Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow [31]
make me fall on my back, but I fell on my front, and very painfully, too, so that I thought I had split myself upward from the navel. Also I got a bad blow on the nose and was afraid the root of it had been parted; I could almost feel the air enter between the separated bones. But somehow I managed to keep a space clear in my brain for counsels of moderation, which was no small achievement in itself. Since that day of zero weather when I was chopping wood and was struck by the flying log and thought, "Truth comes with blows," I had evidently discovered how to take advantage of such experiences, and this was useful to me now, only it took a different form; not "Truth comes with blows" but other words, and these words could not easily have been stranger. They went like this: "I do remember well the hour which burst my spirit's sleep." Prince Itelo now took a grip high up on my chest with his legs; owing to my girth he could never have closed them about me lower. As he tightened them, I felt my blood stop and my lips puffed out while my tongue panted and my eyes began to run. But my hands were at work, and by applying pressure with both thumbs on his thigh near the knee, digging into the muscle (called the adductor, I believe) I was able to bend his leg straight and break his hold. Heaving upward, I snatched at his head; his hair was very short but gave all the grip I needed. Turning him by the hair I caught him at the back and spun him. I had him by the waistband of those loose drawers, my fingers inside, then I lifted him up high. I didn't whirl him at all, as that would have knocked the roof off the place. I threw him on the ground and followed up again, knocking the breath out of him doubly. I suppose he had been very confident when he saw me, big but old, bulging out and sweating turbulently, heavy and sad. You couldn't blame him for thinking he was the fitter man. And now I almost wish that he had been the winner, for as he was going down, head first, I saw, as you can sometimes glimpse a lone object like a bottle dashing over Niagara Falls, how much bitterness was in his face. He could not believe that a gross old human trunk like myself was taking his championship from him. And when I landed on him for the second time his eyes rolled upward, and this intensity was not caused altogether by the weight I flung upon him. It certainly did not behoove me to gloat or to act in any way like a proud winner, I can tell you. I felt almost as bad as he did. The whole straw case had almost come down about us when the prince's back struck the floor. Romilayu was standing out of the way against the wall. Though it made my breast ache to win, and my heart winced when I did it, I knelt nevertheless on the prince to make sure he was pinned, for if I had let him up without pinning him squarely he would have been deeply offended. If the contest had taken place within nature he would have won, I am willing to bet, but he was not matched against mere bone and muscle. It was a question of spirit, too, for when it comes to struggling I am in a special class. From earliest times I have struggled without rest. But I said, "Your Highness, don't take it so hard." He had covered his face with his hands, the color of washed stone, and didn't even try to rise from the ground. When I tried to comfort him I could think only of things such as Lily would have said. I know damned well that she would have flushed white and looked straight ahead and stalled to speak under her breath, fairly incoherent. She would have said that any man was only flesh and bone, and that everyone who took pride in his strength would be humbled by and by, and so on. I can tell you by the yard all that Lily would have said, but I myself could only feel for him, dumbly. It wasn't enough that they should be suffering from drought and the plague of frogs, but on top of it all I had to appear from the desert--to manifest myself in the dry bed of the Arnewi River with my Austrian lighter--and come into town and throw him twice in succession. The prince now got on his knees, scooping