Andrus Kivirähk - The Man Who Spoke Snakish

“Why are you so sure that it will be a boy?” I asked.

“What else?” replied Magdaleena, astonished. “His father is a knight. Knights don’t have daughters.”

I stroked her soft cheek and kissed her earlobe tenderly. But I was thinking, Oh, she’s just as stupid as the others. But what of it — I’ll stay. Where would I go anyway?

We stayed by the swings, but Magdaleena and I sat apart from the others and it felt good. The villagers swung in a great arc, rocking back and forth between earth and sky, and hooted for all they were worth. In this way they seemed actually quite pleasant, because their faces couldn’t be made out in the gathering dusk. By the firelight one could see only a single large bundle of noisy merriment.

And so I stayed in the village. With the other villagers I went to the fields to cut rye. I helped to thresh, winnow, and grind it. I felt an actual awe for the enormous trouble people were prepared to go to in order to imitate foreign ways and munch the bread that to me still tasted like tree bark.

Occasionally, however, I did allow myself proper food, and with the help of Snakish words I caught a hare in the meadow, took it home, and roasted it. I ate the hare with Magdaleena and Johannes, who had still not reconciled himself to having an unchristened heathen in his house, glancing sidelong at me and reminding me in those moments of the late Tambet. But nonetheless he did eat the hare, unable to resist the animal’s delicious meat.

As he greedily gnawed on a hare bone, I tried to force the old man to admit that it would actually be wiser to throw away the bread and dine every day on roast meat. But Johannes argued with me, as he wiped the grease off his chin, explaining that bread is a human being’s main nourishment, since God has ordained it so. When Johannes proudly declared that eating rye bread is what distinguishes us from the quadrupeds, I told him: “All right then, next time I bring a hare home, you can suck his toes in a corner or eat bread, but you won’t be getting any more meat.” At this, Johannes glared at me bitterly and tried to get at the marrow in the bone, as if afraid that I would carry out my threat right away.

The villagers ate meat rarely, because they hunted animals with strange traps, into which only sick or especially stupid animals fell, or with bows and arrows, which mostly missed their mark. My success in hunting hares was much remarked on, but nobody wished to understand that I was helped by ordinary everyday Snakish words, and everything was attributed to some secret spell. Magdaleena felt very proud of me; she went around the village talking of all the things I could achieve, exaggerating terribly and making me out to be some sort of sage who could move the clouds or call down a thunderstorm with magic words. I explained to her that I wasn’t a sage, that a sage was just a swindler who does tricks under his sacred linden trees. I added that I had already chopped one such sage almost in half, and if any other figure like that turned up I’d do the same again. Magdaleena smiled; she liked my wildness. As she moved around the village, though, she carried on calling me a sage, since that word, whose real meaning no one in the village understood anymore, aroused vague memories in them of a bygone era, and brought shivers to their spines — or so Magdaleena told me. I was very saddened that instead of all the good and beautiful things that had once been people’s memories clung to the image of the Sage of the Grove; why couldn’t they remember Snakish and the Frog of the North? To crown it all, one day in the fields fat Nigul asked me was it true that I had once sacrificed young virgins at my own grove to appease the devil. I gave him a smack in the face to make his nose bleed; he had reminded me too painfully of Hiie and those days when I was still happy.

Despite the fact that I had Magdaleena, I didn’t feel happy in the village. Our nights were beautiful, but our days were depressing. Although I kept apart from the villagers as much as possible, it wasn’t possible to avoid them completely. There was always someone hanging at my heels, making my blood boil with senseless jabbering.

The only thing in the village that interested me apart from Magdaleena was her child. I awaited its birth impatiently. I really had the feeling that I was about to become a father, even though the baby she was carrying was not put there by me. He was going to be my pupil, and that was just as important.

Winter came, and Magdaleena’s belly grew so huge that she seemed to have a bear cub under her smock. As she moved around the village she was accompanied by admiring looks: many women came up to her and put their ears against the round belly, as if hoping to hear the German language or the jangling of chain mail in there. The villagers really seemed to think that the son of a knight would come riding on horseback out of his mother’s belly, a white feather fluttering on his helmet. There were no limits to the people’s superstition; even Magdaleena was deadly certain that she would give birth to a boy, whereas I, on the other hand, expected a daughter, just to taunt her. At the bottom of my heart, though, I was also hoping for a boy, because I felt it would be easier to teach him; before my eyes I saw Uncle Vootele and Magdaleena’s son as myself. I was longing for that child, the only person in the village who was still uncorrupted and pure, who knew nothing of the foreigners’ mad nonsense or the villagers’ idiotic ways. There had to be a person with whom I could converse in Snakish, my pupil, my friend, my child.

In spring he was born — and he was indeed a boy. Magdaleena’s foolish faith was confirmed. That didn’t bother me. I bent over the suckling and tenderly stroked his face. The child opened his mouth and poked out his miraculous little tongue, and to my great joy I saw that his tongue was flexible and agile, just the kind that is needed for talking Snakish.

I hissed a couple of words at him. The child looked at me with big eyes; his expression was serious and attentive.

aturally I wasn’t able to set about teaching Snakish right away. I’d anticipated the child’s birth so impatiently that I hadn’t actually thought about how much time must pass before the boy was able to start learning. I had to wait a few years! The only thing I could do right away was to explain to Magdaleena that the child’s tongue must not be blunted by bread and porridge. To begin with he had to be fed on breast milk of course, but after that I wanted to take care of feeding the boy. Magdaleena agreed with me.

The child didn’t have a name yet. Magdaleena wanted to christen him Jesus of course, but Johannes claimed that the monks would not allow that, because there could be only one Jesus in the world. Finally the child was christened Toomas, as that was supposed to be a suitable Christian name for a knight’s son. I didn’t go with them to the church, but since christening was so important to Magdaleena and her father I didn’t say anything. It did the child no harm, and while everyone was out of the house, I was able to take a nice little nap.

When Toomas was brought back home, I tried to whisper his name in Snakish and it sounded quite good. The boy smiled on hearing my voice, and when I stroked his face, he turned his head and started sucking my finger, mistaking it for a nipple.

“He wants to eat,” I told Magdaleena.

Magdaleena came and picked up Toomas.

“Toomas the Knight must have everything he wants!” she whispered in the child’s ear, putting the boy to her breast. I was often surprised by the way Magdaleena treated the suckling. It wasn’t ordinary motherly tenderness, but something much more; in her tone of voice there was humility, even supreme subjection. I was sure that when the boy grew bigger, Magdaleena would never be able to deny him or beat him; for her little Toomas really was a higher being.