I was taken to the top floor, Thomas said, there I found behind a desk a man in a mask. The mask was as tall as the man and had been hewn from a tree, it was African in character and had been worked upon with chisels most skillfully or perhaps with hoe blades most skillfully, it resembled a human face in that five holes presented themselves, there were no ears. The man in the mask said that I was wrong and had always been wrong and would always be wrong and that he was not going to hurt me. Then he hurt me, with documents. Then he asked my companions if I was maturing. He’s growing older, the taller of the two replied, and everyone present nodded, this was certainly true, the man in the mask expressed satisfaction. Then, wrapping me in a djellabah of thirty shades of brown they removed me to a Land-Rover which immediately rovered out onto a broad arid plain for a distance of several hundred miles, stopping at intervals to take on petrol and water in battered jerry cans wrung from unwilling unbuttoned overweight out-of-uniform supply sergeants at depots along the route. Where was lunch? I wondered remembering the first day, the chicken, the cucumbers, the potato salad. On the other side of the desert we came to a swamp, great sucky grasses tufted into a green scum, we abandoned the Land-Rover for a pirogue, and with one of my companions paddling in the bow and the other poling in the stern and me in the middle set off across the dank whining surface, giant cypresses gnarling and snarling all about us and two-inch-high tree monkeys hanging by one arm like evil fruits therefrom. During a pause in the poling and paddling with the nose of the pirogue snugged into a greasy hummock they filled their pipes with damp tobacco drawn from their attache cases, the which I was not offered any of, and damaged me again, with harsh words. But they seemed to be tiring, I was hurt less than before, they told me I was wrong etc. but added that I was becoming, by virtue of their kind attentions and the waning of the present century and the edifications of surface travel, less wrong than before. We were going to see the Great Father Serpent, they said, the Great Father Serpent would if I answered the riddle correctly grant me a boon but it was one boon to a customer and I would never answer the riddle correctly so my hopes, they said, should not be got up. I rehearsed in my mind all the riddles that I knew, trying to patch the right answer to the right riddle, while I was disordering my senses in this way we pushed off again into the filthy water, in the distance I could hear a roaring.
I’m fatigued, said the Dead Father.
Be of good courage, said Thomas, it ends soon.
The roaring they told me was the voice of the Great Father Serpent calling for the foreskins of the uninitiated but I was safe, my foreskin had been surrendered long ago, to a surgeon in a hospital. As we drew near through the tangling vines I perceived the outlines of a serpent of huge bigness which held in its mouth a sheet of tin on which something was written, the roars rattled the tin and I was unable to make out the message. My keepers hauled the pirogue onto the piece of ground on which the monster was resting and approached him most deferentially as who would not, shouting into his ear that I had come to be tested by the riddle and win for myself a boon and that if he were willing they would proceed to robe him for the riddling. The Great Father Serpent nodded most graciously and opening his mouth let fall the sheet of tin which on its reverse had been polished to the brightness of a mirror. My escorts set up the mirror side in such a way that the creature could regard himself with love as the fussing-over proceeded, I wondering the while if it would be possible to creep underneath and read the writing there. First they wrapped the Great Father Serpent in fine smallclothes of softwhispering blush-colored changeable taffeta taken from a mahogany wardrobe of prodigious size located behind him, tussling for half an hour to cover his whole great length.
I like him, said the Dead Father, in that we are both long, very long.
Reserve judgment, said Thomas, we are not quite to the end.
Then they put on him, said Thomas, a kind of scarlet skirt stuffed with bombast and pleated and slashed so as to show a rich inner lining of a lighter scarlet, the two scarlets together making a brave show at his slightest movement or undulation. The Great Father Serpent looked neither to the right nor to the left but stark ahead at his primrose image in the tin. Then they covered the upper or more headward length of him with a light jacket of white silk embroidered with a thread nutmeg in color and a thread goose-turd in color, these intertwined, and trimmed with fine whipped lace. Then they put on him a sort of doublet of silver brocade slashed with scarlet and slashed again with gold, sleeves for his no-arms hanging there picked out with seed pearls, the doublet having four and one half dozen buttons, the buttons being one dozen of ivory, one dozen of silk, one dozen of silk and hair, one dozen mixed gold and silver wire, and six diamonds set in gold. Next they put on him a great cloak made of unshorn velvet pear-colored inside and outside embroidered at the top and down the back with bugles and pearls countless in number and holding two dozens of buttons, altogether they were near two hours a-buttoning, while they buttoned I inched closer to the underside of the tin which was taller than myself and leaning against a tree, I inched and inched, sometimes half-inched, so that to the eye my movements were imperceptible. Then they belted around his midpoint a girdle of russet gold with pearls and spangles supporting his hanger, to which was buckled the scabbard (buff-colored leather worked in silver wire gimp and colored silk) which held the shining, split tongue two meters long. As they placed upon the oblong head the French hat with its massy goldsmith’s work and long black feather, I slipped beneath the tin and out again, I could not believe what I saw written there. The Great Father Serpent nodded once at his own image, whisked the tongue from its scabbard, and pronounced himself ready to riddle.
Here is the riddle said the Great Father Serpent with a great flourishing of his two-tipped tongue, and it is a son-of-a-bitch I will tell you that, the most arcane item in the arcana, you will never guess it in a hundred thousand human years some of which I point out have already been used up by you in useless living and breathing but have a go, have a go, do: What do you really feel? Like murderinging, I answered, because that is what I had read on the underside of the tin, the wording murderinging inscribed in a fine thin cursive. Why bless my soul, said the Great Father Serpent, he’s got it, and the two ruffians blinked at me in stunned wonder and I myself wondered, and marveled, but what I was wondering and marveling at was the closeness with which what I had answered accorded with my feelings, my lost feelings that I had never found before. I suppose, the Father Serpent said, that the boon you wish granted is the ability to carry out this foulness? Of course, I said, what else? Granted then, he said, but may I remind you that having the power is often enough. You don’t have to actually do it. For the soul’s ease. I thanked the Great Father Serpent; he bowed most cordially; my companions returned me to the city. I was abroad in the city with murderinging in mind — the dream of a stutterer.