I never expected to see such a color in Africa, I swear. And I was worried lest it pass before I could get everything I should out of it. So I put my face, my nose, to the surface of this wall. I pressed my nose to it as though it were a precious rose, and knelt there on those old knees, lined and grieved-looking; like carrots; and I inhaled, I snuckered through my nose and caressed the wall with my cheek. My soul was in quite a condition, but not hectically excited; it was a state as mild as the color itself. I said to myself, “I knew that this place was of old.” Meaning, I had sensed from the first that I might find things here which were of old, which I saw when I was still innocent and have longed for ever since, for all my life-and without which I could not make it. My spirit was not sleeping then, I can tell you, but was saying, Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho!
Gradually the light changed, as it was bound to do, but at least I had seen it again, like the fringe of the Nirvana, and I let it go without a struggle, hoping it would come again before another fifty years had passed. As otherwise I would be condemned to die a mere old rioter or dumb-sock with three million dollars, a slave to low-grade fear and turbulence.
So now when I turned my thoughts to the relief of the Arnewi, I was a different person, or thought I was. I had passed through something, a vital experience. It was exactly the opposite at Banyules-sur-Mer with the octopus in the tank. That had spoken to me of death and I would never have tackled any big project after seeing that cold head pressed against the glass and growing paler and paler. After the good omen of the light I approached the making of a bomb with confidence, although it presented me with no small amount of problems. It would require all the know-how I had. Especially the fuse, and the whole question of timing. I’d have to wait until the last possible moment before throwing my device into the water. Now, I had followed with great interest the story in the papers of the bomb-scare man in New York, the fellow who had quarreled with the electric company and was bent on revenge. Diagrams of his bombs taken from a locker in Grand Central Station had appeared in the News or Mirror, and I was so absorbed in them I missed my subway stop (the violin case being between my knees). For I had some pretty accurate ideas about the design of a bomb and always found them of great interest. He had used gas pipes, I believe. I thought then I could have made a better bomb at home but of course I had the advantage on my side of officers’ training in the infantry school where there had been a certain amount of guerrilla instruction. However, even a factory-made grenade might have failed in that cistern and the whole thing presented a considerable challenge.
And sitting on the ground with my materials between my legs and my helmet pushed back, I concentrated on the job before me, breaking open the shells and emptying the powder into the flashlight case. I have a positive ability to lose myself in practical tasks. God knows that in the country where I have had so many fights it has become harder and harder for me to find help and I have of necessity turned into my own handy-man. I am best at rough carpentry, roofing, and painting, and not so hot as an electrician or plumber. It may not be correct to say that I have an ability to lose myself in practical work; rather what happens is that I become painfully intense, and this is true even when I lay out a game of solitaire. I took out the glass end of the flashlight with the little bulb and fitted it tightly with a circle of wood whittled to shape. Through this I made a hole for the fuse. Now came the tricky part, for the functioning of the apparatus depended on the rate at which the fuse would burn. With this I experimented now and I did not look at Romilayu often, but when I did I saw him shake his head in doubt. To this I tried to pay no attention, but I said at last, “Hell, don’t throw gloom. Can’t you see that I know what I’m doing?” However, I could see I didn’t have his confidence, and so I cursed him in my heart and went on with my lighter, setting fire to lengths of various materials to see how they would burn. But if I could get no support from Romilayu there was at least Mtalba, who returned at an early hour of the morning. She was now wearing a pair of transparent violet trousers and one of those veils over her nose, and she took my hand and pressed it on her breast with great liveliness, as if we had reached an understanding last night. She was full of pep. Serenaded by the rhinoceros-foot xylophone and occasionally a chorus of finger whistles she began to stride-if that is the word (to wade?)-to do her dance, shaking and jolting her rich flesh, her face ornamented with a smile of coquetry and love. She recited to the court what she was doing and what I was doing (Romilayu translating). “The woman of Bittahness who loves the great wrestler, the man who is like two men who have grown together, came to him in the night.” “She came to him,” said the others. “She brought him the bride price”-here followed an inventory which included about twenty head of cattle who were all named and their genealogy given—“and the bride price was very noble. For she is Bittah and very beautiful. And the bridegroom’s face has many colors.” “Colors, colors.” “And it has hair upon it, the cheeks hang and he is stronger than many bulls. The bride’s heart is ready, its doors are standing open. The groom is making a thing.” “A thing.” “With fire.” “Fire.” And sometimes Mtalba kissed her hand in token of my own, and held it out to me, and her face in the lines about the nose exhibited those signs of love-suffering, the pains of love. Meanwhile I was burning a shoelace dipped in lighter fluid, watching closely, my head stooped between my knees, to see how it took the spark. Not bad, I thought. It was promising. A little coal descended. As for Mtalba, time was when I would have felt differently about the love she offered me. It would have seemed much more serious a matter. But, ah! The deep creases have begun to set in beside my ears and once in a while when I raise my head in front of the mirror a white hair appears in my nose, and therefore I told myself it was an imaginary Henderson, a Henderson of her mind she had fallen in love with. Thinking of this, I dropped my lids and nodded my head. But all the while I continued to burn scraps of wick and shoelace and even wisps of paper, and it turned out that a section of shoelace, held for about two minutes in the lighter fluid, served better than any other material. Accordingly I prepared a section of the lace taken from one of my desert boots and threaded it through the hole prepared in the wood block and then I said to Romilayu, “I think she’s ready to go.”
From stooping over the work I had a dizzy thickness at the back of the head, but it was all right. Owing to the vision of the pink light I was firm of purpose and believed in myself, and I couldn’t allow Romilayu to show his doubts and forebodings so openly. I said, “Now, you’ve got to quit this, Romilayu. I am entitled to your trust, this once. I tell you it is going to work.”
“Yes, sah,” he said.
“I don’t want you to think I’m not capable of doing a good job.”
He said again, “Yes, sah.”
“There is that poem about the nightingale singing that humankind cannot stand too much reality. But how much unreality can it stand? Do you follow? You understand me?”
“Me unnastand, sah.”
“I fired that question right back at the nightingale. So what if reality may be terrible? It’s better than what we’ve got.”
“Kay, sah. Okay.”
“All right, I let you out of it. It’s better than what I’ve got. But every man feels from his soul that he has got to carry his life to a certain depth. Well, I have to go on because I haven’t reached that depth yet. You get it?”
“Yes, sah.”
“Hah! Life may think it has got me written off in its records. Henderson: type so and so, with the auk and the platypus and other experiments illustrating such-and-such a principle, and laid aside. But life may find itself surprised, for after all, we are men. I am Man-I myself, singular as it may look. Man. And man has many times tricked life when life thought it had him taped.”