Andrus Kivirähk - The Man Who Spoke Snakish

Their heads led them farther and farther toward the sea; the first iron men were already standing with their feet in the water and kept having to step ever farther. Now they were screaming in mortal fear. Ever farther into the sea their heads directed them, and they stumbled on like tethered sheep. They struggled to resist, but kept walking, for they had no strength to resist. One iron man of short build had now got so far into the sea that the water was up to his neck: he screamed like a madman but couldn’t stop, and the next moment the water rushed into his mouth. He disappeared into the waves.

Now the iron men all fully understood what kind of end awaited them; they howled and yelped, and one man took a knife from his belt and slit his own throat with it, to rid himself of his own murderous head. Thus he was saved from drowning, but not from death, and his body collapsed into the sea and colored the water red.

The other iron men were not so resolute. They screamed and yelled, waved their arms to heaven, and begged for help from their God, whom they obviously imagined to be lounging up there beyond the clouds, wondering at this peculiar scene. Nothing helped them. One by one they vanished into the sea, and when the waves had taken the last iron man’s head, an unexpected silence fell on the shore.

I took a deep breath. I was alive. I had been saved, though I didn’t understand how. What force had driven these men into the water, to voluntarily drown themselves? I didn’t know, and for the moment that wasn’t my greatest problem. I had to get free of my fetters and get out of this pool of blood into which the iron men had forced me, facedown. I wriggled like a snake, but the fetters would not give way.

“Wait, we’ll help you!” came a voice. I turned my head and saw two snow-white forms lumbering ahead with difficulty. It was Pirre and Rääk! For the first moment it was even difficult to recognize them, so old had they become. Their long white fur fluttered in the sea breeze and turned the Primates into great downy chicks. They were walking heavily, swaying and stumbling, but finally they reached me and with their long yellow paws unpicked the knots.

I sat up straight and groaned, for my wounded head was again hurting and my now-free limbs were throbbing. But that was nothing compared to the happiness that my back was still intact and my ribs still hidden within my body. I embraced the Primates and declared, “I thank you. How did you know to come here just at the right moment?”

“Everything can be seen from our tree,” said Pirre. “It’s only that we haven’t been walking for ages; that’s why it took a lot of time. If we’d been a little quicker, we would have had time to save your grandfather too.”

“Yes, it’s our fault that he had to die,” said Rääk. “We’re too old and terribly slow.”

“What happened to those iron men?” I asked. “What drove them to drown in the sea?”

“Lice,” replied the Primates proudly. “Our dear lice, which we’ve been studying and training all our lives. We sent them into the iron men’s hair and gave the command to move toward the sea. The lice started moving, and drew the men with them. It isn’t possible to stay in one place when a thousand lice want to go somewhere in your hair, not if they are given the power by the right Snakish words, the kind that humans no longer remember, not even you, my boy. Special old Primates’ Snakish words, which have power even over insects. They saved you and led the iron men into the water, sadly together with the poor lice, who sacrificed themselves for you, Leemet.”

“I’m very grateful to them,” I said. “But who will you study and teach now that all the lice perished in the sea?”

“Oh, there’ll be new ones born,” opined Pirre. “But we’re hardly likely to train them any longer. We really are too old. Besides, there would be no point, because after us no one will be able to talk to the lice anyway. Those lice that led the great throng into the sea today were the last ones that could be directed with Snakish words; the lice of the future will live their own lives and won’t obey anyone any longer.”

“So it is,” I replied. “All things come to an end. Today the last human with fangs died, the last human who could fly. In the future they’ll think that such things were possible only in fairy tales.”

I lit a big bonfire by the seashore, on which I burned my grandfather’s corpse. Then I said good-bye to the Primates, promising to come and see them soon, and went into the forest, to look for my sister and think about how to go on living.

ccording to Pirre and Rääk, Salme should still be living in her old cave, and that is where I bent my steps. Although some trees had grown taller and others been broken by autumn storms, it was easy for me to find my sister’s dwelling. I pushed aside the deerskin hung in front of the cave entrance and stepped inside.

“Hello!” I said in a loud voice. “Still recognize me, sister?”

“You, Leemet!”

Salme got up in astonishment. The cave was dim, but still you could clearly see that in the meanwhile my sister had grown very old. Her hair hung untidily, faded and tangled like last year’s grass stalks under melted snow. Her leather cape was torn in places and sooty, as was her face. I must have looked quite taken aback at my sister. At any rate she seemed to feel a slight embarrassment at her appearance; she pushed away the wisps of hair in front of her face.

“I wasn’t expecting you,” she mumbled in confusion. “Such a long time … Where have you been? I really didn’t know … Nobody ever visits us anymore. Mõmmi, look who’s come!”

Mõmmi looked at me and I looked at him, and I saw the fattest bear I had ever chanced to meet. He took up half of the cave. Fat had swallowed up his snout, so that his face was flat and round, as if he were no longer a bear but an eagle owl. Thick folds of flab hung everywhere on him. It seemed that the old fur couldn’t manage to cover the gigantically expanded body, and so there were yawning hairless gaps on his skin in several places, like stains or large scabs. Mõmmi’s feet weren’t visible at all; a rampant paunch covered them like soft brown moss.

“Hello, Leemet,” mumbled this mountain of lard, peering at me with his tiny eyes, which hardly peeped out over the fat cheeks. “Haven’t seen you in a long time. Nice that you dropped by! Salme, offer your brother something to eat.”

“No, thanks!” I said rapidly. In the presence of such a fat animal I couldn’t force a mouthful down my throat. Besides, I could smell a strong stink, which filled the whole cave and nauseated me. I presumed that Mõmmi had grown so obese that he couldn’t go outside the cave to do his business, and therefore would shit right there. I imagined what might be hidden in that fat furry belly, which covered the bear’s feet like flayed skin, and it made me feel bilious. What’s more, I saw gnawed bones lying everywhere along with rotting bits of meat; for some reason Salme had not bothered to throw them out, and they stank as well. Great black flies were strutting all over and rubbing their front legs together, as if expressing pleasure at such a grand feast. Mother would never have tolerated such slovenliness and filth in her own shack. Apart from being disgusting, it was shameful. What would the neighbors say about such squalor!

But at the same time I understood that neighbors were what Salme and Mõmmi no longer had. They lived all alone in the forest. Nobody stepped over their threshold; nobody had anything to do with them. They were the only people left in the forest — and actually Mõmmi was a bear. No wonder, then, that their residence had gone wild and was now more like an animal’s lair than a human dwelling.