The Man Who Spoke Snakish

by Andrus Kivirähk

  That is what Mother was now asking me to do.

  “He’s been prowling round there all day and Salme is quite beside herself,” she complained. “I told her the bear can’t help his nature; he simply adores all women terribly. Let him look at them. He won’t do anything with them!”

  In Salme’s quarrels with Mõmmi, Mother often took the bear’s side; at any rate she loved to emphasize that she “understands bears” and wanted Salme likewise to “learn to appreciate them.” At this Salme always got very angry and shouted, “Whose mother are you, mine or Mõmmi’s?”

  “Yours, of course, dear child!” replied Mother.

  “Why do you defend Mõmmi?”

  “Because I understand bears,” Mother began again, and so it continued for hours.

  I didn’t bother to scream at Mõmmi, but as the only man I was already used to restraining my mother, my sister, and her bear, and I also knew that Mother wouldn’t leave me in peace before I did it. I could already guess her objections that would immediately follow if I were to say I was tired and wanted to go to sleep: “But she’s your sister,” “she looked after you so well when you were little,” “we’re one family; we have to help each other,” “we mustn’t stand aside.” So I ate my fill quietly and said, “All right, I’ll go. But first of all I’ll eat.”

  For Mother, eating was sacred, and she was not about to hurry me up. I chewed deliberately slowly. I had told Mother a hundred times that Salme could call her bear home herself; it wasn’t difficult. Mõmmi never put up any resistance; at the first call he would get to his feet obediently and slouch to his den, sighing sadly to himself. But Mother had an answer to that: “You’re the head of the family,” followed by talk of the “only man.” I finished my roast, drank some springwater, and got up.

  “So, I’ll go then,” I said.

  “Do that, darling!” replied Mother. “Do your sister that favor. Don’t be angry with Mõmmi. Just tell him simply that what he’s doing is not right.”

  “I never get angry with him,” I said, and went out. It was already evening and the forest was getting dark, but I could find the way with my eyes closed. Mõmmi was in exactly the same place where I’d found him more than ten times before, sitting, looking toward the village and sighing longingly. He understood immediately why I’d come, and started getting up, but I didn’t say anything to him—just sat down next to him and joined him, staring at the village.

  They were making fire. A great bonfire was blazing at the edge of the village, and around it skipped young people—boys and girls. Pärtel must have been among them there; I hadn’t seen him since the time we got into a quarrel. I didn’t recognize him; all those village boys looked the same, broad shouldered with fat red faces. I didn’t like them at all; they seemed dull witted. But the girls were beautiful, much more beautiful than Hiie and more beautiful than my sister. So no wonder that Mõmmi went spying on them every day.

  “So many girls!” said Mõmmi dreamily. Then he looked at me and winked, man to man. “You like them too, don’t you?”

  “I do,” I admitted, somehow against my will.

  I had tried to keep as far away from the village as possible; I didn’t want to have anything to do with it. But the girls really were beautiful. I couldn’t deny it.

  We sat for a while looking at the villagers.

  The boys led the girls to dance. The girls didn’t refuse; they took the boys by the waist and whirled around the fire with them. I suddenly felt very bad, got up, and said to the bear: “That’s enough, come home! Salme will be worrying. What’s the meaning of coming here every evening?”

  “I can’t help it,” replied Mõmmi. “I’m driven here. Salme’s a nice woman, but sometimes I want someone fresh so badly.”

  “And what is Salme then? I think she’s still fresh.”

  “Salme’s like last year’s honey,” said the bear somewhat bitterly. “It’s good too, but …” He didn’t finish the sentence.

  “You’re shameless you are. How can you talk about my sister that way! You’re like honey yourself, sticking to everything. Now go home and try and stay there. It’s really annoying having to come and fetch you every evening.”

  “But you can look at beautiful girls yourself then, can’t you?” asked Mõmmi, suddenly mischievous, nudging me with his cold black nose in the groin. This was so unexpected that I blushed and couldn’t reply. Mõmmi sniffed the scent of the girls wafting toward him from the village for the last time and lumbered into the bushes. I didn’t get up to accompany him. Why should I get involved in other creatures’ family quarrels?

  Sixteen

  can’t say that I hadn’t thought about girls from time to time. There just weren’t any of them in the forest, apart from Hiie. Mother was dead certain that one day I would take Hiie as my wife. I wasn’t so sure. In fact if I hadn’t seen a single other girl I might have thought that all women are like Hiie and been resigned to my fate. But I had a sister, who might not have been a first-class beauty, but was still luscious and fluffy in every way. I remembered her girlfriends too, whom Pärtel and I used to go and peep at when they were whisking themselves stark naked in the trees. There were some real beauties among them. Now they had all moved away to the village, but the village wasn’t exactly seven seas away; in fact it was quite close to us, and there was nothing to stop me from roaming to the edge of the forest every once in a while.

  Yes, I was no better than Mõmmi; I too went spying on the village girls. I’d seen them gathering hay and cutting grain with a scythe and—why hide it—even bathing in the lake. I knew very well what a girl should look like, and Hiie was nothing compared to the village maidens. She was sweet and nice, and we met and chatted often, but on no occasion did I feel a wish to caress her. She was a different sort. There are certain species of flower that seem to demand to be picked, with every color of their blossom radiating at you in a meadow, and you notice them even among the tallest grass. As a child I was very fond of picking flowers and presenting them to Mother. In the early spring when the first yellow coltsfoot appeared, I would pick them and take them home. Yet the coltsfoot is not really a flower; it withers indoors almost right away, but with its golden florets it stands out from the dead spring grass, asking to be picked. That’s to say nothing of the later globeflowers, chamomiles, bellflowers, and poppies. As a child I just couldn’t walk peacefully past them; even when I was in a hurry somewhere, my foot would falter when I saw their many-colored blooms and I felt a terrible desire to go and pick flowers.

  But there are also a large number of plants that don’t excite you at all. There are all sorts of stalks and grasses that fill the forest. You never pick them. It would seem downright ridiculous to go home with a handful of ordinary grass. Why bring that hay indoors? Of course it’s nice that there are such plants, because the forest floor can’t be carpeted with flowers alone, but they don’t arrest your gaze. And unfortunately Hiie was that sort of plant. I had nothing against meeting her sometimes in the forest, but I didn’t want to take her home. I was interested in the flowers that grew in the village, especially when they swam naked in the lake like water lilies.

  So it was quite annoying for me to listen at home to Mother’s discussions about where she would put me and Hiie to sleep when we started living together. Mother wanted to enlarge our shack, to move herself to an outhouse and leave the whole old hovel to us. I always tried delicately to contest this, reminding Mother that we weren’t married yet, but she just shrugged her shoulders: “You ought to think about the future! You’ll be taking a wife one day, won’t you, and who else but Hiie? There aren’t any other girls here in the forest.”

  Fortunately Mother never pushed me into taking a wife, for in her opinion I was still a child—even if at the same time the only man—and my main task was to eat properly what Mother made for me, and to be a good boy. But even though it was still some time in the future, Mother was starting to yearn for Hiie to enjoy her roasts too.

  “It wou
ld be so nice if Hiie came to eat with us sometimes,” she said, smiling and blowing at the fire. Mother was for some reason of the firm opinion that Hiie and I were already a couple, and thought that I was just too shy to invite my young lady to visit. She tried to embolden me, explaining that even though we weren’t living together, I was still allowed to invite Hiie to lunch, because the sooner she got to know her future daughter-in-law, the better.

  “Don’t be afraid. I’ll begin to love her like my own daughter!” she assured me, looking at me as if she could already see me and Hiie in her mind’s eye sitting side by side at the table, tucking into a haunch of venison. When she talked like this I always lost my appetite, but I didn’t say anything. In the end I consoled myself with the fact that Hiie’s father wouldn’t allow his daughter to be the wife of a village-born bastard anyway.

  Tambet really would never have allowed it. His grudge against our family was as great as ever. I no longer fled into the bushes like a little boy when I caught sight of him—that would have been ridiculous, for I was now even taller than Tambet—but we never greeted each other.

  It was in fact a pretty extraordinary situation that prevailed in the forest then; there were very few people left, but we had nothing to do with each other. Tambet and Mall would whizz past our family as proud hawks fly over nettles, without even turning their heads.

  Ülgas the Sage was still alive too, and although very old and terribly shriveled, he did acknowledge us and even spoke to us, but only to make invocations and shout threats. Hanging around the empty sacred grove had obviously driven him crazy; he saw sprites everywhere, and could most often be found crouching at the foot of some tree bringing offerings to the spirit living in its trunk. He became a real nuisance to small animals, and his paths were steeped in a trail of blood. With the aid of Snakish words he forced squirrels, hares, and weasels to submit to him, and he would kill them by twisting their necks twice. Then he would crawl on his knees around some oak or linden tree and mark its roots with fresh blood. Finally he would lumber away, but would soon thereafter think he’d seen some new wood-sprite, which he absolutely had to placate, and the whole gruesome massacre would begin again. Foxes and polecats would follow behind him and gobble up the carcasses of the animals brought for sacrifice; that was kind of them, because otherwise the stink would have made it impossible to walk around in the forest.

  Ülgas was always shouting curses at our family, and screamed that if we didn’t come to the sacred grove immediately, the dogs of the grove would come and kill us. I had lived in the forest all my life, but I had never seen such animals as the dogs of the grove, so I didn’t take Ülgas’s threats seriously. But he did have an annoying and repulsive way about him, and to tell the truth, I was impatiently anticipating the old man’s death. He looked ready to keel over at any moment: he had become as thin as a skeleton, his shaggy beard hung down to his navel, and his tangled hair bristled in every direction. He hardly ate anything, and only stayed on his feet thanks to his lunacy. But that was a strong stick to lean on. He was not dying anytime soon.

  Apart from Tambet and Mall, who treated us with silent contempt, and Ülgas, who shouted his rage in our faces, the only one left alive was Meeme, who was sinking more and more under the sod. Moss grew on his clothes, dead insects, fallen leaves, and all sorts of mold were stuck on the beard that covered his whole face. From within that mess shone only the two eyes, whose lashes were tangled with cobwebs, and a mouth with fat red lips. To those lips Meeme raised his wineskin every little while. It was completely incomprehensible how he still managed to get himself anything to drink; from his appearance you would think that roots were growing out of his heels, which held him fixed to the ground. But evidently this human sod was still capable of getting up and killing, because apart from robbing the monks or the men of iron it wasn’t possible to get wine.

  Meeme had little to do with other people. Sometimes when he saw me with Hiie he yelled a few obscenities and we went elsewhere. Once I happened to see how Ülgas evidently mistook Meeme for some Forest-Mother or moss-sprite, and tried to bring him a sacrifice—then Meeme spat into Ülgas’s eye with deadly accuracy and Ülgas fled, just as if his nose had been bitten.

  Likewise the Primates Pirre and Rääk were still in the forest, though they no longer lived in their old cave, but had moved to a tree. That is, in their love of antiquity they had gone so far that even living in a cave seemed senselessly modern to them. In their opinion the villagers had already sunk over their heads into the bog; I was wading in it up to my chest—but sure ground was a tree branch under bare ground.

  They claimed that now they felt a lot healthier, and that peace and happiness were only to be found in the way of life they inherited from their ancestors. I thought that climbing in the trees was an unnecessary discomfort, and felt bad watching Pirre crawling slowly and uncertainly along some spruce tree, his face wincing as the needles prodded his naked willy. Pirre and Rääk were Primates after all, not primeval apes, whose example they were following, and for them life in the trees was unfamiliar and difficult. Besides, they were no longer young; their fur was gray and it was very troublesome for them to keep their balance on the branches. In the name of their principles, however, they were prepared to undergo any trial.

  I visited them quite often, for there was no one else to visit; besides, Pirre and Rääk were nice, despite their odd ideas. Their louse was still living too, perhaps by growing in size it had also increased its life span as well. It was certainly the oldest louse in the world. It had moved to the trees along with Pirre and Rääk, and squatted on a branch like a big white owl. Only when Hiie approached did it scrabble its way down the trunk and go and rub itself against her legs.

  By now Hiie was too big to ride on the louse’s back, but the insect never seemed to understand that, and slouched invitingly every time. Hiie would stroke and pat it and held the louse by one leg like a child, and the insect hopped on its remaining legs happily beside her.

  On that day, too, I was with Pirre and Rääk, who were telling me yet again about how right their forefathers were living their whole lives in the trees, and how great the view was from the top of a spruce. I had seen Pirre and Rääk swinging around up there, and was always afraid that they would come crashing down and kill themselves, seeing the tip of the spruce bending ominously under their weight. One time Rääk did start to fall, but luckily her tits stuck to the resinous trunk, and that saved her life. After this, of course, the Primates talked about how wise their ancestors were in setting up home in resinous trees, and how they couldn’t cease to wonder at the wisdom of the ancient apes.

  Pirre and Rääk hardly ever came down from their tree anymore—they spent their whole adulthood there—and if the Primates wanted to get anything off the ground, such as strawberries or lingonberries, the lice went to pick them.

  At that moment I was sitting under the tree listening to Pirre and Rääk talking, when suddenly I felt someone crawling over my toes. It was Ints. He was now a fully grown snake, a big strong snake-king, with a golden crown on his brow. He put his head on my shoulder and whispered that he wanted to tell me something.

  I said good-bye to the Primates and went with Ints to a big stump where he liked to sun himself. Ints had somehow got fat. I assumed he had just eaten something and was now digesting his prey. Ints coiled himself around the stump, looked at me bashfully, and said, “Look, Leemet, I’ve got news for you. I’m having children.”

  This really was news. I couldn’t have guessed that Ints had a wife. Of course I’d seen him crawling around with other snakes from time to time, but in the first place it’s terribly difficult to tell whether a snake is male or female, and in the second, I’d never noticed Ints fondling another snake. I was quite shocked and a little annoyed that Ints hadn’t ever introduced me to his wife, and I said, “So, congratulations! This is pretty unexpected. Why haven’t you ever shown me your wife?”

  “Wife?” repeated Ints, amazed. “What wife?”


  “Well, the one who’s making you a father,” I said.

  “No, I’m not going to be a father!” replied Ints. “I’m going to be a mother. I’m having children. Leemet, did you think I’m male? I’m an adderess.”

  I stared at her, as if she had said she wasn’t a snake but a lynx. Ints looked back at me, just as dismayed.

  “I thought you knew!” she said. “Leemet, we’ve been friends for so long. How is it possible that you thought I was male all this time? Leemet, look me in the eye. You can see immediately that I’m female!”

  I looked, but all I understood was that I was talking to an adder. I didn’t have the foggiest idea whether it was male or female.

  “I understood immediately that you’re a boy!” said Ints, offended.

  “With me, you can see that immediately. For example, I’m growing a beard. Women never have that. Ints, I really couldn’t have guessed! Anyway you said yourself I could call you Ints.”

  “So?”

  “Ints is a boy’s name.”

  “I didn’t know that. I thought it was just a beautiful word that fitted with my adder name. I’m really deeply shocked by your ignorance.”

  “I’m shocked too,” I replied. “I’m shocked by your sex.”

  We were silent for a while.

  “Well, anyway it doesn’t change anything,” said Ints eventually. “Now you know I’m female. And I’m having children. Soon I should be giving birth. I wanted to tell you, because you’re my friend, even if you’re too dumb to know the difference between male and female snakes.”