Henderson the Rain King (9 page)

and none of them seemed advisable. I told Romilayu, "The only method that figures is a bomb. One blast will kill all these little buggers, and when they're floating dead on top all we have to do is come and skim them off, and the Arnewi can water their cattle again. It's simple." When my idea did get across to him at last, he said, "Oh, no, no, sah." "What, 'No, no, sah!' Don't be a jerk, I'm an old soldier and I know what I'm talking about." But it was no use arguing with him; the idea of an explosion frightened him and I said, "Okay, Romilayu, let's go to our shack then and get some sleep. It's been a big day and we've got lots to do tomorrow." So we went back to the hut, and he began to say his prayers. Romilayu had begun to get my number; I believe he liked me, but it was dawning on him that I was rash and unlucky and acted without sufficient reflection. So he sank on his knees and his haunches pressed on the muscles of his calves and spread them; his big heels were visible beneath. He pressed his hands together, palm to palm, with the fingers spread wide apart under his chin. Often I would say to him, or mutter, "Put in a good word for me," and I half meant it. When Romilayu was done praying he lay on his side and tucked one hand between his knees, which were drawn up. The other hand he slipped under his cheek. In this position he always slept. I, too, lay down on my blanket in the dark hut, out of range of the moonbeams. I don't often suffer from insomnia but tonight I had a lot of things on my mind, the prophecy of Daniel, the cat, the frogs, the ancient-looking place, the weeping delegation, the wrestling match with Itelo, and the queen having looked into my heart and telling me of the grun-tu-molani. All this was mixed up in my head and excited me greatly, and I kept thinking of the best way to blow up those frogs. Naturally I know a little something about explosives, and I thought I could take out the two batteries and manufacture a pretty good bomb in my flashlight case by filling it with powder from the shells of my.375 H and H Magnum. They carry quite a charge, believe me, and could be used on an elephant. I had bought the.375 especially for this trip to Africa after reading about it in Life or Look. A fellow from Michigan who had one went to Alaska as soon as his vacation started; he flew to Alaska and hired a guide to track a Kodiak bear; they found the bear and chased him over cliffs and marshes and shot him at four hundred yards. Myself, I used to have a certain interest in hunting, but as I grew older it seemed a strange way to relate to nature. What I mean is, a man goes into the external world, and all he can do with it is to shoot it? It doesn't make sense. So in October when the season starts and the gunsmoke pours out of the bushes and the animals panic and run back and forth, I go out and pinch the hunters for shooting on my posted property. I take them to the Justice of the Peace and he fines them. Thus having decided in the hut to take the shells and use them in my bomb, I lay grinning at the surprise those frogs had coming, and also somewhat at myself, because I was anticipating the gratitude of Willatale and Mtalba and Itelo and all the people; and I went so far as to imagine that the queen would elevate me to a position equal to her own. But I would say, "No, no. I didn't leave home to achieve power or glory, and any little favor I do you is free." With all this going on within me I couldn't sleep, and if I were going to prepare the bomb tomorrow I needed my rest badly. I am something of a crank about sleep, for somehow if I get seven and a quarter hours instead of eight I feel afflicted and drag myself around, although there's nothing really wrong with me. It's just another idea. That's how it is with my ideas; they seem to get strong while I weaken. While I was lying awake I had a visit from Mtalba. Coming in, she shut off the moonlight in the doorway and then sat down near me on the floor, sighing, and took my hand, and talked softly and made me touch her skin, which was certainly wonderfully soft; she had a right to be vain of it. Though I felt it, I acted oblivious and refused to respond, but my bulk lay extended on the blanket and I fixed my gaze on the thatch while I tried to concentrate on putting together the bomb. I unscrewed the top of the flashlight (in thought) and dumped the batteries in the front end; I cut open the shells and let the powder trickle into the flashlight case. But how would I ignite it? The water presented me with a special problem. What would I use for a fuse, and how would I keep it from getting wet? I might take some strands from the wick of my Austrian lighter and soak them for a long time in the fluid. Or else a shoelace; a wax shoelace might be perfect. Such was my line of thought, and all the while Princess Mtalba sat beside me licking me and smooching my fingers. I felt very guilty about that and thought, if she knew what offenses I had committed with those same hands, she might think twice before lifting them to her lips. Now she was on the very finger with which I had aimed the revolver at the cat and a pang shot through it and into my arm and so on through the rest of the nervous system. If she had been able to understand I would have said, "Beautiful lady" (for she was considered a great beauty and I could see why)--"Beautiful lady, I am not the man you think I am. I have incredible things on my conscience and am very fierce in character. Even my pigs were afraid of me." And yet it isn't always easy to deter women. They do take such types of men upon themselves--drunkards, fools, criminals. Love is what gives them the power to do it, I guess, canceling all those terrible things. I am not dumb and blind, and I have observed a connection between women's love and the great principles of life. If I hadn't picked this up by myself, surely Lily would have pointed it out to me. Romilayu didn't wake but slept on with one hand slipped under his scarred cheek and the hair swelled out from his head to one side. Glassy rainbows from the moon passed across the doorway, and there were fires outside made with dried dung and thorn branches. The Arnewi were sitting up with their dying cattle. As Mtalba continued to sigh and caress and smooch me and lead my finger-tips over her skin and between her lips, I realized she had come for a purpose, this mountainous woman with the indigo hair, and I lifted my arm and let it fall on Romilayu's face. He opened his eyes then but didn't remove the hand from under his cheek or otherwise change his position. "Romilayu." "Whut you want, sah?" said he, still lying there. "Sit up, sit up. We have a visitor." He was unsurprised by this and he rose. Moonlight came in by way of the wicker-work and the door, the moon growing more clean and pure, as if perfuming the air, not only lighting it. Mtalba sat with her arms at rest upon the slopes of her body. "Find out what is the purpose of this visit," I said. And so he began to talk to her, and addressed her formally, for he was a great stickler, Romilayu, for correctness, African style, and was on his court manners even in the middle of the night. Then Mtalba started to speak. She had a sweet voice, sometimes rapid and sometimes drawling in her throat. From this conversation the fact came out that she wanted me to buy her, and, realizing that I didn't have the bride price, she had brought it to me tonight. "Got to pay, sah, fo' womans." "That I know, pal." "You don' pay, womans no respect himself, sah." Then I started to say that I was a rich man and could afford any kind of price, but I realized that money had nothing to do with it and I said, "Hah, that's very handsome of her. She is built like Mount Everest but has a lot of delicacy. Tell her I thank her and send her home. What time is it, I wonder. Christ, if I don't get my sleep I'll be in no condition to take on those frogs tomorrow. Don't you see, Romilayu, the thing is up to me alone?" But he said all the stuff she had brought was lying outside, and she wanted me to see it, and so I rose, highly unwilling, and we went out of the hut. She had come with an escort, and when they saw me in the moonlight with my sun helmet they began to cheer as if I were the groom already--they did it softly as the hour was late. The gifts were lying on a big mat, and they made a large mound--robes, ornaments, drums, paints, and dyes: she gave Romilayu an inventory of the contents and he was transmitting it. "She's a grand person. A great human being," I said. "Hasn't she got a husband already?" To this there could be no definite answer, as she was a woman of Bittahness and it didn't matter how many times she married. It would do no good, I knew, to tell her that I already had a wife. It hadn't stopped Lily, and it certainly would cut no ice with Mtalba. To display the greatness of the dowry, Mtalba began to put on some of the robes to the accompaniment of a xylophone made of bones played by one of her party, a fellow with a big knobby ring on his knuckle. He smiled as if he were giving the woman of Bittahness away, and she meantime was showing off the gowns and wrappers, gathering them around her shoulders, and winding them about her hips, which required a separate and broader movement. Sometimes she wore a half-veil across the bridge of her nose, Arab style, which set off her loving eyes and occasionally as she jingled with her hennaed hands she took off, huge but gay, looking back at me over her shoulder with those signs of suffering about her nose and lips which come from love only. She would saunter, she would teeter, depending on the rhythm given by the little xylophone of hollow bones--the feet of a rhinoceros perhaps emptied by the ants. All this was performed by a bluish moonlight, while great white blotches of fire burned at irregular points around the horizon. "I want you to tell her, Romilayu," I said, "that she's a damned attractive woman and that she certainly has an impressive trousseau." I'm sure Romilayu translated this into some conventional African compliment. "However," I added, "I have unfinished business with those frogs. They and I have a rendezvous tomorrow, and I can't give my full consideration to any important matter until I have settled with them once and for all." I thought this would send her away hut she went on modeling her clothes and dancing, heavy but beautiful--those colossal thighs and hips--and furling her brow at me and sending glances from her eyes. Thus I realized as the night and the dancing wore on that this was enchantment. This was poetry, which I should allow to reach me, to penetrate the practical task of demolishing the frogs in the cistern. And what I had felt when I first laid eyes on the thatched roofs while descending the bed of the river, that they were so ancient, amounted to this same thing--poetry, enchantment. Somehow I am a sucker for beauty and can trust only it, but I keep passing through and out of it again. It never has enough duration. I know it is near because my gums begin to ache; I grow confused, my breast melts, and then bang, the thing is gone. Once more I am on the wrong side of it. However, this tribe of people, the Arnewi, seemed to have it in steady supply. And my idea was that when I had performed my great deed against the frogs, then the Arnewi would take me to their hearts. Already I had won Itelo, and the queen had a lot of affection for me, and Mtalba wanted to marry me, and so what was left was only to prove (and the opportunity was made to order; it couldn't have suited my capacities better) that I was deserving. And so, Mtalba having touched my hands happily one final time with her tongue, giving me herself and all her goods--after all, it was a fine occasion--I said, "Thank you, and good night, good night all." They said, "Awho." "Awho, awho. Grun-tu-molani." They answered, "Tu-molani." My heart was expanded with happy emotion and now instead of wanting to sleep I was afraid when they left that if I shut my eyes tonight the feeling of enchantment would disappear. Therefore, when Romilayu after another short prayer--once more on his knees, and hand pressed to hand like a fellow about to dive into eternity--when Romilayu went to sleep, I lay with eyes open, bathed in high feeling.

IX

And this was still with me at daybreak when I got up. It was a fiery dawn, which made the interior of our hut as dark as a root-cellar. I took a baked yam from the basket and stripped it like a banana for my breakfast. Sitting on the ground I ate in the cool air and through the door I could see Romilayu, wrinkled, asleep, lying on his side like an effigy. I thought, "This is going to be one of my greatest days." For not only was the high feeling of the night still with me, which set a kind of record, but I became convinced (and still am convinced) that things, the object-world itself, gave me a kind of go-ahead sign. This did not come about as I had expected it to with Willatale. I thought that she could open her hand and show me the germ, the true cipher, maybe you recall--if not, I'm telling you again. No, what happened was like nothing previously conceived; it took the form merely of the light at daybreak against the white clay of the wail beside me and had an extraordinary effect, for right away I began to feel the sensation in my gums warning of something lovely, and with it a close or painful feeling in the chest. People allergic to feathers or pollen will know what I'm talking about; they become aware of their presence with the most gradual subtlety. In my case the cause that morning was the color of the wall with the sunrise on it, and when it became deeper I had to put down the baked yam I was chewing and support myself with my hands on the ground, for I felt the world sway under me and I would have reached, if I were on a horse, for the horn of the saddle. Some powerful magnificence not human, in other words, seemed under me. And it was this same mild pink color, like the water of watermelon, that did it. At once I recognized the importance of this, as throughout my life I had known these moments when the dumb begins to speak, when I hear the voices of objects and colors; then the physical universe starts to wrinkle and change and heave and rise and smooth, so it seems that even the dogs have to lean against a tree, shivering. Thus on this white wall with its prickles, like the gooseflesh of matter, was the pink light, and it was similar to flying over the white points of the sea at ten thousand feet as the sun begins to rise. It must have been at least fifty years since I had encountered such a color, and I thought I could remember waking as a tiny boy, alone in a double bed, a black bed, and looking at the ceiling where there was a big oval of plaster in the old style, with pears, fiddles, sheaves of wheat, and angel faces; and outside, a white shutter, twelve feet long and covered with the same pink color. Did I say a tiny boy? I suppose I was never tiny, but at age five was like a twelve-year-old, and already a very rough child. In the town in the Adirondacks where we used to stay in summer, in the place where my brother Dick was drowned, there was a water mill, and I used to run in with a stick and pound the flour sacks and escape in the dust with the miller cursing. My old man would carry Dick and me into the mill pond and stand with us under the waterfall, one on each arm. With the beard he looked like a Triton; with his clear muscles and the smiling beard. In the green cold water I could see the long fish lounging a few yards away. Black, with spots of fire; with water embers. Like guys loafing on the pavement. Well then, I tell you, it was evening, and I ran into the mill with my stick and clubbed the floursacks, almost choking with the white powder. The miller started to yell, "You crazy little sonofabitch. I'll break your bones like a chicken." Laughing, I rushed out and into this same pink color, far from the ordinary color of evening. I saw it on the floury side of the mill as the water dropped in the wheel. A clear thin red rose in the sky. I never expected to see such a color in Africa, I swear. And I was worried lest it pass before I could get everything I should out of it. So I put my face, my nose, to the surface of this wall. I pressed my nose to it as though it were a precious rose, and knelt there on those old knees, lined and grieved-looking; like carrots; and I inhaled, I snuckered through my nose and caressed the wall with my cheek. My soul was in quite a condition, but not hectically excited; it was a state as mild as the color itself. I said to myself, "_I knew__ that this place was of old." Meaning, I had sensed from the first that I might find things here which were of old, which I saw when I was still innocent and have longed for ever since, for all my life--and without which _I__ _could not make it.__ My spirit was not sleeping then, I can tell you, but was saying, Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho! Gradually the light changed, as it was bound to do, but at least I had seen it again, like the fringe of the Nirvana, and I let it go without a struggle, hoping it would come again before another fifty years had passed. As otherwise I would be condemned to die a mere old rioter or dumb-sock with three million dollars, a slave to low-grade fear and turbulence. So now when I turned my thoughts to the relief of the Arnewi, I was a different person, or thought I was. I had passed through something, a vital experience. It was exactly the opposite at Banyules-sur-Mer with the octopus in the tank. That had spoken to me of death and I would never have tackled any big project after seeing that cold head pressed against the glass and growing paler and paler. After the good omen of the light I approached the making of a bomb with confidence, although it presented me with no small amount of problems. It would require all the know-how I had. Especially the fuse, and the whole question of timing. I'd have to wait until the last possible moment before throwing my device into the water. Now, I had followed with great interest the story in the papers of the bomb-scare man in New York, the fellow who had quarreled with the electric company and was bent on revenge. Diagrams of his bombs taken from a locker in Grand Central Station had appeared in the _News__ or _Mirror__, and I was so absorbed in them I missed my subway stop (the violin case being between my knees). For I had some pretty accurate ideas about the design of a bomb and always found them of great interest. He had used gas pipes, I believe. I thought then I could have made a better bomb at home but of course I had the advantage on my side of officers' training in the infantry school where there had been a certain amount of guerrilla instruction. However, even a factory-made grenade might have failed in that cistern and the whole thing presented a considerable challenge. And sitting on the ground with my materials between my legs and my helmet pushed back, I concentrated on the job before me, breaking open the shells and emptying the powder into the flashlight case. I have a positive ability to lose myself in practical tasks. God knows that in the country where I have had so many fights it has become harder and harder for me to find help and I have of necessity turned into my own handy-man. I am best at rough carpentry, roofing, and painting, and not so hot as an electrician or plumber. It may not be correct to say that I have an ability to lose myself in practical work; rather what happens is that I become painfully intense, and this is true even when I lay out a game of solitaire. I took out the glass end of the flashlight with the little bulb and fitted it tightly with a circle of wood whittled to shape. Through this I made a hole for the fuse. Now came the tricky part, for the functioning of the apparatus depended on the rate at which the fuse would burn. With this I experimented now and I did not look at Romilayu often, but when I did I saw him shake his head in doubt. To this I tried to pay no attention, but I said at last, "Hell, don't throw gloom. Can't you see that I know what I'm doing?" However, I could see I didn't have his confidence, and so I cursed him in my heart and went on with my lighter, setting fire to lengths of various materials to see how they would burn. But if I could get no support from Romilayu there was at least Mtalba, who returned at an early hour of the morning. She was now wearing a pair of transparent violet trousers and one of those veils over her nose, and she took my hand and pressed it on her breast with great liveliness, as if we had reached an understanding last night. She was full of pep. Serenaded by the rhinoceros-foot xylophone and occasionally a chorus of finger whistles she began to stride--if that is the word (to wade?)--to do her dance, shaking and jolting her rich flesh, her face ornamented with a smile of coquetry and love. She recited to the court what she was doing and what I was doing (Romilayu translating). "The woman of Bittahness who loves the great wrestler, the man who is like two men who have grown together, came to him in the night." "She came to him," said the others. "She brought him the bride price"--here followed an inventory which included about twenty head of cattle who were all named and their genealogy given--"and the bride price was very noble. For she is Bittah and very beautiful. And the bridegroom's face has many colors." "Colors, colors." "And it has hair upon it, the cheeks hang and he is stronger than many bulls. The bride's heart is ready, its doors are standing open. The groom is making a thing." "A thing." "With fire." "Fire." And sometimes Mtalba kissed her hand in token of my own, and held it out to me, and her face in the lines about the nose exhibited those signs of love-suffering, the pains of love. Meanwhile I was burning a shoelace dipped in lighter fluid, watching closely, my head stooped between my knees, to see how it took the spark. Not bad, I thought. It was promising. A little coal descended. As for Mtalba, time was when I would have felt differently about the love she offered me. It would have seemed much more serious a matter. But, ah! The deep creases have begun to set in beside my ears and once in a while when I raise my head in front of the mirror a white hair appears in my nose, and therefore I told myself it was an imaginary Henderson, a Henderson of her mind she had fallen in love with. Thinking of this, I dropped my lids and nodded my head. But all the while I continued to burn scraps of wick and shoelace and even wisps of paper, and it turned out that a section of shoelace, held for about two minutes in the lighter fluid, served better than any other material. Accordingly I prepared a section of the lace taken from one of my desert boots and threaded it through the hole prepared in the wood block and then I said to Romilayu, "I think she's ready to go." From stooping over the work I had a dizzy thickness at the back of the head, but it was all right. Owing to the vision of the pink light I was firm of purpose and believed in myself, and I couldn't allow Romilayu to show his doubts and forebodings so openly. I said, "Now, you've got to quit this, Romilayu. I am entitled to your trust, this once. I tell you it is going to work." "Yes, sah," he said. "I don't want you to think I'm not capable of doing a good job." He said again, "Yes, sah." "There is that poem about the nightingale singing that humankind cannot stand too much reality. But how much unreality can it stand? Do you follow? You understand me?" "Me unnastand, sah." "I fired that question right back at the nightingale. So what if reality may be terrible? It's better than what we've got." "Kay, sah. Okay." "All right, I let you out of it. It's better than what I've got. But every man feels from his soul that he has got to carry his life to a certain depth. Well, I have to go on because I haven't reached that depth yet. You get it?" "Yes, sah." "Hah! Life may think it has got me written off in its records. Henderson: type so and so, with the auk and the platypus and other experiments illustrating such-and-such a principle, and laid aside. But life may find itself surprised, for after all, we are men. I am Man--I myself, singular as it may look. Man. And man has many times tricked life when life thought it had him taped." "Okay." He shrugged away from me, and offered his thick black hands in resignation. Speaking so much had worn me out, and I stood clutching the bomb in its aluminum case, ready to carry out the promise I had made to Itelo and his two aunts. The villagers knew this was a big event and were turning out in numbers, chattering or clapping their hands and singing out. Mtalba, who had gone away, came back in a changed costume of red stuff that looked like baize and her indigo-dyed hair freshly buttered, large brass rings in her ears, and a brass collar about her neck. Her people were swirling around in colored rags, and there were cows led on gay halters and tethers; they looked somewhat weak and people came up to give them a kiss and inquire about their health, practically as if they were cousins. Some of the maidens carried pet hens in their arms or perched on their shoulders. The heat was deadening, and the sky steep and barren. "There is Itelo," I said. I thought that he, too, looked apprehensive. "Neither of these guys has any faith in me," I said to myself, and even though I realized why I didn't especially inspire confidence, my feelings, nevertheless, were stung. "Hi, Prince," I said. He was solemn and he took my hand as they all did here and led it to his chest so that I felt the heat of his body through the white middy, for he was dressed as yesterday in his loose whites with the green silk scarf. "Well, this is the day," I said, "and this is the hour." I showed the aluminum case with its shoelace fuse to his highness and I told Romilayu, "We ought to make arrangements to gather the dead frogs and bury them. We will do the graves-registration detail. Prince, how do your fellow tribesmen feel about these animals in death? Still taboo?" "Mistah Henderson. Sir. Wattah is �" Itelo could not find the words to describe how precious this element was, and he rubbed his fingers with his thumb as if feeling velvet. "I know. I know just exactly what the situation is. But there's one thing I can tell you, just as I told you yesterday, I love these folks. I have to do something to show my friendship. And I am aware that coming from the great outside it is up to me to take this on myself." Under the heavy white shell of the pith helmet, the flies were beginning to bite; the cattle brought them along, as cattle will invariably, and so I said, "It is time to start." We set off for the cistern, myself in the lead holding the bomb. I checked to see whether the lighter was in the pocket of my shorts. One shoe dragged, as I had taken out the lace, nevertheless I set a good pace toward the reservoir while I held the bomb above my head like the torch of liberty in New York harbor, saying to myself, "Okay, Henderson. This is it. You'd better deliver on your promise. No horsing around,"