Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow [82]
ha!" I laughed and cried. "Say, King! What's that? Oh, Jesus--come again? The pumps of the firmament? Isn't that the dandiest!" However, the king had no time for me. At a signal from Horko's box there was an all-out, slam-bang, grand salute of the guns and with it a pounding of the deep liquid bass drums. The king arose. Wild hosannas! Fountains of praise! Faces screaming fiercely with pride and twisted with diverse inspirations. From the basic blackness of the flesh of the tribe there broke or erupted a wave of red color, and the people all arose on the white stone of the grandstands and waved red objects, waved or flaunted. Crimson was the holy-day color of the Wariri. The amazons saluted with purple banners, the king's colors. His purple umbrella was raised, and its taut head swayed. The king himself was no longer beside me. He had gone down from the box to take a position in the arena. At the other side of the circle, which was no bigger than the infield of a ball park, there arose a tall woman. To the waist she was naked and her head had woolly ringlets. When she came closer I saw that her face was covered with a beautiful design of scars that looked like Braille. Two peaks of this came down beside each ear, and a third descended to the bridge of her nose. As far as the belly she was painted a russet or dull gold color. She was young, for her breasts were small and didn't waver when she walked, as in the case with more adult females, and her arms were long and thin. They manifested the three major bones; I mean the tapered humerus and the radius and ulna. Her face was small and sloping, and when I first saw her from across the field she had no more features than the ball of a flagpole; at a distance she had a face like a gilded apple. She wore a pair of purple trousers, mates to the king's, and was his partner in a game they now began to play. For the first time, I realized that there was a group of shrouded figures in the center of the arena--roughly, let's say, where the pitcher's mound would have been. I figured correctly that these were the gods. Around them and over them the king and this gilded woman began to play a game with the two skulls. Whirling them by the long ribbons, each took a short run and threw them high in the air, above the figures of wood which stood under the tarpaulins--the biggest of these idols about as tall as an old upright Steinway piano. The two skulls flew up high, and then the king and the girl each made the catch. It was very neat. All the noise had died, had gone like the wrinkles of a cloth under the hot iron. A perfectly smooth silence followed the first throws, so you could even hear how hollow the catch sounded. Soon even the whiff the skulls made as they were being whirled around came to my un-handicapped ear. The woman threw her skull. The thick purple and blue ribbons made it look like a flower in the air. I swear before God, it appeared just like a gentian. In midair it passed the skull coming from the hand of the king. Both came streaming down with the blue satin ribbons following, as though they were a couple of ocean polyps. Soon I understood that this wasn't only a game, but a contest, and naturally I rooted for the king. I didn't know but what the penalty for dropping one of those skulls might have been death. Now I myself have become ultra-familiar with death, not only owing to my age, but for a lot of reasons unnecessary to cite at this time. Death and I are just about kissing cousins. But the thought of anything happening to the king was horrible to me. Though his confidence seemed great, and his bounding and his quick turns and his sureness made beautiful watching as he warmed to the game like a fine tennis player or a great rider, and he--well, he was virile to a degree that made all worry superfluous; such a man takes all he does upon himself; nevertheless I trembled and shook for him. I worried for the girl, too. Should either one of them stumble or let the ribbons slip or the skulls collide they might have to pay the ultimate price, like the poor guy I found in