Palm branches swayed. Nothing obtruded. He stared at the madman turned savage who held up the snake and fought, mocking it to do its worst, bringing it closer to his open mouth as if to spit on it, then spun it round, stunning it against the air. In such an elemental contest, he could not sympathise either with man or snake. Its force pierced all stomachs and pinned them into awe. Both knew absolutely what they were involved in, a common image proclaimed under a life-and-death struggle. Frank felt a desire to empty his gun at the three men and end their show. Yet looking at it had cured his fever, left no pain from his scrapes and scratches. His blood flowed marvellously free in its proper circuits, so he let go of his gun, thinking to save his rage and ammunition for the purpose first rationally intended.
The snake’s head, dazzlingly coloured, a large desert asp, worked further from the grip of his manic fist, turned to plant its scorching fangs in the soft armflesh. Perhaps he was immune to its poison, Frank thought, a man of so much snaky bile bursting to mingle with the sweet venom of the snake, so that if the snake bit him it had an equal chance of dying. They became one animal, set on introvert destruction, the reptile an arm of his arm trying to kill the rest of the body even if it died itself. It turned the man into a monster, and as the fight went on between the man determined not to be bitten and the snake not to be strangled, it became a fight for sanity among the scattering notes of insane music, the man and the snake one normal sane creature locked in a dream-battle of reality that by some dread fluke the world had at last given him to watch, as if looking at himself in some great mirror that stretched from earth to sky, across beautifully painted scenery, and showing a reflection of himself set there by his own eyes.
He forgot everything. The snake relaxed, its life almost squeezed out. The skin on the man’s face was yellow, bones stretching as if he and the snake might after all die together. Their scene was a door, an exit and entrance, but Frank longed for it to be over, for he and all people to be released and set back to normal life — if such a thing were ever possible while this day that had been unlike any other lasted.
The snake revived, but the man was quicker, used his other hand to grip it half-way along the body while the thin whip of its tail caressed his wrist. He had mastered it at last, and Frank felt a wave of joy, shared the feelings of those around who grunted and smiled at the man’s feat. He felt thirsty again, thinking the show was finished. But the music weaved with more intensity, as if something else was yet to come. The victory had seemed too easy, carried the disappointment of a false dawn while the real day had still to be witnessed.
The raita fledged up its notes as if scattering feathers into the air, followed by drumbeats set on the impossible job of chasing them, and dragging them back to earth. The white-faced man held the snake, limp and pliable, not yet dead, gripped it with two hands near the neck.
A groan broke from everyone. With eyes closed, he was biting the snake at the neck, ripping into its flesh. The music stopped, the youth turned away, but the old man looked on, shaking as if ready to fall, but his face gentle and smiling at the victory helped by the exertions of his music. The snake-head was in his mouth, its body thrashing helplessly while his knife-teeth tore at it. As he bit on the snake the wound in Frank’s arm burst into excruciating pain, the same ache as before only increased to such a pitch that he roared out. The wound burned, the air grew black, but he fought for consciousness. At his cry, other men shouted as if they too had old wounds that came back to life at the sight of the snake eaten in its final convulsions of life.
He forced himself to the horror, dying with the snake yet killing it himself, legs shaking, jaws locked. The man was swallowing pieces of the snake, eating it alive. Where had they come from, this sect from the bowels of the white and livid earth? His eyes were closed, stomach expanding under his rags, falling in, pushing out again, an unleashed madness devouring the earth’s own snakes.
There was a movement behind, two newcomers approaching the outer fringe of the audience. They had been watching for some time, and one of them broke through with a revolver lifted, and Frank saw Mokhtar fire shot after shot into the body of the man who was eating the snake. He fell, writhing and spitting, flesh and blood pouring from his mouth and wounds. Mokhtar shouted at the others, a wild rational rage in his words, and they began to move. The dusk was blood red, colouring the wilderness all around as they attended to water and fires. The air before Frank went black. His eyes were pressed into his head, and he fell to the earth, raving in his fever that had returned with devastating fire.
Soil closed around him. The sun vanished, taking away consciousness, and all pictures out of his mind. He burned in the grey ash-bed of the night, he crawled towards water to escape the cares of the world, using the last remnants of mole-like strength after he fell. Mokhtar and Idris dragged him to a tent. Opening his eyes, he saw nothing. They closed, driven by fear into beneficient blackness.
He was moved with the caravan to the nearest village, the turbulent camelback journey distorting his black sleep. Lemon-rind was rubbed round his mouth, and he fought eyeless against water dripping over his teeth. He was tied on, a blanket over him, where he would drink his own sweat, rave and freeze. The village was by a spring in the mountains, with tree groves nearby, and a wall of cliff banking him off against the north.
Part Three
Chapter Twenty-one
His impulse was to get out of Lincolnshire, break camp and flee like some nomad chief who feels the approach of an almighty force that will sweep him away. To lose such a painting was a disaster, the thieving of his life’s soul, a base robbery of his best work that barred a desperate groping to achieve something in life.
He walked up and down all night, in his studio and then around the house. A trip to London always brought bad luck, stirred the cauldron of fate, cut all guidelines and distorted his compass-bearings. And yet, he decided, it wasn’t the time to flee, for he slowly realised with the coming of dawn that whenever he thought about abandoning everything he was on the point of solving whatever bothered him. A revelation was at hand. Standing far down under his studio window, by the old tree which leaned so close that it was continually lopped to give more light, he looked over the fence and across the field, towards the wood where, a fortnight ago, he had seen someone sniping him with field-glasses. It was such a facile explanation to all his troubles that it must be true. He lit another cigar. London hadn’t been entirely unlucky, merely confusing. He’d been in love with her for longer than he’d imagined, but their lovemaking only emphasised the unholy fact that she felt nothing comparable for him and never could, because she still hankered after Frank Dawley who had vanished months ago into Algeria on a bout of misguided and cranky idealism. If I leave Lincolnshire where do I go, with a wife and seven children, a dog, two cars and two caravans, and a brace of au pair girls? You don’t often hear of a flat to let in London with a car-park attached. He looked up at the stars for some time, before realising there weren’t any, I’m too old for baling out. Forty-three is the pineapple age, sweet and upright. Yet maybe I’d get young again if I blew all this up. The bourgeois trap is a long one, a tunnel without end, a burrow. You went into it though, and forgot your dynamite-Nobody lured you. I’m not trying to get out. I’m leaving nobody. I’m not that sort. I’m not at the end of my tether. But I don’t have ideals to help me off the hook and as an excuse to bolt.