The Man Who Spoke Snakish

by Andrus Kivirähk

  I suddenly felt very sad, and noticed a faint smell of death, a scent that came back to me at these moments. I could not get free of that smell, as if, after the burning of Uncle’s body, the stink had been released to the skies and mixed with the blue above, and now, at any moment, the wind could carry it back to me. That stench came like a rain cloud, and I never noticed its approach until the first drops assaulted my nose. It mostly came when I was sad, as I was now, because here they were admiring me for knowing Snakish words, which to me were as ordinary and natural for a human as being able to speak at all, or having legs to walk, and hands to do work. Suddenly I felt terribly alone, in the midst of alien people, with whom I had not the least thing in common. I had felt just as alone and abandoned that time in the cellar, where my only companion was the corpse of Uncle Vootele. I turned my head away to seek fresher air, but the stench would not leave me alone and the whole world seemed full of decay. Johannes the village elder invited me indoors. I went, but even there it stank.

  Magdaleena got busy laying the table, but Johannes sat down next to me and laid his hand on my shoulder.

  “Don’t think that you would have been able to learn Snakish words unless God had marked you out for that,” he said. “God doesn’t want an innocent child like my daughter to perish, and for that reason he opened your mind to the language of snakes, so that you could appear out of the woods and save Magdaleena’s life.”

  “I don’t know anything about God, and I don’t want to,” I said. “I was taught those words by my uncle. Every human knows them, if he hasn’t forgotten them all by moving to the village.”

  “Even if we have forgotten something, that is God’s will,” said Johannes, explaining further. “God doesn’t want us to talk to the snakes, for a snake is his enemy. And what have we to say to the enemies of God? Nowhere on earth do they talk to snakes. Believe me. I have wandered around and I know what I’m talking about. Why should we be the last miserable people to be on the side of the snakes? I think we should listen to those who are wiser than us. The foreigners, who know how to build fortresses and monasteries of stone, whose ships are big and fast, and whose bodies are covered by armor that no arrow can penetrate. Have the snakes taught them all that wisdom? No, they uncovered these secrets thanks to God! He has enlightened them and made them strong, and he will help us too, if we listen to him.”

  “If you don’t know Snakish words, then neither stone nor iron are of any use,” I said. “I’ve seen my friend an adder biting a monk in the throat. The monk perished on the spot.”

  “Lord have mercy!” yelled Johannes. “What a heinous crime! Cursed be that snake. Now you see that they are the servants of Satan, when they attack even holy fathers. Fortunately there’s no doubt that that monk is now in Paradise, in eternal bliss.”

  “Actually, I think that foxes and wandering wolves ate his body,” I said. “If you don’t understand Snakish, you’re more wretched than a frog. Why should we be like those fools who don’t understand a single hiss of it? They’re not humans; they’re vermin!”

  I immediately regretted what I’d said, because I recalled that Johannes himself was such a verminous creature, for whom Snakish words were a dark land. But Johannes didn’t get angry. He even laughed!

  “Boy, you really have lived too long in the forest,” he said, with an unpleasant arrogance. “How can you think that you are clever, and that these strong foreign people who rule the whole world in the name of God are a stupid bunch? In that case the Holy Father, the Pope, would also be stupid, because he doesn’t know Snakish either! Is that what you mean? Better not to say so, it would be a terrible sin. It was actually a sin even for me to ask you that. I will certainly have to confess that.”

  “Who is this Pope then?” I asked.

  “The Pope is God’s deputy on the earth,” said Johannes in a quiet voice, and his face became as sweet as if he were licking honey. “He lives in the holy city of Rome and keeps his hand over us all like a loving father. I have visited him and kissed his feet, back when I was still a little boy. The iron men took me with them, so that I, a little forest lad as I was then, could see the might of the world, how wise and strong the Christians are. I was taken to Rome and led in front of the Pope, and the glory and splendor I saw there took my breath away. Gold, silver, and precious stones were glittering everywhere; the churches were made of stone and with such high towers that not a single spruce tree here in the forest could reach them. Then I understood that the God that is served by the foreigners is the most powerful, and if we want to achieve anything in life, then it is wise to turn to him and to forget all the silly superstitious customs that make us ridiculous before the whole world. I came back home and was ashamed that we still live like children, while other nations have grown into adults. We should hurry after them; we should learn all the necessary knowledge that has been an everyday thing elsewhere in the world. Fortunately more and more knights and pious brothers were coming to our land. They helped us in every way and showed us how to be like civilized people. Believe me one day we will be no worse than them.”

  “That’s why we still shouldn’t forget the Snakish words,” I said.

  Johannes leaned in very close to me.

  “Dear boy, keep in mind what I tell you,” he whispered. “Actually there are no Snakish words.”

  This was such a surprising claim that I didn’t even burst out laughing; I simply looked the village elder in the eye to see what other odd things he would say or do.

  “Yes, they don’t exist!” he repeated. “How else could it be that the church knows nothing of them? Do you think that if God has made the Pope his deputy on the earth, he hasn’t made him all-powerful? The Pope is omnipotent. Every word he says is true, and with the help of God he can even make the rivers flow backward. If Snakish words did exist, the Pope would understand them too, and so would other holy men, but they don’t, for God hasn’t given snakes the power of speech. They shouldn’t be spoken to. They should be killed, or else be kept away by the power of prayer, and every holy man is able, with the help of the Word of God, to drive all the snakes back to Hell. So it is! The fact that you saved my child from a snake today is not your doing, but God’s! He looked down from Heaven and made the snake lick Magdaleena’s wound clean.”

  “What’s this you’re saying now?” I asked. “I do happen to know that I spoke with him, exactly as I’m speaking with you now.”

  “That isn’t possible!” declared Johannes, and his expression now turned severe. “Snakes don’t speak! It only seemed that way to you! You must leave the forest. The devil rules there, and he is leading you astray and making you hear and see things that don’t exist. Come to the village, be baptized, start going to church, and you’ll soon understand that Snakish words are a delusion!”

  “That will never happen!” I said, getting up. “I would have to be completely mad! I do know those words! Listen!”

  I gave a long hiss, spoke to Johannes in my best Snakish, but he only stared at me and said, “That’s just a hiss, which doesn’t mean anything! Forget this stupidity! That is what I meant when I said that our nation is still living like a child. It’s time to grow up! It’s time to live like the others! Snakish doesn’t exist!”

  “It does exist, and if everyone understood it as they used to, there would be no foreigners living among us!” I said. “The Frog of the North would have gobbled them all up, and not even their bones would be lying by the seaside!”

  “Childishness again!” said Johannes. “What Frog of the North? No one survives against the shining knights and their swords!”

  I was furious. Johannes was talking complete nonsense, but it wasn’t possible for me to convince him. I had no way to produce the Frog of the North to swallow those knights with their swords. The Frog was sleeping somewhere in his secret burrow and I didn’t have the key to find him; and anyway I couldn’t wake him up. And I had no way of proving even the power of Snakish words, because I couldn’t invite an adder in
to Johannes’s home. Even if I were to chat with some snake, Johannes would only hear what to him was incomprehensible hissing. We lived in different worlds, like two snails who cannot look into each other’s shells. I could claim to him that Snakish and the Frog of the North are in my shell, and he wouldn’t believe it anyway, because in his shell he saw God and the Pope of Rome.

  I wanted to go off home, for my mood was black and my nose smelt the stench of putrescence more and more, but then Magdaleena came up to me, touched me on the shoulder, and invited me to eat. I guessed what they would be eating. Just as I had stepped at Magdaleena’s invitation into her father’s cottage, now I went to their table too.

  Eighteen

  y suspicions didn’t let me down. On the table was a big loaf of bread, and around it bowls and dishes of different sizes, full of strange, sticky glistening substances. I felt sick at the very sight of them, but Magdaleena sat next to me, and I sensed the scent of her hair penetrating the carrion stench, conquering my nostrils completely and flowing into my throat, so that I thought I could taste Magdaleena in my mouth. At once I didn’t care anymore about the disgusting things on the table and was prepared to sacrifice my digestion for the sake of Magdaleena.

  Johannes settled himself at the end of the table, crossed his hands, lowered his eyes, and mumbled something. Magdaleena followed her father’s example. I guessed that this too was some useless spell, much the same as the incantations of Ülgas the Sage before he started to chop up animal sacrifices. Johannes and Magdaleena did not mumble for long; soon Johannes lifted his head, took the loaf of bread in one hand, a knife in the other, and cut a coarse slice.

  “This is for you, visitor from afar!” he said, handing me the slice. “Bread is the main food of the people of the cross. Bread is sacred. Bread is older than we are.”

  I accepted the piece of bread with barely disguised disgust, drew a breath, and bit a piece off the side. It tasted just as bad as I remembered; it turned in my mouth and stuck to my teeth.

  “Spread some butter on it too!” said Magdaleena, passing me a little dish, in which some strange putrid yellow grease stared back at me. Only under the threat of death might I have been prepared to eat it.

  “Go on, take it. It’s good!” said Magdaleena, herself spreading the yellow grease on a piece of bread with the edge of a knife, biting it, and making such a sweet face that she might have been eating a strawberry.

  I summoned up my courage, insinuated a fragment of the butter onto my own piece of bread, and tried to eat it. It wasn’t as horrible as I feared, but loathsome all the same.

  “Don’t you eat meat at all?” I asked.

  “We do on holy days,” replied Johannes, devouring his bread with great gusto. “Then we always have pig or lamb on the table.”

  “Why only on holy days? Why not every day?”

  “We’re not so rich. Our people are still poor,” explained Johannes. “Only the gentlemen knights in their fortress can afford meat every day. If we started squandering like that, we’d soon be eating our way to ruin.”

  “There are plenty of animals in the forest,” I asserted. “Deer, goats, hares … Why don’t you eat those?”

  Johannes snorted.

  “Who can get hold of them? The knights, of course, they go hunting; they have fast horses and sharp foreign-made spears. But for an old man like me it’s downright impossible to catch a goat. Now hares—you can put cords out for them, but they’re cunning too; they don’t go into the trap.”

  Again I felt depressed. Here sat a man who had abandoned Snakish and even violently denied its existence. And he was proud of his decision, believed he was going the right way, and wanted to lead me on it too. But in fact he was like a person who has bitten his own hands off and now lies on the ground, as helpless as a bundle of rags. My mother was no younger than Johannes, moreover she was a woman and quite fat, yet she would have no trouble slaughtering one big stag every day. Of course we wouldn’t be able to eat a whole stag every day, far from it, but in principle it was possible. This man here, who boasted that he had seen someone called the Pope, wasn’t even capable of killing a hare. He fooled around with ridiculous cords and complained that a stupid hare was more cunning than him! He was deadly certain that to kill a goat you need a horse and a spear, and this was accompanied by a hunt lasting hours! Why didn’t he believe in Snakish words, with whose help you can force a goat to submit within one minute? I felt once more that I had come from a completely different world.

  “Try some porridge too,” said Magdaleena, handing me a wooden spoon. In the middle of the table stood a large bowl of gunk that I’d never seen before, which both Johannes and Magdaleena were eating hungrily.

  “What’s this?” I asked, digging suspiciously in the contents of the bowl.

  “Flour porridge,” replied Johannes. “Good solid food. Get your fill of that and you’ve got the strength to work.”

  “Where does this food come from?” I asked with disgust. I couldn’t imagine my mother offering guests such slops. She would fling slime like this out; she would take it into the forest and bury it in the ground so it wouldn’t pollute nature. “Does the Pope of Rome eat this?”

  Johannes shook his head.

  “What does this have to do with the Pope of Rome?” he asked reproachfully. “He is God’s deputy on earth; we can’t compare ourselves with him. Of course his table of fare is richer: his servants bring him the choicest kinds of meat from game birds and animals; rare fruits are sent to him from distant lands to feed his guests. It would be silly for us to try to live the same way. A person has to know his place: we are a small and poor nation!”

  “I eat meat every day,” I declared.

  “Forgive me, but you, my boy, are only a forest lad,” said Johannes sternly. “A wolf devours meat too—but should we follow his example? We aspire toward the light and we serve God, and in return he gives us our daily bread and other things besides.”

  “I see no sense in this,” I said, flinging away my piece of bread. I couldn’t finish it, because the sight of the porridge had finally made me feel nauseous. “I’d rather be a wolf, then, and at least be able to eat properly, than to live in the village here and chew on droppings cooked from some sort of straw.”

  Johannes and Magdaleena remained silent and looked at me oddly.

  “Don’t talk like that,” said Johannes slowly and cautiously at length. “Boy, tell me honestly, haven’t you committed the most terrible sin that a person can take upon his soul? Haven’t you become a werewolf?”

  “What is a werewolf?” I wanted to know.

  “It is a person who takes on the shape of a wolf by means of bad magic,” replied Johannes. “Pious monks have told me that such a thing is possible; in their home country there are vile people who practice this art. Tell me, really, haven’t you done that yourself? It is a terrible crime!”

  “Such a thing isn’t possible,” I said with indifference. “A human is a human and a wolf is a wolf. A wolf is for milking and riding. No human would want to change into a wolf, because nobody wants to be milked or to have someone climb on its back. Those monks are fools.”

  “They are learned and wise men,” contested Johannes. “But I believe you when you say you’re not involved with such witchcraft. You have an honest face, and one day you’ll become a good Christian.”

  “Hardly,” I muttered, getting up from the table. Johannes nodded to Magdaleena.

  “Go now and show the boy the village. I hope he won’t be going back to the forest anymore.”

  “We could go to the monastery,” said Magdaleena. “The monks sing there. All the young villagers go to listen to them. It’s wonderfully beautiful!”

  “Yes, go there,” agreed Johannes. “The sacred church singing refreshes the soul. Go on, go on. I still have work to do. A human being is like an ant; it is his lot to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow.”

  This comparison was quite apt, considering that neither an ant nor Johanne
s could speak Snakish, and therefore, from the forest folks’ point of view, were among the most miserable kinds of creatures. I was not about to say this to the village elder, because I was pleased to be able to go somewhere now with Magdaleena, and I didn’t want to stoke up an argument. We walked side by side, and every time my shoulder or fingertip brushed against Magdaleena, something was startled within me. I wanted to wave my hand in such a way that it bounced against Magdaleena over and over again, but I was afraid the girl would take it as an intrusion and so I did the opposite, shrinking from contact like a stick, and tried to brush against her as little as possible. How stupidly bashful that seems to me now, years later! No wonder that shy people like me are dying out. We were still only shadows, lengthening for a while before the sun goes down, to finally vanish afterward. I too have vanished. Nobody knows that I am still alive.

  Magdaleena and I walked along, as I vacillated between a wish to touch her on the one hand and a fear of disturbing her on the other, but Magdaleena was thinking of different things entirely. Suddenly she stopped, pulled me behind a tree, and asked in an excited whisper: “Were you lying to Father when you said you don’t turn into a werewolf? Actually you do know how to do that, don’t you?”

  “I don’t,” I said. “That sort of thing isn’t possible. One creature can’t change into another. An adder sheds its skin, but that doesn’t change it into a grass snake or a slowworm. No human has ever changed into a wolf. It’s completely stupid to believe such a thing.”

  “I believe it!” said Magdaleena, and I was immediately terribly embarrassed that I hadn’t chosen my words better. “The monks talk about it too. Leemet, I understand that you don’t want to tell me about it. Father said it’s a terrible sin, and now you think I believe the same. But I don’t; I think it’s awfully exciting. I’d love to be able to change into a wolf!”