A Cure for Serpents

by Alberto Denti di Pirajno

  She had been in excellent health the evening before. She had stayed in the kitchen until ten o’clock; Omar had given her a nice piece of raw meat together with the bones of the previous day’s beefsteaks which Tabhatú had kept for her; she had eaten with excellent appetite and after a short run in the garden had gone to her cage and had fallen asleep immediately, under Omar’s eyes. He had found her in exactly the same position in the morning – but dead.

  An hour later my friends from the Vaccine Institute were in the cage with me, bending over Neghesti’s body. We put forward many arguments and discussed many possibilities but did not succeed in making any diagnosis. What was the use?

  In Neghesti’s passing there was a definite breaking of links which transcended the mere fact of her death: her end closed a chapter of my life and it did not seem important to know what had killed her; when one of the doctors suggested an autopsy I shook my head.

  At the foot of the pepper tree which opened its umbrella over the flower-bed in front of the house Omar dug a deep pit, while Tabhatú wrapped a white sheet round Neghesti’s body and sewed it up with an interminable row of neat, even stitches. In the evening, Tesemmà and Omar laid the body of the lioness in the grave and Jemberié covered it with earth, flattened the soil with his spade and replanted the flowers which Omar had taken up carefully before beginning to dig.

  Before he began putting the earth back, I saw Jemberié throw a silver Coptic crucifix down into the grave. Tabhatú saw it too, and with her thumb she made the sign of the Cross.

  Chapter Seven

  THE ROAD TO TRIPOLI

  IT HAS often been said that the mission of the doctor and the mission of the priest have much in common, and that the art of healing is a priestly function. There is, of course, some foundation for this. Physicians and priests are both called upon to succour those who turn to them in time of crisis; both prescribe certain rules for living, and predict trouble later if the prescribed rules are not kept; both receive confessions and promise salvation – one in this world, the other in the next. But there is another and less often remarked affinity: a priest always remains a priest and a physician always remains a physician. The priest may put aside his habit and the physician may find himself occupied in an entirely different field, but ‘Semel abbas, semper abbas’.

  It was therefore not surprising – although I was at this time chef de cabinet to the Viceroy in Addis Ababa – that on receiving an urgent call from a sick man I answered the summons at once. But I must admit that it turned out to have been a very imprudent move, for never did any patient so harass me with tenacious affection and esteem, or so torment me with remorseless gratitude.

  The patient in question was a bronze-skinned Abyssinian prince, son of the king who had reigned over the country where Jemberié was born. He was almost illiterate and averse to soap and water, but it was quite obvious, without consulting his family tree, that he came of royal stock. He was tall, lean and of a most stern countenance; and when his eyes fell upon the colourful rabble that formed his court his people automatically lowered their own.

  When I made his acquaintance he must have been over seventy. His movements were lithe and quick; his hair, moustache and goatee beard were dyed a prodigious black; and when he smiled he displayed a dazzling set of false teeth, which had been supplied by a Swiss dentist. He was courteous, violent, overbearing, or obsequious, according to the circumstances and company; his swift changes of attitude and expression were those of a descendant of a long line of autocrats.

  I had already met him on several occasions at official ceremonies or when he had called at my office to obtain facilities of one kind or another. We had to converse through an interpreter because I do not speak Amharic and the ras knew no Italian, nor any other of the few languages I possess. His interpreter – as round as a barrel and with tightly curling hair – wore a perennial smile and sweated profusely in all seasons.

  Once, when they were both in my office, this engaging young man explained to his master that I was also a doctor. The ras’s enthusiasm knew no bounds: he insisted on embracing me and I had no choice but to submit, for the delicate political situation made a certain flexibility desirable in dealing with a chieftain possessed of so much authority and such a strong following.

  A month later, looking up from the sea of papers in which I was immersed, I again met the eyes of the perspiring interpreter. With the most joyful of smiles he told me that his master was dying and wished to see me before he breathed his last.

  In the ras’s room, as I entered, the smells of civet, incense, stale air and dried sweat on dirty skin vied with each other for the upper hand. There was very little light and I had to accustom myself to the smoky semi-darkness before I could distinguish people and objects. A decrepit old man in a gold-embroidered cloak took me by the hand and led me to a bed from which came the sound of laboured breathing through catarrh-choked bronchial tubes.

  The ras was naked except for a fūta over his legs; he was half-sitting and was supported by a girl who, curled up on the bed, served as a bolster for him; another girl held his head up, while a third and fourth massaged his forearms vigorously, as though they were kneading bread.

  The ras was the colour of lead. Without the false teeth his face was no bigger than a fist. It was a network of wrinkles, and great drops of sweat ran slowly down his cheeks; the girl he was leaning against wiped them continuously with a cloth. On the whitening hairs of his chest a large, gold filigree cross hung from a greasy ribbon, rising and falling with the painful breathing.

  I heard the sound of invisible people moving about in the dark corners of the room – a woman’s sobbing, a cough, a mumbled prayer. An infant with a pear-shaped head appeared for an instant at my feet, gave me a meaningless smile and disappeared under the bed.

  The old man in the gold embroidered cloak, who until that moment had not said a word, told me in excellent French that the ras had been ill for some days, that he had pains, a violent cough and a high fever.

  I persuaded the patient to lie down and substituted a couple of cushions for the Shoan girl, but the masseuses transferred their attentions from their master’s arms to his legs and feet and continued their manipulations during the entire examination. It was a clear case of lobar pneumonia at the stage of resolution and half an hour later we were in an ambulance, on our way to hospital, the ras wrapped snugly in half a dozen blankets.

  My official duties kept me extremely busy at that time and I was not able to follow up my occasional patients as closely as I should have liked. The ras was in good hands, however, and every now and again a colleague telephoned to give me the latest news of his progress. I felt, therefore, that I need not worry and that I could leave the old man to his fate.

  He was certainly far from my thoughts when, one morning, I was again confronted by the sweaty, smiling interpreter together with the decrepit old man in the gold-embroidered cloak. While the former mopped his forehead, the old man informed me that the ras had recovered and would go home next day. He, the ras, begged that I would accompany him: I had brought him good fortune on the outward journey and my company on the way home could not fail to have a beneficent influence. It was obviously impossible to refuse an invitation couched in these terms, and I was punctual at the appointment.

  The personage who received me at the hospital bore no resemblance whatever to the sick man whom I had found propped up on his bed with a Shoan girl for a bolster. He held court in the corridor, dressed in an immaculate shamma bordered with red like a Roman senator’s toga. The false teeth, back in their place, flashed smiles at the doctors, assistants, nurses and native servants, the latter gazing with awe on the great man who was known and feared throughout Ethiopia.

  When he caught sight of me he ran to embrace me, proclaiming through the interpreter that without my intervention he would certainly now be dead, and declaring that he loved me like a blood relation; he called upon the Trinity to witness his words and again took me to his bosom.
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  A cortege accompanied us down the stairs and crowded on to the steps to see us depart.

  In a dilapidated Ford the ras and I sat together, facing the interpreter and a Coptic priest who was the ras’s personal confessor. This humble servant of God, whom the hair-raising confessions of his penitent seemed to have reduced to a stunned condition, sat bolt upright on the seat, his eyes fast closed. At regular intervals, perhaps in order to assert his spiritual authority, he unwrapped from an excessively greasy red cloth a large gilt crucifix, polished it and passed it to us to kiss; this done, he gave it another rub, wrapped it up again in its dirty cloth and placed it on his knee, where it remained until the next exactly similar rite.

  The courtyard of the prince’s residence was full of cheering people. Zealous janissaries opened a path for us with kicks and blows in all directions. Deafened by the shrill cries of the women, we passed through the inner court, up wooden staircases flanked by genuflecting dignitaries in full rig, and through squalid, dusty apartments, until we reached a room so long and narrow that I took it for a corridor. A Persian carpet which would have brought water to the mouth of any collector was spread over the uneven floor tiles. Against the wall stood an eighteenth-century writing table of inlaid rosewood ornamented with bronze to which time had given a pleasant patina. On the writing table a large photograph of the Viceroy was propped against a glass case which protected a bottle containing a pirate ship in full sail. On the opposite wall, under photographs of the King and of Mussolini, was a long shelf filled with a strange assortment of books, clocks of all kinds, alabaster statuettes, saucerless cups without handles, a few odd silver spoons and forks, a stuffed owl half eaten by moths, and images of Abyssinian saints with round eyes like hard-boiled eggs. Near the door, Marlene Dietrich in a bathing costume exhibited her legs on the colourful cover of a French magazine which was stuck on the wall. A layer of dust toned down the colours, softened the outlines and threw a veil of melancholy over the whole scene.

  The ras installed himself in an armchair and the march-past began. There were men of all ages, although for the most part they were getting on in years: some were white-haired but there were a few young men and adolescents and even a few children clinging, frightened, to their mothers’ skirts, awaiting their turn. Some were dressed in velvet or silk and gold; others wore their everyday clothes and some were covered with rags. All went barefoot.

  There appeared to be no order in the procession, nor any question of precedence. The only indication of rank, or degree of relationship to the ras, seemed to be the measure of the warmth of his greeting, and the expression – imperious, distant, condescending, affable, affectionate – with which he received the homage.

  Some who prostrated themselves to kiss his foot failed to move a muscle of his face; but others were raised and embraced even before they could bow before him. Some bent to kiss the master’s knee while he passed a hand absent-mindedly over their heads in a gesture of benediction. One old man, whose beard was so white in contrast to his dark skin that it did not seem possible that it could be real, placed a kiss upon the august shoulder and in return was kissed on the forehead. Many kissed his hands, and there were just a few who made the first move towards an embrace; these friends he strained to his heart, speaking a few words into their ears. Two small boys who threw themselves at his feet were raised, placed on his knee and caressed with a tenderness so at variance with the ras’s stern expression that they were obviously more scared than gratified. There was one man of Herculean build who burst into tears and cried like a child in his master’s embrace.

  When the ceremony was over and I was free to withdraw, I assumed that my relations with the ras thenceforward would be no longer those of physician and patient, but would revert to those I maintained in my official capacity with all the other native chiefs living in the capital. Little did I know how tenacious gratitude can be in a generous heart and what unexpected forms it may assume.

  A week after the ceremony in the palace I was invited to a banquet given by the ras to celebrate his recovery. It began at mid day and took place in marquees set up on the open space behind the palace. After three hours of it the guests, seated round long tables, were eating with less appetite; some were on the point of falling asleep, overcome by the spring heat and by too much food and tech, the strong native beer. To wake things up, a troupe of dancers entered. There were about thirty of them, slim and lithe, with small regular features, their bodies bound from neck to ankles in fine white linen so that they looked like Tanagra statuettes. In single file, with small steps and without raising their feet from the ground, they wound slowly back and forth, serpenting to and fro to the accompaniment of harsh, twanging music and an intermittent dull beating of drums. Their bodies responded to the savage rhythm with a shudder that started at the hips and was accentuated at the shoulders. To my European eyes there was nothing lascivious in the dance, but possibly the motions had some erotic significance for the other guests, conjuring up no end of disturbing images in their excited brains. They followed every movement with smouldering eyes, and showed their appreciation by uproarious shouting and thunderous applause as the dancers made their exit, leaving behind them a trail of perfume mingled with the smell of the rancid butter with which their hair was dressed.

  After a lull, during which a speech in honour of the ras was made by some pompous dignitary covered with gold and with a lion’s mane on his head, the servants rushed in under the tent flaps and ran round the tables refilling plates and glasses. As they withdrew, the singers entered. They were dressed exactly like the dancers and moved about from table to table, singing short verses in subdued voices with occasional bursts into high trills and cadenzas.

  I did not, of course, understand a word and the singing was too strange for me to be able to judge its merits. From time to time a guest threw a handful of coins or a banknote to the girls, and every now and again someone rose to announce that he was giving such and such a sum in honour of the ras or of some other notability present at the feast; applause greeted each offer and the singer, having pocketed the money, placed herself in front of the person named and improvised a few couplets in his honour. It was clear that the lines often made fun of some feature of the banquet and contained topical allusions; the guests swayed with noisy laughter and made the plates and glasses bounce as they banged the tables with their hands.

  At the head of one of the tables was an important merchant from Massawa whom I had at one time treated for severe syphilis. He shouted over the heads of the others that he offered twenty thalers in my honour.

  As a special guest, I was seated on a small raised platform, at a separate table protected by a canopy. Two servants were assigned to me and as soon as my plate was empty they refilled it with the dexterity of conjurors. I have always had an excellent stomach of considerable capacity and I have a special weakness for zighini, the Abyssinian stew made with red pepper. I have no idea how many plates I had polished off on that occasion but it must have been an imposing number.

  At the moment when the merchant from Massawa called my name my mouth was full and I was chewing with gusto. Suddenly I found the ras’s interpreter at my side, and in front of me, a few paces away, a singing girl who watched me furtively and smiled with one side of her mouth. She was young and beautiful, tall and coffee-coloured with liquid eyes; her hair was arranged in tiara fashion above her forehead. For a few moments she remained silent, her chin on her breast – then she raised her head and sang. The interpreter translated the lines for me as the girl improvised them.

  The beautiful creature declared herself to be terrified; she trembled, so she affirmed, from head to foot, her teeth chattered, she could hardly speak and a cold perspiration ran down her body. For a moment she held her audience in suspense, tickling their curiosity, and then explained that she was terrified because she found herself face to face with a lion.

  I assumed a modest air and smiled my most benign smile. The young woman covered her face wit
h her hands and continued her song: she could see the lion – he was tall and large-limbed, with a silver mane, and he crouched in the shade looking at her with eyes of fire. I began to be embarrassed. Hundreds of eyes were fixed on me and I wondered what sort of figure I cut as a lion. Yes, the girl insisted, she saw the lion, the ambessa, and she recognised him not because he roared, for in fact he smiled at her; not because he was ferocious, for in fact he was kindly. How did she recognise him? ‘I recognise you, O ambessa, because you have been eating for four hours without a pause!’

  The guests rose to their feet and yelled their approval. The ras smiled and waved to me. The Massawa merchant, shouting down the others, invoked God’s blessing on me in Arabic. The interpreter mopped himself and offered congratulations and good wishes.

  In primitive communities the big eater or drinker is always a popular figure: a large appetite is taken as an indication of strength which demands respect and inspires admiration. At that particular moment, however, I would have been glad to disappear into the earth; instead of which I had to rise and thank the company. There was further applause as, through the interpreter, I praised the beauty of the singer and the melody of her song and put some thalers into her hand.

  The next day, when Jemberié opened the door to me on my return from the office, he announced that a man and woman were awaiting me in the drawing room. The man was the ras’s interpreter and the woman was the singer who had professed herself terrified at the sight of the lion.

  The rotund and jovial interpreter became eloquent. The ras loved me and even venerated me, for to me he owed his life; the ras thought of me continually: he admired my capacity for work and was often sad when he spoke of my solitary life, passed between the four walls of an office or in a house in which there was no one to bear me company. When he was with me, the interpreter continued, the ras had no eyes for anyone else: he followed my every movement, hung upon my words and almost divined my thoughts. He had been happy to see me laugh at the singer’s improvisations. The girl was of noble family and I had myself praised her beauty and her singing. Very well then – the ras begged me to keep her: when I was sad she would smile at me; when I was tired she would sing for me; when I was lonely she would bear me company – in fact, there was no limit to what the charming girl would do for me.