The Night of the Cobra

Later, she would think all her troubles dated from the night of the cobra. That drama played as a prelude to her slow slither into uncertainty, doubt and self-loathing.

She was already lying down, the mosquito net embracing the bed, when she heard the shouts outside, and the frantic barking of her dog, Casper. She listened, reluctant to leave her cocoon. She was never easy at night when Tim was away. Alone in their double bed, listening to the throaty kra-kra-kra of the frogs in the neighbours’ yard, starting at the frenzied clatter of unseen talons or paws on the zinc roof. Maybe it was burglars again. She buried a little deeper into the damp, twisted sheets.

She could hear Pierre’s cries more clearly now, he sounded scared. Cursing, she wriggled out from under the net and unlocked the bedroom door, stepping out into the moonlit hallway. The palms in the atrium shimmied, casting fronds of shadow along the white walls.

Pierre was at the kitchen door, his knock insistent but low, his hand caught between his reluctance to disturb her at 3 a.m. and the emergency. Nina grabbed one of the colourful cloths thrown on the sofa, twisted it around her bare breasts, knotted it and cautiously opened the door, annoyed to see her hands were shaking slightly. Pierre stood there, a machete gripped in his hand. Nina stepped back.

“Madame, il y a serpent.”

Nina shot a horrified look around the concrete yard and recoiled further. “Where?” she whispered.

“Dead, we chopped its head off,” Pierre said. “But it bit the guard from next door.”

He gestured with the machete towards the garage. Nina  walked out tentatively, still fearing the dart of a spear-like head and forked tongue.

The guard was lying beside her Landrover. His trouser leg had been pulled up. In the harsh glare of the garage’s single bulb, Nina saw four red puncture wounds on his calf. “Christ,” she muttered.

She knelt by the guard, just a teenager really under the official yellow and green shirt. “Madame, ca fait mal,” he said in thick French, tears streaming out of his wide, scared eyes.

His name was Jean-Marie. She didn’t know his surname. They always exchanged a few words when she passed by on her walks with Casper. He had a terrible stammer but he once told her haltingly that he was learning English. She gave him some books and since then he always greeted her with “Hello Madame, have a nice day.” The effort of pushing the unfamiliar words through his stutter left him sweating while Nina’s entire body seemed to vibrate, willing him through to the end of the sentence.

Now, she was dimly aware of several other figures in the dark beyond the garage, watching her.

“We need a doctor,” she said. What did she know about snake bites? Did you suck the poison out? Did you cut it out? Did you bind the leg up? Vaguely she remembered Tim telling her that tourniquets were mainly used in films and in real life would likely cause the limb to be amputated.

“Where is the snake?” she asked Pierre.

He gestured around the side of the house. It was lying under the mango tree. A metre long, dark and evil. Its body had been hacked in several places. Its head lay apart.

“What is it?” Nina asked.

“Cobra, I think,” Pierre replied.

Nina now moved very quickly. She ran into the house, grabbed her mobile phone and dialled her doctor’s cell.

“Emmanuel, it’s Nina Walters. Sorry to bother you so late but a guard has been bitten by a snake in my yard. A cobra. Sort of yellow brown. When? About 10 minutes ago I think … Pierre, when was he bitten?”

“Maybe 15 minutes ago,” Pierre said, his eyes still on the snake’s mangled corpse as if afraid it would rear up again. Nina could hear the other figures whispering in low, terrified tones.

“Okay, please hurry,” she said and hung up. “Pierre doesn’t anyone here know what to do for snake bites?”

Pierre shrugged, barked a couple of words in the local dialect to the faceless men in the shadows and shrugged again in their silence. “People usually die,” he whispered in Nina’s ear as she bent to the terrified young man lying on the concrete.

She stroked his brow, feeling useless and straining to hear Emmanuel’s car. Bats skittered above her head.

“I’ll be back in a second.” She ran inside and unearthed the medical kit from the back of her wardrobe. She grabbed some bandages, compresses – things she collected faithfully hoping never to need them.

She bound Jean-Marie’s leg tightly, telling him that the doctor was on his way. His eyes were closing now and he seemed to be finding it difficult to breathe. Then she heard a car pull up and someone hammered on the big, iron gate. Pierre ran to open it.

Emmanuel Leclerc strode in, somehow reassuringly French even in gaudy mauve shorts, a stained blue T-shirt and unlaced desert boots on sockless feet. Nina immediately felt calmer. He squeezed her shoulder briefly as he knelt beside the boy.

“Bien, bien,” he grunted, looking at the bandage. “Show me the snake.”

He returned walking fast, and rummaged in his bag. “I’ve got some antidote but we have to get him to hospital. Venez, aidez-moi,” he shouted at the shadows.

Later in the hospital, Nina realised she was still wearing just the cloth pagne and a pair of plastic flip-flops. Jean-Marie would be alright. They had caught him in time.

She had sent Pierre to fetch the guard’s mother, who was now sitting silent and wondering by his bed in the bare, slightly smelly room. Nina had insisted on bringing Jean-Marie to the city’s best hospital. She knew he would wait too long at any of the others and besides it was close to her home.

She invited Emmanuel to come back with her. She didn’t want to be alone, and in any case the sun had risen and the least she could do was offer him a coffee.

As they drove back, mist was lifting off the slowly waking city and the stinking lagoon. Traders were setting up their stalls by the roadside, unpacking cigarettes, setting out bunches of spindly, spider-like red and orange flowers all wrapped neatly in plastic. Large bottomed women sauntered through the morning cool, trays of bread on their gently swaying heads. Children in beige school uniforms stood in groups along the broken pavements, waiting for the lumbering, creaking, state-owned buses.

Nina felt drained. She made real French coffee at home, not the instant Nescafe that was a staple here. She and Emmanuel sat on the terrace, looking out across the short lawn around the pool.

“What a drama,” she breathed taking a deep sip and lighting her umpteenth cigarette.

Emmanuel smiled. “It was bound to happen. You know this neighbourhood is renowned for snakes. Better get a mongoose. Although Casper seems to be doing well so far.” He bent to pat the dog’s head.

“Yes, luckily he spotted the cobra, otherwise God knows where it would have gone. I am going to have nightmares now for weeks, imagining the damn thing’s relatives are going to come and attack the house,” Nina said.

Emmanuel chuckled with the nonchalance of an old Africa hand. He had spent 30 years on the continent and every year seemed to have left a wrinkle on his tanned face.

“It’s the first time I’ve seen a real snake, well one that wasn’t tamed or had its poison removed,” Nina said.

She shuddered despite the fact that the temperature was already rising rapidly to its drenching daily average of 35 degrees.

“Thank God, you came so quickly.” She leant over to rub Emmanuel’s hand.

They had been friends since Nina and Tim arrived in Ivory Coast two years ago. The expatriate community was pretty small here, and had shrunk even more since a civil war broke out 18 months before. Many people had left for Europe or the relative stability of Ghana or Senegal. But Emmanuel said he had been uprooted too many times already and at 55 was not going anywhere.

“When is Tim coming back?” he asked now.

“I don’t know. He has to finish organising the food distribution in northern Mauritania. I think they’ve had some problems getting the trucks into Nouakchott. Something about papers.” 

She took another sip of  coffee. “Maybe next week.”

Emmanuel sighed. “You know, I worry about you here on your own. You’ve been robbed twice and now the snake. You really should stay with someone when he’s away.”

Nina smiled. “I’m fine. Anyway, I’m going away tomorrow to Freetown. Story to do on child soldiers.”


“You and Tim move around so much. I almost never see the two of you together,” Emmanuel sighed, shaking his head with mock seriousness. “What kind of marriage is that?”

Nina laughed. “Maybe that’s the secret of our success,” she replied lightly.

Because she and Tim were happy, and she knew enough thirty-somethings caught in the middle earth of marriage to appreciate their good fortune. The plateau of coupledom could be a barren wasteland and she had friends whose love had perished here. People who had found themselves hemmed in by children, mortgages, car payments, school fees.

A daring few had broken away, decided to start from scratch. Bt there were always casualties. Yes, she and Tim were lucky, she thought later as she lay on her hot bed, hoping for a few hours sleep.

In many ways, Africa had been a godsend for them. They had been rapidly getting bored of life in Europe. They both adored Paris and their apartment in the 11th arrondisement but they felt as though time had moved into top gear after they hit 30 and that if adventure was to be had it had to be now.

When Tim was offered the job as regional director for a Canadian NGO based in Abidjan, it seemed the perfect opportunity. Her editors on The Chronicle were sceptical but she had argued that West Africa would yield a rich vein of cultural and political stories. She had not been wrong.

A year after they arrived, war had broken out in Ivory Coast and both she and Tim had been run off their feet. She travelling with rebels, writing about the thousands of displaced, keeping her head down in the occasional battle. Tim barging along the dusty red-dirt tracks , trying to organise food deliveries to remote regions where thousands of lost, terrified people were gathering.

When they met on the road in run-down, dirty hotels they were usually exhausted about what they had seen and done. They lay on vaguely itching beds, holding each other and silently sipping giant, lukewarm bottles of beer, too wiped out to talk. When a ceasefire was declared and the fighting died down, it just gave them more opportunity to travel to other countries in West Africa.


Nina had to admit they spent a lot of time apart but it just made their days together more precious. And they both loved their jobs. It was just … She struggled to finish the thought.

Sometimes now, she found herself wondering if this was all she could expect from life or at least from love. She supposed the next stage for them was children, but she wasn’t at all sure about that. If they did not have kids, did that mean that their relationship would stagnate?

Maybe that was the shapeless worry niggling at her mind recently – a vague disquiet that she had not wanted to confront. Images of babies filled her head but a few moments later, sleep finally released her from her uncomfortable thoughts and the stifling heat.