Andrus Kivirähk - The Man Who Spoke Snakish

Magdaleena got busy laying the table, but Johannes sat down next to me and laid his hand on my shoulder.

“Don’t think that you would have been able to learn Snakish words unless God had marked you out for that,” he said. “God doesn’t want an innocent child like my daughter to perish, and for that reason he opened your mind to the language of snakes, so that you could appear out of the woods and save Magdaleena’s life.”

“I don’t know anything about God, and I don’t want to,” I said. “I was taught those words by my uncle. Every human knows them, if he hasn’t forgotten them all by moving to the village.”

“Even if we have forgotten something, that is God’s will,” said Johannes, explaining further. “God doesn’t want us to talk to the snakes, for a snake is his enemy. And what have we to say to the enemies of God? Nowhere on earth do they talk to snakes. Believe me. I have wandered around and I know what I’m talking about. Why should we be the last miserable people to be on the side of the snakes? I think we should listen to those who are wiser than us. The foreigners, who know how to build fortresses and monasteries of stone, whose ships are big and fast, and whose bodies are covered by armor that no arrow can penetrate. Have the snakes taught them all that wisdom? No, they uncovered these secrets thanks to God! He has enlightened them and made them strong, and he will help us too, if we listen to him.”

“If you don’t know Snakish words, then neither stone nor iron are of any use,” I said. “I’ve seen my friend an adder biting a monk in the throat. The monk perished on the spot.”

“Lord have mercy!” yelled Johannes. “What a heinous crime! Cursed be that snake. Now you see that they are the servants of Satan, when they attack even holy fathers. Fortunately there’s no doubt that that monk is now in Paradise, in eternal bliss.”

“Actually, I think that foxes and wandering wolves ate his body,” I said. “If you don’t understand Snakish, you’re more wretched than a frog. Why should we be like those fools who don’t understand a single hiss of it? They’re not humans; they’re vermin!”

I immediately regretted what I’d said, because I recalled that Johannes himself was such a verminous creature, for whom Snakish words were a dark land. But Johannes didn’t get angry. He even laughed!

“Boy, you really have lived too long in the forest,” he said, with an unpleasant arrogance. “How can you think that you are clever, and that these strong foreign people who rule the whole world in the name of God are a stupid bunch? In that case the Holy Father, the Pope, would also be stupid, because he doesn’t know Snakish either! Is that what you mean? Better not to say so, it would be a terrible sin. It was actually a sin even for me to ask you that. I will certainly have to confess that.”

“Who is this Pope then?” I asked.

“The Pope is God’s deputy on the earth,” said Johannes in a quiet voice, and his face became as sweet as if he were licking honey. “He lives in the holy city of Rome and keeps his hand over us all like a loving father. I have visited him and kissed his feet, back when I was still a little boy. The iron men took me with them, so that I, a little forest lad as I was then, could see the might of the world, how wise and strong the Christians are. I was taken to Rome and led in front of the Pope, and the glory and splendor I saw there took my breath away. Gold, silver, and precious stones were glittering everywhere; the churches were made of stone and with such high towers that not a single spruce tree here in the forest could reach them. Then I understood that the God that is served by the foreigners is the most powerful, and if we want to achieve anything in life, then it is wise to turn to him and to forget all the silly superstitious customs that make us ridiculous before the whole world. I came back home and was ashamed that we still live like children, while other nations have grown into adults. We should hurry after them; we should learn all the necessary knowledge that has been an everyday thing elsewhere in the world. Fortunately more and more knights and pious brothers were coming to our land. They helped us in every way and showed us how to be like civilized people. Believe me one day we will be no worse than them.”

“That’s why we still shouldn’t forget the Snakish words,” I said.

Johannes leaned in very close to me.

“Dear boy, keep in mind what I tell you,” he whispered. “Actually there are no Snakish words.”

This was such a surprising claim that I didn’t even burst out laughing; I simply looked the village elder in the eye to see what other odd things he would say or do.

“Yes, they don’t exist!” he repeated. “How else could it be that the church knows nothing of them? Do you think that if God has made the Pope his deputy on the earth, he hasn’t made him all-powerful? The Pope is omnipotent. Every word he says is true, and with the help of God he can even make the rivers flow backward. If Snakish words did exist, the Pope would understand them too, and so would other holy men, but they don’t, for God hasn’t given snakes the power of speech. They shouldn’t be spoken to. They should be killed, or else be kept away by the power of prayer, and every holy man is able, with the help of the Word of God, to drive all the snakes back to Hell. So it is! The fact that you saved my child from a snake today is not your doing, but God’s! He looked down from Heaven and made the snake lick Magdaleena’s wound clean.”

“What’s this you’re saying now?” I asked. “I do happen to know that I spoke with him, exactly as I’m speaking with you now.”

“That isn’t possible!” declared Johannes, and his expression now turned severe. “Snakes don’t speak! It only seemed that way to you! You must leave the forest. The devil rules there, and he is leading you astray and making you hear and see things that don’t exist. Come to the village, be baptized, start going to church, and you’ll soon understand that Snakish words are a delusion!”

“That will never happen!” I said, getting up. “I would have to be completely mad! I do know those words! Listen!”

I gave a long hiss, spoke to Johannes in my best Snakish, but he only stared at me and said, “That’s just a hiss, which doesn’t mean anything! Forget this stupidity! That is what I meant when I said that our nation is still living like a child. It’s time to grow up! It’s time to live like the others! Snakish doesn’t exist!”

“It does exist, and if everyone understood it as they used to, there would be no foreigners living among us!” I said. “The Frog of the North would have gobbled them all up, and not even their bones would be lying by the seaside!”

“Childishness again!” said Johannes. “What Frog of the North? No one survives against the shining knights and their swords!”

I was furious. Johannes was talking complete nonsense, but it wasn’t possible for me to convince him. I had no way to produce the Frog of the North to swallow those knights with their swords. The Frog was sleeping somewhere in his secret burrow and I didn’t have the key to find him; and anyway I couldn’t wake him up. And I had no way of proving even the power of Snakish words, because I couldn’t invite an adder into Johannes’s home. Even if I were to chat with some snake, Johannes would only hear what to him was incomprehensible hissing. We lived in different worlds, like two snails who cannot look into each other’s shells. I could claim to him that Snakish and the Frog of the North are in my shell, and he wouldn’t believe it anyway, because in his shell he saw God and the Pope of Rome.

I wanted to go off home, for my mood was black and my nose smelt the stench of putrescence more and more, but then Magdaleena came up to me, touched me on the shoulder, and invited me to eat. I guessed what they would be eating. Just as I had stepped at Magdaleena’s invitation into her father’s cottage, now I went to their table too.