Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow [136]
of marvelous things. First she told me that the world was strange to me. It is strange to a child. But I am no child. This gave me pleasure and pain, both." _The Kingdom of Heaven is for children of the spirit. But who is this nosy, gross phantom?__ "Of course there's strangeness and strangeness. One kind of strangeness may be a gift, and another kind a punishment. I wanted to tell the old lady that everybody understands life except me--how did she account for it? I seem to be a very vain and foolish, rash person. How did I get so lost? And never mind whose fault it is, how do I get back?" _It is very early in life, and I am out in the grass. The sun flames and swells; the heat it emits is its love, too. I have this self-same vividness in my heart. There are dandelions. I try to gather up this green. I put my love-swollen cheek to the yellow of the dandelions. I try to enter into the green.__ "Then she told me I had grun-tu-molani, which is a native term hard to explain but on the whole it indicates that you want to live, not die. I wanted her to tell more about it. Her hair was like fleece and her belly smelled like saffron; she had a cataract in one eye. I'm afraid I will never be able to see her again, because I goofed and we had to get out. I can't go into details. But without Prince Itelo's friendship I might have been in serious trouble. I thought I had lost my opportunity to study my life with the aid of a really wise person, and I was very downcast over it. But I love Dahfu, king of the second tribe we came to. I am with him now and have been given an honorary title, King of the Rain, which is merely standard, I guess, like getting the key to the city from Jimmy Walker used to be. A costume goes with it. But I am not in a position to tell you much more, except in general terms. I am participating in an experiment with the king (almost an M. D., I told you) and this is an ordeal, daily." _The animal's face is pure fire to me. Every day. I have to close my eyes.__ "Lily, I probably haven't said this lately, but I have true feeling for you, baby, which sometimes wrings my heart. You can call it love. Although personally I think that word is full of bluff." _Especially for somebody like me, called from nonexistence into existence: what for? What have I got to do with husbands' love or wives' love? I am too peculiar for that kind of stuff.__ "When Napoleon was out at St. Helena, he talked a lot about morals. It was a little late. A lot he cared for them. So I'm not going to discuss love with you. If you think you are in the clear you can go ahead and talk about it. You said you couldn't live for sun, moon, and stars alone. You said your mother was dead when she wasn't, which was certainly very neurotic of you. You got engaged a hundred times and were always out of breath. You conned me. Is this how love acts? All right, then. But I expected you to help me. This king here is one of the most intelligent people in the world, and I have great faith in him, and he tells me I should move from the states that I myself make into the states which are of themselves. Like if I stopped making such a noise all the time I might hear something nice. I might hear a bird. Are the wrens still nesting in the cornices? I saw the straw sticking out and was amazed that they could get inside." _I__ _could never take after the birds. I would crash all the branches. I would have scared the pterodactyl from the skies.__ "I am giving up the violin. I guess I will never reach my object through it," _to raise my spirit from the earth, to leave the body of this death. I was very stubborn. I wanted to raise myself into another world. My life and deeds were a prison.__ "Well, Lily, everything is going to be different from now on. When I get back I am going to study medicine. My age is against it, but that's just too damn bad, I'm going to do it anyway. You can't imagine how keen I am to get into the laboratory. I can still remember the smell of those places. Formaldehyde. I'll be among a bunch of young kids, I realize, doing chemistry and zoology and