Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow [17]
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I heard Mtalba crying, "Aii, yelli, yelli." "What is she saying?" I asked Romilayu. "She say, goo'by. Fo' evah." And Itelo in a trembling voice said to me, "You please, Mistah Henderson, covah down you face." I asked, "What's the matter? You're not going to take my life?" "No, no, you won me. You want to die, you got to die you'self. You are a friend." "Some friend," I said. I could hear that he was speaking against a great pressure in his throat; the lump in it must have been enormous. "I would have laid down my life to help you," I said. "You saw how long I held that bomb. I wish it had gone off in my hands and blown me to smashes. It's the same old story with me; as soon as I come amongst people I screw something up--I goof. They were right to cry when I showed up. They must have smelled trouble and knew that I would cause a disaster." Under cover of the shirt, I gave in to my emotions, the emotion of gratitude included. I demanded, "Why for once, just once!, couldn't I get my heart's desire? I have to be doomed always to bungle." And I thought my life-pattern stood revealed, and after such a revelation death might as well ensue as not. But as Itelo would not stab me, I pulled down the cistern-stained shirt and said, "Okay, Prince, if you don't want my blood on your hands." "No, no," he said. And I said, "Then thanks, Itelo. I'll just have to try to carry on from here." Then Romilayu muttered, "Whut we do, sah?" "We will leave, Romilayu. It's the best contribution I can make now to the welfare of my friends. Good-by, Prince. Good-by, dear lady, and tell the queen good-by. I hoped to learn the wisdom of life from her but I guess I am just too rash. I am not fit for such companionship. But I love that old woman. I love all you folks. God bless you all. I'd stay," I said, "and at least repair your cistern for you �" "Bettah you not, sir," said Itelo. I took his word for it; after all, he knew the situation best. And moreover I was too heartbroken to differ with him. Romilayu went back to the hut to collect our stuff while I walked out of the deserted town. There was not a soul in any of the lanes, and even the cattle had been pulled indoors so that they would not have to see me again. I waited by the wall of the town and when Romilayu showed up we went back into the desert together. This was how I left in disgrace and humiliation, having demolished both their water and my hopes. For now I'd never learn more about the grun-tu-molani. Naturally Romilayu wanted to go back to Baventai and I said to him that I knew he had fulfilled his contract. The jeep was his whenever he wanted it. "However," I asked, "how can I go back to the States now? Itelo wouldn't kill me. He's a noble character and friendship means something to him. But I might as well take this.375 and blow my brains out on the spot as go home." "Whut you mean, sah?" said Romilayu, much puzzled. "I mean, Romilayu, that I went into the world one last time to accomplish certain purposes, and you saw for yourself what has happened. So if I quit at this time I'll probably turn into a zombie. My face will become as white as paraffin, and I'll lie on my bed until I croak. Which is maybe no more than I deserve. So it's your choice. I can't give any orders now and I leave it up to you. If you are going to Baventai it will be by yourself." "You go alone, sah?" he said, surprised at me. "If I have to, yes, pal," I said. "For I can't turn back. It's okay. I have a few rations and four one-thousand-dollar bills in my hat, and I guess I can find food and water on the way. I can eat locusts. If you want my gun you can have that too." "No," said Romilayu, after thinking briefly about it. "You no go alone, sah." "You're a pretty regular guy. You're a good man, Romilayu. I may be nothing but an old failure, having muffed just about everything I ever put my hand to; I seem to have the Midas touch in reverse, so my opinion may not be worth having, but that's what I think. So," I said, "what's ahead of us? Where'll we go?" "I no know," said Romilayu. "Maybe Wariri?" he said. "Oh, the Wariri. Prince Itelo went to school with their king--what's his name?" "Dahfu." "That's it, Dahfu. Well, then, shall we go in that direction?" Reluctantly Romilayu said, "Okay, sah." He seemed to have his doubts about his own suggestion. I picked up more than my share of the burden and said, "Let's go. We may not decide to enter their town. We'll see how we feel about that later. But let's go. I haven't got much hope, but all I know is that at home I'd be a dead man." Thus we started off toward the Wariri while I was thinking about the burial of Oedipus at Colonus--but he at least brought people luck after he was dead. At that time I might almost have been willing to settle for this. We traveled eight or ten days more, through country very like the Hinchagara plateau. After the fifth or sixth day the character of the ground changed somewhat. There was more wood on the mountains, although mostly the slopes were still sterile. Mesas and hot granites and towers and acropolises held onto the earth; I mean they gripped it and refused to depart with the clouds which seemed to be trying to absorb them. Or maybe in my melancholy everything looked cocksy-worsy to me. This marching over difficult terrain didn't bother Romilayu, who was as much meant for such travel as a deckhand is meant to be on the water. Cargo or registry or destination makes little difference in the end. With those skinny feet he covered ground and to him this activity was self-explanatory. He was very skillful at finding water and knew where he could stick a straw into the soil and get a drink, and he would pick up gourds and other stuff I would never even have noticed and chew them for moisture and nourishment. At night we sometimes talked. Romilayu was of the opinion that with their cistern empty the Arnewi would probably undertake a trek for water. And remembering the frogs and many things besides I sat beside the fire and glowered at the coals, thinking of my shame and ruin, but a man goes on living and, living, things are either better or worse to a fellow. This will never stop, and all survivors know it. And when you don't die of a trouble somehow you begin to convert it--make use of it, I mean. Giant spiders we saw, and nets set up like radar stations among the cactuses. There were ants in these parts whose bodies were shaped like diabolos and their nests made large gray humps on the landscape. How ostriches could bear to run so hard in this heat I never succeeded in understanding. I got close enough to one to see how round his eyes were and then he beat the earth with his feet and took off with a hot wind in his feathers, a rusty white foam behind. Sometimes after Romilayu had prayed at night and lain down I would keep him awake telling him the story of my life, to see whether this strange background, the desert, the ostriches and ants, the night birds, and the roaring of lions occasionally, would take off some of the curse, but I came out still more exotic and fantastic always than any ants, ostriches, mountains. And I said, "What would the Wariri say if they knew who was traveling in their direction?" "I no know, sah. Dem no so good people like Arnewi." "Oh they're not, eh? But you won't say anything about the frogs and the cistern, now will you, Romilayu?" "No, no, sah." "Thanks, friend," I said. "I don't deserve credit for much, but when all is said and done I had only good intentions. Really and truly it kills me to think how the cattle must be suffering back there without water. No bunk. But then suppose I had satisfied my greatest ambition and become a doctor like Doctor Grenfell or Doctor Schweitzer--or a surgeon? Is there a surgeon anywhere who doesn't lose a patient once in a while? Why, some of those guys must tow a whole fleet of souls behind them." Romilayu lay on the ground with his hand slipped under his cheek. His straight Abyssinian nose expressed great patience. "The king of the Wariri, Dahfu, was Itelo's school chum. But you say they aren't good people, the Wariri. What's the matter with them?" "Dem chillen dahkness." "Well, Romilayu, you really are a very Christian fellow," I said. "You mean they are wiser in their generation and all the rest. But as between these people and myself, who do you think has got more to worry about?" Without changing his position, a glitter of grim humor playing in his big soft eye, he said, "Oh, maybe dem, sah." As you see, I had changed my mind about by-passing the Wariri, and it was partly because of what Romilayu had told me about them. For I felt I was less likely to do any damage amongst them if they were such tough or worldly savages. So for nine or ten days we walked, and toward the end of this time the character of the mountains changed greatly. There were domelike white rocks which here and there crumpled into huge heaps, and among these white circles of stone on, I think, the tenth day, we finally encountered a person. It happened while we were climbing, late in the afternoon under a reddening sun. Behind us the high mountains we had emerged from showed their crumbled peaks and prehistoric spines. Ahead shrubs were growing between these rock domes, which were as white as chinaware. Then this Wariri herdsman arose before us in a leather apron, holding a twisted stick, and although he did nothing else he looked dangerous. Something about his figure struck me as Biblical, and in particular he made me think of the man whom Joseph met when he went to look for his brothers, and who directed him along toward Dothan. My belief is that this man in the Bible must have been an angel and certainly knew the brothers were going to throw Joseph into the pit. But he sent him on nevertheless. Our black man not only wore a leather apron but seemed leathery all over, and if he had had wings those would have been of leather, too. His features were pressed deep into his face, which was small, secret, and, even in the direct rays of the red sun, very black. We had a talk with him. I said, "Hello, hello," loudly as if assuming that his hearing was sunk as deeply as his eyes. Romilayu asked him for directions and with his stick the man showed us the way to go. Thus old-time travelers must have been directed. I made him a salute but he didn't appear to think much of it and his leather face answered nothing. So we toiled upward among the rocks along the way he had pointed. "Far?" I said to Romilayu. "No, sah. Him say not far." I now thought we might pass the evening in a town, and after ten days of toilsome wandering I had begun to look forward to a bed and cooked food and some busy sights and even to a thatch over me. The way grew more and more stony and this made me suspicious. If we were approaching a town we ought by now to have found a path. Instead there were these jumbled white stones that looked as if they had been combed out by an ignorant hand from the elements that make least sense. There must be stupid portions of heaven, too, and these had rolled straight down from it. I am no geologist but the word calcareous seemed to fit them. They were composed of lime and my guess was that they must have originated in a body of water. Now they were ultra-dry but filled with little caves from which cooler air was exhaled--ideal places for a siesta in the heat of noon, provided no snakes came. But the sun was in decline, trumpeting downward. The cave mouths were open and there was this coarse and clumsy gnarled white stone. We had just turned the corner of a boulder to continue our climb when Romilayu astonished me. He had set his foot up to take a long stride but to my bewilderment he began to slide forward on his hands, and, instead of mounting, lay down on the stones of the slope. When I saw him prostrate, I said, "What the hell is with you? What are you doing? Is this a place to lie down? Get up." But his extended body, pack and all, hugged the slope while his frizzled hair settled motionless among the stones. He didn't answer, and now no answer was necessary, because when I looked up I saw, in front of us and about twenty yards above, a military group. Three tribesmen knelt with guns aimed at us while eight or ten more standing behind them were crowding their rifle barrels together, 30 that we might have been blown off the hillside; they had the fire power to do it. A dozen guns massed at you is bad business, and therefore I dropped my.375 and raised my hands. Yet I was pleased just the same, due to my military temperament. Also that leathery small man had sent us into an ambush and for some reason this elementary cunning gave me satisfaction, too. There are some things the human soul doesn't need to be tutored in. Ha, ha! You know I was kind of pleased and I imitated Romilayu. Brought to the dust I put my face down among the pebbles and waited, grinning. Romilayu was stretched will-less, in an African manner. Finally one of the men came down, covered by the rest, and without speech but stoically, as soldiers usually do, he took the.375 and ammunition and knives and other weapons, and ordered us to get up. When we did so he frisked us again. The squad above us lowered their guns, which were old weapons, either the Berber type with long barrels and inlaid butts, or old European arms which might have been taken away from General Gordon at Khartoum and distributed all over Africa. Yes, I thought, old Chinese Gordon, poor guy, with his Bible studies. But it was better to die like that than in smelly old England. I have very little affection for the iron age of technology. I feel sympathy for a man like Gordon because he was brave and confused. To be disarmed in ambush was a joke to me for the first few minutes, but when we were told to pick up our packs and move ahead I began to change my mind. These men were smaller, darker, and shorter than the Arnewi but very tough. They wore gaudy loincloths and marched energetically and after we had gone on for an hour or more I was less merry at heart than before. I began to feel atrocious toward those fellows, and for a small inducement I would have swept them up in my arms, the whole dozen or so of them, and run them over the cliff. It took the recollection of the frogs to restrain me. I suppressed my rash feeling and followed a policy of waiting and patience. Romilayu looked very poorly and I put my arm about him. His face because of the dust of surrender was utterly in wrinkles, and his poodle hair was filled with gray powder and even his mutilated ear was whitened like a cruller. I spoke to him, but he was so worried he scarcely seemed to hear. I said, "Man, don't be in such a funk, what can they do? Jail us? Deport us? Hold us for ransom? Crucify us?" But my confidence did not reach him. I then told him, "Why don't you ask if they're taking us to the king? He's Itelo's friend. I'm positive he speaks English." In a discouraged voice Romilayu tried to inquire of one of these troopers, but he only said, "Harrrff!" And the muscles of his cheek had that familiar tightness which belongs to the soldier's trade. I identified it right away. After two or three miles of this quick march upward, scrambling, crawling, and trotting, we came in sight of the town. Unlike the Arnewi village, it had bigger buildings, some of them wooden, and much expanded under the red light of that time of day, which was between sunset and blackness. On one side night had already come in and the evening star had begun to spin and throb. The white stone of the vicinity had a tendency to fall from the domes in round shapes, in bowls or circles, and these bowls were in use in the town for ornamental purposes. Flowers were growing in them in front of the palace, the largest of the red buildings. Before it were several fences of thorn and these rocks, about the size of Pacific man-eating clams, held fierce flowers, of a very red color. As we passed, two sentries screwed themselves into a brace, but we were not marched between them. To my surprise we went by and were taken through the center of town and out among the huts. People left their evening meal to come and have a look, laughing and making high-pitched exclamations. The huts were pretty ordinary, hive-shaped and thatched. There were cattle, and I dimly saw gardens in the last of the light, so I supposed they were better supplied with water here, and on that score they were safe from my help. I didn't take it hard that they laughed at me, but adopted an attitude of humoring them and waved my hand and tipped my helmet. However, I didn't care one bit for this. It annoyed me not to have been given an immediate audience with King Dahfu. They led us into a yard and ordered us to sit on the ground near the wall of a house somewhat larger than the rest. A white band was painted over the door, indicating an official residence. Here the patrol that had captured us went away, leaving only one fellow to guard us. I could have grabbed his gun and made scrap metal of it in one single twist, but what was the use of that? I let him stand at my back and waited. Five or six hens in this enclosed yard were pecking at an hour when they should have gone to roost, and a few naked kids played a game resembling skip rope and chanted with thick tongues. Unlike the Arnewi children, they didn't come near us. The sky was like terra cotta and then like pink gum, unfamiliar to my nostrils. Then final darkness. The hens and the kids disappeared, and this left us by the feet of the armed fellow, alone. We waited, and for a violent person waiting is often a bed of troubles. I believed that the man who kept us waiting, the black Wariri magistrate or J. P. or examiner, was just letting us cool our bottoms. Maybe he had taken a look through the rushes of the door while there was still light enough to see my face. This might well have astonished him and so he was reflecting on it, trying to figure out what line to take with me. Or perhaps he was merely curled up in there like an ant to wear out my patience. And I was certainly affected; I was badly upset. I am probably the worst waiter in the world. I don't know what it is but I am no good at it, it does something to my spirit. Thus I sat, tired and worried, on the ground, and my thoughts were mainly fears. Meanwhile the beautiful night crawled on as a continuum of dark and warmth, drawing the main star with it; and then the moon came along, incomplete and spotted. The unknown examiner was sitting within, and he exulted probably over the indignity of the grand white traveler whose weapons had been taken away and who had to wait without supper. And now one of those things occurred which life has not been willing to spare me. As I was sitting waiting here on this exotic night I bit into a hard biscuit and I broke one of my bridges. I had worried about that--what would I do in the wilds of Africa if I damaged my dental work? Fear of this has often kept me out of fights and at the time I was wrestling with Itelo and was thrown so heavily on my face I had thought about the effect on my teeth. Back home, unthinkingly eating a caramel in the movies or biting a chicken bone in a restaurant, I don't know how many times I felt a pulling or a grinding and quickly investigated with my tongue, while my heart almost stopped. This time the dreaded thing really happened and I chewed broken teeth together with the hardtack. I felt the jagged shank of the bridge and was furious, disgusted, frightened; damn! I was in despair and there were tears in my eyes. "Whut so mattah?" said Romilayu. I took out the lighter and fired it up and I showed him fragments of tooth in my hand, and pulled open my lip, raising the flame so that he could look inside. "I have broken some teeth," I said. "Oh! Bad! You got lot so pain, sah?" "No, no pain. Just anguish of spirit," I said. "It couldn't have happened at a worse time." Then I realized that he was horrified to see these molars in the palm of my hand and I blew out the light. After this I was compelled to recall the history of my dental work. The first major job was undertaken after the war, in Paris, by Mlle. Montecuccoli. The original bridge was put in by her. You see, there was a girl named Berthe, who was hired to take care of our two daughters, who recommended her. A General Montecuccoli was the last opponent of the great Marshal Turenne. Enemies used to attend each other's funerals in the old days, and Montecuccoli went to Turenne's and beat his breast and sobbed. I appreciated this connection. However, there were many things wrong. Mlle. Montecuccoli had a large bust, and when she forgot herself in the work she pressed down on my face and smothered me, and there were so many drains and dams and blocks of wood in my mouth that I couldn't even holler. Mlle. Montecuccoli with fearfully roused black eyes was meanwhile staring in. She had her office in the Rue du Colis