Andrus Kivirähk - The Man Who Spoke Snakish

“You really don’t want to eat?” asked Salme. “We’ve got venison. But it’s not cooked right through like Mother’s roasts. You see, Mõmmi likes it a bit less well done, and so nowadays I don’t cook the meat so long. It’s juicier that way. Want to try?”

From somewhere behind the inglenook she brought out an enormous dish of cold venison, which to my mind was practically raw. No force on earth could have made me taste it.

“No, Salme, I’ve just eaten,” I lied. “Let’s just chat. Mõmmi’s grown quite a bit, I see.”

“Yes, he has; he can’t get outside. You don’t know what a calamity he had. The iron men wanted to kill him! They hunted after him, and one of them got him with a spear, which wounded his hip. He was able to escape from them into a thicket and limp back to me, but the wound was horrible. I doctored him as best I could, but Mõmmi’s leg started festering and he couldn’t move at all anymore. He still can’t. He just sits. I’m so sorry for him, but I can’t help him at all, because I’ve tried all the medicinal herbs and the other tricks. I feed him well and take care that he wants for nothing. Yes, he’s got a bit fatter, but so what. At least he has a full belly. Haven’t you, darling?”

“Yes, I have a full belly,” concurred Mõmmi, who, to pass the time, had started devouring the venison she had brought to the table. “You’re a dear and good woman.”

“That’s how we live, the two of us,” said Salme. “Quite happily, although Mõmmi would of course like to go out in the forest sometimes. We’re not bored. We eat several times a day, and when our bellies are full, we sleep in each other’s arms. I hope the iron men won’t find us in this cave; they don’t usually come so deep into the forest. They are so horrible! How could they hunt a bear? A bear is such a good animal. Oh, Mõmmi, have you eaten all that venison already? Want some more?”

“Give me some more,” mumbled the bear, flinging the gnawed bones carelessly on the floor, so that a cloud of flies took to flight in excitement, delighted with a new greasy bone to scurry along.

I felt bad, and it was now that a feeling of great dejection descended on me. Now, not when Grandfather’s ribs were ripped out of his backbone, and not even when I had placed his remains on the pyre. Grandfather had got what he wanted: he had fought proudly, killed many iron men, and now been killed himself. He had known he would die beforehand. Sooner or later he would be worn out by his own age; one day even his fangs would become blunt. That a bowman’s arrow had struck Grandfather at just that time was chance, but there was nothing shameful in it. A warrior had been doing battle; now, bested in combat, he had to take his punishment. Nobody was to blame; Grandfather’s life had ended just as he wished for himself, and in our lousy times his fate was beautiful and uplifting.

What had happened to my sister was quite different. It was terrible; it was shameful. It sometimes happened, even in our home, that Mother forgot a little bit of haunch of hare or some other food in some corner, which when fresh would have been tasty and juicy, but when left to oblivion rotted and became covered in mold. Now my sister was like that haunch of hare fallen into oblivion, as sad as it was for me to acknowledge it. The forest was empty. Only she was left — a forgotten piece of carrion that had not been noticed at the right time, and was now inedible. She had gone bad! Her time had passed; she was no longer human. She wasn’t a bear either, but was moving in that direction. She was now happy to eat raw meat, and her hair now resembled shaggy fur. And I couldn’t help her at all, because I myself was just the same, a piece of moldy meat, trying spasmodically to preserve its freshness and imagine that it was still good for something. For what? My sister had understood this correctly; she could now just eat and sleep in her bear’s embrace. Nothing else. I didn’t even have a bear: I had to sleep alone.

So this is my future in the forest, I thought with horror. Wouldn’t it have been better if the Primates had been delayed even more, so that bold wings had grown out of my bloodied back and I had flown away with Grandfather — to where all my dear ones had gone, all my predecessors, all my people. “Why don’t you eat?” asked Salme again, gnawing hungrily on some half-raw venison so that some reddish substance trickled out of the corner of her mouth. “Are you afraid it isn’t cooked enough? If you like I can cook a piece right through for you!”

“No, Salme, don’t go to the trouble,” I replied. “I’m really not hungry.”

I didn’t stay with my sister long. I got used to the stink, but we had nothing to talk about. Since our last meeting a lot had happened, but I didn’t have the strength or the wish to talk about it.

Therefore I didn’t say a word about Grandfather; I didn’t talk about my own life in the village, or the battles that followed. I felt that Salme wouldn’t understand those things anyway. What for me were precious or painful memories would be for her just some incomprehensible news of an unknown, distant world — an alien, strange smell that would just disturb her dozing in the warm old domestic stench. For them to understand, I suspected that I would have to explain every detail, and even that would be no help.

Therefore I only said that in the interval I had been wandering around. That was enough for Salme. She didn’t inquire any further, and Mõmmi nodded his chubby head with satisfaction. Then Salme recalled the death of our mother, the reason for which was quite unclear to her: that is she thought that the snakes’ nest where Mother was living had simply caught fire for some reason — and I didn’t bother to tell her that it was not so simple. I let her go on complaining and grumbling for a while, and I noticed that meanwhile Mõmmi was falling asleep, a half-chewed bone hanging out of his mouth, as if he were vomiting his own skeleton.

Salme ended her tale with a long sigh and then yawned. I understood that she wanted to go to sleep right then, in the embrace of her gigantically bloated bear, and I said I would get going.

“Where will you live?” asked Salme. “In Mother’s old shack?”

“We’ll see,” I replied. “I haven’t thought about it yet. Maybe I will, or maybe I’ll build myself a new house.”

“In the meantime you can come and sleep at our place. We’ve got room.”

“No, I want a place to myself,” I explained. Salme nodded sleepily.

“Keep on coming, then; you can always come for a meal with us. Sadly we can’t come visiting; poor Mõmmi is completely crippled.”

She looked pityingly at her mountainous bear and added in a whisper: “Of course it’s good in a way that he can’t go fornicating in the forest anymore. Well, peeping at those village girls. Now he’s only my bear and I don’t have to worry about where he is and what he’s doing. I have my eye nicely on him all the time.”

“Yes, that’s good,” I agreed and started setting off. Fresh air blew in my face as if I’d been sprayed with cold water. It felt downright delicious after the stuffy cave, so that I wanted to bite down into it. I walked for a while, simply feeling the pleasure of breathing. Then I sat down, ate some lingonberries, for my stomach was quite empty, and gave some thought to what to do next.

I didn’t want to go back to war without Grandfather. I must have been worn out with rampaging. Instead of the crazed anger and desire for revenge that had foamed in my veins so recently, I was overcome with a complete indifference. Really I couldn’t be bothered doing anything anymore. What I wanted most to do was to stay right there among the bushes basking in the sunshine like an adder curled up. The lingonberries were within reach and there were plenty of them. What more could I need? I fell into a pleasant torpor, and recovered from it only when the sun had sunk beyond the treetops and I started to feel chilly.