“What I think?” I tried to get my lower lip under control by means of my teeth. “Oh, Your Majesty, please. Not everything in one day. I am doing my best.”
He admitted to me, “It is true I am attempting rapid progress. But I wish to overcome your preliminary difficulties in quick time.”
I smelled my fingers, which had taken a peculiar odor from the lioness. “Listen,” I said, “I suffer a lot from impatience myself. But I have to say that there is just so much I can take at one time. I still have wounds on my face from yesterday, and I’m afraid she’ll smell fresh blood. I understand nobody can control these animals once they scent it.”
This marvelous man laughed at me and said, “Oh, Henderson-Sungo, you are exquisite.” (That I never suspected of myself.) “You are real precious to me, and do you know,” he said, “not many persons have touched lions.”
“I could have lived without it,” was the answer I might have made. But as he thought so highly of lions I kept it to myself, mostly. I merely muttered.
“And how you are afraid! Really! In the highest degree. I am really delighted by it. I have never seen such a fear manifestation. It resembled anxious pleasure to me. Do you know, many strong people love this blended fear and satisfaction the most? I think you must be of that type. In addition, I love when your brows move. They are really extraordnary. And your chin gets like a peach stone, and you have a very strangulation color and facial swelling, and your mouth spread very wide. And when you cried! I adored when you began to cry.”
I knew that this was not really personal but came from his scientific or medical absorption in these manifestations. “What happens to your labium inferiorum?” he said, still interested in my chin. “How do you get so innumerable puckers in the flesh?” (This was extremely revealing to me.) He was so superior to me and overwhelmed me so with his presence, with the extra shadow or smoky brilliancy that he had, and with his lion-riding, that I let him say everything without challenge. When the king had made several more marveling observations about my nose and my paunch and the lines in my knees, he told me, “Atti and I influence each other. I wish you to become a party to this.”
“Me?” I didn’t know what he was talking about.
“You must not feel because I make observations of your constitution that I do not appreciate how remarkable you are in other levels.”
“Do I understand you to say, Your Highness, that you have plans for me with this animal?”
“Yes, and shall explain them.”
“Well, I think we should proceed carefully,” I said. “I don’t know how much strain my heart can take. As my fainting fits indicate I can’t take too much. Moreover, how do you think she would behave if I keeled over?”
Then he said, “Perhaps you have had enough exposure to Atti for the first day.” He left the platform again, the animal following. There was a heavy gate raised by a rope that passed over a grooved wheel about eighteen feet above the ground by means of which the king let the lioness out of the den into a separate enclosure. I have never seen any member of the cat species pass through a door except on its own terms, and she was no exception. She needed to loiter in and out while the king hung on to the rope by which the gate was suspended. As she was in exit I wanted to suggest that he should give her a boot in the tail to help her with the decision, since obviously he was her master, but under those conditions I couldn’t really presume. At last, in that soft, narrow stride, so easy, so deliberate, so vigilant, she entered the next room. Releasing the hawser, the king let the great panel slide. It hit the stone with a loud noise and he rejoined me on the trestle looking very pleasant. Peaceful. He leaned backward and his lids, large-veined, sank a little and he breathed calmly, resting. Sitting close to him in my barbaric trousers with the jockey shorts visible under them, it seemed to me that something more than the planks beneath sustained him. For after all, I was on them, and I was not similarly sustained. At any rate I sat and waited for him to complete his rest. Once again I brought to mind that old prophecy Daniel made to Nebuchadnezzar. They shall drive thee from among men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. The lion odor was still very keen on my fingers. I smelled it repeatedly and there returned to my thoughts the frogs of the Arnewi, the cattle whom they venerated, the tenants’ cat I had tried to murder, to say nothing of the pigs I had bred. Sure enough, this prophecy had a peculiar relevance to me, implying perhaps that I was not entirely fit for human companionship.
The king, having completed a short rest, was ready to speak.
“Now, then, Mr. Henderson,” he began to say in his exotic and specially accented way.
“Well, King, you were going to explain to me why it was desirable to associate with this lion. So far I haven’t got a clue. Oh, am I confused!”
“I am to make the matter clear,” he said, “so first of all I shall tell you how and what about the lions. A year ago or more I captured Atti. There is a traditionary way among the Wariri for obtaining a lion if you need him. Beaters go forth and the animal is driven into what we call a hopo, and this is a very large affair embracing several miles out in the bush. The animals are aroused by noises with drums and horns and pursued into the wide end of the hopo and toward the narrow. At that narrow end is the trap, and I myself as king am obliged to make the capture. In this way Atti was obtained. I have to tell you that any lion except my father, Gmilo, is forbidden and illicit. Atti was brought here in a condition of severest disapproval and opposition, causing a great anxiety and partisanship. Especially the Bunam.”
“Say, what’s the matter with those guys?” I said. “They don’t deserve a king like you. With a personality like yours, you could rule a big country.”
The king was glad, I think, to hear this from me. “Notwithstanding,” he said, “there is considerable trouble with the Bunam and my Uncle Horko and others, to say nothing of the queen mother and some of the wives. For, Mr. Henderson, there is only one tolerable lion, who is the late king. It is conceived the rest are mischief-makers and evildoers. Do you see? The main reason why the late king has to be recaptured by his successor is that he cannot be left out there in company with such evildoers. The witches of the Wariri are said to hold an illicit intercourse with bad lions. Even some children assumed to come of such a union are dangerous. I add if a man can prove his wife has been unfaithful with a lion, he demands an extreme penalty.”
“This is very peculiar,” I said.
“Summarizing,” the king went on, “I am the object of a double criticism. Firstly I have not yet succeeded in obtaining Gmilo, my father-lion. Secondly it is said that because I keep Atti I am up to no good. Before all opposition, however, I am determined to keep her.”
“What do they want?” I said. “You should abdicate, like the Duke of Windsor?”
He answered with a soft laugh, then said, in the deeply founded stillness of the room-with the yellow-gray air weighing on us, deepening, darkening slowly—“I have no such intention.”
“Well,” I said, “if your back is up about it, that I understand perfectly.”
“Henderson-Sungo,” he said, “I see I must tell you more about this. From a very early age the king will bring his successor here. Thus I used to visit my lion-grandfather. His name was Suffo. Thus from my small childhood I have been on familiar or intimate terms with lions, and the world did not offer me any replacement. And I so missed the lion connection that when Gmilo my father died and I was notified at school of the tragic occurrence, despite my love of the medical course I was not one hundred per cent reluctant. I may go so far as to assert that I was weak from a continuing lack of such a relationship and went home to be replenished. Naturally it would have been the best of fortune to capture Gmilo at once. But as instead I caught Atti, I could not give her up.”