A Cure for Serpents

by Alberto Denti di Pirajno

  * * *

  Rebecca Buaron, the proprietress of the Misurata brothel, was a voluminous Jewess. She was only about forty years old but the premature blooming of the oriental woman, love of good food, and excesses of all kinds had aged her before her time. In her youth she was famous for her beauty throughout the whole of North Africa; she had inspired the wildest of passions and driven the more frenzied of her admirers to every sort of folly. In her life and loves she had undoubtedly provided enough material for a new Decameron.

  Being a pious and deeply religious woman, she maintained that all her friends had been sent to her from God. God in his infinite goodness had certainly been generous, filling this beautiful creature’s life with an unending cavalcade of men of every age, occupation, race, colour and estate. Among the many, some of the most remarkable included the rebel chief Ramadan es-Shetâwi, General Ameglio, an Egyptian who could dance the polka with a pack mule across his shoulders, an Italian minister, a learned student of the Byzantine liturgy, and the most rascally Greek tradesman in Libya.

  Her vast and varied experience had endowed her with a frank contempt for the sons of Adam of whatever race or colour, and she spoke of them with long-suffering compassion as though they were deficient beings in need of protection and guidance.

  When I told her that I had heard wonderful accounts of the perspicacity of the rebel chief Seff en-Nàsser who still maintained the revolt against us in the South, she shook her head in protest and said, ‘All stories. Seff en-Nàsser is an imbecile because he has not thrown you back into the sea, and you are fools because you have not destroyed him. Mark my words, tebīb, the world goes on because God has distributed a measure of stupidity to everyone, for it is certain that Seff en-Nàsser could drown you and he does not do it, and you could wipe him out and there seems no likelihood of that either.’

  I passed on these words to our military commander and he – a hard-bitten old colonial – told me that he had for a long time been considering entrusting the direction of his political department to Rebecca, but was afraid the appointment would not meet with approval in Tripoli.

  Her pessimistic view of the male sex had not embittered Rebecca or made her unpleasant or malicious. Now that for her the season of love-making was over – a fact not unduly regretted – she was able to take an interest in other people’s love affairs and was almost as proud of the successes of her girls (whose sentimental vicissitudes she followed with intelligent understanding) as she would have been of her own. She guarded her protégées with a jealous affection not unlike that of a mother, but she had no illusions about their defects and shortcomings. ‘Have you noticed Khadijia’s eyes? If she had a brain behind them she would turn the world upside down.’

  She was a Jewess, but she was a complete stranger to the avarice which those who have seemingly never known a close-fisted Christian believe to be the prerogative of Jews. She treated her girls with a disinterested generosity which was really remarkable in one of her profession. Unfortunate creatures from brothels all over Libya, who had been exploited by grasping madams, begged to be allowed to come and work in her house in Misurata. Even Jemberié, with his hatred of the Jews, said of Rebecca, ‘She very good old strumpet.’

  When the girls came to the dispensary for the regular medical check-up, Rebecca accompanied them and kept them close about her, rather as a hen gathers her brood together. The little prostitutes would cross the courtyard with a bored air, dragging their sandals over the uneven cobblestones and crowding outside the room where I awaited them beside the iron bed.

  They stretched themselves languidly, their arms up over their heads, twisting their bodies from the waist and yawning silently; for them the hour was early and they vented their resentment at losing their sleep by making faces at Ehlia, the nurse appointed to attend to the ills, great and small, of Venus Pandemia. Ehlia, in order not to be obliged to notice their impertinent grimaces, would bend her fat and sullen face over the steriliser.

  I called them in by name. One at a time they entered, undressed and mounted the bed, letting fall their sandals one after the other. Before lying down, the more daring among them would blow a kiss in the direction of the speculum in my hand, as though to propitiate it. With their savage humour, they called it zebb el hukûma – the phallus of the Government – of the Government which subjected them to this control. But even the most shameless of them, before undressing, always cast an uneasy glance towards the courtyard where Mohamed ed-Dernàwi waited with his cards and register – for even these women have their modesty. If this glance was intercepted by Ehlia it always brought a sarcastic smile to her face. Ehlia despised the girls on account of their profession and the girls detested her because she was a Jewess. Even in this little world of shipwrecked humanity the brotherly love which should be engendered by religion did not operate very effectively.

  Every time I plunged my hands into a bowl of disinfectant after the examination, the victim would raise her head and ask anxiously, ‘Am I well?’ When the answer was, ‘Yes’, all the benedictions of Allah were showered upon me, as though I had some part in their escape from the perils with which their path was beset. Sometimes, however, my verdict was less consoling.

  ‘Am I still ill?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Then there were tears and lamentations, exclamations and invocations; and the names of God and of the most venerated saints were mingled with my prescriptions.

  ‘Ya Sidi Abdesselām,’ prayed Khadijia, who was from Sliten and attributed to the marabouts of her native country powers that in fact belong only to the anti-syphilitic drugs.

  Sometimes Rebecca, authoritative and massive, was able, in her wisdom, to comfort them: she had seen too much in her lifetime not to know that time arranges most things in this world, and that if there are ills for which no remedy exists, hope must never be abandoned. So she would clasp the patient to her ample bosom, help her dress to the accompaniment of jingling bracelets and ornaments, and whisper to her the absurd words which mothers address to their children. As she twisted the hāik round the girl’s hips she would turn a pleading face to me and say, ‘Isn’t it true, tebīb, that Mabruka will get well? Such a lovely creature, wallàhi! A little patience, some medicine and Allah’s help. Allah is merciful. In a little while this princess will smile again. The blessing of Allah upon her.’

  In the meantime the other girls would be gossiping and chattering under Ehlia’s baleful eye. While I bent over the washbasin one of them, on the pretext of speaking to me, might come near enough to see herself in the glass on the wall – and turn away, confused, if she met my glance in the mirror.

  The most famous of all these girls was Mné. She was lithe and slim, with small features, huge liquid eyes that slanted like an antelope’s and beautiful hands and feet. She was a desert girl from the qibla, and had been sold into her profession by caravaneers. Her beauty had already brought her a host of admirers; she had even had a novel written about her; and the girls were flattered to have her in their house.

  When the girls left the dispensary, accompanied by Rebecca, Mné usually brought up the rear, and as she passed Ehlia she would put out her tongue at her. Ehlia would lose her temper at last and hiss ‘sharmouta’ through her teeth. The insult would bring a fresh and delighted smile to Mné’s face, and bending towards the Jewess she would mutter something like (and here the translator feels it necessary, owing to the misuse into which the magic of language has fallen, to leave the passage in the original) ‘Che tua madre non si stanchi di scondinzolare sulle pisciate dei maschi e possa il Consolatore toglierle il vizio di mordere.’

  Rebecca Buaron had taken a liking to me – because I was a doctor, because my hair was prematurely white, and because I treated her for nothing. ‘Wallàhi, I am not sure yet whether you are my father or my son – but I am very fond of you. Fond from the heart, you understand?’ I was not much taken with the imaginary relationship, but the remark was well meant.

  When she summoned me to treat her
for one of the liver attacks to which she was subject, or when I called on an official visit without notice, she always kept me to tea and told me some story from her highly coloured life. She would tell of how they had played darts for her when she was a child; of how the rebels had seized and kept her in their camp, and how in the midst of a battle she had remained for hours flat on the ground, pressed as close as possible to the earth, while bullets riddled the tent in which she had taken refuge; of her stay in a harem in Tunis, covered with gold and jewels, and of her desperate flight after having abandoned all her possessions, walking for days and days towards the frontier of Tripolitania with her clothes in rags and with bleeding feet. She had been so happy to find herself in her own country again that she had given herself, on a sand dune, to the first spahi she met after crossing the frontier.

  Sometimes she invited me to mid day dinner in her house in the deserted street, which stood dazzling white in the sun except where a corner or a verandah cast a sharp-edged violet shadow across a wall or down on the cobbled lane. In the long white wall, punctuated at regular intervals by shuttered, half-moon windows, there was no apparent entrance to welcome the visitor out of the glaring light into the shady, peaceful courtyard beyond. But as I turned the corner into the alley, where the sun-baked mud preserved the imprint of bare feet and sandals, a door was thrown open and the bakkūsh, a deaf-mute porter, was there on the threshold to receive me with a festive whimper. The unfortunate creature, unable to speak, clapped his hands and emitted guttural noises to announce my arrival.

  Graceful phantoms gowned in rustling silks greeted me timidly in the cool shade of the darkened corridor and escorted me with care so that I should not stumble up or down the invisible steps.

  In the luminous courtyard the girls crowded round me: for these occasions they put on their most gorgeous attire; from the sanduq they unearthed their finest ornaments of brass, silver and gold. Khadijia was peacocking in a hāik made of cloth of silver, which shone like moonlight; Salma, the monkey, paraded a triple necklace of Turkish coins and gold filigree medallions which gave the impression of a medieval gorget; Yasmina wore a silver belt a hand’s breadth wide with a clasp as big as a fist; Fatma’s ear-rings of old silver, encrusted with coral and other semi-precious stones, reached to her shoulders, and Mahadia displayed a pair of gold chain cuffs which covered her arm from the wrist to the elbow.

  I pretended to be overcome: the more they were expected, the more were compliments an obligation.

  Could it be possible that all this finery was in honour of the tebīb? Were these Rebecca’s girls, or had I fallen among princesses escaped from the seraglio of Istanbul? They must all tell me their names because I could not be expected to recognise the girls I knew among these dazzling creatures. I covered my eyes to protect them from so much splendour, and the little multi-coloured crowd, perfumed with sandalwood and carnation, chirped and fluttered round me like flustered, exotic birds in an aviary.

  Through the open window of a ground-floor room, Mné could be seen sitting back on her heels intent upon putting a final touch of kohl on her half-closed eyelids; at the noise, she turned and looked at us, surprised, with the mirror in one hand and the antimony-stained fingers of the other spread out fanwise, in an attitude that made us roar with laughter.

  The girls’ laughter prevented me from hearing Rebecca Buaron who, in a peach-coloured holy stretched tightly over her exuberant bosom and heavy hips, sailed like a battleship across the courtyard and took us in the rear with raucous exclamations like fire-crackers; her extended arms were ajingle with gold ornaments, and a broad smile masked the shrewdness of a face in which obesity had not altogether cancelled the traces of her earlier beauty.

  It would almost seem that she had forgotten her invitation. With feigned and festive surprise she would ask: can it really be that the tebīb has come especially to eat with her and with her girls? But what would he eat, seeing that there was nothing in the market that morning and the new cook had not the slightest idea of what a meal should be? In the meantime I must certainly be dying of hunger while these brainless hussies had kept me so long listening to their senseless chatter. She turned a severe look upon the girls and began giving orders as though she were directing a military manœuvre: she shouted awful threats in the direction of the kitchen, and made frantic signs to the deaf-mute who was busy arranging cushions in the room prepared for the banquet.

  When we were seated, two of the girls would enter carrying an enormous dish – holding it high so as not to mark their dresses – from which emerged a steaming hot mountain of cuscus. The cook, apprehensive about her masterpiece, followed them with her eyes from the door of the kitchen where she stood with a frying-pan in one hand and a cloth in the other.

  In the long, low room, seated on cushions arranged upon the carpet, we stretched out our hands for the food in that religious silence which, in all countries, accompanies the beginning of a meal.

  At my side, Rebecca eyed the best pieces of mutton surrounding the pyramid of cuscus and with her fat fingers smothered in rings she handed them to me with a brief and dignified inclination of the head.

  The small, henna-tinted hands of the girls carried the food to their mouths with movements full of grace; faces which were as open books in the light of day bent towards the steaming, greasy mouthfuls of food; busy, flashing tongues gathered up the grains of semolina and fragments of meat that remained on their fingers.

  The mountain of semolina became a vast crater; from the fat sheep’s tail I selected titbits that dissolved in the mouth with a delicious flavour of spices.

  The moment for congratulations had come. The cook was a negress with a face like a monkey and a body like a statue; she leant indolently against the doorpost and accepted our compliments with obvious pleasure and without any false modesty.

  But Rebecca was not satisfied: the filfil was not ground fine enough; in that season sheep were thin; the right quality of semolina could not be found; I had eaten nothing; there must surely be something or other with which I could satisfy my hunger?

  With a great effort, levering herself up with one hand on my shoulder and another on that of Mahadia, she rose, breathing heavily, and disappeared into the kitchen.

  When she returned she was followed by the negress and the bakkūsh bearing a long covered dish. Rebecca had wished to introduce into an Arab meal one dish of her own people. ‘We Jews,’ she said, with an air of gastronomic pride as she lifted the cover to show me the kharâymi – a colossal fish swimming in a fiery red pepper sauce. Rebecca had prepared it, she told me, with her own hands, and she cast her eyes to heaven, calling upon God to witness the truth of what I was evidently supposed to consider an impossibility.

  The earthenware jug which kept the water cool passed from hand to hand as we attempted to put out the fire which the potent filfil had started in our gullets.

  Sweets now followed sweets. Our already overburdened insides found difficulty in giving the welcome they deserved to the delicious concoctions of sugar, honey, cinnamon, pistachio. After baglāwa in the shape of lozenges, Khadijia offered me half-moons dusted with vanilla: the Tunisian brīk. During her long stay in the hospitable houses of Tunis, Khadijia had acquired a heavy necklace of ‘Napoleons’ and the secret of making little puff pastries which imprison a fragile egg yolk. She was proud of her ability and between one mouthful and the next she would tell us stories of her imaginary adventures in Tunisia: the Arab notabilities who had ruined themselves for her; French officers who had wanted to abandon their careers in order to marry her; the Greek shipbuilder who had offered her a villa at the Goletta. Gesticulating in the excitement of her fantastications, she broke a brīk in her hand and the egg yolk spattered her nose, to the infinite delight of her companions.

  Finally, the cook advanced with a jingling of silver anklets. In one hand she bore a copper bowl containing a water jar and soap; on the other arm she carried a pile of hand towels. A thin stream of water was poured over our soaped ha
nds and ran into the bowl; we dried ourselves as the aroma of rose-perfumed coffee rose from the cups which the bakkūsh had placed in a circle in front of us.

  It was the hour of the siesta, but the presence of an unaccustomed guest kept these slaves of the Court of Love from their sleep and invited confidences which they whispered into the doctor’s ear, punctuating their recitals with sighs and pensive silences.

  Yasmina told me of her troubles, which I already knew: the story of the disease with which she was afflicted in the past; with a face as grave as a child’s she talked to me of ulcers that corrode the flesh, of gnawing pains, of unsuccessful treatments, of ineffectual doctors. She showed me the marks left on her arms by clumsy injections: in the curve of the elbow I noted that, under the pressure of my fingers, a swelling appeared beneath the velvety skin. This caused all of them to inspect their arms with concern, and the name of the ‘great sickness’, spoken with awe, passed from painted mouth to painted mouth.

  Mné dragged herself across the mat to rest her head against my knee. I looked down upon her sharp profile; the heavy meal had brought a flush to her face; her cheeks were rosy and the light and shade reflected from the courtyard outlined the bone structure. I could feel against my knee the grace of a body which interrupted pregnancies, disease and the profession she followed had not yet succeeded in deforming. She told me in a voice veiled in tragedy the details of her last abortion – the pain, the hæmorrhage which emptied her veins, the child extracted in pieces. As she spoke of these things a certain reticence caused her to lose herself in roundabout phrases when she could not find a discreet expression with which to replace the vulgar one that sprang spontaneously to her lips.

  Mabrouka, lying by the window, sang in a languid mezza voce the song of Shiara Misrani, a popular ballad which perpetuates a crime passionel committed many years ago; she drew out the notes in a long cadenza, rocking her head from side to side. Blonde curls, at variance with her dark face, escaped from one side of the scarf round her head. They were the result of an application of peroxide of hydrogen which I had given her some time ago when she fell from her bicycle and her scalp was torn by one of the pedals.