Andrus Kivirähk - The Man Who Spoke Snakish

“Is the Frog of the North here too?” I asked.

“Oh yes, in quite a few places,” Pirre assured me, and showed me pictures of a big lizard-like creature, flying around the heads of tiny humans, with other humans’ legs dangling out between its jaws.

“These pictures are really, really old,” said Hiie respectfully. “The Frog of the North hasn’t been seen for ages.”

“Oh, dear child!” laughed Pirre and Rääk. “The time since the last time the Frog of the North flew can’t even be measured yet. It was so recently! These pictures tell us about times long before that. And actually these pictures aren’t all that old. The really old pictures are behind this wall.” The Primates pointed to a rock far at the back of the cave. “In olden times this cave was much bigger, but a few hundred thousand years ago the earth quaked here and the end of the cave was buried under rocks. All the old drawings remained there; there was a huge number of them, dating from the very earliest times. No one can see them anymore, and so you can’t know exactly what happened in those olden times. If there are no pictures, you can’t remember anything. But at least this big louse is now nicely drawn, and all future generations can admire him. He will endure.”

Pirre looked proudly at his handiwork, a great red insect painted on the wall, which might be a louse, or just as well a spider or a fly. The Primates were not the best of artists, and lice are quite difficult to draw.

“Look, this is you!” said Hiie tenderly to her pet. The louse shivered with pleasure, as Hiie stroked it. It was not interested in the picture and maybe didn’t even see it, since we weren’t sure if it had eyes.

We spent the whole evening with Pirre and Rääk, sitting by the fire and listening to the Primates singing their strange songs, which were not at all like the tunes that humans sing. Primates’ songs consisted more of vocalizations than of words, together with squeals, growls, and murmurs, but as a whole it sounded very beautiful. We tried to sing along, but couldn’t manage at all well. Nowadays, when I have nothing better to do, I sometimes call to mind those ancient tunes, which no one else remembers apart from me, and I hum to myself. I like those old songs much better than these fashionable “regi” songs that the village women crow nowadays, which always give me a headache. They last so interminably long; you think the women will never shut up. The Primates’ songs were never long. They either ended with a deafening shriek or subsided into a low hum, and they had a strange power. Even today they make my heart glad and they conjure up before my eyes those happy evenings when Pirre and Rääk still lived in their cave and used to sing to us.

That cave has now collapsed shut. No one will ever see Pirre’s drawing of the louse. No one will ever know that such a creature lived here in the forest.

Oh, there are so many things that no one will ever get to know about.

We said good-bye to the Primates and went home. Ints crawled into his nest. Hiie set off for her hut. She had never gone home so late, and she would surely have got a beating from her mother and father, but luckily they weren’t there. Lately they had been going more and more to the sacred grove to listen to Ülgas’s incantations, and that evening too they were out at some special nocturnal gathering where they sacrificed foxes by moonlight, trying to find out what was on the sprites’ minds.

I was plodding toward my shack when suddenly someone called me. It was Pärtel. I was quite astonished that he was still roaming around so late, but I thought he might be doing something exciting, and I was ready for adventure right away. I didn’t give a thought to that morning’s quarrel.

As soon as I saw Pärtel closer up, I understood that he wasn’t out in the forest to play any pranks. He looked very troubled, even frightened, grabbed me by the shoulder, and demanded, “Where were you? I was looking for you!”

“What is it?” I asked. “Something wrong?”

“I don’t know,” said Pärtel. “It’s just that … I wanted to tell you … Father said today … We’re moving to the village.”

Nothing could have shocked me more. I sat right down among the ferns, completely stunned by my friend’s news, and Pärtel sat down beside me, looking at me pleadingly, as if he had fallen into a bog pool and was now waiting for me to heave him out from it and help him back onto dry land. But there was no way I could help him out from the pool into which he had now fallen.

“Why?” was the only thing I could say.

“Father said there’s no point in staying here; everyone’s leaving,” replied Pärtel. “He doesn’t want to go, but there’s nothing that can be done. There’s no sense in swimming against the tide. If the rest of the people have decided to move to the village, you have to get used to it and follow the crowd.”

For a while we were silent again.

Finally I asked him, “Do you want to go?”

Pärtel shrugged.

“Not really,” he said. “But what can I do? If Father and Mother are going, I have to go with them. I can’t stay here alone.”

He shifted closer to me.

“Might you come too?” he asked. “Not tomorrow, but some time. In a while. It’d be nice, we’d be together again and …”

“I was born in the village,” I said. “Mother moved away from there to the forest and said she’d never go back. And I don’t want to either. You saw what they wanted to do to Ints. They’re all mad there.”

“Well, yes, that business with Ints was awful,” agreed Pärtel. “And I wouldn’t … You know me. I like it here! But there’s nothing I can do. I have to go!”

“I know,” I said quietly.

Pärtel was sitting beside me like a heap of misery. I felt terribly sorry for him.

“Never mind,” I said. “The village isn’t far away, right here on the edge of the forest. I can visit you sometimes and you can always slip into the forest when you want to play with me. We’ll keep seeing each other.”

“Yes, of course,” Pärtel agreed. “I’ll be sure to come looking for you in the forest!”

“And I’ll come to your place, and I’ll bring Hiie and Ints with me. You won’t start hitting Ints with a stick.”

“No, I’m not that mad! I’ll … I’ll carry on living as I did in the forest.”

“But you’ll start eating bread. It won’t do you any harm, though. You managed eating it very well.”

“Yes, I can eat bread. It won’t do anything to me, but I don’t like it either. Well, I guess you can always get meat in the village too.”

“You see it’s not so bad after all,” I said. But actually I was thinking it is bad, very bad. It couldn’t be worse! My best friend is moving away! How could it happen like this? Surely he won’t go after all! Maybe he’ll stay in the forest and everything will be as it was.

“Yes, it’s not so bad,” muttered Pärtel, but it was quite clear that he was thinking the same as I was.

We sat morosely a while longer, until Pärtel finally got up.

“Well, it’s nothing,” he said somehow soundlessly, as if he’d caught a cold and lost his voice. “I’ll go home now. Tomorrow morning we’ll get going; before that I have to get ready.”

“Have you let your wolves out?” I asked.

“We will tomorrow,” replied Pärtel. He stood there snuffling.

“See you then,” he fumbled. “You might come tomorrow and see how we’re …”

“Guess I’ll come then,” I said.

“Till tomorrow,” said my friend and set off on the way through the forest to his shack, to sleep there for the last time. It was terrible and incredible. I traipsed home and curled up in my place, but I couldn’t sleep all night; I finally got to sleep toward morning, and slept like a log. Mother didn’t wake me; she liked me to sleep in, just as she liked me to eat a lot. When I finally opened my eyes it was already noon. Pärtel has gone, I thought straight away, and actually I was pleased that I hadn’t gone to see him off. I lay on my back awhile, staring at the ceiling.