The Snake

Fourteen

Holly showed her press card and a tall, muscular, aloofly courteous Purie wearing the armband of a member of Christ's Cohorts led her down an aisle of the Tabernacle to the front row. The man sitting next to her was a city news reporter from the Associated Press. The rest of the row reserved for the press was empty.

The A. P. man said good morning, and in an ambiguous tone that mixed gallantry and resentment, complimented her on looking so fresh and dewy at the unearthly hour of 9:30 A.M.

She acknowledged with an ambiguous smile of her own. Was it her fault that it took a full week before she began to show the stigmata of fatigue? Well, not that it was any of the A.P. man's business, but she had spent most of the night awake, agonizing over whether or not to rush downtown to Mark Converse's place and cradle his head against her breast.

Want, need, what was she, a blue-ribbon semanticist? But last night the distinction had seemed important, and so she had remained in her bed and paid for it with hours of sleeplessness.

The Reverend's recruitment meeting had drawn a full house. Every seat in the Tabernacle was taken, and there were dozens of standees at the rear and against the side walls. The crowd, young, mostly in its early twenties, was hushed and expectant. Holly looked at the flyer she had been given at the door. It was an application form for membership in the Church of the Purification. No selling copy, no hype, just a chaste logo that read "Church of the Purification" and a few dotted lines for name, address, age, present religious affiliation.

"They're getting members," the A.P. man said. "According to our church news man, they've been signing up in droves, the usual white kids from good families."

The Purie membership was overwhelmingly middle class, with access to money through their parents, no matter how much the parents were opposed to their joining. Whatever else you said about the Reverend, Holly thought, he was shrewd. He read the public mind-at least that segment of it that was likely to respond to his primitive appeal-with great accuracy. Latching on to the issue of the snake, however blatantly opportunistic it might seem to be, looked certain to pay off in enlarged membership and increased revenue to contribute to the support of his various real estate holdings, not to mention fuel for his gas-eating limousines, the cost of expensive red silk linings for his cloaks, the salary of his personal French chef…

The organ played a sudden monitory chord in a minor key. A dazzling white spotlight settled on a white door at the side of the stage. The organ repeated the chord, held it in a trembling vibrato. The door opened and the Reverend Sanctus Milanese strode toward the podium. The spotlight accompanied him, focusing on the brilliant scarlet of his calotte, leaving his face in shadows.

"The footlights are dimmed; the curtain is up, the star has appeared," the A.P. man said, "and that magical moment before the performance begins is at hand. I hope to hell it's a good show."

But it wasn't really, Holly thought. Not that it was bad, either, just that it wasn't new. Her notes read: Star in fine fettle, but material old hat. Usual burning eyes, evangelical tones, well-timed swirl of cape to show red lining, for which I would willingly become Purie if he would give me a bolt so I could make a seductive housecoat. Rings same old changes on established theme. Snake is Satan's messenger. Can be captured only by the pure in heart-guess who? The location of the lair in which the evil serpent lurks will soon be vouchsafed to us by Him. All in good time, however, for He moves in mysterious ways His miracles, etc. Drama trite, leading man terrific. Give it one star.

Nevertheless, the audience was eating it up. Not a muscle twitching, barely breathing, eyes glued to the figure on the dais.

The A. P. man whispered, "Same old crap." He was obviously disappointed-as she herself was-that the meeting was not producing any dramatic news.

The Reverend was expounding on the villainous role the snake had played throughout the history of man and religion. The symbol of Evil from time immemorial. Ever the servant of the Devil, eager to do his most heinous bidding. From time im-mem-morial. The serpent in the Garden of Eden, traducer of Eve… Now if he had said seducer, Holly thought, we might have had a flashy bit of revisionist theology.

The A. P. man said, "I was half hoping he would come up with something wild-like the Chinese thing."

A year earlier, for some fancied slight, he had had his adherents try to set fire to the Chinese Consulate on 65th Street.

Somebody behind them shushed the A.P. man. They didn't want to miss a word of the Reverend's wisdom. Well, it was their privilege. Holly let the sound of his voice wash over her. She had really been glad that Mark Converse had phoned her, and not terribly surprised, either. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and the Empress of all the Russia’s. She had really wanted to go to him, and only the intervention of her guardian angel, who checked in whenever she became too susceptible to her emotions, had prevented it. Right on, guardian angel, mustn't be all that biddable, chaps lose respect for a girl who's that available. Right? Bullshit.

Better to follow where the heart-and loins-led.

The Reverend was driving hard into his peroration, making his pitch for recruits. Come to us, come to Purity, offer God a sign that you long to be purified, enlist in the legions of the pure, who shall inherit the earth more surely than the meek, step forward in purity into the presence of the Lord…

With an operatic swirl of his cape, red and black mingling richly, the Reverend walked off attended by the faithful white spotlight.

Holly said goodbye to the A.P. man and started up the aisle. At the door, a wooden box was beginning to overflow with membership applications. The Reverend was on the beam, Holly thought, he was riding the snake's tail to glory.

The event that came to be known as the Day of the Dog was inspired by a "name withheld" letter to the Daily News suggesting that dogs, which were constantly turning up snakes (often when they were least wanted), were better equipped to sniff out the snake in the park than cops with a degenerated human smelling apparatus. The writer added that, if the police refused to employ the Department's own dogs for this purpose, individual dog owners should organize their own posse.

The idea became an instant success. Before the day was over, hundreds of dog owners began to bombard the special police line; others, accompanied by their pets, picketed police stations. What was a more or less spontaneous, unorganized movement suddenly solidified with the fortuitous ascendancy of a Mrs. Reginald Campbell, who, finding herself singled out by a television interviewer at the scene of a picketing, announced that there was no time to lose, that the very next day was none too soon. She exhorted all dog lovers within the sound of her voice to appear at the park tomorrow in the forenoon with their animals, which would then be unleashed and, having located the snake, bark loudly and reveal its hiding place.

Thereupon, a police lieutenant who had come out of the precinct to watch the proceedings issued a warning to the effect that the city ordinance pertaining to unleashed dogs, and the fine appertaining thereto, would be strictly enforced.

He was barely heard over the roars of approval for Mrs. Reginald Campbell and the barking of the assembled dogs.

But Mrs. Campbell herself responded to this threat later in the evening when she was interviewed for television at her home. Photographed in her living room, surrounded by her standard poodle, her Airedale, her two German shepherds, and her miniature schnauzer, she offered the following stratagem: "If a policeman attempts to hand you a summons, simply say,

'Sorry, officer, my dog accidentally slipped its leash."'

When Mrs. Campbell's remarks were brought to the attention of a police official, he said, "The law doesn't make any distinction between dogs that are deliberately set free and dogs that become free by accident. All owners of dogs that are off the leash will receive summonses."

The following day, at eleven o'clock in the morning, some four hundred people and six hundred dogs of the most diverse breeds had gathered at the Bowling Greens. Holding her standard poodle, her Airedale, her two German shepherds, and her miniature schnauzer on a fiveleashed rein, lifting her voice above a concerted din of barking, whining, snarling, snorting, and whimpering dogs, Mrs. Campbell offered her salutatory address.

"Welcome, dog lovers of the City of New York. I am deeply touched by this tremendous response to my television appeal. I know that you share with me the conviction that our beloved pets, left to their own devices, will generously ferret out the slimy creature which has made our beloved park an unsafe haven in this most trying time for all of us…

She paused as a phalanx of policemen, led by a lieutenant, pushed their way toward her through the crowd. The lieutenant spoke to her, but his words were inaudible because of the booing of the crowd, which also served to incite a fresh outburst from the dogs. The lieutenant addressed the crowd, which overrode his voice with even louder booing. The lieutenant spoke to Mrs. Campbell, who nodded graciously and held up her hand to the crowd, which presently fell quiet.

"Dear friends," Mrs. Campbell said. "The officer has asked me if he might be permitted to say a few words to you."

The booing started up again, interspersed with shouts of "No! No!" One of Mrs. Campbell's shepherds mounted her miniature schnauzer. The schnauzer snapped at the shepherd and forced it to dismount. Mrs. Campbell yanked at her reins, and her five dogs were pulled off balance into a struggling bunch.

"In the true spirit of democracy we will allow the lieutenant to have a few words," she shouted, "and then we will go about our business as if he had not spoken."

Wild cheers from the crowd. A toy poodle jumped out of its owner's arms and ran madly through the crowd, yipping in a shrill, excited voice. The owner set out after it, calling its name, which was Mon Trosor. The poodle swerved sharply and took off in the direction of the Sheep Meadow.

Mrs. Campbell kept her hand in the air until she had comparative silence.

The lieutenant cleared his throat.

"I realize that you are all acting with the best of intentions…

The crowd jeered. The lieutenant, sweating visibly, went on. "We of the police are duty-bound to uphold the law. I therefore advise you that if your dog is off its leash, you will receive-"

The crowd burst out into laughter and shouts. The lieutenant stopped speaking and appealed to Mrs. Campbell. She shook her head firmly, indicating to the lieutenant that he had had his day in court. The crowd applauded. The lieutenant moved off and joined his fellow officers. Mrs. Campbell held up her hand for quiet.

"Dog lovers, unleash your animals!"

In the course of the next few hours the police issued a summons to everyone holding a dogless leash. Most of the summonses were torn up and thrown away.

In the aftermath of the Day of the Dog, the police estimated there were at least twenty-five dog fights in which blood was drawn, and perhaps eighty more that were broken off by mutual consent or interrupted by owners, several of whom were bitten in the process, some by their own dogs. There were thirty mountings leading to consummated intercourse.

Three squirrels were killed. Six children sustained bites.

One dog suffered a broken rib when it was kicked by a man it had snapped at. Two dogs died of coronary occlusion. Thirty-five dogs collapsed with heat prostration. Four dogs were run over and killed by cars. Damage to shrubs and other plants was called "catastrophic" by the Parks Department. Nineteen dogs were lost; of this number, fourteen were reclaimed by their owners, many of whom were obliged to pay a reward; five, perhaps the victims of kidnapping, were never recovered.

By three o'clock, all dogs were leashed and most had been taken from the park. Shortly thereafter, Mrs. Campbell departed following a brief statement for the television cameras.

"I blame the failure of our pets to find the snake on police harassment.

Now, if you will excuse me, I must go to the vet." She held up the bloody left paw of her Airedale for inspection. "Checkers-I named him after Mr. Nixon's wonderful dog of yesteryear-cut his pad on broken glass. Instead of harassing dog owners, the police should keep vandals who break glass in this once-lovely park out of this once-lovely park."

A television reporter said, "There were hundreds of dogs running free out there today. Yet, not one of them found the snake's trail. How do you explain it?"

"It's not whether you win or lose," Mrs. Campbell said, "but how you play the game."

If three years as a reporter of city news had taught Holly Markham anything at all, it was to take nothing on faith. And so, late in the afternoon, she went around to the Public Library and, sitting in the North Reading Room with a pile of books, compiled notes on the relationship of snake and man from "time immemorial." Her findings not only refuted much of the Reverend's sweeping claim, but overturned a few conceptions of her own.

Rev's assertion (she wrote in her racing shorthand) that snake "symbol of Evil from time immemorial" is pure nonsense. Actually such is case only a lousy two thousand years, and even then only in Western theologies. Fact is, from "time immemorial" man's reaction to snake highly contradictory: worshipped, feared, hated, admired, etc.

Many civilizations, both primitive and advanced, held snake to be deity or semi-deity, e.g.-Australian bushmen regarded (still regard? check out) snakes as sort of water god, make rain fall, help find springs, etc.

Ditto, Hopi Indians, used snakes as go-betweens to plead with rain gods to make rain.

More snake worship: pythons in Africa; king cobra in Burma. Cobra also venerated in India; in old days, Dravidians believed headmen reincarnated as cobras. Mexico: famous Quetzalcoatl, feathered serpent, combination snake and bird, god of civilization, inventor of agriculture, metallurgy, patron of all the arts. ne Poo-bah of animals!

Beginning to sweat, Rev?

More: Babylon: snake symbol for Ishtar, goddess of sexual love.

Okay, snake obvious phallic symbol, ancients knew it before Freud. And not just symbolic, either-in many early pies, snakes shown diddling women.

Greeks and Romans: both used to regard snakes as sacred creatures.

Household pets in Old Rome, everyone who was anyone kept one around the house. Check out if poisonous. Marc Antony referred to Cleopatra, respectfully, as "serpent of the old Nile." Egyptians supposed to have kept snakes in home, too-tamed asps. Check with M. Converse, can poisonous snakes be tamed? Don't check with M. Converse, ulterior motive involved-right?

Sweden: as recently as sixteenth century, Swedes worshipped snakes as household gods, and snakes not to be killed under any circumstances.

Notion later spread to other European countries.

Ancient Greece: snake regarded as healer. Vide Aesculapius, god of Greek medicine. Caduceus, staff wreathed with two snakes, carried by Hermes, and still familiar emblem of physicians and medicine. Go fight the AMA, Reverend!

But Reverend has his innings with coming of Christianity, where snake firmly established as symbol of evil. Christians opposed idea of snake worship (one God, right?), so fingered it as epitome of evil. Snake's big caper: tricked Adam and Eve into original sin and expulsion from Eden.

Said God: "Henceforth be enmity between serpent and man," and turned it into a belly-crawler. Church put shoulder to wheel, selling idea of snake as symbol of evil. Put it across, too-credit where credit due. Medieval artists (dependent on church for patronage) used snake as symbol of evil.

In old drawings, Devil's penis snakelike, sinuous, sometimes forked, resembling snake's tongue. Sounds interesting.

Modern times: in Abruzzi region of Italy, snake-handling feature of religious festival taking place every May; in church in Kentucky, twenty-five years ago, handling of snakes-diamondback and timber rattlers-used to be regular occurrence. Hopis (see above) do snake dance in Arizona, priests take heads in mouth. Ugh!

Fact: although people die of snakebite (most in Asia, Australia, Africa, fewest in Europe, U.S.A.), number comparatively small. As M. Converse (what, again?) said, many more humans poison snakes than other way around. Most common-sprays used to kill insects, insects swallowed by snakes, accumulate in liver, liver swells until snake dies painful death.

No snakes eat humans, but humans eat snakes. Large constrictors most sought-after delicacy. Australian aborigines eat practically anything that crawls, but not poisonous ones. But Japanese eat sea snakes, which are poisonous. In Hong Kong, discerning diners eat poison kraits and cobras. U.S.A.-rattlers on menus used to be known as prairie eel."

Theories on why people hale snakes: they prefer upright animals, reflecting own image. Bears, cats, dogs, penguins, all get up on hind legs. Same sense, people like expressiveness in animals, particularly dogs, unlike snakes, which are stony-eyed because have no way of closing eyes. Probably not poisonousness of snakes that fills humans with revulsion so much as stitheriness. Also, they're sneaky-hard to see, vide snake in grass. But children two and three years old like to play with snakes. Around four, though, begin to develop aversion. Proves no innate fear of snakes, but instead brainwashing by parents?

Snakes as medicine: snakeskin’s used to cure everything from lumbago to hot flashes. In U.S., in more innocent times, hustlers sold "snake oil" as panacea. Years ago, Italian ladies would eat vipers to make complexion smooth. What price beauty! Hippocrates devised pessary of snake's fat and bull's fat. Pliny (the Elder, the Younger, who cares?) prescribed snake fat to cure baldness. Central American Indians drank rattlesnake venom as aphrodisiac. In some American Indian tribes, pregnant women ate powdered rattlesnake to shorten labour, as follows: child in womb hears rattle and hurries to get born, figuring snake is coming after him if he doesn't get out. Contradiction here, suggesting fear of snakes is prenatal? No. It's adult assigning own fears to unborn child.

Tidbits: man in California (where else?) committed suicide by jumping into rattlesnake pit. Hannibal supposed to have catapulted pots of snakes into Roman ships, causing panic. American Indians used to shoot at U.S. Cavalry with arrows dipped in snake venom. Didn't work.

Talk to editor about using some of this stuff as shirttail piece to Reverend story? Remember bits and pieces to show M. Converse how terrifically knowledgeable I am?

The snake cornered a rat near the retaining wall along Central Park West, but the surprise was not complete. The rat heard the slight sound of the snake's movement, and, before the snake could strike, ran away along the base of the wall. Where the wall broke for an opening to the street the rat stopped and turned and saw that the snake was pursuing it. It ran again, rounding the wall into the 4 A.M. stillness of Central Park West.

It paused briefly at the curb, its fur tingling from green to red with the change of a traffic light. When the snake slid around the wall onto the pavement the rat fled across the street.

Halfway up the street the rat tired, and the snake gained on it. The rat darted suddenly ~o its left, scampered behind a brownstone stoop, and hopped through the bars in front of an open window leading into a basement apartment.

The snake crawled past the stoop to the window. It inserted its head and neck through the bars, sinuous, swaying, then slid forward onto a table standing against the wall beneath the window. Without stopping, without waiting for its posterior to clear the bars, it began to wind down the table leg to the floor.

It paused, with its long wet tongue flicking, then glided through an open doorway into another room. It paused again, and now its flicking tongue tasted other doors than those of the rat.

Webster McPeek would never truly know whether he heard the snake or was simply awakened by some atavistic instinct. He sat upright in bed, and saw the snake almost at once and very clearly, in a fling of light from the streetlamp outside. Its head was up, its tongue was darting in and out.

McPeek shouted, loud and hoarse, his voice clogged by fear. His wife awoke in panic, and, when she saw the snake, screamed. The snake started to curl its long slender body into forward motion, and when McPeek realized that it was heading toward the children's bedroom he leaped out of bed, and ran after it toward the open door.

But the children, aroused by the shouting and screaming, were out of bed, and they appeared wide-eyed and frightened in the doorway. The snake was between McPeek and the children. He tried to wave them back into their room, but instead they ran toward him, arms outstretched, and the snake's head leaped forward and the children screamed. He ran toward them blindly, with his wife just behind him.

In the darkness, the snake struck out in a panic at the threshing legs, the stamping feet that threatened it. It struck several times, until the feet and legs retreated, and then it turned in a tight arc and glided swiftly back the way it had come, its head still high, its mouth open. It didn't pause, but pushed itself toward the table. It wound up the leg in a continuous motion, and slid through the bars over the window.

The snake ran down the street toward the park. But when it started to cross, a brightness bore down on it, moving very quickly, intensifying as it came closer. Pressing down hard with its scutes, throwing its body into powerful curves, the snake produced a surge of speed that carried it safely past the huge oncoming brightness. It ran along the base of the retaining wall until it found the opening it had come through in pursuit of the rat.

In the park, it slid off the pavement into the concealment of grass and brush.

Hyman Closs, cruising north on Central Park West after dropping a fare at 96th and Amsterdam, spotted the snake when he was a block away from it. At first he didn't believe it was real; it was one of those crazy fakes that were all over town. But when it slid down off the curb he knew it was no fake, it was the snake. He slammed his foot down on the accelerator and bore down on it. He braced himself queasily for the impact of his wheels bumping over it, but to his astonishment it outran him, and crawled up onto the sidewalk.

He braked, and looked behind him. It was gone. The speed of it! Tingling with excitement, he made a U-turn and headed downtown. He considered stopping at a phone booth, but he didn't want to get out on the street at 4:30 in the morning, so he decided to go to the precinct in the 85th Street transverse.

Racing southward, cheating on lights, he still couldn't believe how fast the thing had crawled. A shame he had missed it. What a hero he would have become! Still, he would have quite a story to tell Florence in the morning.

In fact, he couldn't wait to tell the cops. But at 94th Street a man and woman flagged him, and before he knew what he was doing, he screeched to a stop. Pure instinct, right? He would have pulled away, but the man was already tugging at the door handle, and he had to let them get in. They gave him an address near Gramercy Park.

He asked them if they would mind if he stopped at the precinct first, it would only take a couple of minutes, and he would raise the flag, no charge-but they were smooching back there, and didn't even hear him. He did sixty all the way downtown, but then they decided to go to an all-night joint in the Village, and he had to take them there. He dropped them, finally, and raced over to the 9th Precinct on East Fifth Street, but by then the police knew all about it. They asked him some questions and made a couple of notes, and then told him that he would have to move his cab because he was blocking the street.