Aimée Crocker with snake.
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Before this book comes to its close, and I am nearing the end now, there is another side of my life which I want to write and which had little in common with the exotic and a great deal with the realistic, and is perhaps the vanity of a woman who has grown too old to play.
You have seen that there were two great influences in my life, men and my passion for the East. I have said very little of women except when they made a “good story.” But I have always been fascinated by women, perhaps because I understand them less than I do men. In a sense, I have always been a little afraid of them. Perhaps it is a natural mistrust. But with my wanderings more or less at an end, back in conventional America, I began to live more or less like anybody else and to have the same sort of relationships and contacts that any other woman might have. It was not easy for me. The free life of wandering had gotten into my blood and the result was that my assimilation into Western living was a fairly complicated process.
The American newspapers were not the last to take advantage of this fact. Mrs. Grundy and her clique were given a great deal to think about, and the reporters on the Sunday scandal sheets often made me into what they thought was good copy.
An illustration of this was my experience with Kaa. It also illustrates one of the reasons why women have always been mysterious to me, and it makes a good story for those who never happened to read the papers in those days. They made me out to be a rather scandalous sort of person, but I think the fun was worth it and that the joke was on them. Kaa, I may as well begin by telling you, was a snake. Kaa was a boa-constrictor over four yards long, eight inches thick, and the property of the Princess Mara Davi, a Hindu woman, and a person I came to love and respect as I have seldom done any other of my own sex.
The past life of Mara Davi I know very little about, and it is not very important to my story. When I knew her, she lived in a rooming house in New York in rather impoverished circumstances. I met her at a cocktail party, liked her, talked India with her, and we became good friends in a very short time.
When I visited her for the first time, I was surprised, not to say alarmed, to find, curled up on her bed and eyeing me coldly, a huge, beautifully marked boa-constrictor. She assured me that he was perfectly harmless, and, since he never moved, I soon forgot him as we talked.
We had chatted on for over two hours, smoking and having tea, when suddenly I felt a slight pressure on my shoulder, and turning my head I looked into the tiny, bright and round eyes of the snake. He had slid out of his first two or three coils silently and held his head erect like an “S” over my shoulder.
I was frightened, but Mara only laughed.
“It’s all right,” she said. “He likes you. It’s rather unusual. Don’t do anything. Just pretend he is not there. He wants to be friendly, that’s all.”
Well, I had had no experience with snakes nor could I say that it was to my liking, but I held my ground and continued to talk, although rather uneasily. The snake did not move from its place at my shoulder for at least half an hour. Then I suddenly felt him ooze round my body, and his smallish hard cold head came into my lap. Again Mara cautioned me not to pay any attention to him, but she seemed surprised that he was making such a demonstration.
I asked her how it was that she had such a pet, and she told me that he was better than a watchdog, and that she really was as fond of Kaa as one could be of a fine dog. She started to tell me a third reason, but stopped a little embarrassed, and changed the subject.
I pressed her, and at last she said:
“Well, I keep him also for a bed-fellow. But I supposed you would not know about that.”
“About what?”
And then I learned an extraordinary thing. It seems that Mara never went to bed but that Kaa wrapped himself around her body, very gently, and she spent the entire night in his embrace. I was skeptical, but eventually I learned better.
I became intimate friends with the Princess Davi, and eventually I brought her to my own home to live, for I had a very large house and plenty of room. With her, too, came Kaa, and it was not long before I was as fond of him as she was.
One night I had an adventure.
I had retired early, for me, and had turned out the light to sleep, when I became conscious of a pressure on the bed. At first I was frightened, when I snapped the light on, for there was Kaa’s head and about a yard of his body on the foot of my bed. But he came on towards me so gently and slowly that I kept my self-control. On he came, foot after foot of him. When he reached me he encircled me, and his head went under the bedclothes. I could feel him, cold and stone-like, crawling down, and I could feel the weight of his 60 pounds of muscle moving over the bed.
Suddenly all fear left. I was curious. Kaa stopped exploring and came up again. He rubbed close to my body. He gave me a strange, tickling sensation that was, I confess, very enjoyable. Slowly his head moved around my body, slowly, inch by inch, he coiled about me. If I had wanted to now, I could not have moved out of his embrace. He was cool. I could feel the vast power of him. I have never felt so helpless nor so overpowered in my life, and yet there was almost no pressure, no force that one could feel. In a few minutes he was completely coiled about me, his head resting over my shoulder. And … astonishing as it may seem, I was not afraid. It was like being in the strong embrace of a man. I was more than comfortable.
Then there was a knock on my door. I looked up, and there through the open portal I saw Mara Davi in her dressing-robe, smiling at me. She said:
“He slipped out and I missed him. So I naturally came here. I knew he liked you. Are you afraid?”
I admitted I was not, but was rather glad when she said something to him in Hindi and he began slowly to slip out of his coils and ooze away from my body. She spoke again, and he slowly curled up at the foot of the bed. We talked again for some time, and Mara Davi returned to her room, leaving the snake behind with me.
“He’s comfortable,” she said, “and he won’t do you any harm. Better leave him there.”
So I spent the night with a snake.
But that is not all the story. I slept until fairly late next morning. Kaa had not moved. His eyes were open and his head was pointed, but otherwise he was motionless. I dressed, and he watched me. When my maid came in with breakfast, she nearly fainted. I forgot to mention that none of my servants would go near Mara’s room until she had locked the snake in his big basket.
Before I went downstairs, I thought I would do what I had seen Princess Davi do … coil him around me and walk about with him. I lifted his head and heavy coil, and quite as if he were trained by me he slipped around my waist.
In a minute he was all about me, heavily and strongly. I carried his head and about a yard of his fold over my arm and went to Mara’s room to return her pet.
When I went in, I found she had a visitor. It was a young girl whom I scarcely knew, but who had been to visit her before. She was very pretty, about 23, and obviously of good American stock. I have forgotten her name.
As I came in, proudly wrapped in Kaa, she stood up almost angrily.
“Oh,” she exclaimed, “give him to me.”
She came over to me and almost snatched Kaa’s head out of my grasp and tried to pull him away. Mara pushed her off, saying sharply:
“Be careful. That is dangerous.” Then she spoke to the snake and made a gesture, and he unwound me and slipped over onto her bed, his regular place.
“When did he start liking you?” demanded the girl, almost as though I had done her some sort of harm. I was puzzled and smiled and made some irrelevant answer. But she persisted, and I was slightly annoyed. I remember that I said something sarcastic, and she suddenly snatched her hat and things and stamped out.
“Now see what you’ve done,” said Mara Davi. She was laughing, but there was a look of seriousness in her face, too. I was bewildered, and I was going to ask a lot of questions when the girl suddenly came back again. She was cry
ing.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I acted this way. I was jealous of you … I can’t understand it. Please forgive me. What a little fool I am …”
And there was a situation explained. Jealous of a snake … the ridiculousness of it strikes you at first, but the longer I live the less I am surprised at how little we know of the real extent of human emotions and human weaknesses.
Once Mara Davi went away on a visit to some friends, and at my pleading she had left Kaa in my charge. He made himself rather manifest about my house. Some people did not like him at all, and some were fascinated by him. I observed these two types of people, and the contrast gave me an amusing idea. At least, I thought it would be amusing.
I sent out an invitation one day for a birthday dinner in honor of H. H. Kaa, Maharajah of Amber. Of course there was no such title, since Amber is a dead city inhabited only by monkeys and snakes, but the invitations were accepted, for all that. We Americans have a weakness for titles, real or not. I took especial care that a certain type of my acquaintances … men of a very special sort … should learn nothing about the truth of the party.
So they came, some fifty of them, men and women from every stratum of New York society. The dinner was very carefully prepared. There was a dais in the center of the table that was left mysteriously empty, and when the guests arrived there was much speculation as to what the thing meant. For me, I waited until everybody was a little impatient before I appeared, and … if I do admit it myself … my entry was superb.
I had a special cold green evening gown made for the occasion, with a long train, and very décolleté, and I wore long jade earrings and emerald studs in a coronet. I came in with Kaa wrapped around me, trying to be unconcerned, and before anybody realized what it was all about I unwound him and placed him on the table, right in the center of the dais.
Well, you should have seen the effect. The very special gentle-men uttered squeals of dismay, and one … who was perhaps a little more special than the others … was so frightened that he simply fainted, while still another gave one long shriek and fairly wafted himself through the door to the street, all in one act. You might have thought him a fairy.
It was very much fun, and those that held their ground laughed as much as I did. The dinner was a great success, except that the newspapers picked it up and made the story into that of an orgy, based on some vague idea of snake-worship, that was really impossible and very unkind.
That is the way in which most of the legends about me started. If only I could have lived up to them I would have had quite a time.
The Statue of Liberty.
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But let me talk some more about America and my recollections that do not come from the faraway lands. I do not want to give the impression of writing travel stories but instead to put down the impressions of an aging woman who has spent her entire life looking for Life, seeking something that is always there if we know how to find it, and often finding it. It is, after all, people who are most interesting. I once heard a little modern flapper say: “People have more fun than anybody else.” It sounds silly, of course, but that youngster knew, in her ignorant way, what she meant, and it is perfectly true.
So we will look back at a few people.
Perhaps the most curious passage of my whole life was wrapped around an Italian fruit-vendor. Shocking? Wait till you hear the story.
It happened when the United States had just declared War. I was in Europe at the time, and I suddenly found that I was completely without funds because of the embargo on dollars. Literally, I mean. I had not enough cash nor credit in any European bank to pay my simple hotel bill; I, who was supposed to be fairly comfortable financially. My adopted daughter and son were literally going without essential food, and I myself was both frightened and worried. The obvious thing was to go back to America, where I had money and could use it, but the difficulty was getting the fares.
Finally a friend in need telegraphed me that a passage had been reserved for me on an Italian steamer, but that I had to sail from Naples. We got to Naples, all three of us, Heaven knows how or on what money, and there awaited the most extraordinary surprise.
The passage existed all right, but when I went, as usual, to the shipping office and demanded my ticket at the First Class Department, clerks’ noses went up into the air and very haughtily indeed they told me that I was mistaken, I had only a steerage passage.
Steerage!
I do not mean “tourist third class” nor any of the infinitely more respectable modern traveling methods, I mean literally steerage, with all its horrors, its immigrants, its smells and its impossible quarters.
But there was nothing else to do … either that, or stay in Italy and starve.
We sailed.
We concealed our jewels under oldish-looking clothes. Yvonne carried my emeralds, my maidservant carried all my sapphires and I concealed all my beloved pearls in twelve thick and neck-breaking ropes around my own very tired neck under a black shirtwaist and a frill. Yet it was a lark. Of course I could not possibly let the fact out that I was returning steerage. The newspapers would have ruined me and I would have scandalized everybody in America who did not know nor understand the circumstances. There was nothing in the world to do but to make the best of it, and this we tried to do.
I shall never forget my arrival on the steerage deck. Yvonne and my son were carrying rolled-up packages in newspapers and cheap roll-bags. We looked so much like every other person in the same class that we attracted no attention at first and we were roughly shown our berths as though we had been the lowest riff-raff ever exported out of Italy.
But the first night Yvonne had a triumph. She was very pretty and you could not conceal it, even in a third-class disguise, and the Captain made a great fuss over the little girl. It was rather lucky because she, at least, had the best food the ship could offer all the way over.
But my case was different. To everybody on the ship I was just another immigrant-woman. I felt that horrible oppression that comes from barriers … the fact that I could not cross the third-class limit, that crushing snobbery of ocean steamers. Thank God for a sense of humor.
Well, the strings of destiny started to tangle our first day out. I found, by trying it, that I could never sleep in the cabin that had been given us. It was foul and stifling, and, to a person accustomed to cleanliness and comfort, absolutely nauseating.
I had noticed one of the sailors, who, unlike the others who were rather stupid, busied himself about everything on our deck. I talked to him, and found out that he was an American although born in Italy, and I asked him point-blank if there were no way of getting another stateroom. I promised that as soon as we landed he should be well repaid. For a wonder, he believed me, and said he would try to do something.
Late that afternoon he told me that he had asked the third officer who sometimes did rent out his cabin. This charming and money-conscious gentleman was perfectly willing to sleep in a hammock for the price of $150, if I would sign a paper for that sum. As things stood in those days the price was very high, but I surprised him by signing his ridiculous document at once, and my sailor installed Yvonne and me in a very presentable cabin before dinner.
Dinner brought me down to the steerage again, and as I was climbing down the steep and awkward ladder, one of the leering peasants in dirty velours and a greasy beard thought it amusing to pinch my legs which were exposed on the ladder. The whole crowd thought it fun, too, and roared with laughter, but there was one stoutish Signor who pushed the would-be joker away violently, swore at him in Italian, and greeted me very politely at the bottom of the ladder with his hand to help me off. More laughter. More Italian profanity and yelling from the offended leg-pincher. But finally, when I was about to run away from what looked as though it might at any moment become a case of knifeplay and bloodshed, they suddenly stopped their excited yelling and the offender went away.
My rescuer turned out to be able to speak fairly good Engli
sh. He escorted me to the mess-hall (I hesitate to call it a dining saloon) and seated himself beside me. He was very nice indeed, and very attentive.
During dinner, I learned his entire life’s history and his name in exchange for a very pathetic (and entirely false) account of my own presence on the ship.
Signor Jiacoppo da Rocca, it appeared, was a fruit-vendor. Further, he no longer pushed the well-known banana-stand about the New York streets, but instead had financed several of his compatriots who did push them, sold the bananas, rented them houses, and had generally grown to be quite an important personage in the Italo-American colony.
He had come over ten years ago from Brindisi and had pushed a vegetable cart with the best of them, saving his pennies, eating spaghetti, and acting like the classical Italian emigrant until he was able to become the “capitalist” he now was.
Suddenly I realized that he was telling me all this with a reason. The reason was not so hard to guess. He gestured, he panted, he rolled his eyes, he smote his rather plump breast, he breathed fire (and garlic) very close to my face, and, still panting, asked me to walk about on the few feet of deck that the steerage was allowed.
We promenaded. It was moonlight, although smelling of tar and kerosene. I knew that on the first-class promenade deck I might have felt sentimental … with another cavalier. And then Signor da Rocca outdid himself. He placed one large hairy paw on my knee and encircled me with the other large and hairy arm and tried to kiss me. I remember how afraid I was that he would feel my jewels.
And I'd Do It Again Page 20
