Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow [95]
No, no, they didn't care. But with the whips and skulls and guns I was whirled with them, their rain king, crying in my filth and frenzy, "Ya--na--bu--ni--ho--no--mum--mah!" as before. Yes, here he is, the mover of Mummah, the champion, the Sungo. Here comes Henderson of the U. S. A.--Captain Henderson, Purple Heart, veteran of North Africa, Sicily, Monte Cassino, etc., a giant shadow, a man of flesh and blood, a restless seeker, pitiful and rude, a stubborn old lush with broken bridgework, threatening death and suicide. Oh, you rulers of heaven! Oh, you dooming powers! Oh, I will black out! I will crash into death, and they will throw me on the dung heap, and the vultures will play house in my paunch. And with all my heart I yelled, "Mercy, have mercy!" And after that I yelled, "No, justice!" And after that I changed my mind and cried, "No, no, truth, truth!" And then, "Thy will be done! Not my will, but Thy will!" This pitiful rude man, this poor stumbling bully, lifting up his call to heaven for truth. Do you hear that? We were yelling and jumping and whirling through terrified lanes, feet pounding, drums and skulls keeping pace. And meanwhile the sky was filling with hot, gray, long shadows, rain clouds, but to my eyes of an abnormal form, pressed together like organ pipes or like the ocean ammonites of Paleozoic times. With swollen throats the amazons cried and howled, and I, lumbering with them, tried to remember who I was. _Me.__ With the slime-plastered leaves drying on my skin. The king of the rain. It came to me that still and all there must be some distinction in this, but of what kind I couldn't say. Under the thickened rain clouds, a heated, darkened breeze sprang up. It had a smoky odor. This was something oppressive, insinuating, choky, sultry, icky. Desirous, the air was, and it felt tumescent, heavy. It was very heavy. It yearned for discharge, like a living thing. Covered with sweat, the generaless with her arm urged me, rolling great eyes and panting. The mud dried stiffly and made a kind of earth costume for me. Inside it I felt like Vesuvius, all the upper part flame and the blood banging upward like the pitch or magma. The whips were hissing and gave a dry, mean sound, and I wondered what in the hell are they doing. After the gust of breeze came deeper darkness, like the pungent heat of the trains when they pass into Grand Central tunnel on a devastated day of August, which is like darkness eternal. At that moment I have always closed my eyes. But I couldn't close them now. We ran back to the arena, where the tribesmen of the Wariri were waiting. As the rain was still held back, so were their voices from my hearing, by a very thin dam, one of the thinnest. I heard Dahfu saying to me, "After all, Mr. Henderson, you may lose the wager." For we were again in front of his box. He gave an order to Tatu, the generaless, and we all turned and rushed into the arena--I with the rest, spinning around inspired, in spite of my great weight, in spite of the angry cuts on my feet. My heart rioting, my head dazed, and filled with something like the fulgor of that vacant Pacific scene beside which I had walked with Edward. Nothing but white, seething, and the birds arguing over the herrings, with great clouds about. On the many-figured white stones I saw the people standing, leaping, frantic, under the oppression of Mummah's great clouds, those colossal tuberous forms almost breaking. There was a great delirium. They were shrieking, shrieking. And of all these shrieks, my head, the rain king's head, was the hive. All were flying toward me, entering my brain. Above all this I heard the roaring of lions, while the dust was shivering under my feet. The women about me were dancing, if you want to call it that. They were bounding and screaming and banging their bodies into me. All together we were nearing the gods who stood in their group, with Hummat and Mummah looking over the heads of the rest. And now I wanted to fall on the ground to avoid any share in what seemed to be a terrible thing, for these women, the amazons,