Now the examiner made a curious request. Would I please take off my shirt? At this I balked a little and wanted to know What for. Romilayu couldn’t tell me. I was somewhat worried and I said to him in low tones, “Listen, what’s all this about?”
“I no know.”
“Well, ask the guy.”
Romilayu did as I had bid him but only got a repetition of the request.
“Ask him,” I said, “if then he’ll let us go to sleep peacefully.”
As if he understood my terms, the examiner nodded, and I stripped off my T-shirt, which was greatly in need of a wash. The examiner then came up to me and looked me over very closely, which made me feel awkward. I wondered whether I might be asked to wrestle among the Wariri as I had been by Itelo; I thought perhaps I had strayed into a wrestling’ part of Africa, where it was the customary mode of introduction. However, this did not seem to be the case.
“Well, Romilayu,” I said, “it could be that they want to sell us into slavery. There are reports that they still keep Slaves in Saudi Arabia. God! What a slave I’d make. Ha. ha!” I was still in a jesting frame of mind, you see. “Or do they want to put me into a pit and cover me with coals and bake me? The pygmies do that with elephants. It takes about a week’s time.”
While I was still kidding like this the examiner continued to size me up. I pointed to the name Frances, tattooed at Coney Island so many years ago, and explained that this was the name of my first wife. He did not seem much interested.
I put on my sweaty shirt again and said, “Ask him if we can see the king.” This time the examiner was willing to reply. The king, Romilayu translated, wanted to see me tomorrow and to talk to me in my own language.
“That’s wonderful,” I said. “I have a thing or two to ask him.”
Tomorrow, Romilayu repeated, King Dahfu wanted to see me. Yes, yes. In the morning before the day-long ceremonies to end the drought were begun.
“Oh, is that so?” I said. “In that case let’s have a little sleep.”
So we were allowed at last to rest, not that much of the night remained. All too soon the roosters were screaming and I awoke and grew aware first of foaming red clouds and the huge channel of the approaching sunrise. I then sat up, remembering that the king wished to see us early. Just inside the doorway, against the wall, sitting in very much my own posture, was the dead man. Someone had fetched him back from the ravine.
XII
I swore. “This is brainwashing.” And I resolved that they would never drive me out of my mind. I had seen dead men before this, plenty of them. In the last year of the war I shared the European continent with about fifteen million of them, though it’s always the individual case that’s the worst. The corpse was sadly covered with the dust into which I had thrown it, and now that they had fetched him back, my relations with him were no secret, and I decided to sit tight and await the outcome of events. There was nothing more for me to do. Romilayu was still asleep, his hand pressed between his knees, the other under his wrinkled cheek. I saw no reason to wake him. And leaving him in the hut with the dead man, I went into the open air. I was aware of a great peculiarity either in myself or in the day, or in both. I must have been getting the fever from which I was to suffer for a while. It was accompanied by a scratchy sensation in my bosom, a little like eagerness or longing. In the nerves between my ribs this was especially noticeable. It was one of those mixed sensations, comparable to what one feels when smelling the fumes of gasoline. The air was warm and swooning about my face; the colors were all high. Those colors were extraordinary. No doubt my impressions were a consequence of stress and of lack of sleep.
As this was a day of festival the town was already beginning to jump, people were running about, and whether or not they knew whom Romilayu and I had in our hut was never revealed to me. A sweet, spicy smell of native beer burst from the straw walls. The drinking here began apparently at sunrise; there was also a certain amount of what seemed to be drunken noise. I took a cautious walk around and no one paid any particular attention to me, which I interpreted as a good sign. There appeared to be quite a few family quarrels, and some of the older people were particularly abusive and waspish. At which I marveled. A small stone struck me in the helmet, but I assumed it was not aimed at me, for kids were throwing pebbles at one another and tussling, rolling in the dust. A woman ran from her hut and swept them away, screaming and cuffing them. She did not seem particularly astonished to find herself face to face with me, but turned around and re-entered her house. I peeked in and saw an old fellow lying there on a straw mat. She trod on his back with her bare feet in a kind of massage calculated to straighten out his spinal column, after which she poured liquid fat on him and she skillfully rubbed him, ribs and belly. His forehead wrinkled and his grizzled beard parted. Baring his great old teeth he smiled at me, rolling his eyes toward the doorway where I was standing. “What gives here?” I was thinking, and I went about the small, narrow lanes and looked into the yards and over fences, cautiously, of course, and mindful of the sleeping Romilayu and the dead man sitting against the wall. Several young women were gilding the horns of cattle and painting and ornamenting one another too, putting on ostrich feathers, vulture feathers, and ornaments. Some of the men wore human jaw bones as neckpieces under their chins. The idols and fetishes were being dressed up and whitewashed, receiving sacrifices. An ancient woman with hair in small and rigid braids had dumped yellow meal over one of these figures and was swinging a freshly killed chicken over it. Meanwhile the noise grew in volume, every minute something new added, a rattle, a snare drum, a deeper drum, a horn blast, or a gunshot.
I saw Romilayu come from the door of our hut, and you didn’t have to be a fine observer to see what a state he was in. I went toward him and when he caught sight of me above the gathering crowd, probably spotting that white shell on my head, the helmet, before any other portion, he put his hand to his cheek wincingly.
“Yes, yes, yes,” I said, “but what can we do? We’ll just have to wait. It may not mean a thing. Anyway, the king-what’s his name, Itelo’s friend, we’re supposed to see him this morning. Any minute now he’ll send for us and I’ll take it up with him. Don’t you worry, Romilayu, I’ll soon find out what gives. Don’t you let on to a thing. Bring our stuff out of the hut and keep an eye on it.”
Then with a sort of fast march which was played on the drums, deep drums carried by women of unusual stature, the female soldiers or amazons of the king, Dahfu, there came into the street a company of people carrying large state umbrellas. Under one of these, a large fuchsia-colored business of silk, marched a burly man. One of the other umbrellas had no user and I reckoned, correctly, that it must have been sent for me. “See,” I said to Romilayu, “they wouldn’t send that luxurious-looking article for a man they were going to frame up. That’s a lightning deduction. Just an intuition, but I think we have nothing to worry about, Romilayu.”
The drummers marched forward rapidly, the umbrellas twirling and dancing roundly and heavily, keeping time. As these huge fringed and furled silk canopies advanced the Wariri got out of the way. The heavily built man, smiling, had already seen me and extended his burly arms toward me, holding his head and smiling in such a way as to show that he was welcoming me affectionately. He was Horko, who turned out to be the king’s uncle. The dress he wore, of scarlet broadcloth, was banded about from his ankles over his chest and up to the armpits. This wrapping was so tight as to make the fat swell upward under his chin and into his shoulders. Two rubies (garnets, maybe?) dragged down the soft flesh of his ears. He had a powerful, low-featured face. As he stepped out of the shade of his state umbrella, the sun flared richly into his eyes and made them seem as much red as black. When he raised his brows the whole of his scalp also moved backward and made a dozen furrows all the way up to the occiput. His hair grew tight and small, peppercorn style, in tiny droplike curls.