical student in white coat and white shoes instead of the velvet hat adorned with human teeth and the satin slippers. He held the lioness by the head; her broth-colored eyes watched me; those whiskers, suggesting diamond scratches, seemed so cruel that her own skin shrank from them at the base. She had an angry nature. What can you do with an angry nature? This was why, when I returned from the den, I felt as I did in the torrid light of the yard, with its stone junk and the red flowers. Horko's bridge table was set up under the umbrella for lunch, but first I went to rest and get my wind back, and I would think, "Well, maybe every guy has his own Africa. Or if he goes to sea, his own ocean." By which I meant that as I was a turbulent individual, I was having a turbulent Africa. This is not to say, however, that I think the world exists for my sake. No, I really believe in reality. That's a known fact. Each day I grew more aware that everybody knew where I had spent the morning and feared me for it--I had arrived like a dragon; maybe the king had sent for me to help him defy the Bunam and overturn the religion of the whole tribe. And I tried to explain to Romilayu at least that Dahfu and I were not practicing any evil. "Look, Romilayu," I told him, "the king just happens to have a very rich nature. He didn't have to come back and put himself at the mercy of his wives. He did it because he hopes to benefit the whole world. A fellow may do many a crazy thing, and as long as he has no theory about it we forgive him. But if there happens to be a theory behind his actions everybody is down on him. That's how it is with the king. But he isn't hurting me, old fellow. It's true it sounds like it, but don't you believe it. I make that noise of my own free will. If I don't look well, that's because I haven't been feeling well; I have a fever, and the inside of my nose and throat are inflamed. (Rhinitis?) I guess the king would give me something for it if I asked him but I don't feel like telling him." "I don't blame you, sah." "Don't get me wrong. The human race needs guys like this king more than ever. Change must be possible! If not, it's too damn bad." "Yes, sah." "Americans are supposed to be dumb but they are willing to go into this. It isn't just me. You have to think about white Protestantism and the Constitution and the Civil War and capitalism and winning the West. All the major tasks and the big conquests were done before my time. That left the biggest problem of all, which was to encounter death. We've just got to do something about it. It isn't just me. Millions of Americans have gone forth since the war to redeem the present and discover