When Atti roared under the palace, there was no comment. Just Horko, of all people, gave a wince, but it merged rapidly again into his low-featured smile. He was always so gleaming, his very blood must have been like furniture polish. Like the king he had a rich physical gift, and the same eye tinge, only his eyes bulged. And I thought that during those years he had spent in Lamu, while his nephew was away at school in the north, he must have had himself a ball. He was certainly no church-goer, if I am any judge.
Well, it was the same every day. After the ceremonies of the meal I went, attended by the amazons, to Mummah. She had been brought back to her shrine by six men who had carried her laid across heavy poles. I witnessed this myself. Her room, which she shared with Hummat, was in a separate courtyard of the palace where there were wooden pillars and a stone tank with some disagreeable water. This was our special Sungo’s supply. My daily visit to Mummah cheered me up. For one thing, the worst part of the day was over (I shall explain in due time) and for another I developed a strong personal attachment to her, due not only to my success but to some quality in her, either as a work of art or as a divinity. Ugly as she was, with the stork-nest tresses and unreliable legs giving under the mass of her body, I attributed benevolent purposes to her. I would say, “Hi-de-do, old lady. Compliments of the season. How’s your old man?” For I took Hummat to be married to her, the clumsy old mountain god that Turombo, the champion in the red fez, had lifted up. It looked like a good marriage, and they stood there contented with each other, near the stone tub of rank water. And while I gave Mummah the time of day, Tamba and Bebu filled a couple of gourds and we went through another passage where a considerable troop of the amazons with umbrella and hammock were waiting. Both of these articles were green, like my pants, the Sungo’s own color. I was helped into this hammock and lay at the bottom of it, a bursting weight, looking up at the brilliant heaven made still by the force of afternoon heat, and the taut umbrella wheeling, now clockwise, now the other way, with lazy, sleepy fringes. Seldom did we leave the gate of the palace without a rumble from Atti, below, which always made the perspiring, laboring amazons stiffen. The umbrella bearer might waver then and I would catch a straight blow of the sun, one of those buffets of violent fire which made the blood leap into my brain like the coffee in a percolator.
With this reminder of the experiments the king and I were engaged in, pursuing his special aim, we entered the town with one drum following. People came up to Tamba and Bebu with little cups and got a dole of water. Women especially, as the Sungo was also in charge of fertility; you see, it goes together with moisture. This expedition took place every afternoon to the beat of the idle, almost irregular single deep drum. It made a taut and almost failing sound of puncture which, however, was always approximately in rhythm. Out in the sun walked the women coming from their huts with earthenware cups for their drops of tank water. I lay in the shade and listened to the sleepy drum-summons with my fingers heavily linked upon my belly. When we reached the center of town I climbed out. This was the market place. It was also the magistrate’s court. Dressed in a red gown, the judge sat on the top of a dunghill. He was a coarse-featured fellow; I didn’t care for his looks. There was always a litigation, and the defendant was tied to a pole and gagged by means of a forked stick which stuck into his palate and pressed down his tongue. The trial would stop for me. The lawyers quit hollering and the crowd yelled, “Sungo! Aki-Sungo” (Great White Sungo). I got out and took a bow. Tamba or Bebu would hand me a perforated gourd like the sprinklers that laundresses used in the old days. No, wait-like the aspergillum the Catholics use in their churches. I would sprinkle them and people would come to me laughing and bowing and offer their backs to the spray, old toothless fellows with grizzled hair in the cleft of their posteriors and maidens whose breasts pointed toward the ground, strong fellows with powerful spines. It didn’t escape me altogether that there was some mockery mingled with respect for my strength and my office. Anyway, I always saw to it the prisoner tied to the post got his full share, and added water drops to the perspiration on the poor guy’s skin.
Such, roughly, were my rain king’s duties, but it was the king’s special aim that I have to tell you about, and all the literature that he had given me. This I shunned; after our preliminary conversation I guessed that there might be trouble in it. There were the two books, which looked pretty well used up, and there were scientific reprints, coverless, with shabby top pages. I looked through a few of these. The print was close and black, and the only clearings in the text were filled with diagrams of molecules. Otherwise the words were as thick and heavy as tombstones, and I was very disheartened. It was much like taking the limousine to La Guardia Field and passing those cemeteries in Queens. So heavy. Each of the dead having been mailed away, and those stones like the postage stamps death has licked.
Anyway, it was a hot afternoon and I sat down with the literature to see what I could do with it. I was wearing my costume, those green silk drawers, and the helmet with its nipple on the top, and the shoes with the crepe soles trodden out of shape and curled like sneering lips. So that’s how it is. Illness and fever have made me sleepy. The sun is very absolute. The stripes of shadow look solid. The air is dreamy with the heat and the mountains in places are like molasses candy, yellow, brittle, cellular, cavey, scorched. They look as if they might be bad for the teeth. And I have this literature. Dahfu and Horko had loaded it on the donkey when they came over the mountains from the coast. Afterward the beast was butchered and fed to the lioness.
Why should I have to read the stuff? I thought. My resistance to it was great. Firstly I was afraid to find out that the king might be a crank; I felt it was not right, after I had come this long way to pierce the spirit’s sleep, and picked up Mummah and become rain king, that Dahfu should turn out to be just another eccentric. Therefore I stalled. I laid out a few games of solitaire. After which I felt extremely sleepy and stared at the sun-fixed colors outside, green as paint, brown as crust.
I am a nervous and emotional reader. I hold a book up to my face and it takes only one good sentence to turn my brain into a volcano; I begin thinking of everything at once and a regular lava of thought pours down my sides. Lily claims I have too much mental energy. According to Frances, on the other hand, I didn’t have any brain power at all. All I can truly say is that when I read in one of my father’s books, “The forgiveness of sin is perpetual,” it was just the same as being hit in the head with a rock. I have told, I think, that my father used currency for bookmarks and I assume I must have pocketed the money in that particular book and then forgot even its title. Maybe I didn’t want to hear any more than that about sin. Just as it was, it was perfect, and I might have been afraid the guy would spoil it when he went on. Anyway, I am the inspirational, and not the systematic, type. Besides, if I wasn’t going to abide by that one sentence, what good would it do to read the entire book?