The Circus of Dr. Lao (9 page)

     Mr. Etaoin contemplated the sea serpent, and the sea serpent contemplated Mr. Etaoin. Mr. Etaoin lit a cigarette and blew grey smoke. The sea serpent exserted its tongue and flickered it; a long yellow naked nerve of a tongue, big as a man's hand, wrist, and arm, languidly sentient, gracefully forked, taster of sounds, feeler of vibrations, symbol of strange senses, silent and secret, suggestive of evil that harked back to Eden. Mr. Etaoin's eyes, circumscribed by rings of horn, looked at the snake through dust-speckled glass ovals. The serpent's eyes, lidless and fixed, regarded the proofreader with catlike pupils, thin black ellipses standing on end in fields of copper. The proofreader's eyes were dull, muscle-bound green things. The snake's eyes were sombre, rare, and wicked jewels.
     Bored with the mutual examination, the snake slowly looped about its enormous cage, the convolutions of its body and tail following through the invisible pathway previously described by its head. Head rearing, it tested the interstices and reticulations of the steel latticework that kept it captive, hoping listlessly to find an opening it had overlooked before, searching the confines of its jail world for freedom into the beyond, examining for the thousandth time the same old bars that hemmed it in.
     Etaoin moved jerkily, startling the serpent. It faced him, vibrating its tail against the wooden floor of its cage so that a whirring arose like a woodsaw's song.

     THE SNAKE: Why do you stand there staring at me? You and I have nothing in common except our hatred of each other.
     ETAOIN: You fascinate me. But why do you buzz your tail that way, mimicking a rattlesnake?
     THE SNAKE: Why not? It is my fondest atavism.
     ETAOIN: Could it be that the instinctive urge which prompts me to seek a tree when a dog barks at me is the same one that prompts you to endeavor to rattle when you are alarmed?
     THE SNAKE: No. Your urge is born of fear. Mine of hate. Your instinct is one of cowardice. Mine one of counterattack. You wish to flee. I to fight back. You are afraid of your own shadow. I am afraid of nothing.
     ETAOIN: The god who gave you bravery gave me cunning.
     THE SNAKE: I would not trade with you.
     ETAOIN: Nevertheless, you are in a cage, and I am free to walk about.
     THE SNAKE: Oh, you have your cage, too. You test your bars just as often as I test mine.
     ETAOIN: I understand you somewhat vaguely.
     THE SNAKE: I shall not be more explicit.
     ETAOIN: Why do you keep rubbing your chin against the floor?
     THE SNAKE: Why do you stand there like a fool? I do it because I like the sensation; because the friction gives me sensual pleasure; because my face itches and the rubbing ameliorates the irritation. Hah! Would you call scratching a counter-irritant for itching? Have I made an epigram?
     ETAOIN: I doubt it.
     THE SNAKE: Why do you wear those things over your eyes?
     ETAOIN: In order to see.
     THE SNAKE: The god that made you cunning made my eyes efficient enough to perceive objects without aid. In fact, the Lord of All Living dealt with me quite generously. Strength He gave me, and symmetry and endurance and patience. Viper and constrictor both He made me. My venom is more virulent than a cobra's. My coils are more terrible than a python's. I can slay with a single bite. I can kill with a single squeeze. And when I squeeze and bite at the same time, death comes galloping, I tell you. Heh, heh, heh! But look at you! You even have to hang rags on yourself to protect your weak skin. You have to hang things in front of your eyes in order to see. Look at yourself. Heh, heh, heh! God did well by you, indeed!
     ETAOIN: I concede I am not His most perfect vessel.
     THE SNAKE: What do you eat?
     ETAOIN: I enjoy a catholicity of taste. I eat grapes and pig's feet, snails and fishes, proteins and carbohydrates. Also I am fond of gooseliver.
     THE SNAKE: I eat only meat and fish and fowl. Once I ate a little brown boy. Shall I tell you about that?
     ETAOIN: If you wish.
     THE SNAKE: Well, my geography is not good, but it was on an island somewhere in some ocean, and it took a long time to swim there, and I swim fast. Notice how my tail is paddle-shaped. Well, I arrived at this island towards dawn of the seventh day; and there I decided to change my skin. It should have been changed days before, but one can't moult in mid-ocean. So I landed on a pretty little beach, steering through some treacherous rocks and breakers and only barely avoiding a dangerous stretch of shoal water. Out on the sand I glided, all eighty feet of me — at least, that is my length according to Doctor Lao, and he understands such matters — and I headed for some thick, trashy bushes I saw up on the bank a way. I tell you it is a bother to crawl about on land after swimming in the ocean. Well, I got in amongst the trashy bushes, sloughed and plowed my head around, and finally unhooked the epidermis from my upper and lower jaws. Then I snagged the ends of the old hide onto the bushes, and after that it was merely routine stuff wriggling out of the rest of it. The old skin bunches up under one's throat, you know, and gradually works back down off the rest of the body; and the faster you shag around in the bushes, the faster the old hide comes off. Well, I chased around and around, and off it came, and I was glad to see the last of it; it had become very uncomfortable the last day or so.
     Now I have observed that every time I change my skin, immediately after the shedding I become hungry. So, gleaming and glistening and shining and sparkling and sleek and colorful in my new skin, I started looking about the island for something to eat. I went over a hill and through a forest and across a valley and never saw anything at all. Then I came to a river and swam up into the current. And it was a small river and a wiggly one, and when I would look behind me, all I could see would be myself disappearing around some bend. Well, I went up that river; and I tell you, all the little fishes in it thought their millennium had come.
     Pretty soon I came to a town, a town of mud shacks and darky people. They were all loafing around near the river bank, listening to one of their medicine men tell what I doubt not was a most atrocious lie. I came sluicing up near them; they screamed and fled, and like chickens they fled in circles; and though you may not believe it, some of them actually hopped in the river and tried to swim across.
     And I watched them and looked them over and picked out the one I wanted for a meal. I chose a little coffee-colored fat boy. Ah, I'll wager his mother had fed him on duck eggs and roast bananas he was so fat. Why, his belly rolled out so far he couldn't see his own knees.
     Anyway, he chose to climb a tree. You know how those natives climb trees: tie their hind feet together and go up a slanting trunk with silly froghops. That's what this brat did. I let him get clear to the top, up among the fronds and coconuts. He looked down at me like a monkey, and the way he bawled one would have thought something terrible was about to happen to him.
     Well, sir, I reaches up real easy-like, you know, easing up along the trunk, slow, slow; my hide rippling and undulating, as with soft efforts I give my head more altitude. And my old tongue what scares folks so — for they think it's a stinger — well, sir, my old tongue was just in and out all the time, giving it hell, I tell you. Gawd! I thought that lil nigger would bust his voice box when he seen my old tongue a-lickin' up at him, giving it hell thataway.
     Well, sir, I snags him by the leg; an', Jesus, did he bawl then! But I gets a good holt, an' I says between my teeth: "Come outa that, yuh lil bastard!" an' I gives one hell of a yank; and, boyoboy, he lets loose, and I sways way back with him in my mouth and loses my balance, and we come crashing down to the ground with a hell of a jar. Damned near knocked me cold.
     I swallowed him much as you would swallow an oyster and with every bit of as much right, if you will pardon an ethical intrusion. And just when he was well down between my jaws, so that my head was all swelled out of shape and my eyes were bugging out like lamp globes, why, damn me, if the kid's old pappy didn't come along with his fish spear and start to make trouble. Well, I couldn't do a hell of a lot of biting with the boy wedged in my mouth that way, but, believe me, fellah, I took care of the old man, all right. I got a hitch around him and his goddam fish spear with about the last third of my body; and when I got through squeezing him, he was ready to cry uncle, only he couldn't on account of his lungs being collapsed.
     ETAOIN: You tell a vivid tale. What happened to the child's father?
     THE SNAKE: Oh, I et him, too. And I looked around for the old lady, but I couldn't find her, so I just et the first vahine I came acrost. But the little fat boy was the best.
     ETAOIN: You are a rare raconteur. Tell me of other of your meals.
     THE SNAKE: No. It's your turn now. You tell me a story.
     ETAOIN: There was a pig. A Duroc Jersey pig. It scampered about in its sty, eating slop and entertaining no spiritual conflicts. Fat it grew and fatter. Then one day its master loaded it into a wagon, took it to the depot, put it in a freight train, and sent it to a packing company. There it was slain, gralloched, and quartered after the manner of slaughterhouses. Some months later I went into a restaurant and ordered pork chops. And the chops they served me — may I die this instant if I lie — were from that very pig of which I have been talking. And the moral of this story is that the whole, sole, one and only and entire purpose of that pig's life, and the lives of its ancestors, and the lives of the things upon which pig and ancestors fed, and the climate and habitat that fostered their propagation and maturations, and the men who bred them and tended them and marketed them — the sole purpose of all that intermixed mass of threads and careers, I say — was to provide for me in that restaurant, at the moment I wanted them, a pair of savory pork chops.
     THE SNAKE: There is merit in your contention. I philosophized along much the same lines when I was eating the little brown boy. Ah, I do so dearly love to talk about eating.
     ETAOIN: There is but one subject more interesting.
     THE SNAKE: I assume you refer to love.
     ETAOIN: Yes. I do. Yes.
     THE SNAKE: I still remember my first affair. It must have been eleven centuries ago. Ah, but she was lovely! Some twenty feet longer than I she must have been, for I was a yearling then; and her great fangs were like the blades of pickaxes. I was in the west; she was in the east. I smelled her all the way across the world. It was the first time I had ever smelled that smell, but I knew what it meant: funny how one knows some things without ever being told. I steered through the ocean waters to the east where she dwelled.
     ETAOIN: It must have been a great voyage.
     THE SNAKE: It was. I saw the nautilus, the squid, the obelia, and the elasmobranch shark. Flying fish flew about my head, and a frigate bird sailed over me. Hungry, I snatched the frigate out of the air and devoured it without even missing a stroke of my tail.
     ETAOIN: How did it taste?
     THE SNAKE: Nasty and fishy. I never ate another one. Pelicans, however, are not bad, and snow geese are extremely palatable.
     ETAOIN: Well, did you find your mate?
     THE SNAKE: Aye. Up alongside a brown rock island. She was cold and coy. She slithered up on top of the rocks and hissed at me. I slithered after her; my passion warmed her; my ardor allayed her coyness. Tell me, do men bite women on the neck when they woo them?
     ETAOIN: Sometimes.
     THE SNAKE: So do we. I bit her in the neck, and she hooked onto my lower jaw, and I could feel her poison circulate into me. But it didn't hurt me any; nor did mine hurt her. Then I dragged her off that rocky island, threw a loop or two about her, and so we wrestled in the bouncing, nervous waves. I remember the sky clouded and thunder muttered, as though the elements were disturbed by our antics. Tell me, do men tire of women after they have lain with them?
     ETAOIN: Sometimes:
     THE SNAKE: So do we. I tired and left her and returned to the west, to a place of enormous turtles and volcanic stones. The turtles there eat only vegetables and fruits; they attain tremendous age; and though they have never been elsewhere than their little volcanic island, they are profoundly wise. I lay in the sand and talked to them. They asked me questions, and they told me many strange and beautiful things. Their feet are like the feet of elephants, and their voices slow and low. But tell me, after the period of surfeit wears off, do men again lust after women?
     ETAOIN: Sometimes.
     THE SNAKE: So do we. The following year I smelled her again, clear across the world again, too; and I heeded the call and went to her. And I went to her every year thereafter until . . .
     ETAOIN: Until what?
     THE SNAKE: Until Doctor Lao caught me and penned me up. Tell me, do men in cages . . . ?
     ETAOIN: Sometimes.
     THE SNAKE: So do we.
     ETAOIN: People every now and again throughout maritime history have claimed to have seen you. Did you make a practice of sticking your head out of the waves and frightening people?
     THE SNAKE: Oh, sometimes when I saw a boat, I'd swim over to it and look in it just for the fun of hearing the folks scream. I like to keep alive my legend, too, you know.
     ETAOIN: Tell me how Doctor Lao managed to capture you.
     THE SNAKE: It was on account of the mermaid. I had never seen anything like her before. Tell me, is she beautiful?
     ETAOIN: Extremely so.
     THE SNAKE: Well, I was puttering around off the China coast one day when Doctor Lao came along in his big old junk. The thing sailed right over me, as I was submerged at the time looking for cuttlefish. Directly, however, I came to the top to get some air, and I saw the doctor dragging what I took to be a big bright fish out of the water. He and all the coolies with him were yelling to beat the devil, so I swam up alongside to see what they had caught that excited them so. It was the mermaid. I just hung my head over the prow of that junk and stared at her. Then, while I was still in my trance, Doctor Lao threw a hawser loop about my neck and took a bight around the windlass with the other end. Just like a goddam rope, those Chinks hauled me up on deck. The damn hawser choked me unconscious, and when I came to I was in a cage. I've been in one ever since. That was nine years ago. But my day is coming. I don't forget.
     ETAOIN: What will you do?
     THE SNAKE: I shall dine, and Doctor Lao will furnish the meat course.
     ETAOIN: Contingent, of course, upon your escape from this cage.
     THE SNAKE: Exactly.
     ETAOIN: After the meal, then what?
     THE SNAKE: Oh, I shall get the mermaid, load her on my back — I think she can hold on if she uses her hands and fishtail at the same time — and then I shall get into the nearest river and swim to the sea. And nothing better try to stop me, either.
     ETAOIN: Why take the mermaid?
     THE SNAKE: She is a daughter of the sea just as I am a son of it. She yearns for it as much as I do. Besides, she is beautiful. You said so yourself. I will take her to the sea and free her there. Do you suppose she will wave her hand at me when she gets out into the tide? Do you suppose she will smile at me as she swims away?
     ETAOIN: Of course she will.
     THE SNAKE: I hope so. Then I will get upon the tide myself and go east to that brown, rocky island. My mate will still be there; I know she will. I shall go east to her. Obelia and nautilus and squid and elasmobranch shark — I shall see them all again.
     ETAOIN: I'd like to go with you.