Andrus Kivirähk - The Man Who Spoke Snakish

“It doesn’t matter what wood the meat is cooked on, as long as it gets juicy enough,” said Hiie. “And if any drink tastes sweet to us, there’s no reason to refuse it. Mother, I grew up in a home that was so full up with principles that I didn’t have room to breathe. I hate principles. I only want what’s good for me. I want to be happy!”

She grabbed me by the neck, kissed me, and dragged me to where Mõmmi was reeling around.

“Let’s dance too!” said Hiie.

She pushed me away from her, stretched out her arms, and writhed in the red glow of the bonfire. Just at that moment a large wolf leapt in between us and sank its teeth into Hiie’s neck.

I yelled as if I had been bitten myself. I heard Ints and the other snakes hissing piercingly. I struck the wolf with my knife, but in my panic wasn’t able to kill the animal, only cutting a long wound in its neck. The wolf let go of Hiie and turned toward me, enraged with pain. Just then her mother rushed toward Hiie and the wolf sank its jaws into her face, so that blood spurted between its teeth. I lashed out at the wolf with my knife once again, but it didn’t fall; a second wound merely appeared on its back, forming a red cross with the first slash. Then a roar was heard from Mõmmi; the bear’s paw came down and the wolf’s backbone broke with a sickening crack.

All this happened in a mere moment.

I bent over Hiie. She was unconscious, her neck was broken, and blood was bubbling out of it.

“Ints!” I screamed. “Can’t you do something? Stop the blood! Isn’t there a Snakish word that could do that?”

“There’s no such word,” said Ints’s father, the snake-king, who had crawled up beside me. “Nobody can stop the flow of blood, the same as with a river. We aren’t able to save Hiie. Look at the moss; it’s thick with blood. Most of her life has already left her, and the little that is left will soon flow out too. I’m terribly sorry, Leemet.”

Ints had also wriggled up to me, and was nosing against Hiie’s pallid cheek. For the first time in my life I saw a snake crying.

Beside Hiie lay her mother, recognizable only from her clothes; her entire face was torn away by the wolf’s teeth. And yet she was still alive, and even spoke: “A fire from the grove wood,” she murmured. “I was afraid it would go this way. Misery! The sprites won’t ever forgive it!”

“Shut up!” I shouted, completely losing my self-control.

“The sprites! The sprites!” repeated the lump of blood that had once been a human face. “They’ll pay you back!”

“Your husband is the one who brings us misery, even in death,” I yelled. “He drove the wolves mad! He turned them deaf!” Mall spoke no more. She was dead.

I was so enraged, so desperate, that I kicked her corpse. Then I grasped Hiie by the waist and bellowed. I shook her so that her broken neck lolled to one side and the wound gaped at me to its full depth. I kissed Hiie, grabbed her with such force that if she had still felt anything, she would certainly have screamed with pain. Oh how I wanted her to scream! I squeezed her so hard that I must have broken her ribs, but I didn’t care. I was completely crazed, and only when Mõmmi, using all his bear’s strength, pulled me aside did I leave Hiie’s corpse in peace.

Yes, she was dead.

“How terrible! How terrible!” repeated my mother, who was also spread-eagled on the ground, as if she were a third corpse, weeping uncontrollably.

I felt sick. My nostrils were again invaded by that old familiar stench of decay, nauseating me. Supporting myself on a wine vat, I vomited. Undigested bits of meat mixed with red wine gushed onto the moss.

To this day I remember in detail what I did in those moments after Hiie’s death.

After vomiting I walked several times around the still-burning bonfire. I wasn’t thinking anything, just concentrating on breathing. I had the feeling that if I didn’t, I would forget to inhale and choke. No one spoke to me; no one dared to stop me.

Then I went and cut the legs and the tail off the dead wolf, doing it with a strange numbness as if I were carrying out some tedious but necessary task. When the legs and tail were cut off, I left them there, threw away the knife, and marched into the forest.

I just walked and walked, heedless of the direction. Owls were hooting; some goats and hares ran across my path. I broke a path through the densest thicket, not feeling the scratching of the branches and twigs. I didn’t have a single thought in my head. It was as if I were seeing myself from somewhere afar, up in the treetops, seeing a tiny human, struggling along alone in a dark forest.

Then suddenly it came to me — Hiie! I turned around immediately, as if I had only just received the news of her death, and rushed back the way I had come.

The fire was still smoldering and all the wedding guests were still there. Hiie had been lifted up alongside her mother, and squatting beside her was the louse.

It was nestling against Hiie’s shoulder, and suddenly I had the ghastly thought that the louse was sucking blood from her wound.

“What’s it doing?” I screamed, and rushed closer to scare the louse away with a kick.

“He’s not doing anything; he’s dead,” said Ints. I crouched down and touched the great insect. Ints was telling the truth: the louse was completely stiff and its tiny legs were curled up helplessly.

“He came straight after you left,” said Ints, crawling up by my feet. “He ran here, pressed himself against Hiie, and died.”

“We saw from the tree how the wolf was attacking her,” Pirre said now. I hadn’t noticed him at first. The Primates were sitting in the shade of a tree; they had been walking on two legs again and were now massaging their cramp-stricken toes. “We came straight here and the louse ran ahead of us. He loved Hiie very much. Let him lie there beside her.”

“Let him lie,” I repeated, and then I blacked out.

was ill for several months. I simply had no desire to get well; it was so good to remain in feverish unconsciousness, without any thoughts, any memories. Dreams came and went, but if there was anything bad or alarming in them, it didn’t remain in my mind and quickly dissolved into new dreams. I liked to keep my eyes closed and the colorful apparitions, without name or clear form, swam around in my head in a kind of luminous haze, as if warning me not to wake. Even when I felt that someone — probably Mother — was spooning broth into my mouth, I didn’t want to return to the real world. My pharynx was working, but my brain remained hidden like a child, crouching in the forest in the shade of branches that reach the ground, hearing the call to come home but not coming, not letting itself get caught and pulled indoors. Being there in the forest under the branches was best, I sensed; indoors, only anxiety and oppression awaited me. I hovered in the middle of a nonexistent space, like a bird that has emerged on the other side of the clouds and is now suddenly separated from everything earthly.

This game of hide-and-seek lasted a long time and I would gladly have made my illness permanent. But it couldn’t be helped: my body betrayed my hiding place, someone’s strong arms pulled me out from under the spruce branches, and although I kept my eyes tightly closed as before, as if hoping that would make me invisible, the world and its sounds and colors gradually began to encroach on me. From time to time I found myself staring at the ceiling; turning my head I saw Mother, tending the fire and boiling something in a pot. Sometimes I also saw Salme and her bear, sitting at the table and gnawing on venison bones with a crunch. I tried to swoon away again, to escape, but the fever had receded; it had slipped away from me like a warm animal skin, and without it I felt naked, cold, and terrible. For days on end I had to listen to Mother’s and Salme’s conversations, mostly revolving around Mõmmi’s activities, occasionally diverging to the state of my health, and floating me on a wave of upsetting sympathy. I tried to seek a way out of sleep, but that was a miserable substitute for the splendid state of unconsciousness that had protected and soothed me for several months. Ordinary sleep now seemed too brief to me; it was merely like a little puddle into which I could at best dip my head, whereas I longed for a deep lake of dark water, into which to dive, and stay.