Andrus Kivirähk - The Man Who Spoke Snakish

“Mõmmi, it’s not decent to watch in secret like that!” said Salme, shielding her naked body with her hands. She wasn’t angry in the slightest. I imagined how differently she would have spoken to me and Pärtel. It was actually insulting: she would have berated her own brother mercilessly for peeping at her and her peers, but with this bear she spoke in a tender and kind voice, as if he were her dearest friend. The bear came right up to Salme and licked her bare feet.

“Don’t do that; Mother is up there,” whispered Salme. “I have to climb back up too. See you some other time.”

“I’ll stay here under the tree until morning,” murmured the bear. “Let me admire your beauty!”

“You silly thing!” said Salme sweetly and stroked the bear’s head. Then she slipped back to her own tree and climbed up.

“Who was there?” asked Mother.

“Nobody,” my sister answered. She took the switch and set about swishing again, but in quite a different way than before. She was no longer bathing in the moon rays; she was performing for Mõmmi, watching down in the thicket, showing off all her charms.

“Let’s go home,” I said, angry with both my sister and the bear.

was really disappointed in Salme, and I had a good mind to tell Mother that my sister was flirting with a bear. I couldn’t do it, however, because straight away she would have wanted to know where I’d seen Salme consorting with a bear, and then I would have had to tell her that I’d been spying on the women whisking in the moonlight. So now I knew my sister’s secret, but had to keep it to myself. Even I couldn’t lash out at Salme, lest she guess that I had been in the forest that night and had seen everything. It was unpleasant.

What made the whole thing especially embarrassing was that Pärtel had also seen my sister with the bear, and kept asking me: “Are they a couple?” He didn’t do it to tease me, but it still irritated me. The fact that Salme was carrying on with a bear was shameful enough — but did the whole world have to know about it? The relations between the bear and Salme were a private family matter! I ordered Pärtel not to tell anyone what we had seen in the moonlit forest, but wasn’t at all sure that he would keep his promise.

I knew for myself how difficult that was. The secret turned in my stomach and pressed itself on my tongue — for what is the point of nosing out a secret if you can’t boast about what you know! It wasn’t just a question of Salme and the bear; we had seen a lot of other things that night that weren’t intended for our eyes. Later, when I met a friend of Salme’s, my head was spinning with the joy of victory; there she sat and regarded me as just an annoying boy, when I had seen her bosoms and bottom! If only she knew! But I kept quiet about my secret reconnaissance and only smiled strangely when Salme’s friends turned to me.

“What are you laughing at?” they would ask, but I wouldn’t answer. Instead I quickly twisted my mouth straight and ran away, so as not to betray my secret knowledge of bosoms and bottoms.

The only one to whom I dared honestly talk about it was Ints. But my news aroused neither interest nor amazement in him. For an adder, a bear and a human were quite similar creatures, and he saw no reason why they would not be attracted to each other. Nor did Ints have any opinion on the hidden beauty of Salme’s friends. Of course it’s quite natural that a snake, a creature that resembles a long smooth rope, would never see the purpose of breasts and buttocks. So Ints listened to my story quite indifferently and said that yes, he had seen all that and there was nothing special about it whatsoever.

I had promised myself that I’d visit Hiie more often, and I did. The girl was chopping up hares again when we crept out of the shrubbery, encouraged by Ints saying that neither Tambet nor his wife were at home at the moment. Hiie looked terribly tired, but when she saw us she suddenly grew downright joyful. Though she was ashamed of her spattered apron and bare toes, which were red with hares’ blood. She hid her toes behind the large ax, and would have liked to chat with us, but the wolves in the barn kept on baying hungrily, demanding food.

“I suppose I’d better carry on working,” whispered Hiie unhappily. “Otherwise they’ll start making so much noise that Mummy and Daddy will hear.”

“And then they’ll be angry?” I asked.

“No, no!” replied Hiie, but it was evident from her face that they would.

“Let’s go and look at those wolves,” suggested Ints, and we stepped into the barn. I had never before seen so many wolves gathered together. It was simply horrible — there were hundreds of them, each in its own little stall. As we looked inside the shed, they all turned their muzzles in our direction and smacked their tongues, obviously hoping that we were bringing the hare meat they hungered for. When the wolves saw that we came empty-handed, they started again with their piercing wail, and some of them threw themselves down on the ground and rolled, to show that they were frantic with hunger.

“They haven’t eaten since this morning,” explained Hiie.

“And a wolf shouldn’t eat so much anyway,” added Ints. “They have some fat on them; some are even quite plump. Just look at that beast by the door! It’s as big and fat as a bear. Don’t feed them so much!”

“But they howl if they don’t get food,” complained Hiie.

“Let’s make them stay quiet,” I said, and hissed loudly. Naturally my voice couldn’t compete with the ululations coming from the wolves’ throats, but a properly uttered Snakish word always reaches its mark; it burns itself through the loudest noise, and it’s impossible not to hear it. This Snakish word was intended to lull animals to sleep. The wolves ceased their clamor, yawned — showing their fangs — then snapped their jaws together and spread themselves out languidly. For a little while they eyed us sleepily, then put their heads on their paws and fell into slumber.

“Haven’t you been taught Snakish?” I asked.

“I have, but not those words,” replied Hiie, watching the sleeping wolves with fascination. “How long will they sleep?”

“Till the evening, or until we wake them. I’ll teach you the Snakish words I just used, so you can feed them in the morning and then put them to sleep, so they won’t make a noise. Would you like that?”

Hiie nodded excitedly. I repeated the relevant words of Snakish until they stayed in her mind and she could pronounce them. Then we did a test: I woke up the wolves. They got drowsily to their feet and at first were quite peaceful, but then their habit of continuous devouring came back to their minds. Noticing that they had no food, they let their throats resonate. Then Hiie faultlessly hissed the Snakish words she had learned by heart, and the wolves obediently lay down, covering their snouts with their tails, and in a moment were asleep again.

“Well, you see how simple it is!” I said. “Strange that your father and mother haven’t taught you that trick before.”

“They probably want Hiie to fatten the wolves all the time,” said Ints. “My mother always says that Tambet loves wolves more than people.”

Hiie blushed on hearing this, because we were talking about her father. She knew that we didn’t like her parents, and she felt guilty for being friendly to us. She must have also been afraid that our dislike for Tambet might grow so great that we wouldn’t like his daughter anymore either. She could hardly have loved her father much anyway. In fact Tambet was so terribly cruel to her that she could have replied to Ints: “Yes, it’s true. He really is a spiteful person.” But Hiie was too ashamed and meek to utter such words. I never heard her say anything bad about her parents, even though she was the one who suffered most because of them. She simply felt a constant embarrassment about them, as if she were ashamed of some ugly scar that could not be hidden from the gaze of others.