He lay dozing at her side, in a state of exhaustion, while she stroked his blond hair. Then she too yielded to fitful sleep, but each time she came to, she glanced sideways at the snakeskin lying on the floor. What is this happiness that I feel? she wondered, fearfully.
As dawn approached, he woke up in a start. He sniffed the air and smelled sunrise coming. He declared that the time had come.
“Do not be sad. Tomorrow, at the same hour, you will have me here once again.”
He threw his snakeskin over his shoulder, and in a trice he turned back into a serpent and curled himself up into a coil at the end of the bed.
She began to cry softly. But she felt so weary that she dropped off at last into a deep, deep sleep.
When she woke up, the snake was where she had last seen it. She was sure she had been dreaming. It was only when she felt the sperm in her groin and saw the bloodstains on the bed linen that she accepted that what had been, had been.
Never in her life had she looked forward to anything with as much impatience and anxiety as she felt while waiting for the next day to turn into evening and the evening to night. Now and again, as her eyes met those of the snake, her heart sank. Then she recalled the last words she had said to him together with his reply:
“You really will come, you won’t let me down?”
“I shall come, I promise. Wait for me”
The word of a snake! she thought, then repented having had such a thought.
He did indeed reappear in his human shape, around midnight. And so, day after day, night after night, all through the autumn, the onset of winter, and through to the darkest days of the bad season, she lived such an undreamed-of, double life. A life in which time itself was cleft in two — the rarest of all wonders. She was henceforth obliged to live in two different kinds of time — human time and reptilian time. Because of this, every point of view was distorted, like the view in a broken mirror. People pitied her, thought she was at her wits’ end, whereas she had never been so happy in her life. She had heard it said that it was very hard to mask one’s own suffering, but she found that hiding her happiness was no less burdensome. She tried as hard as she could, but she did not succeed.
People assumed she had gone mad. Anyway, it seemed almost reasonable for a woman to lose her wits after a shock like that. That did not bother her. What pained her most of all was that she could not walk out on her husband’s arm, as all young brides did, during his human time. It was forbidden: the pact prevented him from doing it. He was only allowed out with her during his snake time.
That was how the pact had been drawn up. Snake time ruled for three-quarters of his existence. Human time was restricted to the remainder, and moreover was not allowed to be shown. But that was only natural, as it was a matter of redeeming a human offense in this strange way.
She knew all that, of course, but her knowledge did not stop her dreaming of the opposite: going out with him, arm in arm, to the village square, walking with him to church for Sunday service. And her desire for these things was sometimes so overpowering that she found herself on the point of going out with the snake, forgetting entirely that people were likely to take fright when they saw them and flee.
One day she asked him if he would like to go out with her in his snake shape, for a walk along some deserted path, but he shrugged his shoulders. As a human he knew nothing of the part of the day when he was a snake. In addition he had no right to know anything about it, just as his other self could not intervene in his life as a man. He and I, he told her, are separate in every sense.
These thoughts troubled her constantly, but on that fateful night of January 17, her irritation at having to keep a secret, her weariness at leading a double life, and her desire to have her young husband for herself and for all of the time condensed in her mind like steam turning into water.
It is past midnight. As usual, the couple have made love, and he is dozing with his head on her shoulder. In the light of the glowing embers in the fireplace, she is looking at his hair and at the fine contour of his cheek. Then her eyes wander toward the thin skin left lying on the floor, its scales seeming to shine with a special light. It seems to her that the snakeskin is laughing at her, with malice.
She keeps staring at the outer coil. That is the real obstacle, she thinks. That is where separation, cleavage, and the forbidden frontier all lie. It is as thin as the coat of blacking that turns glass into a mirror, it is just as fragile and just as cruel.
And what if it was all a misunderstanding? What if the young man had been caught in a pact without reason?
She must free him from his trap, from the snare that consumes him a little more every day. If she can only manage to smash the bewitching mirror, then the young man won’t be able to get away, whether he wants to or not. He’ll stay on this side, and be hers entirely.
You brought me all this woe, and now you have the cheek to laugh at me? she says to the snakeskin. You’ve got another think coming!
So as not to wake her sleeping lover, she gets out of bed slowly and carefully, and for the first time in her life feels the touch of the snakeskin. It seems to her unbelievably light, lighter even than silk; there’s good reason, she thinks, to put snakeskin alongside gauze.
Suddenly her eyes narrow in anger. You have no right! she screams inwardly. “You” means the whole world — her parents, the pact, those who drew up the pact, all the other mysterious forces, and fate itself.
With a swift movement of her arm, she throws the snakeskin into the hearth. She has never seen anything devoured so hungrily by fire. The merest instant suffices. The tiniest fragment of time.
She sneaks back to bed as quietly and discreetly as possible. He is still asleep. She feels relieved and burdened at the same time, as if she had just lifted a rock.
And so she waits for daybreak. Dawn comes. The young man stretches his limbs and sniffs the morning air. She is about to say, Sleep on a little, now that you belong to the other time. But she cannot.
He says what he usually does: “Farewell, until tomorrow. Do not be downcast, dear soul.”
He gets out of bed and starts looking this way and that.
“Where is my suit?”
The bride does not answer.
“Have you hidden it? Please don’t play games!”
He searches for it everywhere, anxiously looking into every nook and cranny, under the blankets, everywhere.
“I am in a hurry. Give me back my snake suit.”
“I cannot,” she replies.
He keeps on searching like a man possessed. “Mercy!” he mumbles now and again.
She pretends to be angry. “Don’t you want to stay with me? Are you in such a hurry to go?” But in fact, it is not anger but fear that she feels.
“Stay!” she cries out, but her voice sticks in her throat. “Calm down! Stay on this side….”
“I cannot. I no longer have a shape…. I have no right….”
His voice gets weaker. He strains for breath between each word.
“I beg you, give me back my suit.”
“I cannot, I have burned it.”
“What did you do?” he yells, but his yell now sounds as though it comes from far away. “You have killed me, by your own hand!”
“I did it for you. And for both of us.”
“You have destroyed me….”
It is his last gasp. Like breath that has misted on a mirror, the young man fades away before his bride’s eyes, and then vanishes entirely, and forever.