Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow [64]
naked, and so revealed little. I tried to consult with myself as to what I should do, but I could not make sense, the reason being that I was becoming offended and angry. "They've done this on purpose, Romilayu," I said. "This is why they made us wait so long and why those broads with the torches were laughing. All the time they were working on this frame-up. If that little crook with the twisted stick was capable of sending us into an ambush, then I don't put it past them to rig up this, either. Boy, they're the children of darkness, all right, just as you said. Maybe this is their idea of a hot practical joke. At daybreak we were supposed to wake up and see that we had spent the night with a corpse. But listen, you go and tell them, Romilayu, that I refuse to sleep in a morgue. I have waked up next to the dead all right, but that was on the battlefield." "Who I tell?" said Romilayu. And I started to storm at him, "Go on," I said. "I've given you an order. Go, wake somebody. Judas! This is what I call brass." Romilayu cried, "Mistah Henderson, sah, whut I do?" "Do what I tell you," I yelled, and the loathing of the dead I felt and all the rage of a tired man who had broken his bridgework filled me. And so, unwillingly, Romilayu went out and probably sat down on a stone somewhere and prayed or wept that he had ever come with me or had been tempted by the jeep, and probably he repented of not having turned back to Baventai alone after the explosion of frogs. Certainly he was too timid to wake anyone with my complaint. And perhaps the thought had come to him, as it now did to me, that we were liable to be accused of a murder. I hurried to the door and leaned out into the thick night, which now smelled malodorous to me, and I said, as loud as I dared, and brokenly, "Come back, Romilayu, where are you? I've changed my mind. Come back, old fellow." For I was thinking that I shouldn't drive him from me as tomorrow we might have to defend our lives. When he came back we squatted down, the two of us, beside the dead man to deliberate and what I felt was not so much fear now as sadness, a regular drawing pain of sadness. I felt my mouth become very wide with the sorrow of it and the two of us, looking at the body, suffered silently for a while, the dead man in his silence sending a message to me such as, "Here, man, is your being, which you think so terrific." And just as silently I replied, "Oh, be quiet, dead man, for Christ's sake." Of one thing I presently became convinced, that the presence of this corpse was a challenge which had to be answered, and I said to Romilayu, "They aren't going to put this over on me." I told him what I thought we should do. "No, sah," he said intensely. "I have decided." "No, no, we sleep outside." "Never," I said. "It will make me look soft. They've unloaded this man on us and the thing for us to do is to give him right back to them." Romilayu began to moan again, "Wo, wo! Whut we do, sah?" "We'll do as I said. Now pay attention to me. I tell you I see through the whole thing. They may try to hang this on us. How would you like to stand trial?" Again I spun the lighter with my thumb, and Romilayu and I saw each other under the small pointed orange flame as I held it up. He suffered from terror of the dead, whereas it was the affront, the challenge, that got me most. It seemed to me absolutely necessary to exert myself, as I was horribly stirred. And my mind was resolute; I had decided to drag him out of the hut. "Okay, let's pull him out," I said. And Romilayu insisted, "No, no. Us go out. I mek you bed on the ground." "You'll do no such thing. I'm going to take him and stick him right in front of the palace. I can hardly believe that Itelo's friend the king could be involved in any such plot against a visitor." Romilayu began to moan again, "Wo, no, no, no! Them catch you." "Well, unloading him in front of the palace probably is too chancy," I conceded. "We'll lay him down somewhere else. But I can't bear not to do anything about it." "Why you mus'?" "Because I just must. It's practically constitutional