Andrus Kivirähk - The Man Who Spoke Snakish

“That’s nonsense,” I said. “I’ve seen the Primates’ history, which over thousands and thousands of years they have drawn on the walls of their cave. There was no God and no Adam. And what does ‘untouched’ mean? So many things have disappeared forever. For instance the Frog of the North. For instance the great fish Ahteneumion, who rose to the surface of the water this morning for the last time and then dived to the bottom of the sea forever. Or Snakish words. Do you know those, Röks?”

“Snakish words are from Satan,” declared the monk, excited for the first time. “A human cannot know them. Satan created the snakes and gave them the power of speech, so as to tempt Eve, the first woman. They are all servants of Satan.”

“Now I can really see how stupid you are,” I said. “You yourself serve God and the iron men and some sort of Pope in Rome. But snakes are nobody’s servants. Nobody created them; they existed in the most ancient times, back when neither humans nor even Primates lived in the forest. I do know what I’m talking about, because I know them well. I do know Snakish! I think that snakes would laugh out loud if they could hear your nonsense. You’ve simply been taught in the monastery a modern legend, but there are many legends in the world. Some are forgotten; new ones are invented to take their place.”

“Dear boy,” said the monk, having regained his former composure. “I don’t want to argue with you, because you haven’t been to school and you don’t know anything. Humankind has become wiser than you realize. I’m simply sorry that you don’t want to live like other young people. Even if you do speak Snakish words and they aren’t from Satan, well, what will you do with them in the wider world? Who will you speak them to? Nowadays young people are interested in Jesus. They talk about him a lot; he’s very successful.”

“He doesn’t interest me,” I said.

“A great pity,” replied the monk with a smile.

We were silent for a while. Hiie and I looked at the monk, but he seemed to be dozing in the sunshine. Suddenly he started singing in a high voice, so that Hiie and I were both startled.

Immediately Möigas the Sage rushed out of the shed and cried, “Be quiet! At once! Don’t shame me in front of the whole world!”

“Daddy, it’s just an innocent hymn, where I extol Jesus’s mercy and grace,” said the monk lazily. “How can this beautiful music shame you in any way? This hymn is making big waves in the world at the moment; it’s being sung at all the feasts.”

“But not under my roof! Not here! In the world they might go in for that sort of thing, but in my house we do things the right way!”

He gave Hiie and me a signal to follow him.

“I don’t have a single windbag ready at home,” he explained. “But never mind, we’ll soon pack the right winds together. Then it will be good for your grandfather to fly. Let him fly to visit me too.”

“Yes, let him come,” said the monk. “I’ll be glad to welcome your friend, Daddy, and I’ll pray for him.”

“No, better he doesn’t come,” said Möigas. “Tolp is a fierce man; he’ll knock you dead in his great rage.”

“Good, then I’ll die a martyr,” declared the monk. “And I’ll go straight to Heaven, where I can sit on the right hand of Jesus. To be a martyr is a great honor; books are written about you and your picture is put up in churches. Daddy, just think, your son a martyr!”

“That might very easily happen. If you don’t keep your mouth shut for once, I might do you some damage myself. Children, let’s go inside quickly! My son is driving me mad!”

We went with the sage into his shed. On its walls hung a huge number of fine, coarse, and even coarser ropes, all tied into large knots. Möigas started rummaging among them and chose about ten bundles of ropes.

“These are wind knots,” he explained. “On the side of each rope is one wind. I go in a boat to sea to catch them, like any other man fishing. But a wind is much harder to catch. It’s fast and slippery; you have to be enormously skillful to get it to run into your noose. Then quickly you tie it on and you can hang the wind on your wall until you need it. A wind is not a fish; it won’t go bad. It can hang on the wall for up to a hundred years, but if you let it open, it howls and pants, as if it had been caught only yesterday and is completely fresh. I have here quite old winds, captured by my father, storms and tempests that you won’t find anywhere today. Here we have, still surviving, the first wind that I caught when I was still a little boy. It’s quite a weak summer breeze, the kind that brings a little nice coolness on a hot day. Look, the same here. A wind like this is quite easy to catch, but at that time I had a lot of bother with it. A little boy’s thing, with ten fingernails I had to keep hold of the other one, stopping the rope from getting tangled, but when I finally hung it up on the wall, it was a great feeling! Just as if I’d captured a whirlwind. In fact I’ve got a few of those, but I’m not sending them to your grandfather; they’re not good for flying. They were used in war: let one of these loose and it’d capsize the enemy’s ships or raze their villages to the ground. Worse than fire! Oh, I’ve got every kind of wind here: winter ones, which bring snow with them, and autumn ones, which blow the rain clouds in. These ones are spring winds: let one of these loose and soon you’ll be breathing light and fresh. There are following winds, which help sailors, and headwinds, to help you defend yourself against enemies. All kinds. I won’t be catching many more. I’m old already, and I probably can’t catch a really big storm, haven’t got the strength, and what will I do with these winds anyway? I wanted to make my son a wind-sage, but that good-for-nothing is not interested in my wind collection at all. So I’m happy to send a few winds to your grandfather; at least one person cares about them and knows how to use them. I chose ten winds; that should be enough.”

“Do we take them with us like that, on the end of a rope?” I asked.

“No, not like that,” replied Möigas. “A wind is smart and cunning, like a living creature. As long as he’s in my hand, he keeps still, because he recognizes that I’m a wind-sage and I’m not going to play tricks with him. But if he understands that some ordinary person is holding the end of the rope, he’ll start to struggle and push, and try to tear himself from the rope end. No, I’ll put them in a bag, so they won’t get out and you can get back nicely to Grandfather’s place.”

From under a table the sage took out a pouch, sewn together from several skins, the mouth of which was pulled shut with a rope. He took hold of the first wind and carefully undid the knots that held it in a bunch. Suddenly the air in the room started to move, and Hiie’s hair started fluttering, as if a sudden gust had tangled it. Then Möigas pushed the wind into the bag. He did the same with all the other bundles of ropes, and by the end the pouch was quite fat. If you pressed your ear to it, you could hear a muffled whooshing and roaring, as if a storm were raging inside.

“Now it’s ready,” said Möigas. “Now there’s nothing more to do than to carefully open the mouth of the bag and let out just enough wind as you need. Your grandfather will know what to do. Yes, he’s one fine man, and he raised his children to be sensible. See, I couldn’t do that with my son; he went bad, so it’s terrible to look at him. Oh, spare me! He’s singing again! I told him that if he isn’t quiet, I’ll box his ears.” A wail could indeed be heard from the yard. Mixed with the monk’s high-pitched singing someone swearing could be heard. We rushed outdoors and saw the monk arguing with a short but horribly fat old man, who was brandishing a stick furiously and yelling, “Will this whining stop for once? I can’t get peace; you’re always opening your jaws and howling like a wolf! What’s wrong with you, Röks? Are you in pain or something?”