Andrus Kivirähk - The Man Who Spoke Snakish

But there are also a large number of plants that don’t excite you at all. There are all sorts of stalks and grasses that fill the forest. You never pick them. It would seem downright ridiculous to go home with a handful of ordinary grass. Why bring that hay indoors? Of course it’s nice that there are such plants, because the forest floor can’t be carpeted with flowers alone, but they don’t arrest your gaze. And unfortunately Hiie was that sort of plant. I had nothing against meeting her sometimes in the forest, but I didn’t want to take her home. I was interested in the flowers that grew in the village, especially when they swam naked in the lake like water lilies.

So it was quite annoying for me to listen at home to Mother’s discussions about where she would put me and Hiie to sleep when we started living together. Mother wanted to enlarge our shack, to move herself to an outhouse and leave the whole old hovel to us. I always tried delicately to contest this, reminding Mother that we weren’t married yet, but she just shrugged her shoulders: “You ought to think about the future! You’ll be taking a wife one day, won’t you, and who else but Hiie? There aren’t any other girls here in the forest.”

Fortunately Mother never pushed me into taking a wife, for in her opinion I was still a child — even if at the same time the only man — and my main task was to eat properly what Mother made for me, and to be a good boy. But even though it was still some time in the future, Mother was starting to yearn for Hiie to enjoy her roasts too.

“It would be so nice if Hiie came to eat with us sometimes,” she said, smiling and blowing at the fire. Mother was for some reason of the firm opinion that Hiie and I were already a couple, and thought that I was just too shy to invite my young lady to visit. She tried to embolden me, explaining that even though we weren’t living together, I was still allowed to invite Hiie to lunch, because the sooner she got to know her future daughter-in-law, the better.

“Don’t be afraid. I’ll begin to love her like my own daughter!” she assured me, looking at me as if she could already see me and Hiie in her mind’s eye sitting side by side at the table, tucking into a haunch of venison. When she talked like this I always lost my appetite, but I didn’t say anything. In the end I consoled myself with the fact that Hiie’s father wouldn’t allow his daughter to be the wife of a village-born bastard anyway.

Tambet really would never have allowed it. His grudge against our family was as great as ever. I no longer fled into the bushes like a little boy when I caught sight of him — that would have been ridiculous, for I was now even taller than Tambet — but we never greeted each other.

It was in fact a pretty extraordinary situation that prevailed in the forest then; there were very few people left, but we had nothing to do with each other. Tambet and Mall would whizz past our family as proud hawks fly over nettles, without even turning their heads.

Ülgas the Sage was still alive too, and although very old and terribly shriveled, he did acknowledge us and even spoke to us, but only to make invocations and shout threats. Hanging around the empty sacred grove had obviously driven him crazy; he saw sprites everywhere, and could most often be found crouching at the foot of some tree bringing offerings to the spirit living in its trunk. He became a real nuisance to small animals, and his paths were steeped in a trail of blood. With the aid of Snakish words he forced squirrels, hares, and weasels to submit to him, and he would kill them by twisting their necks twice. Then he would crawl on his knees around some oak or linden tree and mark its roots with fresh blood. Finally he would lumber away, but would soon thereafter think he’d seen some new wood-sprite, which he absolutely had to placate, and the whole gruesome massacre would begin again. Foxes and polecats would follow behind him and gobble up the carcasses of the animals brought for sacrifice; that was kind of them, because otherwise the stink would have made it impossible to walk around in the forest.

Ülgas was always shouting curses at our family, and screamed that if we didn’t come to the sacred grove immediately, the dogs of the grove would come and kill us. I had lived in the forest all my life, but I had never seen such animals as the dogs of the grove, so I didn’t take Ülgas’s threats seriously. But he did have an annoying and repulsive way about him, and to tell the truth, I was impatiently anticipating the old man’s death. He looked ready to keel over at any moment: he had become as thin as a skeleton, his shaggy beard hung down to his navel, and his tangled hair bristled in every direction. He hardly ate anything, and only stayed on his feet thanks to his lunacy. But that was a strong stick to lean on. He was not dying anytime soon.

Apart from Tambet and Mall, who treated us with silent contempt, and Ülgas, who shouted his rage in our faces, the only one left alive was Meeme, who was sinking more and more under the sod. Moss grew on his clothes, dead insects, fallen leaves, and all sorts of mold were stuck on the beard that covered his whole face. From within that mess shone only the two eyes, whose lashes were tangled with cobwebs, and a mouth with fat red lips. To those lips Meeme raised his wineskin every little while. It was completely incomprehensible how he still managed to get himself anything to drink; from his appearance you would think that roots were growing out of his heels, which held him fixed to the ground. But evidently this human sod was still capable of getting up and killing, because apart from robbing the monks or the men of iron it wasn’t possible to get wine.

Meeme had little to do with other people. Sometimes when he saw me with Hiie he yelled a few obscenities and we went elsewhere. Once I happened to see how Ülgas evidently mistook Meeme for some Forest-Mother or moss-sprite, and tried to bring him a sacrifice — then Meeme spat into Ülgas’s eye with deadly accuracy and Ülgas fled, just as if his nose had been bitten.

Likewise the Primates Pirre and Rääk were still in the forest, though they no longer lived in their old cave, but had moved to a tree. That is, in their love of antiquity they had gone so far that even living in a cave seemed senselessly modern to them. In their opinion the villagers had already sunk over their heads into the bog; I was wading in it up to my chest — but sure ground was a tree branch under bare ground.

They claimed that now they felt a lot healthier, and that peace and happiness were only to be found in the way of life they inherited from their ancestors. I thought that climbing in the trees was an unnecessary discomfort, and felt bad watching Pirre crawling slowly and uncertainly along some spruce tree, his face wincing as the needles prodded his naked willy. Pirre and Rääk were Primates after all, not primeval apes, whose example they were following, and for them life in the trees was unfamiliar and difficult. Besides, they were no longer young; their fur was gray and it was very troublesome for them to keep their balance on the branches. In the name of their principles, however, they were prepared to undergo any trial.

I visited them quite often, for there was no one else to visit; besides, Pirre and Rääk were nice, despite their odd ideas. Their louse was still living too, perhaps by growing in size it had also increased its life span as well. It was certainly the oldest louse in the world. It had moved to the trees along with Pirre and Rääk, and squatted on a branch like a big white owl. Only when Hiie approached did it scrabble its way down the trunk and go and rub itself against her legs.

By now Hiie was too big to ride on the louse’s back, but the insect never seemed to understand that, and slouched invitingly every time. Hiie would stroke and pat it and held the louse by one leg like a child, and the insect hopped on its remaining legs happily beside her.