“Oh? No. What?” he said. “They are living in the old universe. Why not? That is part of my bargain with them, isn’t it?” Something of the gold tinge of the stones came into his smile, brilliantly. “Why, this is my great day, Mr. Henderson. I can afford all the omens. After I have captured Gmilo they can say nothing more.”
“Sticks and stones will break my bones but this is idle superstition, and so forth. Well, Your Highness, if that’s the way you take it, fine, okay.” I looked into the rising heat, which borrowed color from the stones and plants. I had expected the king to speak harshly to the Bunam and his follower who was painted with the color of bad omen, but he only made one remark to them. His face appeared very full under that velvet hat with the large brim and the crown full of soft variations. The umbrellas had stayed behind. The women, the king’s wives, stood at the low wall of the town at assorted heights; they watched and cried certain (I suppose farewell) things. The stones paled more and more with the force of the heat. The women sent strange cries of love and encouragement or warning or good-by. They waved, they sang, and they signed with the two umbrellas, which went up and down. The beaters, silent, had not stopped for us but went away with the bugles, spears, drums, and rattles, in a solid body. There were sixty or seventy of them, and they started from us in a mass but gradually dispersed toward the bush. Antlike they began to spread into the golden weeds and boulders of the slope. These boulders, as noted before, were like gross objects combed down from above by an ignorant force.
The departure of the beaters left the Bunam, the Bunam’s wizard, the king, and myself, the Sungo, plus three attendants with spears standing about thirty yards from the town.
“What did you tell them?” I asked the king.
“I have said to the Bunam I would accomplish my purpose notwithstanding.”
“You should give them each a kick in the tail,” I said, scowling at the two guys.
“Come, Henderson, my friend,” Dahfu said, and we began to walk. The three men with spears fell in behind us.
“What are these fellows for?”
“To help maneuver in the hopo,” he said. “You will see when we come to the small end of the place. That is better than explanation.”
As we went down into the high grass of the bush he raised his sloping face with the smooth low-bridged nose and scented the air. I breathed it in, too. Dry and fine, it had an odor like fermented sugar. I began to be aware of the tremble of insects as they played their instruments underneath the stems, down at the very base of the heat.
The king began to go quickly, not so much walking as bounding, and as we followed, the spearmen and I, it occurred to me that the grass was high enough to conceal almost any animal except an elephant and that I didn’t have so much as a diaper pin to defend myself with.
“King,” I said. “Hisst Wait a minute.” I couldn’t raise my voice here; I sensed that this was not the time to make a noise. He probably didn’t like this, for he wouldn’t stop, but I kept on calling in low tones and finally he waited for me. Greatly worked up, I stared into his eyes at close range, fought a few moments for air, and then said, “Not even a weapon? Just like this? Are you supposed to catch this animal by the tail?”
He decided to be patient with me. I could see the decision being taken. This I would swear to. “The animal, and I hope it is Gmilo, is probably within the area of the hopo. See here, Henderson, I must not be armed. What if I were to wound Gmilo?” He spoke of this possibility with horror. I had failed before (what was the matter with me?) to observe how profoundly excited he was. I had not seen through his cordiality.
“What if?”
“My life would be required as for any harm to a living king.”
“And what about me-I’m not supposed to defend myself either?”
He did not answer for a moment. Then he said, “You are with me.”
There was nothing I could say after that. I decided that I would do the best I could with my helmet, which would be to strike the animal on the muzzle and confuse it. I grumbled that he would have been better off in Syria or Lebanon as a mere student, and, although I spoke unclearly, he understood me and said, “Oh, no, Henderson-Sungo. I am lucky and you know it.” In his close-fitting breeches, he set off again. My trousers hampered me as I rushed over the ground behind him. As for the three men with spears, they gave me very little confidence. Any minute I expected the lion to burst on me like an eruption of fire, to knock me down and tear me into flames of blood. The king mounted on a boulder and drew me up with him. He said, “We are near the north wall of the hopo.” He pointed it out. It was built of ragged thorns and dead growths of all sorts, heaped and piled to a thickness of two or three feet. Coarse, croaky-looking flowers grew there; they were red and orange and at the center they were blotted with black, and it gave me a sore throat just to look at them. This hopo was a giant funnel or triangle. At the base it was open, while at the apex or spout was the trap. Only one of the two sides was built by human hands. The other was a natural formation of rock, the bank of an old river, probably, which rose to the height of a cliff. Beside the high wall of brush and thorn was a path which the king’s feet found under the spiky yellow grass. We continued toward the small end of the hopo over fallen ribs of branches and twists of vine. From the hips, which were small, his figure broadened or loomed greatly toward the shoulders. He walked with powerful legs and small buttocks.
“You certainly are on fire to come to grips with this animal,” I said.
Sometimes I think that pleasure comes only from having your own way, and I couldn’t help feeling that this was assimilated by the king from the lions. To have your will, that’s what pleasure is, in spite of all the thought that has been done. And he was dragging me along with the power of his personal greatness, because he was so brilliant and had a strong gift of life, manifested in the smoky, bluish trembling of his extra shadow. Because he was bound to have his way. And therefore I lumbered after him without a weapon for protection unless you counted the helmet, unless I could pull down these green pants and bag the animal in them-they might almost have been roomy enough for that.
Then he stopped and turned to me, and said, “You were equally on fire when it came to lifting up the Mummah.”
“That’s correct, Your Highness,” I said. “But did I know what I was doing? No, I didn’t.”
“But I do.”
“Well, okay, King,” I said. “It’s not for me to question it. I’ll do whatever you say. But you told me that the Bunam and the other fellow in the white pigment were from the old universe and I assumed you were out of it.”
“No, no. Do you know how to replace the whole thing? It cannot be done. Even if, on supreme moments, there is no old and is no new, but only an essence which can smile at our arrangement-smile even at being human. That is so full of itself,” he said. “Nevertheless a play of life has to be allowed. Arrangements must be made.” Here his mind was somewhat beyond me, so I didn’t interfere with him, and he said, “To Gmilo, the lion Suffo was his father. To me, grandfather. Gmilo, my father. As, if I am going to be the king of the Wariri, it has to be. Otherwise, how am I the king?”
“Okay, I get you,” I said. “King,” I told him, and I spoke so earnestly it might almost have sounded like a series of threats, “you see these hands? This is your second pair of hands. You see this trunk?” I put my hand on my chest. “It is your reservoir, like. Your Highness, in case anything is going to happen, I want you to understand how I feel.” My heart was very much aroused. I began to suffer in the face. In recognition of the fellow’s nobleness, I fought to spare him the grossness of my emotions. This was in the shade of the hopo wall, under the embroidery of stiff thorns. The narrow track along the hopo was black and golden, as when grass burns in broad daylight and the heat is visible.