Andrus Kivirähk - The Man Who Spoke Snakish

The same attitude could be observed among all the villagers. When they came to us to look at the infant, they didn’t dare to step farther than the threshold, but squinted at the corner where the little boy was sleeping, and if he suddenly woke up and started nodding, they all drew into a huddle and listened respectfully to the child’s babbling. The villagers obviously imagined that the knight’s son was talking German to them. I noticed that even Magdaleena listened to her son’s utterances with intense interest, and if she thought she caught something German sounding among the babble, she smiled, enraptured.

Most ridiculous, though, to my mind, was Johannes’s behavior. He had a habit of occasionally sitting by the child’s bed, and when little Toomas started chuckling to himself, he listened to the child’s incoherent shrieks with a deadly serious face, nodding and saying “ahhaa!” from time to time. I couldn’t understand whether he was simply trying to give us the impression that he, a man who had visited holy Rome and shared his place with a bishop, understood the babblings of the offspring of a knight, or whether the village elder was simply off his rocker. He never explained his actions: if the child fell silent, Johannes always shook his head, as if he’d received supremely important tidings, went to his corner, and sat there for hours, as if he were meditating on something.

This respect and reverence that people expressed to the baby of knightly blood was so stupid that I, on the other hand, behaved as freely as possible with the child; I tickled him under the chin, jiggled him in my arms, and blew on his tummy so that he roared with laughter and flailed his arms and legs joyfully. When I frolicked with him like that, Magdaleena always stood beside me looking concerned, as if she hadn’t quite decided whether such behavior with the son of a knight wasn’t too wanton, but she never actually forbade me. I noticed that after our romps, she was especially tender and caring to little Toomas, as if trying to exonerate my naughty behavior with an individual of such noble lineage. They really were peculiar, these villagers.

Soon there was not much time left for playing with little Toomas, for spring arrived and I had to start on the exhausting and, to my eyes, completely useless tasks in the fields. But I did what was asked of me without grumbling, because in my life I had lived through much harder things than mere sowing, and if the villagers wished, I could help them cultivate crops. I was tired out by my companions’ talk much more than by the sowing.

Their newest favorite subject was horseshit. The men of the village had few horses of their own, only a few old and bony creatures with shaggy manes. They sowed with bullocks. The iron men would gallop around everywhere, even trotting over the fields if they wished. It often happened that in the middle of sowing one of the villagers would discover a horse turd, signaling his find with a shout — and a moment later all the sowers were gathered round the dropping.

They all regarded themselves as great experts on horseshit.

“Now that’s a turd from an Arab thoroughbred!” said Jaakop. “I always recognize an Arab’s turd; it’s sort of curved at the end and a bit crumbly.”

“Mm …” murmured fat Nigul doubtfully, almost pressing his nose into the shit and sniffing fiercely. “From the smell this should be from a Spanish horse.”

“A Spanish horse doesn’t make droppings like that!” argued Andreas. “Believe me I know a stable hand who sometimes brings me turds from his gentleman knight’s horse. You know I collect them. Come to my place. I’ll show you a Spanish horse’s shit. Of course there’s a slight similarity to the layman’s eye, but I could see right away that this horse is actually from England. Notice those varying brownish tones.”

Conversations like that took place every week, because there were plenty of iron men and they rode around widely. At first the men’s passionate interest in horseshit had seemed a joke to me, but later on it just made me yawn. I was carrying on calmly sowing, when suddenly I saw a village girl scurrying toward me in terrible pain across the field.

“Help, help!” she screamed. “Snakebite! A snake bit Katariina!”

Katariina was the same flaxen-haired girl who had asked me about the snake-king’s crown up on the swing hill. I understood well what was expected of me; everyone knew that I had once healed Magdaleena’s leg. It wasn’t really difficult — I only had to call the snake that had bitten the girl — but I didn’t want to do that. I was afraid of meeting some adder who knew and remembered me. What kind of look would it give me, Leemet, who had repeatedly spent the winter with the adders, been one of them, but was now wearing village clothes and smelling of porridge? I watched the girl approaching ever closer and just wanted to run off in the other direction.

But naturally I didn’t do that. The bite might be serious, and I couldn’t let silly flaxen-haired Katariina die.

“Where is she?” I asked the girl, who had now reached me and was panting terribly. “Lead me to her, quick!”

“Ah, ah!” gasped the girl. “I ran so fast I can’t even stand up anymore!”

She fell spread-eagled on the field and fanned herself with her skirt.

“Well!” I said. “You were in a frightful hurry, but now you want to lie down!”

“Ah, ah, I’m right out of breath,” panted the girl, and finally was able to pull herself together enough to explain to me where Katariina got bitten.

I left the foolish messenger gasping on the field and rushed off on my own. Katariina wasn’t far away; it was quite a wonder that running over such a short distance would tire the silly girl out. But she was of course fat, with short legs.

Katariina was sitting on a rock, white in the face and looking like she was about to faint. Seeing me, she couldn’t even speak; she only pointed to her leg, where two large bloody tooth marks were visible, and whimpered like a little animal.

I quickly hissed the appropriate words, and the next moment who should come crawling out but Ints.

“You!” I muttered, taken aback. I had been prepared to meet some familiar adder, but seeing Ints was unexpected. The tooth marks on Katariina’s shin suggested a small snake. Ints was of serpentine royalty, and if a king snake stung anyone, it was only in the throat, and after that it wasn’t possible to save anyone.

“That’s the snake, yes!” Katariina was quick to scream. “The same disgusting creature!”

“Be quiet!” I snapped over my shoulder at the girl, looking awkwardly at Ints. I felt terrible shame because of my village clothes, but Ints didn’t seem to pay much heed to that: she curled into a ring as always and said, “Hello, Leemet! Nice to see you again. That’s just why I gave this girl a jab, to lure you here; otherwise you wouldn’t show yourself. You know I’ll start by sucking the venom out of the girl, and then you and I can have a calm chat, without this girl whining.”

“Please do,” I replied, and Ints crawled up to Katariina and quickly cleaned the wound.

“Doesn’t hurt anymore?” I asked the girl.

“No,” said Katariina, looking spellbound at Ints’s head, which wore a splendid crown. “So that’s the king of the snakes!”

“Yes, but you can’t have the crown!” I said. “Now go home.”

“What about you?” asked Katariina.

“What about me? What I do is none of your business. Get going!”

Katariina departed slowly. We waited for her to disappear behind the trees; then Ints wriggled up to my knees and put her head in my lap.

“We haven’t met for a long time,” she said. “How have you been, old friend?”