Elephant Song

He left the temple and cut through the night market where the stall-holders offered a bewildering array of wares and the prostitutes plied their trade in flimsy wooden sheds in the back areas of the market.  Both storekeepers and painted ladies haggled loudly with their potential customers, and the spectators joined in with comment and suggestion and laughter.  It was good renao, and Cheng's spirits revived.

He entered -Snake Alley down which the shops were crowded closely together.  Outside each stall were piled snake baskets of steel mesh and the front windows were filled with the largest and most spectacularly coloured of the serpents which gave the alley its name.

Many of the shops had a live mongoose tethered outside the front door.

Cheng stopped to watch an arranged contest between one of these sleek little predators and a four-foot cobra.

The cobra reared up as it confronted the mongoose, and the crowd gathered quickly and shrieked with delight.  With its striped hood fully extended, the cobra revolved and swayed like a flower on its stalk to watch the circling mongoose with unblinking bright eyes while its feathery black tongue tasted the scent of its adversary on the air.

The mongoose danced in and then leapt back as the cobra struck.  For an instant the snake was off balance and fully extended and the mongoose darted in for the kill.  It seized the back of the glistening scaled head and its needle teeth crunched into bone.  The snake's body whipped and coiled in its death throes and the proprietor of the shop separated the mongoose from its victim and carried the writhing reptile into his shop, followed by two or three eager male customers.

Cheng did not join them.  He had his own special shop, and he wanted a particular type of snake, the rarest, the most expensive, the most effective.

The snake-doctor recognized Cheng over the heads of the crowd that thronged the alley.  His shop was famous.  He did not have to stage mongoose fights to attract his customers.  He beamed and bowed, and ushered Cheng through to the back room which was curtained off from the public gaze.

It was not necessary for Cheng to state his requirements.  The shop owner knew him well, over many years.  it was Cheng who had arranged his supply of the most virulently poisonous reptiles from Africa.  It was Cheng who had introduced him to Chetti Singh, and made the first consignments of snakes through the diplomatic bag.  Of course, Cheng; took a commission on each shipment.

Cheng had also persuaded him to deal in rare African birds.

Once again these had been supplied by Chetti Singh and the trade was now worth over a quarter of a million US dollars a year.  There were collectors in Europe and America who would pay huge sums for a pair of saddle-billed storks or bald this.  The African parrots, although not as colourful as the South American varieties, were also much sought after. Chetti Singh could supply all these, and once again Cheng took his commission.

However, the main source of the snake-doctor's income was still the supply of venomous snakes.  The more venomous, the more valuable they were to Chinese gentlemen with faltering potency.  The African mamba had been entirely unknown in Taiwan or mainland China until Chetti Singh had made the first shipment.  Now they were the most prized of all snakes on the island, and commanded a price of two thousand US dollars apiece.

The snake-doctor had a particularly beautiful specimen ready in a mesh cage on his stainless-steel-topped table.  Now he drew on a pair of elbow-length gloves, a precaution that he would have scorned had he been dealing with a cobra.

He opened the sliding lid of the cage a crack and slipped in a long steel forked rod.  Deftly he pi

Now the snake-doctor opened the lid fully and seized the mamba behind the head, careful to get thumb and forefinger aligned behind the protuberances of the skull so the snake could not pull free of his grip.

The instant he released the pressure of the forked rod, the snake wrapped itself in tight coils around his forearm.  it was six feet long and angry.  it exerted all its rippling scaled strength to pull its head free, but the snake-doctor prevented the points of the skull from being drawn through his fingers.

The mamba's jaws gaped wide open and its short fangs were erect in the pate soft mucous lining of its mouth.  The clear venom oozed down the open cha

The snake-doctor held the reptile's head on a small anvil and with a sharp blow of a wooden mallet crushed the skull.  The snake's body whipped around wildly in the death frenzy.

Cheng watched impassively as the snake-doctor hung the writhing body on a meat hook and then used a razor to slit open the belly cavity and drain the blood- into a cheap glass tumbler.  With a surgeon's skill he removed the venom sacs from the mamba's neck and placed them in a glass bowl.

After that he lifted out the liver and gall bladder and placed them in a separate bowl.

Next he peeled off the snake's skin, ringing the neck with the razor and stripping the skin like a nylon stocking from a girl's leg.  The naked body was pink and glistening.  The snake doctor took it down from the meat hook and laid it on the steel tabletop.

With half a dozen blows of a cleaver he chopped it into pieces, and dropped them into a soup kettle that was already boiling on the burner of a gas stove at the rear of the shop.  As he added herbs and spices to the kettle he intoned a magical incantation that had remained unchanged since the Han dynasty of 200 Bc when the first snake-doctors had developed their art.

Once the soup was cooking, the snake-doctor turned back to his table.

He spilled the gall bladder and liver into a small mortar and pounded them to pulp with a ceramic pestle.  Then he looked up at Cheng enquiringly.

Do you wish to take the tiger juice?  he asked.  It was a rhetorical question.  Cheng always drank the venom.

Again it was part of the gambler's thrill to flirt with death, for if he had a tiny gum boil or a scratch on his tongue, a bleeding rash in his throat or a raw spot in his guts, even a duodenal or gastric ulcer, the mamba venom would find it and kill him within minutes, and it would be an excruciating death.

The snake-doctor added the translucent sacs of venom to the mortar and pounded them in with the liver.  Then he scraped the pulp into the glass tumbler of dark blood and while he stirred it he added a dash of medicine from each of three other bottles.

The concoction was black, and thick as honey.  He handed the tumbler to Cheng.

Cheng drew a deep breath and then tossed back the liquid at a single gulp.  It was bitter with gall.  He placed the empty glass on the metal table-top, and folded his hands in his lap.  He sat without showing any emotion, while the snake-doctor recited spells from his magic book over him.

If the venom did not kill him, Cheng knew that the potion would arm his manhood.  It would transform his flaccid penis into a steel lance.

It would turn his testicles into ca

After ten minutes he felt no ill-effects, but his penis stirred and swelled into a semi-erection.  He moved a little to give it space in his trousers and the snake-doctor smiled and nodded happily at the success of his treatment.

He went to fetch the soup kettle from the gas burner and poured some of the liquid into a rice bowl and then added a piece of mamba flesh, cooked white and flaking.  He offered the bowl and a pair of ivory chopsticks to Cheng.

Cheng ate the meat and drank the soup and when he had finished he accepted a second bowl.  At the end of the meal he belched loudly to show his appreciation, and again the snake doctor nodded and smiled.