All this meant that Mr Meininger was both surprised and irritated when he looked up from reading a report on how fast his wealth was growing and saw the face of our friend the snake.
I think we can call him our friend, because we are surely Mary’s friends and her friends must therefore be our friends, as long as they are nice and kind.
‘Ugh,’ said Mr Meininger. (He was too fat to wave his arms about and too dignified to scream.) ‘A snake.’
‘I know,’ said the snake and flickered his tongue and slipped around the sleeve of Mr Meininger’s dressing gown like a gold braid decoration – except with teeth.
‘Ugh,’ said Mr Meininger. ‘A talking snake.’
The snake blinked. ‘I know that, too.’ He angled his head to one side, as if he were studying Mr Meininger very hard indeed. ‘Now, perhaps you could tell me something I don’t know.’
Mr Meininger was used to being surrounded by extremely respectful servants and sad, exhausted trees. When he met people beyond his cavern they were deferential and gave him gifts, because you will always be given gifts if you already have too much. And if he wasn’t bowed to and petted and coddled he would usually go very red in the face and bellow, or go very white in the face and growl that everyone should be fired at once. And everyone would be. This happened even if the people being fired were prime ministers, film stars or kings. Mr Meininger practised his growl sometimes when he was in the bathroom and would look at himself in the mirror to make sure he had perfected his chilling stare. An unauthorised animal in his cavern would usually have been the cause of bellows and stares and all kinds of redundancies. But Mr Meininger couldn’t say a word and it seemed to him that his skin was becoming clammy and too tight.
‘Well . . . ?’ asked the snake and waited politely.
And even though the snake’s voice was like buttered velvet and even though the snake was being very quiet and courteous, Mr Meininger found that he was very frightened of that sleek golden body and that delicate golden head.
‘I have come a long way to meet you,’ said the snake. His tongue tested the air and allowed him to taste Mr Meininger’s cramped, dark thoughts and his shallow, dim heart and his calculating brain. He could also taste fear that was thick as fog. ‘You might at least tell me your name.’
And Mr Meininger couldn’t help but say, ‘Karl Otto Meininger’. If you had been there to hear him you would have noticed he sounded as if he were answering a schoolteacher or filling in a form. Then he blurted out, ‘I am the third wealthiest man in the world.’ He mentioned this because it had always impressed people before, although he already felt that he knew the snake was not people and would not be impressed.
‘No,’ the snake murmured in his sweetest voice. ‘You are only the fourth wealthiest. Ten minutes ago the copper mines of Lembit Quartak made him the third wealthiest.’ The snake eased higher up Karl’s sleeve. (We can call Mr Meininger Karl, now that he has told us his name.) Lanmo’s body came to rest on Karl’s left shoulder and he whispered, ‘And it really doesn’t matter, anyway. It never did.’
Karl swallowed while the gentle breath of the snake pressed against his neck. ‘Please.’ Karl hadn’t said please for years and years – there had been no one he’d thought it was worth saying to.
‘Please what?’ asked the snake and the question made Karl’s skin shiver from head to foot. ‘What would you like, Karl Otto Meininger, who is the fourth wealthiest man in the world?’
‘Please don’t.’
‘Hmmm.’ The snake slipped around the back of Karl’s neck and came to rest on his other shoulder. He breathed into Karl’s right ear. ‘I think I can taste how many times other people have said that to you and how many times you have ignored them.’
‘I didn’t mean it.’
‘Of course you did,’ purred the snake. ‘You can be honest with me. You might as well. You ignored them every time, didn’t you?’
Karl made a kind of garckling noise that he recalled other people making when he forced them to work all night on their children’s birthdays, or fired them the day before Christmas, or decided to knock down their homes just to prove he could. Then he said, ‘I’ll give you everything I have.’ Other people had told him that, too.
The snake rubbed his head against Karl’s ear and Karl heard the rustle of immaculate scales. ‘I cannot take everything you have.’ The snake paused. ‘. . . I will only take everything you are.’
And then the snake opened his beautiful mouth and his tiny needle teeth shone white as bone.
In the morning Mary woke up early and discovered that she felt more rested and cosy than she ever had before. When she rolled on to her side there was Lanmo coiled on her pillow. He may or may not have been sleeping, but certainly his eyes were closed and he was making small th-th-th noises which might have been the way that a snake snores. Mary smiled at him and kissed the smooth, warm top of his head where it glimmered in the dull light of an autumn dawn which was shuffling in around the closed door. ‘Good morning, Lanmo.’
The snake – who was in fact perfectly awake – opened his ruby eyes and licked the end of Mary’s nose to make her laugh. ‘Good morning, Mary. Did you sleep better and deeper than you ever have?’ Then he sleeked along the blanket and wriggled and tied himself in knots and untangled himself out very straight and then curled his body into a nice curve and raised his head. ‘That is how a snake wakes up,’ he explained. ‘If you ever see another snake doing that do not interrupt her, or him. In fact . . . do not have anything to do with snakes who are not me. One never knows.’
‘What if I see a very lovely snake?’ asked Mary, teasing.
‘There are no snakes lovelier than me,’ said Lanmo firmly. ‘May I have some more cheese for breakfast? I am tired.’
‘Didn’t you sleep well?’
‘Not really.’
Mary did sneak a nubbin of cheese out of the larder for the snake and fed him while he rode on the top of her satchel, peering about over her shoulder as she walked along in the frosty air, all the way to school.
‘Snakes do not go to school. Everything important in the world is written on the inside of our eggs. When we have finished reading and memorising what is written, we break our eggs and hatch.’
‘Really?’ said Mary as she strolled across the playground, feeling much less lonely than usual.
‘Perhaps,’ said the snake, looking absolutely just like a snake and licking the interesting air very quickly, because it had so much to tell him. Several teachers looked straight at Lanmo, but because a small girl never does have a golden snake calmly reclining on her satchel they assumed that they were looking at a strange kind of handle, or that their glasses were dirty, or that they were mistaken. None of the children spotted the snake, because they were busy with each other and, as usual, had no time for Mary.
While Mary sat in a number of classrooms and learned about the colours of money and the lengths of different silences and the average weights of heights, the snake nipped and slipped from classroom to classroom and explored.
The snake found the school very odd. In one room the teacher was telling the class, ‘You will see on the board all of the answers for today’s National Test. You will spend this period copying down the answers on to your National Test Papers. If you have copied down the answers correctly you will then be clever enough to take next week’s National Test.’