“Then doesn’t this apply to you, too?”
He said, with a nod of full agreement, “Oh, certainly. It applies. It applies to everyone. Though nothing may be visible, still it is heard, like radio. It is on almost all the frequencies. And all tremble, and all are wincing, in greater or lesser degree.”
“And you think there is a cure?” I said.
“Why, I surely believe there is. Otherwise all the better imagining will have to be surrendered. Anyways, I will not urge you to come in with me and do as I have done. As my father Gmilo did. As Gmilo’s father Suffo did. As we all did. No. If it is positively beyond you we may as well exchange good-by and go separate ways.”
“Wait a minute now, King, don’t be hasty,” I said. I was mortified and frightened; nothing could have been more painful than to lose my connection with him. Something had gone off in my breast, my eyes filled, and I said, almost choking, “You wouldn’t brush me off like that would you, King? You know how I feel.” He realized how hard I was taking it; nevertheless he repeated that perhaps it would be better if I left, for although we were temperamentally suited as friends and he had deep affection for me, too, and was grateful for the opportunity to know me and also for my services to the Wariri in lifting up Mummah, still, unless I understood about lions, no deepening of the friendship was possible. I simply had to know what this was about. “Wait a minute, King,” I said. “I feel tremendously close to you and I’m prepared to believe what you tell me.”
“Sungo, thank you,” he said. “I also am close to you. It is very mutual. But I require more deep relationship. I desire to be understood and communicated to. We have to develop an underlying similarity which lies within you by connection with the lion. Otherwise, how shall we maintain the truth agreement we made?”
Moved as anything, I said, “Oh, this is hard, King, to be threatened with loss of friendship.”
The threat was exceedingly painful also to him. Yes, I saw that he suffered almost as hard as I did. Almost. Because who can suffer like me? I am to suffering what Gary is to smoke. One of the world’s biggest operations.
“I don’t understand it,” I said.
He took me up to the door and made me look through the grating at Atti the lioness, and in that soft, personal tone peculiar to him which went strangely to the center of the subject, he said, “What a Christian might feel in Saint Sophia’s church, which I visited in Turkey as a student, I absorb from lion. When she gives her tail a flex, it strikes against my heart. You ask, what can she do for you? Many things. First she is unavoidable. Test it, and you will find she is unavoidable. And this is what you need, as you are an avoider. Oh, you have accomplished momentous avoidances. But she will change that. She will make consciousness to shine. She will burnish you. She will force the present moment upon you. Second, lions are experiences. But not in haste. They experience with deliberate luxury. The poet says, ‘The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.’ Let us embrace lions also in the same view. Moreover, observe Atti. Contemplate her. How does she stride, how does she saunter, how does she lie or gaze or rest or breathe? I stress the respiratory part,” he said. “She do not breathe shallow. This freedom of the intercostal muscles and her abdominal flexibility” (her lower belly, which was disclosed to our view, was sheer white) “gives the vital continuity between her parts. It brings those brown jewel eyes their hotness. Then there are more subtle things, as how she leaves hints, or elicits caresses. But I cannot expect you to see this at first. She has much to teach you.”
“Teach? You really mean that she might change me.”
“Excellent. Precisely. Change. You fled what you were. You did not believe you had to perish. Once more, and a last time, you tried the world. With a hope of alteration. Oh, do not be surprised by such a recognition,” he said, seeing how it moved me to dis-cover that my position was understood. “You have told me much. You are frank. This makes you irresistible, as not many are. You have rudiments of high character. You could be noble. Some parts may be so long-buried as to be classed dead. Is there any resur-rectibility in them? This is where the change comes in.”
“You think there’s a chance for me?” I said.
“Not at all impossible if you follow my directions.”
The lioness stroked past the door. I heard her low, soft, continuous snarl.
Dahfu now started to go in. My nether half turned very cold. My knees felt like two rocks in a cold Alpine torrent. My mustache stabbed and stung into my lips, which made me realize that I was frowning and grimacing with terror, and I knew that my eyes must be filling with fatal blackness. As before, he took my hand as we entered and I came into the den saying inwardly, “Help me, God! Oh, help!” The odor was blinding, for here, near the door where the air was trapped, it stank radiantly. From this darkness came the face of the lioness, wrinkling, with her whiskers like the thinnest spindles scratched with a diamond on the surface of a glass. She allowed the king to fondle her, but passed by him to examine me, coming round with those clear circles of inhuman wrath, convex, brown, and pure, rings of black light within them. Between her mouth and nostrils a line divided her lip, like the waist of the hourglass, expanding into the muzzle. She sniffed my feet, working her way to the crotch once more and causing my parts to hide in my belly as best they could. She next put her head into my armpit and purred with such tremendous vibration it made my head buzz like a kettle.
Dahfu whispered, “She likes you. Oh, I am glad. I am enthusiastic. I am so proud of both of you. Are you afraid?”
I was bursting. I could only nod.
“Later you will laugh at yourself with amusement. Now it is normal.”
“I can’t even bring my hands together to wring them,” I said.
“Feel paralysis?” he said.
The lioness went away, making a tour of the den along the walls on the thick pads of her feet.
“Can you see?” he said.
“Barely. I can barely see a single thing.”
“Let us begin with the walk.”
“Behind bars, I’d like that fine. It would be great.”
“You are avoiding again, Henderson-Sungo.” His eyes were looking at me from under the softly folded velvet brim. “Change does not lie that way. You must form a new habit.”
“Oh, King, what can I do? My openings are screwed up tight, both back and front. They may go to the other extreme in a minute. My mouth is all dried out, my scalp is wrinkling up, I feel thick and heavy at the back of my head. I may be passing out.”
I remember that he looked at me with keen curiosity, as if wondering about these symptoms from a medical standpoint. “All the resistances are putting forth their utmost,” was his comment. It didn’t seem possible that the black of his face could be exceeded, and yet his hair, visible at the borders of his hat, was blacker. “Well,” he said, “we shall let them come out. I am firmly confident in you.”
I said weakly, “I’m glad you think so. If I’m not torn to pieces. If I’m not left down here half-eaten.”
“Take my assurance. No such eventuality is possible. Now, watch the way she walks. Beautiful? You said it! Furthermore this is uninstructed, specie-beauty. I believe when the fear has subsided you will be capable of admiring her beauty. I think that part of the beauty emotion does result from an overcoming of fear. When the fear yields, a beauty is disclosed in its place. This is also said of perfect love if I recollect, and it means that ego-emphasis is removed. Oh, Henderson, watch how she is rhythmical in behavior. Did you do the cat in Anatomy One? Watch how she gives her tail a flex. I feel it as if undergoing it personally. Now let us follow her.” He began to lead me around after the lioness. I was bent over, and my legs were thick and drunken. The green silk pants no longer floated but were charged with electricity and clung to the back of my thighs. The king did not stop talking, which I was glad of, since his words were the sole support I had. His reasoning I couldn’t follow in detail—I wasn’t fit to—but gradually I understood
that he wanted me to imitate or dramatize the behavior of lions. What is this going to be, I thought, the Stanislavski method? The Moscow Art Theater? My mother took a tour of Russia in 1905. On the eve of the Japanese War she saw the Czar’s mistress perform in the ballet.
I said to the king, “And how does Obersteiner’s allochiria and all that medical stuff you gave me to read come into this?”
He patiently said, “All the pieces fit properly. It will presently be clear. But first by means of the lion try to distinguish the states that are given and the states that are made. Observe that Atti is all lion. Does not take issue with the inherent. Is one hundred per cent within the given.”
But I said in a broken voice, “If she doesn’t try to be human, why should I try to act the lion? I’ll never make it. If I have to copy someone, why can’t it be you?”
“Oh, shush these objections, Henderson-Sungo. I copied her. Transfer from lion to man is possible, I know by experience.” And then he shouted, “Sakta,” which was a cue to the lioness to start running. She trotted, and the king began to bound after her, and I ran too, trying to keep close to him. “Sakta, sakta,” he was crying, and she picked up speed. Now she was going fast along the opposite wall. In a few minutes she would come up behind me.
I started to call to him, “King, King, wait, let me go in front of you, for Christ’s sake.”
“Spring upward,” he called back to me. But I was clumping and pounding after him trying to pass him, and sobbing. In the mind’s eye I saw blood in great drops, bigger than quarters, spring from my skin as she sank her claws into me, for I was convinced that as I was in motion I was fair game and she would claw me as soon as she was within range. Or perhaps she would break my neck. I thought that might be preferable. One stroke, one dizzy moment, the mind fills with night. Ah, God! No stars in that night. There is nothing.
I could not catch up with the king, and therefore I pretended to stumble and threw myself heavily on the ground, off to the side, and gave a crazy cry. The king when he saw me prostrate on my belly held out his hand to Atti to stop her, shouting, “Tana, tana, Atti.” She sprang sideward and began to walk toward the wooden shelf. From the dust I watched her. She gathered herself down upon her haunches and lightly reached the shelf on which she liked to lie. She pointed one leg outward and started to wash herself with her tongue. The king squatted beside her and said “Are you hurt, Mr. Henderson?”
“No, I just got jolted,” I said.
Then he began to explain. “I intend to loosen you up, Sungo, because you are so contracted. This is why we were running. The tendency of your conscious is to isolate self. This makes you extremely contracted and self-recoiled, so next I wish—”
“Next?” I said. “What next? I’ve had it. I’m humbled to the dust already. What else am I supposed to do, King, for heaven’s sake? First I was stuck with a dead body, then thrown into the cattle pond, clobbered by the amazons. Okay. For the rain. Even the Sungo pants and all that. Okay! But now this?”
With much forbearance and sympathy he answered, picking up a pleated corner of his velvet headgear, the color of thick wine, “Patient, Sungo,” he said. “Those aforementioned things were for us, for the Wariri. Do not think I am ever ingrate. But this latter is for you.”
“That’s what you keep saying. But how can this lion routine cure what I’ve got?”
The forward slope of the king’s face suggested, as his mother’s did, that it was being offered to you. “Oh,” he said, “high conduct, high conduct! There will never be anything but misery without high conduct. I knew that you went out from home in America because of a privation of high conduct. You have met your first opportunities of it well, Henderson-Sungo, but you must go on. Take advantage of the studies I have made, which by chance are available to you.”
I licked my hand, for I had scratched it in falling, and then I sat up, brooding. He squatted opposite me with his arms about his knees. He looked steadily at me across his large folded arms while he tried to make me meet his gaze.
“What do you want me to do?”
“As I have done. As Gmilo, Suffo, all the forefathers did. They all acted the lion. Each absorbed lion into himself. If you do as I wish, you too will act the lion.”
If this body, if this flesh of mine were only a dream, then there might be some hope of awakening. That was what I thought as I lay there smarting. I lay, so to speak, at the bottom of things. Finally I sighed and started to get up, making one of the greatest efforts I have ever made. At this he said, “Why rise, Sungo, since we have you in a prone position?”
“What do you mean, prone position? Do you want me to crawl?”
“No, naturally not, crawl is for a different order of creature. But be on all the fours. I wish you to assume the posture of a lion.” He got on all fours himself, and I had to admit that he looked very much like a lion. Atti, with crossed paws, only occasionally looked at us.
“You see?” he said.
And I answered, “Well, you ought to be able to do it. You were brought up on it. Besides, it’s your idea. But I can’t.” I slumped back on the ground.
“Oh,” he said. “Mr. Henderson, Mr. Henderson! Is this the man who spoke of rising from a grave of solitude? Who recited me the poem of the little fly on the green leaf in the setting sun? Who wished to end Becoming? Is this the Henderson who flew half around the world because he had a voice which said I want? And now, because his friend Dahfu extends a remedy to him, falls down? You dismiss my relationship?”
“Now, King, that’s not true. It’s just not true, and you know it. I’d do anything for you.”
To prove this, I rose up on my hands and feet and stood there with knees sagging, trying to look straight ahead and as much like a lion as possible.
“Oh, excellent,” he said. “I am so glad. I was sure you had sufficient flexibility in you. Settle on your knees now. Oh, that is better, much better.” My paunch came forward between my arms. “Your structure is far from ordinary,” he said. “But I offer you sincerest congratulations on laying aside the former attitude of fixity. Now, sir, will you assume a little more limberness? You appear cast in one piece. The midriff dominates. Can you move the different portions? Minus yourself of some of your heavy reluctance of attitude. Why so sad and so earthen? Now you are a lion. Mentally, conceive of the environment. The sky, the sun, and creatures of the bush. You are related to all. The very gnats are your cousins. The sky is your thoughts. The leaves are your insurance, and you need no other. There is no interruption all night to the speech of the stars. Are you with me? I say, Mr. Henderson, have you consumed much amounts of alcohol in your life? The face suggests you have, the nose especially. It is nothing personal. Much can be changed. By no means all, but very very much. You can have a new poise, which will be your own poise. It will resemble the voice of Caruso, which I have heard on records, never tired because the function is as natural as to the birds. However,” he said, “it is another animal you strongly remind me of. But of which?”
I wasn’t going to tell him anything. My vocal cords, anyway, seemed stuck together like strands of overcooked spaghetti.
“Oh, truly! How very big you are,” he said. He went on in this vein.
At last I found my voice and asked him, “How long do you want me to hold this?”
“I have been observing,” he said. “It is very important that you feel something of a lion on your maiden attempt. Let us start with the roaring.”
“It won’t excite her, you think?”
“No, no. Now look, Mr. Henderson, I wish you to picture that you are a lion. A literal lion.”
I moaned.
“No, sir. Please oblige me. A real roar. We must hear your voice. It tends to be rather choked. I told you the tendency of your conscious is to isolate self. So fancy you are with your kill. You are warning away an intruder. You may begin with a growl.”
Having come so far with the guy there was no way to back out. Not one single alternative remained. I had
to do it. So I began to make a rumble in my throat. I was in despair.
“More, more,” he said impatiently. “Atti has taken no notice, therefore it is far from the thing.”
I let the sound grow louder.
“And glare as you do so. Roar, roar, roar, Henderson-Sungo. Do not be afraid. Let go of yourself. Snarl greatly. Feel the lion. Lower on the forepaws. Up with hindquarters. Threaten me. Open those magnificent mixed eyes. Oh, give more sound. Better, better,” he said, “though still too much pathos. Give more sound. Now, with your hand—your paw—attack! Cuff! Fall back! Once more—strike, strike, strike, strike! Feel it. Be the beast! You will recover humanity later, but for the moment, be it utterly.”
And so I was the beast. I gave myself to it, and all my sorrow came out in the roaring. My lungs supplied the air but the note came from my soul. The roaring scalded my throat and hurt the corners of my mouth and presently I filled the den like a bass organ pipe. This was where my heart had sent me, with its clamor. This is where I ended up. Oh, Nebuchadnezzar! How well I understand that prophecy of Daniel. For I had claws, and hair, and some teeth, and I was bursting with hot noise, but when all this had come forth, there was still a remainder. That last thing of all was my human longing.
As for the king, he was in a state of enthusiasm, praising me, rubbing his hands together, looking into my face. “Oh, good, Mr. Henderson. Good, good. You are the sort of man I took you to be,” I heard him say when I stopped to draw breath. I might as well go the whole way, I thought, as I was crouching in the dust and the lion’s offal, since I had come so far; therefore I gave it everything I had and roared my head off. Whenever I opened my bulging eyes I saw the king in his hat rejoicing by my side, and the lioness on the trestle staring at me, a creature entirely of gold sitting there.
When I could do no more I fell flat on my face. The king thought I might have passed out, and he felt my pulse and patted my cheeks saying, “Come, come, dear fellow.” I opened my eyes and he said, “Ah, are you okay? I worried about you. You went from crimson to black starting from the sternum and rising into the face.”