Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow [55]
is bad business, and therefore I dropped my.375 and raised my hands. Yet I was pleased just the same, due to my military temperament. Also that leathery small man had sent us into an ambush and for some reason this elementary cunning gave me satisfaction, too. There are some things the human soul doesn't need to be tutored in. Ha, ha! You know I was kind of pleased and I imitated Romilayu. Brought to the dust I put my face down among the pebbles and waited, grinning. Romilayu was stretched will-less, in an African manner. Finally one of the men came down, covered by the rest, and without speech but stoically, as soldiers usually do, he took the.375 and ammunition and knives and other weapons, and ordered us to get up. When we did so he frisked us again. The squad above us lowered their guns, which were old weapons, either the Berber type with long barrels and inlaid butts, or old European arms which might have been taken away from General Gordon at Khartoum and distributed all over Africa. Yes, I thought, old Chinese Gordon, poor guy, with his Bible studies. But it was better to die like that than in smelly old England. I have very little affection for the iron age of technology. I feel sympathy for a man like Gordon because he was brave and confused. To be disarmed in ambush was a joke to me for the first few minutes, but when we were told to pick up our packs and move ahead I began to change my mind. These men were smaller, darker, and shorter than the Arnewi but very tough. They wore gaudy loincloths and marched energetically and after we had gone on for an hour or more I was less merry at heart than before. I began to feel atrocious toward those fellows, and for a small inducement I would have swept them up in my arms, the whole dozen or so of them, and run them over the cliff. It took the recollection of the frogs to restrain me. I suppressed my rash feeling and followed a policy of waiting and patience. Romilayu looked very poorly and I put my arm about him. His face because of the dust of surrender was utterly in wrinkles, and his poodle hair was filled with gray powder and even his mutilated ear was whitened like a cruller. I spoke to him, but he was so worried he scarcely seemed to hear. I said, "Man, don't be in such a funk, what can they do? Jail us? Deport us? Hold us for ransom? Crucify us?" But my confidence did not reach him. I then told him, "Why don't you ask if they're taking us to the king? He's Itelo's friend. I'm positive he speaks English." In a discouraged voice Romilayu tried to inquire of one of these troopers, but he only said, "Harrrff!" And the muscles of his cheek had that familiar tightness which belongs to the soldier's trade. I identified it right away. After two or three miles of this quick march upward, scrambling, crawling, and trotting, we came in sight of the town. Unlike the Arnewi village, it had bigger buildings, some of them wooden, and much expanded under the red light of that time of day, which was between sunset and blackness. On one side night had already come in and the evening star had begun to spin and throb. The white stone of the vicinity had a tendency to fall from the domes in round shapes, in bowls or circles, and these bowls were in use in the town for ornamental purposes. Flowers were growing in them in front of the palace, the largest of the red buildings. Before it were several fences of thorn and these rocks, about the size of Pacific man-eating clams, held fierce flowers, of a very red color. As we passed, two sentries screwed themselves into a brace, but we were not marched between them. To my surprise we went by and were taken through the center of town and out among the huts. People left their evening meal to come and have a look, laughing and making high-pitched exclamations. The huts were pretty ordinary, hive-shaped and thatched. There were cattle, and I dimly saw gardens in the last of the light, so I supposed they were better supplied with water here, and on that score they were safe from my help. I didn't take it hard that they laughed at me, but adopted