Andrus Kivirähk - The Man Who Spoke Snakish

“Not bad,” I said, trying to be vague. Life in the village was not a thing I could or wanted to talk to Ints about. “How’s my mother doing?”

“She’s doing fine; she’s living with us now. She came in the winter and stayed. She said she wasn’t used to living alone. You could come and see her; she misses you badly.”

I nodded, but Ints didn’t let me say anything, and carried on. She told me about Salme and Mõmmi, and for his birthday how my sister had sewn him trousers that are put on with so many buckles and hooks that Mõmmi couldn’t take them off, and now Salme could be sure that the bear won’t be unfaithful when left on his own. Ints told me that during the winter Pirre and Rääk had grown very old and their fur was now gray all over, so that when they crouched in their tree they looked like two big cobwebs, and that her own sons were now big and living their own lives and they had new, very beautiful skin. As she told me all this, I realized suddenly how terribly I longed for the forest and how much I missed my mother. The sight of Ints cleared my head. That whole world that I had regarded as forever lost to me was wriggling and undulating around me in the slender person of Ints, and at once I felt like a fish that had fallen back into water.

Suddenly I was no longer able to understand the reasons that had forced me to leave the forest and move to the village. In whose name had I been sitting here through a whole winter, many long months, among stupid villagers, while in the forest my own mother in the flesh, my sister, my friend Ints were waiting for me? All right, Magdaleena’s son, little Toomas, was to be my pupil, but that didn’t mean I had to spend the rest of my life in the village, that I couldn’t visit my mother and friends. I no longer feared sympathy; for me it would not be terrible even for Ints or Mother to start talking about Hiie. On the contrary, right now I almost even wanted that. For a while now I had been living with swollen eyes, but now suddenly the swelling had abated and I saw everything again just as before.

“Ints, I’m coming today to visit Mother,” I said. “It’s wonderful that you’ve been looking for me. Otherwise I might have stayed here moldering who knows how long.”

“Yes, I thought too I ought to simply pull you out of here,” replied Ints. “Now you can come back to the forest and forget this village.”

“No, not quite,” I said, and I told Ints about Magdaleena’s son, whom I had to teach Snakish, so that there would be at least one person in the world who would understand it after my death. Ints listened and sighed.

“You’re always hoping,” she said. “Leemet, old boy, don’t take this the wrong way, but I think humans are finished. It’s sad and it’s nasty, but what can you do? You and your family are exceptions, and if you teach that boy, he too will be an exception, but the rest of humanity are like little blue tits that have pecked their own wings off and are now hopping about on the ground like feathery mice.”

“All the more reason,” I said. “At least one of those tits has to learn to fly too, so that it will be known in the future: a tit is a bird, not a mouse. At least one!”

“Well, but a child of the village …” Ints began scornfully, but I interrupted her.

“Ints, I do understand that that child should have been my son with Hiie,” I said. “But that child wasn’t born, and never will be.”

“Yes, I know,” said Ints quietly. “I thought you wouldn’t want to talk about Hiie.”

“It’s not important anymore. As you said, you’ve already pulled me out of that old life. Let’s go to the forest now. I’m longing to see my mother.”

Mother had grown older, but otherwise was much the same. She fell on my neck when I squirmed into the snakes’ cave, squeezed me as much as she could and then let me go, took a look at me amazed, cried “oy!” and ran away.

“Mother, what’s wrong?” I called after her. “Where are you going?”

I tried to follow her, but Mother had vanished. She had rushed out of the cave and it wasn’t possible to find her among the trees.

I went back into the cave to talk to the adders, to look over Ints’s children and praise them for how much they’d grown, and after a while Mother came back.

“Mother, where did you go?” I asked — and then I noticed that Mother’s cheek was bloody and her clothes torn in places. “What happened?” I cried in astonishment.

“Nothing, nothing!” Mother protested. “Everything’s all right.”

“All right, when your cheek’s gashed? Did someone attack you?”

“Oh, it’s just a little graze,” said Mother, trying to wipe the blood off with her sleeve. “Nobody attacked me. Who would do that? This is my home forest! I simply fell over.”

“Where did you fall?” I wondered.

“Out of a tree. My foot slipped on a branch you see. I must be getting old,” said Mother, almost apologetically. “I used to climb like a squirrel; no tree was too tall for me.”

“But Mother, why did you have to climb a tree? I don’t understand. I haven’t seen you for a long time, and when I come, you climb a tree.”

“I wanted to fetch you some owls’ eggs,” replied Mother, taking two beautiful big eggs from her pocket. “They were your favorite when you were a child, and all the time you were away I was constantly thinking that when my dear boy comes home I’ll offer him owls’ eggs, as I used to when you were still small. Now you’ve come, and I didn’t have a single owl’s egg! I was embarrassed, so I ran to fetch them. There’s an owls’ nest just near here, but you see I was so excited that I stumbled and tumbled out of the tree. Lucky I didn’t have the eggs in my pocket yet, otherwise they would have broken. So I climbed again and got the eggs anyway. There you are, son. These are for you.”

I took the owls’ eggs from Mother’s hand and simply held them for a while, unable even to thank her. Mother was still rubbing her cheek; the wound was deep and the blood kept on oozing.

“Now look, my son comes visiting after a long time, and like a fool I’m bleeding,” she muttered, almost angrily. “Oh, I’m useless! I’m sorry, Leemet. I know how horrible it is with my torn cheek …”

“Mother, what are you saying!” I cried. “I should be asking your forgiveness that I haven’t shown my face for so long. You understand …”

“I understand!” interrupted Mother. “Leemet, I understand it all. My poor child …”

She sat down beside me, took me by the waist, sobbing, and asked, “But why don’t you eat your owls’ eggs? Don’t you like owls’ eggs anymore? Are the village foods better?”

“Mother, what do you mean!” I said. “How can you even ask that? Nothing compares to owls’ eggs!”

“So suck them empty then!” Mother pleaded. “They’re at their best right now.”

I knocked a hole in an egg and sucked the yolk out. Mother looked at me with mournful satisfaction.

“At least I can still offer you owls’ eggs, dear child,” she said. “When everything else is gone, you can always eat your fill at your mother’s house.”

She drew her sleeve once more over her bloody cheek and got up decisively.

“Suck the other egg out and come and eat,” she said. “Roast venison is waiting for you, darling.”

t really is ridiculous how persistently everything in my life has gone awry. It reminds me of a bird that builds itself a nest high in a tree, but at the same time as it sits down to hatch, the tree falls down. The bird flies to another tree, tries again, lays new eggs, broods on them, but the same day that the chicks hatch, a storm comes up and that tree, too, is cloven in two.