Traveler's Tales - Tuscany
True Stories
Edited by James O'Reilly and Tara Austen Weaver
October 2001
ISBN 1-885211-68-6
256 pages



Here is a story by Sophia Fairchild taken from the book

Travelers' Tales - Tuscany

Today is the day of Bride;
The serpent shall come from the hole,
I will not molest the serpent
Nor will the serpent molest me.

Hymn of the Scottish Highlands
(Bride is the Celtic Triple Goddess Brighid)



Fear knocked at the door,
trust opened it,
and nobody was there.

The Fairy Oracle

The Snake at Her Back Door

There is a snake living at my back door. The ancient stone slab at the doorstep just outside the kitchen, where I sit reading in the sun, is the path she slithers across to get to or from her rocky home, down behind the old green shutter. She’s a beautiful snake, about five feet long, with lime green scales and black crosshatched diamonds on her back. Her belly is the color of lemons and her eyes are shiny black.

Two days ago, she peers up at my left arm as I sit on the step, blocking her passage home in the late afternoon sun. I jump up and frighten her into using a wide detour. She slithers around the broad granite slabs of the patio, through the rapidly growing grass sprouting up through the gravel beyond, over the low stone wall to the right, heavily shaded by trees and vines, and down the twenty foot drop to the chicken house below.

There is no way to tell whether this is a local serpent or one that is just passing through, and whether it’s harmless or poisonous. I wonder in that moment if I should warn the Italian Nonna below (whose brother manages the Padre’s olive groves) that I’ve just seen a snake heading towards her chickens! I quickly find the Italian phrasebook and look up the words for snake and poisonous, il serpente and il veleno. But in the back of my mind I hear the fearful Italian word vipera (adder) coming up for emergency use.

I hunt around for the silver-haired Nonna, whose head I’ve just seen recently, bobbing about at the clothesline below, scolding the chickens in her herb garden. She doesn’t respond when I knock at her door, calling out “Scusi, Signora!” There’s no sign of her, but I think she’s hiding from me, the straniera (foreigner) who lives in the villa above hers. I suspect she’s watching me silently from one of the upper windows, where the heavy wooden shutters are drawn to keep the afternoon sun from fading her holy pictures.

I speak to her old black cat with gummy eyes, who looks too lazy or sick to be worried about snakes. This half-blind cat, I realize now, must be the reason I keep hearing the mysterious sounds of smashing glass or pottery rising up from her patio below. I had thought the Signora might have a slight drinking problem.

I notice her small shrine to the Madonna, near the windowsill the cat is now stretched across. This shrine faces away from the villa, watching out over the fertile valley below. Half-burnt candles sit on a shelf in front of the white ceramic faces of the Holy Mother and Child. I sense whispered prayers in the air and feel I’m invading her sanctuary.

I continue searching for the old woman, feeling every bit the stranger I am, here amongst her meticulous private property, until I hear a vehicle pull up on the gravel driveway below. I reach the edge of the slope in time to see the Big Papa Signore jump out of the driver’s seat. He’s the Padrone who owns this whole hillside of grapes and olives.

Two middle-aged women emerge from the other side of the large white van. They’re dressed as though they’ve just been to church, and look as if they could be sisters. I remember now that it is a holy day for the Pentecost. I call out “Scuse Signore! There is a serpente over there!” (pointing up towards my place) “Is it a vipera?”

The big man looks up at me, with those wild blue eyes and snowy hair, as if I’m mad. I know I’m making a fool of myself in front of the well-dressed startled sisters, but I feel I owe it to my neighbor, the old Signora, (even if she won’t open her door to me) to find out if the presence of this snake poses any real danger to the general community.

The Big Papa Signore finally understands what I’m talking about and asks me in Italian, “Where is the snake?” I mime for him (and to the sisters’ great amusement) “At my back door!” by waving my hands in front of me, to mimic the opening and closing of French doors, and by pointing down towards the ground in front of me. He understands this little performance and nods. The question has to be asked, in spite of my hopeless Italian grammar, “Is it il veleno (a poison)?” “No ‘il veleno’!” he says with a wave of his hand and a big smile. As he turns to go, he cocks his head with a sly afterthought. He suggests, in Italian, that I close my back door.

The sisters stand in a sympathetic huddle after witnessing all of this. They’re now holding hands, shuddering at the thought that perhaps a snake might come through their own kitchen doors! One of them mutters a soft Ave Maria under her breath while the other lifts a finger to her lips. The Padrone is greatly amused however, and looks very pleased with himself, having just come to the aid of a helpless foreigner. Now, when he passes me on the road when I drive into the village, I see his great flash of white teeth and those crazy blue eyes, as he waves and chuckles with the memory. That’s the straniera with the snake at her back door!

This morning as I sit on the stone step in the misty early morning sun, the snake pokes her head through the gap above the hinge of the great green shutters astride the kitchen door. The snake’s head is no more than six inches from my right arm, and the rest of her is coiled amongst the rocks. I register in a millisecond that this is NOT one of the many green or yellow lizards that feast on ants around the stone patio. It’s that snake again!

I marvel at how quickly I leap forward, away from the snake, making no sound except for the hiss of the newspaper I’ve been sitting on (to insulate my bottom against the cold of the granite step, not yet warmed by the day’s sun.) I don’t even spill my tea.

I’m standing in my pajamas thinking to myself “There’s a snake living at my back door!” It takes a few moments to absorb this new reality. I start thinking about how, day and night this past week, I’ve sat on that stone step, my bottom on that well-slithered path, reading in the sun, or watching the fireflies dance across the garden under the spring moon, just inches away from the snake’s rocky den.

I’m the straniera with the snake at my back door; that’s all.
Now, when I open that door, I hiss, to give her fair warning.



GO WITH SPIRIT!