But he didn’t say anything, because just then he saw a snake and all other thoughts left his head. She saw it too, raising her voice, an alarmed ascending song in her sinuses, and stepped back, reaching to steady the basket on her head.
The puff adder lay on the hot coarse sand but near enough to some dead leaves to seem like part of the trash of twigs and grass nearby, the thick brownish snake as unmoving as vegetable matter, its jaw resting against the sand.
In stepping back, Zizi had braced herself, keeping her knees together and slightly bent. As she murmured her fearful song, now softly slipping it into her throat, Hock could see that her face was beaded with sweat, not from effort or the heat, but wet as though from terror.
So transfixed was she by the sight of the fat snake that she had not noticed that her wrap, the faded chitenje cloth that had been hitched under her arms, had slipped its knot and drooped, exposing one neat breast and a swollen nipple, like a pure unsucked fruit at the top of the smooth bulge. She had a body almost devoid of curves, which made her hard muscled bottom and her small breasts so noticeable.
The snake was facing away from them, flicking its tongue, a slitted eye staring from each side of its head. Hock saw what perhaps in her fear Zizi did not see, that the adder had started to swell, slowly thickening. It had seen them. It had not changed its position on the sand, yet it was now almost one-third fatter than a moment ago, when they’d stopped six feet away.
Absent-mindedly, Zizi touched her throat as if registering the vibrato of her song on her skin. Then her hand slipped to her breast, cupping it, her fingertip caressing the nipple. Her mouth was open, the whining melody from it worrying a strand of saliva that was like a lute string vibrant between her parted lips. Her teeth were just visible. She seemed terrified, she’d gone rigid, her eyes glittering as though in ecstasy.
“Pick it up,” Hock said.
But she didn’t move. Her eyes were fixed on the fattening thing.
Hock had been carrying his forked stick behind his back. Without stepping nearer, he drew the stick forward and jabbed it in the direction of the snake, rousing it. The snake shortened its muscled body and then, uncoiling, chucked itself at the stick. And before it had time to prepare itself for another rush forward, before it was able to draw its body into another explosive knot, Hock clamped the fork of the stick at the back of its wide head. Now, its head pinned, its body whipped against the sand.
“Take it now.”
Zizi’s mouth gaped, the growly song of fear hovering in her tongue. Her knees were still pressed together.
“Hold it behind its head. Use your fingers to grip it tight.”
“I cannot.”
“Do it for me,” he said.
She removed the basket from atop her head and placed it without a sound on the sand next to her, all the while watching the pinned-down puff adder thrashing its swollen body and pushing at the sand.
“Please,” he said. It was a word he tried to avoid saying in the village, a word of the weak, a word of submission.
Zizi hunched her shoulders and knelt, her wrap slipping farther, both breasts exposed, as she reached and gripped the snake where Hock had indicated. As she took hold of it he lifted the stick, so when she stood she had the snake’s head and gaping jaws above her skinny fist and the whole body of the snake and its tail encircling her forearm.
The song, a jubilant chant, rose from her throat to her mouth and nose, and it pounded against her sweaty face. The snake’s jaws were wide open, not attempting to strike but gasping for air. Zizi’s grip was a stranglehold.
“Easy,” Hock said.
As if hearing him for the first time, Zizi faced him bare-breasted, holding the snake, the foamy, speckled jaws widened at Hock, its fangs dripping mouth-slime.
Hock was slightly alarmed by the change in Zizi — he had not seen this fierce face nor heard this song before. He reached over and took her wrist and, replacing his grip with hers, picked at the snake’s tail, uncoiling its body from her arm, where it had wrapped itself like a tentacle.
“You are strong,” he said.
She surrendered the snake, and as Hock took possession of it, she said, “I am not afraid,” and her face glowed, her eyes glittered, she was breathless. “Not afraid,” she repeated with wonderment, and then was silent, breathing hard, no longer singing.
Back at the hut, they slipped the snake into the basket and fastened the lid. Snowdon saw them and ran to tell the village.
Before going to sleep that night, and the next — because he’d had no word — he followed in his mind Aubrey’s progress to the boma, on the bus, to the Chikwawa Road, and to Blantyre; the young man presenting the envelope at the consulate and, as in a movie sequence, its passing from the receptionist to the secretary upstairs and finally to the vice consul.
“‘Seriously compromised,’” the vice consul would report to the consul. “We’d better send someone down to check on this.” Or the man would go himself, in an official car, Aubrey sitting in the back seat. The matter was urgent; the message was clear.
But even on the third day no one came. No one except Manyenga, who sauntered over, seeming to approach the hut sideways, to see the big snake in the basket, which was news in Malabo. He was impressed, especially when Hock told him that Zizi had caught it; and he was unusually friendly.
“That naartjie is for you,” he said, handing over a tangerine. The Afrikaans word was used by the Sena people, as was takkies, for sneakers. Manyenga often screamed, “Voetsak!” when he was telling an underling to go away. Hock felt that someone must have used the word with him.
Snowdon snatched the tangerine from Hock’s hand and ran off, waving it.
“Cheeky bugger,” Manyenga said, and made a threatening gesture.
“Leave him alone,” Hock said, laughing. He could not help seeing Snowdon as anything but a licensed jester, like the fool in a Shakespeare play.
“You are so kind, father,” Manyenga said. “That is why you are being our minister. You will be a great chief one day!”
“You don’t need me to be a chief.”
“Not true, father. You are our elder. You are so wise. You are always doing the right thing for us.”
Each of these words — kind, wise, minister, elder — was loaded. All such words, Hock saw, had money value, and could be exchanged for hard currency. It seemed that as Manyenga added each word, the final bill was increased. Hock thought of Aubrey saying smartly, “It’ll cost you,” when he asked for the favor. In the past, money had not mattered much. Small debts were settled with a chicken or some dried fish wrapped in banana leaves; big debts might cost a cow. Now, with money, every word and deed had a price.
“You are brave, too,” Manyenga said, tapping the basket after he had had a glimpse of the snake.
“Brave” was worth a handful of kwacha notes, certainly.
“Zizi caught the snake,” Hock said.
And hearing her name, Zizi stared at Manyenga.
“You are making her too proud,” Manyenga said.
There was a word for the handmaiden of a chief, a consort, a junior-wife-to-be, and Manyenga used it now, referring to her as “the small woman.”