“Teach? You really mean that she might change me.”
“Excellent. Precisely. Change. You fled what you were. You did not believe you had to perish. Once more, and a last time, you tried the world. With a hope of alteration. Oh, do not be surprised by such a recognition,” he said, seeing how it moved me to discover that my position was understood. “You have told me much. You are frank. This makes you irresistible, as not many are. You have rudiments of high character. You could be noble. Some parts may be so long-buried as to be classed dead. Is there any resurrectibility in them? This is where the change comes in.”
“You think there’s a chance for me?” I said.
“Not at all impossible if you follow my directions.”
The lioness stroked past the door. I heard her low, soft, continuous snarl.
Dahfu now started to go in. My nether half turned very cold. My knees felt like two rocks in a cold Alpine torrent. My mustache stabbed and stung into my lips, which made me realize that I was frowning and grimacing with terror, and I knew that my eyes must be filling with fatal blackness. As before, he took my hand as we entered and I came into the den saying inwardly, “Help me, God! Oh, help!” The odor was blinding, for here, near the door where the air was trapped, it stank radiantly. From this darkness came the face of the lioness, wrinkling, with her whiskers like the thinnest spindles scratched with a diamond on the surface of a glass. She allowed the king to fondle her, but passed by him to examine me, coming round with those clear circles of inhuman wrath, convex, brown, and pure, rings of black light within them. Between her mouth and nostrils a line divided her lip, like the waist of the hourglass, expanding into the muzzle. She sniffed my feet, working her way to the crotch once more and causing my parts to hide in my belly as best they could. She next put her head into my armpit and purred with such tremendous vibration it made my head buzz like a kettle.
Dahfu whispered, “She likes you. Oh, I am glad. I am enthusiastic. I am so proud of both of you. Are you afraid?”
I was bursting. I could only nod.
“Later you will laugh at yourself with amusement. Now it is normal.”
“I can’t even bring my hands together to wring them,” I said.
“Feel paralysis?” he said.
The lioness went away, making a tour of the den along the walls on the thick pads of her feet.
“Can you see?” he said.
“Barely. I can barely see a single thing.”
“Let us begin with the walk.”
“Behind bars. I’d like that fine. It would be great.”
“You are avoiding again, Henderson-Sungo.” His eyes were looking at me from under the softly folded velvet brim. “Change does not lie that way. You must form a new habit.”
“Oh, King, what can I do? My openings are screwed up tight, both back and front. They may go to the other extreme in a minute. My mouth is all dried out, my scalp is wrinkling up, I feel thick and heavy at the back of my head. I may be passing out.”
I remember that he looked at me with keen curiosity, as if wondering about these symptoms from a medical standpoint. “All the resistances are putting forth their utmost,” was his comment. It didn’t seem possible that the black of his face could be exceeded, and yet his hair, visible at the borders of his hat, was blacker. “Well,” he said, “we shall let them come out. I am firmly confident in you.”
I said weakly, “I’m glad you think so. If I’m not torn to pieces. If I’m not left down here half-eaten.”
“Take my assurance. No such eventuality is possible. Now, watch the way she walks. Beautiful? You said it! Furthermore this is uninstructed, specie-beauty. I believe when the fear has subsided you will be capable of admiring her beauty. I think that part of the beauty emotion does result from an overcoming of fear. When the fear yields, a beauty is disclosed in its place. This is also said of perfect love if I recollect, and it means that ego-emphasis is removed. Oh, Henderson, watch how she is rhythmical in behavior. Did you do the cat in Anatomy One? Watch how she gives her tail a flex. I feel it as if undergoing it personally. Now let us follow her.” He began to lead me around after the lioness. I was bent over, and my legs were thick and drunken. The green silk pants no longer floated but were charged with electricity and clung to the back of my thighs. The king did not stop talking, which I was glad of, since his words were the sole support I had. His reasoning I couldn’t follow in detail-I wasn’t fit to-but gradually I understood that he wanted me to imitate or dramatize the behavior of lions. What is this going to be, I thought, the Stanislavski method? The Moscow Art Theatre? My mother took a tour of Russia in 1905. On the eve of the Japanese War she saw the Czar’s mistress perform in the ballet.
I said to the king, “And how does Obersteiner’s allochiria and all that medical stuff you gave me to read come into this?”
He patiently said, “All the pieces fit properly. It will presently be clear. But first by means of the lion try to distinguish the states that are given and the states that are made. Observe that Atti is all lion. Does not take issue with the inherent. Is one hundred per cent within the given.”
But I said in a broken voice, “If she doesn’t try to be human, why should I try to act the lion? I’ll never make it. If I have to copy someone, why can’t it be you?”
“Oh, shush these objections, Henderson-Sungo. I copied her. Transfer from lion to man is possible, I know by experience.” And then he shouted, “Sakta,” which was a cue to the lioness to start running. She trotted, and the king began to bound after her, and I ran too, trying to keep close to him. “Sakta, sakta,” he was crying, and she picked up speed. Now she was going fast along the opposite wall. In a few minutes she would come up behind me.
I started to call to him, “King, King, wait, let me go in front of you, for Christ’s sake.”
“Spring upward,” he called back to me. But I was clumping and pounding after him trying to pass him, and sobbing. In the mind’s eye I saw blood in great drops, bigger than quarters, spring from my skin as she sank her claws into me, for I was convinced that as I was in motion I was fair game and she would claw me as soon as she was within range. Or perhaps she would break my neck. I thought that might be preferable. One stroke, one dizzy moment, the mind fills with night. Ah, God! No stars in that night. There is nothing.
I could not catch up with the king, and therefore I pretended to stumble and threw myself heavily on the ground, off to the side, and gave a crazy cry. The king when he saw me prostrate on my belly held out his hand to Atti to stop her, shouting, “Tana, tana, Atti.” She sprang sideward and began to walk toward the wooden shelf. From the dust I watched her. She gathered herself down upon her haunches and lightly reached the shelf on which she liked to lie. She pointed one leg outward and started to wash herself with her tongue. The king squatted beside her and said, “Are you hurt, Mr. Henderson?”