It was a piece of rope. It was a piece of rope strewn on the planks of a rope bridge. The bridge connecting our path to the one on the other side of the expanse. The path that sloped downward and looped around to go under the bridge and back up and around to where we started. It was a circle (aesthetically pleasing, but all together pointless) that we could have skipped in the Open Air Museum in Hakone, Japan.

      We had arrived in the land of the rising sun three months ago. This journey was not a leisurely vacation, but a rite of passage. We came to test of our survival skills in a world where we hardly spoke the language. We were going to work and explore, and maybe find a part of ourselves that we had been missing. But behind the romantic ideology behind this trip there was something more important that we were testing. This was a test of our newly formed marriage. If we could survive a year in Japan, then logically we could probably, most likely survive anything else. This fact, of course, we tried to think about as little as possible.

      Now was the biggest test of all. We had passed the first test: We had gone through three months of teaching English without killing ourselves, or more importantly, students, and now we just had to survive our first road trip into the Japanese countryside. The museum we found ourselves at was like no other I had ever seen. It was a large expanse of open land dedicated to impressive sculptures, both large and small, eccentric and anatomically correct, which rested languidly throughout the grounds. The section we were in was exquisitely Japanese. The park was landscaped like the forest of bamboo and pine on the other side of the inconspicuous chain-link fence was slowly encroaching, reclaiming the space that was taken from it. Reconquering the space in wild abandon, but in a very organized, too asymmetrical way. Like I said, we could have skipped this part, but we didn’t. We decided to go across the rope bridge with its ropes strewn willy-nilly upon the planks.

      I let my wife go first because I’m a gentleman, and if I don’t keep an eye on her she tends to disappear without warning, and some day I know when I’m not paying attention she’ll see something that catches her eye (cough Brad Pitt cough) and be gone forever. She took a step onto the bridge, her foot landing right next to the piece of rope because its rope and there was nothing to be afraid of. Because ropes don’t move. Ropes don’t slither. Except this one did.

     My wife was in front of me and so I didn’t see the initial movement, all I saw, in slow motion like the most important part of a kung fu movie, was my wife tense like a pouncing cheetah, spring into the air and pirouette like a figure skater in a motion, the action so smooth, it glided into my perception like light from a sunrise. My wife would tell me later that when her foot went down the rope, the snake, jumped and squirmed in an action that mirrored my wife. She grabbed hold of my arms and squealed and shook in panic.

     By then I saw the snake with my own eyes, I saw it wriggle and writhe and I opened my mouth to say, “Dear lord, a snake coming straight for me, I’m going to get out of the way, while pulling my wife to safety,” though the only thing that came through was:

     “AHH!”

     And I’ll be damned if I didn’t hear the snake say the same thing. They say that the snake is more afraid of you than you are of it…but that’s bullshit.

     At that point on of two versions took place.

     The true version is as follows:

     I yelled, and grabbed my wife by the arms in a sturdy vice-like grip, and pulled her to the side and backward in an attempt to keep her out of harms way, while continuing to monitor the snake as it attempted to slither to safety. The direction I pulled her in was in a diagonal away from the danger in a harrowing act of heroism in the face of utter terror.

     Her version is this:

     I screamed like a little girl and grabbed her arms, locking my elbows and prevented her from getting away from the snake, which was coming toward her at great speed. Instead of pulling her to safety, I positioned her in between myself and our attacker, and began pushing her in that same direction, while trying to move backward and away from the snake.

     Neither of us are willing to come to a consensus.

     It might have been that the snake was absolutely terrified by the present situation, for it chose to bail over the side of the bridge rather than attempt to scoot past a pair of hysterical tourists. Once the snake bailed like a skydiver out of a plane, my wife and I were given some time to regain our composure. We looked at each other and laughed nervously. I rearranged my sleeves.

     “You tried to push me toward the snake,” my wife exclaimed through fits of laughter.

     “No I didn't,” I replied, “I was saving you.”

     Her lips suddenly disappeared, and she looked through her eyelashes at me.

     “Uh-huh,” was all she said.

     When the maximum amount of composure had been achieved, we both looked at the bridge. We still crossed it, because if this was part of the test, we were not going to fail. We kept our eyes to the planks the whole time, making sure no more errant ropes impeded our progress.

     We don't discuss the incident very much. When we tell the story it's in jest, but sometimes I catch my wife looking at me like she's wondering if the next time we're really in trouble, will I sacrifice myself to save her, or push her into the path of danger while I make my escape.

     I don't answer that question on principle.