It was a tense moment; the ring of council members watched with bated breath and screwed-up countenances while the Fon licked his lips, put out his hand towards the skink, drew it back nervously, and then reached out again. There was a moment’s suspense as his hand lowered over the highly-coloured reptile, then he drew a deep breath and grabbed the beast firmly round the waist.
‘Ahhh!’ hissed the council members.
‘Wheee! I done hold um,’ yelped the Fon, clutching the unfortunate skink so tightly that I feared for its life.
‘Hold um softly,’ I begged. ‘You go kill um if you hold um tight.’
But the Fon, paralysed by a mixture of fright and pleasure at his own daring, could only sit there glaring at the skink in his hand and muttering, ‘I done hold um … I done hold um …’ until I was forced to prise the unfortunate skink loose and return it to its box.
The Fon examined his hands, and then looked up at me with an expression of child-like delight on his face. The council members were chattering away to each other. The Fon waved his hands at me and started to laugh. He laughed and laughed and laughed, slapping his thighs, doubling up in his chair, coughing and spluttering, while the tears ran down his face. It was so infectious that I started to laugh as well, and soon the councillors joined in. We sat there stamping our feet, laughing as though we would never stop until some of the councillors rolled on the floor and fought for breath, and the Fon lay back weakly in his chair shaken by huge gusts of mirth.
‘Why you de laugh?’ I spluttered at last.
‘Na funny ting,’ said the Fon, shaken with fresh laughter, ‘for long time, ever since I be picken, I done fear dis beef. Wah! I done fear um too much. Now you give me medicine and I no de fear any more.’
He leant back in his chair and sobbed with mirth at the thought.
‘Que-fong-goo, your time done pass; I no go fear you again,’ he gurgled.
Later, still aching from our laughter, we finished our drinks, and the Fon went back to his own villa, carefully clutching a small packet of boracic powder. I had warned him that although the medicine could be used with success against Que-fong-goos, agamas, and geckos, it could not, in any circumstances, be used to guard against the bite of snakes. As I had hoped, the story that the Fon had picked up a Que-fong-goo after having been immunized by my medicine, and that he had survived the encounter, was common gossip the next day. In the afternoon the Bafut Beagles turned up, and stood grinning at me disarmingly.
‘Whatee?’ I asked coldly.
‘Masa,’ said the Beagles, ‘give us dat medicine you done give for Fon, and we go hunt Que-fong-goos for Masa.’
That evening I had two boxes full of the beautiful grassland skinks, and the Bafut Beagles were drinking corn beer, surrounded by an admiring crowd of Bafutians, while they recounted the story of the day’s hunt, with, I have no doubt, suitable embellishments. While I listened to them, I sat on the veranda and wrote a note to the nearest U.A.C. stores, asking them to send me another packet of boracic. I felt that it might come in useful.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Typhlops in Disguise
After a few weeks the number of people who brought me specimens dwindled to a steady daily trickle. This was because I had, by this time, obtained enough of the commoner species of animals, and I was refusing to buy any more of them. The veranda outside my bedroom was piled high with a strange variety of cages, containing the most fantastically assorted collection of mammals, birds, and reptiles, and my mornings and the better part of my evenings were devoted to their care. My days were full, but never dull; apart from cleaning and feeding the collection, there was endless enjoyment to be got from watching the habits of my specimens and their reaction to captivity and to myself. Then there was the life of Bafut. Working on the veranda I was in an elevated vantage point that commanded an excellent view of the road and the Fon’s courtyard and houses. Peering through the tattered fringe of bougainvillaea, I could watch the movements of the Fon’s numerous wives, offspring, and councillors, and the constant comings and goings of the Bafut population on the road. From the veranda I observed many a scene enacted below me, and by reaching out a hand for my field-glasses I could bring the actors so close that every slight change of expression on their faces could be noticed.
One evening I saw a slim, good-looking girl walk down the road; she was meandering, dragging her feet, as though waiting for someone to catch up with her. I was just about to call a greeting to her as she passed beneath the house when I saw a powerful young man come trotting up behind her, his face distorted into a ferocious scowl. He called out sharply, and the girl paused, then turned round with an expression of sulky insolence on her handsome face, which the young man obviously found very irritating. He halted in front of her and started to talk in a loud and angry voice, gesturing fiercely with his arms, his eyes and teeth flashing in his dark face. The girl stood without movement, a faint, rather sneering smile on her lips. Then a third actor joined the scene: an old woman came scuttling down the road, screaming at the top of her voice and waving a long bamboo. The man took no notice of the newcomer, but continued his rather one-sided argument with the girl. The old woman danced round the two of them, brandishing her bamboo, screeching shrilly, her flat and wrinkled dugs flapping up and down on her chest as she moved. The more she screeched the louder the man shouted, and the more he shouted the more sullen became the girl’s expression. Suddenly the old woman whirled round on one leg like a dervish and struck the man across the shoulders with her bamboo. The only notice he took of this assault was to reach out a long, muscular arm, twitch the stick from the old woman’s hand, and fling it high into the air so that it fell over the red brick wall into the great courtyard. The old woman stood nonplussed for a moment, then she danced up behind the young man and kicked him hard in the behind. He took no notice whatsoever, but continued to shout at the girl, his gestures getting wilder and wilder. All at once the girl snarled some reply at him and spat accurately on to his feet.
The young man up till then had obviously been adopting a non-belligerent attitude, and he had, I felt, been getting the worst of things; the women, I decided, were taking an unfair advantage of him. However, having his feet spat upon was apparently the last straw; he stood for a moment open-mouthed at such a treacherous attack, and then with a roar of rage he leapt forward, grasped the girl round the throat with one hand while boxing her ears soundly with the other, and finally gave her a push so that she fell to the ground. The old woman was quite overcome by this action, falling flat on her back into the ditch and indulging in the finest fit of hysterics I have ever seen. Rolling from side to side and patting her mouth, she gave vent to prolonged Red Indian hoots of the most blood-curdling quality. Occasionally, she would break off these noises to scream. The girl lay in the red dust, sobbing bitterly; the man took no notice of the old lady, but squatted down beside the girl and appeared to be pleading with her. After a while the girl looked up and gave a watery smile, whereupon the young man sprang to his feet, grabbed her by the wrist and they set off down the road, leaving the old woman still rolling and hooting in the ditch.
I was, quite frankly, puzzled by the whole affair. What had it all been about? Was the girl the man’s wife, and had she been unfaithful to him, and had he found out? But what then was the reason for the old woman’s presence? Perhaps the girl had stolen something from the man? Or, more likely, the girl and the old woman had been practising juju on him, and he had found out? Juju, I thought; that must be the explanation. The girl, tiring of her young husband, had tried to poison him by mixing chopped-up leopard whiskers with his food – leopard whiskers which she had obtained from the old woman, who was, of course, a well-known local witch. But the husband had become suspicious, and the girl had fled to the witch for protection. The husband had followed the girl, and the witch (who felt some sort of obligation towards her customers) had followed them both to try to sort things out. I had just worked this theory out into a form that would have
been acceptable to the Wide World Magazine, when I looked over the edge of the veranda and saw Jacob below peering through the hedge at the old woman, who was still rolling in the ditch and making noises reminiscent of Clapham Junction.
‘Jacob,’ I called, ‘na whatee all dat palaver?’
Jacob looked up and gave a throaty chuckle.
‘Dis ole woman, sah, she be mammy for dat picken woman. Dat picken woman be wife for dat man. Dat man ’e done go for bush all day, an’ when ’e done come back ’e find ’e wife never make him food. ’E belly de cry out, an’ de man angry too much, so he like beat ’e wife. De wife ’e run, de man ’e run, for beat ’e wife, an’ de ole woman ’e run for beat dis man.’
I was bitterly disappointed; I felt that Africa, the dark and mysterious continent, had let me down. Instead of my juicy intrigue, my witches and magic potions full of leopard whiskers, I had been witnessing an ordinary domestic upheaval with the usual ingredients of an erring wife, a hungry husband, an uncooked dinner, and an interfering mother-in-law. I turned my attention back to the collection, feeling distinctly cheated. It was the mother-in-law, I think, that rankled most.
Not long after this there was another upheaval on and around the veranda, in which I played the chief part, but it was not until long afterwards that I was able to appreciate its humour. It was a beautiful evening, and in the west shoals of narrow, puffy clouds were assembling for what was obviously going to be a glorious sunset.
I had just finished a well-earned cup of tea, and was sitting on the top step in the late sunlight trying to teach an incredibly stupid baby squirrel how to suck milk from a blob of cotton wool on the end of a matchstick. Pausing for a moment in this nerve-racking work, I saw a fat and elderly woman waddling down the road. She was wearing the briefest of loin-cloths, and was smoking a long, slender black pipe. On top of her grey, cropped hair was perched a tiny calabash. When she reached the bottom step, she knocked out her pipe and hung it carefully from the cord round her ample waist, before starting to climb towards the veranda.
‘Iseeya, Mammy,’ I called.
She stopped and grinned up at me.
‘Iseeya, Masa,’ she replied, and then continued to heave her body from step to step, panting and wheezing with the exertion. When she reached me, she placed the calabash at my feet, and then leant her bulk against the wall, gasping for breath.
‘You done tire, Mammy?’ I asked.
‘Wah! Masa, I get fat too much,’ she explained.
‘Fat!’ I said in shocked tones; ‘you no get fat, Mammy. You no get fat pass me.’
She chuckled richly, and her gigantic body quivered.
‘No, Masa, you go fun with me.’
‘No, Mammy, I speak true, you be small woman.’
She fell back against the wall, convulsed with laughter at the thought of being called a small woman, her vast stomach and breasts heaving. Presently, when she had recovered from the joke, she gestured at the calabash.
‘I done bring beef for you, Masa.’
‘Na what kind of beef?’
‘Na snake, Masa.’
I unplugged the calabash and peered inside. Coiled up in the bottom was a thin, brown snake about eight inches long. I recognized it as a typhlops, a species of blind snake which spends its life burrowing underground. It resembles the English slow-worm in appearance, and is quite harmless. I already had a box full of these reptiles, but I liked my fat girl friend so much that I did not want to disappoint her by refusing it.
‘How much you want for dis beef, Mammy?’ I asked.
‘Eh, Masa go pay me how ’e tink.’
‘Snake no get wound?’
‘No, Masa, atall.’
I turned the calabash upside down and the snake fell out on to the smooth concrete. The woman moved to the other end of the veranda with a speed that was amazing for one so huge.
‘’E go bite you Masa,’ she called warningly.
Jacob, who had appeared to see what was going on, gave the woman a withering look at this remark.
‘You no savvay Masa no get fear for dis ting?’ he asked. ‘Masa get special juju so dis kind of snake no go chop ’e.’
‘Ah, na so?’ said the woman.
I leant forward and picked up the typhlops in my hand, so that I could examine it closely to make sure it was unhurt. I gripped its body gently between my thumb and forefinger, and it twisted itself round my finger. As I looked at it, I noticed a curious thing: it possessed a pair of large and glittering eyes, a thing which no typhlops ever possessed. Foolishly, rather startled by my discovery, I still held the reptile loosely in my hand, and spoke to Jacob.
‘Jacob, look, dis snake ’e get eye,’ I said.
As I spoke, I suddenly realized that I was holding loosely in my hand not a harmless typhlops but some unidentified snake of unknown potentialities. Before I could open my hand and drop it, the snake twisted round smoothly and buried a fang in the ball of my thumb.
Off-hand I can never remember receiving quite such a shock. The bite itself was nothing – like the prick of a pin, followed by a slight burning sensation, rather similar to a wasp sting. I dropped the snake with alacrity, and squeezed my thumb as hard as I could, so that the blood oozed out of the wound, and as I squeezed I remembered three things. First, there was no snake-bite serum in the Cameroons; secondly, the nearest doctor was some thirty miles away; thirdly, I had no means of getting to him. These thoughts did not make me feel any happier, and I sucked vigorously at the bite, still holding the base of my thumb as tightly as I could. Looking about, I found that Jacob had vanished, and I was just about to utter a roar of rage, when he came scurrying back on to the veranda, carrying in one hand a razor blade, and in the other a couple of ties. Under my frenzied directions, he tied the latter round my wrist and forearm as tightly as he could, and then, with a curious gesture, he handed me the razor blade.
I had never realized before quite how much determination it requires to slash yourself with a razor blade, nor had I realized quite how sharp a razor blade could be. After an awful moment’s hesitation, I slashed at my hand, and then found I had given myself a nasty and unnecessary cut about half an inch away from the bite, in a place where it could be of no possible use.
I tried again, with much the same result, and I thought gloomily that if I did not die of the bite, I would probably bleed to death as a result of my own first aid. I thought vindictively of all those books I had read that gave tips on how to deal with snake-bite. All of them, without exception, told you how to make an incision across the bite to the full depth of the fang punctures. It’s easy enough to write that sort of thing, but it is quite a different matter to put it into practice successfully when the thumb you are slitting open is your own. There was only one thing to be done, unless I wanted to go on hacking my hand about in the hope of hitting the bite sooner or later. I placed the blade carefully on the ball of my thumb and, gritting my teeth, I pressed and pulled as hard as I could. This was successful, and the blood flowed freely in all directions. The next thing to do, I remembered, was to use permanganate of potash, so I sprinkled some crystals into the gaping wound, and wrapped my hand in a clean handkerchief. By now my hand, wrist, and the glands in my armpit were considerably swollen, and I was getting shooting pains in my thumb, though whether this was due to the bite or to my surgery, I could not tell.
‘Masa go for doctor?’ asked Jacob, staring at my hand.
‘How I go for doctor,’ I asked irritably; ‘we no get car for dis place. You tink sometimes I go walk?’
‘Masa go ask de Fon for ’e kitcar,’ suggested Jacob.
‘Kitcar?’ I repeated, hope dawning, ‘de Fon get kitcar?’
‘Yes, sah.’
‘Go ask him den … one time.’
Jacob galloped down the steps and across the great courtyard, while I paced up and down on the balcony. Suddenly I remembered that in my bedroom reposed a large and untouched bottle of French brandy, and I sped inside in search of it. I had just m
anaged to pull out the cork when I recalled that all the books on snake-bite were adamant when it came to the point of spirits. On no account, they all stated, must spirits be taken by anyone suffering from snake-bite; apparently they accelerated the heart action and did all sorts of other strange things to you. For a moment I paused, the bottle clutched in one hand; then I decided that if I were going to die I might as well die happy, and I raised the bottle and drank. Warmed and encouraged, I trotted out on to the veranda again, carrying the bottle with me.
A large crowd of people, headed by Jacob and the Fon, were hurrying across the courtyard. They went over to a big hut, and the Fon threw open the door and the crowd poured inside, to reappear almost immediately pushing in front of them an ancient and battered kitcar. They trundled this out through the archway and into the road, and there the Fon left them and hurried up the steps followed by Jacob.
‘My friend,’ gasped the Fon, ‘na bad palaver dis!’
‘Na so,’ I admitted.
‘Your boy done tell me you no get European medicine for dis kind of bite. Na so?’
‘Yes, na so. Sometime doctor done get medicine, I no savvay.’
‘By God power ’e go give you medicine,’ said the Fon piously.
‘You go drink with me?’ I asked, waving the bottle of brandy.
‘Yes, yes,’ said the Fon, brightening, ‘we go drink. Drink na good medicine for dis kind of ting.’
Jacob brought glasses and I poured out a liberal measure for us both. Then we went to the top of the steps to see what progress was being made with the preparation of the ambulance.
The kitcar had reposed inside the hut for such a great length of time that its innards seemed to have seized up. Under the driver’s gentle ministrations the engine coughed vigorously several times and then ceased. The large crowd round the vehicle clustered closer, all shouting instructions to him, while he leant out of the window and abused them roundly. This went on for some time, and then the driver climbed out and tried to crank her up. This was even less successful, and when he had exhausted himself, he handed the crank to a councillor and went and sat on the running-board for a rest. The councillor hitched up his robes and struggled manfully with the crank, but was unable to rouse the engine to life.