‘Quickly, Timber, but take your shoes off first.’
I couldn’t understand about taking off the shoes but I figured that if he was as ill as he sounded I’d better humour him, so I bent down and removed the shoes and left them in the middle of the floor. Then I went over to his bed.
‘Don’t touch the bed! For God’s sake don’t touch the bed!’ He was still speaking like he’d been shot in the stomach and I could see him lying there on his back with a single sheet covering three-quarters of his body. He was wearing a pair of pyjamas with blue, brown, and white stripes, and he was sweating terribly. It was a hot night and I was sweating a little myself, but not like Harry. His whole face was wet and the pillow around his head was sodden with moisture. It looked like a bad go of malaria to me.
‘What is it, Harry?’
‘A krait,’ he said.
‘A krait! Oh, my God! Where’d it bite you? How long ago?’
‘Shut up,’ he whispered.
‘Listen, Harry,’ I said, and I leaned forward and touched his shoulder. ‘We’ve got to be quick. Come on now, quickly, tell me where it bit you.’ He was lying there very still and tense as though he was holding on to himself hard because of sharp pain.
‘I haven’t been bitten,’ he whispered. ‘Not yet. It’s on my stomach. Lying there asleep.’
I took a quick pace backwards. I couldn’t help it, and I stared at his stomach or rather at the sheet that covered it. The sheet was rumpled i
n several places and it was impossible to tell if there was anything underneath.
‘You don’t really mean there’s a krait lying on your stomach now?’
‘I swear it.’
‘How did it get there?’ I shouldn’t have asked the question because it was easy to see he wasn’t fooling. I should have told him to keep quiet.
‘I was reading,’ Harry said, and he spoke very slowly, taking each word in turn and speaking it carefully so as not to move the muscles of his stomach. ‘Lying on my back reading and I felt something on my chest, behind the book. Sort of tickling. Then out of the corner of my eye saw this little krait sliding over my pyjamas. Small, about ten inches. Knew I mustn’t move. Couldn’t have anyway. Lay there watching it. Thought it would go over top of the sheet.’ Harry paused and was silent for a few moments. His eyes looked down along his body towards the place where the sheet covered his stomach, and I could see he was watching to make sure his whispering wasn’t disturbing the thing that lay there.
‘There was a fold in the sheet,’ he said, speaking more slowly than ever now and so softly I had to lean close to hear him. ‘See it, it’s still there. It went under that. I could feel it through my pyjamas, moving on my stomach. Then it stopped moving and now it’s lying there in the warmth. Probably asleep. I’ve been waiting for you.’ He raised his eyes and looked at me.
‘How long ago?’
‘Hours,’ he whispered. ‘Hours and bloody hours and hours. I can’t keep still much longer. I’ve been wanting to cough.’
There was not much doubt about the truth of Harry’s story. As a matter of fact it wasn’t a surprising thing for a krait to do. They hang around people’s houses and they go for the warm places. The surprising thing was that Harry hadn’t been bitten. The bite is quite deadly except sometimes when you catch it at once and they kill a fair number of people each year in Bengal, mostly in the villages.
‘All right, Harry,’ I said, and now I was whispering too. ‘Don’t move and don’t talk any more unless you have to. You know it won’t bite unless it’s frightened. We’ll fix it in no time.’
I went softly out of the room in my stocking feet and fetched a small sharp knife from the kitchen. I put it in my trouser pocket ready to use instantly in case something went wrong while we were still thinking out a plan. If Harry coughed or moved or did something to frighten the krait and got bitten, I was going to be ready to cut the bitten place and try to suck the venom out. I came back to the bedroom and Harry was still lying there very quiet and sweating all over his face. His eyes followed me as I moved across the room to his bed and I could see he was wondering what I’d been up to. I stood beside him, trying to think of the best thing to do.
‘Harry,’ I said, and now when I spoke I put my mouth almost on his ear so I wouldn’t have to raise my voice above the softest whisper, ‘I think the best thing to do is for me to draw the sheet back very, very gently. Then we could have a look first. I think I could do that without disturbing it.’
‘Don’t be a damn fool.’ There was no expression in his voice. He spoke each word too slowly, too carefully, and too softly for that. The expression was in the eyes and around the corners of the mouth.
‘Why not?’
‘The light would frighten him. It’s dark under there now.’
‘Then how about whipping the sheet back quick and brushing it off before it has time to strike?’
‘Why don’t you get a doctor?’ Harry said. The way he looked at me told me I should have thought of that myself in the first place.
‘A doctor. Of course. That’s it. I’ll get Ganderbai.’
I tiptoed out to the hall, looked up Ganderbai’s number in the book, lifted the phone and told the operator to hurry.
‘Dr Ganderbai,’ I said. ‘This is Timber Woods.’