Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow [22]
was a young woman, a girl not much older, I believe, than my daughter Ricey. As soon as she saw me she burst into loud tears. I would never have expected this to wound me as it did. It wouldn't have been realistic to go into the world without being prepared for trials, ordeals, and suffering, but the sight of this young woman hit me very hard. Though of course the tears of women always affect me deeply, and not so long before, when Lily had started to cry in our hotel suite on the Gulf, I made my worst threat. But this young woman being a stranger, it's less easy to explain why her weeping loosed such a terrible emotion in me. What I thought immediately was "What have I done?" "Shall I run back into the desert," I thought, "and stay there until the devil has passed out of me and I am fit to meet human kind again without driving it to despair at the first look? I haven't had enough desert yet. Let me throw away my gun and my helmet and the lighter and all this stuff and maybe I can get rid of my fierceness too and live out there on worms. On locusts. Until all the bad is burned out of me. Oh, the bad! Oh, the wrong, the wrong! What can I do about it? What can I do about all the damage? My character! God help me, I've made a mess of everything, and there's no getting away from the results. One look at me must tell the whole story." You see, I had begun to convince myself that those few days of lightheartedness, tramping over the Hinchagara plateau with Romilayu, had already made a great change in me. But it seemed that I was still not ready for society. Society is what beats me. Alone I can be pretty good, but let me go among people and there's the devil to pay. Confronted with this weeping girl I was by this time ready to start bawling myself, thinking of Lily and the children and my father and the violin and the foundling and all the sorrows of my life. I felt that my nose was swelling, becoming very red. Behind the weeping girl other natives were crying along softly. I said to Romilayu, "What the blast is going on?" "Him shame," said Romilayu, very grave, with that upstanding bush of hair. Thus this sturdy, virginal-looking girl was crying--simply crying--without gestures; her arms were meekly hanging by her sides and all the facts about her (speaking physically) were shown to the world. The tears fell from her wide cheekbones onto her breasts. I said, "What's eating this kid? What do you mean, shame? This is very bad, if you ask me, Romilayu. I think we've walked into a bad situation and I don't like the looks of it. Why don't we cut around this town and go back in the desert? I felt a damned sight better out there." Apparently Romilayu sensed that I was rattled by this delegation shedding tears and he said, "No, no sah. You no be blame." "Maybe it was a mistake with that bush?" "No, no, sah. You no mek him cry." At this I struck myself in the head with my open hand and said, "Why sure! I _would__." (Meaning, "I _would__ think first of myself.") "The poor soul is in trouble? Is there something I can do for her? She's coming to me for help. I feel it. Maybe a lion has eaten her family? Are there man-eaters around here? Ask her, Romilayu. Say that I've come to help, and if there are killers in the neighborhood I'll shoot them." I picked up my H and H Magnum with the scope sights and showed it to the crowd. With enormous relief it dawned on me that the crying was not due to any fault of mine, and that something could be done, that I did not have to stand and bear the sight of those tears boiling out. "Everybody! Leave it to me," I said. "Look! Look!" And I started to go through the manual of arms for them, saying, "Hut, hut, hut," as the drill instructors always did. Everyone, however, went on crying. Only the very little kids with their jack-o'-lantern faces seemed happy at my entertainment. The rest were not done mourning, and covered their faces with their hands while their naked bodies shook. "Well, Romilayu," I said, "I'm not getting anywhere, and our presence is very hard on them, that's for sure." "Dem cry for dead