Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow [70]
him by my side. He was allowed to walk behind me in the procession, carrying all the gear. Tried in strength and patience, he bent under his double burden; it was out of the question for me to carry anything. We marched. Considering the size of the umbrellas and the drums, it was marvelous what speed we made. We flew forward, the drumming amazons before us and behind. And how different the town was today. Our route was lined with spectators, some of them bending over to spy out my face under the combined cover of umbrella and helmet. Thousands of hands, of restless feet, I saw, and faces glaring with heat and curiosity or intensity or holiday feeling. Chickens and pigs rushed across the route of the march. Shrill noises, squeals, and monkey shrieks swirled over the pounding of drums. "This is certainly a contrast," I said, "to yesterday when everything was so quiet. Why was that, Mr. Horko?" "Yestahday, sad day. All people fast." "Executions?" I suddenly said. From a scaffold at some distance to the left of the palace I saw, or thought I saw, bodies hanging upside down. Through a peculiarity of the light they were small, like dolls. The atmosphere sometimes will act as a reducing and not only as a magnifying glass. "I certainly hope those are effigies," I said. But my misgiving heart said otherwise. It was no wonder they hadn't made any inquiry about their corpse. What was one corpse to them? They appeared to deal in them wholesale. With this my feverishness increased, plus the scratchiness in my breast, and within my face itself a curious over-ripe sensation developed. Fear. I don't hesitate to admit it. I turned my eyes backward toward Romilayu, but he was lagging under the weight of the equipment and we were separated by a rank of drumming amazons. So I said to Horko, and was compelled to yell because of the drums, "Seem to be a lot of dead people." We had left the narrow lanes and were in a large thoroughfare approaching the palace. He shook his big head, smiling with his red-stained tongue, and touched one of his ears, from the lobe of which there dragged a red jewel. He did not hear me. "Dead people!" I said. And then I told myself, "Don't ask for information with such despair." My face was indeed hot and huge and anxious. Laughing, he could not admit that he had understood me, not even when I made a pantomime of hanging at the end of a rope. I would have paid four thousand dollars in spot cash for Lily to have been brought here for one single instant, to see how she would square such things with her ideas of goodness. And reality. We had had that terrific argument about reality as a consequence of which Ricey had run away and returned to school with the child from Danbury. I have always argued that Lily neither knows nor likes reality. Me? I love the old bitch just the way she is and I like to think I am always prepared for even the very worst she has to show me. I am a true adorer of life, and if I can't reach as high as the face of it, I plant my kiss somewhere lower down. Those who understand will require no further explanation. It consoled me for my fears to imagine that Lily would be unable to reply. Though at the present moment I can't for one instant believe that anything would stump her. She'd have an answer all right. But meanwhile we had crossed the parade ground and the sentries had opened the red gate. Here were the hollow stone bowls of yesterday with their hot flowers resembling geraniums, and here was the interior of the palace; it was three stories high with open staircases and galleries, quadrangular and barnlike. At ground level the rooms were doorless, like narrow stalls, open and bare. Here there could be no mistake about it--I heard the roar of a wild beast underneath. No creature but a lion could possibly make such a noise. Otherwise, relative to the streets of the town, the palace was quiet. In the yard were two small huts like doll-houses, each occupied by a horned idol, newly whitewashed this morning. Between these two was a trail of fresh calcimine. A rusty flag which had had too much sun