Andrus Kivirähk - The Man Who Spoke Snakish

“You’re right they won’t,” said the others, terribly glad that their friend found a way out of a tricky situation, already anticipating his future conquests. “They won’t want to soil their horses’ hooves with manure. If you hide behind the cowsheds, they surely won’t see you.”

There was no jealousy; they obviously all thought it was right that the owner of such a splendid foreign helmet should pounce on all the women in the village.

“Oh, if only I could find one of those!” fat Nigul sighed. “But I know you only get a privilege like that once in a hundred years. Such precious things don’t grow everywhere like mushrooms. The knights look after their helmets.”

“I think they’re easy to get,” I said. “You simply have to kill a knight, and the helmet’s yours.”

My words were followed by a hesitant silence. The village men looked at me as if I’d recommended them to go home and eat their mothers. Finally Jaakop said, “What rubbish you talk. How could we kill a knight?”

“Well, why not?” I questioned. “Do you think they’re immortal? Eternal like rocks?”

“No, it’s not that; it’s that we wouldn’t overcome them,” said Jaakop. “They sit on horseback and they have armor. They have a sword and a lance. They’re much stronger and more powerful than we are. Attacking them would be insane.”

“Squatting there in the forest, maybe you simply haven’t seen them?” added Andreas scornfully. “Here in the village we meet knights every day, and know very well what they’re worth. They are mighty masters. Do you remember, Nigul, just a couple of days ago you didn’t dip your cap low enough, and a knight knocked you flat with his sword? Lucky that you jumped into the ditch; otherwise you would have got a good walloping.”

“Why do you have to take off your cap?” I asked.

“Well, you really are from the forest! It’s a famous old foreign custom! Abroad they always do it: when a knight comes riding along the road, a peasant doffs his cap. It’s polite. If you don’t take your cap off, you’re a boor.”

“I’m not a boor,” objected fat Nigul. “I always take my cap off when a knight rides by, and I bow down to the ground too. I’m a decent person. I know how to behave among the finer folk. But that time I simply didn’t see my lord the knight. The bloody sun was shining in my eyes!”

“Yes, and you got a lesson!”

“That I did. I’ll be more careful in the future.”

“Now you see how stupid you were,” said Jaakop, turning toward me. “Good lord, you want to kill a knight! What for? Because he brings such beautiful helmets to our country? We would otherwise never see the miracles of the outside world if the knights and monks weren’t looking after us.”

I couldn’t be bothered arguing with them. I didn’t tell them that I’d killed several knights and thrown their helmets into the woods like useless rubbish. I could even have led those men to the exact spot where those helmets and coats of mail would be rusting away to that day under a rotting corpse, if the wolves and foxes hadn’t dragged them to gnaw at elsewhere. But I didn’t wish to help them.

I left the men admiring the helmet and walked toward the women. Even from afar I could hear Magdaleena’s voice, explaining, “Yes, he knows the devil.” She was obviously talking about me. The girls gasped and looked at me with horrified eyes, but when I sat down among them, only a few of them shifted away, probably the timidest ones. Others, on the other hand, gradually slipped closer and glanced at me with greedy curiosity, as if hoping I would suddenly bring about something frightful.

However, I merely sat and chewed on a stalk of grass. I noticed a few girls picking up similar stalks and putting them in their mouths, probably thinking it involved some fairy trick or spell. Finally a little flaxen-haired lass dared to speak to me, clearing her throat a little at first to beg my attention, and piped up: “I have a question! Please tell me, is it true, if you give the devil three drops of blood, you become a witch and you can fly in the sky?”

To a few especially well-mannered girls this very question seemed so horrid that they got up, startled, and went off to swing, preferring that innocent pastime to this dangerous conversation. The bolder ones, however, stayed there and awaited my reply, holding their breath. To my mind they were dreadfully childish. In the forest a three-year-old brat might have thought up something similar. I told the girls that I had never seen anyone flying. I wasn’t going to tell them about my own grandfather and the wings he’d made of human bones; it would have given rise to too many more questions.

“I’ve also heard that if you kill the king of the snakes and eat his crown, a person can learn the language of birds,” continued the flaxen-haired one. “That’s true. Magdaleena told us you can talk to the animals.”

“There is no language of birds,” I replied. “I know Snakish. To learn that you don’t have to kill anyone, and certainly not the king of the snakes. Eating his crown wouldn’t help; you have to learn the Snakish words. It takes a long time, but when you finally master them, then it’s really possible to make yourself understood to the animals. And the birds too. But you can’t talk with them, because very few animals can answer you back. They understand and obey a word, but they don’t talk themselves.”

The flaxen lass wasn’t satisfied with my answer: “Eating the king snake’s crown does give you some power, though. People don’t tell such stories for nothing. There must be a grain of truth in it.”

“There’s none,” I said. “Pure silliness. People who’ve never even seen a snake-king talk a lot of twaddle.”

“Have you seen a king of the snakes?” asked Magdaleena, evidently anticipating the answer and wanting to make an impression on her friends.

“I have,” I said. Again this was a subject that I didn’t want to dwell on too long; all too clearly I envisaged Ints, her father, and all the other adders. They were my best friends, but now I was sitting among humans who wanted to kill them and devour them only in order to learn the nonexistent “language of birds”—what an idiotic idea. What had I got myself into?

“I don’t want anyone attacking the king of the snakes!” I said angrily. “Before you reached out your hand for his crown, he would have time to sting you ten times. As I said, there’s no need to go after the crown. You could eat a barrelful of them, and the language of birds wouldn’t be any clearer to you. Eat bread, not snake-kings, and be content with your own sweet life.”

I got up and walked away, disgust and pain in my heart. I had wanted to bury myself here, forget all my previous life — but could that be done? Ignorance was splashed in my face and kept reminding me of the happy times in the forest. How long could I put up with this? I was too different to these villagers; I could never become like them. I had escaped to the village from mourning; now, though, I was very close to leaving the village to escape from stupidity. But where would I go?

Somebody was stroking my head; it was Magdaleena. She had come after me and was now kissing my neck.

“Take no notice of them!” she whispered in my ear. “That’s why I didn’t want a peasant for a husband. They don’t know anything about the forest, the place where they too came from but which they’ve forgotten, nor about the wide world, where they have never been and never will be. They wouldn’t have anything to teach my son. You’re a different matter; you know the old world and all its secrets. You will teach my son Snakish, his knightly father has already given him his blood, and I will add mother love and bring him up as a great man. Leemet, forget those idiots! I saw from your face that you’d like to run back to the forest, but you mustn’t do that. You and I have to bring up my son together, so he can learn about the old and the new world equally. Then there will be at least one man like that, not only just people who don’t know either one properly.”