Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow [49]
closely, my head stooped between my knees, to see how it took the spark. Not bad, I thought. It was promising. A little coal descended. As for Mtalba, time was when I would have felt differently about the love she offered me. It would have seemed much more serious a matter. But, ah! The deep creases have begun to set in beside my ears and once in a while when I raise my head in front of the mirror a white hair appears in my nose, and therefore I told myself it was an imaginary Henderson, a Henderson of her mind she had fallen in love with. Thinking of this, I dropped my lids and nodded my head. But all the while I continued to burn scraps of wick and shoelace and even wisps of paper, and it turned out that a section of shoelace, held for about two minutes in the lighter fluid, served better than any other material. Accordingly I prepared a section of the lace taken from one of my desert boots and threaded it through the hole prepared in the wood block and then I said to Romilayu, "I think she's ready to go." From stooping over the work I had a dizzy thickness at the back of the head, but it was all right. Owing to the vision of the pink light I was firm of purpose and believed in myself, and I couldn't allow Romilayu to show his doubts and forebodings so openly. I said, "Now, you've got to quit this, Romilayu. I am entitled to your trust, this once. I tell you it is going to work." "Yes, sah," he said. "I don't want you to think I'm not capable of doing a good job." He said again, "Yes, sah." "There is that poem about the nightingale singing that humankind cannot stand too much reality. But how much unreality can it stand? Do you follow? You understand me?" "Me unnastand, sah." "I fired that question right back at the nightingale. So what if reality may be terrible? It's better than what we've got." "Kay, sah. Okay." "All right, I let you out of it. It's better than what I've got. But every man feels from his soul that he has got to carry his life to a certain depth. Well, I have to go on because I haven't reached that depth yet. You get it?" "Yes, sah." "Hah! Life may think it has got me written off in its records. Henderson: type so and so, with the auk and the platypus and other experiments illustrating such-and-such a principle, and laid aside. But life may find itself surprised, for after all, we are men. I am Man--I myself, singular as it may look. Man. And man has many times tricked life when life thought it had him taped." "Okay." He shrugged away from me, and offered his thick black hands in resignation. Speaking so much had worn me out, and I stood clutching the bomb in its aluminum case, ready to carry out the promise I had made to Itelo and his two aunts. The villagers knew this was a big event and were turning out in numbers, chattering or clapping their hands and singing out. Mtalba, who had gone away, came back in a changed costume of red stuff that looked like baize and her indigo-dyed hair freshly buttered, large brass rings in her ears, and a brass collar about her neck. Her people were swirling around in colored rags, and there were cows led on gay halters and tethers; they looked somewhat weak and people came up to give them a kiss and inquire about their health, practically as if they were cousins. Some of the maidens carried pet hens in their arms or perched on their shoulders. The heat was deadening, and the sky steep and barren. "There is Itelo," I said. I thought that he, too, looked apprehensive. "Neither of these guys has any faith in me," I said to myself, and even though I realized why I didn't especially inspire confidence, my feelings, nevertheless, were stung. "Hi, Prince," I said. He was solemn and he took my hand as they all did here and led it to his chest so that I felt the heat of his body through the white middy, for he was dressed as yesterday in his loose whites with the green silk scarf. "Well, this is the day," I said, "and this is the hour." I showed the aluminum case with its shoelace fuse to his highness and I told Romilayu, "We ought to make arrangements to gather the dead frogs