A Cure for Serpents

by Alberto Denti di Pirajno

  Suddenly, the sun appeared on the horizon, dissolving the mist and making our wet clothes steam.

  The water was not as high or as extensive as we had thought under the misleading light of the moon – or else it had had time to subside. The current however – perhaps because we could now see as well as hear it – seemed stronger. Branches and splintered trunks went spinning by, catching themselves in the tops of palm trees which bent to the force of the waters. Corpses of antelopes, gazelles, hyenas and wild boars swept past us, and at one moment the entire roof of a tukul floated by, revolving slowly, together with other relics that told their story of destruction and death. There were rags, fragments of rush fences, battered native beds, planks, tubs, a cradle, and a cow on its back, its stiff legs stretched towards heaven and with a kind of marabou perched on its monstrously swollen belly. Later, in the glittering reflection of the sun, we saw in the distance an object we first thought must be the trunk of a tree but as it floated past into the shade of a clump of palms we saw that it was a human corpse.

  The flood had caught us unawares in the space of minutes; but it was two days before the bush re-emerged and began to dry itself in the sun. The passage of the waters had swept away the soil and scraped the ground like a gigantic rake: shrubs and bushes, combed by the flood, were bent down to the ground. All footmarks had been washed away and Taddé Bocú and the other trackers looked out disconsolately over the vast area from which every trace had been removed as with a sponge.

  Common sense suggested that it would be best to continue in the direction in which we were travelling before the flood had surprised us, but no one could know whether the elephant had changed his course. It might be supposed that he would have moved on to the hills, but it was impossible to decide which direction he would then have taken in his effort to flee the torment he carried with him.

  If we were perplexed concerning the movements of el wāhido, however, we were still more worried by the problem of food. The flood had decimated the animals in the river area and the rest must have fled to higher ground. In the hope, therefore, of again picking up the tracks of the elephant and of finding some game we might eat, we descended from our crag and began to cross the plain which separated us from the hills.

  It was only a few miles, but we took one and a half days to cross it. At every step we went in up to our knees. We walked barefoot so that the mud would cling less, but time and again we had to help each other out of the mire. When, at long last, the ground began to rise and we felt solid earth under our feet again our relief was so great that for a moment we forgot our weariness and hunger.

  The ground on the hillside was covered with the tracks of animals, chiefly the heart-shaped marks of the gazelles, accompanied by their excrement which smells of violets. We noted also traces of the ariel, of the aburuf, and the horned, deep marks of the kudu. But so far there was no sign of the elephant.

  We came into the wooded zone, and Gabremariam by a stroke of luck brought down an antelope which suddenly appeared between two trees. We roasted the flesh on an open fire and ate it. Without seasoning of any kind it was nauseating and insipid. At every mouthful Gabremariam renewed his curses on the lazy blackguards, sons of prostitutes, etc., who had been so scared of a little water that they had let our provisions be swept away.

  With the flood, the rainy season had had its final fling; now, at the end of September, the good weather settled in and we marched towards the west under a clear sky in which, at night, the stars hung just above our heads.

  One day, as we were winding in single file among the spiky bushes, one of the men noticed a small bird and followed it to a tree. It was a large tree like all the others and we should have passed it by without notice, but the bird knew better, and began to knock on the trunk with its beak. Suddenly, a swarm of bees emerged from a gap between two branches and spread out like a shower of golden sparks. The men set to work with their hatchets and soon the trunk lay open like a book, full of dripping honeycomb.

  We had a memorable feast. Satiated and disgusted with unsalted roast meat, we sucked the last drop out of the comb and then chewed it until all taste of honey had disappeared. It was a full-flavoured honey with the acrid aroma of forest flowers, and we fed on it for two days.

  In the meantime, Fate had decided to compensate Anto Alimatú for all the humiliations he had suffered.

  The luckless hunter of fleas, although despised by his companions as a poor tracker, was an extremely good shot and though armed only with an old shot-gun he brought down game at an incredible range. One day, as he ran down a slope after a bustard which, wounded in flight, was flapping its way through the bushes, he suddenly came upon the tracks of el wāhido. It seemed too good to be true, and he began shouting and dancing round the tracks, singing a song of triumph.

  Anto Alimatú forgot the bustard: the spirits had granted him a sign of their favour. He, Anto Alimatú, had found the tracks of the elephant; he was no longer a tracker of fleas; he alone, Anto Alimatú of Bioccomà in the Lakatakura, had found the traces of the elephant while the famous trackers, blind and stupid like owls in the daylight, wandered about the forest expecting elephants to fall into their hands like doum palm nuts; he, Anto Alimatú, had discovered the tracks of the solitary elephant.

  He scampered back up the slope like a goat and when he shouted his news to us he was greeted by a chorus of ridicule and abuse. In the end he had to be believed and we all climbed down the hillside, grabbing at bushes to keep ourselves from falling. And there we too found the unmistakable footprints in the soft earth.

  Taddé Bocú walked round them, furious at not being able to deny the claim of the hunter of fleas. Bending over the marks, he examined them minutely and touched them with his finger to test the consistency of the earth and thus decide how long ago el wāhido had passed that way. Every now and again he raised his eyes, shook his head and looked with annoyance at Anto Alimatú who, radiant and puffed out with self-importance, pretended not to be aware of his presence.

  The beast had evidently continued to march towards the west, but instead of going up on to the crest of the hills as we had done, he had gone only half way up – probably because the young plants and shoots for which he had a weakness were more plentiful there. He had been going at a much slower pace, but a tree uprooted here and there spoke of his moments of frenzy: the deep marks of his tusk were visible on the roots of a baobab tree which he had evidently tried to uproot.

  Our hunger and weariness were dissipated at once and we stopped shooting at other game so as not to alarm the elephant. Made more venturesome by the undisturbed silence, animals which had certainly never seen hunters before flocked across our path, gazed at us with soft, surprised eyes and followed us like domestic animals. We seemed to be crossing a fairy-tale country in the company of flocks of gazelles, droves of wild boar, and herds of roan antelopes which trotted and galloped beside us through the trees; on the cliff we saw the twisted horns of the great kudu; the cynocephalus families came down to drink, and the dawn resounded with the cries of enamoured ariels.

  In this strange company, we followed the last tracks of the elephant, speaking little among ourselves but conscious of a curious excitement and some sadness. It had been a long hunt and we had come a long way, our days and nights continuously dominated by the presence of this great beast, this solitary one who, always just out of sight, led us remorselessly with him along his path of torment. We had the feeling now that the last hours of the chase were upon us.

  A few days later, as dawn broke clear and transparent as crystal along the edge of the hills, we saw the vultures circling in the sky, and instinctively knew that our search was over.

  All day we followed the tracks, and in the late afternoon we arrived at a glen half-hidden among trees from which the carrion-eaters rose heavily at our approach.

  And there, on his side against an ancient sycamore tree, his one tusk turned like a scimitar towards the heavens, lay the imposing mass of the solitary one. W
e made a circle round him and gazed in silence.

  He had led us so far, had given us so much trouble, and now there he was, inert and huge as a rock. One wide glazed eye, staring from a labyrinth of furrows, pouches and wrinkles, seemed to mock at us. The other was closed by a great purulent blister and from its socket a thick stream of matter trickled down into the gangrenous cavity which had opened in the jaw and which ran from the root of the missing tusk almost up to the temple. It was a hideous wound and the stench was intolerable.

  The men were sad, and their disappointment was plain to see: no one’s ears would be adorned with a gold ring to celebrate the death of this elephant; there would be no village festivities and no songs to welcome home the victors. We had tracked and found him, but there was no rejoicing in it.

  It was late, and we shook ourselves. As we set about removing his one remaining tusk a monkey’s cry broke the silence of the valley.

  * * *

  That was not quite the end of the journey, however. We were heading for home, bearing the great tusk of the solitary one between us, and had already come down into the flat country, when we saw across the dhurra fields the cone-shaped roofs of the village of Sabatú.

  We turned our steps towards it and were no more than a hundred yards away when I felt the onset of one of those sudden, prostrating attacks of malaria to which I was by this time quite accustomed. My knees turned to water so that I could hardly raise my feet from the ground; in my ears a slight buzzing, like the noise of a mosquito, grew in a few moments to a deafening roar; an appalling nausea overtook me and I shivered with cold; I seemed to be falling through a whirl of scintillating sparks into utter blackness. I had just time to call to Gabremariam before I lost consciousness.

  When I came to I was lying on a native bed in a darkened tukul, naked and running with sweat. I tried to remember, to collect my thoughts, but they escaped me like birds flying from a broken cage: I had not the slightest idea where I was. At a hand’s breadth from my face a young negress looked at me with eyes the colour of flax flowers. I assumed that I must still be delirious and that it was the fever which made me see negresses with blue eyes.

  But, in fact, the fever had passed. The negress put an arm under my head and tried to lift me so that I could drink from the bowl of frothy milk held in her other hand. I had now become accustomed to the semi-darkness and could see her better. She was naked and her breasts were like polished mahogany and so firm that they were hardly flattened when, in her effort to hold me up, they were pressed against my chest. The angareb on which I was lying was too high, and the arm, although robust, could not support a fever-weakened body weighing over twelve stone. The girl therefore raised herself on tiptoe and, placing a knee on the frame of the bed, managed to pull me up. When I was at last in a sitting position I noticed that she was not altogether naked, for round her hips she wore a string of doum palm nuts fastened at the crucial point by a metal disc on which was written in clear print: ‘CORNERI & BOGLIASCO, CREMONA – YELLOW PEACH JAM OF THE FINEST QUALITY’.

  I fell back on the bed in a paroxysm of laughter. The girl laughed with me without knowing the cause of my amusement and busied herself about the bed, pleased to see that I was better.

  Attracted by the laughter, other people entered the tukul, including an old woman, two other young women, an elderly man and a few children. A goat also joined the party, together with a couple of sheep – one of which was accompanied by a lamb which looked as if it were made of whipped cream.

  The new arrivals crowded round my bed, smiling and showing their wonderful teeth and besieging me with the formal Cunama questions: ‘Are you well?’ ‘Is your body well? Is it at peace?’ ‘Is your land happy?’

  To all these questions the conventional reply is one which is of itself sufficient evidence of the gentle nature of these people: ‘Everything is happy, everything is milk.’ I began to feel my strength returning and my brain clearing; in fact, as far as I was concerned ‘everything was milk’.

  But my knowledge of the Cunama tongue went no further than the formal greetings and a little invective – not a very useful vocabulary for sustained conversation, so sitting on the bed I could only reply by nods and smiles to the women, old men and children who crowded around me.

  My gentle nurse, proud of my quick recovery, helped me to dress. And it was quite true – her eyes were blue, and they gave an infantile candour to her coal-black face with its flat nose and heavy, prominent lips which were perpetually parted in a smile, showing her dazzling white teeth.

  As for the ‘peach jam’ decoration, it may have been a memento. For during the Abyssinian war, this Cunuma girl, whose name was Mula Mulidi, was the lover of a good-looking Milanese who made gaseous drinks and delivered them by motor-truck to our troops stationed on the Amha Bircutan. This young man, who did not allow the manufacture of aerated drinks to shrivel his heart up, had composed a poem in honour of his Dulcinea which he used to sing to his own guitar accompaniment. I can only remember one verse:

  Why do you laugh, Mula Mulidi,

  Negress with eyes of blue,

  There’s no one like you, Mula Mulidi,

  From Gurma to Cullucu.

  They are not, of course, lines which Petrarch would have written to Laura and they will probably never be found in any anthology: I only quote them to prove my story about the blue-eyed Cunama woman who attended to my needs with so much charity in the village of Sabatú, a little place in the Lakatakura.

  By the time I had finished dressing, under the smiling eyes of the villagers, an awful hunger invaded me and I hailed with joy the arrival of Gabremariam who had brought with him a bustard braised in a red pepper sauce in which mysterious aromatic herbs had been slowly dissolved.

  I fell upon it, and when I had finished a man from the small hill-post of Antoré arrived to inform me that a lorry would pick us up on the following day and take us all back to Barentú and Agordat.

  Our adventure was at an end. So many risks, so much effort, so much water and such a high fever in order to kill four malefactors, take the tusk from a half-putrefied elephant, and make the acquaintance of a negress with china-blue eyes.

  And of that man-and-elephant hunt nothing remains now but the great tusk of el wāhido which stands on a shelf in my library, pointing heavenward.

  Chapter Six

  THE SHADOW MERCHANT AND THE EMPRESS

  IT was at Massawa in Eritrea that I first made the acquaintance of Bughesha el keddāb, one of the strangest characters I have ever known, a mythomaniac of unusual powers of persuasion and a master trickster even for the Near East. At that time he was a small boy, but age in those parts is calculated approximately, and Bughesha’s mother informed me that the boy’s brain was unlike that of other children owing to the shock she received just before his birth when the powder factory at Otumlo blew up.

  I had visited his father, the honest old cobbler, Yàcub ben Daud, and found him swollen like a bladder of lard, with nephritis and heart disease. He was a meek creature who accepted his fate without question, but even he spoke to me with concern of this odd child of his. When the mother accompanied me to the door of the house she pointed down the street to a boy who was running about under the dim and only lamp, waving a rag in his hand.

  ‘That’s my son – chasing moths,’ said the woman, shaking her head in a disconsolate manner.

  But Bughesha was not trying to catch moths at all; he was merely chasing their shadows, which he aimed at with the rag as they danced on the wall. Each time he struck the wall the moths disappeared into the night, their shadows with them. The boy watched them go and waited happily, knowing that the lamp would soon draw them back again.

  His face was thin and on his head he wore a round, white cap. He had a low and convex forehead, a short nose with wide nostrils and a soft, full mouth, as red as if it were painted; his eyes were dark and velvety and shone with the liquid brilliance seen sometimes in the eyes of antelopes and of saints; the face had a certain inde
finable animal beauty.

  On hearing his name called, he reluctantly interrupted his game and came towards us, dragging his feet in the dust. He kept his chin on his chest and sucked his under-lip, simulating a shyness which was obviously non-existent. His mother told me in a tearful voice what a burden this strange son was to her. Why did he chase moth shadows? No other boy of his age wasted time in such a foolish way.

  ‘I take them to the sultans,’ said the boy.

  He spoke, not with a boy’s high-pitched voice, but in a deep tone quite out of keeping with his appearance.

  The mother sighed and asked him where he had ever seen a sultan; where were these sultans except in his imagination?

  ‘You don’t know them, but I do,’ said the boy.

  I asked him how much he charged for moth shadows, and he looked up at me with a conspiratorial smile which seemed to accept me as someone who could understand his games. He did not sell shadows, he said; he gave them away. But one day he would be vizier; he would have horses harnessed with gold and shod with silver.

  The mother held her head in her hands. ‘You hear him? You hear him? Already everyone calls him el keddāb, the liar, may God have mercy on him.’

  A few months later I again met Bughesha, but on this occasion he was not chasing shadows. It was evening and he stopped me in the Moslem quarter of the city and asked me if I wanted a Sudanese girl. As he made the offer he placed his index finger in his cheek to signify that the goods he offered were of first quality.

  I gave him a cigarette and asked him if, by acting as procurer, he expected to become vizier more quickly. Offended, he replied that he had never acted as procurer and that, in fact, the Sudanese girl did not exist: he had invented her in order to have the pleasure of speaking to me to tell me that his father, thanks to my treatment, was cured; that he had taken my medicine, had urinated for six hours without stopping, had flooded the whole street and had then gone off for a walk; at present he was in Port Sudan, business was good and he sent home a lot of money.