The Snake-Charmer’s Song

The Hotel Room, Edward Hopper

I knew a snake-charmer at the dawn of my life. He taught me how to dance. He was nimble with his silver flute, fluent, mercurial, shrill. When he pressed his lips to his flute, his snakes would slither out from under his overcoat and come to me, to me.

Oh, how delighted I would be! Bright, twirling, green emerald and purple midnight, subtly shimmering scales in the early morning light, thick as thighs, they slithered, like tongues, to me. The snakes writhed up my legs, wrapped around my hips, up my waist, my breasts, caressed my neck, constricting and flying, a hundred snakes. In entirety I was given. How I danced, to the sound of that flute.

I turned to him often, breath heavy, eyes hooded, neck tipped back, as he sang the snakes closer to me, tighter around me, himself perched and indifferent, far away atop an apple tree. How cruel I thought him in my ecstasy of snakes and fire, to let me burn alone. He taught me to dance, but I danced alone.

With time I grew cold, cold as snakes. The songs he sang on his flute hypnotised not only me, but my senses too, I felt only grey, dull, longing. The snake-charmer gave nothing, nothing but the snakes and the moment. And I, I remained powerless to it, to him, to them on my body, gripping my soul.

On the fateful night, the snake-charmer played his flute while I was sleepwalking. Even in my sleep, I yearned and stretched towards him. I felt the familiar ecstasy of his snakes slithering up my calves and the inside of my thighs, I arched my back and let my head roll back, I knew the snakes — he — would catch me. I danced desperately, tightly, beautiful and black and sparkling yet. At the climax of his song, my lips parted in a sigh, a moan, a moan which interrupted his song for a fateful second.

The snake-charmer looked at me, into me, finally. In that fateful moment I pierced into him, I swallowed his snake, a magnificent white snake, head first, no chewing, my jaws parted wider than possible. I ate the snake. I ate the snake.

I have not danced to the snake-charmer’s song for many, many moons. Since I ate the snake, I have taken up the waltz. It makes me feel warmer, composed, upright, held, old. I am good at the waltz. It suits me better.

Still, sometimes, as I twirl and whirl through ballrooms, I see the snake-charmer, standing in corners, peering out of looking-glasses, haunting the windows. He is without his sharp flute, and so without his snakes, nowadays. I would not be able to hear him over the waltz anyway.

In place of his flute, he occupies his mouth with apples. The crunch, I hear always. And the snake inside me stirs.

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