I thought it would be bigger. I really did. Not that I am complaining. I have to swallow it, after all.
Apparently, swallowing the still-beating heart of a freshly-slain cobra is not a girl thing. "Makes you strong," they say. Our waitresses giggle at me, but only because they assume that Robert is going to eat it, and that Robert is my husband, and that I therefore have an interest in his virility. Women aren't even supposed to wear sleeveless blouses in Vietnam, let alone swallow sexual strength enhancers, but Robert is not interested in raw snake of any kind so I guess it's up to me.
The waitresses are confused. Vong explains that, yes, it's the female tourist who wants to eat it. They seem to wonder for a moment whether they should wink and giggle at Robert and make lewd suggestions about what he might have in store for him when the snake's heart has its effect on me, but that's just not the way it's done. Or maybe they don't really know what it will do to a woman.
Vong says something else to them, explaining, maybe, that Robert is just a friend from California who also happens to be traveling in Vietnam. He won't be testing my strength tonight. They seem relieved. We're charting unknown territory here, but at least there's no need to worry about whether Robert will be safe. We suspect that one of them has a special role to play when administering live snake heart to a man… not to judge people by their clothing but all the other women are wearing respectable floor length au dais, while this one is hovering around us in white sequined hot pants.
Vong had known exactly where to go when I said I wanted to see what the live cobra dinner was like. The restaurant is famous in Saigon, but looking at it from the street you would not know why. Apparently, most of the things on its menu are of questionable legality so they can't be formally advertised. But it's the best place in town to get field mouse.
"It must be pretty easy to find mouse here," Robert says, chatting in the car on our way to the restaurant.
"Oh, but not just any mouse," Huong emphasizes. "Not house mouse."
"Are field mice better than house mice?" he asks.
"Oh yes!" she shoots back. "House mouse is..." she can't find a word for how bad house mouse is so she makes a nasty face and a little shudder instead. "But field mouse is very good."
Hmm. Vong mentioned that he'd called ahead to make sure they would have a good snake for us. Robert and I wonder whether he also ordered us some interesting appetizers to try. As it turns out, though, we just stick to snake. No experimenting with the more exotic meats on the menu like bat, fox, monkey, alligator, porcupine and of course, field mouse.
We had imagined there would be more of a build-up to the whole thing, mostly involving several rounds of alcohol to help get me in the mood to eat raw reptile for the first time. But the restaurant takes the opposite approach, getting it over with before I have time to reconsider.
 |
| The Snake Pit |
I haven't even sat down and there is the same snake handler at our door. They use a private dining room when people eat cobra so they can close the door if things get out of hand. Vong had told us a story about another snake dinner he'd attended in this very same room. "This was back when the power went out a lot," he said, laughing, "and suddenly the lights all went out right when the handler had the snake on the floor!" Our eyes got big. "Everyone jumped onto their chairs and tables screaming!"
There had been a power outage at his place today too… that's what made him think about it. We'd left his entire neighborhood in darkness. But we are all the way on the other side of town now. Still… I checked out the chair and table layout just in case.
Robert had asked what they do about the venom. "Don't cobras spit venom?" I didn't know. "I think it can blind you," he added. I hadn't really asked any questions, just trusted the restaurant to know what it was doing, but as the moment gets closer I do wonder how often people get bit doing this, and how close the nearest snake bite clinic is, and what kind of qualifications the handler has.
But no time to think about all that now, my snake is already here, blocking the doorway, handler stepping firmly on its tail while he prods it with his pole to make it spread its hood. It waves its head around at us in a menacing way, hissing and flaring. Robert is stuck in the room with the rest of us though he didn't sign up to be part of the show. He wants to get some good pictures. Vong wants me to pose next to the handler, but I’m really not sure what kind of striking distance a cobra has. I take a wimpy step or two towards it to try to get around the door and then it is the handler's turn to hiss something at me, a crystal clear "no!" in any language. I step back again.
The handler plays with our snake for a few minutes, letting go with his foot from time to time for effect then pulling it back in with his pole until he thinks we've been hissed at enough to leave a good impression. Then he and the waitresses get serious.
He reels in the snake, squeezing it all along its body from the tail upward so the blood collects towards its head. I think that is supposed to calm the cobra down a bit. It calms us down for sure to see most of it neatly wrapped up under the handler's arm, nothing sticking out but the head and about six inches of neck, twice as thick as normal because of all the blood and almost completely immobilized. With an image like that I think there might be another reference to male strength on the way but this is definitely not the time.
He lays the poor snake's "neck" out on a round wooden chopping block, upside down. The woman in hot pants presses the tip of a paring knife down on it to keep it from moving its head, and then whack! goes a cleaver and it is done. The woman in hot pants takes the head away on a linen napkin like it is a contaminated substance. The body keeps moving and coiling while the initial burst of blood is poured into a funnel resting in a vodka bottle. Then the handler quickly cuts out the pulsing heart with his paring knife and drops it into a small glass with a thimbleful of lemon vodka in it. He dribbles a little blood on top, then goes back to draining as much as he can squeeze into our vodka while a waitress brings me the glass of heart. I am supposed to drink it down in one go before it stops beating.
The moment has arrived.
Why was it I wanted to do this? I can't remember anymore how it came up for the first time… I'd just decided at some point that if someone offered me a live cobra heart, even though I am a woman, then I would eat it. I try to remember why that had sounded appealing. Lucky for me we are only a group of four so we didn't need a very big snake. His heart fits neatly in the bottom of a port glass. Well, not so neatly, maybe; there are little bits of membrane and artery still attached that give it kind of a shaggy look.
It also isn't beating nearly as grotesquely as I had imagined it would. I had pictured it jumping all over the dish or squirting blood or something. I'd imagined feeling it expanding and contracting all the way down my throat as big as a pomegranate. This little thing is much more subtle than that.
Still, it is a raw snake heart. And it is moving.
After a good long moment of indecision, I figure there is no turning back. Everyone is standing there, cameras in hand, waiting, so down it goes in one big gulp, slithering down my throat with its little subtle pulses.
And you know, it isn't so bad. You don't chew it so you can't really taste it. It's just the idea that's disgusting. I actually think it is easier to hold down than a largish oyster. What really surprises me, though, is the blood.
The blood had been drained, mixed with lemon vodka, and well shaken. Now it is chilling over ice, which doesn't take long since snakes are cold-blooded to start with. It is red and frothy and looks a bit like tomato juice. I hate tomato juice and I think this stuff looks thoroughly disgusting, but it is part of the ritual so I have to try it. I am glad for that, because it turns out to be one of the best parts of the meal. The taste is actually good. Really good. It’s crisp and refreshing and really brings out the fruitiness of the lemon. I have a second glass of the cobra blood cocktail and would probably have more but Robert is getting too grossed out watching me drink it.
They cook the snake several different ways once it's dead. We spend the next hour munching on snake bone crispies, curried snake meat and skin, snake soup, and some kind of ground snake product that probably contains all the rest of the edible bits that didn't fit anywhere else.
Robert had just arrived in Saigon late last night. This is his first dinner in Vietnam and he’s still jet-lagged so it is really more like breakfast for him. It is unfortunate that the first cooked dish they send out to us is sauteed cobra liver and stomach. He'd had a conversation with someone earlier that day about how rude it is in Vietnam to refuse food, how important it is to at least make a show of taking a bite or two. But reptile tripe? That really is asking a bit much.
He takes a nibble on the liver. "Mmmm..." Then his Adam’s apple begins to twitch. Huong looks alarmed.
"Are you OK?" she asks. Robert just nods, as if he doesn't quite trust what might happen if he opens his mouth to answer. I watch him next to me as he makes a supreme effort to hold it together. Maybe I should get out of the way, I wonder. But after some mild gagging he manages to keep the liver down. Barely. Probably a good move to pass on the tripe.
- - - - -
I feel no physical effects from the snake heart that night, which is a good thing since I’m sharing a double room with Robert downtown at the Continental. If I were to wake up in the middle of the night feeling uncontrollably “strong” that could really make things awkward tomorrow. What do they mean by strong anyway, we wonder. Strong in desire? In rigidity? In stamina perhaps? In procreative potency? I get conflicting answers from different people and come to the conclusion that it all depends on the problem one is trying to solve. There must be something to it, though. Why else would Vietnamese wives giggle and blush when I ask whether their husbands have ever eaten snake heart and what effect it had on them?
And how, we wonder, does this strength manifest itself in a woman? No one knows. I may be the first woman who has ever eaten a live snake heart. The restaurant staff had never heard of one and they do this all the time. Just to be safe, Robert and I agree that he will resist my advances if I come tapping on his shoulder, or on anything else, in the middle of the night.
As it turns out, though, I sleep like a baby. Apparently, snake heart has no effect whatsoever on a woman. At least not on this woman. We would need to try it out on several others to come to any hard scientific conclusions.
What does have an effect, I find out a few weeks later, is snake wine. Snake wine is not actually made from wine. They call it wine, but it’s really more like eighty proof rice moonshine, just like the stuff I had at Ta Van Village and with the teachers in Ha Tien. With one small difference. Before the moonshine goes in, a small cobra is put inside the bottle. The cobra is not happy to be there so it coils up and spreads its hood. Whatever angry, hissing look it has on its face at the moment it begins to pickle is preserved for the lucky person who later drinks down the wine. Rice moonshine with pickled cobra would be a more accurate translation, but snake wine sounds better. Most appealing is simply to say it in Vietnamese, rượu rắn. That sounds very drinkable.
I have to try some of this stuff. Like many of the obscure consumable products one can find in Vietnam, snake wine is supposed to make you strong. “You” refers to men, of course… women aren’t supposed to drink snake wine either. I’m still not at all sure what strong means but maybe, like with live cobra heart, it all depends on the problem one is trying to solve. I need a love potion.
I don’t want just any snake wine. Not the dime a dozen bottles you can buy on the street near Lam Son Square. Those are just for tourists. I’ve heard that some of them even use recycled cobras. I want real snake wine, the kind a giggly Vietnamese woman would buy for her husband. I spot the perfect place along the bus line on Cach Mang Thang.
I started taking the bus around Saigon after I came back from Hanoi. I just walked out to Truong Chinh one day and, instead of hailing a taxi like I’d done my first week here, I decided to hop on a bus going in the same direction. I had a map. I could follow along where we were. If the bus starting heading somewhere I didn’t want to be I would just get off and grab a taxi. How lost could I get? The sign on the front of the number 13 bus said Cu Chi – Sai Gon. That sounded good. Sai Gon is what the locals confusingly call the city center around District 1. The entire city is also called Saigon, or Sai Gon, or Ho Chi Minh City if you want to be sure there’s no confusion, usually abbreviated in writing to HCMC.
The number 13 took me right to the bus terminal in the center of town. It turns out this is one of the best deals in Vietnam. For 2000 dong, about twelve cents, I can get on an air conditioned bus and go anywhere in the city I want. Not only that, but the bus is really big and really loud so everyone else on the road gets out of its way. That makes it much faster than taking a taxi and almost as fast as taking a motorbike. I have warmed up a little to the concept of traveling by motorbike.
One of the best things about taking the bus is the people I meet. They aren’t sure what to make of me. Sometimes they just treat me like a normal passenger, but other times they take me on as a project, my entire section of the bus – doorman, ticket collector, passengers and all – collaborating to make sure the foreigner doesn’t get lost. Do I know where I’m going? Do I know where to get off? I try to nod yes, but they’re not satisfied. My presence has brought out their paternal side. I hold up fingers to signal the street number nearest my destination – four, four, one. A debate ensues between passengers and doorman. Someone pulls out a piece of paper and writes the numbers down to make sure they got them right, “441.” Yes, I nod. I point to the left side of the street.
Now everyone in my section crowds to the left of the bus to watch the numbers go by. They cheer as the numbers get bigger, then they laugh at themselves for being so silly. We’re having a great time. It’s a pity I have to leave. When we get close, the doorman yells out to the driver. Often the bus doesn’t even stop completely when letting passengers off or taking them on, but the doorman doesn’t want his foreigner to get hurt trying to jump off a moving vehicle so he makes sure it has stopped completely before he steps aside from the doorway to let me out. We all wave good bye like good friends and they go on with their commute. Variations on this scene take place almost every day when I take the bus. They take good care of foreigners here.
One day while taking the number 13 down to Sai Gon, I notice a shadowy storefront along Cach Mang Thang. Bottles of snake wine in every shape and size. This is no tourist trap trying to pawn recycled cobras off on the unwary. This looks like the real deal. An ancient woman greets me at the entrance and, with a nod, tells her equally ancient husband to stay put. She’s got this one under control. We wander to the back of the small shop, passing right on by the pickled scorpions. Time slows down with every step back into the recesses of this dimly lit shop. The old lady seems to know exactly what I want. But still, a young woman appears out of nowhere to translate. “One of these,” I tell her, pointing to about a hundred bottles of snake wine.
I had no idea there would be so many variations. Some bottles have just one snake, some have two. Every snake has a unique expression on its face. That actually means something. The condition of the snake at the moment it drowns determines how it will affect the alcohol it steeps in. None of the bottles are labeled. All of them have various seeds, roots and stems soaking at the bottom. All have been aging for different amounts of time. I have no idea what any of it means or how long snake wine is supposed to age so I rely entirely upon the old woman to guide me.
At first she just watches me look at the bottles for a while. Then she comes closer and gets my attention. “It is for a man?” she says through her translator, her eyes just a few inches from mine.
A big suckery smile creeps all over my face. The translator disappears again without even waiting for me to answer in words. I feel silly, and maybe I’ve just been in Vietnam too long, but I actually believe that a shot of cobra moonshine might make someone fall in love with me. The old woman looks at me periodically as she examines the contents of several bottles. Finally she settles on one, cleans the dust off of it with a towel to have a better look, then hands it to me. She smiles and puts her arm around me in an affectionate way, and says something in Vietnamese which I take to mean, “This is the one that will work the magic you want.” There is no doubt in my mind that this woman understands my heart completely. Probably more completely than I do. I take the bottle, plus some to share with my friends. I have never been the slightest bit superstitious, but I get back on the number 13 bus absolutely elated by this crazy new mystical belief in the power of snake wine.
Later, my mood swings like a pendulum. Magic love potions? What an idiot! When did I turn into such a sap?
- - - - -
There is something to it, though. Everyone who has even half a shot of the old lady’s snake wine gets wild, sweaty, narcotic dreams all night long. “Go ahead and take a hit on the snake,” I tell them, “but be careful. We don’t really know what’s in this stuff. Probably best not to fly tomorrow… just in case.”
No one takes my warning seriously until they start to feel funny. By then it’s too late. “What the hell did you give me?” they ask the next day. “That was really weird.”
“I don’t know.” I tell them. “It must have something to do with the venom.”
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