Andrus Kivirähk - The Man Who Spoke Snakish

For a while I didn’t dare to leave the venison, because although it was also dead, that hunk of meat was somehow safe — nourishing and friendly — whereas my dead uncle was metamorphosing in my mind into an ever more horrible and dangerous being, lurking for me in the darkness and deathly silence somewhere. At the same time there was still a place in my thoughts for that other uncle, the smiling, genial Uncle Vootele, and as much as I feared that bug-eyed corpse, I yearned for the living Uncle Vootele, and I started quietly sobbing when I realized anew that Uncle was dead and we would never meet again. That awareness came in waves and was just as painful as the gnawing ache of my broken arm, bringing me to despair and then receding, only to return a little while later. I squatted by the venison, wept, and ate, mourning Uncle Vootele and fearing his corpse.

Finally I fell asleep again and when I awoke again I tried to call out a little, but my voice was as hoarse and weak as before. Then, since my arm was hurting a little less for the moment, I hit upon the idea of trying to break out of the cellar by my own effort. That meant, of course, that I had to move around again and risk stumbling over the corpse, but after a moment’s hesitation I crawled from my spot. I managed to reach the ladder without coming across Uncle Vootele’s body, and with a little effort managed to get onto the first rung. But when I reached the closed hatch and tried to push it up with my good arm, I soon realized that it wasn’t possible. The hatch was too heavy; it would have been hard for me to get it open even with two hands, but with only one arm, moreover in a position where every movement caused such pain that I whimpered out loud, it was an unworkable task. I went down the ladder, but in the darkness I slipped on one rung, rolled to the floor, did more damage to my injured arm, and in the horrible rush of agony lost consciousness.

I don’t know whether the time was short or long, but in the end I recovered. I was stunned and so weak that I couldn’t even get to my knees. I crawled slowly to where I thought the venison was, but naturally I now bumped almost immediately into Uncle Vootele.

I was really afflicted by the pain radiating from my arm, and if I had wanted to escape, I simply wouldn’t have had enough strength. So I restricted myself to simply turning my face away after coming across the corpse.

Uncle Vootele did not smell good; he gave off an unpleasant stench, but otherwise he remained quiet and gentle as a corpse should. Suddenly I no longer feared him, I put my whole arm out boldly, and touched the body resting beside me. I had bumped against Uncle’s shoulder. There was his arm, on the other side his neck and from there I could go up to the face, but I didn’t want to touch that. I left Uncle to rest in peace and crawled away. I was hungry and needed venison, not a dead human.

In the following days I hardly left the pile of meat. Uncle had begun to stink and the stench made me feel ill. I no longer feared Uncle’s corpse; it had become repulsive to me. Somewhere in the dark he lay slowly rotting, contaminating the air which I, his nephew, had to breathe. At one time he had taught me Snakish; now he was gradually poisoning me.

I cowered in the dark, having lost all sense of time passing, drowsy and almost stupefied with pain, despair, and the stench of death, and strange ideas and visions revolved in my head. In my exhausted brain the fresh leafless forest that I had seen when I climbed out of the snakes’ den and my rotting uncle blended together, and I saw apparitions of those same snow-thawed trees, the leafless branches like putrefied forked joints, and from that forest emerged a suffocating corpse stench.

Then in my thoughts Uncle was transformed into the Frog of the North, a gigantic winged snake, but he too was oozing and decaying. I could almost see him; he was lying beside me, and in my ramblings I lifted my arm and patted the darkness around me, consoling the imaginary Frog: “Never mind. You’ll get well!” But my arm passed through the giant snake’s scales, for it was decayed and brittle, and fetid air escaped from it with a hiss. In that hiss I recognized Snakish words and answered them; I was hissing on my own in the darkness of Uncle Vootele’s cellar, and the air grew thicker and heavier. When I chewed the venison, it too stank of death and I was not sure whether I was eating deer or my own deceased uncle. But even that gruesome doubt couldn’t shock me anymore, so weak was I.

Yet it was the hissing that saved me, those same Snakish words that this beloved uncle, now decomposing on the ground, had taught me, choked on the venison that he so loved to eat. I drove the image of the dead Frog of the North from my mind and rambled on, pressing from my parched lips the most diverse hisses. And those quiet, barely audible Snakish words penetrated through the ground surface, to where not even the loudest screams produced by the human mouth could penetrate.

The adders, now awoken from their hibernation, heard me, and the king of the snakes, Ints’s father, bit through the trapdoor. They brought me out and carried me home to Mother, who had to spend a long time nursing and feeding me before I could walk and talk again.

My left arm remained crooked forever, broken in two places. Likewise the smell of the corpse never left my nostrils. Sometimes it seems to have gone. For many days I can’t smell it, but in a moment it again strikes my nose, ranker than ever, and turns my stomach. It was the last gift I received from my beloved uncle, who taught me Snakish and who moldered away beside me.

he forest has changed. Even the trees are not as they were, or I don’t recognize them; they have become alien to me. I don’t mean that their trunks have become thicker, their crowns broader, and their tops stretch ever higher; that is all natural. There is something apart from the usual growth; the forest has become careless. It grows in any old way; it sheds leaves where previously the paths were clear. It has become tangled and shaggy. It is no longer a home but lives its own life and breathes to its own set rhythm. You might almost think that the forest is itself to blame for the people leaving its midst, because it behaves like a conqueror, spreading out in the footsteps of its former master. It was the people that vacated the place, and just as they let loose their own wolves, so they released the forest from its bonds and it dispersed itself like a pile of mold. Going to the spring, I’m constantly finding it off the footpath, and I stamp back the footpath into the ground, and the forest falls with an insulted rustle back into a coma, only to gain consciousness and spring back the next moment, stretching out its branches and leaves and covering the ancient human paths with needles. One day I will no longer go to the spring, and then the power will finally be in its hands.

Of course there are still the villagers, and they come here sometimes to pick berries, mushrooms, or brushwood, but they are no match for the forest. They are afraid of the forest, much more than needs be, and to increase their terror they have invented all sorts of monsters — werewolves, leprechauns, and ghosts. These poor idiots even believe in sprites; Ülgas the Sage can really rest assured that he has good disciples and plenty of them. Strange that Snakish has been forgotten while belief in fairies remains. Stupidity is stronger than wisdom. Ignorance is as tough as a tree root that bores into the ground where people once walked. The forest is proliferating; the village people are on the increase — but I am the last man who knows Snakish.