Snake Charmed
“Snake Charmed” was a pleasure to read and was very funny. — — Bill H.
This was a wonderfully evocative piece. One actually felt the “Mad Dogs & Englishman” heat and mood. — — Mary Lou M.
I was greatly impressed with your ability to convey context and mood. The descriptions of the climate and ambiance of Java and the whole context for this story were very impressive. — — Rick C.
I had just arrived at the bank when Fred Zimmerman, the manager, marched up to my desk. Fred and I got along well enough, but that morning he was all business. “Did you see that snake charmer?” he asked. I nodded yes. “I want you to tell him to leave; he’ll scare the customers.”
“Fred, I hate snakes.”
“Nobody hates snakes more than I do.”
“I met a psychiatrist once and asked her about that…” I said. Fred rolled his eyes. “Anyway, I don’t speak any of the Indian languages.”
“Everyone speaks a little Malay in Singapore; yours is pretty good,” Fred said. “Try that.”
I saw Stanley Wong walking down the stairs. “Why not send Stanley? He grew up in Malaysia; his Malay is fluent.”
“Tried that before you came in.” Fred shook his head in frustration. “Stanley hates snakes too, and he’s off to meet a customer.”
With Stanley gone, Fred and I were the only two officers on the loan floor. Downstairs the guard was unlocking the doors for business. Pointing, I said, “The guard’s Indian. Why not tell him to handle it?”
“Tried that,” Fred sighed. “He refused because of some religious thing I didn’t understand. He knew I couldn’t counter that.” Fred patted my shoulder, “Look, someone has to do it, and it’s not me. Just tell the fellow to push off — piece of cake.” Fred had softened his order, but it was an order nonetheless.
Living in Asia for five years in the early 1970s, I’d never encountered a snake until that morning when I saw the Indian snake charmer with his basket under the trees facing the Bank of America’s Singapore Branch. The snake charmer, a tiny man with spindly legs and a pot belly, was probably in his fifties. His steel-rimmed glasses were too small and pinched his features into an intellectual’s scowl. He sat down and played his flute; the cobra rose from the basket and began swaying. I had heard that cobras follow the charmer’s rocking motion, not the music.
When I went outside, the cobra was inside the basket and the charmer was dozing against a tree. He opened his eyes as I approached him. Skipping the interrogatives that start polite Malay conversations (How are you? Your family?) I got to the point, “You, snake-man, take snake, go away.” I pointed at the basket with my foot. “Bank no place for snakes; my boss says go.” Not bad. Even with my limited Malay, I’d made my point. But he didn’t budge and stared at me. I hadn’t been firm enough. “Go, now,” I said shooing him with my hands. He kept looking, sizing me up.
People gathered; Europeans confronting Asians in public always attracted crowds. I had come on too strong, and directness is off-putting to most Asians. Worse, I had shown my cards; the snake charmer knew I’d be in trouble with my boss if he didn’t leave. Even worse, without thinking, I had pointed at his basket with my foot — a calculated insult in many parts of Asia, especially the Malay areas. Worst of all, I was a large European talking like a three-year old and ordering around a small Indian. Looking at the gathering crowd, I knew every single one of them sided with the snake charmer.
The charmer replied in measured Malay, “First the British, now you Americans. You people come over here and tell us what to do. Why?” I was too busy translating to answer. He switched to English. “Bankers are the worst; they decide who gets the money.”
At least we were speaking English, but I wasn’t about to argue history or economics. I tried reasoning, “Well, life isn’t fair, is it?” He accepted that with a nod. “Look, both of us have better things to do, don’t we?” I thought the inclusive “we” might help.
The crowd muttered — Chinese dialects, Indian languages, Malay and English. A Malay man hissed at me. The charmer polished his glasses with his shirt, held them up to the sun and blew away a speck. Taking his time adjusting the frames and tucking in his shirt, he declared, “I’m not moving, just because you say so. I might stay here all day.”
My move. Conciliatory but firm, I replied, “Your snake scares our customers. You don’t want to do that, now do you?” Too patronizing; I switched to mollifying. “Please take your snake and leave.”
He readied his flute. I stepped back. “Please, don’t; I hate snakes.”
“Snakes have their purpose.” He reached for the basket.
“I’ll pay you to go.”
Taking his hand away, “How much?”
“Ten dollars.” About four US dollars at the time.
He grasped the basket lid. “Fifty; I go.”
“Fifteen.”
“Thirty,” he countered.
“Twenty, last offer.”
He nodded, “Done.”
“Done,” I said as the crowd melted away. Paying him, I suggested, “Why don’t you take your snake over to the Chase Manhattan Bank around the corner and see how they like it?”
After lunch I heard the flute outside, and my phone rang. Fred wanted to see me in his office. “Didn’t you cut a deal with that snake charmer?” He arched an eyebrow.
“I did, but that guy’s difficult; it’s a long story. I’ll fix it.” Fred wanted details, but his phone rang and I slipped out.
I empathized with the cobra; when the flute played he popped out of the basket and I popped out of the bank. “Look,” I said, “we had a deal: twenty dollars and you go away.”
“The man at Chase Bank paid me fifty to come back.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Life isn’t fair,” he said with a faint smile. “You said so yourself. So did the Chase man.”
“We agreed that you wouldn’t come back.”
“You didn’t say, ‘Don’t ever, ever come back here,’ like the Chase man did. You know, if I had a lot of money, I would put it in Chase Bank — better bankers, more careful.”
That did it. “I’m not taking that from you, a snake charmer, a dishonest one at that.” I felt my face flush.
With a contemptuous glare, he removed the basket lid, and I stepped out of cobra range. Another crowd gathered as the charmer played his flute with a martyr’s serenity. An apology was needed. When the cobra was back in the basket, I said, “I called you names. I’m sorry.”
With a shrug of his shoulders, “Now what?”
“What do you say, another deal? Fifty dollars and you go. But you can’t come back, ever, ever again. Never ever.”
“Understood. But one hundred.”
We settled on sixty. The crowd drifted away. Some were laughing. I asked the charmer as he was leaving, “Where are you going?”
“Citibank.”
“They’re an arrogant bunch.”
“Good, ” he said.
