But anyhow, I felt pretty good, and it was now my turn to receive presents. I got a bolster covered with leopard skin from the sisters, and a basketful of cold baked yams was brought, covered with a piece of straw matting. Mtalba’s eyes grew bigger, while her brow rolled up softly and she appeared to suffer about the nose—all signs that she was gone on me. She licked my hand with her small tongue, and I withdrew it and wiped it on my shorts.
But I thought myself very lucky. This was a beautiful, strange, special place, and I was moved by it. I believed the queen could straighten me out if she wanted to; as if, any minute now, she might open her hand and show me the thing, the source, the germ—the cipher. The mystery, you know. I was absolutely convinced she must have it. The earth is a huge ball which nothing holds up in space except its own motion and magnetism, and we conscious things who occupy it believe we have to move too, in our own space. We can’t allow ourselves to lie down and not do our share and imitate the greater entity. You see, this is our attitude. But now look at Willatale, the Bittah woman; she had given up such notions, there was no anxious care in her, and she was sustained. Why, nothing bad happened! On the contrary, it all seemed good! Look how happy she was, grinning with her flat nose and gap teeth, the mother-of-pearl eye and the good eye, and look at her white head! It comforted me just to see her, and I felt that I might learn to be sustained too if I followed her example. And altogether I felt my hour of liberation was drawing near when the sleep of the spirit was liable to burst.
There was this happy agitation in me, which made me fix my teeth together. Certain emotions make my teeth itch. Esthetic appreciation especially does it to me. Yes, when I admire beauty I get these tooth pangs, and my gums are on edge. Like that autumn morning when the tuberous flowers were so red, when I was standing in my velvet bathrobe under the green blackness of the pine tree, when the sun was like the coat of a fox, and the animals were barking, when the crows were harsh on that golden decay of the stubble—my gums were hurting sharply then, and now similarly; and with this all my difficult, worried, threatening arrogance appeared to fade from me, and even the hardness of my belly kind of relented and sank down. I said to Prince Itelo, “Look, Your Highness, could you arrange it for me to have a real talk with the queen?”
“You don’t talk?” he said, somewhat surprised. “You do talk, Mistah Henderson.”
“Oh, a real talk, I mean. Not sociable fiddle-faddle. In earnest,” I said. “About the wisdom of life. Because I know she’s got it and I wouldn’t leave without a sample of it. I’d be crazy to.”
“Oh, yes. Very good, very good,” he said. “Oh, all right. As you have won me I do not refuse you a difficult interpretation.”
“So you know what I mean?” I said. “This is great. This is wonderful. I’ll be grateful till my dying day, Prince. You have no idea how this fills my cup.” The younger sister of Bittahness, Mtalba, meanwhile was holding my hand, and I said, “What does she want?”
“Oh, she have a strong affection for you. Don’ you see she is the most beautiful woman and you the strongest of strong men. You have won her heart.”
“Hell with her heart,” I said. Then I began to think how to open a discussion with Willatale. What should I concentrate on? Marriage and happiness? Children and family? Duty? Death? The voice that said I want? (How could I explain this to her and to Itelo?) I had to find the simplest, most essential points, and all my thinking happens to be complicated. Here is a sample of such thinking, which happens to be precisely what I had on my mind as I stood in that parched courtyard under the mild shade of the thatch; Lily, my after-all dear wife, and she is the irreplaceable woman, wanted us to end each other’s solitude. Now she was no longer alone, but I still was, and how did that figure? Next step: help may come either from other human beings or—from a different quarter. And between human beings there are only two alternatives, either brotherhood or crime. And what makes the good such liars? Why, they lie like fish. Evidently they believe there have to be crimes, and lying is the most useful crime, as at least it is on behalf of good. Well, when push comes to shove, I am for the good, all right, but I am very suspicious of them. So, in short, what’s the best way to live?
However, I couldn’t start at such an advanced point of my thought with the woman of Bittahness. I would have to work my way forward slowly so as to be sure of my ground. Therefore I said to Itelo, “Now please tell the queen for me, friend, that it does wonderful things for me simply to see her. I don’t know whether it’s her general appearance or the lion skin or what I feel emanating from her—anyway, it puts my soul at rest.”
This was transmitted by Itelo and then the queen leaned forward with a tiny falter of her stout body, smiling, and spoke.
“She say she like to see you, too.”
“Oh, really.” I was beaming. “This is simply great. This is a big moment for me. The skies are opening up. It’s a great privilege to be here.” Taking away my hand from Mtalba I put my arm around the prince and I shook my head, for I was utterly inspired and my heart was starting to brim over. “You know, you are really a stronger fellow than I am,” I said. “I am strong all right, but it’s the wrong kind of strength; it’s coarse; because I’m desperate. Whereas you really are strong—just strong.” The prince was affected by this and started to deny it, but I said, “Look, take it from me. If I tried to explain in detail it would be months and months before you even got a glimmer of what gives. My soul is like a pawn shop. I mean it’s filled with unredeemed pleasures, old clarinets, and cameras, and moth-eaten fur. But,” I said, “let’s not get into a debate over it. I am only trying to tell you how you make me feel out here in this tribe. You’re great, Itelo. I love you. I love the old lady, too. In fact you’re all pretty damned swell, and I’ll get rid of those frogs for you if I have to lay down my life to do it.” They all saw that I was moved, and the men began to make the hollow whistle on their fingers and spread their mouths so like satyrs and yet sweetly, softly.
“My aunt says what do you request, sir?”
“Oh, does she? Well, that’s wonderful. For a starter ask her what she sees in me since I find it so hard to tell her who I am.”
Itelo delivered the question and Willatale furrowed up her brow in that flexible way peculiar to the Arnewi as a whole, which let the hemisphere of the eye be seen, purely, glistening with human intention; while the other, the white one, though blind, communicated humor as if she were giving me a wink to last me a lifetime. This closed white shutter also signified her inwardness to me. She spoke slowly without removing her gaze, and her fingers moved on her old thigh, shortened by her stoutness, as if taking an impression from Braille. Itelo transmitted her words. “You have, sir, a large personality. Strong. (I add agreement to her.) Your mind is full of thought. Possess some fundamentall of Bittahness, also.” (Good, good!) “You love send …” (It took him several seconds to find the word while I was standing, consumed—in this colorful court, on the gold soil, surroundings tinged by crimson, by black; the twigs of the bushes brown and smelling like cinnamon—consumed by desire to hear the judgment of her wisdom on me.)
“Send-sations.” I nodded, and Willatale proceeded. “Says … you are very sore, oh, sir! Mistah Henderson. You heart is barking.” “That’s correct,” I said, “with all three heads, like Cerberus the watch dog. But why is it barking?” He, however, was listening to her and leaning from the balls of his feet, as if appalled to hear with what kind of fellow he had gone to the mat in the customary ceremony of acquaintance. “Frenezy,” he said. “Yes, yes, I’ll confirm that,” I said. “The woman has a real gift.” And I encouraged her. “Tell me, tell me, Queen Willatale! I want the truth. I don’t want you to spare me.” “Suffah,” said Itelo, and Mtalba picked up my hand in sympathy. “Yes, I certainly do.” “She say now, Mistah Henderson, that you have a great copacity, indicated by your largeness, and especially your nose.” My eyes were big and sad as I touched my face. Beauty certainly vanishes. “I was once a good-look
ing fellow,” I said, “but it certainly is a nose I can smell the whole world with. It comes down to me from the founder of my family. He was a Dutch sausage-maker and became the most unscrupulous capitalist in America.”
“You excuse queen. She is fond on you and say she do not wish to make you trouble.”
“Because I have enough already. But look, Your Highness, I didn’t come to shilly-shally, so don’t say anything to inhibit her. I want it straight.”
The woman of Bittahness began to speak again, slowly, dwelling on my appearance with her one-eyed dreamy look.
“What does she say—what does she say?”
“She say she wish you tell her, sir, why you come. She know you have to come across mountain and walk a very long time. You not young, Mistah Henderson. You weight maybe a hundred-fifty kilogram; your face have many colors. You are built like a old loco-motif. Very strong, yes, I know. Sir, I concede. But so much flesh as a big monument …”
I listened, smarting at his words, my eyes wincing into their surrounding wrinkles. And then I sighed and said, “Thank you for your frankness. I know it’s peculiar that I came all this way with my guide over the desert. Please tell the queen that I did it for my health.” This surprised Itelo, so that he gave a startled laugh. “I know,” I said, “superficially I don’t look sick. And it sounds monstrous that anybody with my appearance should still care about himself, his health or anything else. But that’s how it is. Oh, it’s miserable to be human. You get such queer diseases. Just because you’re human and for no other reason. Before you know it, as the years go by, you’re just like other people you have seen, with all those peculiar human ailments. Just another vehicle for temper and vanity and rashness and all the rest. Who wants it? Who needs it? These things occupy the place where a man’s soul should be. But as long as she has started I want her to read me the whole indictment. I can fill her in on a lot of counts, though I don’t think I would have to. She seems to know. Lust, rage, and all the rest of it. A regular bargain basement of deformities …”
Itelo hesitated, then transmitted as much of this as he could to the queen. She nodded with sympathetic earnestness, slowly opening and closing her hand on the knot of lion skin, and gazing at the roof of the shed—those pipes of amber bamboo and the peaceful, symmetrical palm leaves of the thatch. Her hair floated like a million spider lines, while the fat of her arms hung down over her elbows. “She say,” Itelo translated carefully, “world is strange to a child. You not a child, sir?”
“Oh, how wonderful she is,” I said. “True, all too true. I have never been at home in life. All my decay has taken place upon a child.” I clasped my hands, and staring at the ground I started to reflect with this inspiration. And when it comes to reflection I am like the third man in a relay race. I can hardly wait to get the baton, but when I do get it I rarely take off in the necessary direction. So what I thought was something like this: The world may be strange to a child, but he does not fear it the way a man fears. He marvels at it. But the grown man mainly dreads it. And why? Because of death. So he arranges to have himself abducted like a child. So what happens will not be his fault. And who is this kidnaper—this gipsy? It is the strangeness of life—a thing that makes death more remote, as in childhood. I was pretty proud of myself, I tell you. And I said to Itelo, “Please say to the old lady for me that most people hate to meet up with a man’s trouble. Trouble stinks. So I won’t forget your generosity. Now listen—listen,” I said to Willatale and Mtalba and Itelo and the members of the court. I started to sing from Handel’s Messiah: “He was despised and rejected, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” and from this I took up another part of the same oratorio, “For who shall abide the day of His coming, and who shall stand when He appeareth?” Thus I sang while Willatale, the woman of Bittahness, queen of the Arnewi, softly shook her head; perhaps admiringly. Mtalba’s face gleamed with a similar expression and her forehead began to fold softly upward toward the stiffly standing indigo hair, while the ladies flapped and the men whistled in chorus. “Oh, good show, sir. My friend,” Itelo said. Only Romilayu, stocky, muscular, short, and wrinkled, seemed disapproving, but due to his wrinkles he had an ingrained expression of that type, and he may have felt no disapproval at all.
“Grun-tu-molani,” the old queen said.
“What’s that? What does she say?”
“Say, you want to live. Grun-tu-molani. Man want to live.”
“Yes, yes, yes! Molani. Me molani. She sees that? God will reward her, tell her, for saying it to me. I’ll reward her myself. I’ll annihilate and blast those frogs clear out of that cistern, sky-high, they’ll wish they had never come down from the mountains to bother you. Not only I molani for myself, but for everybody. I could not bear how sad things have become in the world and so I set out because of this molani. Grun-tu-molani, old lady—old queen. Grun-tu-molani, everybody!” I raised my helmet to all the family and members of the court. “Grun-tu-molani. God does not shoot dice with our souls, and therefore grun-tu-molani.” They muttered back, smiling at me, “Tu-molani.” Mtalba, with her lips shut, but the rest of her face expanded to a remarkable extent with happiness and her little henna-dipped hands with puckered wrists at rest on her hips, was looking into my eyes meltingly.
VIII
Now, I come from a stock that has been damned and derided for more than a hundred years, and when I sat smashing bottles beside the eternal sea it wasn’t only my great ancestors, the ambassadors and statesmen, that people were recalling, but the loony ones as well. One got himself mixed up in the Boxer Rebellion, believing he was an Oriental; one was taken for $300,000 by an Italian actress; one was carried away in a balloon while publicizing the suffrage movement. There have been plenty of impulsive or imbecile parties in our family (in French Am-Bay-Seel is a stronger term). A generation ago one of the Henderson cousins got the Corona Italia medal for rescue work during the earthquake at Messina, Sicily. He was tired of rotting from idleness at Rome. He was bored, and would ride his horse inside the Palazzo down from his bedroom and into the salon. After the earthquake he reached Messina by the first train and it is said that he didn’t sleep for two entire weeks, but pulled apart hundreds of ruins and rescued countless families. This indicates that a service ideal exists in our family, though sometimes in a setting of mad habit. One of the old Hendersons, although far from being a minister, used to preach to his neighbors, and he would call them by hitting a bell in his yard with a crowbar. They all had to come.
They say that I resemble him. We have the same neck size, twenty-two. I might cite the fact that I held up a mined bridge in Italy and kept it from collapsing until the engineers arrived. But this is in the line of military duty, and a better instance was provided by my behavior in the hospital when I broke my leg. I spent all my time in the children’s wards, entertaining and cheering the kids. On my crutches I hopped around the entire place in a hospital gown; I couldn’t be bothered to tie the tapes and was open behind, and the old nurses ran after me to cover me, but I wouldn’t hold still.
Here we were in the farthest African mountains—damn it, they couldn’t be much farther!—and it was a shame that these good people should suffer so from frogs. But it was natural for me to want to relieve them. It so happened that this was something I could probably do, and it was the least that I could undertake under the circumstances. Look what this Queen Willatale had done for me—read my character, revealed the grun-tu-molani to me. I figured that these Arnewi, no exception to the rules, had developed unevenly; they might have the wisdom of life, but when it came to frogs they were helpless. This I already had explained to my own satisfaction. The Jews had Jehovah, but wouldn’t defend themselves on the Sabbath. And the Eskimos would perish of hunger with plenty of caribou around because it was forbidden to eat caribou in fish season, or fish in caribou season. Everything depends on the values—the values. And where’s reality? I ask you, where is it? I myself, dying of misery and boredom, had happiness, and objective happine
ss, too, all around me, as abundant as the water in that cistern which cattle were forbidden to drink. And therefore I thought, this will be one of those mutual-aid deals; where the Arnewi are irrational I’ll help them, and where I’m irrational they’ll help me.
The moon had already come forward with her long face toward the east and a fleece of clouds behind. It gave me something to gauge the steepness of the mountains by, and I believe they approached the ten-thousand-foot mark. The evening air turned very green and yet the beams of the moon kept their whiteness intact. The thatch became more than ever like feathers, dark, heavy, and plumy. I said to Prince Itelo as we were standing beside one of these iridescent heaps—his company of wives and relatives were still in attendance with the squash-flower parasols—“Prince, I’m going to have a shot at those animals in the cistern. Because I’m sure I can handle them. You aren’t involved at all, and don’t even have to give an opinion one way or another. I’m doing this on my own responsibility.”
“Oh, Mistah Henderson—you ’strodinary man. But sir. Do not be carry away.”
“Ha, ha, Prince—pardon me, but this is where you happen to be wrong. If I don’t get carried away I never accomplish anything. But that’s okay,” I said. “Just forget about it.”
So then he left us at our hut and Romilayu and I had supper, which consisted mainly of cold yams and hardtack, to which I added a supplement of vitamin pills. On top of this I had a slug of whisky and then I said, “Come on, Romilayu, we’ll go over to that cistern and case it by moonlight.” I took along a flashlight to use under the thatch, for, as previously noted, a shed was built over it.