Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow [83]
my hut. He certainly had not died of natural causes. You can't kid me; I would have made a terrific coroner. But the king and the woman were in top form, from which I judged that he didn't spend all his time on his back, pampered by those dolls of his, for he ran and jumped like a lion, full of power, and he looked magnificent. He hadn't even taken off the purple velvet hat with its adornment of human teeth. And he was equal to the woman, for in my mind she shaped up as the challenger. She behaved like a priestess, seeing to it that he came up to the mark. Because of the gold paint and Braille marks on her face she looked somewhat inhuman. As she sprang, dancing, her breasts were fixed, as if really made of gold, and because of her length and thinness, when she leaped it was something supernatural, like a giant locust. Then the last pair of throws, and the catch was completed. Each tucked the skull under his arm, like a fencer's mask; each bowed. A tremendous noise followed, and again the crimson flags and rags erupted. The king was breathing hard as he returned, with that Francis I hat, as Titian might have painted it. He sat down. When he did so, the wives surrounded him with a sheet so that he might not be seen drinking in public. This was taboo. Then they dried his sweat and massaged the muscles of his great legs and his panting belly, loosening the golden drawstring of his purple trousers. I wished to tell him how great he had been. I was dying to say what I felt. Like, "Oh, King, that was royally done. Like a true artist. Goddammit, an artistl King, I love nobility and beautiful behavior." But I couldn't say a thing. I have this brutal reticence of character. Such is the slavery of the times. We are supposed to be cool-mouthed. As I told my son Edward--slavery! And he thought I was a square when I said I loved the truth. Oh, that hurt! Anyway, I often want to say things and they stay in my mind. Therefore they don't actually exist; you can't take credit for them if they never emerge. By mentioning the firmament, the king himself had shown me the way, and I might have told him a lot, right then and there. What? Well, for instance, that chaos doesn't run the whole show. That this is not a sick and hasty ride, helpless, through a dream into oblivion. No, sir! It can be arrested by a thing or two. By art, for instance. The speed is checked, the time is redivided. Measure! That great thought. Mystery! The voices of angels! Why the hell else did I play the fiddle? And why were my bones molten in those great cathedrals of France so that I couldn't stand it and had to booze up and swear at Lily? And I was thinking that if I spoke of this to the king and told him what was in my heart he might become my friend. But the wives were between us with their naked thighs, and their behinds turned toward me, which would have been the height of discourtesy except that they were wild savages. So I had no chance to speak to the king under those inspired conditions. A few minutes later, when I was able again to talk to him, I said, "King, I had a feeling that if either of you missed, the consequences would not be pretty." Before he answered he moistened his lips, and his chest still moved quickly. "I can explain to you, Mr. Henderson, why the factor of missing is negligible." His teeth shone toward me and the panting made him seem to smile, though there was nothing to smile about. "Some day the ribbons will be tied through here." With two fingers he pointed to his eyes. "My own skull will get the air." He made a gesture of soaring, and said, "Flying." I said, "Were those the skulls of kings? Relatives of yours?" I didn't have the nerve to ask a direct question about his kinship with those heads. At the thought of making a similar catch, the flesh of my hands pricked and tingled. But there was no time to go into this. Too much was happening. Now the cattle sacrifices were made, and they were done pretty much without ceremony. A priest with ostrich feathers that sprayed out in every direction threw his arm about the neck of a cow, caught