“Grun-tu-molani,” the old queen said.
“What’s that? What does she say?”
“Say, you want to live. Grun-tu-molani. Man want to live.”
“Yes, yes, yes! Molani. Me molani. She sees that? God will reward her, tell her, for saying it to me. I’ll reward her myself. I’ll annihilate and blast those frogs clear out of that cistern, sky-high, they’ll wish they had never come down from the mountains to bother you. Not only I molani for myself, but for everybody. I could not bear how sad things have become in the world and so I set out because of this molani. Grun-tu-molani, old lady — old queen. Grun-tu-molani, everybody!” I raised my helmet to all the family and members of the court. “Grun-tu-molani. God does not shoot dice with our souls, and therefore grun-tu-molani.” They muttered back, smiling at me, “Tu-molani.” Mtalba, with her lips shut, but the rest of her face expanded to a remarkable extent with happiness and her little henna-dipped hands with puckered wrists at rest on her hips, was looking into my eyes meltingly.
VIII
Now, I come from a stock that has been damned and derided for more than a hundred years, and when I sat smashing bottles beside the eternal sea it wasn’t only my great ancestors, the ambassadors and statesmen, that people were recalling, but the loony ones as well. One got himself mixed up in the Boxer Rebellion, believing he was an Oriental; one was taken for $300,000 by an Italian actress; one was carried away in a balloon while publicizing the suffrage movement. There have been plenty of impulsive or imbecile parties in our family (in French Am-Bay-Seel is a stronger term). A generation ago one of the Henderson cousins got the Corona Italia medal for rescue work during the earthquake at Messina, Sicily. He was tired of rotting from idleness at Rome. He was bored, and would ride his horse inside the Palazzo down from his bedroom and into the salon. After the earthquake he reached Messina by the first train and it is said that he didn’t sleep for two entire weeks, but pulled apart hundreds of ruins and rescued countless families. This indicates that a service ideal exists in our family, though sometimes in a setting of mad habit. One of the old Hendersons, although far from being a minister, used to preach to his neighbors, and he would call them by hitting a bell in his yard with a crowbar. They all had to come.
They say that I resemble him. We have the same neck size, twenty-two. I might cite the fact that I held up a mined bridge in Italy and kept it from collapsing until the engineers arrived. But this is in the line of military duty, and a better instance was provided by my behavior in the hospital when I broke my leg. I spent all my time in the children’s wards, entertaining and cheering up the kids. On my crutches I hopped around the entire place in a hospital gown; I couldn’t be bothered to tie the tapes and was open behind, and the old nurses ran after me to cover me, but I wouldn’t hold still.
Here we were in the farthest African mountains-damn it, they couldn’t be much farther! — and it was a shame that these good people should suffer so from frogs. But it was natural for me to want to relieve them. It so happened that this was something I could probably do, and it was the least that I could undertake under the circumstances. Look what this Queen Willatale had done for me-read my character, revealed the grun-tu-molani to me. I figured that these Arnewi, no exception to the rules, had developed unevenly; they might have the wisdom of life, but when it came to frogs they were helpless. This I already had explained to my own satisfaction. The Jews had Jehovah, but wouldn’t defend themselves on the Sabbath. And the Eskimos would perish of hunger with plenty of caribou around because it was forbidden to eat caribou in fish season, or fish in caribou season. Everything depends on the values-the values. And where’s reality? I ask you, where is it? I myself, dying of misery and boredom, had happiness, and objective happiness, too, all around me, as abundant as the water in that cistern where cattle were forbidden to drink. And therefore I thought, this will be one of those mutual-aid deals; where the Arnewi are irrational I’ll help them, and where I’m irrational they’ll help me.
The moon had already come forward with her long face toward the east and a fleece of clouds behind. It gave me something to gauge the steepness of the mountains by, and I believe they approached the ten-thousand-foot mark. The evening air turned very green and yet the beams of the moon kept their whiteness intact. The thatch became more than ever like feathers, dark, heavy, and plumy. I said to Prince Itelo as we were standing beside one of these iridescent heaps — his company of wives and relatives were still in attendance with the squash. flower parasols—“Prince, I’m going to have a shot at those animals in the cistern. Because I am sure I can handle them. You aren’t involved at all, and don’t even have to give an opinion one way or another. I’m doing this on my own responsibility.”
“Oh, Mistah Henderson-you ’strodinary man. But sir. Do not be carry away.”
“Ha, ha, Prince-pardon me, but this is where you happen to be wrong. If I don’t get carried away I never accomplish anything. But that’s okay,” I said. “Just forget about it.”
So then he left us at our hut and Romilayu and I had supper, which consisted mainly of cold yams and hard tack, to which I added a supplement of vitamin pills. On top of this I had a slug of whisky and then I said, “Come on, Romilayu, we’ll go over to that cistern and case it by moonlight.” I took along a flashlight to use under the thatch, for, as previously noted, a shed was built over it.
These frogs really had it better than anyone else. Here, due to the moisture, grew the only weeds in the village, and this odd variety of mountain frog, mottled green and white, was hopping and splashing, swimming. They say the air is the final home of the soul, but I think that as far as the senses go you probably can’t find a sweeter medium than water. So the life of those frogs must have been beautiful, and they fulfilled their ideal, it seemed to me, as they coasted by our feet with those bright wet skins and their white legs and the emotional throats, their eyes like bubbles. While the rest of us, represented by Romilayu and me, were hot and sweaty, burning. In the thatch-intensified shadow of evening my face felt as if it were on fire, as if it were the opening of a volcano. My jaws were all swelled out and I half believed that if I had turned off the flashlight we could have seen those frogs in the cistern by the glare emanating from me.
“They’ve got it very good, these creatures,” I said to Romilayu, “while it lasts.” And I swung the big flashlight to and fro over the water in which they were massed. Under other circumstances I might have taken a tolerant or even affectionate attitude toward them. Basically, I had nothing against them.
“What fo’ you laugh, sah?”
“Am I laughing? I didn’t realize,” I said. “These are really great singers. Back in Connecticut we have mostly cheepers, but these have bass voices. Listen,” I said, “I can make out all kinds of things. Ta dam-dam-dum. Agnus Dei-Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere no-ho-bis! It’s Mozart. Mozart, I swear! They’ve got a right to sing miserere, poor little bastards, as the hinge of fate is about to swing back on them.”
“Poor little bastards” was what I said, but in actual fact I was gloating-yuck-yuck-yuck! My heart was already fattening in anticipation of their death. We hate death, we fear death, but when you get right down to cases, there’s nothing like it. I was sorry for the cows, yes, and on the humane side I was fine. I checked out one hundred per cent. But still I hungered to let fall the ultimate violence on these creatures in the cistern.