Literary Corner: The snake man [A short story]

Bush training for circumcision was over but as always Alpha stayed behind to avoid Morikebba and his boys.

It had become impossible to stay with that group because Morikebba would constantly talk about himself—how he ran and jumped better than all his friends, how he recited better, and how he wrestled better.

But one evening as if on impulse, Alpha had allowed himself to join the group after class even though he knew Morikebba had not changed. Nothing could get Morikebba to reduce the size of himself or increase the measure he held of Alpha or some of the other students. The bush master had let them go early that evening because of a stubborn pain which scourged his aging back.

Early release always meant more time at he village square among the market stalls. And there the gang trooped pinching fruit off the stall and causing general riot and chaos among the chickens and sheep. The boys would normally have left the butcher’s table alone because that was where a thousand grey flies sang pasting their fat hairy bodies over the blood covered meat. But this time a strange scene drew them to the butcher’s stall. A man with a big bag over his shoulder was talking loudly to a crowd.

“The best medicine for snake bite,” the man was saying sowing off a piece of white string. “No man in all this Kombo District can do better. No ma knows better than I who made this. No size of snake can touch you or even scare you. I have power and I use my power for people. Buy this medicine and forget about bites.” “How do we know it works?” the butcher shouted out causing much laughter. “Watch me,” the man answered loosening the mouth of the bag while continuing lofty announcements about himself and his father, his grandfather before him and the power of his medicine.

The circle immediately became larger when the women realised what might be coming out of the bag. While the bag bulged and shook, the man began to move backwards reciting cotton string. Then there came a long moment when the movement inside the bag suddenly stopped.

“Let it come out,” another man said. “I know you’ve sold more strings than I’ll ever sell cola nuts. So let is come out!” The bag began to bob again. The circle got wider. Morikebba, Alpha and the other boys held their distance watching as intently as every one else. The mouth of the bag lifted up in one corner and a black tongue flashed. A cry of horror went up among the younger women. Then the head shot out.

The butcher reached for the longest of his machetes and retreated behind his stall where an army of grey flies instantly covered his fat face. He fanned vigorously to keep an eye on what was happening. So did Morikebba whose body had stiffened, his eyes bulging. The snake’s head turned menacingly. The skin a delicate mottle of red and black and ash grey shades shone coldly. The eyes, red and burning, surveyed the crowd with treacherous and diabolic calculation. Morikebba reached for a machete from the butcher’s table and wiped his sweaty face. He could no longer hide his terror. Alpha watched him as closely as he kept an eye on the snake.

“Comes the wind they whistle,” Alpha said under his breath. “But comes the true test of fire, they are but ashes because they are men of straw.” The creature was fully out of the bag. Its stout body had begun to open out from a coil of three or four circles, each the size of a motor tyre. Minianhgo! It was the snake with the most vicious reputation among the hunters of the forest.  It sniffed the air, its head drawn towards the meat stall.

“It smells the blood of the meat,” Alpha whispered to Morikebba in whose tort fist the machete shook like a leaf.  “It is looking at us,” Morikebba cried, unable to move. “We are done for.” “Be calm,” Alpha said stepping in front of Morikebba to reassure him. “It has felt my eyes on it. It won’t bother us.” The brute suddenly broke its concentration on the meat stall and pivoted its floating head towards the snake man. The man tried to touch it but it swerved away holding itself aloft like a deadly missile ready for firing. An involuntary noise left Morikebba’s throat. Even the older men held their breath. Only the insane will play with miniangho.

Then the creeping thing lowered its head, dimmed its cunning eyes and crept to its master in penitential submission. The thick neck drooped and the serpent wrapped itself around the man’s arm slithering on to his shoulders, coiling round his neck before gently resting its white underbelly on the other arm.

The snake man stood up under the weight and moved round the scattering circle. When he came near the meat stall, Morikebba was only a breath away from a faint but Alpha was feeling quite sorry for him and again moved in front of him as cover. After a ritual dance, the snake man grabbed the creature’s dangling head and lowered the beast gently on to the ground. He moved away a distance whispering, reciting and chanting. After finishing his incantations he paused in deep contemplation before rising to acknowledge the rapturous applause from the crowd. The snake had coiled up its master’s feet, its eyes in a half sleep.

“Power!” he shouted. “The greatest, anywhere!” Men, women and children poured over him and, in a short time, had had sold almost all of the cotton strings stuffing the money hungrily into the large pockets of his kurto trousers. When there was no more buying, the snake man began to wrap up his satchel and moving towards the snake when, suddenly, the creature came alive. It bared its fangs, its black tongue dancing drunkenly inside the pink cavern of its mouth. The snake man began his incantations again and attempted another approach. But the snake swung restlessly. With one ferocious hiss it lunged forward but the man ducked on time to get away from the deadly strike of the creature’s head.  

The man chanted harder gaining momentary control over it. But it was only for a moment as brief as a breath when the snake seized up again and would not return into the bag. Everyone could see now that the snake man was beginning to lose his confidence. The man withdrew to study the problem but the crowd refused to give him any room. The people began to boo and yell and soon the edge of the circle was littered with a hundred white strings flung down.

“Fraud! Fraud!!” some cried. “Give us our money back.” The only reason they did not attack him was because the snake ironically served as his protector. Unable to improve any on the snake’s obnoxious behaviour, the snake man finally gave up and was looking for a bid to mingle in the crowd and to sneak out of the market place when the butcher and some chicken vendors tackled him. “You won’t leave here without your snake. We don’t want it here. And what about the people’s money?” The snake man was lost for words. The loud and confident champion medicine man of a while ago had become a broken timid figure swallowing nervously and begging the crowd to let him go. He still muttered that he was the best in all the Kombo District but that something he could not explain had gone wrong.

With a sudden spur of courage he decided he would put it right. He walked straight towards the snake and pointed a stick at it and commanding it in a strange language. Every breath in the market place stopped as people watched the young man walk towards death itself. The snake coiled its fat and glistening neck and through its wide open mouth it gurgled madly. When it stretched and came forward, the snake man took off running back among the crowd that was now reeling with mockery and laughter. “You’re nothing but a fraud,” the chicken vendors screamed at him. They had been the most worried as any chicken vendor would be with such a mighty snake so close to their clucking frightened birds.

At this point, Alpha made his way from the stall and took the snake man aside into a private conference with him. Morikebba was still holding tightly to his cutlass, glued to the spot where he was with fear. “You see that old man sitting over there,” Alpha said pointing to the side of the square, “buy some cola nuts, offer them to him and ask for pardon.” “Why should I do such a thing?” the snake man asked beginning to put up some resistance.

“Just do as I tell you,” Alpha insisted. “You might learn something new in the process.” This surprised every one especially the snake man. All the same he walked dejectedly over to the white headed man sitting in a deckchair and apparently detached from what was happening. It took some convincing before the old man would accept the cola nuts. “Tell the crowd that you know nothing of what you are doing,” the tiny sage quietly ordered the snake man to say after him.

“I know nothing of what I am doing,” the snake man repeated aloud for all to hear. “Tell them you are a bragging young cheat.” “I am abragging young cheat.” “Tell them you will never again use such great and ancient craft to get people’s money.” With tears welling from his eyes, the snake man echoed the old man’s words, his voice breaking. “That is all. You are pardoned,” the old man said filling his toothless jaws with the cola nut bits. “You can take your snake and go now. Never mind about the money. There is no need for you to suffer twice. Besides, the people also must pay for their foolishness in believing every claim they hear about every spectacle that comes to this market.”

The inquisitive and jeering crowd followed the snake man back to his snake still spread ready for war in the middle of the square. He collected the rice bag but first looked over his shoulder at the old man as if asking for some reassurance. “Pick it up,” the old man called out to him. “It won’t harm you.” Timidly, the snake man put out a hesitant hand but the swaying restless head did not convince him the snake was calm enough to be taken. He quickly withdrew again. “Are you sure it won’t bite me?” the snake man asked to mocking laughter from the crowd.

Alpha’s heart was touched where he stood at the butcher’s stall. Morikebba’s jaws dropped when Alpha walked straight up to the swaying serpent, spread a hand over its head and said a few words. Immediately, the snake turned towards the boy and bowed its furious head in the dust and lay as calmly as a harmless worm. “Pick it up. And take this,” Alpha said to the distraught snake man and put something inside his the palm of his hand. “Should you have difficulty like this again, you will need it. Did your master send you to do this?” “No,” the snake man confessed. “I needed some money.”

“How many years have you been learning under your master?” Alpha asked under the awestruck eyes of Morikebba and the other boys rubbing heir sweaty palms from the sidelines. “Only six,” he replied. “You know you have a long way to go,” Alpha said kindly but firmly. “You’re still learning just like I am. And watch what you say in the presence of many people. Remember, there will always be one greater than you, somewhere. I am sorry my grandfather was so hard with you. Forgive him. He is an impatient man.” “Don’t be sorry,” the snake man said. “I thank your grandfather for teaching me. Although I have never met him I have heard stories about him from my master.” “What is your master’s name?”

“Fa Karafa of Sotokoto.”“He was one of the first students my grandfather taught as a young master,” Alpha said. “You have a fine teacher.” “But promise me he will not hear a word of this,” the snake man pleaded. “You have my word. Pick up your snake and go.” The man took up the snake. It was a docile lump in his hands, its eyes dimmed and obedient. He stuffed all of the huge coils of the serpent inside the bag again and swung it over his shoulder. Morikebba’s stiff fingers finally released the butcher’s cutlass.

It was a relief, an uncanny sense of security, when he could reach Alpha’s side. The snake man ambled away under the weight of his luggage, the sun sinking with him with red and saffron pouring through the clouds beyond the market square.

The men and women were packing their stalls and closing up. The chattering crowd was dispersing and the boys, too, were making their way homeward out of the darkening market place. For the first time in a long time the boys could hear their footsteps in the sand as they went. It was indeed a rare opportunity. It was one time when Morikebba was silent about himself on their way home.