What many people had called a sinister whim, or a frantic desire to crush the Other, or an example of Albanian lunacy, or a misshapen fantasy, or a compound of shame and horror, was in the end carried out. Like the publication of the engagement, the wedding ceremony was one of the necessary conditions. The marriage rites were thus celebrated in the normal manner, except that the church kept a clearly disdainful distance, and that instead of the bride going to the groom’s house, the groom was brought to his bride.
The snake came in a wicker basket lashed to the back of a horse, with an escort of armed paranymphs led by their chief, as for a real wedding. Then the wedding verses were sung, shots were fired, and finally the paranymphs left as they came, on horseback. Night fell, and the newly wedded wife, known henceforth as “the snake’s wife,” was led to the nuptial chamber, where her spouse awaited her.
You can imagine what sort of a night the household spent. And the horrors were not those of the immediate family alone. No one in the whole village slept a wink. Everyone waited to hear a scream of misfortune or despair. The scream of the young wife bitten by her husband. Or else the wailing of the family as it discovered its daughter dead. Or a scream of God knows what in the face of such a monstrous error.
But the night passed without incident, and dawn when it came was just as calm. As they were sure that the new day would recompense their long wait, people allowed themselves to drop off for a bit in the small hours of the morning. To their considerable surprise they learned that curiosity, if it is allowed to go too far, tends to become painful.
The sun rose. Villagers flocked gingerly toward the house; then, abandoning their initial timidity, they knocked on the door. After all, they were from the same village, and had no reason to pretend they were unconcerned about what had gone on between those walls.
When the family showed them all in with a smile, the villagers were dumbfounded, and remained speechless when, before they had expected it, the young wife appeared, looking quite resplendent. Her face and hair were still made up for her wedding; as she moved about the house, she radiated contentment.
They could not take their eyes off her. Her face glowed gently, as if caught in the reflection of unseen mirrors, her lips formed just the beginning of a smile, and her eyes seemed bathed in dew. She was a resilient girl and had managed to hide her distress the whole summer long. Now it was not sadness but joy that she was failing to conceal.
She had obviously lost her wits. She had put up with that abomination as best she could, but in the end she had broken like a glass. Poor thing!
That was the first reaction that could be read in people’s eyes. But then, with furrowed brows, they worked out a different explanation: the family must have killed the snake during the night. That was why they appeared to be free of anguish.
With that understanding in their heads, and expressing tacit approval with their eyes, the villagers left the house, feeling just as relieved as they imagined the family to be. So that was how it had turned out. Of course it was the only solution. They had thought of it often themselves but had never dared say it aloud for fear of committing a sin.
Toward the end of the afternoon the snake’s masters reappeared in the village. They were out of breath, and had a menacing air about them.
“The husband!” they yelled from the doorstep. “We want to see the husband!”
The bride’s father had been expecting this visit. He asked the men in, and took them up to the newlyweds’ bedroom.
The serpent lay there peacefully, all coiled up, at the end of the conjugal bed. The men went closer, inspected the reptile with all due care, then offered their apologies to the master of the house for having doubted him without reason. These days the world had become so evil and twisted…. Horrible suspicions had been whispered….
“No matter, no matter,” their host replied. “There’s nothing surprising about that. Is not the world itself a doubting without end?”
As week followed week and month followed month, the villagers’ curiosity fell off, like the yellowing leaves that fell to the ground and rotted away. The weather turned cold, the rains came, and fires were once again lit in the hearths. As they always did at the onset of winter, people kept themselves wrapped up indoors.
In the house that the snake had entered as a bridegroom, life went on as if everything was normal. The young wife grew more beautiful by the day. Not her eyes alone, but her whole body expressed joy. Her breasts, which had been small, grew larger, and her hips swung with a new vitality. All that remained was for her to say to her lord and master: Thank you, Father sir, for having got me a husband. Though she never put it in words, her looks expressed the thought unmistakably.
When evening came, she would stand at her mirror for a good long while arranging her hair, putting on her makeup, and then going up to the nuptial chamber. In the morning she would rise looking weary, but just as splendid as the day before.
So that’s the way of this world, people used to say. One day you think everything is quite hopeless, and then all of a sudden you find a way to salvation.
So we should get used to snakes? others objected. Oh, no, no, no! She can carry on if she wants, but not us, never!
The womenfolk got even more excited when they realized that the young bride could even go to church or to a dance with her husband, like any other married woman.
But wait a minute, hold your horses, you women! the men would protest. Don’t take things so dramatically! Haven’t you ever seen a groom that turned out to be a hunchback? Or a bride who turns out to be blind when the veil is lifted? This one, at least, didn’t hide the fact he was a snake! He was honest enough to show himself in the form that God gave him!
The story of the marriage with the reptile, which had begun in mid-October, seemed to come to an abrupt end on the night of the following January 17. That evening, as if she had foreseen that it would be her last night in the company of her snake-spouse, the young bride spent even longer than usual primping and arranging her hair. Then she lit the fire in the fireplace and took a saucer of milk up to her husband in the bedroom before having her own dinner with her parents, as was her custom.
Early next morning she came out of the bedroom looking deathly pale, with tears streaming down her waxen cheeks. Her parents rushed to her, looking for the trace of a snakebite, or else strangulation marks, signs that they had pretended to banish from their minds but which in their anguish they had never ceased to fear seeing on her.
She shook her head, trying to explain what had happened, but without success. When her parents finally accepted that nothing untoward had happened to her, they at last asked her about her husband. She replied, “He has vanished.” And then: “He dissolved.” And lastly: “He melted away.”
They went into the bedroom, looked for the snake everywhere, looked for him or for his remains, or at least his skin. Nothing to be found. They examined all the openings through which he might have gone, the windows, the door, the shutters. The night, like all nights in January, was a cold one, and everything had been shut tight. The only route by which he could have escaped was the chimney, but as the embers of the evening fire were still glowing bright, he could not imaginably have gotten out that way.