The Man Who Spoke Snakish

by Andrus Kivirähk

  To this I could do nothing other than shrug my shoulders.

  “Tell me, how is it done?” insisted Magdaleena.

  “I really don’t know!” I replied. I would have liked to help Magdaleena; she was so beautiful that I would have done anything for her, but I couldn’t change her into a wolf, because that was impossible. But then I had a good idea.

  “You want me to teach you Snakish words?” I offered.

  “Can you change into a wolf with their help?” Magdaleena asked.

  “No, you can’t. But with their help you can talk to all the animals. Of course I mean those that can speak themselves. Many of them can’t. But even they understand Snakish words and obey them. For example, without much trouble you can get food for yourself; you simply call a deer to you and kill it. You want me to teach you? It’s simple!”

  “How does it go then?” asked Magdaleena. She didn’t seem to be particularly enthusiastic; Snakish words weren’t a good enough compensation against changing into a wolf.

  I hissed to her one of the simplest sibilations and Magdaleena tried to repeat it after me, but her mouth managed only a sort of fizzling that didn’t sound anything like Snakish.

  “Not bad,” I said. “It’s hard to start with; even I used to twist my tongue until it hurt. Try again. Listen carefully to how I do it, and try to repeat after me.”

  I hissed again, very slowly and carefully, to make it easier for Magdaleena to catch the vibrations of the sound. She tried cautiously, tensely, so her face went red and mucus sprayed between her teeth. But it wasn’t Snakish.

  “No, that’s not it,” I sighed.

  “I did exactly the same thing as you,” said Magdaleena.

  “Actually you didn’t,” I said, trying to offend her as little as possible. I wanted so much for Magdaleena to be my pupil. We could start having lessons in the most beautiful places in the forest that I could find, sitting together under a tree and hissing in competition with each other. And perhaps other things might happen under that tree too. I didn’t want to give up this wonderful future for any price, so I took up a new hiss and asked Magdaleena to try it.

  “It’s just the same as the previous one,” said Magdaleena, when she had listened through my hiss.

  “How do you mean? Didn’t you hear the difference? Those hisses are not alike at all. Listen again!”

  I hissed the first word to her, and then the second.

  “To me it’s all the same fizzle,” said Magdaleena, now a little peevishly. “And I said it the same way too.” She hissed again, but this hiss didn’t mean anything; if an adder had heard it, he would have said that the hisser had a dead rat in his mouth and he should swallow it first if he wanted to say anything.

  I didn’t say that to Magdaleena, of course, and there was no rat in her mouth. The fault was in her tongue. Her pretty little pink tongue, which she was poking out of her mouth at my request so I could find out what was wrong with it, was surprisingly clumsy. Magdaleena’s tongue didn’t move; it was meant only for chewing bread and swallowing pap. I recalled the sad look that Pirre and Rääk always gave to my bottom when I went swimming in their presence; there was no trace of a tail. It had vanished, just as the muscles that made uttering Snakish words possible had vanished from Magdaleena’s tongue. Her tongue sat too deep; it was overgrown and weak. People were devolving before our very eyes: I no longer had my grandfather’s fangs; Magdaleena didn’t even have a proper tongue. Likewise her hearing was blunted; she really couldn’t tell one hiss from another. For her, Snakish was simply one endless sibilation, with no meaning, rather like the lapping of the waves of the sea.

  I was forced to give in. It wasn’t possible for Magdaleena to learn Snakish; she was destined to live forever in the village, among the rakes and spinning wheels. True, that was how she wanted to live anyway. She had lost a priceless treasure, but she didn’t care about it.

  “I can’t teach you Snakish,” I said awkwardly. “You’d never be able to pronounce it freely. Your tongue isn’t flexible.”

  Magdaleena didn’t seem particularly concerned.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I don’t want to talk to snakes anyway. I’m afraid of them. Listen, let’s talk about something else. Have you seen sprites?”

  “What sprites?” I asked reluctantly, because this subject immediately brought the Sage of the Grove to mind.

  “Sprites live in the forest!” whispered Magdaleena. “Father believes that too, and he’s a very clever man after all, who has been in a foreign land and seen all the wonders of the world. He speaks the foreigners’ language and has talked with them. They also say that the forest is full of spirits, fairies, and little leprechauns who live under the ground. They’re all in the service of Satan, and that’s why it’s not good for a human to go into the forest. At least not deep into it, because then the spirits and the sprites lead them off the path and take them to their castle. You must have seen them!”

  Wasn’t this dreadful? These people denied Snakish; everything worthwhile to be found in the forest was unknown and alien to them—but the sprites, those fairy-tale characters made up by Ülgas the Sage, had spread to the village and settled there! I was desperate. What was I supposed to say? If I assured her that the sprites didn’t exist, Magdaleena wouldn’t believe me anyway, and would think that I was hiding them from her, like the trick that allowed humans to change into wolves. But it was repulsive to me to spout the same drivel that droned on and on from the mouths of Ülgas and Tambet. I shrugged.

  “I haven’t met many of them.”

  “But you have met one or two? What are they like?”

  “Ohh … Magdaleena, weren’t we supposed to be going to listen to some singing?”

  “You don’t want to tell me about them!” whispered Magdaleena. “I understand. The sprites won’t let you reveal their secrets. But at least I know now that you’ve seen them. I can tell other people that—that I know a boy from the forest who’s seen fairies and spirits! Oh, they’ll be amazed!”

  She grabbed my hand and pulled me quickly along the road, and I felt her warm palm and feared more than anything that my hands might get sweaty from the excitement. We passed several houses and finally arrived at the same place where Ints had killed a monk many years before. Near the place was a monastery. Magdaleena drew me over by a wall and signaled to me to sit down.

  “Aren’t we going to go in?” I asked.

  “Of course not! This is a monastery; no woman is allowed in there. Not you either, since you’re not a knight or a monk, but an ordinary peasant boy. The foreigners don’t allow peasants into their castles.”

  “But your father has been in there,” I said. “I think—to see the Pope and …”

  “Father’s an exception. That’s why everyone respects him; he’s the most honored man in our village. He knows how to talk to the foreigners in their own language and he’s taught me that too. You know what I long for most of all? For a knight to invite me into his castle! I’d like so much to see how they live. They’re so handsome and splendid and dignified! Those suits of mail they have! Their feathered helmets! Sometimes they invite peasant girls into their castles, quite rarely, and not all of them. But I hope I’ll be taken in there. I must be taken! I won’t stand it if I’m not!”

  From behind the walls of the monastery, protracted singing began to be heard. Magdaleena snuggled against a wall and closed her eyes.

  “Isn’t it divine?” she whispered. “How well they sing! I’m crazy about this music!”

  I couldn’t form any opinion about the monks’ singing. It sounded like someone moaning and groaning with a stomachache, and moreover I soon discovered that the monks’ singing makes you sleepy. I was overcome with enervation; the singing curled around my ears and wafted into my head like a cap made of moss. With the scent of Magdaleena beside me, I would have liked to rest my head on her shoulder and fall happily asleep. But I didn’t dare to do that and forced my eyes open. The singing dragged on and
echoed like someone groaning deep in a cave. I yawned, and a fly flew into my mouth. I spat it out again and the sleepiness subsided a bit. I gazed at Magdaleena.

  The girl was humming along with the monks, resting her head on her knees, with her long skirt tucked under her legs. She looked so sweet and pretty that for me the monks’ singing faded somewhere into the background. I concentrated on Magdaleena and started subtly inching myself toward her. My neck became hot and my heart beat with excitement, but I reached my goal and was finally sitting right beside Magdaleena. I slipped my hand onto the girl’s bare leg and lightly touched her ankle. At this the blood rushed to my head with such force that it all went misty before my eyes. I stroked Magdaleena’s leg again. But then voices could be heard, and around the corner of the monastery came some village boys. Among them was my old friend Pärtel, who I had not seen for years.

  Nineteen

  here were three boys: apart from Pärtel two little men who were shorter than him (and me), but with the same astonishingly broad shoulders, so that they looked almost square. Later I got to know that their powerful shoulder muscles came from the dull tilling of the fields and walking behind an ox supporting a plow. Their stunted growth was the consequence of poor diet; of course you don’t grow close to the heavens by munching plenty of bread and porridge. Tallness is not desirable for the villagers anyway: to cut grain with a scythe you have to be stooping all the time anyway, and if your backbone is too long, it gets hurt terribly. Life is altogether easier for those who have remained stunted and unnaturally stocky. Those are the bastards who are suitable for village life.

  Pärtel towered over these toadstool-shaped men, while being no worse than his companions in the breadth of his shoulders. He had become a real strong man, and there was not much left of the boy I used to know, the boy who had accompanied me to spy on the whisking women, the boy who had been my best friend. And yet I recognized him immediately. And he recognized me. He stared straight at me and said, “It’s really you. Have you finally come to live in the village? I thought you wouldn’t come.”

  “I haven’t come anywhere,” I retorted. “Magdaleena simply invited me here to listen to some music. Hello, Pärtel.”

  Pärtel screwed up his face.

  “I’ve completely forgotten that name, but you still remember it. I told you that last time we met. My name is now …”

  “Peetrus, yes, I remember.”

  “That’s it!” said Pärtel-Peetrus. “And these are my friends, Jaakop and Andreas. This is Leemet. He’s from the forest.”

  Jaakop and Andreas gazed at me and stretched out their hands. This was another village habit that I didn’t understand. Why did they have to keep on touching each other? I understand it if you want to touch a girl you love; that’s a different matter. Sister Salme has told me how nice it is to rumple a bear’s soft fur; I’ve never done it, but I do really think that a bear’s thick fur feels warm to the touch and tickles your palm. An adder’s skin is silky too, and it’s pleasant to stroke it. But the village boys’ hands are rough, filthy, and clammy, full of breadcrumbs under the fingernails. After a touch like that you want to soak your hand for a few hours in cold stream water. Yet I didn’t show my feelings, but pressed both the young men’s hands out of respect for their local custom; they were unpleasantly big and coarse, like the Primates’ feet.

  “We thought there weren’t any people left in the forest,” said Andreas. “What was wrong with you that you didn’t come earlier? Were you sick, or what?”

  I wanted to say that I had been sick only once in my life—after eating the disgusting rye bread—but it isn’t my habit to be cheeky and start quarrels with people. I simply shrugged my shoulders and mumbled something.

  “Never mind,” said Jaakop paternally. “Better late than never. You’ve already looked around this place, for some land to clear and start your own field?”

  “No, I haven’t,” I said, my honest answer for once not being insulting.

  Jaakop started immediately to give recommendations, but fortunately Magdaleena interrupted this useless chitchat.

  “Boys, be quiet,” she begged. “The monks are singing now! Let’s listen!”

  Pärtel and his mates sat down and were silent.

  After a little while, Pärtel said, “It’s wonderful. I don’t suppose you’ve heard them before, Leemet?”

  “The monks don’t go singing to the forest, do they?” scoffed Andreas. “We were lucky that they decided to build their monastery near our village. You’d have to go overseas otherwise, to listen to a proper hymn.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Hymn,” repeated Andreas. “The name of this music is ‘hymn.’ It’s highly respected all over the world these days. You like it too, eh?”

  “Yes,” I replied cautiously, since agreement seemed safest, while saying no would quite clearly have ended in an argument. “But I don’t understand a single word.”

  “Well, it’s Latin you see,” said Pärtel. “Hymns are sung in Latin; they do that everywhere. It’s the music of the world!”

  “Boys, you can’t keep quiet at all!” snapped Magdaleena angrily, getting up and walking away from us. Then she sat down again, pressed her ear to the monastery wall, and even closed her eyes, to concentrate better.

  “We’ve been thinking about learning to sing hymns too,” said Andreas in a whisper. “The girls go mad for it. The monks have swarms of women, and they always start singing when the ladies give them the eye.”

  “Yes, we’ve even been practicing,” said Pärtel. “It’s gone pretty well, too, but we have the problem that we don’t have any castrati in our choir.”

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  “Castrati are the most famous singers,” explained Jaakop. “There’s one of them here in the monastery; he sings with a high voice like a lark. Because he’s had his balls cut off.”

  “But that would be so painful!” I said. I had never heard anything so obscene.

  Andreas snorted contemptuously.

  “Easy to see that you’re from the forest!” he said. “Painful! Who cares if it’s painful! People cut balls off all over the world! Elder Johannes himself told me that in Rome, where the Pope lives, half the men don’t have balls and they sing so beautifully it’d knock you flat. It’s the fashion there. Johannes told me they actually wanted to cut his balls off too. Some bishop had suggested that. But unfortunately something got in the way and he had to leave, so the plan came to nothing. They don’t cut balls off hereabouts. We’re out in the sticks here!”

  Mentally I was thanking fate that Elder Johannes had kept his balls, for otherwise there would be no Magdaleena, just an old man warbling like a lark. What a ghastly thought; it gives you gooseflesh! But Pärtel and his friends really looked sorrowful. They sat listening to the monks’ singing and scratching their crotches occasionally, and the scratching constantly reminded them of their own imperfection.

  “You can sing with balls too,” I remarked.

  “It’s not that,” replied Jaakop. “In every proper chorus there has to be a castrato. Of course, somewhere by the river or by the cooking stove any man can drone away, but you don’t get famous that way. Proper choirs work in monasteries.”

  “So go into a monastery and become a monk,” I suggested. The boys shook their heads.

  “You don’t get it,” said Pärtel. “They don’t take people like us into monasteries. Who would sow the fields and make hay, if everyone was singing in a chorale? There’s a division of labor, understand?”

  “We’ve got nothing against sowing and cutting,” added Jaakop. “Toiling with a plow is just fine. Have you ever stood behind a plow?”

  No was my honest answer.

  The other three laughed.

  “So you’re completely in the dark,” said Andreas. “The plow is a mighty thing. With it you can sow … It’s great. Sowing is good, but I want to do the choir thing to get women. Look how Magdaleena’s out of her mind about these ch
orales. Most of all I’d like it if I sowed in the morning and sung in the evening in the chorale and then got with the dames.”

  “A monk’s haircut would be cool too,” added Pärtel dreamily. “The girls like it too, but we’re not allowed to cut our heads that way. The monks won’t allow it. Peasants aren’t allowed to look like monks.”

  “Why do you listen to them?” I asked.

  “How do you mean?” exclaimed Jaakop. “They’ve come from a foreign country; they know better how things are done in the world. We only came out of the forest recently. What do we have to teach them?”

  “Snakish words,” I said. The trio stared at me scornfully.

  “You know them, do you?” asked Andreas.

  “Of course I do,” I replied. “And at least Pärtel—I mean Peetrus—used to know them. Didn’t you, Peetrus?”

  Pärtel screwed up his face.

  “I don’t remember,” he said somewhat reluctantly. “As a child I used to play all sorts of games and you can make up all kinds of nonsense. It was so long ago I can’t recall.”

  “You have to remember,” I said excitedly. “You can’t claim that Snakish doesn’t exist. I’ve heard you hissing it yourself.”

  “Well, maybe I did hiss something,” agreed Pärtel. “But I no longer remember a single Snakish word. And I’m not interested either. What would I do with those Snakish words? I’m not a snake! I’m a human being, I live in a human village, and I talk human language.”

  “It would be a different matter if you knew Latin well,” said Andreas. “Then you’d sing hymns and you’d get all the women into bed.” He didn’t seem to be thinking of anything else.

  “German is important too,” added Jaakop. “That’s what the knights speak. If you understand German, some knight might take you as his servant.”

  “Do you want to be a servant then?” I asked, taken aback.

  “Of course,” answered Jaakop. “That would be great. You could live in a castle and travel with the gentleman knight into foreign lands. It’s very hard to become a servant, because everyone wants to, but the knights take on very few former peasants. They prefer to bring their own servants from abroad, because our people are still too stupid and might embarrass the knights in fine society.”