Andrus Kivirähk - The Man Who Spoke Snakish

He burst into laughter, coughed, and spat phlegm down his front.

“Again the last!” I chuckled bitterly. “The last wedding in the forest! For me this wedding is the first, the only one, and the most important, and for Hiie too. We don’t intend to die or be laid out on a pyre. For you it might be fine to be weak and facing death, if you decide to carry on that endless wheezing. If you got married, it would really be ridiculous; there’s really no point in you polishing the stumps of your teeth to a shine.”

“Ahhaa, how spiteful!” smirked Meeme into his beard, taking a swig on his wineskin. “Bridegroom! Navel of the world!”

“By the way, I promise you that when you do die, I will build a proper pyre for you and set it alight with my own hands,” I added, to bring the subject to a close.

“No, on the contrary!” shrieked Meeme, raising a warning paw, whose nails had grown enormously long and crooked like old pine roots. “You must promise not to build me a funeral pyre. I want to rot away right where I peg out. You can see that I’ve already made a start on it, and you mustn’t interfere with your good heart and your sympathy. Burning is for great warriors and important people; folk like me should quietly rot away like acorns fallen on the ground.”

“All right then, be an acorn,” I said, quite bored. “I don’t care. I’m getting married tomorrow and have more to think about than death and decay; those are your problems. It would be nice if you didn’t prattle on all the time about those things tomorrow at the feast. A wedding is supposed to be fun.”

“Are you offering wine?” asked Meeme.

“Wine is the iron men’s drink,” I replied. “It’s not the custom in the forest to drink it.”

“Don’t talk such rubbish, boy!” screamed Meeme. “You come to me talking about customs. Just now you were razing the grove to the ground; even though in a couple of years that shit would have collapsed all on its own. So don’t come playing the ancient prophet with me! The end is at hand, and there’s no point holding back on the good stuff. So what are you going to offer your guests?”

“We wanted to roast a deer,” said Hiie.

“Bah! I’m not talking about food. I’m thirsty, not hungry! Do you want to wash the bit of roast meat down with springwater like the animals? Think about wine, boy. It lifts the spirits! Or are you planning to chew fly agaric? I’ve tried both things, not just a little either, and believe me wine is better! It’s the only good thing you can get from the village. I’m not recommending you bring bread into the forest. Let the hares nibble on that. But wine was their good invention. Listen to me, boy. I know what I’m talking about!”

Hiie and I looked at each other. After all — why not? In the course of a few days everything had been turned inside out. I had razed the sacred grove to the ground and cut half of the sage’s face off. Nothing was as it had been. So what if another joist in the old life was sent toppling? Really, why couldn’t we drink wine? The forest was empty; we didn’t have to reckon with anybody else’s opinion. We didn’t intend to live like villagers, cutting straws with a scythe in the field and going to the monastery to listen to the singing of castrated monks, but nor did we plan to hang tooth and nail to ancient habits. Hiie and I wanted to live our own way, freely, exactly as we liked, a good way.

“What does that wine taste like?” I asked Meeme.

“Try it!”

I took the skin and had a swig. The wine was surprisingly sweet and tickled the throat pleasantly. It really was delicious, quite different to bread and porridge. What a surprise that those odd foreigners could think up something so good. I took another sip.

“Getting to like it?” smirked Meeme. “What did I tell you? It does the trick.”

“Where can you get it?” I asked, handing the wine back.

“Go to the edge of the big road and look for some iron man or monk passing; they always have a wineskin with them,” said Meeme. “Then knock him down and the wine is yours. If you’re lucky you can get a whole vat.”

A desire to kill was rising in my stomach and getting my mind throbbing. I was already imagining those iron heads rolling in the dust of the highway.

“I’m thinking of wine,” I told Hiie. “This will be the first wedding in the forest — remember that, Meeme, the first, not the last — where a drink from over the seas is drunk along with good old venison.”

“If that’s the word you like, then why not use it. First or last, there’s no difference.”

e spent the night with the adders, but in the morning we arranged a division of labor. Hiie had to kill a deer, but we entrusted the cooking of it to my mother. It was the only option. Mother would have been fatally offended otherwise. She never let anyone else roast meat, and if Salme or I tried to help her, she only took that to mean mistrust, and sometimes even started crying. “Ah, so the food I make isn’t good enough for you?”

So it was natural that Mother would be preparing the wedding roast.

We told her that Hiie would procure the deer; Mother nodded at this and said she would bring two goats and about ten hares in that case.

“No, Mother, we were thinking of roasting only one deer,” we explained.

“Are you joking?” exclaimed Mother. “This is a wedding! One deer is not enough. There definitely has to be goat and hare as well.”

“Mother, there’s no need for such a large feast!” I tried to convince her. “Why so much? Who will eat it?”

“They might not eat it, but the table has to be laid plentifully,” maintained Mother. “Of course it’s another matter if you don’t like the food I make …”

Her eyes were growing damp again.

“No, no!” we said. “We like it very much! Go on then. Cook the goats and hares as well as the deer. Do just as you like!”

Mother was satisfied. She rolled up her sleeves and started flaying and chopping.

I set off to get the wine, and Ints came with me.

“I’d like to get some fresh air,” she said. “Sitting at home with the children wears me out terribly.”

“So where are you leaving your children?” I asked.

“The children are coming with me, of course,” replied Ints. “They need some recreation too. They’ve never seen a single iron man or monk, and they’re very excited. Just a couple of days ago I was telling them how we killed that monk, and how the slowworm retrieved the ring from his stomach; the children found that very funny. Do you remember that story?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” I said. “Come on then; maybe I’ll be needing your fangs.”

We set off for the edge of the highway, where the monks and iron men always rode by, and lay in wait. The little adders chased each other and frolicked among the crowberry plants.

Finally a lone rider wearing chain mail came into view.

“Is that a suitable one?” asked Ints.

“I can’t see if he’s carrying a wineskin,” I said, peering more closely at the iron man with a peculiar kind of pleasure that I had only recently learned to feel. “But let’s knock him down anyway.”

When the iron man had come right up to us, I gave a long hiss. The horse understood these words immediately and reared on its hind legs, whinnying. The iron man toppled out of his saddle and fell on his back on the road.

The next moment I was upon him, and struck off his head with my knife, giving a loud roar.

“There!” I screamed. “That’s what they used to do in the days of the Frog of the North!”