The Man Who Spoke Snakish (20 page)

Pärtel chimed in enthusiastically, “Right, the village elder can give you the best advice about how to start a new life.” The five of us traipsed toward the village.

When we got to Magdaleena’s house, Johannes was just coming out of the cottage, a sheath knife in his hand.

“What are you doing, Father?” cried Magdaleena.

“Miira is worse,” replied Johannes anxiously. “She won’t take to her feet anymore.”

“Is there something wrong with the cow?” asked Pärtel.

“Yes, she’s been sickly for a week or so,” said Magdaleena. “She won’t eat or anything, just lows quietly and sadly. Poor creature. Father’s been treating her, but nothing helps.”

“Never mind. I haven’t tried the best arts of doing it yet,” said Johannes. “I was taught those by one of the knights’ stable
hands—a genuine German. This was the way he treated his master’s horses, so it’s a tried and tested trick. Not homespun wisdom, but knowledge figured out in foreign lands.”

“Can I look on?” asked Jaakop. Johannes was happy to agree.

“Of course, come with me, young men! This wisdom might be of use to you. As long as you live you learn.”

We all went into the barn. Miira the cow was lying on the straw and looked really pathetic and starved. It was immediately clear to me that this beast’s days were numbered. She was simply too old. Not even a human lives forever, let alone an animal. Johannes had talked about treating the cow but I hoped that he would just cut the animal’s throat and end the creature’s suffering. Johannes evidently didn’t think so. He had such faith in the German stableboy’s teaching that he apparently thought he could wake the dead. He went up to the cow, took the knife, and made a deep incision in the animal’s tail. The cow lowed in pain.

“Ahhaa!” said Johannes triumphantly and then split the cow’s ears with the knife.

“What are you doing?” asked Andreas respectfully.

“I’m making slits in her body, to let the disease out,” explained Johannes, and jabbed a little hole in the cow’s udder. Blood started to trickle and the poor cow cried out.

“Keep in mind, boys, you have to make holes in the udder, under the tail, and in the ears!” instructed Johannes, and Pärtel, Jaakop, and Andreas repeated those words in a murmur, so that it would all sink into their minds. It was horrible for me to watch this animal torture, but I didn’t intervene. What business was it of mine what the villagers did to their own animals? What I knew for certain was that in the forest no human would have
cut into his wolves like that. But that wasn’t everything. The German stableboy had taught Johannes many tricks.

Johannes fetched out a tub, in which a strange substance was glistening.

“This is seal blubber,” he said. “The cow must eat it.”

Naturally the cow declined this confection. Even though dying, she was still strong enough to press her jaws firmly together and turn her head away when she was offered the blubber. Johannes sighed.

“Stupid creature, you don’t know what’s good for you,” he said, a gentle rebuke in his voice. “The seal blubber will drive the disease out through the wounds in your skin. Boys, come and help! Pull her jaws open with the knife, so I can put the blubber in.”

After a moment the four of them had forced the cow around; only Magdaleena didn’t take part in torturing the animal. True, Magdaleena scarcely regarded it as torture; she was keeping away so as not to disturb the men’s important work. In my heart I hoped, though, that the cow would die and once and for all escape all this mauling. You could see that her life was only hanging by a thread.

Nevertheless it wasn’t easy for the men to force her to eat the seal blubber. With great effort they had managed to get the knife between her teeth; now Pärtel was holding the animal’s jaws open with it, while Jaakop and Andreas sat astride the sick cow’s neck, so that she wouldn’t flinch. Elder Johannes had dipped a piece of seal blubber inside, and was now forcing it into the cow’s throat, with the other hand tugging the long dark tongue out of the way. The cow made a terrible noise, as if starting to choke, and this was no wonder, because it’s hard to breathe when a stick is
poked down your throat. Johannes twisted the stick back and forth, until he was convinced that the seal blubber had passed down the cow’s throat. Then he pulled the rod out; the cow choked and her eyes turned inside out. But she still wasn’t able to die and that was her misfortune, for the German stableboy really had taught Johannes many frightful things.

“The blubber pushes the disease out, but there needs to be some force from the outside too,” explained Johannes. “One medicine pushes, the other pulls! For the pulling we use steam. Magdaleena, go to the inglenook and fetch the little pot that I put on to boil there. Quickly! I can see that the blubber has started to do its work and is scaring away the disease with full force.”

Johannes pointed with satisfaction to the cow’s wounds, which had started to bleed profusely from the great mauling. Andreas and Jaakop, who were still mounted on the cow’s back, were spattered in blood. They looked at their blood-flecked clothes suspiciously.

“The disease won’t go over to us, will it?” asked Andreas.

“Don’t worry, it won’t! It has lost all its power and strength. Soon we’ll put hot steam on the wounds and then the cow will be perfectly well.”

I was perfectly sure that the cow would not survive this torture. Magdaleena had come with a steaming pot, and Johannes set about throwing some straws in it.

“Take notice, boys, which plants I put into the hot water!” Johannes instructed. “This is a great art, and not a single herb may be left out. Everything has to go in the right proportion. Look, I’m putting in thyme and finally swallowwort too. That is what you have to put in last, so the stableboy taught me. It’s
a sure cure; the whole world uses it. Now try to raise the cow’s arse a little. I want to put this pot under her tail.”

Pärtel and Jaakop started levering the poor cow’s arse up from the ground with two poles. The animal was already unconscious, breathing heavily. Nevertheless, when Johannes shoved the hot pot under her tail, she managed a last bellow. Then she died.

I was the only one who noticed it; Johannes carried on treating the cow.

“The disease is almost conquered!” he remarked with satisfaction, eagerly attending to the expired cow. “Now we’ll let some smoke into the cut in the udder; that’s where the disease is flowing out fastest. That must have been the biggest seat of the disease.”

He scorched the carcass all over, muttered some words, patted the corpse, and only a while later did he start to realize that something was wrong.

“Miira!” he cried, and with his thumb opened the cow’s inverted eye. “Miira, what’s wrong?”

“She’s dead,” I said.

“What are you saying?” Johannes shouted, only now letting go of his pot. At first he looked quite disappointed, but he soon conjured up a humble expression and piously turned his eyeballs heavenward. “Indeed, you’re right. Well now, what’s to be done? Evidently God had other plans.”

“She was such a good cow,” sighed Magdaleena. “How sad!”

“Nothing to be done about it,” said Johannes. “Man proposes; God disposes. We did all in our power, but God always makes the final decision.”

This talk reminded me very much of Ülgas and his sprites, onto whom misfortunes could always be shifted, so I felt quite
strange. Always the same story, there’s always some invented bugaboo to take the blame. I asked Johannes whether that German stableboy was ever able to make a horse better with his horrible remedies.

“Of course!” said Johannes, surprised. “Why do you even ask? He didn’t invent these arts. He’d learned them from the Franks, and they in turn got them straight from Rome!”

The involvement of Rome reminded me of a certain bishop and his bedfellow, and I won’t deny that I stared at Johannes for a little while with quite an odd expression. He didn’t notice it; he was suddenly in a great hurry. He discussed some tasks with Pärtel, Andreas, and Jaakop, things that were incomprehensible to me, and since I noticed that Magdaleena had left the barn, I went to look for her.

I found her at the gate. Away on the ridge a solitary iron man was riding, and Magdaleena couldn’t take her eyes off him. “Isn’t he grand?” she whispered to me. “What a suit of armor! What a helmet! What a splendid horse and what a fine saddlecloth!”

I couldn’t share Magdaleena’s enthusiasm, since to my eyes both the coat of mail and the helmet were quite useless things; I had no reason to envy their owner. Instead I became a little bitter, for Magdaleena was paying no attention at all to me, but ran out of the gate to admire the iron man as long as possible, and when he finally vanished from view and Magdaleena came back to the house, I told her I was going home.

“Home?” she exclaimed. “So where then? To the forest?”

“Yes, of course,” I replied. “That’s where I live.”

I thought Magdaleena would try to persuade me, as her father or Pärtel would certainly have done, but Magdaleena just nodded and whispered in my ear, “Off you go! I like knowing
boys who can change into werewolves and have met the sprites. It’s so mysterious! Come and see me again and teach me some witchcraft. I know it’s a sin, but it’s exciting. Will you, Leemet?”

“I only know Snakish,” I muttered.

“No, you know a lot more!” answered Magdaleena. “You just don’t want to tell me everything. I know that. On your way, off you go now! I’ll expect you back soon. Apart from everything, you’re my lifesaver. Thank you again, my dear werewolf!”

She kissed me on the cheek and slipped indoors, while I started to trudge homeward through the darkening woods.

had hardly got among the trees when I stepped in the darkness on something soft. This soft thing belched and then swore obscenely, and I realized my foot had hit upon Meeme’s stomach as he lay on the ground.

“I’m sorry!” I said. “It’s so dark here.”

“Dark!” sneered Meeme. “Yes, of course, eyes that come from the village can’t make things out. Everything gets blunted there, starting with your common sense. I’d just been having a drink when you stepped on my belly, you damn idiot.” He wiped some spilled wine off his face and licked his hand.

“I apologize,” I said. “But there’s no need to be in the middle of the road; you could at least go and sleep under the bushes.”

“Where is there a road in this forest, then?” asked Meeme. “There are no longer any roads here. Animals walk in the bushes, but humans don’t live here anymore. The forest is empty; only you and a couple of other fools roam around and disturb the peaceful sleepers. Why did you come here? You went to the
village, could’ve stayed there. What are you looking for here? Is there no one in the village with a belly to trample on?”

“No, there’s no one lying on the ground, and no one like leaf mold as you are,” I replied angrily. Meeme laughed.

“I’m not only like leaf mold; it’s what I actually am. Can you smell the stink of decay?”

“I can,” I replied. That stench had indeed returned to my nostrils, and although a very small whiff of the sweet Magdaleena still clung to my clothes, it soon evaporated in the forest. “I’m not surprised. Look at you!”

Meeme laughed again.

“Yes, I’m decaying,” he said. “Not just me. You are too. You can smell your own scent, you unhappy lop-ear! We’re all crumbling to dust, starting with your uncle, then me, and finally you. We’re like last year’s leaves, which melt away under the snow in spring, brown and rotten. We belong to last year and our fate is to quietly change into ashes, because new life has already sprouted on the tips of the trees and new fresh green buds are bursting forth. You can march around the forest and imagine to yourself that you’re young and that you have something important to do, but actually you’re old and moldy, like me. You stink! Sniff yourself! Sniff carefully! That decay is inside you!”

He started coughing and I quickly took to my heels, my back wet with fearful sweat. Meeme had uttered what I myself had long feared—that the torturous stink of decay that clung around came from me. I had caught it from Uncle Vootele like an infection. When I smelt decay in Elder Johannes’s house, I was smelling myself!

Of course it wasn’t a visible, open wound that spread this stench; nor was it an internal focus of disease, a swelling hiding
in the abdominal cavity or the chest, and you could quite surely claim that apart from me no one else was aware of the smell. Only I could smell myself, just as only oneself can read and understand one’s own secret thoughts.

It was the Snakish words in my mouth that stank: in the new world the knowledge that was quietly and insipidly decaying was proving to be useless and unnecessary. Suddenly I saw my own future with terrible clarity—a solitary life in the midst of the forest, my only companions a couple of adders, while outside the woods were the galloping iron men, the singing monks, and thousands of villagers going to cut grain with scythes. Could I change anything? Go to the village and till the soil and eat bread with the other villagers? I didn’t like life there; I felt immeasurably better and wiser than the villagers. And I was. I loved the forest, I loved Snakish, I loved that world under whose roof slept the Frog of the North. So what if I had no hope of ever seeing him with my own eyes? But at the same time there was nothing for me to do here. I sensed that especially strongly now. I had spent a whole day in the village, and although I didn’t enjoy the monks’ whining song or approve of the idiotic torture of the cow, I did at once realize that this outside world was interesting. I had had dealings with many people. I’d conversed, been silent, experienced a lot that was new. In the forest my days passed quite monotonously. Yes, as a child it had been nice to play here; what could I do in the gigantic woods, so empty of people, as an adult? How could I pass my whole life here?

Those few people who lived in the forest apart from me had filled their days with their own invented diversions: Tambet and Mall were raising armies of wolves that nobody actually needed; Ülgas was bustling around the grove and bringing sacrifices to
the invented sprites. The Primates were breeding lice and trying to force themselves back into the most primeval past. My mother’s days passed in roasting, Salme in watching over her Mõmmi. Hiie? She was wandering around the forest like me, feeling ever lonelier.

Of course there was Ints and the other adders, but they were snakes; they had their own life, especially now, when Ints had become a mother. Suddenly the forest seemed terribly unconsoling to me. In the village they lived like fools, but they lived to the full. In the village lived Magdaleena, whom I adored. I should have gone there, to get rid of the stench of decay in my nose, and yet I didn’t want to do that; the very thought was repulsive to me. I didn’t have anything to do in the forest. I lacked any kind of a future here—but it was my home. I couldn’t become a green leaf; I was one of last year’s crop.

This knowledge drove me to despair. I wanted to live in the forest, I wanted to be with Magdaleena, I wanted other people around me, I wanted them not to be fools, I wanted them to know Snakish, I wanted some meaning in my life, I didn’t want to decay. But all these wishes were incompatible and in opposition, and I knew that most of them weren’t destined to be fulfilled. Everything might have been different if my mother hadn’t ever moved out of the village, if she hadn’t started to be attracted to a bear, and if that bear hadn’t bitten my father’s head off. Then I would have grown up among the villagers, my tongue would have been thick from eating bread, and I wouldn’t have understood a single Snakish word. I would now be an ordinary villager and my life would be simple and clear. I was wandering in time, and entered a door to the past just before it closed over. It was no longer possible for me to leave. I was bound by the Snakish words.

In an inconsolable mood I trudged home and found my whole family there—Mother, Salme, and Mõmmi, plus a tableful of roast venison through which Mõmmi had managed to gnaw a wide swathe. At first I thought that the topic would again be the bear’s bad deeds, which I, as the only man in the family, would have to take a stand against. That I did not want to do. I was so tired and in the grip of such despondency that I couldn’t be bothered to start a fuss with a silly bear. But it emerged that this was not the current chapter in Salme’s and Mõmmi’s love story. The reality was much worse.

Mother was white in the face, and as soon as I stepped inside, she leapt upon me and yelled, “You have to do something! Hiie is your bride, after all!”

Especially on this evening, after my meeting with Magdaleena and the kiss I received from her, I didn’t care at all for a conversation on the subject of my relations with Hiie. But Mother was so upset that I understood: this was no tiny domestic issue. Something really bad must have happened.

“What’s this about Hiie?” I asked.

“They want to sacrifice her!” said Salme, with tearful eyes. “Where have you been all day, anyway? We’ve been looking for you everywhere. Mõmmi even climbed up a spruce tree to look, but you couldn’t be found anywhere, and he couldn’t see you. Where were you?”

“That’s not important now,” I said. “Rather you tell me what you mean. Who’s sacrificing her and to whom?”

“For heaven’s sake, Ülgas of course, that evil man!” replied Mother. “Who else? He’s taken it into his head that our life here in the forest won’t get better until the sprites get the sacrifice of a young virgin. The mad old man! What’s wrong with our
life? There’s meat on the table, full stomachs. What more does a person want? But look, he has little to choose from, and since Hiie is the only young virgin here in the forest, she was picked out. Lucky for you, Salme, that you have a husband! Very good that you found dear little Mõmmi for yourself!”

“Thanks, Mummy,” said Mõmmi piously, without stopping from gnawing on a bone.

“What do Tambet and Mall say about it?” I asked, astonished. “Hiie is their daughter after all.”

“They don’t have a sound thought in their heads,” wept Mother. “Ülgas has driven them insane. He’s a half-wit himself and makes others like himself. I saw him this morning; the old man was collecting dried twigs and singing in a shrill voice. I asked him what was making him so happy, and he replied that tonight the forest will be saved, because young blood will wash away all the filth, and out of the sacrificial smoke the ancient world will arise before us again. He showed me those twigs he’d collected, and announced that on that sacred wood we would burn a young virgin. I got frightened—I’m the mother of a daughter too—and I asked, ‘What mad scheme are you planning, who are you going to burn?’ ‘Hiie.’ He said he would first let out the girl’s blood to please the sprites, and then burn the corpse on a pyre. The sprites are supposed to have told him that only the blood of a young virgin would make the world as it was. I felt sick, because I saw that Ülgas was serious. He’s completely mad. His eyes were shining, as if he were rabid! I lifted up my skirts and ran to Tambet and Mall’s place. Me, a fat old woman, my heart wanted to jump out of my mouth I was rushing so! Tambet and Mall were in front of their shack and I shouted even from far away: ‘Help, help, Ülgas has gone
crazy. He wants to burn your daughter!’ And can you imagine: Tambet said that he knew. His face was completely gray as ash and he was hunched and stiff. Mall looked the same; her face was no longer human, and most horrible of all were their eyes: they didn’t seem to see anything; they stared out like dead fishes’ eyes. I screamed, ‘For pity’s sake, if you know it already, why don’t you do anything? Go and strike down that mad Ülgas or tie him up.’ But Tambet raised his hand and said that it had to be so. That they were ready to bring the biggest sacrifice of all, to save the ancient world and bring life back to the forest. I tell you it wasn’t a human voice that came out of his mouth; it was like a corpse talking. I don’t know what Ülgas had done to him. I screamed, ‘This is your own dear little daughter! Are you really going to let her have her throat cut like a hare?’ Then Mall bit her lips, so she wouldn’t burst into tears, but she didn’t say anything, and Tambet was quiet too, only staring into the distance.

“Then I screamed that Hiie is my son’s bride, but that drove Tambet into a rage; he came up to the fence and yelled at me that it was much better for Hiie to be sacrificed to the sprites and in that way save the old way of life than to start living with a traitor born in the village. ‘What life would she expect here?’ he screamed in my face. ‘I’d rather kill her with my own hands than give her to your son! Better for her a noble death, in the name of a better future for her people, than your son making her his own and moving to the village with that scoundrel, spitting on the bones of our forefathers!’ I saw that there was no talking to this man. He’s completely mad. I started crying and came home. Then we started looking for you, but you’d disappeared, and now it’s already evening and we have so little time. They’ll
kill Hiie! They’ll kill your bride, Leemet! Tell me, what are you going to do?”

I really didn’t know what I should do. I only knew that I had to try to save Hiie. Of course she wasn’t my bride, but she was a sweet and dear girl and didn’t deserve such a gruesome end. Two mad old men wanted to bring her as a sacrifice for their own sick ramblings. It mustn’t be allowed to happen! No one could bring the olden times back to the forest, least of all the imaginary sprites. And even if these sprites really did exist, the death of one innocent girl was too high a price to pay for any miracle.

Hiie was my friend; we had grown up together. I had always felt sorry for her, because there is no greater misfortune than having a mother and father who don’t love you. They had always mauled and bullied her, but I would still never have believed they would want to kill her. Tambet and Ülgas were for me so evil that I felt an unexpected rush of rage; at that moment I could have torn their hearts out of their chests with my nails, beat their heads against a tree, ripped them to pieces. This terrible wave of hatred frightened me more than before, because usually I was such a bashful boy, the kind who would rather flee from his enemy into the bushes than seek a battle with him. But now I wanted war. I recalled how Uncle Vootele had, that time by the lake, gone on the attack against Ülgas, like an adder driven to rage. I yearned for my old grandfather’s fangs. I would have wanted to sink them into Ülgas’s and Tambet’s throats. I wanted to kill those bastards. Evidently the others also noticed that something strange was going on within me, for Mõmmi’s hackles were raised on his neck when he looked straight at me, and Mother and Salme shrieked in unison.

“What’s wrong? Are you feeling sick?” asked Mother. “Your face is so … strange!”

“Nothing wrong,” I replied, breathing in deeply. “I’m going to Tambet’s now and I’ll bring Hiie out.”