I shared a ground floor bathroom with my aunt Titi. It had a window that looked straight down a narrow space between the back of the house and smooth rock that was the side of a cliff, which if you could scale would lead to a Buddhist monastery above and behind our house. The window stayed open except during typhoons and cold spells. No one had screens.
I was thirteen. I opened the bathroom door and stepped inside. On the floor under the window was what looked like a large pile of coiled garden hose. Then it moved, slightly. I held my breath. Pretending to be not there, I carefully pulled back my leg, backed up and slammed the door shut. I immediately broke two rules for ladylike behavior: Don’t raise your voice, and don’t run through the house. “SNAKE! SNAKE!” I screamed, “There’s a snake in my bathroom!” Of course, I scared away the snake.
That night when the family gathered for dinner, they had a show and tell with a cobra’s head floating in a glass jar. The snake I saw had terrified the kitchen staff, and my uncle Artur had caught and killed it. Artur was our bachelor uncle and not a hunter. Dancing in the night clubs was his kind of sport. But the amahs held up the cobra head like a trophy. Artur the Cobra Slayer!
Never mind trophy, the cobra head was valuable. It followed the rest of the I- forget- how –many- feet- long snake to the Chinese apothecary. The skin, the gallbladder, the meat, every last bit was used as medicine to heal people.
No wonder that was the only snake I ever saw around our house.
My uncle Artur
Recent Comments