Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow [134]
Any day he will be encountered. Go and write the letter to your missis," Dahfu told me, laughing very low on his green sofa amid his black troop of nude women. "I'm going to write to her today," I said. So I went down to have lunch with the Bunam and Horko. Horko, the Bunam, and the Bunam's black-leather man were always waiting for me at the bridge table under the umbrella. "Gentlemen �" "Asi Sungo," said everyone. I was always aware that these people had heard me roaring and probably could smell the odor of the den on me. But I brazened it out. The Bunam, when he did glance my way, Which was rarely, was very somber. I thought, "I may get you first. No man can know that and you'd better not push me hard." The behavior of Horko on the other hand was invariably genial, and he hung out his red tongue and leaned over the little table with his knuckles like tree boles until it swayed with his weight. There was an air of intrigue under the transparent silk of the umbrella, while entertainers skipped for us out in the sun and feet flitted in and out of robes as Horko's people danced to amuse us and the old musician played his pendulum viol and others drummed and blew in the palace junkyard with its petrified brains of white stone and the red flowers growing in the humus. After lunch came the daily water duty. The laboring women, with deep stress marks on the skin of their shoulders from the poles, carried me out into the lanes of the town where the dust of the ruts was reduced to a powder. The lone drum bumped after me; it seemed to warn people to stay away from this Henderson, the lion-contaminated Sungo. People still came to look at me out of curiosity, but not in their previous numbers, nor did they particularly want to be sprinkled by the crazy rain king. So that when we got to the dunghill at the center of town where the court was situated, I made a point of getting on my feet and sprinkling right and left. This was stoically taken. The magistrate in his crimson gown seemed as if he would have stopped me if he had had the power. However, nothing was done. The prisoner with the forked stick in his mouth leaned his face against the post he was tied to. "I hope you win, pal," I said to him and got back into my hammock. That afternoon I wrote to Lily as follows: "Honey, you are probably worried about me, but I suppose you have known all along that I was alive." _Lily claimed she could always tell how I was. She had some kind of privileged love-intuition.__ "The flight here was spectacular." _Like hovering all the way inside a jewel.__ "We are the first generation to see the clouds from both sides. What a privilege! First people dreamed upward. Now they dream both upward and downward. This is bound to change something, somewhere. For me the entire experience has been similar to a dream. I liked Egypt. Everybody was in basic white rags. From the air the mouth of the Nile looked like raveled rope. In some places the valley was green and it was yellow. The cataracts resembled seltzer. When we landed in Africa itself and Charlie and I put the show on the road, it wasn't exactly what I had hoped in leaving home." _As I discovered a pestilence when I entered the old lady's house and realized that I must put forth effort or go down in shame.__ "Charlie did not relax in Africa. I was reading R. F. Burton's _First Footsteps in East Africa__ plus Speke's_ Journal,__ and we didn't see eye to eye about any subject. So we parted company. Burton thought a lot of himself. He was very good with the �e and saber and he spoke everyone's language. I picture him as resembling General Douglas MacArthur in character, very conscious of having a historical role and thinking of classical Rome and Greece. Personally, I had to decide to follow a different course, as by any civilized standard I am done for. However, the geniuses love common life a great deal." _When he got back to England, Speke blew his brains out. This biographical detail I spared Lily. By genius I mean somebody like Plato or Einstein. Light itself was all Einstein needed. What could be