Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow [137]
physiology and physics and math and anatomy. I expect it to be quite an ordeal, especially dissecting the cadaver. " _"Once more, Death, you and me. "__ "However, I have had to have dealings with the dead anyway and haven't made a buck on any of them. I might as well do something in the interests of life, for a change. " _What is it, now, this great instrument? Played wrong, why does it suffer so? Right, how can it achieve so much, reaching even God?__ "Bones, muscles, glands, organs. Osmosis. I want you to enroll me at Medical Center and give my name as Leo E. Henderson. The reason for that I will tell you when I get home. Aren't you excited? Dearest girl, as a doctor's wife you'll have to be more clean, bathe more often and wash your things. You will have to get used to broken sleep, night calls and all of that. I haven't decided yet where to practice. I guess if I tried it at home I'd scare the neighbors to pieces. If I put my ear against their chests as an M. D., they'd jump out of their skins. "Therefore, I may apply for missionary work, like Dr. Wilfred Grenfell or Albert Schweitzer. Hey! Axel Munthe--how about him? Naturally China is out, now. They might catch us and brain-wash us. Ha, ha! But we might try India. I do want to get my hands on the sick. I want to cure them. Healers are sacred." _I__ _have been so bad myself I believe there must be a virtue in me, finally.__ "Lily, I'm going to quit knocking myself out." _I__ _don't think the struggles of desire can ever be won. Ages of longing and willing, willing and longing, and how have they ended? In a draw, dust and dust.__ "If Medical Center won't let me in, apply first to Johns Hopkins and then to every other joint in the book. Another reason why I want to stop in Switzerland is to look into the medical-school situation. I could talk to people there, explain things, and maybe they would let me in. "So get busy, dear, with those letters, and another thing: sell the pigs. I want you to sell Kenneth the Tamworth boar and Dilly and Minnie. Get rid of them. "We are funny creatures. We don't see the stars as they are, so why do we love them? They are not small gold objects but endless fire." _Strange? Why shouldn't it be strange? It is strange. It is all strange.__ "I haven't been drinking at all, here, except for a few nips taken while writing this letter. At lunch they serve you a native beer called 'pombo' which is pretty good. They ferment the pineapple. Everybody is very animated here. Folks with feathers, folks with ribbons, with scarf decorations, rings, bracelets, beads, shells, gold walnuts. Some of the harem women walk like giraffes. Their faces slope forward. The king's face has very much of a slope. He is very brilliant and opinionated. "Sometimes I feel as though I had a whole troop of pygmies jumping up and down inside me, yelling and carrying on. Isn't that odd? Other times I am very calm, calmer than I have ever been. "The king believes that one should have a suitable image of himself �" I believe that I tried to explain to Lily what Dahfu's ideas were, but Romilayu lost the last few pages of the letter, and I suppose that it's just as well that he did, for when I wrote them I had had quite a lot to drink. In one I think I said, or maybe I merely thought it, "I had a voice that said, I want! _I__ want? I? It should have told me _she__ wants, _he__ wants, _they__ want. And moreover, it's love that makes reality reality. The opposite makes the opposite."
XX
Romilayu and I said good-by in the morning and when he finally set off with the letter to Lily I had a very unwholesome feeling. My very stomach seemed to drop as his wrinkled face looked through the closing gates of the palace. I believe that he expected at the last minute to be called back by his changeable and irrational employer. But I only stood there in the carapace-like helmet and those pants which made me seem as though I had gotten lost from my troop of Zouaves. The gate shut on Romilayu's scarred and seamed gaze, and I felt unreasonably low. But Tamba and Bebu diverted me from my sadness.