Andrus Kivirähk - The Man Who Spoke Snakish

“Dear old neighbor,” replied the monk, piously rubbing his hands slowly together, as if washing them with sunshine. “You could be a bit more agreeable. This kind of music is what the young people appreciate these days. You’re old; you have your own favorite tunes. But you should understand that times move on, and what you don’t like might provide happiness for a new generation, who take their example from Christ.”

“It was Christ that taught you to sing like that, was it?” shrieked the stocky neighbor.

“Of course,” replied the monk. “He is my idol, and the idol of all young people. These songs are sung by the angels in paradise; they’re sung by the cardinals in the holy city of Rome. Why shouldn’t we sing them too, as the whole Christian world does?”

“My backyard isn’t the Christian world!” interjected Möigas now. “I’m sorry, Hörbu, that you were disturbed. You must have been having your noontide nap.”

“Well, of course I was having my noontide nap!” complained Hörbu the neighbor. “And just when the sleep was sweetest, your useless son started whining. Why do you let him come here at all? Let him sit in his monastery if that’s what he’s chosen.”

“He’s my own flesh and blood,” sighed Möigas.

“So what if he’s your son! I told my daughter: ‘If you ever become a nun, you slut, don’t ever show your face in my house again!’ The whore!”

“You didn’t have to bless your daughter with such ugly words, dear neighbor,” countered the monk. “Johanna is a very exemplary nun. I meet her often. Why should she have stayed in this wild place? There’s no better way for a modern girl of today to get into the wide world than by becoming a bride of Christ!”

“She should’ve got married!” shouted Hörbu. “There are fifty of those brides of Christ there in the nunnery. It’s a disgusting obscenity, and it’s putting everything upside down!”

“You’ve misunderstood everything,” sighed the monk sympathetically. “Pious nuns live out their days in deep virtue and have nothing to do with men.”

“You go there yourself! You said yourself that you meet her often!”

“I’m a monk. Oh, neighbor, you don’t understand anything about young people today.”

“I don’t understand, and I don’t want to,” declared Möigas. “And don’t speak in the name of all young people! Leemet is young too, and he isn’t involved in that kind of filth.”

“He’s from the forest, completely uneducated,” replied the monk, with scorn in his voice. “It’s a shame, Daddy, that for you there is more value in spiritual darkness and clinging to past times than in ambition and the desire to learn.”

“If you’re so keen on learning, why didn’t you want to learn to catch the winds?” asked Möigas sadly. “This ancient art will now go to the grave with me. You would’ve had an honorable profession, one which would always keep you fed.”

“On the contrary, Daddy, there’s no future in that profession. You don’t need to catch the winds; it’s enough to humbly turn to God in prayer and he will roll the winds toward you where you need it; he quietens the storm and calms the tempest.”

“Sadly it’s not so simple,” sighed Möigas. “But you believe only in what you’re told in the monastery, not what your own old father says.”

“Forgive me, Daddy, but there in the monastery they read books printed in Latin. When the wise men in foreign lands wrote them, our ancestors were still running around the forest with the foxes,” said the monk with a smile, as if feeling pleasure that he had raised up such great wisdom from such harsh circumstances. He shook his head in a saintly way, looked at us all in turn, and rose with a sigh.

“I shall pray for you, poor heathens, and especially for you, dear father,” he stated. Then he looked once more at Hiie and me and added, “If you start to take an interest in Jesus Christ, then you know where to find me. Sharp young men are always welcomed with open arms to our monastery.”

I didn’t reply. The monk nodded again, made the sign of the cross in the air, and left.

Hörbu spat on the ground.

“Forgive me, Möigas, but that son of yours is as mad as a polecat.”

“Yes,” sighed Möigas bitterly. “In his younger days he was such a sweet little boy. These new winds, they’re changing people.”

“My daughter was such a strong little grasshopper,” said Hörbu. “But then she started hanging around that monastery. I forbade her. I even gave her a hiding, but she kept on going where she wasn’t allowed. What was driving her there? Why did she become a nun? Perhaps we really are old and we don’t understand a thing about the new world?”

In my nose I smelt again the carrion stench that assaulted me from time to time. I would have liked to open the windbag and let out all Möigas’s storms and tempests, to scare away the rotting odor, let myself be cleaned by the airs. But these winds were intended for Grandfather. So we said farewell to Möigas and Hörbu and sat down in the boat.

On the way to Grandfather’s island we saw one of the iron men’s ships passing on the horizon.

“Ahteneumion rose to the surface a bit too early,” said Hiie. “Now he would have seen the iron men, and the iron men would have seen him. But now they’re sailing there and they don’t even know what’s lying on the sea bottom under his own beard. Only we know. Isn’t that exciting?”

At that moment it seemed to me that we knew perhaps too much that others didn’t know, and on the other hand too little that was known to everyone else, but I said nothing to Hiie.

fter we got back to Grandfather’s island, the first thing we noticed was a strange boat drawn up on the shore, which Hiie thought she recognized. She shrank from the sight of it, clinging to my sleeve and, without saying a word, beckoned me back toward the sea.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Let’s go away, back to Saaremaa. It doesn’t matter where; let’s just go,” whispered Hiie, looking at me with troubled eyes. “Please, let’s go, quickly!”

“Whose boat is that?” I inquired, guessing the answer already.

“Father’s, of course,” whimpered Hiie in a tiny voice. “Don’t you recognize it? He’s come after us, he’s chasing us, he still wants to kill me, he’s mad! Leemet, let’s go! Let’s row far from here, as far as you possibly can! Please!”

I have to admit that the knowledge that Tambet was somewhere here filled me with dread. This crazed old man couldn’t rest with having failed to save the world. An obsession, once taken into the head, grows in it like a horn. I wasn’t at all sure how well I could defend Hiie if her father were to suddenly leap out of the bushes and wanted to carry her off. Tambet was a big strong man; compared to him I was like a young rowan beside an oak. I tried to awaken in myself the rage and courage that had sustained me that evening when I stole Hiie from the sacrificial grove, but the flame inherited from my ancestors this time didn’t want to catch fire. I was also overtaken by dread when I looked into the forest and on the shoreline and tried to guess whether Tambet was lurking in it now and whether he’d already noticed us. I began to feel that Hiie’s plea to get into the boat and row to some safe place wasn’t such a bad idea. Hiie was already in the boat, weeping and shouting, “Come on! What are you waiting for? We’ve got to go before he sees us. You won’t get away from him on the sea he rows so fast! I know.”

I had just about agreed to do as she wanted. Only Möigas’s windbag held me back. I had to take it to Grandfather! There was a chance that if we left now, hid somewhere for a couple of days and quietly rowed here to the island, Tambet might have left, the coast would be clear, and I could calmly hand over the windbag to Grandfather. But it was shameful to run away like this, to admit our own weakness and fear, while my grandfather had fangs in his mouth and was preparing for an air war with the whole world. When I started thinking about Grandfather, one thought occurred to me: with him I could perhaps even overcome Tambet. After all, Grandfather had built himself a real fortress, to withstand a siege. If we could get there without Tambet noticing us, we would be in quite a secure place. And yet — would it not be better to row back to sea in fright, as Hiie had suggested? Or was it wiser to stay on the island and fight Tambet with Grandfather, to tell him that Hiie was now my bride, and that there could be no talk of a sacrifice? Let him go back to his forest; we would stay here on the island. We wouldn’t argue with him; we would just wish him to leave us in peace.