The Serpents

In the seventh ditch the thieves are bound and bitten by serpents, and the only punishment you see carried out is an exchange: a serpent bites a man, the bite becomes the man and the man becomes the serpent, and it starts again. The game lets it run by itself, on a clock, a full turn every twenty-two seconds: there is nothing to win here, there is something to watch and a way past while it happens.

Nine are in the ditch from the start, and more are set along the way. They move at two point six metres a second, rear for half a second before the bite, and can bite every two point six seconds; fire drives one off for six seconds, and an arrow pins one where it stands, which is the only way to stop one without fire.

At a certain point in the chapter they stop keeping to their ditch and climb onto the banks, and from then on they do not run out: seven of them hold the four stretches that are left, two by two, and on a bank three and a half metres wide three of them are enough to make you choose a side. The note the game shows on the exchange reads: a man and a serpent bound together, the bite smoking and the two smokes mixing, and when they come apart each has the other’s body, and they begin again.