The Man Who Spoke Snakish

by Andrus Kivirähk

  “Elder Johannes was a servant to a bishop for a while,” said Pärtel, adding kindly for my benefit: “A bishop is about the same as a monk, but much richer and more important. It was when Johannes was still young, well, at the same time as when he visited the Pope in Rome. Johannes was allowed to live in the bishop’s castle and eat from his table. He even slept with the bishop in the same bed, because it’s the custom in foreign lands for important men to sleep with both women and boys.”

  “What?” I was shocked.

  “There you go—straight from the forest, straight from the forest!” sneered Andreas. “Shut your mouth and don’t make such a stupid face! Yes, that is the custom in the world! Only a man from the forest would be amazed at that. Johannes has said that in Rome sleeping with boys is a divine everyday thing. I’ve tried that sort of thing myself, with my own brother, but nothing much came of it. It just made you sweaty and ripped your trousers. Obviously you’d have to get trained by some knight or monk; otherwise you end up in a tangle like some amateur.”

  “But it happens very rarely that some knight or monk lets peasants into his bed,” sighed Jaakop. “They don’t think we’re really worthy of them.”

  I told them that even in the forest that custom wasn’t unknown; it happens quite often that a male fox in heat gets on the back of another male fox. This annoyed all of them.

  “So you think I’m like some male fox?” asked Andreas angrily. “Who’s interested in what some animals do in your stupid forest? I’m talking about what goes on in the world. You don’t know anything about it. You don’t know any languages!”

  “Only Snakish,” added Jaakop, grinning. “I guess snakes don’t get the latest news from Rome?”

  “Don’t boast, Leemet,” said Pärtel, admonishing me. “You’ve only just come to the village; it would be best if you kept your eyes and ears open and tried to learn as much as possible about living as humans live, not like the animals in the forest. Where are you going to live anyway? You have to build a house, clear some land, get yourself all the tools you need. I can lend you a quern. I’ve got two.”

  I wanted to tell him that he could shove his quern up his arse, but this was when the monks’ singing ended. Magdaleena slid her hand over her eyes, as if releasing herself from a spell, and came over to us.

  “You boys are strange,” she said. “Why do you come to listen to hymns at all if you chatter among yourselves all the time? Today that castrato sounded so wonderful that my heart went to my throat. I worship that voice!”

  “Didn’t I tell you that women melt before those monks?” droned Andreas. “I can sing too. Haven’t you heard me at haymaking time? I even sang a song in Latin.”

  “Ah, Andreas, you do understand that you’re not a monk,” said Magdaleena. “I’ve got nothing against peasants singing by the bonfire, but that isn’t real music. Real music is only in the monastery.”

  “Well now,” sighed Jaakop. “What do you want from us? We’ve just come out of the forest; our voices still have a bit of the wild animal’s growl about them. I do believe that one day great choir singers and castrati will come up out of our people and be famous all over the world. But for that to happen, our country will have to get so far ahead that they start cutting off balls here as well. It’s shameful; we’re like some backwoods! Your father mixes with those knights and other important men. Hasn’t he heard anything about when we’re going to start cutting balls off here?”

  “No, Father hasn’t talked about it,” replied Magdaleena. “I have to go home now. I’ve got a lot to do there.”

  “Well, so have we,” agreed the trio. “We grabbed some time to listen to music, but now we have to get back to work. You have to earn your bread. God doesn’t just give you anything.” I wasn’t in any hurry, on the other hand. I knew there was a whopping hunk of venison waiting for me at home, but I wasn’t hungry yet. And I didn’t have the heart to leave Magdaleena; this sudden rush of love was like a leaf attaching me to her skirt tails, and I couldn’t and wouldn’t tear myself away. “I’ll come with you,” I said to Magdaleena.

  Pärtel chimed in enthusiastically, “Right, the village elder can give you the best advice about how to start a new life.” The five of us traipsed toward the village.

  When we got to Magdaleena’s house, Johannes was just coming out of the cottage, a sheath knife in his hand.

  “What are you doing, Father?” cried Magdaleena.

  “Miira is worse,” replied Johannes anxiously. “She won’t take to her feet anymore.”

  “Is there something wrong with the cow?” asked Pärtel.

  “Yes, she’s been sickly for a week or so,” said Magdaleena. “She won’t eat or anything, just lows quietly and sadly. Poor creature. Father’s been treating her, but nothing helps.”

  “Never mind. I haven’t tried the best arts of doing it yet,” said Johannes. “I was taught those by one of the knights’ stable hands—a genuine German. This was the way he treated his master’s horses, so it’s a tried and tested trick. Not homespun wisdom, but knowledge figured out in foreign lands.”

  “Can I look on?” asked Jaakop. Johannes was happy to agree.

  “Of course, come with me, young men! This wisdom might be of use to you. As long as you live you learn.”

  We all went into the barn. Miira the cow was lying on the straw and looked really pathetic and starved. It was immediately clear to me that this beast’s days were numbered. She was simply too old. Not even a human lives forever, let alone an animal. Johannes had talked about treating the cow but I hoped that he would just cut the animal’s throat and end the creature’s suffering. Johannes evidently didn’t think so. He had such faith in the German stableboy’s teaching that he apparently thought he could wake the dead. He went up to the cow, took the knife, and made a deep incision in the animal’s tail. The cow lowed in pain.

  “Ahhaa!” said Johannes triumphantly and then split the cow’s ears with the knife.

  “What are you doing?” asked Andreas respectfully.

  “I’m making slits in her body, to let the disease out,” explained Johannes, and jabbed a little hole in the cow’s udder. Blood started to trickle and the poor cow cried out.

  “Keep in mind, boys, you have to make holes in the udder, under the tail, and in the ears!” instructed Johannes, and Pärtel, Jaakop, and Andreas repeated those words in a murmur, so that it would all sink into their minds. It was horrible for me to watch this animal torture, but I didn’t intervene. What business was it of mine what the villagers did to their own animals? What I knew for certain was that in the forest no human would have cut into his wolves like that. But that wasn’t everything. The German stableboy had taught Johannes many tricks.

  Johannes fetched out a tub, in which a strange substance was glistening.

  “This is seal blubber,” he said. “The cow must eat it.”

  Naturally the cow declined this confection. Even though dying, she was still strong enough to press her jaws firmly together and turn her head away when she was offered the blubber. Johannes sighed.

  “Stupid creature, you don’t know what’s good for you,” he said, a gentle rebuke in his voice. “The seal blubber will drive the disease out through the wounds in your skin. Boys, come and help! Pull her jaws open with the knife, so I can put the blubber in.”

  After a moment the four of them had forced the cow around; only Magdaleena didn’t take part in torturing the animal. True, Magdaleena scarcely regarded it as torture; she was keeping away so as not to disturb the men’s important work. In my heart I hoped, though, that the cow would die and once and for all escape all this mauling. You could see that her life was only hanging by a thread.

  Nevertheless it wasn’t easy for the men to force her to eat the seal blubber. With great effort they had managed to get the knife between her teeth; now Pärtel was holding the animal’s jaws open with it, while Jaakop and Andreas sat astride the sick cow’s neck, so that she wouldn’t flinch. Elder Johannes had di
pped a piece of seal blubber inside, and was now forcing it into the cow’s throat, with the other hand tugging the long dark tongue out of the way. The cow made a terrible noise, as if starting to choke, and this was no wonder, because it’s hard to breathe when a stick is poked down your throat. Johannes twisted the stick back and forth, until he was convinced that the seal blubber had passed down the cow’s throat. Then he pulled the rod out; the cow choked and her eyes turned inside out. But she still wasn’t able to die and that was her misfortune, for the German stableboy really had taught Johannes many frightful things.

  “The blubber pushes the disease out, but there needs to be some force from the outside too,” explained Johannes. “One medicine pushes, the other pulls! For the pulling we use steam. Magdaleena, go to the inglenook and fetch the little pot that I put on to boil there. Quickly! I can see that the blubber has started to do its work and is scaring away the disease with full force.”

  Johannes pointed with satisfaction to the cow’s wounds, which had started to bleed profusely from the great mauling. Andreas and Jaakop, who were still mounted on the cow’s back, were spattered in blood. They looked at their blood-flecked clothes suspiciously.

  “The disease won’t go over to us, will it?” asked Andreas.

  “Don’t worry, it won’t! It has lost all its power and strength. Soon we’ll put hot steam on the wounds and then the cow will be perfectly well.”

  I was perfectly sure that the cow would not survive this torture. Magdaleena had come with a steaming pot, and Johannes set about throwing some straws in it.

  “Take notice, boys, which plants I put into the hot water!” Johannes instructed. “This is a great art, and not a single herb may be left out. Everything has to go in the right proportion. Look, I’m putting in thyme and finally swallowwort too. That is what you have to put in last, so the stableboy taught me. It’s a sure cure; the whole world uses it. Now try to raise the cow’s arse a little. I want to put this pot under her tail.”

  Pärtel and Jaakop started levering the poor cow’s arse up from the ground with two poles. The animal was already unconscious, breathing heavily. Nevertheless, when Johannes shoved the hot pot under her tail, she managed a last bellow. Then she died.

  I was the only one who noticed it; Johannes carried on treating the cow.

  “The disease is almost conquered!” he remarked with satisfaction, eagerly attending to the expired cow. “Now we’ll let some smoke into the cut in the udder; that’s where the disease is flowing out fastest. That must have been the biggest seat of the disease.”

  He scorched the carcass all over, muttered some words, patted the corpse, and only a while later did he start to realize that something was wrong.

  “Miira!” he cried, and with his thumb opened the cow’s inverted eye. “Miira, what’s wrong?”

  “She’s dead,” I said.

  “What are you saying?” Johannes shouted, only now letting go of his pot. At first he looked quite disappointed, but he soon conjured up a humble expression and piously turned his eyeballs heavenward. “Indeed, you’re right. Well now, what’s to be done? Evidently God had other plans.”

  “She was such a good cow,” sighed Magdaleena. “How sad!”

  “Nothing to be done about it,” said Johannes. “Man proposes; God disposes. We did all in our power, but God always makes the final decision.”

  This talk reminded me very much of Ülgas and his sprites, onto whom misfortunes could always be shifted, so I felt quite strange. Always the same story, there’s always some invented bugaboo to take the blame. I asked Johannes whether that German stableboy was ever able to make a horse better with his horrible remedies.

  “Of course!” said Johannes, surprised. “Why do you even ask? He didn’t invent these arts. He’d learned them from the Franks, and they in turn got them straight from Rome!”

  The involvement of Rome reminded me of a certain bishop and his bedfellow, and I won’t deny that I stared at Johannes for a little while with quite an odd expression. He didn’t notice it; he was suddenly in a great hurry. He discussed some tasks with Pärtel, Andreas, and Jaakop, things that were incomprehensible to me, and since I noticed that Magdaleena had left the barn, I went to look for her.

  I found her at the gate. Away on the ridge a solitary iron man was riding, and Magdaleena couldn’t take her eyes off him. “Isn’t he grand?” she whispered to me. “What a suit of armor! What a helmet! What a splendid horse and what a fine saddlecloth!”

  I couldn’t share Magdaleena’s enthusiasm, since to my eyes both the coat of mail and the helmet were quite useless things; I had no reason to envy their owner. Instead I became a little bitter, for Magdaleena was paying no attention at all to me, but ran out of the gate to admire the iron man as long as possible, and when he finally vanished from view and Magdaleena came back to the house, I told her I was going home.

  “Home?” she exclaimed. “So where then? To the forest?”

  “Yes, of course,” I replied. “That’s where I live.”

  I thought Magdaleena would try to persuade me, as her father or Pärtel would certainly have done, but Magdaleena just nodded and whispered in my ear, “Off you go! I like knowing boys who can change into werewolves and have met the sprites. It’s so mysterious! Come and see me again and teach me some witchcraft. I know it’s a sin, but it’s exciting. Will you, Leemet?”

  “I only know Snakish,” I muttered.

  “No, you know a lot more!” answered Magdaleena. “You just don’t want to tell me everything. I know that. On your way, off you go now! I’ll expect you back soon. Apart from everything, you’re my lifesaver. Thank you again, my dear werewolf!”

  She kissed me on the cheek and slipped indoors, while I started to trudge homeward through the darkening woods.

  Twenty

  had hardly got among the trees when I stepped in the darkness on something soft. This soft thing belched and then swore obscenely, and I realized my foot had hit upon Meeme’s stomach as he lay on the ground.

  “I’m sorry!” I said. “It’s so dark here.”

  “Dark!” sneered Meeme. “Yes, of course, eyes that come from the village can’t make things out. Everything gets blunted there, starting with your common sense. I’d just been having a drink when you stepped on my belly, you damn idiot.” He wiped some spilled wine off his face and licked his hand.

  “I apologize,” I said. “But there’s no need to be in the middle of the road; you could at least go and sleep under the bushes.”

  “Where is there a road in this forest, then?” asked Meeme. “There are no longer any roads here. Animals walk in the bushes, but humans don’t live here anymore. The forest is empty; only you and a couple of other fools roam around and disturb the peaceful sleepers. Why did you come here? You went to the village, could’ve stayed there. What are you looking for here? Is there no one in the village with a belly to trample on?”

  “No, there’s no one lying on the ground, and no one like leaf mold as you are,” I replied angrily. Meeme laughed.

  “I’m not only like leaf mold; it’s what I actually am. Can you smell the stink of decay?”

  “I can,” I replied. That stench had indeed returned to my nostrils, and although a very small whiff of the sweet Magdaleena still clung to my clothes, it soon evaporated in the forest. “I’m not surprised. Look at you!”

  Meeme laughed again.

  “Yes, I’m decaying,” he said. “Not just me. You are too. You can smell your own scent, you unhappy lop-ear! We’re all crumbling to dust, starting with your uncle, then me, and finally you. We’re like last year’s leaves, which melt away under the snow in spring, brown and rotten. We belong to last year and our fate is to quietly change into ashes, because new life has already sprouted on the tips of the trees and new fresh green buds are bursting forth. You can march around the forest and imagine to yourself that you’re young and that you have something important to do, but actually you’re old and moldy, like me. You stink! Sni
ff yourself! Sniff carefully! That decay is inside you!”

  He started coughing and I quickly took to my heels, my back wet with fearful sweat. Meeme had uttered what I myself had long feared—that the torturous stink of decay that clung around came from me. I had caught it from Uncle Vootele like an infection. When I smelt decay in Elder Johannes’s house, I was smelling myself!

  Of course it wasn’t a visible, open wound that spread this stench; nor was it an internal focus of disease, a swelling hiding in the abdominal cavity or the chest, and you could quite surely claim that apart from me no one else was aware of the smell. Only I could smell myself, just as only oneself can read and understand one’s own secret thoughts.

  It was the Snakish words in my mouth that stank: in the new world the knowledge that was quietly and insipidly decaying was proving to be useless and unnecessary. Suddenly I saw my own future with terrible clarity—a solitary life in the midst of the forest, my only companions a couple of adders, while outside the woods were the galloping iron men, the singing monks, and thousands of villagers going to cut grain with scythes. Could I change anything? Go to the village and till the soil and eat bread with the other villagers? I didn’t like life there; I felt immeasurably better and wiser than the villagers. And I was. I loved the forest, I loved Snakish, I loved that world under whose roof slept the Frog of the North. So what if I had no hope of ever seeing him with my own eyes? But at the same time there was nothing for me to do here. I sensed that especially strongly now. I had spent a whole day in the village, and although I didn’t enjoy the monks’ whining song or approve of the idiotic torture of the cow, I did at once realize that this outside world was interesting. I had had dealings with many people. I’d conversed, been silent, experienced a lot that was new. In the forest my days passed quite monotonously. Yes, as a child it had been nice to play here; what could I do in the gigantic woods, so empty of people, as an adult? How could I pass my whole life here?