If the contest had taken place within nature he would have won, I am willing to bet, but he was not matched against mere bone and muscle. It was a question of spirit, too, for when it comes to struggling I am in a special class. From earliest times I have struggled without rest. But I said, “Your Highness, don’t take it so hard.” He had covered his face with his hands, the color of washed stone, and didn’t even try to rise from the ground. When I tried to comfort him I could think only of things such as Lily would have said. I know damned well that she would have flushed white and looked straight ahead and stalled to speak under her breath, fairly incoherent. She would have said that any man was only flesh and bone, and that everyone who took pride in his strength would be humbled by and by, and so on. I can tell you by the yard all that Lily would have said, but I myself could only feel for him, dumbly. It wasn’t enough that they should be suffering from drought and the plague of frogs, but on top of it all I had to appear from the desert — to manifest myself in the dry bed of the Arnewi River with my Austrian lighter — and come into town and throw him twice in succession. The prince now got on his knees, scooping dust on his head, and then he took my foot in the suede, rubber-soled desert boot and put it on his head. In this position he cried much harder than the maiden and the delegation who had greeted us by the mud-and-thorn wall of the town. But I have to tell you that it wasn’t the defeat alone that made him cry like this. He was in the midst of a great and mingled emotional experience. I tried to get my foot off the top of his head, but he held it there persistently, saying, “Oh, Mistah Hendersonl Henderson, I know you now. Oh, sir, I know you now.”
I couldn’t say what I felt, which was: “No, you don’t. You never could. Grief has kept me in condition and that’s why this body is so tough. Lifting stones and pouring concrete and chopping wood and toiling with the pigs — my strength isn’t happy strength. It wasn’t a fair match. Take it from me, you are a better man.”
Somehow I could never make myself lose any contest, no matter how hard I tried. Even playing checkers with my little children, regardless how I maneuvered to let them win and even while their lips trembled with disappointment (oh, the little kids would be sure to hate me), I would jump all over the board and say rudely, “King me!” though all the while I would be saying to myself, “Oh, you fool, you fool, you fool!”
But I didn’t really understand how the prince felt until he rose and wrapped his arms about me and laid his dusty head on my shoulder, saying we were friends now. This hit me where I lived, right in the vital centers, both with suffering and with gratification. I said, “Your Highness, I’m proud. I’m glad.” He took my hand, and if this was awkward it was stirring also. I was covered with a strong flush which is the radiance an older fellow may allowably feel after such a victory. But I tried to deprecate the whole thing and said to him, “I have experience on my side. You’ll never know how much and what kind.”
He answered, “I know you now, sir, I do know you.”
VII
The news of my victory was given out as we left the hut by the dust on Itelo’s head and by his manner in walking beside me, so that the people applauded as I came into the sunshine, pulling on my T-shirt and setting the helmet back into place. The women flapped their hands at me from the wrist while opening their mouths to almost the same degree. The men made whistling noises on their fingers, spreading their cheeks wide apart. Far from looking hangdog or grudging, the prince himself participated in the ovation, pointing at me and smiling, and I said to Romilayu, “You know something? This is really a sweet bunch of Africans. I love them.”
Queen Willatale and her sister Mtalba were waiting for me under a thatched shed in the queen’s courtyard. The queen was seated on a bench made of poles with a red blanket displayed flagwise behind her, and as we came forward, Romilayu with the bag of presents on his back, the old lady opened her lips and smiled at me. To me she was typical of a certain class of elderly lady. You will understand what I mean, perhaps, if I say that the flesh of her arm overlapped the elbow. As far as I am concerned this is the golden seal of character. With not many teeth, she smiled warmly and held out her hand, a relatively small one. Good nature emanated from her; it seemed to puff out on her breath as she sat smiling with many small tremors of benevolence and congratulation and welcome. Itelo indicated that I should give the old woman a hand, and I was astonished when she took it and buried it between her breasts. This is the normal form of greeting here — Itelo had put my hand against his breast-but from a woman I didn’t anticipate the same. On top of everything else, I mean the radiant heat and the monumental weight which my hand received, there was the calm pulsation of her heart participating in the introduction. This was as regular as the rotation of the earth, and it was a surprise to me; my mouth came open and my eyes grew fixed as if I were touching the secrets of life; but I couldn’t keep my hand there forever and I came to myself and drew it out. Then I returned the courtesy, I held her hand on my chest and said, “Me Henderson. Henderson.” The whole court applauded to see how fast I caught on. So I thought, “Hurray for me!” and drew an endless breath into my lungs.
The queen expressed stability in every part of her body. Her head was white and her face broad and solid and she was wrapped in a lion’s skin. Had I known then what I know now about lions, this would have told me much about her. Even so, it impressed me. It was the skin of a maned lion, with the wide part not on the front where you would have expected it, but on her back. The tail came down over her shoulder while the paw was drawn up from beneath, and these two ends were tied in a knot over her belly. I can’t even begin to tell you how it pleased me. The mane with its plunging hair she wore as a collar, and on this grizzly and probably itching hair she rested her chin. But there was a happy light in her face. And then I observed that she had a defective eye, with a cataract, bluish white. I made the old lady a deep bow, and she began to laugh and her lion-bound belly shook and she wagged her head with its dry white hair at the picture I made bowing in those short pants while I presented my inflamed features, for the blood rushed into my face as I bent.
I expressed regret at the trouble they were having, the drought and the cattle and the frogs, and I said I thought I knew what it was to suffer from a plague and sympathized. I realized that they had to feed on the bread of tears and I hoped I wasn’t going to be a bother here. This was translated by Itelo and I think it was well received by the old lady but when I spoke of troubles she smiled right along, as steady as the moonlight at the bottom of a stream. Meanwhile my heart was all stirred and I swore to myself every other minute that I would do something, I would make a contribution here. “I hope I may die,” I said to myself, “if I don’t drive out, exterminate, and crush those frogs.”
I then told Romilayu to start with the presents. And first of all he brought out a plastic raincoat in a plastic envelope. I scowled at him, ashamed to offer this cheap stuff to the old queen, but as a matter of fact I had a perfectly good excuse, which was that I was traveling light. Moreover, I meant to render them a service here that would make the biggest present look silly. But the queen put her hands together at the wrists and flapped them at me more deliberately than the other ladies did, and smiled with marvelous constitutional gaiety. Some of the other women in attendance did the same and those who were holding infants lifted them up as if to impress the phenomenal visitor on their memories. The men drew their mouths wide, whistling on their fingers harmoniously. Years ago the chauffeur’s son, Vince, tried to teach me how to do this and I held my fingers in my mouth until the skin wrinkled, but could never bring out those shrieking noises. Therefore I decided that as my reward for ridding them of the vermin, I would ask them to teach me to whistle. I thought it would be thrilling to pipe on my own fingers like that.