Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

‘Can you see how the poison fangs are located at the front of the mouth?’ his father shouted enthusiastically.

‘Yes?’

‘So then what do we have here?’

‘Please, Father, let’s just get this over with first. It’s making me nervous.’

He dropped the snake into the sack that Ken was holding open.

‘Black mambo,’ said his father, shading his eyes as he peered up into the trees.

Whatever, Ken thought, and shivered as he felt the snake wriggling about inside.

After half an hour in the baking sunlight Ken allowed himself a smoke break. He leaned up against one of those trees his father had tried to teach him the names of, and he thought of the rifle in the car, that this was probably about as good a time as any, when he heard his father’s scream. It wasn’t really much of a scream, more a short bark, but Ken knew at once what had happened. Maybe because he’d dreamed about it, thought about it or just unconsciously hoped it would happen. He stubbed out his cigarette against the tree trunk. If he was lucky this might turn out to save him a whole lot of bother. He shaded his eyes, and there, over by the riverbank, he saw his father’s back, bent over in the waist-high, stiff grass.

‘Dammit, Ken! I’ve been bitten and I didn’t see what kind of snake it was. Help me look for him!’

‘On my way!’

His father hesitated a moment, perhaps taken aback by the tone of his son’s voice.

Ken remembered his father saying that if you couldn’t identify the snake and were left to make a choice between the forty different antidotes there was no use in trying to cover every option by injecting all of them; do that, and the antidotes would kill you quicker and more certainly than the poison. He also remembered something his father said about moving your feet quietly when you were out hunting snakes, that they leave as soon as they pick up the vibrations through the ground. Ken put his feet down as heavily as he could.

‘Got it!’ his father shouted as he dived down into the grass. Another of his lessons: the risk of being bitten a second time is less than not knowing what it was that bit you the first time.

Ken swore inwardly.

Poor bastard, thought Ken as he saw his father swinging the sack over and over again against the nearest tree trunk. And he wasn’t thinking of the snake or of his father. The image of the guy in his doorway in the suit and with the baseball bat had appeared on his retinas again. As usual, Ken Abbott was thinking of Ken Abbott.

His father slumped to the ground by the tree trunk as Ken approached. His skin was red and his breath came in hoarse gasps.

‘Find out which one it was,’ he whispered as he tossed the sack over towards Ken. The cloud of dust whirled up from the ground made Ken cough. He opened the sack and gingerly poked his hand inside.

‘Don’t...’ was all his father had time to say.

Ken felt the rough, dry fish skin against the palm of his hand. Over the past few weeks he’d touched more of them than he cared to think about. This one hadn’t been any different. Not until he realised that the movement he had felt beneath the scales was muscular and that the animal wasn’t dead. Not even close to dead. He screamed, more out of fear than pain, as he felt the fangs penetrate the skin of his arm. He pulled his arm away quickly and saw the two circular puncture marks just below his elbow and screamed again. Then he put his arm to his mouth lightning quick and began feverishly to suck at the holes.

‘Cut it out.’ His father’s voice was weak and despairing. ‘That only works in Westerns, I told you that.’

‘Yes but—’

‘And the other thing I told you was never to stick your hand down into a sack of snakes whether you think they’re dead or not. You turn the sack upside down and empty it, being careful about your legs. Always.’

‘Always’ and ‘never’ in the same didactic utterance. No wonder Ken hadn’t registered it.

‘Empty the sack.’

The snake fell to the ground with a soft thud and coiled itself, paralysed by the sunlight.

‘What do you think, Ken? A Cape cobra?’

Ken didn’t reply, just stared wide-eyed at the snake.

‘Sandslang? Gabon viper?’

The supersensitive tongue slid out of its mouth, absorbing tastes and smells in a way that gave it — at least, according to one of his father’s lectures — a complete picture of its surroundings within a single second.

‘Don’t let it get away, Ken.’

But Ken did let it get away. He had neither the strength nor the nerve to touch a snake again, still less one that had just shortened his lifespan down to twenty-seven years.

‘Damn!’ said his father.

‘You must be joking!’ said Ken. ‘You saw it as clearly as me and you know how to recognise every snake in the whole of this damned continent. Are you telling me you don’t know—’

‘Of course I know which snake it was,’ said his father, looking at Ken in a strange and enigmatic way. ‘And that’s why I said “Damn”. Hurry up and fetch the brown bag from the car.’

‘But shouldn’t we get back to—’

‘It was an Egyptian cobra. Our central nervous systems would be paralysed before we got halfway. Now do as I say.’

Ken’s brain tried desperately to assess the situation and the options. It couldn’t. He even poked the tip of his tongue out of his mouth, but that didn’t help either. So he did as his father told him.

‘Open it,’ his father said when Ken returned with the large brown buffalo-hide doctor’s bag. ‘Hurry.’

His body writhed; his mouth was open as though he couldn’t get enough air.

‘I’m feeling fine, Father, why—’

‘Because I was the one who got bitten first. It’s got five times as much poison as the second time. Which gives me about half an hour and you two and a half. What do you see?’

‘There are a lot of test tubes attached to the sides here.’

‘We always take supplies with us of the antidotes for bites we know we won’t have time to get back home for. The Egyptian cobra, can you see that one?’

Ken’s eyes raced over the names on the labels on the test tubes.

‘Here it is, Father.’

‘I need to take it at once. Hopefully I’ll still be alert enough to show you the way when we drive back to the farm so that we get there well before you start to have problems. The needles are in the bottom. You know what you’ve got to do, son.’

Ken looks across at his father. It’s clear he is no longer able to move. He just sits there, eyes half closed and watching his son. Then Ken concentrates on the needle again. Tries to ignore the nausea. Takes a deep breath. Knows that this is something he’ll remember to his dying day, the moment when he took things into his own hands and saved the life of the man he loved above all others. He places the point of the needle between the two bite holes, sees how the skin dips a little under the pressure, and then moves back out again once it’s been penetrated and the point enters Ken Abbott’s arm. It stings, and he breathes deeply through his nose as he pushes the plunger down. He watches the changing level of the yellow fluid until about two-thirds of it are left, and then pulls the plunger back up a tiny bit, removes the needle and repeats the procedure a little higher up the arm. A thought strikes him: so he won’t be joining the 27 Club after all. Quite the contrary; he’s going to be rich, happy and have a long life. All thanks to an injection. You could die of laughing.

‘How are you feeling?’ he asks cheerfully.

‘Sad,’ whispers his father. His chin is now down in his chest.

Ken withdraws the needle and uses a ball of cotton wool to dry the small bead of blood left behind by the injections. No nausea. No guilty conscience. Just sunshine and joy. In a word — the jackpot, at last.