Schaapsteker Institute

The Schaapsteker Institute is a center for studying snake venom and devising antivenenes. In the novel it enters the family’s story through the alarming escape of its snakes, then through the arrival of its elderly specialist, Doctor Schaapsteker, as a tenant at Buckingham Villa. The Institute’s scientific work, the rumors surrounding its doctor, and the danger of venom converge in a period when private troubles and public omens seem to multiply together.

Research and Reputation

The Institute studies the medicinal functions of snake venom and works to devise antivenenes. Its work is especially associated with the banded krait, whose bite has no known antivenene. Doctor Schaapsteker devotes his life to finding one, injecting small doses of its poison into horses in an attempt to produce antibodies. The horses do not develop them; they die, and are turned into glue.

The Institute’s work does not keep its reputation within scientific bounds. Superstitious orderlies claim that Doctor Schaapsteker dreams each night of being bitten and is therefore immune to snakebites; others whisper that he is half-snake. Stories say he can kill horses simply by approaching them with a syringe. These are presented as rumors, not established facts, and Amina dismisses them when she agrees to rent him a room.

The Snake Escape and Its Omens

In February 1948, snakes escape from the Institute. The incident follows other reported portents: dead pomfret on the beaches, comets over Back Bay, and flowers said to bleed. A rumor spreads that a seven-foot Bengali snake-charmer is leading captive reptiles out of snake farms in protest against Bengal’s partition. The figure is variously imagined as Krishna or as a sky-blue Jesus, so the escape acquires competing religious and political meanings beyond the Institute’s scientific purpose.

The escaped cobras disappear into city sewers, while banded kraits are reported on buses. Religious leaders interpret the escape as punishment for the state’s official secularism. The episode thus turns a failure of containment into a public sign onto which people project anxieties about religion, national identity, and political change.

Doctor Schaapsteker at Buckingham Villa

At this time Ahmed Sinai is bedridden and demoralized by the freeze, and Mary Pereira asks how the household will manage. Homi Catrack introduces the family to the eighty-one-year-old Doctor Schaapsteker, who offers cash rent for a top-floor apartment overlooking the Arabian Sea. Amina accepts, despite the stories told about him: his rent helps the family endure a period in which Ahmed seems unable to fight back.

The decision brings the consequences of the Institute’s work into the household. The narrative marks the end of February with the arrival of snake poison in family life, linking the escaped snakes and Schaapsteker’s research to the wider sequence of dangers and reversals surrounding the family. The Institute itself remains offstage, but its scientific pursuit, its failed containment, and the legend surrounding its doctor leave a lasting imprint on the plot.