The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl Volume 2 Read online

  "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 in 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 the 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 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 had 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 hail, 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."

  "Hello, Mr Woods. You not in bed yet?"

  "Look, could you come round at once? And bring serum—for a krait bite."

  "Who's been bitten?" The question came so sharply it was like a small explosion in my ear.

  "No one. No one yet. But Harry Pope's in bed and he's got one lying on his stomach asleep under the sheet lying on his stomach."

  For about three seconds there was silence on the line. Then speaking slowly, not like an explosion now but slowly, precisely, Ganderbai said, "Tell him to keep quite still. He is not to move or to talk. Do you understand?"

  "Of course."

  "I'll come at once!" He rang off and I went back to the bedroom. Harry's eyes watched me as I walked across to his bed.

  "Ganderbai's coming. He said for you to lie still."

  "What in God's name does he think I'm doing!"

  "Look, Harry, he said no talking. Absolutely no talking. Either of us."

  "Why don't you shut up then?" When he said this one side of his mouth started twitching with rapid little downward movements that continued for a while after he finished speaking. I took out my handkerchief and very gently I wiped the sweat off his face and neck, and I could feel the slight twitching of the muscle—the one he used for smiling—as my fingers passed over it with the handkerchief.

  I slipped out to the kitchen, got some ice from the ice-box, rolled it up in a napkin, and began to crush it small. That business of the mouth, I didn't like that. Or the way he talked, either. I carried the ice pack to the bedroom and laid it across Harry's forehead.

  "Keep you cool."

  He screwed up his eyes and drew breath sharply through his teeth. "Take it away," he whispered. "Make me cough." His smilingmuscle began to twitch again.

  The beam of a headlamp shone through the window as Ganderbai's car swung around to the front of the bungalow. I went out to meet him, holding the ice pack with both hands.

  "How is it?" Ganderbai asked, but he didn't stop to talk; he walked on past me across the balcony and through the screen doors into the hail. "Where is he? Which room?"

  He put his bag down on a chair in the hail and followed me into Harry's room. He was wearing soft-soled bedroom slippers and he walked across the floor noiselessly, delicately, like a careful cat. Harry watched him out of the sides of his eyes. When Ganderbai reached the bed he looked down at Harry and smiled, confident and reassuring, nodding his head to tell Harry it was a simple matter and he was not to worry but just to leave it to Dr Ganderbai. Then he turned and went back to the hail and I followed him.

  "First thing is to try and get some of the serum into him," he said, and he opened his bag and started to make preparations. "Intravenously. But I must do it neatly. Don't want to make him flinch."

  We went into the kitchen and he sterilized a needle. He had a hypodermic syringe in one hand and a small bottle in the other and he stuck the needle through the rubber top and began drawing a pale yellow liquid up into the syringe by pulling out the plunger. Then he handed the syringe to me.

  "Hold that till I ask for it."

  He picked up the bag and together we returned to the room. Harry's eyes were bright now and wide open. Ganderbai bent over Har