Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow [18]
V
I guess I hadn't taken two steps out into the world as a small boy when there was Charlie, a person in several ways like myself. In 1915 we attended dancing school together (in the house out of which Miss Lenox was buried), and such attachments last. In age he is only a year my junior and in wealth he goes me a little better, for when his old mother dies he will have another fortune. It was with Charlie that I took off for Africa, hoping to find a remedy for my situation. I guess it was a mistake to go with him, but I wouldn't have known how to go right straight into Africa by myself. You have to have a specific job to do. The excuse was that Charlie and his wife were going to film the Africans and the animals, for during the war Charlie was a cameraman with Patton's army--he could no more stay at home than I could--and so he learned the trade. Photography is not one of my interests. Anyway, last year I asked Charlie to come out and photograph some of my pigs. This opportunity to show how good he was at his work pleased him, and he made some first-rate studies. Then we came back from the barn and he said he was engaged. So I told him, "Well, Charlie, I guess you know a lot about whores, but what do you know about girls--anything?" "Oh," he said, "it's true that I don't know much, but I do know she is unique." "Yes, I know all about this unique business," I said. (I had heard all about it from Lily but now she was never even at home.) Nevertheless we went down to the studio to have a drink on his engagement, and he asked me to be his best man. He has almost no friends. We drank and kidded and reminisced about the dancing class, and made tears of nostalgia come to each other's eyes. It was then when we were both melted down that he invited me to come along to Africa where he and his wife would be going for their honeymoon. I attended the wedding and stood up for him. However, because I forgot to kiss the bride after the ceremony, there developed a coolness on her side and eventually she became my enemy. The expedition that Charlie organized had all new equipment and was modern in every respect. We had a portable generator, a shower, and hot water, and from the beginning I was critical of this. I said, "Charlie, this wasn't the way we fought the war. Hell, we're a couple of old soldiers. What is this?" It wounded me to travel in Africa in this way. But I had come to this continent to stay. When buying my ticket in New York I went through a silent struggle there at the airlines office (near Battery Park) as to whether or not to get a round-trip ticket. And as a sign of my earnestness, I decided to take it one way. So we flew from Idlewild to Cairo. I went on a bus to visit the Sphinx and the pyramids, and then we flew off again to the interior. Africa reached my feelings right away even in the air, from which it looked like the ancient bed of mankind. And at a height of three miles, sitting above the clouds, I felt like an airborne seed. From the cracks in the earth the rivers pinched back at the sun. They shone out like smelters' puddles, and then they took a crust and were covered over. As for the vegetable kingdom, it hardly existed from the air; it looked to me no more than an inch in height. And I dreamed down at the clouds, and thought that when I was a kid I had dreamed up at them, and having dreamed at the clouds from both sides as no other generation of men has done, one should be able to accept his death very easily. However, we made safe landings every time. Anyway, since I had come to this place under the circumstances described, it was natural to greet it with a certain emotion. Yes, I brought a sizable charge with me and I kept thinking, "Bountiful life! Oh, how bountiful life is." I felt I might have a chance here. To begin with, the heat was just what I craved, much hotter than the Gulf of Mexico, and then the colors themselves did me a world of good. I didn't feel the pressure in the chest, nor hear any voice within. At that time