Andrus Kivirähk - The Man Who Spoke Snakish

“Of course, all men have them,” answered Uncle Vootele.

“Is the monk a man then? I thought she was an iron man’s wife.”

Uncle Vootele laughed and assured me that wasn’t so. At first I couldn’t believe him and put forward some counterclaims.

“But they have tits. I’ve seen them bouncing under their dresses. And they’re pregnant too. Surely a man can’t be pregnant?”

“They’re not pregnant, and they don’t have tits either. They’re simply very fat, the fat runs around them like resin on a spruce.”

The monk who was now striding along the path was also fat. He noticed me and slowed his pace, but then obviously thought I was alone and didn’t present any danger. He didn’t see Ints, because he was hidden in the grass. But the monk did immediately see the ring on my finger. He stared at it and said something in his own language.

“I don’t understand,” I replied, and hissed the same in Snakish, but the monk didn’t understand either language. He came up to me, squinting at my ring, looked around quickly, and seeing that the coast was clear, grabbed me with one hand by the scruff of the neck, while his other hand pulled the ring off my finger.

I hissed the strongest Snakish words into his face, but since the monk didn’t understand them, they had no effect on him. He was like the hedgehog who could calmly attack an adder, since his stupid head defended him from all the Snakish words. The monk gave me a smack on the back of the head and pushed me away, at the same time putting the ring in his mouth — apparently to hide and defend a precious thing from others.

I was hissing frantically and wanted to bite the monk, but Ints got in ahead of me. The monk screamed with pain and collapsed, with two bleeding spots on his shin.

Now he was much lower, and Ints managed to bite him on the throat. The adder jumped; the monk screamed and grabbed with his hand, but that didn’t help. Two little fang marks reddened on his neck, right on a vein.

“Thanks, Ints. But I want my ring back!” I said.

“Let’s wait until he dies, then we’ll take it from his mouth,” suggested Ints. We went back into the forest, for the monk’s painful yells and moans were disturbing us, and we stretched out happily in the cool of the trees, until everything went quiet. Then we came out of the forest. The monk was dead, but when I prized his jaws open, to my great disappointment the creature’s mouth was empty.

“He’s swallowed it,” said Ints.

“What shall we do now?” I cried. “He’s dead now, which means that he won’t shit anymore. Are we supposed to wait until he rots away?”

“Cut him to pieces,” suggested Ints.

“I don’t have such a big knife,” I said. “Just a little sheath knife, I’d be sawing all day with that. And I can’t drag him home; he’s terribly fat and heavy. And I can’t leave him here and go home for a knife, because meanwhile someone might come by and take him away or eat him up — and then I’ll be without my ring. But, say, Ints, couldn’t you squeeze inside him? He’s so big that there’d be easily room for you to crawl in. Then maybe you could bring the ring out in your mouth.”

“I don’t want to go in there,” replied Ints. “He’s bound to be terribly filthy inside. I’ll get covered in smudges, and my skin is so new and beautiful.”

“Please, Ints! You’re my friend, after all. Afterward you can go and wash yourself in the lake.”

“No, I’m not going inside all that mush. But I know what to do. We’ll invite a slowworm.”

Slowworms were not actually snakes, but simply legless lizards. Adders paid them no attention, since they thought that slowworms were trying to compare themselves with snakes, while being nothing like as clever, and therefore not deserving the name of snake. But they used slowworms to carry out irksome tasks, such as this one. Ints hissed, and pretty soon a long slowworm came slithering closer through the grass and lay submissively before the adder.

“Go inside that monk and look for a ring,” Ints commanded.

The slowworm nodded and wriggled nimbly into the monk’s mouth. Soon we saw the neck of the corpse bulging and then falling back; the slowworm had crawled through it.

For a while nothing happened. Finally Ints tilted his head and announced, “I think I hear the slowworm’s voice. Can you hear it?”

I had to admit I couldn’t hear anything, and no wonder. Adders have far sharper hearing. Ints crawled over to the monk’s stomach and listened intently.

“Yes, he says he’s found the ring, but can’t manage to bring it out. It won’t fit in his mouth. I think you’d better make a little hole into the monk with your sheath knife, then the slowworm will push the ring out through it.”

“Where exactly am I supposed to make the hole?” I asked, taking out the knife. Ints showed me the place. I started cutting. It was quite difficult, because apart from the skin of the stomach I had to also cut a thick layer of fat that covered the monk’s belly. The knife had almost vanished among the creases when finally Ints cried, “The slowworm says he can see your knife! Now make the hole wider.”

Now even I could hear the slowworm’s hissing. I twisted the knife in my hand, and in this way I prepared a hole through which the ring would fit.

“Now push!” Ints commanded the slowworm.

Movement could be seen under the hole, and after a while the luster of gold began to appear from inside the monk. The ring emerged into the daylight. I caught it by the fingers and in a moment the ring was in my hand. It was slimy and bloody, but I rubbed it clean against the grass and popped it onto my finger.

“Come out now!” said Ints to the slowworm. “Everything’s all right.”

After a little while the slowworm became visible, but he didn’t come out of the monk’s mouth but out of the fringe of his dress.

“I didn’t turn back,” he hissed.

“Thank you so much,” I said. “Come by our place another time — my mother will give you a haunch of venison.”

“With great pleasure!” promised the slowworm, and disappeared into the forest.

“Did you notice how he looked?” Ints asked in a whisper. “Horrible! I couldn’t imagine crawling through all that. What would be left of my skin? No fountain could ever wash off that filth.”

“The slowworm is the color of shit anyway, so it doesn’t look too bad on him,” I said.

We considered continuing the search for the Frog of the North, but evening had fallen by now, and we both had empty stomachs. We decided to go home and eat, and look for the Frog of the North some other time.

“Anyway I don’t believe this is the right ring anymore,” said Ints when we had set off homeward. “A real ring would never have ended up in a monk’s stomach. The Frog of the North doesn’t live in anyone’s intestines!”

“That was just unlucky!” I said, but Ints shook his head doubtfully.

e went in search of our fortune with the ring a few more times, but it was no use. The Frog of the North could not be found. Each time our journey ended with us at some point not wanting to go on any farther, and just stopping to eat blueberries.

Finally I came to the conclusion that the ring I received as a gift was not the right ring, or if it was, its use required a lot of effort and the sort of knowledge I didn’t have. I lost interest in the ring, stuffed it back in its leather pouch, and got on with other things.

In my search for the Frog of the North I had often come upon the Primates’ hut. Naturally I already knew them, because quite a few of us humans had remained in the forest. And Pirre and Rääk were actually human, though hairier than any of us. That was plain to see, since they didn’t wear animal skins, but walked around stark naked. They claimed that that was their ancient custom, and that the decline of our people hadn’t started with moving to the village or eating bread, but with putting on alien creatures’ skins and adopting iron tools stolen from ships. There wasn’t a speck of metal in their home, just hand axes made of stone. These were clumsy and almost shapeless, but Pirre and Rääk assured us they sat comfortably in the hand and were healthy to use.