Andrus Kivirähk - The Man Who Spoke Snakish

“Thank you, Leemet,” said Magdaleena. “But now I want to ask you a favor. I want you to be my husband.”

This was so unexpected that I simply stared at Magdaleena. “Why me?” I finally managed to utter.

Magdaleena took me by the neck and pressed herself close to me. It was pleasant, and yet I couldn’t suppress the thought that somewhere right here, snuggled against my stomach, was a little jesus, and this made me slightly uncomfortable. But then Magdaleena slipped her hand under my jacket and I did the same and forgot about all the jesuses in the world. To me they might as well have been mere midges. As long as I could stroke Magdaleena’s bare back, I didn’t care about them one bit.

“I know that God is strong,” whispered Magdaleena in my ear. “But I also know that sometimes he gives way to the devil. Often it happens that holy pictures and crosses can’t stop it, and today the belt didn’t help either. It didn’t stop you; you killed the sheep anyway.”

I couldn’t be bothered arguing; right now I didn’t care what Magdaleena said, as long as I got to caress her bare hot skin.

“Things like this come up quite often in the village,” continued Magdaleena. “Father is very wise. He has studied many useful spells in far-off lands, but they’re all supported by God’s power. He’s forgotten the devil; the monks and the other foreigners don’t know the devil either. They’re only afraid of him, because they know that God won’t always avail them against him. But you’re not afraid of the devil. You know him; you can talk with him. You’ve seen the sprites and you understand the language of snakes, but a snake is almost the same as the devil. My son will be a jesus, and he will have the whole of God’s world open to him, but I want you to open up the devil’s world to him too. I want you to bring him up and teach him like a father in the flesh, to teach him Snakish, and the art of changing into a werewolf, everything you know how to do. Leemet, will you fulfill my wish? If you can’t leave your forest, you won’t have to live with us, but you should visit every day, because my son must become a man who understands the language of both God and the devil. When you get cold in the forest, there’ll always be room for you in my bed.”

“I’m cold already,” I said.

“Already?” murmured Magdaleena. “I don’t have a bed here in the forest to invite you into the warm. This is your world, werewolf, and your bed. This is where I have to ask you if there’s room in your bed.”

“Always,” I replied, and indeed we had plenty of room.

re you coming with me?” asked Magdaleena afterward, as we were getting dressed.

“Yes, I’m coming,” I replied. For why shouldn’t I go? I didn’t want to stay in the forest. Especially now — after having got out of bed for the first time since Hiie’s death, and gone straight off and slept with a beautiful village girl — it seemed completely impossible for me to go back home. I imagined Mother and Salme waiting for me there, their eyes full of pity and sadness, competing with each other to chat about everything that had happened since that fateful wedding. They would tell me about Hiie’s cremation; they might even want to show me the remains of the pyre. But I would be coming from another woman, carrying her scent on me, and feeling like a villain. That would be horrible; I couldn’t stand the idea of it. If I even just thought of Mother’s weeping eyes, her mournful expression that would follow me day in, day out from then on, the drowning sympathy that drove me out of the house, a choking lump came into my throat. I didn’t want to be pitied, and there was no danger of that in the village. Nobody sympathized with me there. Not a single person suspected that I was an unhappy man, deprived of his wife on his wedding day. This was an opportunity to escape from my own mourning.

Besides, I wanted Magdaleena as much as before. I appreciated that this was crude and repulsive; I should have remained true to Hiie’s memory, but if I had behaved like a bear in heat anyway, I would no longer have anything to lose. So I would move to the village. I would sink myself among those stupid village folk, start gobbling that nauseating bread, and working in the fields like the worst of fools. It was best for me. That was my punishment. I would no longer be Leemet, but somebody else completely, a nameless villager. Leemet died with Hiie; a new slouching little man would be the one to start living in the village, as idiotic as his neighbors.

If I refused now, I would die in the forest full of regret — both that I had betrayed Hiie and that I had given up Magdaleena’s alluring beauty, which she herself was offering me so generously. I couldn’t live as before anyway; that was impossible.

I was terribly afraid that at the last moment Ints, or my mother, or Mõmmi, or a Primate would appear out of the bushes and say something. I didn’t want any human or animal from the forest to ever see me again. I wanted to vanish without trace, and at a stroke draw a veil over my whole past, like a lizard that discards its own tail and staggers off who knows where.

“Let’s go,” I said to Magdaleena. “I love you. I’ll always stay with you. I won’t ever go back to the forest.”

“You’re so sweet,” replied Magdaleena with a radiant smile. “I knew you’d agree. You’ll start teaching my child, won’t you, and look after him as if he was your own.”

“I will,” I assured her. I really did intend to do that. Magdaleena’s stories of gods, devils, and jesuses were of course completely harebrained, and I understood nothing of all this strange twaddle, but I really did want to be the father of her child. I recalled Uncle Vootele’s talk about Snakish and how the time would come when I would have to pass it on to my successor. In this case, the Snakish words would live on, and at least I wouldn’t be the last man in this world who understood the language of the serpents. I needed a child with whom to share all my wisdom, and where else would I find such a child but in the village? There were no children in the forest, and by now it was abundantly clear that no more would be born there. Hiie was dead; the whole forest was dying. But the Snakish words would live on, as long as I was alive, and I wished them to live on a little longer than myself.

I was not troubled in the least that the father of Magdaleena’s child was an iron man; I didn’t feel any jealousy toward that rattling creature that had impregnated Magdaleena one night. If my training met its mark, then one fine day Magdaleena’s child might, with a single Snakish word, break the stride of his father’s horse and the neck of the old iron man. If Magdaleena’s hopes came true, and her child really did wander out into the wide world from his home village, then with the help of Snakish he could achieve a great deal. I knew from my own experience how helpless people are when they don’t understand Snakish and are attacked in the right way. I wanted to make this child my heir; I wanted to give him that great secret weapon that only he in the whole world could use. That was the only thought I had, the only goal that my life could still have.

I strode along at Magdaleena’s heels toward the village and didn’t look back once. I no longer wished to ever see my mother or sister again. In the normal course of events, I should have died of the fever; my recovery was absurd and incomprehensible. Everything had changed too much, and it was no longer possible to find one’s way in the world. The only possibility was to leap straight into the bushes. That was what I was doing. I saw Johannes’s house before me, and I took a deep breath, as if before diving.