Andrus Kivirähk - The Man Who Spoke Snakish

“Things are no better in other places,” I replied. “I was actually looking for Möigas the Sage of the Wind. Do you know where he lives?”

“I do indeed,” said the adder. “Follow me. I’ll lead you to him.”

Möigas didn’t live far away. His shack was on the seashore and was surrounded by juniper bushes. The adder wished us a good day and wriggled off.

I knocked on the door. It opened, and looking back at me was — a monk! I certainly hadn’t expected that. I took a few steps back, as if I’d encountered a wasp’s nest.

“Are you Möigas, the Sage of the Wind?” asked Hiie, who was also amazed to see a monk and took me by the hand.

“No, dear girl, I’m only his unworthy son,” replied the monk in a thin voice, as if milk were being sucked from his mouth. He was still a young man, but hairless and, stranger still, also without eyebrows, so that his face resembled a bird’s egg. Behind the monk’s back some grumbling was heard, and out of the shack climbed a stunted old man with a long red beard, braided into hundreds of little plaits. This had to be Möigas.

“Here stands my esteemed father,” said the monk, putting his hand on the red-bearded old man’s shoulder. “Daddy, these people have come to see you.”

“Yes, I can see that myself,” muttered Möigas. “What can I do for you?”

“Are you Christians?” asked the monk, before we had time to reply. “Do you like Jesus Christ?”

“Be quiet, Röks!” snapped Möigas. “Don’t embarrass me!”

“Daddy, I’ve told you my name isn’t Röks anymore,” chirped the monk, making a kindly face, as if the utterance of every word were an extreme pleasure. “It’s not a proper name; no one in the Christian world has it. My name is Taaniel. I’ve told you that a hundred times, dear father. Brother Taaniel, that’s what the other reverend brothers in the monastery call me.”

I was reminded of Pärtel and I became very sorry for the old Sage of the Wind, because to lose a friend is unpleasant, but to lose a son is far worse. Möigas seemed to have read my thoughts; he looked at me sadly and said, “My son has gone to waste. Forgive me. It must be because he lost his mother early. I wasn’t able to bring him up properly. But what am I going to do. He’s my own child; I can’t abandon him just because he has become — ugh, it’s horrible to even say it — a monk.”

“Daddy, you’ve brought me up very well,” said the monk. “I’ll be grateful to you till my dying day that you sired me and tenderly looked after me.”

“What do you know about siring, you wretch?” sighed old Möigas. “You haven’t even got balls!”

“Nobody has in our monastery; it’s the fashion nowadays,” replied Taaniel the monk. “Thanks to that, we can sing the praises of God in a high voice. Daddy, I’ve invited you to come and listen. Why haven’t you? You’d certainly be proud to listen to your son singing with the reverend brothers.”

“I don’t want to hear it or see it. I’d be ashamed of my own eyes!”

“Oh Daddy, what are you saying! What is there to be ashamed of; they do this all over the world. And our choir has many admirers, women cry when they listen to us, and even men wipe away tears, so light and beautiful are our voices.”

“Don’t make me sick!” said Möigas, turning toward us. “Forgive me, guests, that you have to see and hear such ugly things. What brings you here? Tell me! And you, Röks, be quiet and don’t interrupt!”

I quickly explained what we were seeking and who sent us. Tears came into old Möigas’s eyes.

“Ah, old Tolp is still alive!” sighed Möigas. “Well, not to be wondered at, he was always a tough guy. Oh, so now he’s taken it into his head to start flying! Why not, why not!”

“A human being can’t fly,” said the monk. “Only angels fly. And Jesus walked on water.”

“I told you, Röks, don’t interrupt!” barked Möigas. “And don’t talk rubbish! Why do you embarrass me in front of these nice young people? You’d be better off following their example. Look how good they are! They respect their grandfather and don’t go around with any iron men or monastic brothers. You see this young man, Leemet? He still has his balls. Haven’t you, Leemet?”

“I have,” I quickly replied.

“Hear that, Röks! Why do you have to be such a will-o’-the-wisp, flying wherever the wind blows?”

“Dear Daddy, to start with, I’m not Röks,” the monk began to slowly chirrup, his eyes half-closed, but old Möigas snapped at him to be silent.

“Why do you tell me all the time you’re not Röks! As far as I’m concerned you’re still Röks. I’m never going to start calling you Taaniel. Now sit down and shut your mouth: I have to go out and look for that windbag. And you, dear guests, wait a while. Take no notice of what my son says. He’s a bit half-witted, a disgrace to the whole family!”

With these words Möigas disappeared into his shed. Taaniel the monk settled down in a sunny spot, nodded amiably to us, and said, “Daddy’s very old now; his head can’t take in young people’s concerns anymore. What can you do; time has passed him by. What do young people think of Jesus in your neighborhood? I’m terribly fond of him. I have his picture over my bed.”

“I don’t know who Jesus is,” I said.

The monk made a noise of amazement that sounded like the shriek of a seagull.

“You don’t know who Jesus is?” he repeated and kneaded his hands, gazing at me kindly and sympathetically. “Baptized, are you?”

“No,” I replied.

“Really?” intoned the monk. “I thought that all young people these days are baptized. Baptism is cool; they pour water over your head. Without baptism they won’t take you into the monastery.”

“I don’t want to go into a monastery!” I declared, by now quite irritated. The monk reminded me of Magdaleena and of how we’d been to listen to the monks singing, and also that I was up to my ears in love with her. Now, sitting next to Hiie, it was somehow unpleasant to be reminded of it. I felt that the monk might suddenly say, “Ho, I saw you with a pretty girl behind our monastery wall!” What would Hiie do and say? I knew that such a thing wasn’t actually possible, that it was an entirely different monastery and other monks singing there, but the bad feeling remained. I was upset by these modern people who boasted all the time about their new customs and strange pets like this Jesus, whom I didn’t know anything about and didn’t want to either. I wasn’t interested in whose picture a monk kept by his bedside, and I said so, though not quite so abruptly.

The monk remained as gentle as before. “It’s silly to close your eyes to education,” was all he said, raising an instructive finger. “You simply won’t get on in today’s world if you don’t know about Jesus. You’ll have nothing to talk about to other people. All right, if music doesn’t interest you, then you don’t have to enter a monastery, and castration isn’t absolutely necessary. But you can’t get to be a knight’s henchman either, if you aren’t baptized and you don’t know about Jesus!”

“Why should I have to be anyone’s henchman?” I asked. This was another horrible trait that united all these modern people — the desire to be someone’s servant.

“Well, but what do you want from life, anyway?” asked the monk. “You want to be a peasant, sowing and reaping? That is of course noble; Adam also sowed and reaped and cultivated the land by the sweat of his brow. Yes, those who have not been given any higher gifts of the spirit must be content to work the fields.”

“Who is this Adam?” Hiie now asked.

“Our forefather, the first human, whom God created out of the dust,” explained the monk. “Before that the land was empty and bare, but then God made everything in six days, and so it has been untouched until today.”