Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow [6]
IV
Is it any wonder I had to go to Africa? But I have told you there always comes a day of tears and madness. I had fights, I had trouble with the troopers, I made suicide threats, and then last Xmas my daughter Ricey came home from boarding school. She has some of the family difficulty. To be blunt, I do not want to lose this child in outer space, and I said to Lily, "Keep an eye on her, will you?" Lily was very pale. She said, "Oh, I want to help her. I will. But I've got to win her confidence." Leaving the matter to her, I went down the kitchen back stairs to my studio and picked up the violin, which sparkled with rosin dust, and began to practice Sevcik under the fluorescent light of the music stand. I bent down in my robe and frowned, as well I might, at the screaming and grating of those terrible slides. Oh, thou God and judge of life and death! The ends of my fingers were wounded, indented especially by the steel E string, and my collarbone ached and a flaming patch, like the hives, came out on my jowl. But the voice within me continued, _I__ _want, I want!__ But soon there was another voice in the house. Perhaps the music drove Ricey out. Lily and Spohr, the painter, were working hard to get the portrait finished by my birthday. She went away and Ricey, alone, took a trip to Danbury to visit a school chum, but didn't find her way to this girl's house. Instead, as she wandered through the back streets of Danbury she passed a parked car and heard the cries of a newborn infant in the back seat of this old Buick. It was in a shoebox. The day was terribly cold; therefore she brought the foundling back with her and hid it in the clothes closet of her room. On the twenty-first of December, at lunch, I was saying, "Children, this is the winter solstice," and then the infant's cry came out by way of the heating ducts from the register under the buffet. I pulled down the thick, woolly bill of my hunting cap, which, it so happens, I was wearing at the lunch table, and to suppress my surprise I began to talk about something else. For Lily was laughing toward me significantly with the upper lip drawn down over her front teeth, and her white color very warm. Looking at Ricey, I saw that silent happiness had come up into her eyes. At fifteen this girl is something of a beauty, though usually in a listless way. But she was not listless now; she was absorbed in the baby. As I did not know then who the kid was or how it had got into the house, I was startled, thrown, and I said to the twins, "So, there is a little pussy cat upstairs, eh?" They weren't fooled. Try and fool them! Ricey and Lily had baby bottles on the kitchen stove to sterilize. I took note of this caldron full of bottles as I was returning to the basement to practice, but made no comment. All afternoon, by way of the air ducts, I heard the infant squalling, and I went for a walk but couldn't bear the December ruins of my frozen estate and one-time pig kingdom. There were a few prize animals whom I hadn't sold. I wasn't ready to part with them yet. I had arranged to play "The First No