Henderson the Rain King

  “Why,” I said, “there’s something about danger that doesn’t perplex the guy. Look at all the things he has to fear, and still look at the way he lies on that sofa. You’ve never seen that. He has an old green sofa upstairs which must have been brought by the elephants a century ago. And the way he lies on it, Romilayu! And the females wait on him. But on the table near him he has those two skulls used at the rain ceremony, one his father’s and the other his grandfather’s. Are you married, Romilayu?” I asked him.

  “Yes, sah, two time. But now got one wife.”

  “Why, that’s just like me. And I have five children, including twin boys about four years old. My wife is very big.”

  “Me, six children.”

  “Do you worry about them? It’s a wild continent still, no two ways about that. I am all the time worrying lest my two little kids wander off in the woods. We ought to get a dog—a big dog. But we’ll be living in town anyway from now on. I am going to go to school. Romilayu, I am going to send a letter to my wife, and you are going to take it to Baventai and mail it. I promised you baksheesh, old man, and here are the papers for the jeep, made over to you. I wish I could take you back to the States with me, but since you have a family it’s not practical.” His face expressed very little pleasure at the gift. It wrinkled especially hard, and as I knew him by now I said, “Hell, man, don’t be toying with tears all the time. What’s to cry over?”

  “You in trouble, sah,” he said.

  “Yes, I know I am. But since I’m a reluctant type of fellow, life has decided to use strong measures on me. I am a shunner, Romilayu, and so this serves me right. What’s the matter, old pal, do I look bad?”

  “Yes, sah.”

  “My feelings always did leak into my looks,” I said. “That’s the type of constitution I have. Is it that woman’s head they showed us that worries you?”

  “Dem kill you, maybe?” said Romilayu.

  “Okay, that Bunam is a bad actor. The guy is a scorpion. But don’t forget I am the Sungo. Doesn’t Mummah protect me? I think maybe my person is sacred. Besides, with my twenty-two neck they’d have to have two guys to strangle me. Ha, ha! You mustn’t worry about me, Romilayu. As soon as this business with the king is completed and I have helped him capture his dad, I’ll join you in Baventai.”

  “Please God, ’e mek quick,” said Romilayu.

  When I mentioned the Bunam to the king, he laughed at me. “When I possess Gmilo, I am absolute master,” he said.

  “But that animal is raging and killing out there in the savanna,” I said, “and you act as though you had him safe in storage already.”

  “Lions do not often leave a given locale,” he said. “Gmilo is near here. Any day he will be encountered. Go and write the letter to your missis,” Dahfu told me, laughing very low on his green sofa amid his black troop of nude women.

  “I’m going to write to her today,” I said.

  So I went down to have lunch with the Bunam and Horko. Horko, the Bunam, and the Bunam’s black-leather man were always waiting for me at the bridge table under the umbrella. “Gentlemen…” “Asi Sungo,” said everyone. I was always aware that these people had heard me roaring and probably could smell the odor of the den on me. But I brazened it out. The Bunam, when he did glance my way, which was rarely, was very somber. I thought, “I may get you first. No man can know that and you’d better not push me hard.” The behavior of Horko on the other hand was invariably genial, and he hung out his red tongue and leaned over the little table with his knuckles like tree boles until it swayed with his weight. There was an air of intrigue under the transparent silk of the umbrella, while entertainers skipped for us out in the sun and feet flitted in and out of robes as Horko’s people danced to amuse us and the old musician played his pendulum viol and others drummed and blew in the palace junkyard with its petrified brains of white stone and the red flowers growing in the humus.

  After lunch came the daily water duty. The laboring women, with deep stress marks on the skin of their shoulders from the poles, carried me out into the lanes of the town where the dust of the ruts was reduced to a powder. The lone drum bumped after me; it seemed to warn people to stay away from this Henderson, the lion-contaminated Sungo. People still came to look at me out of curiosity, but not in their previous numbers, nor did they particularly want to be sprinkled by the crazy rain king. So that when we got to the dunghill at the center of town where the court was situated, I made a point of getting on my feet and sprinkling right and left. This was stoically taken. The magistrate in his crimson gown seemed as if he would have stopped me if he had had the power. However, nothing was done. The prisoner with the forked stick in his mouth leaned his face against the post he was tied to. “I hope you win, pal,” I said to him and got back into my hammock.

  That afternoon I wrote to Lily as follows:

  “Honey, you are probably worried about me, but I suppose you have known all along that I was alive.”

  Lily claimed she could always tell how I was. She had some kind of privileged love-intuition.

  “The flight here was spectacular.”

  Like hovering all the way inside a jewel.

  “We are the first generation to see the clouds from both sides. What a privilege! First people dreamed upward. Now they dream both upward and downward. This is bound to change something, somewhere. For me the entire experience has been similar to a dream. I liked Egypt. Everybody was in basic white rags. From the air the mouth of the Nile looked like raveled rope. In some places the valley was green and it was yellow. The cataracts resembled seltzer. When we landed in Africa itself and Charlie and I put the show on the road, it wasn’t exactly what I had hoped in leaving home.” As I discovered a pestilence when I entered the old lady’s house and realized that I must put forth effort or go down in shame. “Charlie did not relax in Africa. I was reading R. F. Burton’s First Footsteps in East Africa plus Speke’s Journal, and we didn’t see eye to eye about any subject. So we parted company. Burton thought a lot of himself. He was very good with the épée and saber and he spoke everyone’s language. I picture him as resembling General Douglas MacArthur in character, very conscious of having a historical role and thinking of classical Rome and Greece. Personally, I had to decide to follow a different course, as by any civilized standard I am done for. However, the geniuses love common life a great deal.”

  When he got back to England, Speke blew his brains out. This biographical detail I spared Lily. By genius I mean somebody like Plato or Einstein. Light itself was all Einstein needed. What could be more common?

  “There was a fellow around named Romilayu, and we became friends, though at first he was scared of me. I asked him to show me uncivilized parts of Africa. There are very few of these left. There are modern governments springing up and educated classes. I myself have met such educated African royalty and am the guest right now of a king who is almost an M.D. Nevertheless, I am off the beaten track, without question, and I have Romilayu (he is a wonderful guy) and Charlie himself, indirectly, to thank for that. To a certain extent it has been terrible, and continues to be. A few times I could have given up my soul as easily as a fish lets out a bubble. You know, Charlie is not a bad egg, at heart. But I shouldn’t have come along on a honeymoon trip. I was a fifth wheel. She is one of those Madison Avenue dollies who have their back teeth pulled to produce a fashionable look (sunken cheeks).”

  But on further recollection I see that the bride could never in the world forgive me for my behavior at the wedding. I was best man, and it was a formal occasion, and it wasn’t only that I didn’t kiss her, but that I was somehow alone in the cab with her instead of Charlie on the way down to Gemignano’s restaurant after the ceremony. In my inside pocket, rolled up, was a sheet of music—Mozart’s “Turkish Rondo” for two violins. I was drunk; how did I get through a violin lesson? At Gemignano’s I was very obnoxious. I said, Is this Parmesan cheese or is it Rinso? I spat it out on the tablecloth, and after this I blew my nose in m
y foulard. Curse my memory for being so complete!

  “Did you send a wedding present for me or not? We must send a present. Get some steak knives, for God’s sake. I want to tell you that I owe Charlie a lot. Without him I might have gone to the Arctic instead, among the Eskimos. This experience in Africa has been tremendous. It has been tough, it has been perilous, it has been something! But I’ve matured twenty years in twenty days.”

  Lily would not sleep in the igloo with me, but I continued my polar experiments anyway. I snared a few rabbits. I practiced spear-throwing. I built a sled, following the descriptions in the books. Four or five coats of frozen urine on the runners and they scooted over the snow like steel. I am positive that I could have arrived at the Pole. But I don’t think I would have found what I was looking for there. In that case, I would have overwhelmed the world from the North with my trampling. If I couldn’t have my soul it would cost the earth a catastrophe.

  “Here they don’t know what tourists are, and therefore I’m not a tourist. There was a woman who told her friend, ‘Last year we went around the world. This year I think we’re going somewhere else.’ Ha, ha! Sometimes the mountains here seem very porous, yellow and brown, and remind me of those old molasses sponge candies. I have my own room in the palace. This is a very primitive part of the world. Even the rocks look primitive. From time to time I have a smoldering fever. It feels like one of those coal mines that have been sealed because of combustion. Otherwise I seem to have benefited physically here, except that I have a persistent grunt. I wonder if this is new, or did you ever notice it at home?

  “How are the twins and Ricey and Edward? I would like to stop in Switzerland on the way home and see little Alice. I may have my teeth looked after, too, while in Geneva. You might tell Dr. Spohr for me that the bridge broke one morning at breakfast. Send me the spare c/o American Embassy, Cairo. It is in the trunk of the convertible under the wire spring that fastens the jack to the spare tire. I put it there for safekeeping.

  “I promised Romilayu a bonus if he would take me off the beaten track. We have made two stops. Humankind has to sway itself more intentionally toward beauty. I met a person who is called The Woman of Bittahness. She looked like a fat old lady, merely, but she had tremendous wisdom and when she took a look at me she thought I was a kind of odd ball, but that didn’t faze her, and she said a couple of marvelous things. First she told me that the world was strange to me. It is strange to a child. But I am no child. This gave me pleasure and pain, both.”

  The Kingdom of Heaven is for children of the spirit. But who is this nosy, gross phantom?

  “Of course there’s strangeness and strangeness. One kind of strangeness may be a gift, and another kind a punishment. I wanted to tell the old lady that everybody understands life except me—how did she account for it? I seem to be a very vain and foolish, rash person. How did I get so lost? And never mind whose fault it is, how do I get back?”

  It is very early in life, and I am out in the grass. The sun flames and swells; the heat it emits is its love, too. I have this self-same vividness in my heart. There are dandelions. I try to gather up this green. I put my love-swollen cheek to the yellow of the dandelions. I try to enter into the green.

  “Then she told me I had grun-tu-molani, which is a native term hard to explain but on the whole it indicates that you want to live, not die. I wanted her to tell more about it. Her hair was like fleece and her belly smelled like saffron; she had a cataract in one eye. I’m afraid I will never be able to see her again, because I goofed and we had to get out. I can’t go into details. But without Prince Itelo’s friendship I might have been in serious trouble. I thought I had lost my opportunity to study my life with the aid of a really wise person, and I was very downcast over it. But I love Dahfu, king of the second tribe we came to. I am with him now and have been given an honorary title, King of the Rain, which is merely standard, I guess, like getting the key to the city from Jimmy Walker used to be. A costume goes with it. But I am not in a position to tell you much more, except in general terms. I am participating in an experiment with the king (almost an M.D., I told you) and this is an ordeal, daily.” The animal’s face is pure fire to me. Every day. I have to close my eyes.

  “Lily, I probably haven’t said this lately, but I have true feeling for you, baby, which sometimes wrings my heart. You can call it love. Although personally I think that word is full of bluff.” Especially for somebody like me, called from nonexistence into existence: what for? What have I got to do with husbands’ love or wives’ love? I am too peculiar for that kind of stuff.

  “When Napoleon was out at St. Helena, he talked a lot about morals. It was a little late. A lot he cared for them. So I’m not going to discuss love with you. If you think you are in the clear you can go ahead and talk about it. You said you couldn’t live for sun, moon, and stars alone. You said your mother was dead when she wasn’t, which was certainly very neurotic of you. You got engaged a hundred times and were always out of breath. You conned me. Is this how love acts? All right, then. But I expected you to help me. This king here is one of the most intelligent people in the world, and I have great faith in him, and he tells me I should move from the states that I myself make into the states which are of themselves. Like if I stopped making such a noise all the time I might hear something nice. I might hear a bird. Are the wrens still nesting in the cornices? I saw the straw sticking out and was amazed that they could get inside.” I could never take after the birds. I would crash all the branches. I would have scared the pterodactyl from the skies.

  “I am giving up the violin. I guess I will never reach my object through it,” to raise my spirit from the earth, to leave the body of this death. I was very stubborn. I wanted to raise myself into another world. My life and deeds were a prison.

  “Well, Lily, everything is going to be different from now on. When I get back I am going to study medicine. My age is against it, but that’s just too damn bad, I’m going to do it anyway. You can’t imagine how keen I am to get into the laboratory. I can still remember the smell of those places. Formaldehyde. I’ll be among a bunch of young kids, I realize, doing chemistry and zoology and physiology and physics and math and anatomy. I expect it to be quite an ordeal, especially dissecting the cadaver.” Once more, Death, you and me. “However, I have had to have dealings with the dead anyway and haven’t made a buck on any of them. I might as well do something in the interests of life, for a change.” What is it, now, this great instrument? Played wrong, why does it suffer so? Right, how can it achieve so much, reaching even God? “Bones, muscles, glands, organs. Osmosis. I want you to enroll me at Medical Center and give my name as Leo E. Henderson. The reason for that I will tell you when I get home. Aren’t you excited? Dearest girl, as a doctor’s wife you’ll have to be more clean, bathe more often and wash your things. You will have to get used to broken sleep, night calls and all of that. I haven’t decided yet where to practice. I guess if I tried it at home I’d scare the neighbors to pieces. If I put my ear against their chests as an M.D., they’d jump out of their skins.

  “Therefore, I may apply for missionary work, like Dr. Wilfred Grenfell or Albert Schweitzer. Hey! Axel Munthe—how about him? Naturally China is out, now. They might catch us and brain-wash us. Ha, ha! But we might try India. I do want to get my hands on the sick. I want to cure them. Healers are sacred.” I have been so bad myself I believe there must be a virtue in me, finally. “Lily, I’m going to quit knocking myself out.”

  I don’t think the struggles of desire can ever be won. Ages of longing and willing, willing and longing, and how have they ended? In a draw, dust and dust.

  “If Medical Center won’t let me in, apply first to Johns Hopkins and then to every other joint in the book. Another reason why I want to stop in Switzerland is to look into the medical-school situation. I could talk to people there, explain things, and maybe they would let me in.

  “So get busy, dear, with those letters, and another thing: sell the pigs.
I want you to sell Kenneth the Tamworth boar and Duly and Minnie. Get rid of them.

  “We are funny creatures. We don’t see the stars as they are, so why do we love them? They are not small gold objects but endless fire.”

  Strange? Why shouldn’t it be strange? It is strange. It is all strange.

  “I haven’t been drinking at all, here, except for a few nips taken while writing this letter. At lunch they serve you a native beer called ‘pombo’ which is pretty good. They ferment the pineapple. Everybody is very animated here. Folks with feathers, folks with ribbons, with scarf decorations, rings, bracelets, beads, shells, gold walnuts. Some of the harem women walk like giraffes. Their faces slope forward. The king’s face has very much of a slope. He is very brilliant and opinionated.

  “Sometimes I feel as though I had a whole troop of pygmies jumping up and down inside me, yelling and carrying on. Isn’t that odd? Other times I am very calm, calmer than I have ever been.

  “The king believes that one should have a suitable image of himself….”

  I believe that I tried to explain to Lily what Dahfu’s ideas were, but Romilayu lost the last few pages of the letter, and I suppose that it’s just as well that he did, for when I wrote them I had had quite a bit to drink. In one I think I said, or maybe I merely thought it, “I had a voice that said, I want! I want? I? It should have told me she wants, he wants, they want. And moreover, it’s love that makes reality reality. The opposite makes the opposite.”

  XX

  Romilayu and I said good-by in the morning and when he finally set off with the letter to Lily I had a very unwholesome feeling. My very stomach seemed to drop as his wrinkled face looked through the closing gates of the palace. I believe that he expected at the last minute to be called back by his changeable and irrational employer. But I only stood there in the carapacelike helmet and those pants which made me seem as though I had gotten lost from my troop of Zouaves. The gate shut on Romilayu’s scarred and seamed gaze, and I felt unreasonably low. But Tamba and Bebu diverted me from my sadness. As usual they saluted me by lying in the dust and putting my foot on their heads, and then Tamba settled herself on her belly so that Bebu might do the joxi with her feet. She trod her back, spine, neck, and buttocks, which seemed to give Tamba heavenly pleasure. She closed her eyes, groaning and basking. I thought I must try this one day; it must be beneficial, it contented these people so; however, this was not the day for it, I was too sad.