Andrus Kivirähk - The Man Who Spoke Snakish

So for a start I sought out Uncle Vootele and said to him: “Tell me about Meeme.”

“Why are you suddenly interested in him?” wondered Uncle Vootele. “Did he offer you wine? You mustn’t drink that; it makes your head swim.”

“He didn’t. Or actually he did, but I didn’t take it. I didn’t take mushrooms either. Tell me who he is! Why is he always lying on the ground and never walking?”

“Oh, he does walk; he doesn’t always loll around in one place,” said Uncle Vootele, fingering his beard. “Look, Leemet, Meeme is a strange person. In his day he was a great warrior, brave and strong. He should have led that battle in which your grandfather was killed. But Meeme didn’t want to go into that battle. In his opinion it was a terribly stupid idea — to fight the iron men with their own weapons. Even the wolves were left at home, and we walked on foot to the battlefield, where the iron men smashed us to a pulp with ease. Meeme could foresee this, and said that such warfare was madness. But no one listened to him.”

“Why?”

“Because many thought the iron men were cleverer than us. They secretly admired their coats of mail and shiny swords, even though they were marching to war against them. They thought that riding on wolves and fighting in the thickets was outmoded and senseless, and that no modern army fights like that. When Meeme explained to them that we ought to stick to our own ancient weapons, many people confirmed that such a tactic was downright suicidal. “We should learn from developed peoples,” they said. “And if the iron men fight on an open field and without wolves, then that is more correct and efficient. They must know what’s good! After all, they sailed here from faraway lands! We should learn from them, not go into battle like some primates. We shouldn’t bring the name of Estonians to shame like that! Let the iron men see that we too know how to fight like humans! We aren’t one iota worse than any other nation! And so they went to war on foot, without wolves, and took with them the weapons they had seized from the iron men. And naturally they were defeated. Apart from my father, no one came off that field alive, and he was saved only by his fangs, the most ancient weapon, one that has now totally disappeared from human mouths.”

Uncle Vootele picked a fiber of meat from between his teeth, swallowed it, and carried on talking.

“Then Meeme started battling the iron men single-handed, and he didn’t use a sword or a spear, but good old Snakish words, which drove all the animals crazy. They went on an enraged attack against the iron men, when Meeme simply gave the command. He conducted his own battles at the edge of the wood, ambushing iron men who had strayed there. Wolves leapt on the iron men from among the trees and dragged these foreigners into the thickets, where Meeme chopped them to bits with a good old ax. It certainly wasn’t the sort of war that the iron men like to wage, and it was far from modern, but very effective. The iron men feared the forest like fire, for they knew that death lay in wait there. And they couldn’t avoid the forest — they had to ride past or through it — and many of them didn’t come out the other side. You can only imagine what we could have achieved if all men had acted like Meeme and slaughtered the foreigners in the forest with the aid of Snakish words and wolves, instead of riding onto the open battlefield. Meeme alone did the work of ten men, but even that didn’t break him.

“But even though Meeme fought like a madman and chopped at the iron men like lightning, that did nothing to stop more and more people moving to live in the village. Meeme cleared the forest of foreigners, but there was no point in that anymore. The forest became ever emptier, and Meeme, who had made it his goal to save his people and kill the iron men, saw that his people were thronging to take up the beliefs of these same iron men, to buy themselves a little plot of land, turn their bums toward the sun, and cut grain from the ground on all fours with a sickle. Why should Meeme carry on fighting? He saw that people didn’t need his help. Then Meeme would only kill iron men when they got in his way; the rest of the time he ate mushrooms and slept.”

“Now he drinks wine,” I said.

“Makes no difference. There’s no order for him anymore; he’s given up on everything, and now he wants to rest alone.”

I thanked Uncle Vootele and set off. Uncle’s story had been very interesting, but the main thing was that it confirmed my belief in the ring. Meeme, the former bold warrior, could be the man to give me the key. He didn’t keep it for himself because nothing interested him anymore, not even the Frog of the North. This was hard for me to imagine. How could he give up even on the Frog of the North? How could he be so tired?

But that was not my concern. I hurried home and looked for my ring. I took it out of the pouch and stuck it on the end of my finger.

I had secretly hoped that some mysterious power would lead me by the fingers toward the cave of the Frog of the North if I simply ran fast enough while wearing the ring, but no such thing happened. The ring sat on the end of my finger as a ring always does, and I understood that the search for the Frog of the North would not be simple.

At any fate I was ready to make the effort. But I didn’t want to search alone. I couldn’t find Pärtel — he wasn’t at home — but I met with Ints and invited him along with me.

The adder agreed readily. Unlike the blooming fern, whose existence he vehemently denied, Ints thought it quite possible that the ring might lead us to the Frog of the North.

“I don’t know anything about rings and other man-made things,” he said. “If you think that’s the key, then let’s try and find out. How does it work?”

“I don’t know that,” I said. “We should simply keep walking, and the ring will lead us itself to the right place.”

We set off. We tried to move completely randomly, not choosing the paths we usually wandered. I even tried shutting my eyes, so as to walk blind, but that proved too complicated in the forest, for I kept stumbling into thickets and scratching my face.

“Open your eyes,” said Ints. “If the ring is really capable of anything, then you don’t need all this trickery and your skin will survive.”

To snakes, skin is very important. Every snake is proud of his skin. Even the smallest scratch they experience as painful, and if anything does happen, they wait patiently for the time when they can slough off the old skin and wear a new undamaged coat. After moulting they are very sensitive about their appearance, and they may fly into a rage if you happen, say, to drip roasting fat onto them, or touch them with fingers stained violet from eating berries. Toward their old moulted skin, torn in several places, they feel only disgust or even horror. In the long winter months, when snakes don’t leave their lairs, mother adders tell their offspring countless horror stories about moulted skins that move of their own accord in a mysterious way, chasing their former owners and wrapping themselves around them. The little adders shiver, and when Mother finishes the story they beg her: “Tell it again! Tell us about the skin again!”

So much for that. For a while Ints wore a still quite fresh and moist glossy skin; he crawled carefully among the tussocks and tried to avoid decaying leaves, which might smudge him. We kept moving forward, chatting with each other, till we came unexpectedly to the edge of the forest, where the trees ended and an open plain began, in the middle of which a narrow path meandered. And on that path a monk was walking.

When I was very small I thought that monks were the wives of the iron men, since they wore the same kinds of wide dresses that women do. True, they weren’t very good-looking, and I did wonder why the iron men had such ugly spouses. The iron men didn’t look nice either, and as a little boy I was sure that their faces were made of iron and that they had no noses or mouths. Only later did I see iron men taking their helmets off, and I understood that they were also human. Likewise, I also once happened to see a monk pissing, and I ran to Uncle Vootele, breathless with anxiety, my eyes burning in my head: “Uncle, Uncle! The monk has a willy!”