I spoke to him, but he was so worried he scarcely seemed to hear. I said, “Man, don’t be in such a funk, what can they do? Jail us? Deport us? Hold us for ransom? Crucify us?” But my confidence did not reach him. I then told him, “Why don’t you ask if they’re taking us to the king? He’s Itelo’s friend. I’m positive he speaks English.” In a discouraged voice Romilayu tried to inquire of one of these troopers, but he only said, “Harrrff!” And the muscles of his cheek had that familiar tightness which belongs to the soldier’s trade. I identified it right away.
After two or three miles of this quick march upward, scrambling, crawling, and trotting, we came in sight of the town. Unlike the Arnewi village, it had bigger buildings, some of them wooden, and much expanded under the red light of that time of day, which was between sunset and blackness. On one side night had already come in and the evening star had begun to spin and throb. The white stone of the vicinity had a tendency to fall from the domes in round shapes, in bowls or circles, and these bowls were in use in the town for ornamental purposes. Flowers were growing in them in front of the palace, the largest of the red buildings. Before it were several fences of thorn and these rocks, about the size of Pacific man-eating clams, held fierce flowers, of a very red color. As we passed, two sentries screwed themselves into a brace, but we were not marched between them. To my surprise we went by and were taken through the center of town and out among the huts. People left their evening meal to come and have a look, laughing and making high-pitched exclamations. The huts were pretty ordinary, hive-shaped and thatched. There were cattle, and I dimly saw gardens in the last of the light, so I supposed they were better supplied with water here, and on that score they were safe from my help. I didn’t take it hard that they laughed at me, but adopted an attitude of humoring them and waved my hand and tipped my helmet. However, I didn’t care one bit for this. It annoyed me not to have been given an immediate audience with King Dahfu.
They led us into a yard and ordered us to sit on the ground near the wall of a house somewhat larger than the rest. A white band was painted over the door, indicating an official residence. Here the patrol that had captured us went away, leaving only one fellow to guard us. I could have grabbed his gun and made scrap metal of it in one single twist, but what was the use of that? I let him stand at my back and waited. Five or six hens in this enclosed yard were pecking at an hour when they should have gone to roost, and a few naked kids played a game resembling skip rope and chanted with thick tongues. Unlike the Arnewi children, they didn’t come near us. The sky was like terra cotta and then like pink gum, unfamiliar to my nostrils. Then final darkness. The hens and the kids disappeared, and this left us by the feet of the armed fellow, alone.
We waited, and for a violent person waiting is often a bed of troubles. I believed that the man who kept us waiting, the black Wariri magistrate or J.P. or examiner, was just letting us cool our bottoms. Maybe he had taken a look through the rushes of the door while there was still light enough to see my face. This might well have astonished him and so he was reflecting on it, trying to figure out what line to take with me. Or perhaps he was merely curled up in there like an ant to wear out my patience.
And I was certainly affected; I was badly upset. I am probably the worst waiter in the world. I don’t know what it is but I am no good at it, it does something to my spirit. Thus I sat, tired and worried, on the ground, and my thoughts were mainly fears. Meanwhile the beautiful night crawled on as a continuum of dark and warmth, drawing the main star with it; and then the moon came along, incomplete and spotted. The unknown examiner was sitting within, and he exulted probably over the indignity of the grand white traveler whose weapons had been taken away and who had to wait without supper.
And now one of those things occurred which life has not been willing to spare me. As I was sitting waiting here on this exotic night I bit into a hard biscuit and I broke one of my bridges. I had worried about that-what would I do in the wilds of Africa if I damaged my dental work? Fear of this has often kept me out of fights and at the time I was wrestling with Itelo and was thrown so heavily on my face I had thought about the effect on my teeth. Back home, unthinkingly eating a caramel in the movies or biting a chicken bone in a restaurant, I don’t know how many times I felt a pulling or a grinding and quickly investigated with my tongue, while my heart almost stopped. This time the dreaded thing really happened and I chewed broken teeth together with the hardtack. I felt the jagged shank of the bridge and was furious, disgusted, frightened; damn! I was in despair and there were tears in my eyes.
“Whut so mattah?” said Romilayu.
I took out the lighter and fired it up and I showed him fragments of tooth in my hand, and pulled open my lip, raising the flame so that he could look inside. “I have broken some teeth,” I said.
“Oh! Bad! You got lot so pain, sah?”
“No, no pain. Just anguish of spirit,” I said. “It couldn’t have happened at a worse time.” Then I realized that he was horrified to see these molars in the palm of my hand and I blew out the light.
After this I was compelled to recall the history of my dental work.
The first major job was undertaken after the war, in Paris, by Mlle. Montecuccoli. The original bridge was put in by her. You see, there was a girl named Berthe, who was hired to take care of our two daughters, who recommended her. A General Montecuccoli was the last opponent of the great Marshal Turenne. Enemies used to attend each other’s funerals in the old days, and Montecuccoli went to Turenne’s and beat his breast and sobbed. I appreciated this connection. However, there were many things wrong. Mlle. Montecuccoli had a large bust, and when she forgot herself in the work she pressed down on my face and smothered me, and there were so many drains and dams and blocks of wood in my mouth that I couldn’t even holler. Mlle. Montecuccoli with fearfully roused black eyes was meanwhile staring in. She had her office in the Rue du Colisée. There was a stone court, all yellow and gray, with shrunken poubelles, cats tugging garbage out, brooms, pails, and a latrine with slots for your shoes. The elevator was like a sedan chair and went so slowly you could ask the time of day from people on the staircase which wound around it. I had on a tweed suit and pigskin shoes. While waiting in the courtyard before the hut with the official stripe above the door, Romilayu beside me, and the guard standing over us both, I was forced to remember all this … Rising in the elevator. My heart is beating fast, and here is Mlle. Montecuccoli whose fifty-year-old face is heart-shaped, and who has a slender long smile of French, Italian, and Romanian (from her mother) pathos; and the large bust. And I sit down, dreading, and she starts to stifle me as she extracts the nerve from a tooth in order to anchor the bridge. And while fitting the same she puts a stick in my mouth and says, “Grincez! Grincez les dents! Fâchez-vous.” And so I grince and fâche for all I’m worth and eat the wood. She grinds her own teeth to show me how.
The mademoiselle thought that on artistic grounds American dentistry was inexcusable and she wanted to give me a new crown in front like the ones she had given Berthe, the children’s governess. When Berthe had her appendix out there was nobody but myself to visit her in the hospital. My wife was too busy at the Collège de France. Therefore I went, wearing a derby and carrying gloves. Then this Berthe pretended to be delirious and rolling in the bed with fever. She took my hand and bit it, and thus I knew that the teeth Mlle. Montecuccoli had given her were good and strong. Berthe had broad, shapely nostrils, too, and a pair of kicking legs. I went through a couple of troubled weeks over this same Berthe.