A Cure for Serpents

by Alberto Denti di Pirajno

  * * *

  When I returned from my leave in 1934 I was, to my chagrin, assigned to Asmara. I have never liked colonial capitals. I dislike intensely the small provincial towns of Italy with their malicious gossip and tittle-tattle; their respectable traditions which have crystallised good and evil into something absolute and static; their drawing rooms which set the social ‘tone’; their cafés where the young man who thinks he is a wit is always to be found in company with the girl who is ‘not quite nice’; their virtuous matrons who spend their time giving advice to young wives. But at least in Italy it is possible, by sitting in a train for a couple of hours, to escape from these small towns with their burden of ancient glory and present boredom, and to lose oneself in the anonymous crowd of a big city. Asmara did not offer even this consolation, because a two hours’ journey could take you only to Massawa or Keren – where little relief was to be found.

  I had lived too long in fascinating natural surroundings and was unable to free myself from the nostalgia which often, even today, assails me. The dull uniformity of the upland Copts was certainly not calculated to help me forget the kaleidoscopic array of peoples with whom I had lived: the Beni Amer with their geometrical hair-dressing; the Hadendowa, descendants of the ancient Egyptians; the Cunama python-hunters; the Rashahida with their henna-tinted beards.

  Instead of wide, noisy rivers, the chatter of families of monkeys, forests where at dawn spectral giraffes stretched their necks up to the tops of the highest trees; instead of hillsides on which one might see the massive forms of elephants outlined against the moon-bathed landscape, or troops of antelopes galloping up a grassy slope – instead of all this, I had the unsuccessfully ambitious streets of Asmara to look upon.

  However, since there is nothing so sterile and useless as hankering after the past, I put aside my nostalgia and endeavoured to organise my life in Asmara in the best way possible. The house and garden which were placed at my disposal were more than adequate for my needs: the garden was large and full of flowers, and in front of the door there was a vanilla tree which, in the evening, gave off a perfume so strong that it went to the head.

  A town house creates a whole series of problems. As far as the service was concerned, Jemberié assured me that only a cook was needed because he would see to the rest. Jemberié was convinced that Asmara was a den of thieves intent on robbing me.

  Thus it was that Tabhatú, a widow of uncertain age – a Coptic Christian turned Catholic – entered my service. She was an excellent woman and a first-class cook who could hold her own with any European cordon bleu. As far as her religion was concerned, she was fanatical like all converts, and she had certain curious manias. She always recited the rosary before starting to prepare a new dish. She also dedicated dishes to particular saints, based on a system which I was unable to grasp; it may have been some assonance which had struck her ear that caused her, for instance, to place her spaghetti alla matriciana under the protection of the Mother of God. Whenever I went down with an attack of malaria, she filled my bed with pictures of saints and sacred talismen: I would wake, exhausted and soaked with sweat, to find St Ignatius on my stomach, St Cecilia the Martyr under my arm, and the Holy Family on my chest.

  For some time we managed with Tabhatú only, but when, to Jemberié’s consternation, I began to entertain people to tea and to dinner I had to promote Jemberié to major-domo and find someone to help him. So Tesemmà arrived on the scene – young, timid and frankly and engagingly stupid. With the patience of a saint, Jemberié taught him to hold a plate in his gloved hands without letting it fall, to fill glasses without wetting the table-cloth, and to serve at table without pouring soup over the guests. That period of servitude under the yoke of the oppressors evidently stood Tesemmà in good stead for, with the advent of democracy, he has become an authoritative exponent of an Eritrean political party.

  After a few weeks, my staff was still further increased, because I was unable to refuse a friend who desired to bequeath to me Omar, a silent, colossal Mussulman from Assaorta. His functions were somewhat vague and ill-defined: he made canes into whistles, set traps for rats, weeded the garden paths and roasted the coffee. He had no qualifications; but on the other hand he had a lady friend from his own country who, two or three times a month, sent me a dish of zighini cooked as they cook them in Assaorta – a masterpiece, stewed with red pepper and aromatic herbs and surrounded with vegetables simmered gently in the piquant and fragrant sauce.

  Unfortunately, this young artist – whose acquaintance I never made – poisoned Omar’s life with her faithlessness. Every so often the unhappy man would come and throw himself at my feet, sobbing out noisily that she had deceived him again. I always found it difficult to conceal my amusement at the sight of this giant, shedding tears like a cut vine over the obviously unworthy object of his affections, but the memory of the delicious zighini always suggested to me so many excuses for her and so many subtle arguments in her favour that poor Omar, who asked nothing better than to be convinced, always ended by believing that there was no foundation for his jealousy.

  Although in those days I had no time to occupy myself with medicine, it happened that I was called upon to treat a lioness.

  I have always envied veterinary surgeons. They can treat their patients without having to listen to their stories; they are not tormented by the morbid scruples of psychasthenics or bewildered by the inventions of psychopathic liars; they are spared the sight of man’s pitiless egoism and cowardice. Moreover, they are not persecuted by the ignorant verbosity of anxious relatives – and they are certain that their prescriptions will be followed. And finally – since man does not live by bread alone – they may occasionally come across a quadruped who is grateful to them for their care.

  But much as I fancied the animal doctor’s life, I did not imagine, when a lioness arrived unexpectedly at my house, that I was about to put it to the test.

  That morning I was certainly not thinking of lions but of the next day’s dinner guests – important people, ‘people with big stomachs’, as Jemberié called them – and worrying about the expense.

  All the servants were with me, going over their respective responsibilities and receiving confirmation of the decisions taken. In view of the number of guests, two would have to serve at table: Jemberié and Tesemmà. I urged Tesemmà to do his utmost not to pour anything over the lady on my right and to avoid getting mayonnaise on the general’s new uniform. Tesemmà cast his eyes heavenward and laid his hand on his heart. Omar was to open the door and bow the guests in. Had Omar practised his bow? The native of Assaorta stepped forward into the centre of the room and proceeded to bow to each of the cardinal points with such solemnity that Tabhatú burst into a laugh like the whinnying of a horse. Before I could reprove her, the door opened and Eleonora entered.

  Eleonora, who had been my guide and prompter at Jemberié’s wedding, was the eldest of five half-caste sisters known throughout Eritrea for their beauty. When very young, she had married an Italian settler who, when she met him, ran a small general store in the Corso del Re, and also managed a tannery in the Gajjiret district. This little man was from the Italian Province of Marche, and was Jewish; he had the quick intelligence and caustic, ready wit of his race, but he had a generosity of soul I have rarely found, not only in Jews, but in any other human being. He was the first Italian assassinated by the bandits in Eritrea after the arrival of the liberators.

  Eleonora entered with the springy and undulating step which years in a college in Venice had not managed to Europeanise, and announced that in the garden there were three Abyssinians and a cat.

  The Abyssinians were caravaneers I had known during my long stay on the Ethiopian frontier, and the ‘cat’ was a lion cub. They had brought it to me because they knew that I liked animals and remembered that my garden at Agordat had been like Noah’s ark. They had encountered a lioness near Um-Hajer and had killed her. Of the two cubs, one had died en route, and this was the other. Unfortunatel
y, in getting hold of the animal they had broken one of its legs.

  When the caravaneers left, I carried the cub into the garden and, sitting on the steps, I placed it on my knees to see how badly it was hurt.

  It was a female not much bigger than a tabby cat. The right thigh bone was broken in the lower third, and when I tried to bring the ends together the cub jumped round and bit a piece out of my shirt.

  Jemberié recommended me to drown the ferocious beast at once, but I ignored him. With the aid of two sticks, a bandage and a packet of cotton wool I managed to immobilise the fractured limb in a primitive but sufficiently solid splint.

  The lion cub lay on its back on the grass with its injured leg, packed round with cotton wool and bandages, stretched straight upwards. It looked at Eleonora and at me with great, green eyes in which the pupils were only tiny slits, and every now and again it yawned, opening a rose-pink mouth full of milk teeth. It was tawny coloured and curly, with a white stomach and disproportionately large paws.

  ‘Shall you keep it?’ asked Eleonora – adding immediately some appropriate words in Tigrinya for the benefit of Jemberié, who continued to insist on the advisability of drowning the animal.

  ‘Of course you must keep it. Imagine the fun of going walking with a lioness and scaring the whole town! Lovely!’

  We began to discuss the question of a name for the new arrival but failed to come to any decision. The cub, as though it thought it should have some say in these proceedings, turned on its stomach and tried to get on to its feet, but the splint prevented it. It raised its head, gazed at us with a worried expression and attempted a roar, but in spite of repeated efforts it produced no more than a feeble little falsetto squeak; it seemed annoyed at this result and shook its head furiously, scraping the ground with its two front paws.

  ‘Do you see how her eyes shine?’ asked Eleonora. ‘Look at her proud expression – like a queen. You must call her “Neghesti”.’

  And so the young lioness was named ‘Neghesti’ which, in Tigrinya, means ‘Empress’.

  People who have never had a young lion with a fractured femur in the house will be unable to imagine how unsettling it can be. In the first place, someone had to take care of the beast. Tabhatú’s work was too delicate and important to permit of further responsibilities. Tesemmà was too stupid to have charge of such an intelligent animal. I sounded Jemberié and when, appealing to his religious sense, I mentioned that Neghesti was also one of God’s creatures, he agreed, but observed gravely that God had placed lions in the forest and not in men’s houses. Thus, the task finally fell to Omar: he was appointed dry nurse to the cub and he took on his new duties with enthusiasm and delight. He accepted his charge immediately, picking the little beast up with a tenderness unsuspected in those great hands, and when the cub licked him with its rough tongue he was moved almost to tears.

  When Neghesti began to mee … ow desperately we came to the conclusion that she must be hungry, and a long discussion took place as to whether a lion of that size had already been weaned. Eleonora, for whom the cub was an orphaned babe, flew home and returned with four pints of milk. During her absence, however, I had asked Tabhatú for a slice of raw meat from the kitchen, and this the lion cub had swallowed at one gulp. But Eleonora was not to be denied, and poured the milk into a salad bowl. The cub plunged her nose into it and lapped it up at such a rate that the bowl was empty in a trice, whereupon she licked it with such enthusiasm that it overturned and smashed on the stone steps. Obviously, a mixed diet and metal dishes were indicated.

  The next morning I took Neghesti to the hospital and a radiograph reassured me with regard to the reduction of the fracture. In the afternoon I called in my veterinary colleagues attached to the Vaccine Production Service and we discussed housing and feeding arrangements for the cub, who sat combing her whiskers with two great paws.

  The mixed diet was approved and the amount fixed at six pints of milk and four pounds of donkey meat a day: the latter the Vaccine Service offered to supply to me at cost price.

  On this diet Neghesti every day grew bigger, heavier and more beautiful. In a month the leg had healed so well that the most careful observer, watching her run and jump, could not say which of the two femurs had been broken. But Neghesti had not forgotten the pain or her doctor: I had only to sit down near her and immediately she would lie on her back and offer me her paws so that I could feel the thickened bone which was the result of the fracture.

  She was by now too big to sleep in a basket in Omar’s room, so I had a large cage constructed at the end of the garden in which she could pass the night. I had to be firm to prevent Omar, who never left her, from also taking up his residence in the cage.

  One morning Omar rushed into my room as I was dressing: the lioness was ill and her guardian wept as though she were already dead. I found Neghesti unrecognisable: her fur was staring, she was listless and she moved with difficulty about the cage, dragging her feet on the ground. When I called to her she looked at me with dull eyes and then flopped heavily on the ground.

  By a process of eliminating one hypothesis after another, we arrived at the cause of the trouble: fearing that raw meat might make her savage, we had been boiling it, and the unfortunate animal presented all the symptoms of acute avitaminosis. The daily ration of meat had now been increased to three kilos, and after she had again had it raw for a week she recovered completely.

  She was very fond of Omar, who devoted his entire time to her: he fed her, brushed and combed her, and passed the day playing with her.

  She knew very well that Tabhatú was terrified of her and amused herself every morning when the poor woman returned from the market by following at her heels across the garden. The cook, terrified, would begin to run, and the animal would lollop playfully after her right into the kitchen. Here Tabhatú would climb on to the stove, invoking the Madonna and all the saints, while Neghesti – seated in the middle of the room – looked on with immense satisfaction, waving her tail furiously.

  With Tesemmà she adopted another system: when she heard his voice she would make her way silently, on her belly, to where he was and spring out at him suddenly so that he jumped into the air, his eyes nearly out of their sockets.

  But I was her great love.

  When Omar brought my coffee in the morning, Neghesti came with him and sat down at the head of my bed. Keeping her claws carefully sheathed, she caressed my face with her front paws, smoothed my hair and pushed her face into my neck, licking my face and purring like a giant cat. I was required to return these caresses by rubbing her behind the ears and talking to her as one talks to a child, to which she replied with deep, short roars that sounded like a blacksmith’s bellows.

  When I left the house in the morning, she came with me as far as the gate, and standing on her hind legs, her front paws on the railing, she followed me with her eyes until I disappeared at the end of the road. Only then did she allow Omar to lead her back to the house where breakfast awaited her.

  When I returned at mid-day, Omar had to run to open the cage because she leapt and threw herself against the iron bars in an effort to reach me. She raised herself on her hind legs, her front paws on my shoulders, looking into my eyes with her own half-closed and a fainting expression which was really absurd on the face of a lioness. From that moment she never left me until I returned to the office again: she accompanied me to the sitting-room, came with me to the bathroom, followed me into the dining-room and sat down beside my chair without ever taking her eyes off me. Even while I was eating I had to take notice of her. If I seemed to have forgotten her, she nudged my elbow with her head with increasing violence until I turned to talk to her or offered her a little piece of meat, or a piece of orange – for which latter delicacy she had a special liking. One day I had taken some office papers to the table and was absorbed in reading them when, annoyed at her insistence, I gave her a slap. She took the table-cloth between her teeth and pulled everything – plates, knives and forks, bottles, g
lasses – on to the floor, leaving me with the papers in one hand and a fork in the other, sitting before an empty table.

  She did not hide her ill humour when I had visitors, and although she just managed to be civil to the men guests she had great difficulty in curbing her feelings with regard to my lady visitors. The only exceptions were Eleonora and her little girls who, on their way to school, came to me for a cup of coffee and milk.

  If I forgot to have Neghesti shut up when a lady visitor arrived, she would think of the most subtle jokes to play on the poor woman. If, while she was free in the garden, she heard a female voice in the ground-floor sitting-room, she would leap through the window, plant herself squarely in the middle of the room and – a thing she never did otherwise – open her mouth in a roar which showed all her teeth. Omar would arrive at the run, and lead her away prancing with satisfaction, while I supported the fainting lady.

  During a luncheon to which I had invited a couple of men friends and a lady who was on her way through Asmara, Neghesti, piqued because she had been excluded from the dining room and furious at the intrusion of the female guest, took the latter’s hat into the garden and reduced it to pieces the size of postage stamps.

  One summer afternoon, the wife of a colleague, seeing me at the window, called to ask if she might gather some flowers from the garden. I told her to cut as many flowers as she liked and to come in and take a cup of coffee. I did not think about Neghesti who, unseen by me, had crawled under the divan on which the young woman sat down; I only became aware of the lioness’s presence when I saw flowers and coffee cup fall on the carpet and my guest, the colour of chalk, slip senseless to the floor, while Neghesti trotted out of the room holding in her mouth the remnants of the stocking which, with extraordinary delicacy, she had removed from the lady’s calf.

  Jemberié had disapproved when I adopted Neghesti, and he watched her installation in the house with ill-concealed displeasure; he saw the cub become a robust and lively lioness and watched her manifestations of affection towards me with distaste and suspicion.