Andrus Kivirähk - The Man Who Spoke Snakish

I imagined what confusion and death Grandfather could sow in the forest. He would wriggle through the grass straight to the highway, sting the knights riding past, bite the monks’ noses off their faces, and do harm to village elder Johannes and all the other friends and henchmen of the iron men. He might well get struck down himself, but before that such a furious and crazed old man could lay waste to several villages. He was dangerous, he was full of primeval strength, and in his presence I felt rising within me that same boldness that had struck me that night when I rescued Hiie — the blind desire to fight and kill. Grandfather was brimful of that madness, and like a heated stone pressed against my body he radiated his warmth into me.

“Would you like me to show you my chalices made of skulls?” asked Grandfather.

At that moment Hiie called me. She had cooked the hare and invited me to eat.

“Your wife’s calling!” said Grandfather dryly. “Let’s go and polish off that hare; the skulls can wait. They won’t be walking anywhere!”

He laughed, showing his fangs again.

The sun had already set when we got to the fireside. I walked, but Grandfather wriggled on the ground with amazing agility like some hairy adder. It had been a truly strange day, at the beginning of which I found a wife and at the end a grandfather as well.

iie was of course amazed when she saw a hairy old man wriggling out of the grass, but I quickly explained things to her. Grandfather crawled up to the fire, grabbed the still-hot hare, and ripped it quickly in half.

“Very good. Crunchy!” he declared, gnawing his own half and spitting out the bones. “At least you know how to roast a hare, whatever else you do here.”

Half of the hare disappeared with amazing speed into the old man’s belly. He licked his fingers clean and stared at us in wonder.

“What? You haven’t even started eating? What are you waiting for? Hare is best eaten hot. If it cools off, you get a taste of clover on the side.”

We divided what was left of the hare into two and sank our teeth into the meat. Grandfather watched us with burning eyes.

“Nice to see some living people again,” he said. “Otherwise I don’t have time to watch them, for when I see movement, I attack straight away and bite. Only when the chap is already dead and it’s time to boil up the corpse do I have time to glance at him. But, well, it’s a bit late when the flesh is starting to come off the bones and it’s all just porridge.”

Hiie screwed up her nose, and suddenly it seemed that it would be hard for her to go on eating the hare. Grandfather noticed this and shook an admonitory finger.

“Don’t make faces like that, girl!” he said. “The charnel house needs supplies. And anyway, thanks to me this island is still free. Not a single iron man has set up a claim here. Listen, tell me the news from the forest! How is my daughter getting on? Do you have brothers and sisters too?”

I told Grandfather that Mother was doing well and that I had a sister, Salme, who lived with a bear.

“Why does she live with a bear?” asked Grandfather angrily. “Are there no more men in the forest?”

“No, there aren’t,” I replied. “They’ve all moved to the village.”

“Well, nothing can be done about that then. Better to be with a bear than with some village blockhead. A bear is your own, even if it’s stupid. In my day I had many friends among the bears; they were good for leg pulling. Bears believe everything you tell them. I always used to feed them hare droppings. I’d say, ‘Look, these are big brown strawberries. Eat!’ The bears always ate them too, maybe even a whole basketful; they’d thank you afterward too. Enough to make you laugh out loud! Well, I think your sister has a jolly life! She doesn’t need to make meals; she can just take a hare and sit it on a nest like a bird, then offer the bear the droppings and say that they’re hare’s eggs, just freshly hatched!”

This crude trick amused Grandfather so much that he cackled with pleasure for a while afterward. “It’s such a shame that I’m on this island; I’d really like to see your brother-in-law!” he said. “If I could just pull his leg! But never mind. Soon my wings will be ready, I’ll fly back to you, and then we’ll play out that hare-eggs joke with the bear.”

“When will you get those wings ready?” I asked. “How many more bones do you need?”

“Not many more. It’ll take two or three men. I’ll get those together in a few months. But I’ve got something much more important missing. You see those wings don’t rise into the air on their own. You need wind for that.”

“Wind?” I repeated. “The wind blows all the time.”

“It does, but that’s not enough,” explained Grandfather. “It has to blow in the right direction and when I need it. I need a windbag, boy, and you have to bring it to me.”

“From where?” I asked.

“From Saaremaa. An old friend of mine lives there — Möigas, the Sage of the Wind. You’ll get a windbag from him if you tell him I sent you.”

“Are you sure that this Sage of the Wind is still alive?” I cautiously inquired. “When did you last see him?”

“It was long ago, but these island folk don’t die off so quickly, especially wind-sages,” explained Grandfather. “They reach two hundred years, because now and then they let the wind blow through them. They press the windbag to their mouths and then it whooshes through all their intestines, it cleans all the infection and trash away, and spurts out of your arse with such a bang that big pines bend to the ground and break in half. After an airing like that your insides are so healthy again that unless someone runs an ax into your back you can happily live another fifty years. So don’t worry at all about whether old Möigas has died. He’ll outlive us all and calmly carry on tending to his winds.”

We agreed that we would set off first thing the next morning, because Grandfather was in a hurry to get hold of his windbag.

“You never know. Maybe a whole fleet of iron men will land here tomorrow,” he said with enthusiasm. “Then I’ll finally have the bones I need. It would be silly to wait around on the island just for the lack of a windbag. You know, boy, I’ve already been lolling around here so long that I’m downright ashamed. Every night I dream of beating iron men until they foam like liquid shit. I want to get back to war! And you’re coming with me, because when those bastards run for cover under the spruce trees, so that I can’t catch them from the air, that’s when you must kick them into returning to the field, so that I can strike them with a club right on the crown.”

Grandfather’s enthusiasm had fired me up so much that at that moment the plan seemed like fun. Even to me, who had never cared for struggling or fighting! Somehow the image of me driving out the fleeing iron men from under the trees into the open like goats toward Grandfather as he rampaged in the air appealed to me. The old fanged man sitting by the campfire inspired me with the urge for battle, and my muscles tensed themselves with excitement.

“But first we’ll sleep,” said Grandfather, suddenly changing from a bloodthirsty bird of prey into a caring old grandpa. “Tomorrow you have a long sea journey ahead; you must rest. Children, I will now crawl into my own lair, otherwise some fox will come and start to gnaw the precious human bones. What a sad end that would be! I’ve counted every bone. You stretch out here; tomorrow I’ll come and get you up. Breakfast is on me. Today you treated me; tomorrow I’ll give you a treat. You’ll come to Grandfather’s to eat!”