Andrus Kivirähk - The Man Who Spoke Snakish

y suspicions didn’t let me down. On the table was a big loaf of bread, and around it bowls and dishes of different sizes, full of strange, sticky glistening substances. I felt sick at the very sight of them, but Magdaleena sat next to me, and I sensed the scent of her hair penetrating the carrion stench, conquering my nostrils completely and flowing into my throat, so that I thought I could taste Magdaleena in my mouth. At once I didn’t care anymore about the disgusting things on the table and was prepared to sacrifice my digestion for the sake of Magdaleena.

Johannes settled himself at the end of the table, crossed his hands, lowered his eyes, and mumbled something. Magdaleena followed her father’s example. I guessed that this too was some useless spell, much the same as the incantations of Ülgas the Sage before he started to chop up animal sacrifices. Johannes and Magdaleena did not mumble for long; soon Johannes lifted his head, took the loaf of bread in one hand, a knife in the other, and cut a coarse slice.

“This is for you, visitor from afar!” he said, handing me the slice. “Bread is the main food of the people of the cross. Bread is sacred. Bread is older than we are.”

I accepted the piece of bread with barely disguised disgust, drew a breath, and bit a piece off the side. It tasted just as bad as I remembered; it turned in my mouth and stuck to my teeth.

“Spread some butter on it too!” said Magdaleena, passing me a little dish, in which some strange putrid yellow grease stared back at me. Only under the threat of death might I have been prepared to eat it.

“Go on, take it. It’s good!” said Magdaleena, herself spreading the yellow grease on a piece of bread with the edge of a knife, biting it, and making such a sweet face that she might have been eating a strawberry.

I summoned up my courage, insinuated a fragment of the butter onto my own piece of bread, and tried to eat it. It wasn’t as horrible as I feared, but loathsome all the same.

“Don’t you eat meat at all?” I asked.

“We do on holy days,” replied Johannes, devouring his bread with great gusto. “Then we always have pig or lamb on the table.”

“Why only on holy days? Why not every day?”

“We’re not so rich. Our people are still poor,” explained Johannes. “Only the gentlemen knights in their fortress can afford meat every day. If we started squandering like that, we’d soon be eating our way to ruin.”

“There are plenty of animals in the forest,” I asserted. “Deer, goats, hares … Why don’t you eat those?”

Johannes snorted.

“Who can get hold of them? The knights, of course, they go hunting; they have fast horses and sharp foreign-made spears. But for an old man like me it’s downright impossible to catch a goat. Now hares — you can put cords out for them, but they’re cunning too; they don’t go into the trap.”

Again I felt depressed. Here sat a man who had abandoned Snakish and even violently denied its existence. And he was proud of his decision, believed he was going the right way, and wanted to lead me on it too. But in fact he was like a person who has bitten his own hands off and now lies on the ground, as helpless as a bundle of rags. My mother was no younger than Johannes, moreover she was a woman and quite fat, yet she would have no trouble slaughtering one big stag every day. Of course we wouldn’t be able to eat a whole stag every day, far from it, but in principle it was possible. This man here, who boasted that he had seen someone called the Pope, wasn’t even capable of killing a hare. He fooled around with ridiculous cords and complained that a stupid hare was more cunning than him! He was deadly certain that to kill a goat you need a horse and a spear, and this was accompanied by a hunt lasting hours! Why didn’t he believe in Snakish words, with whose help you can force a goat to submit within one minute? I felt once more that I had come from a completely different world.

“Try some porridge too,” said Magdaleena, handing me a wooden spoon. In the middle of the table stood a large bowl of gunk that I’d never seen before, which both Johannes and Magdaleena were eating hungrily.

“What’s this?” I asked, digging suspiciously in the contents of the bowl.

“Flour porridge,” replied Johannes. “Good solid food. Get your fill of that and you’ve got the strength to work.”

“Where does this food come from?” I asked with disgust. I couldn’t imagine my mother offering guests such slops. She would fling slime like this out; she would take it into the forest and bury it in the ground so it wouldn’t pollute nature. “Does the Pope of Rome eat this?”

Johannes shook his head.

“What does this have to do with the Pope of Rome?” he asked reproachfully. “He is God’s deputy on earth; we can’t compare ourselves with him. Of course his table of fare is richer: his servants bring him the choicest kinds of meat from game birds and animals; rare fruits are sent to him from distant lands to feed his guests. It would be silly for us to try to live the same way. A person has to know his place: we are a small and poor nation!”

“I eat meat every day,” I declared.

“Forgive me, but you, my boy, are only a forest lad,” said Johannes sternly. “A wolf devours meat too — but should we follow his example? We aspire toward the light and we serve God, and in return he gives us our daily bread and other things besides.”

“I see no sense in this,” I said, flinging away my piece of bread. I couldn’t finish it, because the sight of the porridge had finally made me feel nauseous. “I’d rather be a wolf, then, and at least be able to eat properly, than to live in the village here and chew on droppings cooked from some sort of straw.”

Johannes and Magdaleena remained silent and looked at me oddly.

“Don’t talk like that,” said Johannes slowly and cautiously at length. “Boy, tell me honestly, haven’t you committed the most terrible sin that a person can take upon his soul? Haven’t you become a werewolf?”

“What is a werewolf?” I wanted to know.

“It is a person who takes on the shape of a wolf by means of bad magic,” replied Johannes. “Pious monks have told me that such a thing is possible; in their home country there are vile people who practice this art. Tell me, really, haven’t you done that yourself? It is a terrible crime!”

“Such a thing isn’t possible,” I said with indifference. “A human is a human and a wolf is a wolf. A wolf is for milking and riding. No human would want to change into a wolf, because nobody wants to be milked or to have someone climb on its back. Those monks are fools.”

“They are learned and wise men,” contested Johannes. “But I believe you when you say you’re not involved with such witchcraft. You have an honest face, and one day you’ll become a good Christian.”

“Hardly,” I muttered, getting up from the table. Johannes nodded to Magdaleena.

“Go now and show the boy the village. I hope he won’t be going back to the forest anymore.”

“We could go to the monastery,” said Magdaleena. “The monks sing there. All the young villagers go to listen to them. It’s wonderfully beautiful!”

“Yes, go there,” agreed Johannes. “The sacred church singing refreshes the soul. Go on, go on. I still have work to do. A human being is like an ant; it is his lot to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow.”

This comparison was quite apt, considering that neither an ant nor Johannes could speak Snakish, and therefore, from the forest folks’ point of view, were among the most miserable kinds of creatures. I was not about to say this to the village elder, because I was pleased to be able to go somewhere now with Magdaleena, and I didn’t want to stoke up an argument. We walked side by side, and every time my shoulder or fingertip brushed against Magdaleena, something was startled within me. I wanted to wave my hand in such a way that it bounced against Magdaleena over and over again, but I was afraid the girl would take it as an intrusion and so I did the opposite, shrinking from contact like a stick, and tried to brush against her as little as possible. How stupidly bashful that seems to me now, years later! No wonder that shy people like me are dying out. We were still only shadows, lengthening for a while before the sun goes down, to finally vanish afterward. I too have vanished. Nobody knows that I am still alive.