Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow [29]
�" "Your Highness, as to that � who can say? If you think the omens are good, I'll go along with you. Listen, Your Highness, I look like a bruiser, and I am gifted in strange ways, mostly physical; but also I am very sensitive. A while back you said something to me about envy and I must admit you kind of hurt my feelings. That's like a poem I once read called, 'Written in Prison.' I can't remember it all, but part of it goes, 'I envy e'en the fly its gleams of joy, in the green woods' and it ends, 'The fly I envy settling in the sun on the green leaf and wish my goal was won.' Now, King, you know as well as I do what goal I'm talking about. Now, Your Highness, I really do not wish to live by any law of decay. Just tell me, how long has the world got to be like this? Why should there be no hope for suffering? It so happens that I believe something can be done, and this is why I rushed out into the world as you have noted. All kinds of motives behind this. There's my wife, Lily, and then there are the children--you must have quite a few of them yourself, so maybe you'll understand how I feel...." I read sympathy in his face, and I wiped myself with my Woolworth bandanna. My nose, independently, itched within, and seemingly there was nothing I could do for it. "Truly I regret if I wounded you," he said. "Well, that's all right. I'm a pretty good judge of men and you are a fine one. And from you I can take it. Besides, truth is truth. Confidentially, I _have__ envied flies, too. All the more reason to crash out of prison. Right? If I had the mental constitution to live inside the nutshell and think myself the king of infinite space, that would be just fine. But that's not how I am. King, I am a Becomer. Now you see your situation is different. You are a Be-er. I've just got to stop Becoming. Jesus Christ, when am I going to Be? I have waited a hell of a long time. I suppose I should be more patient, but for God's sake, Your Highness, you've got to understand what it's like with me. So I am asking you. You've got to let me out there. Why it is, I can't say, but I feel called upon to do it, and this may be my main chance." And I spoke to the examiner, who stood in his leopard mantle and cuffs, holding up the bone rod, and said, "Excuse me, sir." I held out a few fingers to him and said, "I will be with you soon." In the heat of my body and fever of mind I couldn't speak with any restraint whatever and I said, "King, I'm going to give you the straight poop about myself, as straight as I can make it. Every man born has to carry his life to a certain depth--or else! Well, King, I'm beginning to see my depth. You wouldn't expect me to back away now, would you?" He said, "No, Mr. Henderson. In sincerity, I would not." "Well, this is just one of those moments," I said. He lay there, having listened with a kind of soft and even musing appreciation. "Well, whatever may come of it, I do grant the permission. As far as I am concerned I do not see why not." "Thank you, Your Majesty. Thank you." "Everybody is expectant." I stood up at once and pulled my shirt over my head and hoisted up my chest broadly and passed my hands over it and over my face, and, with my shorts conforming awkwardly to my trunk, and feeling tall and huge, branded by the sun on the top of my head, I went down into the arena. I kneeled in front of the goddess--one knee. And I sized her up while drying my damp hands with dust and wiping them on my suntan pants. The yells of the Wariri, even the deep drums, came very lightly to my hearing. They occurred on a small, infinitely reduced scale, way out on the circumference of a great circle. The savagery and stridency of these Africans who mauled the gods and strung up the dead by their feet had nothing to do with the emotion of my heart. This was distinct and altogether separate, a thing unto itself. My heart desired only one great object. I had to put my arms about this huge Mummah and raise her up. As I came closer I saw how huge she was, how over-spilling and formless. She had been oiled, and glittered before my eyes. On her surface walked flies. One of these little sphinxes of the air who sat on her lip was washing himself. How fast a threatened fly departs! The decision is instantaneous and there seems to be no inertia to overcome and there is no superfluity in the way flies take off. As I began, all the flies fled with a tearing noise into the heat. Never hesitating, I encircled Mummah with my arms. I wasn't going to take no for an answer. I pressed my belly upon her and sank my knees somewhat. She smelled like a living old woman. Indeed, to me she was a living personality, not an idol. We met as challenged and challenger, but also as intimates. And with the close pleasure you experience in a dream or on one of those warm beneficial floating idle days when every desire is satisfied, I laid my cheek against her wooden bosom. I cranked down my knees and said to her, "Up you go, dearest. No use trying to make yourself heavier; if you weighed twice as much I'd lift you anyway." The wood gave to my pressure and benevolent Mummah with her fixed smile yielded to me; I lifted her from the ground and carried her twenty feet to her new place among the other gods. The Wariri jumped up and down in the white stone of their stands, screaming, singing, raving, hugging themselves and one another and praising me. I stood still. There beside Mummah in her new situation I myself was filled with happiness. I was so gladdened by what I had done that my whole body was filled with soft heat, with soft and sacred light. The sensations of illness I had experienced since morning were all converted into their opposites. These same unhappy feelings were changed into warmth and personal luxury. You know, this kind of thing has happened to me before. I have had a bad headache change into a pain in the gums which is nothing but the signal of approaching beauty. I have known this, then, to pass down from the gums and appear again in my breast as a throb of pleasure. I have also known a stomach complaint to melt from my belly and turn into a delightful heat and go down into the genitals. This is the way I am. And so my fever was transformed into jubilation. My spirit was awake and it welcomed life anew. Damn the whole thing! Life anew! I was still alive and kicking and I had the old grun-tu-molani. Beaming and laughing to myself, yes, sir, shining with contentment, I went back to sit beside Dahfu's hammock and wiped my face with a handkerchief, for I was anointed with sweat. "Mr. Henderson," said the king in his African English voice, "you are indeed a person of extraordinary strength. I could not have more admiration." "Thanks to you," I said, "for giving me such a wonderful chance. Not just hoisting up the old woman, but to get into my depth. That real depth. I mean that depth where I have always belonged." I was grateful to him. I was his friend then. In fact, at this moment, I loved the guy.