“Oh, no, Mr. Henderson,” he said. “It is not even conceivable that we should relinquish you so immediately upon arrival. You have vast social charm, my dear guest. You must believe I should suffer a privation positively gruesome to lose your company. Anyways, I think Fate have intended we should be more intimate. I told you how excited I have been since the announcement of your appearance from the outside world. And so, as the time has come for the ceremonies to begin, I invite you to be my guest.”
He put on a generous large-brimmed hat of the same purple color as his drawers, but in velvet. Human teeth, to protect him from the evil eye, were sewed to the crown. He arose from his green sofa but only to lie down again in a hammock. Amazons dressed in their short leather waistcoats were the bearers. Four on either side put their shoulders to the poles, and these shoulders, although they were amazons, were soft. Physical capacity always stirs me, especially in women. I love to watch movies in Times Square of the Olympic Games, in particular those vital Atalantas running and throwing the javelin. I always say, “Look at that! Ladies and gentlemen—look what women can be like!” It appeals to the soldier in me as well as the lover of beauty. I tried to replace those eight amazons with eight women of my acquaintance—Frances, Mlle. Montecuccoli, Berthe, Lily, Clara Spohr, and others—but of them all it was only Lily who had the right stature. I could not think of a matched team. Berthe, though strong, was too broad and Mlle. Montecuccoli had a large bust but lacked the shoulders. These friends, acquaintances, and loved ones could not have carried the king.
At his majesty’s request, I walked beside him down the stairs and into the courtyard. He did not lie lazily in his hammock; his figure had real elegance; it showed his breeding. None of this might have been manifest if I had met him and Itelo during their student days in Beirut. We have all encountered students from Africa, and usually they wear baggy suits and their collars are wrinkled because knotting a tie is foreign to their habits.
In the courtyard the procession was joined by Horko with his umbrellas, amazons, wives, children carrying long sheaves of Indian corn, warriors holding idols and fetishes in their arms which were freshly smeared with ochre and calcimine and were as ugly as human conception could make them. Some were all teeth, and others all nostrils, while several had tools bigger than their bodies. The yard suddenly became very crowded. The sun blasted and blazed. Acetylene does not peel paint more than this sun did the doors of my heart. Foolishly, I told myself that I was feeling faint. (It was owing to my size and strength that this appeared foolish.) And I thought that this was like a summer’s day in New York. I had taken the wrong subway and instead of reaching upper Broadway I had gone to Lenox Avenue and 125th Street, struggling up to the sidewalk.
The king said to me, “The Arnewi too have a difficulty of water, Mr. Henderson?”
I thought, “All is lost. The guy has heard about the cistern.” But this did not actually appear to be the case. No hint was contained in his manner; he was only looking from the hammock into the windless and cloudless blue.
“Well, I’ll tell you, King,” I said. “They didn’t have much luck in that particular department.”
“Oh?” he said thoughtfully. “It is a peculiarity about luck with them, do you know that? A legend exists that we were once the same and one, a single tribe, but separated over the luck question. The word for them in our language is nibai. This may be translated ‘unlucky.’ Definitely, this is the equivalent in our tongue.”
“Is that so? The Wariri feel lucky, eh?”
“Oh yes. In numerous instances. We claim ourselves to be the contrary. The saying is, Wariri ibai. Put in other words, Lucky Wariri.”
“You don’t say? Well, well. And what’s your own opinion of that? Is the saying right?”
“Are we Wariri lucky?” he asked. Unmistakably he was setting me straight, for I had challenged him by the question. I tell you! It was an experience. It was a lesson to me. He pulled his majesty on me so lightly it was hardly noticeable. “We have luck,” he said. “Incontrovertibly, it is a fact about the luck. You wouldn’t dream how consistent it is.”
“So do you think you will have rain today?” I said, grimly grinning.
He answered very mildly, “I have seen rain on days that began like this.” And then he added, “I believe I can understand your attitude. It derives from the kindliness of the Arnewi. They have made the impression on you which so commonly they make. Do not forget that Itelo is my special chum and was my side-kick in situations making for great intimacy. Ah, yes, I know the qualities. Generous. Meek. Good. No substitutes should be accepted. On this my agreement is total and complete, Mr. Henderson.”
I put my fist to my face and looked at the sky, giving a short laugh and thinking, Christ! What a person to meet at this distance from home. Yes, travel is advisable. And believe me, the world is a mind. Travel is mental travel. I had always suspected this. What we call reality is nothing but pedantry. I need not have had that quarrel with Lily, standing over her in our matrimonial bed and shouting until Ricey took fright and escaped with the child. I proclaimed I was on better terms with the real than she. Yes, yes, yes. The world of facts is real, all right, and not to be altered. The physical is all there, and it belongs to science. But then there is the noumenal department, and there we create and create and create. As we tread our overanxious ways, we think we know what is real. And I was telling the truth to Lily after a fashion. I knew it better, all right, but I knew it because it was mine—filled, flowing, and floating with my own resemblances; as hers was with her resemblances. Oh, what a revelation! Truth spoke to me. To me, Henderson!
The king’s eyes gleamed into mine with such a power of significance that I felt he could, if he wanted to, pass right straight into my soul. He could invest it. I felt this. But because I am ignorant and untutored in higher things—in higher things I am a coarse beginner, because of my abused nature—I didn’t know what to expect. However, under the light of King Dahfu’s eyes I comprehended that in bombing the cistern I had not lost my last chance. No sir. By no means.
Horko, the king’s uncle, was still marshaling the procession. Over the palace walls came howls and sounds surpassing anything I ever heard from mortal throats or lungs. But as soon as there was a lull the king said to me, “I easily gather, Mr. Traveler, that you have set forth to accomplish a very important matter.”
“Right, Your Majesty. One hundred per cent right,” I said, and bowed. “Otherwise I could have stayed in bed and looked at a picture atlas or slides of Angkor Wat. I have a box full of them, in color.”
“Deuce. That is what I meant,” he said. “And you have left your heart with our Arnewi friends. We agree, they are excellent. I even have conjectured if it is environment or nature. Frequently I have inclined to the innate and not the nurture side. Sometimes I would like to see my friend Itelo. I would give away a very dear treasure to hear his voice. Unfortunately I cannot go. My office … official capacity. Good impresses you, eh, Mr. Henderson?”
In the flash of the sun, tiny gold platelets within my eyes blinding me, I nodded. I said, “Yes, Your Highness. No bunk. The true good. The honest-to-God good.”
“Yes, I know how you feel over it,” he said, and spoke with a weird softness or longing. I could never have believed that I could take this from anybody, or would ever have to, and least of all from this person in the royal hammock, with the purple large-brimmed hat, and the teeth sewed onto it, the huge, soft, eccentric eyes tinged very slightly with red, and his pink swelling mouth. “They say,” he went on, “that bad can easily be spectacular, has dash or bravado and impresses the mind quicker than good. Oh, that is a mistake in my opinion. Perhaps of common good it is true. Many, many nice people. Oh yes. Their will tells them to perform good, and they do. How ordinary! Mere arithmetic. ‘I have left undone the etceteras I should have done, and done the etceteras I ought not to have.’ This does not even amount to a life. Oh, how sordid it is to bookkeep. My whole view is opposite or contrary
, that good cannot be labor or conflict. When it is high and great, it is too superior. Oh, Mr. Henderson, it is far more spectacular. It is associated with inspiration, and not conflict, for where a man conflicts there he will fall, and if taking the sword also perishes by the sword. A dull will produces a very dull good, of no interest. Where a fellow draws a battle line there he is apt to be found, dead, a testimonial of the great strength of effort, and only effort.”
I said eagerly, “Oh King Dahfu—oh, Your Majesty!” He had stirred me so much. By just these few words spoken as he reclined in the hammock. “Do you know the queen over there, that woman of Bittahness, Willatale? She’s Itelo’s aunt, you know. She was going to instruct me in grun-tu-molani, but one thing and another came up, and—”
But the amazons had put their backs to the poles and the hammock rose and moved forward. And the screams, the excitement! The roars, the deep drum noises, as if the animals were speaking again by means of the skins that had once covered their bodies! It was a great release of sound, like Coney Island or Atlantic City or Times Square on New Year’s Eve; at the king’s exit from the gate the great cacophony left all the previous noises in my experience far behind.
Shouting, I asked the king, “Where … ?”
I bent very close for the reply. “… possess a special … a place… arena,” he said.
I heard no more. The frenzy was so great it was metropolitan. There was such a whirl of men and women and fetishes, and snarls like dog-beating and whines like sickles sharpening, and horns blasting and blazing into the air, that the scale could not be recorded. The bonds of sound were about to be torn to pieces. I tried to protect my good ear by plugging it with my thumb, and even the defective one had more than it could take. At least a thousand villagers must have been in this mob, most of them naked, many painted and gaudy, all using noisemakers and uttering screams. The weather was heavy, sultry, so that my body itched. It was an ugly, dusty heat, and there were times when my face felt as if wrapped up in serge. But I had no time to take note of discomfort, being carried forward beside the king. The procession entered a stadium—I stretch the term—a big enclosure fenced with wood. Within was a quadruple row of benches cut from the white calcareous stone aforementioned. For the king there was a royal box in which I sat, too, under a canopy with floating ribbons, with wives, officials, and other royalty. The amazons in their corsetlike vests and large smooth bodies and delicate, shaved, immense heads, round like melons, oval like cantaloupes, long like squashes, were posted all around. Accompanied by his retinue and umbrellas, Horko bowed and salaamed before the king. The family resemblance between these two suggested that they could communicate thoughts merely by looking at each other; sometimes it is like that. The same noses, the same eyes, the same implied message of the race. So, in a silent manner, Horko appeared to me to urge his royal nephew to do something previously discussed. But by the look of him the king wouldn’t promise a thing. He was in command here; there could never be any question about that.
Carried aloft by four amazons, one at each leg, came the bridge table. On it was the bowl containing two skulls I had seen a short while ago in the royal apartment. But now they had ribbons tied through the eye sockets, very long and gleaming, of a dark blue color. They were set down before the king, who took note of them with one roll of his eyes and looked no more at them. Meantime this huge Horko, all rolled up so that he stood heel to heel in his crimson sheath, the fat crowded upward to his chin and shoulders, took the liberty of mocking my expression. At least I thought I recognized my own scowl on his face. I didn’t mind. I made a short bow to acknowledge that he had taken me off pretty well. And, like the politician he was, he gave me a glad, impudent wave. The colored umbrella wheeled over him and he went back to his box on the king’s left and sat down with the examiner who had kept me waiting last night, the character whom Dahfu called the Bunam, and the wrinkled old black-leather fellow who had sent us into the ambush. The one who had arisen out of the white rocks like the man met by Joseph. Who sent Joseph over to Dothan. Then the brothers saw Joseph and said, “Behold, the dreamer cometh.” Everybody should study the Bible.
Believe me, I felt like a dreamer, and that’s no lie.
“Who is that man all wrinkled like a Greek olive?” I said.
“Beg pardon?” said the king.
“With the Bunam and your uncle.”
“Oh, of course. A senior priest. Diviner of a sort.”
“Yesterday we met him with a twisted stick,” I was saying, when several squads of amazons lined up with muskets and started to aim at the sky. I could not see the .375 anywhere. These large women began to fire salutes, first in honor of the king and the king’s late father, Gmilo, and for various others. Then, so the king told me, there was a salute for me.
“For me? You’re kidding, Your Highness,” I said. But he was not, so I asked him, “Should I stand up?”
“I think it would be widely appreciated,” he said.
And I got to my feet, and there were loud shrieks and screams. I thought, “The word has got around how I dealt with that corpse. They know I’m no Caspar Milquetoast but a person of strength and courage. Plenty of moxie.” I was beginning to feel the spirit of the occasion–pervaded by barbaric emotions—the scratchiness in my bosom was greatly aggravated. I had no words to speak, no mortar or bazooka to fire, replying to the guns of the amazons. But I was impelled to make a sound, and therefore I uttered a roar like the great Assyrian bull. You know, to be the center of attention in a crowd always stirs and disturbs me. It had done so when the Arnewi wept and when they gathered near the cistern. Also when shaved in Italy near the stronghold of the ancient Guiscardos that time in Salerno. In a big gathering my father also had a tendency to become excited. He once lifted up the speaker’s stand and threw it down into the orchestra pit.
However, I roared. And the acclaim was magnificent. For I was heard. I was seen gripping my chest as I bellowed. The crowd went wild over this, and its yells were, I have to admit it, just like nourishment to me. I reflected, So this is what guys in public life get out of it? Well, well. I no longer wondered that this Dahfu had come back from civilization to be king of his tribe. Hell, who wouldn’t be a king, even a small king? It was not a privilege to be missed. (The time of payment to a strong young fellow was remote; the wives couldn’t invent enough attentions and expressions of gratitude; he was the darling of their hearts.)
I stood as long as was feasible and luxuriated in this applause, laughing, and I sat down when I had to.
Now, horrified, I saw a grinning face with a mouth like a big open loop and a forehead infinitely wrinkled. It was the sort of vision you might have in a shop window on Fifth Avenue, and, when you turned to see what fantastic apparition New York had thrown up behind you, there would be no one. This face, however, stood its ground and held steady while it grinned at the party in the king’s box. Deep bloody cuts were being made meanwhile on the chest that belonged to this face. A green old knife—a cruel clutch. Oh, the man is being slashed and stabbed. Stop, stop! Holy God! Why, this is murder being committed, said I. Through my depths as in a tunnel went a shock like the ones big buildings get from trains which pass beneath.
But the cutting wasn’t deep, it was lateral and superficial, and despite the speed of the painted priest who wielded the knife it was done according to plan, and with skill. Ochre was rubbed into the wounds, which must have stung like frenzy, but the fellow grinned and the king said, “This proceeding is about semiusual, Mr. Henderson. The worry is not necessary. He is thus advanced in his priesthood career and so is very pleased. As to the blood, that is supposed to induce the heavens also to flow, or prime the pumps of the firmament.”
“Ha, ha!” I laughed and cried. “Say, King! What’s that? Oh, Jesus—come again? The pumps of the firmament? Isn’t that the dandiest!”
However, the king had no time for me. At a signal from Horko’s box there was an all-out, slam-bang, grand salute of the guns and with it a p
ounding of the deep liquid bass drums. The king arose. Wild hosannas! Fountains of praise! Faces screaming fiercely with pride and twisted with diverse inspirations. From the basic blackness of the flesh of the tribe there broke or erupted a wave of red color, and the people all arose on the white stone of the grandstands and waved red objects, waved or flaunted. Crimson was the holy-day color of the Wariri. The amazons saluted with purple banners, the king’s colors. His purple umbrella was raised, and its taut head swayed.
The king himself was no longer beside me. He had gone down from the box to take a position in the arena. At the other side of the circle, which was no bigger than the infield of a ball park, there arose a tall woman. To the waist she was naked and her head had woolly ringlets. When she came closer I saw that her face was covered with a beautiful design of scars that looked like Braille. Two peaks of this came down beside each ear, and a third descended to the bridge of her nose. As far as the belly she was painted a russet or dull gold color. She was young, for her breasts were small and didn’t waver when she walked, as is the case with more adult females, and her arms were long and thin. They manifested the three major bones; I mean the tapered humerus and the radius and ulna. Her face was small and sloping, and when I first saw her from across the field she had no more features than the ball of a flagpole; at a distance she had a face like a gilded apple. She wore a pair of purple trousers, mates to the king’s, and was his partner in a game they now began to play. For the first time, I realized that there was a group of shrouded figures in the center of the arena—roughly, let’s say, where the pitcher’s mound would have been. I figured correctly that these were the gods. Around them and over them the king and this gilded woman began to play a game with the two skulls. Whirling them by the long ribbons, each took a short run and threw them high in the air, above the figures of wood which stood under the tarpaulins—the biggest of these idols about as tall as an old upright Steinway piano. The two skulls flew up high, and then the king and the girl each made the catch. It was very neat. All the noise had died, had gone like the wrinkles of a cloth under the hot iron. A perfectly smooth silence followed the first throws, so you could even hear how hollow the catch sounded. Soon even the whiff the skulls made as they were being whirled around came to my unhandicapped ear. The woman threw her skull. The thick purple and blue ribbons made it look like a flower in the air. I swear before God, it appeared just like a gentian. In midair it passed the skull coming from the hand of the king. Both came streaming down with the blue satin ribbons following, as though they were a couple of ocean polyps. Soon I understood that this wasn’t only a game, but a contest, and naturally I rooted for the king. I didn’t know but what the penalty for dropping one of those skulls might have been death. Now I myself have become ultrafamiliar with death, not only owing to my age, but for a lot of reasons unnecessary to cite at this time. Death and I are just about kissing cousins. But the thought of anything happening to the king was horrible to me. Though his confidence seemed great, and his bounding and his quick turns and his sureness made beautiful watching as he warmed to the game like a fine tennis player or a great rider, and he—well, he was virile to a degree that made all worry superfluous; such a man takes all he does upon himself; nevertheless I trembled and shook for him. I worried for the girl, too. Should either one of them stumble or let the ribbons slip or the skulls collide they might have to pay the ultimate price, like the poor guy I found in my hut. He certainly had not died of natural causes. You can’t kid me; I would have made a terrific coroner. But the king and the woman were in top form, from which I judged that he didn’t spend all his time on his back, pampered by those dolls of his, for he ran and jumped like a lion, full of power, and he looked magnificent. He hadn’t even taken off the purple velvet hat with its adornment of human teeth. And he was equal to the woman, for in my mind she shaped up as the challenger. She behaved like a priestess, seeing to it that he came up to the mark. Because of the gold paint and Braille marks on her face she looked somewhat inhuman. As she sprang, dancing, her breasts were fixed, as if really made of gold, and because of her length and thinness, when she leaped it was something supernatural, like a giant locust.