Andrus Kivirähk - The Man Who Spoke Snakish

“She was such a good cow,” sighed Magdaleena. “How sad!”

“Nothing to be done about it,” said Johannes. “Man proposes; God disposes. We did all in our power, but God always makes the final decision.”

This talk reminded me very much of Ülgas and his sprites, onto whom misfortunes could always be shifted, so I felt quite strange. Always the same story, there’s always some invented bugaboo to take the blame. I asked Johannes whether that German stableboy was ever able to make a horse better with his horrible remedies.

“Of course!” said Johannes, surprised. “Why do you even ask? He didn’t invent these arts. He’d learned them from the Franks, and they in turn got them straight from Rome!”

The involvement of Rome reminded me of a certain bishop and his bedfellow, and I won’t deny that I stared at Johannes for a little while with quite an odd expression. He didn’t notice it; he was suddenly in a great hurry. He discussed some tasks with Pärtel, Andreas, and Jaakop, things that were incomprehensible to me, and since I noticed that Magdaleena had left the barn, I went to look for her.

I found her at the gate. Away on the ridge a solitary iron man was riding, and Magdaleena couldn’t take her eyes off him. “Isn’t he grand?” she whispered to me. “What a suit of armor! What a helmet! What a splendid horse and what a fine saddlecloth!”

I couldn’t share Magdaleena’s enthusiasm, since to my eyes both the coat of mail and the helmet were quite useless things; I had no reason to envy their owner. Instead I became a little bitter, for Magdaleena was paying no attention at all to me, but ran out of the gate to admire the iron man as long as possible, and when he finally vanished from view and Magdaleena came back to the house, I told her I was going home.

“Home?” she exclaimed. “So where then? To the forest?”

“Yes, of course,” I replied. “That’s where I live.”

I thought Magdaleena would try to persuade me, as her father or Pärtel would certainly have done, but Magdaleena just nodded and whispered in my ear, “Off you go! I like knowing boys who can change into werewolves and have met the sprites. It’s so mysterious! Come and see me again and teach me some witchcraft. I know it’s a sin, but it’s exciting. Will you, Leemet?”

“I only know Snakish,” I muttered.

“No, you know a lot more!” answered Magdaleena. “You just don’t want to tell me everything. I know that. On your way, off you go now! I’ll expect you back soon. Apart from everything, you’re my lifesaver. Thank you again, my dear werewolf!”

She kissed me on the cheek and slipped indoors, while I started to trudge homeward through the darkening woods.

had hardly got among the trees when I stepped in the darkness on something soft. This soft thing belched and then swore obscenely, and I realized my foot had hit upon Meeme’s stomach as he lay on the ground.

“I’m sorry!” I said. “It’s so dark here.”

“Dark!” sneered Meeme. “Yes, of course, eyes that come from the village can’t make things out. Everything gets blunted there, starting with your common sense. I’d just been having a drink when you stepped on my belly, you damn idiot.” He wiped some spilled wine off his face and licked his hand.

“I apologize,” I said. “But there’s no need to be in the middle of the road; you could at least go and sleep under the bushes.”

“Where is there a road in this forest, then?” asked Meeme. “There are no longer any roads here. Animals walk in the bushes, but humans don’t live here anymore. The forest is empty; only you and a couple of other fools roam around and disturb the peaceful sleepers. Why did you come here? You went to the village, could’ve stayed there. What are you looking for here? Is there no one in the village with a belly to trample on?”

“No, there’s no one lying on the ground, and no one like leaf mold as you are,” I replied angrily. Meeme laughed.

“I’m not only like leaf mold; it’s what I actually am. Can you smell the stink of decay?”

“I can,” I replied. That stench had indeed returned to my nostrils, and although a very small whiff of the sweet Magdaleena still clung to my clothes, it soon evaporated in the forest. “I’m not surprised. Look at you!”

Meeme laughed again.

“Yes, I’m decaying,” he said. “Not just me. You are too. You can smell your own scent, you unhappy lop-ear! We’re all crumbling to dust, starting with your uncle, then me, and finally you. We’re like last year’s leaves, which melt away under the snow in spring, brown and rotten. We belong to last year and our fate is to quietly change into ashes, because new life has already sprouted on the tips of the trees and new fresh green buds are bursting forth. You can march around the forest and imagine to yourself that you’re young and that you have something important to do, but actually you’re old and moldy, like me. You stink! Sniff yourself! Sniff carefully! That decay is inside you!”

He started coughing and I quickly took to my heels, my back wet with fearful sweat. Meeme had uttered what I myself had long feared — that the torturous stink of decay that clung around came from me. I had caught it from Uncle Vootele like an infection. When I smelt decay in Elder Johannes’s house, I was smelling myself!

Of course it wasn’t a visible, open wound that spread this stench; nor was it an internal focus of disease, a swelling hiding in the abdominal cavity or the chest, and you could quite surely claim that apart from me no one else was aware of the smell. Only I could smell myself, just as only oneself can read and understand one’s own secret thoughts.

It was the Snakish words in my mouth that stank: in the new world the knowledge that was quietly and insipidly decaying was proving to be useless and unnecessary. Suddenly I saw my own future with terrible clarity — a solitary life in the midst of the forest, my only companions a couple of adders, while outside the woods were the galloping iron men, the singing monks, and thousands of villagers going to cut grain with scythes. Could I change anything? Go to the village and till the soil and eat bread with the other villagers? I didn’t like life there; I felt immeasurably better and wiser than the villagers. And I was. I loved the forest, I loved Snakish, I loved that world under whose roof slept the Frog of the North. So what if I had no hope of ever seeing him with my own eyes? But at the same time there was nothing for me to do here. I sensed that especially strongly now. I had spent a whole day in the village, and although I didn’t enjoy the monks’ whining song or approve of the idiotic torture of the cow, I did at once realize that this outside world was interesting. I had had dealings with many people. I’d conversed, been silent, experienced a lot that was new. In the forest my days passed quite monotonously. Yes, as a child it had been nice to play here; what could I do in the gigantic woods, so empty of people, as an adult? How could I pass my whole life here?

Those few people who lived in the forest apart from me had filled their days with their own invented diversions: Tambet and Mall were raising armies of wolves that nobody actually needed; Ülgas was bustling around the grove and bringing sacrifices to the invented sprites. The Primates were breeding lice and trying to force themselves back into the most primeval past. My mother’s days passed in roasting, Salme in watching over her Mõmmi. Hiie? She was wandering around the forest like me, feeling ever lonelier.

Of course there was Ints and the other adders, but they were snakes; they had their own life, especially now, when Ints had become a mother. Suddenly the forest seemed terribly unconsoling to me. In the village they lived like fools, but they lived to the full. In the village lived Magdaleena, whom I adored. I should have gone there, to get rid of the stench of decay in my nose, and yet I didn’t want to do that; the very thought was repulsive to me. I didn’t have anything to do in the forest. I lacked any kind of a future here — but it was my home. I couldn’t become a green leaf; I was one of last year’s crop.