The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories Read online

“And that’s the end of him,” Cruzada murmured, rearranging herself in her coils. But as the dog was about to throw himself upon the viper, he heard his master’s steps and arched his back, barking at the yarará. The man with the dark glasses appeared before Cruzada.

  “What’s going on?” another asked from the other side of the veranda.

  “An alternatus. A good specimen,” the man replied. And before the viper could defend herself, she felt herself strangled in a kind of noose tied at the end of a pole.

  The viper gnashed her fangs to see herself in this predicament; she threshed and lunged; she tried in vain to free herself and curl around the pole. Impossible; she needed a point of support for her tail, that famous point of support without which even a powerful boa finds itself reduced to the most shameful impotence. The man carried her, dangling, and she was thrown into the serpentarium.

  This area for the serpents consisted of a piece of land enclosed by sheets of smooth zinc. It was furnished with a few cages containing some thirty or forty vipers. Cruzada fell to the ground, where for a moment she lay coiled and throbbing beneath the fiery sun.

  The installation was obviously temporary; large, shallow, pitch-covered boxes served as pools for the vipers, and several small shelters and piled rocks offered protection to the guests in this improvised paradise.

  In a few seconds the yarará was surrounded and scrutinized by five or six fellow prisoners who had come to identify her species.

  Cruzada recognized all of them except an enormous viper bathing herself in a wire mesh-enclosed cage. Who was she? She was completely unfamiliar to the yarará. Curious, in her turn, she slowly approached the stranger.

  She approached so close that the other serpent rose in challenge. Cruzada smothered a stupefied hiss as she coiled defensively. The great viper’s neck had swollen monstrously, something Cruzada had never seen. She was really extraordinary looking.

  “Who are you?” Cruzada murmured. “Are you one of us?”

  She meant, are you venomous. The other viper, convinced there was no intent of attack in the yarará’s approach, flattened her great swollen hood.

  “Yes. But not from here; from very far away . . . , from India.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Hamadrías . . . or Royal hooded cobra.”

  “I am Cruzada.”

  “Yes, you didn’t have to tell me that. I have seen many of your sisters. When did they catch you?”

  “Just now. I couldn’t kill.”

  “It would have been better for you had they killed you.”

  “But I killed the dog.”

  “What dog? The one here?”

  “Yes.”

  The cobra burst out laughing at the same moment Cruzada received another shock: the fleecy dog she thought she’d killed was barking!

  “Surprised, are you?” Hamadrías added. “The same thing has happened to many others.”

  “But I bit him on the head,” Cruzada answered, more and more bewildered. “I spent every last drop of venom. It is the patrimony of the yarará to empty the contents of our venom sacs in one attack.”

  “It doesn’t matter whether you emptied your sacs or not.”

  “He can’t die?”

  “Yes, but we can’t kill him. He’s immunized. But you don’t know what that means.”

  “I know!” Cruzada countered quickly. “Ñacaniná told us.”

  Then the cobra regarded her attentively.

  “You seem intelligent to me.”

  “At least as intelligent as you,” Cruzada replied.

  Again the neck of the Asiatic serpent abruptly swelled, and again the yarará coiled in defense.

  Both vipers stared at each other, as the cobra’s hood slowly deflated.

  “Intelligent and courageous,” murmured Hamadrías. “Yes, I can talk to you. Do you know the name of my species?”

  “Hamadrías, I suppose.”

  “Or Naja bungaró . . . Royal hooded cobra. We are, in relation to the common hooded cobra of India, what you are compared to one of those coatiaritas. And do you know what we feed on?”

  “No.”

  “On American vipers . . . , among other things,” she concluded, her head swaying before Cruzada.

  Cruzada rapidly calculated the length of the foreign ophiophagous serpent.

  “Two and a half meters?” she asked.

  “A little more than that, my tiny Cruzada,” Hamadrías replied, following Cruzada’s gaze.

  “You’re a good size. About the length of Anaconda, one of my cousins. Do you know what she feeds on?” and she, in turn, stared at Hamadrías. “On Asiatic vipers!”

  “Well said!” Hamadrías replied, again swaying. And after cooling her head in the water, she added lazily, “A cousin of yours, you said?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nonvenomous, then?”

  “That’s right. That’s precisely why she has such a great weakness for venomous foreigners.”

  But the Asiatic serpent, absorbed in her thoughts, was no longer listening.

  “Listen to me,” she said suddenly. “I’ve had enough of men, dogs, animals, and all this hell of stupidity and cruelty. You must understand, imagine what it’s been like. . . . I’ve been closed up here in a cage like a rat for a year and a half, mistreated, periodically tortured. And what’s worse, scorned . . . , handled like an old rag by vile men. And I, who have the courage, the strength, and the venom necessary to kill every one of them, am condemned to sacrifice my venom to the preparation of their antivenom serum. Can you realize what this means to my pride?” she concluded, peering closely into the yarará’s eyes.

  “Yes,” she replied. “What must I do?”

  “There’s one way, only one way you can get the last drops of revenge. Come close. I don’t want the others to hear. It hinges on the point of support we need to unleash our strength. Our salvation depends on that point of support. Only . . .”

  “What?”

  The Royal cobra again stared at Cruzada.

  “Only, you may die . . .”

  “Just me?”

  “Oh no. . . . They, some of the Men, will also die.”

  “That’s all I want! Continue.”

  “Come closer still. Closer!”

  The dialogue continued a few moments in such low voices that the body of the yarará rubbed against the wire mesh of Hamadrías’s cage, shedding some of her scales. Suddenly, the cobra rose, swayed, and struck Cruzada three times. The vipers, who had been following events from a distance, shouted, “Look at that! She’s killed her! She’s a traitor!”

  Cruzada, bitten three times in the neck, dragged herself heavily across the grass. Suddenly she lay motionless, and it was there an Institute employee found her three hours later when he entered the serpentarium. The man looked at the yarará, nudged her with his foot, rolled her over like a length of rope, and stared at her white belly.

  “She’s dead . . . good and dead,” he muttered. “But of what?” He squatted down to look at the viper. The examination did not take long. On the neck, at the very base of the head, he noticed the unequivocal marks of venomous fangs.

  “Hum,” he said to himself. “This must be the hamadrías’s work. There she lies, coiled and staring at me as if I were another alternatus. I’ve told the director a dozen times that the mesh of that cage is too big. And there’s the proof. . . . Oh, well,” he concluded, grasping Cruzada by the tail and pitching her over the zinc fence, “one less varmint to take care of!”

  He went to see the director: “The hamadrías has bitten the yarará you brought in a while ago. We’ll get very little venom from her.”

  “What a bore,” the director replied. “And we need that venom today. We have only one more tube of serum. Did the alternatus die?”

  “Yes, I threw her over the fence. You want me to bring the hamadrías?”

  “Yes, there’s nothing we can do. But bring her for the second collection, two or three hours from now.”

&nbs
p; VIII

  . . . She felt battered, exhausted. Her mouth was filled with dirt and blood. Where was she?

  The dense haze before her eyes began to evaporate, and Cruzada raised her head to identify her surroundings. She saw. . . . She recognized the zinc fence, and suddenly she remembered everything: the black dog, the loop, and the plan of battle devised by the enormous Asiatic serpent in which she, Cruzada, was gambling her life. She remembered everything now that the paralysis caused by the venom was beginning to leave her. With the return of her memory came the full awareness of what she must do. Would there still be time?

  She tried to drag herself forward, but in vain; her body undulated, but she could not move. She lay still a moment, her uneasiness increasing.

  “I’m only thirty meters away!” she murmured. “Two minutes, one minute of strength, and I’ll be there in time!”

  And after a new effort she succeeded in inching forward, desperately dragging herself toward the laboratory.

  She crossed the patio and reached the door at the moment that the employee held the hamadrías suspended from his hands, while the man with the dark glasses was introducing a watch crystal into the serpent’s mouth. As Cruzada was still at the threshold, his hand moved to press the poison sacs.

  “I won’t have time!” she said hopelessly. But dragging herself forward in one last supreme effort, she bared her shining white fangs. The employee, feeling his bare foot burning from the bite of the yarará, yelled and jumped—not far, but enough so the dangling body of the Royal cobra twisted, and she swung her body toward the table where swiftly she coiled around the table leg. With this point of support, she jerked her head from the employee’s hands and sank her fangs up to the gums into the left wrist of the man with the dark glasses—right in a vein.

  That was it! Amidst the shouts, the Asiatic cobra and the yarará fled without pursuit.

  “A point of support,” the cobra hissed as she fled across the fields. “That’s all I needed. Success at last!”

  “Yes,” the yarará, still in great pain, raced beside her. “But I hope we never have to do that again.”

  At the laboratory, two black strings of sticky blood dripped from the man’s wrist. The venomous injection of a hamadrías in a vein is too serious for a mortal to sustain for very long—and the wounded man’s eyes closed forever after four minutes.

  IX

  The Congress was complete. In addition to Terrífica and Ñacaniná and the yararás—Urutú Dorado, Coatiarita, Neuwied, Atroz, and Lanceolada—Coralina had also arrived, a viper who, according to Ñacaniná, is a bit stupid, a fact that does not prevent her bite from being one of the most painful in the Kingdom. Besides, she is beautiful, uncontestably beautiful with her red and black rings.

  As vipers are known to be very vain on the question of beauty, Coralina was quite happy about the absence of her sister Frontal, whose triple black and white rings upon a purple background place this coral viper on the highest scale of ophidic beauty.

  The Hunters were represented that night by Drimobia, whose fate it is to be called the bush yararacusú, although her appearance is really quite different from theirs. Cipó also attended, a beautiful green, and a great hunter of birds. Radinea was there, small and dark, who ordinarily never abandons her puddles. Also Boipeva, whose primary characteristic is to flatten herself against the ground the moment she feels menaced. And Trigemine, a coral snake with a very delicate body like that of her tree-dwelling companions. And finally Esculapia, whose entrance, for reasons that will be clear in a moment, was greeted by generally uneasy glances.

  Thus several species of both the venomous serpents and the Hunters were missing, an absence which requires an explanation. When we said the Congress was complete, we were referring to the great majority of the species and especially those that can be called royal because of their importance. From the first Congress of Vipers it is remembered that the species with great numbers, comprising the majority, could support their decisions by strength of numbers. This was the reason for the numbers present, even though the absence of the yarará Surucucú, whom no one had been able to find, was deeply regretted. All the more so because this viper, which reaches three meters in length, is, besides being queen of America, also vice-empress of the World Empire of Vipers, since only one snake surpasses her in size and in potency of venom: the Asiatic hamadrías.

  Someone else was missing, besides Cruzada, but all the Vipers pretended not to notice her absence. Nevertheless, they were forced to turn around when they heard a sound and turned to see a head with large burning eyes peering through the ferns.

  “May I enter?” the visitor said happily.

  As if an electric current had passed through their bodies, the Vipers raised their heads in unison when they heard that voice.

  “What do you want here?” Lanceolada cried with profound irritation.

  “You have no place here!” Urutú Dorado exclaimed, for the first time showing signs of vivacity.

  “Get out! Get out!” cried several Vipers, intensely uneasy.

  But Terrífica, with a clear, although tremulous, hiss, succeeded in making herself heard.

  “Sisters. Don’t forget we are in Congress, and all of us here know its laws: nobody, while it is in session, may exercise any act of violence. Enter, Anaconda!”

  “Well said!” exclaimed Ñacaniná ironically. “The noble words of our queen assure us. Enter, Anaconda!”

  And the lively and pleasant head of Anaconda advanced, followed by all two and a half meters of dark sinuous body. She passed all of them, exchanging an intelligent glance with Ñacaniná, and coiled herself, with light hisses of satisfaction, beside Terrífica, who could not help but shudder.

  “Do I disturb you?” Anaconda asked courteously.

  “No, not at all!” Terrífica replied. “It’s my venom sacs that make me uncomfortable, so swollen. . . .”

  Anaconda and Ñacaniná again exchanged an ironic glance and then attended to the proceedings.

  The very obvious hostility of the assembly toward the new arrival had a sound basis which one cannot help but appreciate.

  The anaconda is the queen of all snakes there are or ever will be, with the exception of the Malayan python. Her strength is phenomenal, and there is no animal of flesh and bone capable of resisting her embrace. When her ten meters of smooth black-spotted body begins to slip from the foliage of the tree, the entire jungle shivers and quakes. But Anaconda is too powerful to hate anyone—with one exception—and the knowledge of her own courage allows her to maintain a good friendship with man. If she detests anyone, it is, naturally, the venomous serpents—thus the commotion of the vipers.

  Anaconda is not, however, a daughter of the region. Swimming in the foamy waters of the Paraná, she had arrived in this area during a great flood and continued to remain in the region, quite content with the country, enjoying good relations with everyone, in particular with Ñacaniná, with whom she’d formed a warm friendship. She was, furthermore, a young anaconda who still had a long way to go before reaching the ten meters of her happy grandparents. But the two and a half meters she already measured were equal to twice that length if one considers the strength of this magnificent boa, who for entertainment at dusk swam the Amazon with half her body raised out of the water.

  But Atroz had just taken the floor before the now distracted Assembly.

  “I think we should begin now,” she said. “First of all, we must find out what happened to Cruzada. She promised to return immediately.”

  “What she promised,” Ñacaniná intervened, “was to be here as soon as she could. We must wait for her.”

  “Why?” replied Lanceolada, not deigning to turn her head toward the snake.

  “What do you mean, why?” Ñacaniná exclaimed, raising her head. “Only a stupid lanceolada would say a thing like that . . . ! I’m already tired of hearing stupid remark after stupid remark in this Congress. You’d think the Venomous Vipers represented the entire Family. Every
one, except this one,” she pointed with her tail toward Lanceolada, “knows that our plan depends on the news Cruzada brings us. Why wait for her? We are in bad shape if minds capable of asking such a question dominate in this Congress!”

  “Don’t be insulting,” Coatiarita reproached her gravely.

  Ñacaniná turned toward her. “And why are you getting into this?”

  “Don’t be insulting,” the tiny viper repeated with dignity.

  Ñacaniná contemplatively considered the punctilious Benjamin, and her voice changed.

  “Tiny little cousin is right,” she concluded tranquilly. “Lanceolada, I beg your forgiveness.”

  “It isn’t important,” the yarará replied with rage.

  “It isn’t important; but again, I ask you to forgive me.”

  Fortunately, Coralina, who was watching the entrance to the cavern, entered and hissed, “Here comes Cruzada!”

  “At last!” exclaimed the assembled serpents happily. But their joy was transformed into stupefaction when, following the yarará, there entered an enormous viper totally unknown to them.

  As Cruzada crossed to lie beside Atroz, the intruder slowly and gently coiled herself in the center of the cavern, then lay motionless.

  “Terrífica!” said Cruzada. “Welcome our guest. She is one of us.”

  “We are sisters!” the rattlesnake hastened to say, observing her uneasily.

  All the vipers, dying with curiosity, slithered toward the new arrival.

  “She looks like a nonvenomous cousin,” said one, a little disdainfully.

  “Yes,” another agreed. “She has round eyes.”

  “And a long tail.”

  “And besides . . .”

  Suddenly they were struck dumb as the stranger’s neck swelled monstrously. This lasted only a second; the hood deflated as the new arrival turned to her friend, her voice altered.

  “Cruzada, tell them not to come so close. . . . I can’t control myself.”

  “Yes, leave her alone!” Cruzada exclaimed. “Especially,” she added, “since she has just saved my life . . . perhaps all our lives.”

  That was all that was necessary. For a while the Congress hung on Cruzada’s every word; she had to tell it all: the encounter with the dog, the noose of the man in the dark glasses, the hamadrías’s magnificent plan, the final catastrophe, and the deep dream that had overcome the yarará until just an hour ago.