Read Online Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow - Free Book Online Page B

whose sobbing had almost stopped. Just then I deeply felt my physical discrepancies. My face is like some sort of terminal; it's like Grand Central, I mean--the big horse nose and the wide mouth that opens into the nostrils, and eyes like tunnels. So I stood there waiting, surrounded by this black humanity in the aromatic dust, with the inanimate brilliance coming off the thatch of the huts near by. Then the man with whom Romilayu had been speaking came up and talked to me in English, which astonished me, for I would never have thought that people who spoke English would have been capable of carrying on so emotionally. However, he was not one of those who had carried on. From his size alone I felt he must be an important person, for he was built very heavily and had an inch or two on me in stature. But he was not ponderous, as I am, he was muscular; nor was he naked like the others, but wore a piece of white cloth tied to his thighs rather than on his hips proper, and around his belly was a green silk scarf, and he had a short loose middy type of blouse, which he wore very free to give his arms lots of play, which owing to the big muscles they needed. At first he was rather heavy of expression and I thought he might be looking for trouble, sizing me up as if I were some kind of human mushroom, imposing in size but not hard to knock over. I was very upset, but what upset me was not his expression, which soon changed for the better; it was, among other things, the fact that he spoke to me in English. I don't know why I should have been so surprised--disappointed is the word. It's the great imperial language of today, taking its turn after Greek and Latin and so on. The Romans weren't surprised, I don't think, when some Parthian or Numidian started to speak to them in Latin; they probably took it for granted. But when this fellow, built like a champion, in his white drooping cloth and his scarf and middy, addressed me in English, I was both shaken up and grieved. Preparing to speak he put his pale, slightly freckled lips into position, moving them forward, and said, "I am Itelo. I am here to introduce. Welcome. And how do you do?" "What? What?" I said, holding my ear. "Itelo." He bowed. Quickly, I too bent and bowed in the short pants and corky white helmet with my overheated face and great nose. My face can be like the clang of a bell, and because I am hard of hearing on the right side I have a way of swinging the left into position, listening in profile and fixing my eyes on some object to help my concentration. So I did. I waited for him to say more, sweating boisterously, for I was confounded down to the ground. I couldn't believe it; I was so sure that I had left the world. And who could blame me, after that trip across the mountain floor on which there was no footprint, the stars flaming like oranges, those multimillion tons of exploding gas looking so mild and fresh in the dark of the sky; and altogether, that freshness, you know, that like autumn freshness when you go out of the house in the morning and find the flowers have waked in the frost with piercing life? When I experienced this in the desert, night and morning, feeling everything to be so simplified, I was quite sure that I had gone clean out of the world, for, as is common knowledge, the world is complex. And besides, the antiquity of the place had struck me so, I was sure I had got into someplace new. And the weeping delegation; but here was someone who obviously had been around, as he spoke English, and I had been boasting, "Show me your enemies and I'll kill them. Where is the man-eater, lead me to him." And setting bushes on fire, and performing the manual of arms, and making like a regular clown. I felt extremely ridiculous, and I gave Romilayu a dark, angry look, as though it were his fault for not having briefed me properly. But this native, Itelo, did not mean to work me over because of my behavior on arrival. It never seemed to enter his mind, even. He