A Cure for Serpents

by Alberto Denti di Pirajno

  At the time of our story, however, Massauda was still beautiful even though she was getting on for thirty, which is the end of summer in the life of a Libyan Jewess.

  Her mind was mediocre and vulgar, but she was intuitive and vivacious and these qualities, combined with a certain shrewdness, sometimes deceived people into believing that she was intelligent. It was perhaps because she was not intelligent that she had never succeeded in accumulating anything in the way of a nest-egg. In order to get along at all, she was now obliged to keep four or five girls in her house, although, whether from indolence or from innate kind-heartedness, she did not make much profit even from them. Or perhaps it was because, although she was reputed to be miserly, she was in fact nothing of the kind and let the pounds slip through her fingers while fussing about the pennies. Her love affairs were a standing proof of her impractical attitude: she had given herself for various reasons – out of vanity, or because she had been attracted, or out of compassion, but only sometimes out of necessity.

  She seemed incapable of appreciating the idiocy, the incoherence, the aberrations of the men she had known, as revealed by the stories she told me in order to prove how much she had been loved, what delicate sentiments she had inspired, with what youthful gusto she had been enjoyed. To her, their behaviour seemed always a natural manifestation of love, and she was moved by it. In the nickname ‘Your rascal’ by which an old Minister of State signed himself (the cretin thought he was being dashing), Massauda saw only a likeable pleasantry. A business man, after fifteen days in Tripoli, wrote her a New Year letter in which he described the family Christmas dinner; after mentioning the various members of the family who were present, he concluded, ‘I am sure you would like my mother.’ This moved her to tears.

  When she insisted on my reading the pitiful, pathologically infantile effusions which a general (whom I had always admired for his culture, character and sense of responsibility) had written her from Italy – on official notepaper – she was surprised that I was not delighted at the revelation of such an affectionate nature in a valorous soldier.

  The subject does not come within the competence of a physician who once ran an African dispensary, and perhaps it would not interest European readers, but nevertheless I have often asked myself whether perhaps such folly is to be explained by the novelty of first contact with a coloured woman. I should like to hope at least that ministers, industrial magnates and high-ranking military commanders do not behave in the same way with white-skinned Massaudas at home.

  But I was off now to discover my fate, to learn just what lay in store for me in Eritrea – as revealed by the coffee grounds of the beautiful sharmouta.

  When I arrived in the cul-de-sac ‘Good Fortune’ the sound of women’s voices filled the street – shouts and laughter accompanied by chords from some stringed instrument.

  A young negress hanging over the balcony stared at me with her mouth open and a stolid expression on her face, until I addressed her in the manner to which negro servants are accustomed. She then fled precipitately with a clacketing of her sandals on the wooden floor.

  Massauda was waiting on a mat in the ground-floor sitting-room. She was wrapped in a brilliant-coloured hāik and covered with gold like a sacred image; and she was ready to tell me my destiny.

  With her chin on her chest, she kept her eyes fixed on the bowl which she balanced on her crossed legs. The air was filled with the aroma of coffee, with the scent of sandalwood and of women.

  She did not speak; she did not even look at me, but raised her hand with its henna-tinted palm motioning me to keep silent. In silence, therefore, I sat down beside her and awaited the verdict.

  In a contralto voice and in her comic Italian, Massauda pronounced the fatal words. At the end of every sentence she swiftly raised her beautiful eyes to my face as though seeking confirmation of her predictions.

  ‘You go by Italy in Eritrea. Perhaps going Naples, perhaps going Rome.’ She raised her voice and shot me a look from her luminous eyes. ‘Not to see this woman, you have understand? Not see this woman. This woman no good, no good. This woman no good for you …’

  Every now and then she interrupted her predictions to shake a threatening fist in the direction of the floor above, where at times there was such an uproar that the notes of the ’ud could no longer be heard. Missa, the old hag of a servant, endeavoured to calm her mistress by stroking her shoulder, but when the noise became unbearable she lifted her skirts with two fingers and disappeared on tiptoe up a staircase in the wall. The bacchanalia subsided a little and Missa descended again. This time she huddled herself close to me on the floor and began to tell the most outlandish stories, regardless of Massauda’s efforts to restrain her.

  Missa was Massauda’s wizened, hawk-nosed, money-squeezing go-between; a sergeant with the girls, a pander with the clients. She had a wagging chin, a heavy leer, and a deep loyalty to Massauda. She was the practical side of the establishment, and also a great liar.

  ‘Do you know,’ she confided in an affected voice, and with a girlish tilt of her withered face, ‘when I go to Italy the prefect comes to meet me on the boat? He does, you know.’

  Massauda smiled in spite of herself and then, with a gesture of impatience, silenced the servant and returned to her prophecies.

  ‘Ooooo … careful on ship, because on ship if you careful you find your destination. On ship many women, but you staying with men … and careful, you understand?’

  At this moment, in the room above, pandemonium broke loose. Ear-splitting screams pierced the air, furniture was overturned, bangs and thuds covered us with plaster, and it seemed as though the ceiling was about to fall in.

  Massauda sprang to her feet, leaving her hāik behind as though she had discarded her shell; jingling with gold ornaments and unsteady on her high heels, she rushed towards the staircase bellowing at the top of her voice. Missa had preceded her and I followed.

  In the semi-darkness the negress and another girl were rolling on the floor, biting, scratching, punching and kicking, dragging out each other’s hair by the handful, spitting at each other, panting and vomiting obscenities. In the fury of the battle they had overturned a large sideboard which had held a liqueur service, glasses, knives and forks, plates, a large porcelain clock, and a whole collection of imitation Dresden figures.

  The negress broke free like a writhing snake, but her adversary, a muscular Jewess whose face was covered with blood, leapt upon her again and they rolled across the carpet, among the broken china and overturned furniture.

  Three other girls who had flattened themselves against the walls were clutching their skirts round them and screaming like magpies. A blind had fallen on to the balcony and the bamboo pole was still stuck through the brass rings.

  Like lightning, Massauda took up the curtain rod and began to lay about her in all directions, striking combatants and non-combatants alike. The non-combatants piled on top of one another in the corner and yelled as though they were being flayed alive. With their faces protected by their arms they jumped and bent and twisted themselves in an effort to avoid the blows. It was at this moment that we became aware of the presence of the ’ud player.

  He was a little yellow hunchback, almost annihilated under a fez much too big for his head and a stambulina too wide for his dwarf’s body. He was standing on a divan against the wall with his head drawn into his shoulders and was holding an enormous lute above his head in an effort to preserve it from the cyclone which was devastating the room. Massauda’s fury had terrified him and he was emitting cries so shrill that they rose high above the shrieks of the girls.

  Massauda turned and looked at him. She was panting and little bubbles of froth were forming at the corners of her mouth. She let the pole fall from her hands and for some reason a new wave of fury swept over her and increased the congestion in her face.

  ‘You … you … you dog, you son of a bitch! …’

  She rushed at him, seized him by the front of his clothes, shoo
k him like a bundle of rags and, reaching up on tip-toe, tried to strike his face with blows that cut through the air like a sword. ‘Ah, dog!…’

  Between my hands I held the bony ones of Missa who, in order not to be left out, and thinking it a gesture appropriate to the occasion, was trying to tear her face with her nails. Fortunately at that moment I was able to push Massauda out of the room. I persuaded Missa to go with her and put her to bed, so that I could attend to the casualties.

  For this purpose we repaired to another room. I began with the Fezzanese negress, who was bruised from head to foot and covered with blood. Every now and again a sob broke from her as with the back of her hand she wiped the blood from her nose. One of Messauda’s blows had caught her shoulder, and her back and buttocks were covered with glass splinters which glittered brightly on the dark bruised skin.

  She still had her wits about her, however, and while I was treating her back, remembering how I had addressed her from the street, she bent towards the other girls and sounded the alarm: ‘ikàsser ellôza’ – ‘Be careful – he cracks the almonds.’

  This phrase, in the jargon of most of the North African underworld means: ‘this man knows Arabic’; but no one has ever been able to tell me why. Pretending not to understand, I next turned my attention to Julia, the Jewess. Her mouth was swollen; her arms showed the marks of the negress’s teeth; one eyebrow was split open and the weals raised by the bamboo pole made her back look like a zebra’s. She was chiefly annoyed, however, to see so many people in her room.

  ‘Are you aware that this is my room?’ she asked.

  The atmosphere was stifling. Through the window opening on to the alley the night air bore an ammoniacal stench of urine mingled with the scent of the jasmin which covered the wall of the house; in the distance, the loud voice of a drunk could be heard. From a silver frame on the bed table a sergeant of artillery gazed at me with a severe and martial air.

  I asked Julia if she would do me the honour to allow me to remain in her room in order to treat her own and her companions’ injuries. With a shrug of her shoulders, indifferent to my irony, she replied, ‘Make yourself at home‚’ and balanced a cigarette between her swollen lips.

  One of the other girls, in order to give herself courage during the medication, began to sing out of tune in a loud and raucous voice, and when I gave her a resounding smack to make her stop she burst into hysterical laughter.

  When we eventually returned to the ruins of the sitting-room, a divan slid out from the wall, and from behind the headboard appeared the fez of the ’ud player, followed by his terrified face.

  His appearance caused another outburst of hilarity. The hunchback did not laugh. He ignored the girls and turned to me: I was the physician. With one hand he held the precious lute behind his back; the other he gravely proffered me, pushing it under my nose so that I could observe a few superficial scratches across the knuckles.

  ‘You are the doctor,’ he said, ‘I am injured.’

  I was obliged to close the doors in a hurry so that the ribald shouts and laughter of the girls should not bring Massauda into our midst again. The music-maker, furious because no one would take him seriously, cursed the women and backed away in order to protect his precious instrument from them. Naked, they pressed round him and showered him with a stream of filthy epithets to each of which the dwarf had a ready answer; in fact, to my surprise, he was more than a match for them.

  Ghazàla asked him in a pitying tone how it was that he was pregnant: how had he got himself into that trouble? In the local dialect a pregnant woman is said to be ‘with belly’. Making a mocking reference to the unfortunate creature’s hump, she asked him how it was that he had got himself ‘with back’.

  ‘Maybe I am pregnant, my beauty,’ replied the hunchback with a sneer. ‘It can never happen to you because the grass does not grow where the crowds walk.’

  He winked at me, satisfied at having thus reduced the impudent Ghazàla to silence, but immediately turned a stream of invective on to the Jewess who, in spite of her bruises and injuries, continued to dance round him endeavouring to bang his fez down over his eyes.

  Finally I managed to bundle him out of the room, and soon afterwards I took my departure. The storm was now over and the girls, peaceable as doves, came to the street door to wish me farewell. They were covered with towels, blankets, bruises and sticking plaster, but were quite unselfconscious, and smilingly bade me Godspeed.

  I had got as far as Shiara Mizrani, the city centre, when I heard someone calling me, and there at the end of the deserted street the hunchback came running, waving his ’ud like a club.

  He had followed me to ask my pardon for his part in the evening’s proceedings. He ran along beside me, trying to adjust his step to mine, and threw his head back so that he could look into my face.

  Julia was always tormenting him, he said. She mocked him, sneered at him and humiliated him in the presence of strangers. He did not mean me, he hastened to add: I was not a stranger because I was a physician and the father of all unfortunate creatures. She introduced him to people as her eunuch, as her own private procurer, and each time invented some fresh insult – such as, that she had bought him in a Turkish brothel; that she had found him on a dung heap; that she had received him as a legacy from the Sultan of Mahbulistan together with a clyster and a spittoon. The dwarf ground his teeth and rolled his head at the remembrance of her insults.

  Dawn was breaking and there were few people in the Piazza dell ’Orologio at that hour: a porter went towards the harbour, a beggar made for his usual stand, a solitary and indolent street-sweeper appeared. The little Arab tavern at the end of the street was, however, already open; from the doorway the large stomach of the proprietor was visible warming itself in front of the fire.

  We were the first callers, and the host, surprised at his unusual guests, put us in a little back room which was lit only by a pale gleam from a high window covered with a piece of rusty wire-netting. We sat down opposite one another, with a rectangular table about ten inches high between us.

  ‘Are we really going to eat together?’ asked the hunchback, who had not taken me seriously when I invited him to have breakfast with me.

  His quick and hungry eyes passed first to the bowls of soup in which eggs, seasoned with cumin seeds, floated on pieces of fried bread, next to the bazina, a kind of polenta made of fermented barley seasoned with red pepper, and then to the bottle of palm wine.

  He chewed every mouthful thoroughly and swallowed it with gusto, making the most of the present in compensation for past hunger and in anticipation of that to come. Every now and again he smiled at me and with his mouth full informed me that the food was excellent – and to prove his satisfaction he belched in the most astounding fashion.

  His approval was, in fact, misplaced. The polenta was lumpy, the oil rancid and the eggs over-cooked. The palm wine alone was passable, being just at the right point of maturity.

  The wine loosened his tongue and he told me he was not from Tripoli; that he was a Yemenite and had always lived at Istanbul. Had I not noticed that he was dressed in Turkish fashion? He looked with some pride at his stambulina which should have been black but had become decidedly green; it reached to his knees, and was worn at the elbows and shoulders and threadbare at the seams.

  But he had left Istanbul owing to some misunderstanding with the police; and when they told him that there was a shortage of good ’ud players in Tripoli he had come with his instrument (which was the finest in North Africa) and settled down here. Would I like him to play something? I said that I would – knowing that he offered it by way of thanks for his meal.

  He carefully unwrapped his ’ud and dusting it delicately with his sleeve he tuned the strings.

  He began to play, bent over the instrument, plucking at the strings with the plectrum, now here, now there, now drawing it lightly over them all at once. His left hand seemed quite independent of his right as the flexible fingers twisted over the instrum
ent like the tentacles of an octopus.

  Suddenly, he raised his head and began to sing. He sang quietly, in a voice which was surprisingly unlike the squeaky falsetto of his speaking voice.

  He sang the song of the trig el bill, the camel track, the caravan route:

  The wind passes like a caress over the waves of the desert sand

  And the caravan leaves no more trace than a bird’s wing in the air or a fish in the water.

  Let us flee the crowd, for in the multitude there is no salvation,

  Let us beware of taking root like a tree.

  The sun rises in the heavens and the feet of the camels wearily seek the shadows;

  Our throats are parched so that we cannot speak;

  The camels’ voices sob.

  Now the evil spirits that send men mad conjure up before our eyes visions of happiness that are only illusion,

  The sound of running water falls on our ears,

  The green of palm trees is reflected in a fountain where brightly plumed birds flutter and sing;

  The mirage fades and shows only the bones of our comrades, whitening in the sun.

  We too shall perish:

  There is no escape from death,

  But Allah is merciful.

  In the Great Void where only God exists, the dying who believe that the Resurrection is certain will find their way to the true oasis.

  On the strings of the ’ud the water gushed forth, gurgled, splashed and spluttered. Three sounds there are that are dear to the ear of man: the sound of money, of a woman’s laughter, and of running water.

  The caravan was saved.

  We shall all be saved.

  That is what we have learned on the caravan route.