The Man Who Spoke Snakish

by Andrus Kivirähk

  “Where are you going now?” asked Ints, crawling along beside me.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you going to the village?”

  “No.”

  “Are you coming to our place?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  I would have liked to just keep going and fall off a precipice where the path met a cliff, just like that day when the wolf killed Hiie. Again it was all over, again it was all past, again everything had vanished.

  “Come to our place first,” suggested Ints. “You should rest. You can lick some of the white stone and go to sleep.”

  “And then?”

  “Then what?”

  “When I wake up?”

  “I don’t know, Leemet. We’ll think about that later. Please, come with me.”

  I didn’t argue with Ints. So be it, I would go to the snakes. Actually it didn’t really matter where I went or what I did.

  We went back to the path that led to the snakes’ cave and went along for a while in silence. Then suddenly Ints hissed in alarm.

  “I can smell smoke!” she hissed. “Hurry! Something strange is going on!”

  I too could smell fire. I started running, and my self-confidence began to return. Smoke and flames blazing between the trees might mean that again I had the opportunity to fight, to bury my own dejection in blind rage for revenge. Who could be making a fire there? Maybe some monks and iron men? I took out my knife and fingered its handle greedily.

  “That smoke is coming from our cave!” hissed Ints beside me, horrified.

  We rushed onward and in a moment we were there. It was not iron men or monks at all. It was a group of villagers, with Johannes at their head, and Pärtel and fat Nigul and Jaakop and all the other men. They were standing in a circle around a huge fire that had been built right in front of the burrow leading to the snakes’ cave, and in the fire one could see several charred adders, which had evidently tried to get into the fresh air from the smoke invading the cave. The only thing they had achieved was to exchange death by choking for death by roasting.

  My mother was in the cave too! And Ints’s father, the king of the snakes! And her children, whose crowns were only just starting to grow on their heads! They were all there and couldn’t get out.

  Ints hissed in a horrifying voice and attacked the villagers from behind. One boy screamed and fell to the ground stung by Ints, then an old man roared, covered his face with his hand, and collapsed. Ints struck out to the right and the left, and fear and confusion reigned among the villagers.

  “Help! Help!” they screamed. “A snake from hell has got out!”

  I didn’t intend to let Ints fight alone. I summoned all the power in my lungs and rushed to help her. With my first blow I cut through fat Nigul’s throat and the greasy man fell down like a sack. I hit out heedlessly in all directions, and sometimes I had to close my eyes as the blood sprayed in my face and stung my eyes. There were too many people, and if I lunged in among them, I couldn’t defend my back. Someone flung a stone at my neck, my skull cracked, and I fell to my knees, spitting blood that came from I knew not where. The world revolved before my eyes, and before I had time to collect myself, I was bound up. Ints was lying beside me. She was still alive and moving slowly, but her backbone was broken.

  I saw my old friend Pärtel bending over us, in his hand a heavy club.

  “These snakes are actually not all that dangerous,” I heard him saying. “You just have to bash them in the middle of the back and they’re done for. It’s as delicate as a twig: one bash and the backbone is broken.”

  “Pärtel,” I mumbled, spitting blood. “Don’t you remember? This is Ints! She used to be your friend!”

  “A snake can’t be a Christian’s friend,” said Pärtel. “You’re the one who makes friends with snakes, because you’re a pagan. That’s why you’re going to be burned at the stake!”

  “You’re a monster,” I said quietly. Pärtel’s words didn’t frighten me. They could burn me if they wanted to; everything was finished anyway, and now they had killed my mother and Ints’s whole family and all my old friends the adders. There was no one left, only Ints with her broken back; no doubt they were about to make an end of her as well. Very well, let them do it; it was painful for me to watch Ints wriggling helplessly in the dust like some miserable earthworm.

  “Hold on, friend!” I hissed to her. Ints looked at me; she understood what I had said, but she was no longer able to answer. Spasmodic convulsions ran through her body. I could see she was in great pain.

  “Shall we throw the snake in the fire?” asked Jaakop, stepping closer and shoving Ints with his foot.

  “No, better to take it to an ants’ nest,” answered Pärtel. “Then you can see some fun; the ants will pick the flesh off the bones so clean as if the damn snake was boiled in a pot.”

  “You wretch, you beast, you turd!” I screeched on the ground, as Pärtel, accompanied by the village men, lifted Ints’s twitching body on a forked branch and took her away somewhere. I recalled how scornful Ints used to be about ants’ nests, and now she had to fall into such filth. Those same repulsive and stupid tiny insects would eat her flesh, carry her off bit by bit into their tiny passageways and leave only a white skeleton. Those wretched little creatures did not know Snakish—just like the villagers, thanks to whom they now had such an abundant meal to eat. The villagers had grown bold. They had summoned the courage to kill the adders, and now there was nothing left to impede the onslaught of the new world. To their deaf ears Snakish words were of no use; they offered no defense against something so crude as a stick, with which it is so easy to smash the delicate back of an adder.

  Pärtel had said I would be burned at the stake, and I had expected to be thrown into the fire there and then. Evidently the village men had other plans. Johannes stepped up to me, looked at me seriously for a while, then bent over me, and said, “Now you see, Leemet, what happened to you because you rejected the sign of the holy cross. If you had let the reverend brothers christen you, the devil would not have got you in his power.”

  “I am not in anyone’s power,” I murmured.

  “But why did you attack us then?” asked Johannes. “Why did you kill so many honest Christians?”

  “Because those Christians killed my friends,” I retorted. “Do you know, you stupid old man, that you murdered my mother today?”

  “Your mother? We were destroying snakes, Satan’s most loyal servants. Yesterday evening those disgusting animals killed two of our village people, young Andreas and dear Katariina. That crime could not go unpunished, so we suffocated the whole damned lot of them in their own cave.”

  “My mother was in that cave too,” I said.

  “In the snakes’ cave?” cried Johannes, brandishing his cross. “Then she was like a snake herself—or worse still, a witch! In that case she got her rightful fate!”

  “Old man,” I said. “Today I ripped out the guts of a fairy-worshipping misfit like you. I’d sorely like to plunge a knife into your belly too and yank your liver out, and then bash you in the face with it.”

  “You talk like a wild animal,” said Johannes scornfully. “And that’s what you are. Your soul is so strongly in the grip of the devil that you have no hope of partaking of God’s mercy and appreciating his grace. You attacked us together with your friend, the diabolical snake, but God protected us and guided the hand of bold Jaakop, who threw a stone at you. Your demonic lord is powerful, but he can’t prevail against God. Soon, at dawn, we’ll burn you, up on the hill of swings. Magdaleena can pray for you, but I’m letting you perish. For too long I’ve allowed a henchman of Satan in my own house; I have been weak and sinful myself.”

  I burst into bitter laughter, although I would rather have wept—but I had no more tears.

  “Magdaleena won’t be praying for me,” I screamed into Johannes’s face. “Don’t you worry about that! Ah, so that’s why you weren’t at home when Death came visiting yo
ur house! You were in the forest, killing snakes! Indeed your God did keep and preserve you and led you out of great danger. Rejoice now, old man, and thank your merciful God, who loves and protects you so much!”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Johannes uneasily. “When did Death visit my house?”

  “In the night, of course!” I sneered, sobbing. “Death comes at night and asks, ‘Knock-knock, is Elder Johannes at home?’ But he isn’t. So where is he? The elder is cooking adders in the forest! He has much work to do; his God has chosen him for it! But Death doesn’t want to go home with empty hands; he wants to fill his mouth with something! There’s no Johannes, no Leemet. But Magdaleena and Toomas are at home! Oh how nice! A beautiful girl, a little boy! How tasty! The sprites and the dogs of the grove also want to eat! God is busy gobbling up the adders that Johannes is cooking for him; well then, the sprites and the dogs can taste human flesh. All these beings are so hungry! They have such big bellies they’re never filled!”

  The last words I absolutely roared, rolling on the ground as if I were on hot coals. The villagers stood around me in astonishment, not knowing what to do. Johannes was trembling.

  “Have you …” he stammered. “Have you done harm to my child?”

  “Not I!” I bellowed. “It was the dogs of the grove, the sprites and the other gods! They drink blood. Not I! I only know Snakish, nothing else, and I’m the last one who does. The very last. For there aren’t even snakes anymore!”

  I burst into laughter, and the next moment I tried to bite the leg of the man standing nearest to me. The man leapt aside in alarm.

  “Don’t be afraid, you bastard! My teeth aren’t venomous; you won’t die of them!”

  “He’s gone mad,” said Johannes, his face pale. “Let’s take him with us and go quickly to the village. I’m very worried about Magdaleena.”

  “Too late, you old idiot, too late!” I brayed in a truly demented way, smashing my head against the ground. “Too late!”

  “Faster!” screamed Johannes, tearing at his beard. “Faster!”

  Thirty-Four

  hen I now think back to that night, the only feeling that prevails in me is a slight embarrassment at my own wild behavior. So much needless shouting and desperation! After the wolf bit Hiie to death, I should have been used to all those close to me being lost. The people and animals that I cared about were disappearing like fish that had swum too close to the surface; a single flash of the fin and they were no longer visible. One by one they were diving to a place I couldn’t follow. That is, of course, I could have followed them, just as it is possible to fling yourself into the sea to try to catch a fish, but you never will. One day I will follow all my dear ones, but although we’re heading in the same direction, we will never meet again. So great is the sea and so tiny are we.

  Today I can think about it completely calmly. I’m not happy to recall the memory of losing Magdaleena and little Toomas, Ints and the other adders, and my mother all on the same night. But that was how it had to go, for the death of a rotten tree is always rapid: one violent shake and over it goes. Its broad canopy, which for many years rose up in its place in the forest, has suddenly vanished. For a while there is a space in the forest cover, but soon the space is filled by new growth, as if nothing had happened.

  I no longer feel bitter that I have no one to whom I can pass on the Snakish words. On the contrary, I feel a gloating pleasure. Let them live without Snakish, those future generations of humans, whom I will never see, nor would I want to! Stupid, poor little insects, I don’t envy them. Of course they don’t know what they’re missing by not knowing Snakish—but I do. I know much more besides, but my foolish successors will never be able to know those things.

  Such a thought gives me pleasure. I try to imagine just such a new world as I lie for hours in my cave—a world without Snakish. Sometimes I laugh to myself, because that future seems so ridiculous to me; it’s a world in which I have no place. Strange and unpleasant.

  I am not bitter about the past. For me it is already too far away. The people whom I knew and loved then have by now become just pictures on the wall of Pirre and Rääk’s cave. I look at them but I don’t feel anything.

  That early morning when I was carried up to the village I was far from such peace of mind. I snarled and shrieked like a wolf cub and cursed everyone I saw, until one scruffy villager gave me such a bludgeon across the chops that some of my teeth flew out. Then I fell quiet and only spat blood, but the rage boiled within me as before, and I felt no pain, in either my smashed mouth or my limbs being cut to ribbons by cords.

  My screams, however, were as nothing beside the roaring that broke out when the gang of snake incinerators finally reached Johannes’s house and could behold all the work and effort that Ülgas the Sage had that night committed indoors. Elder Johannes ran up to me, shook me, and screamed, “You killed them! You bit them to death! You’re a werewolf. I’ve known it all along!”

  I was not surprised or enraged by these accusations; I had been anticipating them. I didn’t intend to answer Johannes at all, but since he wouldn’t leave me alone and kept on tugging at me, I mumbled through bloody lips: “Leave me alone, you idiot. I didn’t kill them. It was a mad old bugger like you, and if it satisfies you, then I’ve already torn out his entrails. He’s paid for his evils and one day you will too.”

  “You or some other pagan from the forest, what does it matter?” bellowed Johannes. “You’re all werewolves! What’s wrong with you? What evil spell forces you to do such horrible things?”

  “Never mind. Let’s toss him into the fire and burn him,” said Jaakop.

  “We will, but what use is that to Magdaleena and her son, who was a little knight besides?” wailed Johannes. “No revenge will save them.”

  “You’re right there, old man,” I said, thinking of Ülgas. I could have killed him a hundred times; it would be of no use to Magdaleena or Toomas. It was in every sense an unequal exchange: the life of a miserable mad sage counted for nothing to anyone; not a single man or beast mourned him. He should have been dead long ago, but instead he went around killing those who should have lived.

  People came and wrung their hands, weeping to heaven. They were certainly wondering how all those gods and jesuses, on whose help they counted and for whose protective support they had moved out of the forest, could now suddenly allow such a dreadful crime to happen. Especially on the same night when they had been so abundantly burning snakes in accordance with their God’s commands. I knew it wasn’t hard at all to find answers to their troubled questions. I had after all lived for years in the forest with Ülgas and remembered well the ease with which he explained everything to Tambet, using for that purpose the invented sprites and his own wily understanding. The villagers didn’t trouble themselves for long about it; thanks to Johannes they had an explanation.

  Naturally I turned out to be the guilty party. God could not allow an unchristened pagan to live in the village, someone who was, moreover, a werewolf, and as a punishment for this he withdrew his protecting hand from Magdaleena. As for little Toomas, God did not punish him, but indeed blessed him. The little child of a foreign knight was simply so dear to God that he called him to him with all speed and sat him on his knee. The villagers were of course only too happy to believe that hogwash, just as the late Tambet had taken as pure gold everything that spilled from between the slovenly teeth of Ülgas. There was no longer any need to worry about this little child; he was in good hands. In fact they felt a secret pride that such a baby had been born right here, in a simple Estonian village. They spoke of a miracle, and they discussed whether the child’s old clothes might be used to keep foxes away from chickens.

  Magdaleena was of course mourned, but everybody agreed that one must not stray from God’s commands and that my acceptance into the house was a great sin. Since I was conveniently within reach, they all came, together and one by one, to spit on me, and piled up a tall heap of brushwood, on top of which they
intended to roast me.

  This pyre, however, reminded me of the bonfire at my wedding, which I had built myself from the remains of the grove. On that occasion my mother was cooking venison on it; now there was no more mother, and these dullards were unable to catch deer with their wretched spears—so they had nothing left to roast but me.

  I wasn’t afraid of death—and why should I be, after all these gruesome events?—but I would have liked to carry on raging. At least I would have liked to do away with Elder Johannes for good, as well as my old friend Pärtel, whom I was now more inclined to call Peetrus. I would have liked to pour out my rage, to harry and plunder, and not to just be burnt to a crisp as a helpless lump on a pyre. But I was very tightly tied up, so that I couldn’t even move. Only my mouth was free, but just now Snakish was of no avail. It would have no effect on the obtuse minds of the villagers.

  The men grabbed me and hauled me toward the pile of brushwood. I saw that Peetrus was holding one of my legs and I said, “Who could have guessed that one day you would throw Ints on an ants’ nest and me on a pyre?”

  “What can be done,” replied Peetrus. “Everyone chooses their own fate. I invited you to the village long ago, but you came too late and you remained wild.”

  “Do you really believe I’m a werewolf?” I asked, now in Snakish. “You know that werewolves don’t exist!”

  For a while Peetrus didn’t answer, and I believed that he didn’t understand the Snakish words anymore.

  “Today in the world they believe that they do exist,” he said suddenly, but in human language, not Snakish, as evidently his tongue, gone soft with village food, couldn’t pronounce it any longer. “All the new people believe it. Therefore so do I.”

  “What are you talking about, Peetrus?” asked Jaakop, who was holding my other leg. He hadn’t understood my question.

  “I’m saying that werewolves are horrible monsters,” shouted Peetrus. “Over you go!”

  I flew into the heap of brushwood. The sun was shining on my face; I turned my face aside and saw my grandfather flying over the village buildings.