Henderson the Rain King (20 page)

her off from the back of my head which bristled like a sea urchin when she approached. She sniffed at my back. The king was smiling and thought we were getting on famously. I cried a little. Then she went away and the king said, "Do not be so exceedingly troubled, Henderson-Sungo." "Oh, Your Highness, I can't help myself. It's what I feel. It's not only that I'm scared of her, and I'm scared all right, but it isn't that alone. It's the richness of the mixture. That's what's getting me. The richness of the mixture. And what I can't understand is why, when fear has taken me on and licked me so many times, I still am not able to stand it." And I went on sobbing, but not too loud, as I didn't want to provoke anything. "Try, better, to appreciate the beauty of this animal," he said. "Do not think I am attempting to submit you to any ordeal for ordeal's sake. Do you think it is a nerve test? Wash your brain? Honor bright, such is not the case. If I were not positive of my control I would not lead you into such a situation. That would truly be scandalous." He had his hand with the garnet ring on the beast's neck, and he said, "If you will remain where you are, I will give you the fullest confidence." He jumped down from the platform, and the abruptness of this gave me a bad shock. I felt a burst of terror go off in my chest. The lioness leaped as soon as he did and the two of them together walked to the center of the den. He stopped and gave her an order. She sat. He spoke and she stretched out on her back, opening her mouth, and then he crouched and pushed his arm into her jaws, bearing down against the wrinkled lips while her tail as she sprawled made a big arc on the stone, sweeping it with utmost power. Withdrawing the arm he made her stand again, and then he crept underneath her and put his legs about her back; his white-slippered feet crossed upon her haunches and his arms about her neck. Face to face she carried him up and down while he talked to her. She snarled, but not at him, seemingly. Together they went clear around the den and back to the platform, where she stood making her soft ripping noise and wrinkling her lips back. He hung on in his purple trousers, looking up at me. Till then I had only thought that I had seen the strangeness of the world. Obviously I had never even begun to see a thing! As he hung from her, smiling upside down into my face, with his high-swelled lips, I realized I had never even had a clue. Brother, this was what you call mastery--genius, that's all. The animal herself was aware of it. On her own animal level it was clear beyond any need of interpretation that she loved the guy. Loved him! With animal love. I loved him too. Who could have helped it? I said, "That beats anything I ever saw." He dropped from the animal and pushed her aside with his knee, then vaulted to the platform again. At the same moment Atti also returned and shook the trestle. "Now is your opinion different, Mr. Henderson?" "King, it's different. It's as different as can be." "However, I note," he said, "you still are in fear." I tried to say I wasn't but my face began to work and I couldn't get those words out. Then I began to cough, with my fist placed, thumb in, before my mouth, and my eyes watered. I finally said, "It's a reflex." The animal was pacing by and the king irresistibly took me by the wrist and pressed my hand on her flank. Slowly her fur passed under my fingertips and the nails became like five burning tapers. The bones of the hand became incandescent. After this a frightful shock passed right up the arm into the chest. "Now you have touched her, and what do you think?" "What I think?" I tried to get my lower lip under control by means of my teeth. "Oh, Your Majesty, please. Not everything in one day. I am doing my best." He admitted to me, "It is true I am attempting rapid progress. But I wish to overcome your preliminary difficulties in quick time." I smelled my fingers, which had taken a peculiar odor from the lioness. "Listen," I said, "I suffer a lot from impatience myself. But I have to say that there is just so much I can take at one time. I still have wounds on my face from yesterday, and I'm afraid she'll smell fresh blood. I understand nobody can control these animals once they scent it." This marvelous man laughed at me and said, "Oh, Henderson-Sungo, you are exquisite." (_That__ I never suspected of myself.) "You are real precious to me, and do you know," he said, "not many persons have touched lions." "I could have lived without it," was the answer I might have made. But as he thought so highly of lions I kept it to myself, mostly. I merely muttered. "And how you are afraid! Really! In the highest degree. I am really delighted by it. I have never seen such a fear manifestation. It resembled anxious pleasure to me. Do you know, many strong people love this blended fear and satisfaction the most? I think you must be of that type. In addition, I love when your brows move. They are really extraordnary. And your chin gets like a peach stone, and you have a very strangulation color and facial swelling, and your mouth spread very wide. And when you cried! I adored when you began to cry." I knew that this was not really personal but came from his scientific or medical absorption in these manifestations. "What happens to your labium inferiorum?" he said, still interested in my chin. "How do you get so innumerable puckers in the flesh?" (This was extremely revealing to me.) He was so superior to me and overwhelmed me so with his presence, with the extra shadow or smoky brilliancy that he had, and with his lion-riding, that I let him say everything without challenge. When the king had made several more marveling observations about my nose and my paunch and the lines in my knees, he told me, "Atti and I influence each other. I wish you to become a party to this." "Me?" I didn't know what he was talking about. "You must not feel because I make observations of your constitution that I do not appreciate how remarkable you are in other levels." "Do I understand you to say, Your Highness, that you have plans for me with this animal?" "Yes, and shall explain them." "Well, I think we should proceed carefully," I said. "I don't know how much strain my heart can take. As my fainting fits indicate I can't take too much. Moreover, how do you think she would behave if I keeled over?" Then he said, "Perhaps you have had enough exposure to Atti for the first day." He left the platform again, the animal following. There was a heavy gate raised by a rope that passed over a grooved wheel about eighteen feet above the ground by means of which the king let the lioness out of the den into a separate enclosure. I have never seen any member of the cat species pass through a door except on its own terms, and she was no exception. She needed to loiter in and out while the king hung on to the rope by which the gate was suspended. As she was in exit I wanted to suggest that he should give her a boot in the tail to help her with the decision, since obviously he was her master, but under those conditions I couldn't really presume. At last, in that soft, narrow stride, so easy, so deliberate, so vigilant, she entered the next room. Releasing the hawser, the king let the great panel slide. It hit the stone with a loud noise and he rejoined me on the trestle looking very pleasant. Peaceful. He leaned backward and his lids, large-veined, sank a little and he breathed calmly, resting. Sitting close to him in my barbaric trousers with the jockey shorts visible under them, it seemed to me that something more than the planks beneath sustained him. For after all, I was on them, and I was not similarly sustained. At any rate I sat and waited for him to complete his rest. Once again I brought to mind that old prophecy Daniel made to Nebuchadnezzar. _They shall drive thee from among men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field.__ The lion odor was still very keen on my fingers. I smelled it repeatedly and there returned to my thoughts the frogs of the Arnewi, the cattle whom they venerated, the tenants' cat I had tried to murder, to say nothing of the pigs I had bred. Sure enough, this prophecy had a peculiar relevance to me, implying perhaps that I was not entirely fit for human companionship. The king, having completed a short rest, was ready to speak. "Now, then, Mr. Henderson," he began to say in his exotic and specially accented way. "Well, King, you were going to explain to me why it was desirable to associate with this lion. So far I haven't got a clue. Oh, am I confused!" "I am to make the matter clear," he said, "so first of all I shall tell you how and what about the lions. A year ago or more I captured Atti. There is a traditionary way among the Wariri for obtaining a lion if you need him. Beaters go forth and the animal is driven into what we call a hopo, and this is a very large affair embracing several miles out in the bush. The animals are aroused by noises with drums and horns and pursued into the wide end of the hopo and toward the narrow. At that narrow end is the trap, and I myself as king am obliged to make the capture. In this way Atti was obtained. I have to tell you that any lion except my father, Gmilo, is forbidden and illicit. Atti was brought here in a condition of severest disapproval and opposition, causing a great anxiety and partisanship. Especially the Bunam." "Say, what's the matter with those guys?" I said. "They don't deserve a king like you. With a personality like yours, you could rule a big country." The king was glad, I think, to hear this from me. "Notwithstanding," he said, "there is considerable trouble with the Bunam and my Uncle Horko and others, to say nothing of the queen mother and some of the wives. For, Mr. Henderson, there is only one tolerable lion, who is the late king. It is conceived the rest are mischief-makers and evildoers. Do you see? The main reason why the late king has to be recaptured by his successor is that he cannot be left out there in company with such evildoers. The witches of the Wariri are said to hold an illicit intercourse with bad lions. Even some children assumed to come of such a union are dangerous. I add if a man can prove his wife has been unfaithful with a lion, he demands an extreme penalty." "This is very peculiar," I said. "Summarizing," the king went on, "I am the object of a double criticism. Firstly I have not yet succeeded in obtaining Gmilo, my father-lion. Secondly it is said that because I keep Atti I am up to no good. Before all opposition, however, I am determined to keep her." "What do they want?" I said. "You should abdicate, like the Duke of Windsor?" He answered with a soft laugh, then said, in the deeply founded stillness of the room--with the yellow-gray air weighing on us, deepening, darkening slowly--"I have no such intention." "Well," I said, "if your back is up about it, that I understand perfectly." "Henderson-Sungo," he said, "I see I must tell you more about this. From a very early age the king will bring his successor here. Thus I used to visit my lion-grandfather. His name was Suffo. Thus from my small childhood I have been on familiar or intimate terms with lions, and the world did not offer me any replacement. And I so missed the lion connection that when Gmilo my father died and I was notified at school of the tragic occurrence, despite my love of the medical course I was not one hundred per cent reluctant. I may go so far as to assert that I was weak from a continuing lack of such a relationship and went home to be replenished. Naturally it would have been the best of fortune to capture Gmilo at once. But as instead I caught Atti, I could not give her up." I took a fold of my gaudy pants to wipe my face which, 195 due to the fever, was ominously dry. Just then I should have been pouring sweat. "And still," he said, "Gmilo must be taken. I will capture him." "I wish you loads of luck." He then took me by the wrist with a sharp pressure and said, "I would not blame you, Mr. Henderson, for wishing this to be delusion or a hallucination. But for my sake, as you have applied to me for reciprocal truth-telling, I request you to be patient and keep a firm hold." About a handful of sulfa pills would do me a lot of good, I thought. "Oh, Mr. Henderson-Sungo," he said, after a long instant of thought, keeping his uncanny pressure on my wrist--there was seldom any abruptness in what he did. "Yes, I easily could understand that--delusion, imagination, dreaming. However, this is not dreaming and sleeping, but waking. Ha, ha! Men of most powerful appetite have always been the ones to doubt reality the most. Those who could not bear that hopes should turn to misery, and loves to hatreds, and deaths and silences, and so on. The mind has a right to its reasonable doubts, and with every short life it awakens and sees and understands what so many other minds of equally short life span have left behind. It is natural to refuse belief that so many small spans should have made so glorious one large thing. That human creatures by pondering should be _correct__. This is what makes a fellow gasp. Yes, Sungo, this same temporary creature is a master of imagination. And right now this very valuable possession appears to make him die and not to live. Why? It is astonishing what a fact that is. Oh, what a distressing picture, Henderson," he said. "To come to the upshot, do not doubt me, Dahfu, Itelo's friend, your friend. For you and I have become united as friends and you must give me your confidence." "That's okay by me, Your Royal Highness," I said. "That suits me down to the ground. I don't understand you yet, but I am willing to go along on suspended judgment. And don't worry too much about the hallucination possibility. When you come right down to it, there aren't many guys who have stuck with real life through thick and thin, like me. It's my most basic loyalty. From time to time I've lost my head, but I've always made a comeback, and by God, it hasn't been easy, either. But I love the stuff. Grun-tu-molani!" "Yes," he said, "indeed so. This is an attitude which I endorse. Grun-tu-molani. But in what shape and form? Now, Mr. Henderson, I am convinced you are a man of wide and spacious imagination, and that also you need � You particularly _need__." "Need is on the right track," I said. "The form it actually takes is, _I__ _want, I want."__ Astonished, he asked me, "Why, what is that?" "There's something in me that keeps that up," I said. "There have been times when it hardly ever let me alone." This struck him full-on, so to speak, and he sat perfectly still with his hands mounted on his large thighs, and his face with his high-rising mouth and his wide, open-nostriled, polished nose looking at me. "And you hear this?" "I used to hear it practically all the time," I said. In a low tone he said, "What is it? Demanding birthright?