This is what I was thinking at that moment, though only the previous day I’d fallen in love with Magdaleena. That love had not faded away, but Magdaleena and Hiie were simply such different girls that I could calmly admire them both. Magdaleena was primevally female, luxuriant, with long blond hair—a real beauty. But Hiie—at least at this moment in the boat—was still slender and boyish. Her hair was dark and not long at all, but she gazed at me with a special, fresh, newly budded charm.
You could almost claim that during her long sleep Hiie had been reborn. This thought terrified me: I was afraid that the new and radiant Hiie might vanish just as suddenly and change back into the pallid and timid girl who used to melt into the bushes. That fear alone would have held me back from returning homeward, because I didn’t want the miracle that happened at sea to fade away when Hiie got back to her old familiar surroundings. In any case, it wasn’t possible to return home. No doubt there was waiting for us on the shore a whole pack of deafened wolves, which Ülgas and Tambet would set upon us to leap on our necks. We had to choose some other route.
“We could go there,” said Hiie, pointing to a distant dimly blackish strip of land, which must have been some island. “It must be quite far away. Can you manage to row there?”
“If I get tired, I can have a rest. We’re not in a hurry,” I answered. “But what will we do there on the island?”
“What will we do here either?” asked Hiie. “Or do you want to spend the rest of your life in a boat?”
She chuckled again.
“It’s quite nice here, in a way,” she said. “It’s easy to wash and you don’t have to go far for a swim. As for eating, that’s a more difficult matter, and if the weather gets cooler, we’re going to get cold, won’t we?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “It would be awful to spend the winter here. So by the time snow arrives, we have to get to that island. It’s so important, because in winter the sea freezes over and I won’t be able to row anymore.”
“Yes,” agreed Hiie. “So don’t have too long a rest, a couple of months at most, then you have to start rowing again.”
“I’ll try to manage that,” I promised.
“Let’s try to make the best possible use of these few days,” said Hiie. “Such a beautiful morning—how about going for a swim?”
“Swim …” I only had time to say in reply before Hiie had pulled off her wolfskin jerkin and jumped naked into the water. I stared at her in amazement. Hiie swam around the boat and cried, “Come on in! The water’s so warm!”
I didn’t like the idea of stripping off in front of Hiie, but it was impossible to refuse. Shyly I removed my jacket and trousers and lowered myself into the water so that the boat was between us.
For the first moment the sea was still very cold and I swam a few strokes quickly to get warm. Hiie’s wet and impish face approached me; we met and swam awhile side by side. The sea covered us, but I knew all the time that right beside me here swam a naked girl, and Hiie suddenly seemed so wonderful to me that I decided to marry her no matter what—and simply visit Magdaleena in the evenings.
I summoned up my courage, swam very close to Hiie, and kissed her nose. She laughed and kissed me back.
This excited me so much that I wanted to take her in my arms right there; I stopped swimming and the next moment sank under the water.
When I rose sputtering back to the surface, Hiie had swum to the boat and was laughing there.
“You’re not a fish!” she cried. “Come onto dry land.” She hauled herself back into the boat and sat there, naked and wet. Bathing had made her even more beautiful. Hiie had truly changed her skin, just like a snake, and this new Hiie, free from her parents, wolves, and all the problems of childhood, was so sweet, so tempting, so irresistible that I swam at my fastest speed to the boat and climbed up to her.
“Keep in mind that we’ve only got until the winter!” whispered Hiie when I kissed her. “Then we’ll be frozen stuck!”
“I know. Before the winter I’ll start rowing again.”
In fact I started rowing much earlier, on the afternoon of the same day. We had been sloshing in the middle of the sea all day, kissing, making love, swimming again, and climbing back into the boat, resting in each other’s arms and talking. I had never heard Hiie talking so much! Usually she was pretty silent, especially back when she used to play with me and Pärtel; it was always we boys who talked and thought up new games, while Hiie only looked at us with round eyes, enchanted at the mere fact that we had taken her into our gang, agreeing with everything that we had to offer.
She was our silent shadow, our little girl grasshopper, whose greatest wish was to keep on our tails—serious and absorbed, as if playing was an important task, to be done with as much care as possible, and as if she were afraid that if she accidentally made a mistake, she must be excluded from our company and would have to stay at home. But at home there was her father, who demanded silence while he meditated on his nation’s illustrious past, and the child’s foolish prattle disturbed him. It had been to Hiie’s advantage to remain as invisible as possible at home, for otherwise Tambet might be reminded, for example, that his daughter didn’t drink wolf’s milk—so it was best for Hiie to move on tiptoes. And so that is what she did, everywhere, always, until now, here in the boat, where she burst into bloom under my gaze. She rested in the crook of my arm, happy and naked, and just kept talking. She was like a fox cub who has suddenly got its eyes and is now greedily ogling the world, and crawling out of the den, instead of drowsily and helplessly lying beside her mother as before. Hiie chatted and laughed until I forced her into silence for a while with kisses, and then she would talk again. And I kept on listening and feeling her warm body against mine. It was one of the most beautiful days of my life: we were completely alone, far from all other people and animals, the sun warmed us, and there was not a cloud in the sky.
Toward evening we were reminded that a person must also eat and that by nightfall it would be wise to seek some other dwelling place than a little boat, because you cannot always know the sea, and if a storm should suddenly arise, sleeping in a little boat is no fun at all. I put on my trousers and cape and took up the oars. After a couple of hours we reached the island.
“Interesting—are there people living here?” asked Hiie. “I hope not. Most of all I’d like to live here with just you, the two of us.”
“Me too,” I replied. I was no longer worried at all that Mother was waiting for me at home, not knowing anything about our fate. In the end it was she who advised me to go and rescue Hiie, my own bride, and I did, although at that moment I didn’t yet believe that Hiie was my bride. Mother would have to be happy, because Hiie was indeed rescued and had become my bride, so all her little baby clothes had not been made in vain at all. I had to admit that Mother was in the end wiser than I as I trudged hand in hand with Hiie around the island, looking for a suitable cave, because we didn’t care to start building a shack as evening fell. A large hare hopped across our path. I called it with Snakish words, it stopped, and I killed it.
After a little while we found a suitable overnight spot. I lit a fire and Hiie set about cooking the hare, while I lined the cave with skins and tried in every way to make it pleasanter. Sometimes life moves terribly quickly: only that morning had I fallen in love with Hiie; now we already had our own home, and my wife was preparing our first evening meal together. I had become a husband and a homeowner, maybe even the ruler of a whole island, because so far we hadn’t encountered a single human. We thought we were alone on the island, just the two of us.
But that wasn’t the case. I was just coming with a new load of branches to our brand-new cave when I was grabbed by the leg, so hard that I screamed and fell to my knees. It was already quite dim and I saw to my amazement only two burning eyes, which almost leapt into my face, and I heard a hoarse voice demanding, “Who’s your father? Tell me, who’s your father?”
“My …” I stammered. “He died long ago.”
I saw a nose, which stuck out from a gray thicket of hair covering the whole face like a mushroom out of moss.
“Was his name Vootele?” demanded the voice. “Tell me, was his name Vootele?”
“No,” I said with a groan, for my leg was still in an iron grip. I imagined one might have a feeling like this when a wolf gnaws at your shinbone. “You’re hurting me. Vootele was my uncle, but he’s dead too.”
“Ah, uncle!” cried the hairy creature with the burning eyes. “So you’re Linda’s child!”
Linda really was my mother’s name and I said so. The grip slackened immediately, and instead I felt something very hairy and piercing sinking into my face, as if I were being forced headlong into the spruce branches. I was kissed on the mouth and shaken by the ears.
“That’s what I thought; a stink doesn’t lie!” said the stranger. “I always recognize the smell of my own blood. What’s your name, grandson?”
“Grandson?” I repeated in amazement. “My name is Leemet, but are you then …”
“Your grandfather!” announced the hairy old man, hugging me with terrible force. “Your mother, Linda, and your uncle Vootele are my children. Ah, so Vootele has died then! What a shame! My dear son! What happened to him then? Did he die in battle?”
I was too surprised to reply. My grandfather! Apparently then the same one that Uncle Vootele had told me about long ago, the crazy man with fangs, whose legs were chopped off and who was then thrown into the sea to drown. But he hadn’t drowned; he was alive. Indeed only his legs were missing; below the knees his trousers were tied up, so that his empty trouser legs wouldn’t drag along the ground. The old man followed my gaze and declared, “They chopped off my legs, the bastards. But never mind. I’ll still get them in the necks for it. You’ve come at the right time, nephew. I need help. But we’ll talk about that later. Is that girl who’s roasting a hare there yours? I didn’t try to bite her. I thought I’d bump the man off first, but then suddenly I got a whiff of my own blood. What are you doing here, Leemet? Are you on a crusade?”
I told my grandfather the whole story in brief. The old man listened with interest. His face was covered in a bush of fur, and from inside this bush two very large and very white eyes stared out, glowing in the dark. Grandfather’s arms, on which he supported himself, were of huge size and terribly bony, like an eagle’s claws. When they pressed into the moss, as he looked at me unblinkingly, he looked like an owl. He didn’t like the end of my story and shook his head disapprovingly.
“A man doesn’t run away!” he said sternly. “I would have attacked those shitty wolves and crushed them to death like rats. I’d have yanked the guts out of the sage with my teeth, and Tambet I’d have taken by the dick and ripped it out with his innards up to the chin. Open your mouth, nephew!”
I obediently opened my mouth. Grandfather looked inside and sighed in disappointment. “You don’t have fangs,” he said. “A shame. I don’t know why it is that I wasn’t able to pass them on to my descendants. My son didn’t have them, nor did my daughter … I hoped they might appear in the third generation, but in vain. Yes, so it’s of course harder to go into battle with wolves without fangs, but you always have to try. Fleeing is not what a man does! I’m a legless cripple, but do I hide in a burrow for that? No, I attack every stranger by the leg. This is my island and I defend it.”
“How did you get here in the first place, Grandfather?” I asked. “Uncle Vootele said you were thrown into the sea.”
“The seals brought me,” he replied. “They understand Snakish too. They carried me here and I took control of this island. Over the years all sorts of shit has barged in here; a whole shipload of knights came ashore here ten years ago and a little later a troop of monks with their farmhands, who had a plan to start building something here. I bumped them all off. I crawled in the grass like a snake and bit them in the thighs with my fangs, pulled them down and cut their throats. Then I flayed them and boiled them until their bones were clean of flesh, and for amusement I made drinking mugs out of their skulls. There’s not much to do here in the evenings, so to scare away the boredom I carved on their skulls.”
“Why did you boil them?” I asked, with some abhorrence. “Surely you don’t eat human flesh?”
“I don’t,” replied Grandfather. “I’ve got plenty of hares and goats here. But I need the bones. You see I’m building wings for myself out of them! Human bones are the best for that. You drill a hole in them, to take out the marrow, so the bone will be lighter, and then you put them together properly. The only thing is you need a lot of those bones. You have to chop up at least a hundred people to get proper wings that will carry a man. I’m not intending to die on this island! I’ll give those iron men a bitter battle yet! I’ll descend on them from the sky like lightning and I’ll bash their brains out. They cut my legs off and threw me in the sea! To hell with it, they won’t get rid of me with childish tricks like that! I’ll never give in!”
Grandfather opened his mouth and roared hoarsely, to reveal two blackened but still sharp fangs. I looked at them with wonderment. Here before me sat a real ancestral person, wild and full of strength, in his own way a little Frog of the North, whose mad life force radiated out, scorching his enemies to ash. You chopped his legs off, but he will build himself wings and attack from the air! When had he disappeared? Many years before my birth, and all that time he had prowled this island, hatching his plan of revenge, never giving up hope, still warlike and as tough as a tree branch that when it bends down straightens up again and strikes you when you least expect it.
I imagined what confusion and death Grandfather could sow in the forest. He would wriggle through the grass straight to the highway, sting the knights riding past, bite the monks’ noses off their faces, and do harm to village elder Johannes and all the other friends and henchmen of the iron men. He might well get struck down himself, but before that such a furious and crazed old man could lay waste to several villages. He was dangerous, he was full of primeval strength, and in his presence I felt rising within me that same boldness that had struck me that night when I rescued Hiie—the blind desire to fight and kill. Grandfather was brimful of that madness, and like a heated stone pressed against my body he radiated his warmth into me.
“Would you like me to show you my chalices made of skulls?” asked Grandfather.
At that moment Hiie called me. She had cooked the hare and invited me to eat.
“Your wife’s calling!” said Grandfather dryly. “Let’s go and polish off that hare; the skulls can wait. They won’t be walking anywhere!”
He laughed, showing his fangs again.
The sun had already set when we got to the fireside. I walked, but Grandfather wriggled on the ground with amazing agility like some hairy adder. It had been a truly strange day, at the beginning of which I found a wife and at the end a grandfather as well.
Twenty-Two
iie was of course amazed when she saw a hairy old man wriggling out of the grass, but I quickly explained things to her. Grandfather crawled up to the fire, grabbed the still-hot hare, and ripped it quickly in half.
“Very good. Crunchy!” he declared, gnawing his own half and spitting out the bones. “At least you know how to roast a hare, whatever else you do here.”
Half of the hare disappeared with amazing speed into the old man’s belly. He licked his fingers clean and stared at us in wonder.
“What? You haven’t even started eating? What are you waiting for? Hare is best eaten hot. If it cools off, you get a taste of clover on the side.”
We divided what was left of the hare into two and sank our teeth into the meat. Grandfather watched us with burning eyes.
“Nice to see some living people again,” he said. “Otherwise I don’t have time to watch them, for when I see movement, I attack straight away and bite. Only when the chap is already dead and it’s time to boil up the corpse do I have time to glance at him. But, well, it’s a bit late when the flesh is starting to come off the
bones and it’s all just porridge.”
Hiie screwed up her nose, and suddenly it seemed that it would be hard for her to go on eating the hare. Grandfather noticed this and shook an admonitory finger.
“Don’t make faces like that, girl!” he said. “The charnel house needs supplies. And anyway, thanks to me this island is still free. Not a single iron man has set up a claim here. Listen, tell me the news from the forest! How is my daughter getting on? Do you have brothers and sisters too?”
I told Grandfather that Mother was doing well and that I had a sister, Salme, who lived with a bear.
“Why does she live with a bear?” asked Grandfather angrily. “Are there no more men in the forest?”
“No, there aren’t,” I replied. “They’ve all moved to the village.”
“Well, nothing can be done about that then. Better to be with a bear than with some village blockhead. A bear is your own, even if it’s stupid. In my day I had many friends among the bears; they were good for leg pulling. Bears believe everything you tell them. I always used to feed them hare droppings. I’d say, ‘Look, these are big brown strawberries. Eat!’ The bears always ate them too, maybe even a whole basketful; they’d thank you afterward too. Enough to make you laugh out loud! Well, I think your sister has a jolly life! She doesn’t need to make meals; she can just take a hare and sit it on a nest like a bird, then offer the bear the droppings and say that they’re hare’s eggs, just freshly hatched!”
This crude trick amused Grandfather so much that he cackled with pleasure for a while afterward. “It’s such a shame that I’m on this island; I’d really like to see your brother-in-law!” he said. “If I could just pull his leg! But never mind. Soon my wings will be ready, I’ll fly back to you, and then we’ll play out that hare-eggs joke with the bear.”
The Man Who Spoke Snakish Page 22
