At last my reception by Horko was completed and he indicated that we should rise. The amazons, in record time, moved away the table and the things, and lined up in formation ready to escort us to the king. Their behinds were pitted like colanders. I set my helmet straight and hiked up my short pants and wiped my hands on my T-shirt, for they were damp and I wanted to give the king a dry warm handshake. It means a lot. We started to march toward one of the staircases. Where was Romilayu? I asked Horko. He smiled and said, “Oh, fine. Oh, oh, fine.” We were mounting the staircase, and I saw Romilayu below, waiting, dejected, his hands, discouraged, hanging over his knees, and his bent spine sticking out. Poor guy! I thought. I’ve got to do something for him. Just as soon as this is cleared up I will. I absolutely will. After the catastrophes I’ve led him into I owe him a real reward.
The outdoor staircase, wide, leisurely, and rambling, took a turn and brought us to the other side of the building. A tree was there and it was shaking and creaking because several men were engaged in a curious task, raising large rocks into the branches with ropes and crude wooden pulleys. They yelled at the ground crew who were pushing these boulders upward and their faces shone with the light of hard work. Horko said to me, and I didn’t quite understand how he meant it, that these stones were connected with clouds for the rain they expected to make in the ceremony soon to come. They all seemed very confident that rain would be made today. The examiner last night with his expression, “Wak-ta,” had described the downpour with his fingers. But there was nothing in the sky. It was bare of all but the sun itself. There were only, so far, these round boulders in the branches, apparently intended to represent rain clouds.
We came to the third floor, where King Dahfu had his quarters. Horko led me through several wide but low-pitched rooms which seemed to be obscurely supported from beneath; I wouldn’t have answered for the beams. There were hangings and curtains. But the windows were narrow, and little could be seen except when a ray of sun would break in here and there and show a rack of spears, a low seat, or the skin of an animal. At the door of the king’s apartment, Horko withdrew. I had not expected that and I said, “Hey, where’re you going?” But one of the amazons took me by the bare arm and passed me through the door. Before I saw Dahfu himself, I was aware of numbers of women-twenty or thirty was my first estimate-and the density of naked women, their volupté (only a French word would do the job here), pressed upon me from all sides. The heat was great and the predominant odor was feminine. The only thing I could compare it to in temperature and closeness was a hatchery-the low ceiling also is responsible for this association. Seated by the door on a high stool, a stool that resembled an old-fashioned bookkeeper’s, was a gray, heavy old woman in the amazon’s vest plus a garrison cap of the sort which went out of date with the Italian army at the turn of the century. On behalf of the king she shook my hand.
“How do you do?” I said.
The king! His women cleared a path for me, moving slowly from my way, and I saw him at the opposite end of the room, extended on a green sofa about ten feet in length, crescent-shaped, with heavy upholstery, deeply pocketed and bulging. On this luxurious article he was fully at rest, so that his well-developed athletic body, in knee-length purple drawers of a sort of silk crepe, seemed to float, and about his neck was wrapped a white scarf embroidered in gold. Matching slippers of white satin were on his feet. For all my worry and fever I felt admiration as I sized him up. Like myself, he was a big man, six feet or better by my estimate, and sumptuously at rest. Women attended to his every need. Now and then one wiped his face with a piece of flannel, and another stroked his chest, and one kept his pipe filled and lit and puffed at it for him to keep it going.
I approached or blundered forward. Before I could come too close a hand checked me and a stool was placed for me about five feet from this green sofa. I sat. Between us in a large wooden bowl lay a couple of human skulls, tilled cheek to cheek. Their foreheads shone jointly at me in the yellow way skulls have, and I was confronted by the united eye sockets and nose holes and the double rows of teeth.
The king observed how warily I looked at him and appeared to smile. His lips were large and tumid, the most negroid features of his face, and he said, “Do not feel alarm. These are for employment in the ceremony of this afternoon.”
Some voices once heard will never stop resounding in your head, and such a voice I recognized in his from the first words. I leaned forward to get a better look. The king was much amused by my spreading my hands over my chest and belly as if to retain something, and raised himself to examine me. A woman slipped a cushion behind his head, but he knocked it to the floor and lay back again. My thought was, “I haven’t run out of luck yet.” For I saw that our ambush and capture and interrogation and all the business of billeting us with the dead man, could not have originated with the king. He was not that sort, and although I did not know yet precisely what sort he might be, I was already beginning to rejoice in our meeting.
“Yesterday afternoon, I have receive report of your arrival. I have been so excited. I have scarcely slept last night, thinking about our meeting … Oh, ha, ha. It positively was not good for me,” he said.
“That’s funny, I didn’t get too much sleep myself,” I said. “I’ve had to make do with only a few hours. But I am glad to meet you, King.”
“Oh, I am very please. Tremendous. I am sorry over your sleep. But on my own I am please. For me this is a high occasion. Most significant. I welcome you.”
“I bring you regards from your friend Itelo,” I said.
“Oh, you have encountered with the Arnewi? I see it is your idea to visit some of the remotest places. How is my very dear friend? I miss him. Did you wrestle?”
“We certainly did,” I said.
“And who won?”
“We came out about even.”
“Well,” he said, “you seem a mos’ interesting person. Especially in point of physique. Exceptional,” he said. “I am not sure I have ever encountered your category. Well, he is very strong. I could not throw him, which gave him very high pleasure. Invariably did.”
“I’m beginning to feel my age,” I said.
The king said, “Oh, why, nonsense. I think you are like a monument. Believe me, I have never seen a person of your particular endowment.”
“I hope you and I do not have to go to the mat, Your Highness,” I said.
“Oh, no, no. We have not that custom. It is not local with us. I must request forgiveness from you,” he said, “for not arising to a handshake. I ask my generaless, Tatu, to act for me because I am so reluctant to rise. In principle.”
“Is that so? Is that so?” I said.
“The less motion I expend, and the more I repose myself, the easier it is for me to attend to my duties. All my duties. Including also the prerogatives of these many wives. You may not think so on first glance, but it is a most complex existence requiring that I husband myself. Sir, tell me frankly—”