Henderson the Rain King

  I stood still. There beside Mummah in her new situation I myself was filled with happiness. I was so gladdened by what I had done that my whole body was filled with soft heat, with soft and sacred light. The sensations of illness I had experienced since morning were all converted into their opposites. These same unhappy feelings were changed into warmth and personal luxury. You know, this kind of thing has happened to me before. I have had a bad headache change into a pain in the gums which is nothing but the signal of approaching beauty. I have known this, then, to pass down from the gums and appear again in my breast as a throb of pleasure. I have also known a stomach complaint to melt from my belly and turn into a delightful heat and go down into the genitals. This is the way I am. And so my fever was transformed into jubilation. My spirit was awake and it welcomed life anew. Damn the whole thing! Life anew! I was still alive and kicking and I had the old grun-tu-molani.

  Beaming and laughing to myself, yes, sir, shining with contentment, I went back to sit beside Dahfu’s hammock and wiped my face with a handkerchief, for I was anointed with sweat.

  “Mr. Henderson,” said the king in his African English voice, “you are indeed a person of extraordinary strength. I could not have more admiration.”

  “Thanks to you,” I said, “for giving me such a wonderful chance. Not just hoisting up the old woman, but to get into my depth. That real depth. I mean that depth where I have always belonged.”

  I was grateful to him. I was his friend then. In fact, at this moment, I loved the guy.

  XIV

  After this feat of strength, when the sky began to fill with clouds, I was not so surprised as I might have been. From under my brows I noted their arrival. I was inclined to take it as my due.

  “Ah, this shade is just what the doctor ordered,” I said to King Dahfu as the first cloud passed across. For the canopy of his box was made only of ribbons, blue and purple, and there were of course the silk umbrellas but these did not really interrupt the brassy glare. However, the large cloud sailing in from eastward not only shaded us, it gave relief from the gaudy color. After my great effort, I sat quiet. My violent feelings seemed to have passed off or to have been transformed. The Wariri, however, were still demonstrating in my honor, flaunting the flags and clattering rattles and ringing hand bells while they climbed over one another with joy. That was all right. I didn’t want such special credit for my achievement, especially considering how much I was the gainer personally. So I sat there and sweltered, and I pretended not to notice how the tribe was carrying on.

  “But look who’s here again,” I said. For it was the Bunam. He stood before the box and he had his arms full of leaves and wreaths and grasses and pines. Next to him, proud and smart in her peculiar Italian-style garrison cap, was the stout woman whom Dahfu had had shake my hand when we were introduced, the generaless, as he called her, the leader of all the amazons. Accompanying her were more of these military women in their waistcoats of leather. And the tall woman who had played the skull game with the king appeared in the background, gilded and shining. She was not one of the amazons, no; but she was a personage, very high-ranking, and no great occasion was complete without her. It didn’t give me much pleasure to see the Bunam, or examiner, smile, and I wondered whether he had come to express thanks or wanted something further, as the vines and leaves and wreaths and all that fodder led me to expect. Also, the women were strangely equipped. Two of them carried skulls on long rusty iron standards while others held odd-looking fly whisks which were made of strips of leather. But then from the way they grasped these instruments I suspected that they were not meant for flies. These were small whips. Now the drummers joined the group in front of the royal box and I figured they were about to begin a new rigmarole and were waiting for the king to give a signal.

  “What do they want?” I asked Dahfu, for his look was directed at me rather than at the Bunam and those huge swelled rude women and the generaless in her antiquated garrison cap. The rest of them were looking at me, too. They had not come to the king, but to me. The black-leather angel-fellow, the man who had risen out of the ground with his crooked stick and sent Romilayu and me into ambush, was especially there, standing beside the Bunam. And these people had turned on me all the darkness, all the expectancy, all the wildness, all the power, of their eyes. Myself, I had remained stripped, half naked, cooling off after the labor I had performed and still panting. And under all this scrutiny of black eyes I began to worry. The king had tried to warn me that there might be consequences to my tangling with Mummah. But I had not failed. No, I was brilliant, a success.

  “What do they want of me?” I said to Dahfu.

  When you got right down to it he was a savage, too. He still dangled a skull (of perhaps his father) by the long smooth ribbon and wore human teeth sewed to his large-brimmed hat. Why should I expect any mercy from him when he himself, the moment he should weaken, would be doomed? I mean, if he didn’t happen to be inspired by good motives, there was no reason to think that he wouldn’t let evil happen to an intruding stranger. No, he might allow all hell to break loose over me. But under the velvet shade of this softly folded crownlike hat he parted his high swelled lips and said, “Now, Mr. Henderson. We have news for you. The man who moves Mummah occupies, in consequence, a position of rain king of the Wariri. The title of this post is the Sungo. You are now the Sungo, Mr. Henderson, and that is why they are here.”

  So I said, vigilant and mistrustful, “Give it to me in plain English. What does it mean?” And I began to say to myself, “This is a fine way to repay me for moving their goddess.”

  “Today you are the Sungo.”

  “Well that may or may not be okay. Frankly, there’s something about it that begins to make me uneasy. These guys look as if they meant business. What business? Now listen, Your Highness, don’t sell me down the river. You know what I mean? I thought you liked me.”

  He moved a little closer to me from his swaying position in the hammock, pushing from the ground with his fingers, and said, “I do like you. Every circumstance thus far have increased my fond feeling. Why do you worry? You are the Sungo for them. They require you to go along.”

  I don’t know why it was, but I couldn’t at this moment wholly bring myself to trust the guy. “Just promise me one thing,” I said, “if anything bad is going to happen, I would like a chance to send a message to my wife. Just along general lines saying good-by with love, and she has been a good woman to me basically. That’s all. And don’t hurt Romilayu. He hasn’t done anything.” I could just hear people back home saying, as at a party for instance, “That big Henderson finally got his. What, didn’t you hear? He went to Africa and disappeared in the interior. He probably bullied some natives and they stabbed him. Good riddance to bad rubbish. They say the estate is worth three million bucks. I guess he knew he was a lunatic and despised people for letting him get away with murder. Well, he was rotten to the heart.” “Rotten to the heart yourselves, you bastards.” “He was full of excess.” “Listen, you guys, my great excess was I wanted to live. Maybe I did treat everything in the world as though it was a medicine—okay! What’s the matter with you guys? Don’t you understand anything? Don’t you believe in regeneration? You think a fellow is just supposed to go down the drain?”

  “Oh, Henderson,” said the king, “such suspicion. What have made you think harm is imminent for you or your man?”

  “Then why are they looking at me like that?”

  The Bunam and the leathery-looking herdsman and the barbarous Negro women.

  “You do not have a solitary item to fear,” said Dahfu. “It is innocuous. No, no,” said this strange prince of Africa, “they require your attendance to cleanse ponds and wells. They say you were sent for this purpose. Ha, ha, Mr. Henderson, you indicated earlier it was enviable to be in the bosom of the people. But that is where you now are, too.”

  “Yes, but I don’t know the first thing about it. Anyway, you were born that way.”

  “Wel
l, do not be ungrateful, Henderson. It is evident you too must have been born for something.”

  Well, I stood up on that one. This strange, many-figured, calcareous white stone was under my feet. That stone, too, was a world of its own, or more than a single world, world within world, in a dreaming series. I stepped down amid buzzing and cries which sounded like the interval between plays in a baseball broadcast. The examiner came up from behind and lifted off my helmet, while the stiff and stout old generaless, bending with some trouble, removed my shoes. And after this, useless to resist, she took off my Bermuda shorts. This left me in my jockey underpants, which were notably travel-stained. Nor was that the end, for as the Bunam dressed me in the vines and leaves, the generaless began to strip me of even the last covering of cotton. “No, no,” I said, but by that time the underpants were already down around my knees. The worst had happened, and I was naked. The air was my only garment now. I tried to cover up with the leaves. I was dry, I was numb, I was burning, and my mouth worked silently; I tried to shield my nakedness with hands and leaves, but Tatu, the amazon generaless, pulled away my fingers and put one of those many-thonged whips into them. My clothes being taken away, I thought I would give a cry and fall and perish of shame. But I was supported by the hand of the old amazon on my back, and then urged forward. Everybody began to yell, “Sungo, Sungo, Sungolay.” Yes, that was me, Henderson, the Sungo. We ran. We left the Bunam and the king behind, and the arena too, and entered the crooked lanes of the town. With feet lacerated by the stones, dazed, running with terror in my bowels, a priest of the rain. No, the king, the rain king. The amazons were crying and chanting in short, loud, bold syllables. The big, bald, sensitive heads and the open mouths and the force and power of those words—these women with the tightly buttoned short leather garments and swelling figures! They ran. And I amidst those naked companions, naked myself, bare fore and aft in the streamers of grass and vine, I was dancing on burnt and cut feet over the hot stones. I had to yell, too. Instructed by the generaless, Tatu, who brought her face near mine with open mouth, shrieking, I too cried, “Ya—na—bu—ni—ho—no—mum—mah!” A few stray men, mostly old, who happened to be in the way were beaten by the women and scrambled for their lives, and I myself hopping naked in the flimsy leaves appeared to strike terror into these stragglers. The skulls on the iron standards were carried along as we ran. They were fixed on sconces. We made a circle of the town way out as far as the gallows. Those were dead men that hung there, each entertaining a crowd of vultures. I passed beneath the swinging heads, having no time to look, for we were running hard now, a hard course; panting and sobbing I was, and saying to myself, Where the hell are we going? We had a destination; it was a big cattle pond; the women drew up here, leaping and chanting, and then about ten of them threw themselves upon me. They picked me up and gave me a heave that landed me in the super-heated sour water in which some long-horned cattle were standing. This water was only about six inches deep; the soft mud was far deeper, and into this I sank. I thought they might mean me to lie there sucked into the bottom of the pond, but now the skull carriers offered me their iron standards, and I latched on to these and was drawn forth. I might almost have preferred to remain there in the mud, so low was my will. Anger was useless. Nor was any humor intended. All was done in the greatest earnestness. I came, dripping stale mud, out of the pond. I hoped at least this would cover my shame, for the flimsy grasses, flying, had left everything open. Not that these big fierce women subjected me to any scrutiny. No, no, they didn’t care. But with the whips and skulls and guns I was whirled with them, their rain king, crying in my filth and frenzy, “Ya—na—bu—ni—ho—no—mum—mah!” as before. Yes, here he is, the mover of Mummah, the champion, the Sungo. Here comes Henderson of the U.S.A.—Captain Henderson, Purple Heart, veteran of North Africa, Sicily, Monte Cassino, etc., a giant shadow, a man of flesh and blood, a restless seeker, pitiful and rude, a stubborn old lush with broken bridgework, threatening death and suicide. Oh, you rulers of heaven! Oh, you dooming powers! Oh, I will black out! I will crash into death, and they will throw me on the dung heap, and the vultures will play house in my paunch. And with all my heart I yelled, “Mercy, have mercy!” And after that I yelled, “No, justice!” And after that I changed my mind and cried, “No, no, truth, truth!” And then, “Thy will be done! Not my will, but Thy will!” This pitiful rude man, this poor stumbling bully, lifting up his call to heaven for truth. Do you hear that?

  We were yelling and jumping and whirling through terrified lanes, feet pounding, drums and skulls keeping pace. And meanwhile the sky was filling with hot, gray, long shadows, rain clouds, but to my eyes of an abnormal form, pressed together like organ pipes or like the ocean ammonites of Paleozoic times. With swollen throats the amazons cried and howled, and I, lumbering with them, tried to remember who I was. Me. With the slime-plastered leaves drying on my skin. The king of the rain. It came to me that still and all there must be some distinction in this, but of what kind I couldn’t say.

  Under the thickened rain clouds, a heated, darkened breeze sprang up. It had a smoky odor. This was something oppressive, insinuating, choky, sultry, icky. Desirous, the air was, and it felt tumescent, heavy. It was very heavy. It yearned for discharge, like a living thing. Covered with sweat, the generaless with her arm urged me, rolling great eyes and panting. The mud dried stiffly and made a kind of earth costume for me. Inside it I felt like Vesuvius, all the upper part flame and the blood banging upward like the pitch or magma. The whips were hissing and gave a dry, mean sound, and I wondered what in hell are they doing. After the gust of breeze came deeper darkness, like the pungent heat of the trains when they pass into Grand Central tunnel on a devastated day of August, which is like darkness eternal. At that moment I have always closed my eyes.

  But I couldn’t close them now. We ran back to the arena, where the tribesmen of the Wariri were waiting. As the rain was still held back, so were their voices from my hearing, by a very thin dam, one of the thinnest. I heard Dahfu saying to me, “After all, Mr. Henderson, you may lose the wager.” For we were again in front of his box. He gave an order to Tatu, the generaless, and we all turned and rushed into the arena—I with the rest, spinning around inspired, in spite of my great weight, in spite of the angry cuts on my feet. My heart rioting, my head dazed, and filled with something like the fulgor of that vacant Pacific scene beside which I had walked with Edward. Nothing but white, seething, and the birds arguing over the herrings, with great clouds about. On the many-figured white stones I saw the people standing, leaping, frantic, under the oppression of Mummah’s great clouds, those colossal tuberous forms almost breaking. There was a great delirium. They were shrieking, shrieking. And of all these shrieks, my head, the rain king’s head, was the hive. All were flying toward me, entering my brain. Above all this I heard the roaring of lions, while the dust was shivering under my feet.

  The women about me were dancing, if you want to call it that. They were bounding and screaming and banging their bodies into me. All together we were nearing the gods who stood in their group, with Hummat and Mummah looking over the heads of the rest. And now I wanted to fall on the ground to avoid any share in what seemed to me a terrible thing, for these women, the amazons, were rushing upon the figures of the gods with those short whips of theirs and striking them. “Stop!” I yelled. “Quit it! What’s the matter? Are you crazy?” It would have been different, perhaps, if this had been a token whipping and the gods were merely touched with the thick leather straps. But great violence was loosed on these figures, so that the smaller ones rocked as they were beaten while the bigger without any change of face bore it defenseless. Those children of darkness, the tribe, rose and screamed like gulls on stormy water. And then I did fall to the ground. Naked, I threw myself down, roaring, “No, no, no!” But Tatu grasped me by the arm and with an effort raised me to my knees. So that, on my knees, I was pulled forward into this, crawling on the ground. My hand, which had the whip still in it, was li
fted once or twice and brought down so that against my will I was made to perform the duty of the rain king. “Oh, I can’t do this. You’ll never make me,” I was saying. “Oh, batter me and kill me. Run a spit up me and bake me over the fire.” I tried to hide against the earth and in this posture was struck on the back of the head with a whip and afterward on the face as well, as the women were swinging in all directions now and struck one another as well as me and the gods. Caught up in this madness, I fended off blows from my position on my knees, for it seemed to me that I was fighting for my life, and I yelled. Until a thunder clap was heard.

  And then, after a great, neighing, cold blast of wind, the clouds opened and the rain began to fall. Gouts of water like hand grenades burst all about and on me. The face of Mummah, which had been streaked by the whips, was now covered with silver bubbles, and the ground began to foam. The amazons with their wet bodies began to embrace me. I was too stunned to push them off. I have never seen such water. It was like the Dutch flood that swept over Alva’s men when the sea walls were opened. In this torrent the people were hidden from me. I looked for Dahfu’s box concealed in the storm and I worked my way around the arena, following the white stone with my hand. Then I met Romilayu, who recoiled from me as if I were dangerous to him. His hair was hugely flattened by the storm and his face showed great fear. “Romilayu,” I said, “please, man, you’ve got to help me. Look at the condition I’m in. Find my clothes. Where is the king? Where are they all? Pick up my clothes—my helmet,” I said. “I’ve got to have my helmet.”