The Man Who Spoke Snakish

by Andrus Kivirähk

  Twenty-Six

  e slept in our shack, but the next morning Hiie wanted to visit her mother, and naturally I went with her. It was actually Mall who had saved our lives, and we hadn’t properly thanked her for it. We also had to bear her the news of Tambet’s death. Mother fed our bellies full to bursting and warned us about wolves wandering in the forest.

  “They’re the same animals whose ears Tambet and Ülgas stopped up with wax,” she explained. “Now they won’t obey anybody. They just keep running around, their teeth bared, and they’re likely to bite. You can hiss at them as much as you like, but a feral wolf won’t notice it, so there’s nothing for it but to try and run home for cover. I tell you, this is the stupidest, stupidest trick, pouring wax in wolves’ ears. Sooner or later they’re going to eat somebody up. Be very careful and if you see any mad wolves, then climb a tree.”

  Sure enough, Hiie and I had hardly gone any distance in the forest when we saw a wolf. It was prowling on us from the bushes and it wasn’t at all possible to read from its green eyes whether it was just watching us or planning to leap on us.

  I hissed a few Snakish words, but the wolf’s expression didn’t change; it started slowly creeping closer to us. It was most definitely one of the animals that had been deafened. Maybe the wolf recognized us and now wanted to execute the last command that had reached its brain before its ears were walled up forever. I pulled out my knife from its sheath and prepared to defend myself.

  “Perhaps we’d be better off going up a tree as your mother recommended,” suggested Hiie.

  “Would my grandfather run away from a wolf up a tree?” I asked.

  “Your grandfather definitely wouldn’t,” said Hiie. “I think the wolf would be the one who’d try to save his skin by climbing a tree if he saw your grandfather. But you’re not your grandfather. Do you believe you can start killing wolves?”

  “I do,” I replied, and I was speaking the truth. I was quite sure, even though I’d never before fought with a wolf. But the trip to Grandfather’s island had opened a new door within me, so to speak, from which flowed a feeling of self-assurance and a desire to struggle with someone, to chop up living flesh and drink the blood of my enemies. The wolf flew over me and I cut open its stomach with my knife, starting from the throat and ending at the tail. Its innards tumbled out and I was barely able to roll aside to avoid getting the wolf’s intestines in my face.

  “Beautiful,” cried Hiie, clapping her hands. But then she added worriedly, “But there are two more coming.”

  Indeed two new wolves had trotted onto the field of battle and were now creeping closer to us, a bloodthirsty expression on their faces. Hiie hissed a few Snakish words, but naturally they fell on deaf, or rather silenced, ears, and the wolves didn’t turn their heads. I roared at them, as Grandfather would have done, and prepared myself to take them on.

  But I didn’t have time to clash with the new wolves. Before I could, I heard a familiar hiss, and the wolves bayed at the air, only to tumble in a cramp to the ground and slowly perish. Two snake-kings appeared from among the long grass and I understood that they had bitten the wolves’ throats. I recognized the snakes instantly: they were Ints and her father. Ints was accompanied by a whole nest of little adders.

  “Hello, dear Leemet!” said Ints’s father. “How nice that you’re back!”

  “I wanted to be with you that night,” said Ints. “I would have stung all those filthy wolves to death and Tambet and Ülgas as well. Who cares if they understand Snakish? They are no longer our brothers. But I wasn’t able to get away from my children. Now even they know how to bite. I swear to you today they actually killed a wolf themselves.”

  “Not quite by themselves, let’s be precise,” objected the old snake-king. “You’re like all mothers, always praising your own children. First of all I bit the wolf in the hip, so it could no longer move, and then the little ones finished it off. But I have to admit they were really good.”

  The little adders listened to their grandfather and nodded their heads proudly.

  “Where are you going?” asked Ints. “Might you come with us? We’re crawling through the forest looking for the wolves with the silenced ears, to finish them off. An animal that no longer understands Snakish must die. They’re too dangerous and unpredictable. Father and I have already finished off six animals and all the other adders are at work in the forest, but there are still a lot of deaf wolves roaming around. Let’s go hunting them! I haven’t seen you for so long, Leemet, old friend!”

  “Right now I can’t, Ints,” I said. “Another time. We’re on our way to Hiie’s mother’s place. Ints, you know, I’m getting married.”

  “It’s great,” said Ints, “that even you are finally in heat. I’m really looking forward to next spring, when you can mate again. How long does your heat last?”

  “Forever,” I said, embracing Hiie. “And all year round.”

  “Oooh!” hummed Ints enviously. “In one way, humans are better than us after all.”

  “Thinking all day only about reproducing is maybe a bit too much, though,” opined the old snake-king. “In any case, I wish you the best of luck! Come past our cave in the evening and tell us where you’ve been and what you’ve seen.”

  We promised to come. The snakes crawled off to hunt the wolves, but we were soon at Hiie’s house.

  The first thing that struck our eyes was the door of the wolves’ barn, which was swinging in the wind. When we stepped closer, we could see that the giant barn that had once harbored hundreds of wolves now stood completely empty. All the wolves had gone.

  “Did he really stop up all the wolves’ ears with wax?” cried Hiie in amazement. “The adders have a lot of work to do …”

  “No, not all,” said someone. It was Hiie’s mother, Mall, standing at the door of her shack, looking at us with damp eyes. “There were about thirty of them whose ears he poured full of wax. The rest I released into the forest. I didn’t want to see them anymore. I couldn’t live in the same house with the wolves, not after that night when they chased you, dear daughter. You’re alive! The sprites kept you safe!”

  Mall came over to Hiie and hugged her daughter, with love, but still somehow awkwardly. One might think that she hadn’t done it often. Evidently her mother’s embrace felt unfamiliar to Hiie too. She did respond to the affection, but seemed confused, and when Mall let go of her, she pulled quickly aside. “Yes,” sighed Mall guiltily. “We haven’t hugged very often. Your father didn’t like it; he was very stern. With himself and with others.”

  “Mother,” said Hiie. “Father is dead.”

  “I know,” replied Mall to our surprise. “Somehow I knew immediately when he rowed off from here that he wouldn’t be coming back. Then I let the wolves loose. Do you think I would have dared to do that if I’d thought your father was still coming back? Never! Wolf rearing was special to him,” she added with a bitter smile. “You never did learn to drink their milk.”

  “It repulsed me,” said Hiie. “But you forced me; you poured it down my throat.”

  “Well, yes,” muttered Mall hesitantly. “I have been too hard on you I know. That’s what your father wanted; he wished you brought up to be a real Estonian.”

  “He wanted to kill me,” said Hiie.

  “That was what Ülgas wanted,” sighed Mall, who appeared to be collapsing into such a tiny, wretched bundle that I began to feel sorry for her. “For Father it was very hard, but he was used to bringing sacrifices. He knew that the sprites’ wishes must be fulfilled; you can’t contradict them. They always get their way.”

  “But we are here!” shouted Hiie. “We’re alive! We haven’t been sacrificed to the sprites. They haven’t got their way.”

  “I started believing that they don’t want you killed,” replied Mall. “Ülgas was mistaken. The sprites are good. They protect the forest and its dwellers; they couldn’t want a forest child to die. They helped me, gave me strength, so that I could ride after you and lead you t
o the boat. Children, the sprites saved you!”

  She shook her head so excitedly—this tiny, elderly, shriveled woman—that I didn’t have the heart to laugh in her face and say that there are no sprites, and that if she did save us, it was thanks to her heart, which Ülgas’s legends hadn’t managed to taint. Her husband’s heart had been turned by these endless tales of the sprites into a lump of mud. Mall had still remained a human being and a mother. She was looking at us with such a simple and yet saintly gaze that I pitied her. Let her believe in her sprites, then, if she can’t do anything else. I bowed before her, kissed both her hands in turn, and said, “Mother, I’m taking Hiie to be my wife now.”

  “I’m pleased,” replied Mall, smiling timidly and stroking my head with her fingertips. Quite certainly she couldn’t have forgotten all the stories that Tambet had told about me, and she must have felt a certain dread seeing me here in her house. I was a strong opponent of the so-called sprites, ever since the business of the swimming louse. You can’t become beloved overnight, but I wasn’t so interested in that either. It was Hiie I was marrying, not her mother, and I really didn’t care what Mall thought of me.

  “Could I perhaps talk with Ülgas …” began Hiie’s mother, but she felt clumsy, because even she knew that neither I nor Hiie had good relations with Ülgas. “But … I suppose you don’t want to invite Ülgas to the wedding?”

  “No,” I replied. “He’s hardly likely to come and bring us together. Yesterday I ripped off one of his ears and a cheek, and I promised that if he comes before me again, his head will fly off.”

  Mall looked at me in amazement, swallowed, and turned her eyes helplessly to Hiie.

  “Where will you marry then, if not in the sacred grove?”

  “We’ll get married anywhere, but not there,” replied Hiie. “Mother, the last time I was there Ülgas and Father tried to kill me! I’m never going there again and the only wedding present I request from Leemet is that he razes the whole grove to the ground and burns down the trees.”

  “Dear child, don’t talk like that!” begged Mall. “Our ancestors have visited it for thousands of years bringing sacrifices! A sprite lives in every tree in the grove. Those trees are sacred!”

  “No tree is sacred!” said Hiie. “The trees in the grove will do just as well for making a bonfire and cooking meat as any other beam or branch. Yes, we’ll celebrate our wedding with a big fire! We’ll set light to all those disgusting old trees in the grove; we’ll roast a deer and dance around the fire. Leemet, that’s the kind of wedding I want, and no other!”

  “Very good,” I said. “I’ll go today and raze the grove and I hope I manage to raze Ülgas to the ground too!”

  “Children!” squealed Mall. “Children!”

  She looked at us in terror, as if she were afraid for our lives.

  “Mother, enough of this silliness,” said Hiie. “Father is dead, Ülgas is probably running around now bleeding to death, and we have no more need for these senseless pieces of timber, which don’t mean a thing. There are so few of us left here in the forest that we could at least try to live honestly, without tricks and lies. Mother, if you want to believe in the sprites, then believe. The forest is full of trees to worship and adorn, but I want that disgusting grove, where I was led like a hare to the slaughter, to burn at my wedding and crumble to ash. I hate those trees! Understand, Mother?”

  “Child, that talk is horrible!” said Mall. Her whole body shook. “You’re inviting misfortune. If the sprites hear you … And they certainly will, for they hear everything!”

  “They don’t,” I said. “Mother, calm down! There’s no point despairing over some half-rotten tree. The important thing is for us to have a beautiful fire and a nice wedding, that we get to eat nicely roasted brown meat and we have fun!”

  “I’m afraid for you,” said Mall. “I’m afraid something terrible will happen. The sacred grove … Please don’t destroy it!”

  “I won’t live in the same forest as that abomination!” declared Hiie. “If Leemet doesn’t chop it down, I’ll take an ax myself, the same one that Father forced me as a child to chop hares’ heads off with.”

  “No need,” I said. “I’ll do it. With pleasure.”

  One might fear that razing the sacred grove was hard work, but it wasn’t. The enormous old linden trees were rotten to the core. They were just decaying corpses, into which you only had to make a cut and each giant would collapse of its own accord. In places the trunks were so soft that the ax got stuck in soggy material as if I were chopping mud. It was a miracle that those trees hadn’t collapsed earlier. As they fell down they broke into hundreds of little pieces, collapsed into decayed wood pulp, and all kinds of insects that had laid their white eggs in the trees were now scurrying stupidly around, unable to understand why their soft sludgy home was suddenly split apart.

  “Those are the sprites,” I said to Hiie, showing her the alarmed centipedes and other insects that were running headlong into the grass in search of new nesting places.

  “They’ve bored out the insides of the trees so empty and gnawed them so soft that we won’t be able to get a proper bonfire here. The deer will remain uncooked if we make a fire only from the sacred grove. We’ll have to bring more good dry wood. These linden trees will only hiss and fume.”

  We piled up the rubbish that was left of the grove’s trees into one big stack, and looked for dried branches, which burned well and weren’t sacred at all. I had hoped that the razing of the grove would bring forth Ülgas too, to try and defend his nest from us, giving me the chance to have at him once more with my knife, properly this time, so that a third attack wouldn’t be necessary. The Sage of the Grove didn’t show himself, however, but must have been suffering somewhere, nursing his hacked cheek—or hoping that the sprites would make him whole. Maybe he was even stalking us somewhere in the bushes, rustling indignantly in the grass like the other beetles whose home had been the old grove. In any case, no one tried to obstruct us.

  By evening all the trees in the grove had been chopped down and the pyre was ready. There was no point in killing a deer before the morning, so now Hiie and I could rest. We had planned to go and visit Ints, as we had promised that morning, but suddenly I saw Meeme. He had appeared just as quietly as always, supporting himself against a tree and sipping on his wineskin. Seeing that we had spotted him, he beckoned to us lazily.

  “Tell me, how do you always manage to creep up without anyone hearing?” I challenged him. “You lie around here, you lie around there, and yet I’ve never seen you coming. What’s the trick of it?”

  Meeme giggled.

  “You have Snakish words in your mouth and you’re terribly smart for your age, but you don’t know everything, and you can’t either,” he smirked. “Yes, understand it or not, how does old Meeme move around so quietly from one place to another so that even your sharp ear doesn’t hear him?”

  “I can’t be bothered to work it out,” I said. “It doesn’t matter to me. By the way, I’m getting married tomorrow. You’re invited to the wedding.”

  “I’m here already,” replied Meeme. “The last wedding here in the forest will be a thing to watch. It’s as if, just before dying, someone was polishing the stumps of their old teeth to a shine, as if it mattered whether you burn on the funeral pyre with clean or dirty fangs. If there is anyone left to set it alight, that is.”

  He burst into laughter, coughed, and spat phlegm down his front.

  “Again the last!” I chuckled bitterly. “The last wedding in the forest! For me this wedding is the first, the only one, and the most important, and for Hiie too. We don’t intend to die or be laid out on a pyre. For you it might be fine to be weak and facing death, if you decide to carry on that endless wheezing. If you got married, it would really be ridiculous; there’s really no point in you polishing the stumps of your teeth to a shine.”

  “Ahhaa, how spiteful!” smirked Meeme into his beard, taking a swig on his wineskin. “Bridegroom! Nave
l of the world!”

  “By the way, I promise you that when you do die, I will build a proper pyre for you and set it alight with my own hands,” I added, to bring the subject to a close.

  “No, on the contrary!” shrieked Meeme, raising a warning paw, whose nails had grown enormously long and crooked like old pine roots. “You must promise not to build me a funeral pyre. I want to rot away right where I peg out. You can see that I’ve already made a start on it, and you mustn’t interfere with your good heart and your sympathy. Burning is for great warriors and important people; folk like me should quietly rot away like acorns fallen on the ground.”

  “All right then, be an acorn,” I said, quite bored. “I don’t care. I’m getting married tomorrow and have more to think about than death and decay; those are your problems. It would be nice if you didn’t prattle on all the time about those things tomorrow at the feast. A wedding is supposed to be fun.”

  “Are you offering wine?” asked Meeme.

  “Wine is the iron men’s drink,” I replied. “It’s not the custom in the forest to drink it.”

  “Don’t talk such rubbish, boy!” screamed Meeme. “You come to me talking about customs. Just now you were razing the grove to the ground; even though in a couple of years that shit would have collapsed all on its own. So don’t come playing the ancient prophet with me! The end is at hand, and there’s no point holding back on the good stuff. So what are you going to offer your guests?”

  “We wanted to roast a deer,” said Hiie.

  “Bah! I’m not talking about food. I’m thirsty, not hungry! Do you want to wash the bit of roast meat down with springwater like the animals? Think about wine, boy. It lifts the spirits! Or are you planning to chew fly agaric? I’ve tried both things, not just a little either, and believe me wine is better! It’s the only good thing you can get from the village. I’m not recommending you bring bread into the forest. Let the hares nibble on that. But wine was their good invention. Listen to me, boy. I know what I’m talking about!”