Night Train to Jamalpur(98)

‘He’s in there?’ I asked Sermon.

‘He’s in there all right, along with a lieutenant or comrade of some kind. The boat is a sort of floating reptile house. It’s moored at its regular berth, Jim. According to Gopal, he sails up the Nullah every few weeks, bringing snakes from up country.’

‘Why?’

‘Sell to the charmers, Jim. Or anyone else who wants one, and I don’t think he’s too particular about his clientele. Hold on a moment,’ Sermon added, and he walked over to the waiting tonga-wallah and spoke a word to him, dismissing the fellow. I began walking towards the snake boat, with Sermon and Gopal following behind. I could see that it was sharply pointed and upraised at bow and stern, like a paper boat.

‘I don’t know how you want to play it, Jim,’ Sermon called out, ‘but I’m at your service if you want to try and run him in.’

I didn’t see how we could do that, since we now had no carriage in which to convey an arrested party. Sermon was walking at my shoulder. ‘I’ve taken the day off work especially for this, Jim.’

I had hoped to see Sermon here, but had he anticipated my arrival? Was anything to be made of the fact that he had pitched up in advance of the time I had mentioned as being that of my own rendezvous? The question went begging as two white-clad Indians emerged from the black bamboo cabin of the moored boat, and stood on the small foredeck. One of the two might have been twenty, the older might have been eighty. The younger carried an ordinary cane chair, and the elderly party now sat in it. The assistant then ducked back into the cabin, and re-emerged carrying a thick black-and-white snake – a python, I believed. He draped the snake over the shoulders of the elderly party, who now sat in state in the pounding rain, ready to receive petitions, like a mayor with his chain of office, and his assistant took up station beside him like the town clerk. But it seemed the elderly party wasn’t happy with the way the snake had been draped, and he wanted it adjusted by his assistant. When this had been accomplished, the snake chief set about staring directly ahead from his chair – and I was powerfully reminded of the pet shop owner of Seven Dials, London, as depicted by Dougie Poole.

Deo Rana was the closest one of us to the boat. He stood by the half-rotted mooring post to which it was tethered. Alongside this post, and practically keeled over, was one of the half-dead-looking bushes supposed to give protection against snake bites: a manasa tree. It was the only instance of vegetation on the riverbank, and it did not look very long for this world. Half concealed beneath it, I saw a white stone.

Deo Rana called out to the two on the boat, and it was the young assistant who gave the reply. They began a conversation I could not understand. I stepped forward, so that I was by the side of Deo Rana.

‘Not here,’ said Deo Rana, half turning towards me.

‘You mean I shouldn’t be standing here, Deo?’ I said. ‘In that case, why are you?’

Deo Rana was indicating his own right ear, while pointing towards the old chap on the boat. He had said, ‘Not hear.’ The snake man was deaf, like his bloody snakes. I had been warned of this, and I had forgotten it. He looked deaf as well somehow, or at any rate appeared sunk in on himself. He looked blind too, for the matter of that, with too much white in his eyes.

Deo Rana leapt on to the foredeck of the boat. The young assistant began yelling abuse at him, while the old chap commenced a fast, low muttering, as though uttering an incantation or a curse.

‘Looks like we’re in for bother,’ said Sermon.

‘What’s he saying?’ I called out to Deo Rana, meaning what was the young Indian saying. It was Charles Sermon who answered: ‘He says it is forbidden to board the boat.’

‘That’s what I thought.’

‘But I’ll not take orders from that gentry. We go on after your man, do we?’

I leapt aboard. Honour demanded that I follow Deo Rana. The snake man increased the speed of his cursing. The python was circulating about him, following a path familiar to it. His companion was screaming at Deo Rana, who had now stepped inside the bamboo cabin. I stepped in after him. There were barrels and boxes and baskets in there; an oil lamp hung from a central bamboo beam, and it smoked the place out. The rain was dripping through the roof. The boat gave a jolt, and as I put my hand up to the beam to support myself, Deo Rana called ‘Huzoor!’ A snake was coiled tightly around the beam; and I had touched it. I stepped back, heart racing. It was coiled like toffee; yet it had felt like oiled, rough leather, and it was green. Above all, it had felt like leather, like an old book, and so it was like a moving book. The young assistant was now inside the creaking, dripping cabin alongside us, and his rage had taken a different form. He was quite silent as he went about his business of upending boxes and kicking over baskets.