However, I couldn’t start at such an advanced point of my thought with the woman of Bittahness. I would have to work my way forward slowly so as to be sure of my ground. Therefore I said to Itelo, “Now please tell the queen for me, friend, that it does wonderful things for me simply to see her. I don’t know whether it’s her general appearance or the lion skin or what I feel emanating from her-anyway, it puts my soul at rest.”
This was transmitted by Itelo and then the queen leaned forward with a tiny falter of her stout body, smiling, and spoke.
“She say she like to see you, too.”
“Oh, really.” I was beaming. “This is simply great. This is a big moment for me. The skies are opening up. It’s a great privilege to be here.” Taking away my hand from Mtalba I put my arm around the prince and I shook my head, for I was utterly inspired and my heart was starting to brim over. “You know, you are really a stronger fellow than I am,” I said. “I am strong all right, but it’s the wrong kind of strength; it’s coarser; because I’m desperate. Whereas you really are strong — just strong.” The prince was affected by this and started to deny it, but I said, “Look, take it from me. If I tried to explain in detail it would be months and months before you even got a glimmer of what gives. My soul is like a pawn shop. I mean it’s filled with unredeemed pleasures, old clarinets, and cameras, and moth-eaten fur. But,” I said, “let’s not get into a debate over it. I am only trying to tell you how you make me feel out here in this tribe. You’re great, Itelo. I love you. I love the old lady, too. In fact you’re all pretty damned swell, and I’ll get rid of those frogs for you if I have to lay down my life to do it.” They all saw that I was moved, and the men began to make the hollow whistle on their fingers and spread their mouths so like satyrs and yet sweetly, softly.
“My aunt says what do you request, sir?”
“Oh, does she? Well, that’s wonderful. For a starter ask her what she sees in me since I find it so hard to tell her who I am.”
Itelo delivered the question and Willatale furrowed up her brow in that flexible way peculiar to the Arnewi as a whole, which let the hemisphere of the eye be seen, purely, glistening with human intention; while the other, the white one, though blind, communicated humor as if she were giving me a wink to last me a lifetime. This closed white shutter also signified her inwardness to me. She spoke slowly without removing her gaze, and her fingers moved on her old thigh, shortened by her stoutness, as if taking an impression from Braille. Itelo transmitted her words. “You have, sir, a large personallty. Strong. (I add agreement to her.) Your mind is full of thought. Possess some fundamental! of Bittahness, also.” (Good, good!) “You love send …” (It took him several seconds to find the word while I was standing, consumed-in this colorful court, on the gold soil, surroundings tinged by crimson, by black; the twigs of the bushes brown and smelling like cinnamon-consumed by desire to hear the judgment of her wisdom on me.)
“Send-sations.” I nodded, and Willatale proceeded. “Says … you are very sore, oh, sir! Mistah Henderson. You heart is barking.” “That’s correct,” I said, “with all three heads, like Cerberus the watch dog. But why is it barking?” He, however, was listening to her and leaning from the balls of his feet, as if appalled to hear with what kind of fellow he had gone to the mat in the customary ceremony of acquaintance. “Frenezy,” he said. “Yes, yes. I’ll confirm that,” I said. “The woman has a real gift.” And I encouraged her. “Tell me, tell me, Queen Willatale! I want the truth. I don’t want you to spare me.” “Suffah,” said Itelo, and Mtalba picked up my hand in sympathy. “Yes, I certainly do.” “She say now, Mistah Henderson, that you have a great copacity, indicated by your largeness, and especially your nose.” My eyes were big and sad and I touched my face. Beauty certainly vanishes. “I was once a good-looking fellow,” I said, “but it certainly is a nose I can smell the whole world with. It comes down to me from the founder of my family. He was a Dutch sausage-maker and became the most unscrupulous capitalist in America.”
“You excuse queen. She is fond on you and say she do not wish to make you trouble.”
“Because I have enough already. But look, Your Highness, I didn’t come to shilly-shally, so don’t say anything to inhibit her. I want it straight.”
The woman of Bittahness began to speak again, slowly, dwelling on my appearance with her one-eyed dreamy look.
“What does she say-what does she say?”
“She say she wish you tell her, sir, why you come. She know you have to come across mountain and walk a very long time. You not young, Mistah Henderson, You weight maybe a hundred-fifty kilogram; your face have many colors. You are built like an old locomotif. Very strong, yes, I know. Sir, I concede. But so much flesh as a big monument …”
I listened, smarting at his words, my eyes wincing into their surrounding wrinkles. And then I sighed and said, “Thank you for your frankness. I know it’s peculiar that I came all this way with my guide over the desert. Please tell the queen that I did it for my health.” This surprised Itelo, so that he gave a startled laugh. “I know,” I said, “superficially I don’t look sick. And it sounds monstrous that anybody with my appearance should still care about himself, his health or anything else. But that’s how it is. Oh, it’s miserable to be human. You get such queer diseases. Just because you’re human and for no other reason. Before you know it, all the years go by, you’re just like other people you have seen, with all those peculiar human ailments. Just another vehicle for temper and vanity and rashness and all the rest. Who wants it? Who needs it? These things occupy the place where a man’s soul should be. But as long as she has started I want her to read me the whole indictment. I can fill her in on a lot of counts, though I don’t think I would have to. She seems to know. Lust, rage, and all the rest of it. A regular bargain basement of deformities …”
Itelo hesitated, then transmitted as much of this as he could to the queen. She nodded with sympathetic earnestness, slowly opening and closing her hand on the knot of lion skin, and gazing at the roof of the shed-those pipes of amber bamboo and the peaceful symmetrical palm leaves of the thatch. Her hair floated like a million spider lines, while the fat of her arms hung down over her elbows. “She say,” Itelo translated carefully, “world is strange to a child. You not a child, sir?”
“Oh, how wonderful she is,” I said. “True, all too true. I have never been at home in life. All my decay has taken place upon a child.” I clasped my hands, and staring at the ground I started to reflect with this inspiration. And when it comes to reflection I am like the third man in a relay race. I can hardly wait to get the baton, but when I do get it I rarely take off in the necessary direction. So what I thought was something like this: The world may be strange to a child, but he does not fear it the way a man fears. He marvels at it. But the grown man mainly dreads it. And why? Because of death. So he arranges to have himself abducted like a child. So what happens will not be his fault. And who is this kidnaper— this gipsy? It is the strangeness of life — a thing that makes death more remote, as in childhood. I was pretty proud of myself, I tell you. And I said to Itelo, “Please say to the old lady for me that most people hate to meet up with a man’s trouble. Trouble stinks. So I won’t forget your generosity. Now listen — listen,” I said to Willatale and Mtalba and Itelo and the members of the court. I started to sing from Handel’s Messiah: “He was despised and rejected, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” and from this I took up another part of the same oratorio, “For who shall abide the day of His coming, and who shall stand when He appeareth?” Thus I sang while Willatale, the woman of Bittahness, queen of the Arnewi, softly shook her head; perhaps admiringly. Mtalba’s face gleamed with a similar expression and her forehead began to fold softly upward toward the stiffly standing indigo hair, while the ladies flapped and the men whistled in chorus. “Oh, good show, sir. My friend,” Itelo said. Only Romilayu, stocky, muscular, short, and wrinkled, seemed disapproving, but due to his wrinkles he had an ingrained expression of that type, and he may have felt no disapproval at all.