The Man Who Spoke Snakish

Fourteen

didn’t meet with Pärtel after that. I no longer stood waiting at the edge of the forest; if Pärtel had come toward me in the forest, I probably would have jumped into the bushes, as I did when I saw the Sage of the Grove or Tambet. I didn’t want to meet Pärtel, because he wasn’t Pärtel anymore but Peetrus, and there is nothing worse than seeing an old friend change into someone alien and incomprehensible.

I had often seen Ints eating, gobbling up a whole frog or mouse in one gulp. A little animal would gradually disappear into his throat and in the end the curves of its body would still be visible under Ints’s skin, even when completely covered by the snake. It had been swallowed by the adder, just as my old friend Pärtel had been swallowed up by some village boy called Peetrus. Pärtel’s nose and ears were still visible inside that Peetrus, but digestion had already begun, and soon enough the last traces of him would disappear. I would have been much happier if Pärtel had died — then I could have mourned him in peace. But now I knew that he was still moving around in some distorted, defiled form; he existed, but not for me. I had the feeling you have when someone takes your good old trousers and shits in them; the trousers still exist, but they can’t be worn anymore; they are full of a disgusting alien smell.

Naturally Pärtel didn’t come to me in the forest, so I had no need to flee into the bushes. No doubt he felt much the same as I did. He had entered a new world and was now greedily learning its rules, just as I had once tirelessly contorted my own tongue to enunciate all the Snakish words and get the whole forest to communicate with me. Pärtel no doubt wanted to be absorbed into his new life as quickly as possible, and I was part of his old one. The sight of me embarrassed him. He might have felt a bit like a traitor, but above all he was ashamed of me. Pärtel had nothing to talk to me about, while in the village there were plenty of boys and girls who lived his kind of life, ate the same foods, and did the same kinds of tasks. It was quite natural for Pärtel to exchange me for them; it was simpler that way.

Would I have acted differently if my mother and father had moved to the village and Pärtel had stayed in the forest in my place? I can’t say. I’d like to say that I wouldn’t have betrayed the forest, would have stayed a true friend to the adders and gone to visit Pärtel every day, that I wouldn’t have forgotten Snakish, as Pärtel had done, because the next time I met him — it was many years later — he couldn’t force out a single hiss. All the Snakish words were, so to speak, purged from his memory, and if he had remembered them, he wouldn’t have been able to hiss them, because he’d lost half his teeth from gnawing on bread and his tongue was swollen from drinking bitter beer, which the village people guzzled instead of simple water. It would be easy for me to say that I wouldn’t have changed into such an oaf, but I’m afraid I’d be lying. Even I would have been sucked into the village, swallowed up as if by a gigantic snake, by the alien and hostile Frog of the North, and gradually digested. And I would have had no power to resist, because my own Frog of the North had vanished, and no one knew where it was sleeping.

So I gave up thinking about Pärtel and became reconciled to the fact that somewhere in the village there now lived a boy named Peetrus, who cut rye with a scythe, played on the swing with the other village children, and had nothing at all to do with me. So I played with Ints and sometimes also visited Hiie. Uncle Vootele often took me with him on his trails, and we went to visit those solitary old men who had stayed on in the forest, but as if by some agreement they all died off during that autumn, and the forest was even emptier of people. Ülgas the Sage burned their corpses on a pyre, but Uncle Vootele and I didn’t take part in the funerals, because after the business of the sacred lake our family had nothing to do with Ülgas. So he cast spells and invocations alone by the fire, the only mourner being the deeply silent Tambet, who naturally didn’t question any rite that had any of the flavor of the ancient way of life.

It was a bleak autumn, perhaps the bleakest in my life, because although I had lived through even sadder times and experienced much more horrible events, back then I hadn’t yet grown that thick carapace over my heart that makes all misfortunes more bearable. To put it in Snakish terms, I hadn’t yet moulted my skin, as I did several times later in life, changing into a harder covering, until my skin could withstand all but a few sensations. By now, probably nothing can penetrate it. I’m wearing a coat of stone.

With the forest seeming almost extinct I spent a lot of time at home. Nothing had changed there. Mother would spend whole days in front of the fire, roasting monstrous amounts of deer and goat. She was in a good mood because she liked her children to sit at home all day eating meat instead of wandering in the forest and turning up at the table only in the evening. I ate more than ever before, and I got fat, which pleased Mother very much. She was even more overjoyed at how Salme became nicely buxom, not least because it proved that her cooking skill hadn’t declined and the roasted haunches of venison were going down well.

Salme was also often at home that autumn. She had been used to going out in the evenings and coming back late at night; she claimed that she’d been watching the sunset. That was an obvious lie, because at that time of the year the sun set early, and you might rather say you were watching the moon rise. But one day she no longer went out, and sat sadly at the table instead, and I guessed immediately what was wrong: the bears had gone into hibernation.

In fact we were also used to snoozing through the winter. Usually in early autumn a giant amount of meat was collected, and with the forest covered in snow we stayed at home, slumbering, stirring ourselves to eat only once a day. That is what all the wiser creatures of the forest do — snakes, humans, and bears, as well as some smaller animals. In winter there was no sense in roaming around and wading through the snow; it was much smarter to conserve your strength and use the dark days for proper rest. The wolves were released into the forest to forage for their own food, and they enjoyed their winter freedom to the full, killing goats and deer, as well as village people who in their alien way didn’t sleep in the winter. Since they didn’t understand Snakish, they were easy prey for our wolves.

That year, too, we were prepared to hibernate in the usual way, when one evening Ints crawled into our place and said, “Father said to ask you whether you’d like to hibernate with us this winter. He’d be very pleased if you came.”

This was an unexpected offer, because the snakes had always hibernated on their own, in large underground caves, and I had never heard of a human spending the winter with them. But apparently there were so few humans left in the forest that the adders thought it was possible to take them in. All the more so because apart from us no one else was going there. Ülgas and Tambet would never have moved in with snakes, because snakes showed no respect for the sprites who were so vital to them. And the adders would not tolerate conjuring or spell casting or any other noise, which Ülgas would insist on.

Uncle Vootele was at our place that evening and he took it on himself to accept.

“We’d be glad to come,” he said. “It’s a great honor for us.”

We moved in with the adders a couple of days later. The first snowflakes were falling from the sky, and it was high time to set up winter quarters. Mother wanted to bring with us a large supply of venison, but the adders sent to escort us said that wasn’t necessary.

“We have plenty to eat there,” they explained. “Keep that meat for the spring; there’s no sense in hauling those hunks of flesh with you.”

I was excited. Although I had often visited the adders, I had never seen the caves where they slept in the winter. And it was wonderful to spend a whole winter with Ints, to doze beside him, and occasionally chat to each other in whispers about our dreams, until we got exhausted again and fell back to sleep. It was only Hiie that I felt sorry for, having to stay aboveground and be satisfied with spending the winter only in her mother’s and father’s company. There was nothing I could do about that; it wasn’t possible for me to bring Hiie along to join the adders.

We trudged through the forest behind two rather vulgar snakes — Mother, Salme, Uncle Vootele, and I — and then descended for a while down a gently sloping passage, until we reached a large warm hall, which was completely dark. But it was a pleasant darkness, soft and caressing. Our eyes got accustomed surprisingly quickly and soon I could see a large number of snakes, who were prettily coiled up — and in the middle of the hall stood a gigantic white stone.

Apparently it was because of that stone that I was able to see so well in the dark. The stone didn’t actually radiate light directly, but it was so pale that the dimness became transparent around it.

“What is that stone?” I asked Ints, who crawled up to me and swished his tail in greeting.

“That is our food stone,” replied Ints. “We lick it in the winter and fill our stomachs. The stone is ancient and never gets smaller. Try it once with your tongue; it’s very good!”

I stepped up to the stone and licked it. The stone was as sweet as honey and I carried on licking until I felt my stomach was terribly full. I felt I had eaten a whole deer.

“Now you won’t want to eat for several days,” said Ints. “That’s how we live in the winter here. We lick the stone, then doze for a couple of days, then we lick again. It’s quiet and warm here and sleep comes quickly.”

We settled down inside and I must admit that I only had to lie down to be overcome with delicious exhaustion. I stretched out like a fox and fell straight to sleep.

I have only the most blissful memories of that winter. Dreams floated around me, and didn’t fly away even when I half-consciously stumbled over to the white stone to get some sustenance, my eyes closed and my body weak from the pleasure of sleep. In the cozy darkness hundreds of adders were snuffling quietly in their sleep; somewhere in their midst were my mother, sister, and uncle. Everything was peaceful, everything good. Pärtel and the emigrants to the village seemed to be just shadows, forgotten as fast as the mind happened to stray to them, and I thought only of how good it is to sleep.

I swam in sleep; its waves rolled over me. I could even feel sleep; it was as soft as moss and crumbled between your fingers like sand. Sleep was all around me; it filled every groove and hole. It was at once both warm and refreshing, enfolding me like a caressing and cooling gust of wind. I had never slept so well as that winter in the adders’ cave, and never since then have I felt such pleasure in sleep, even though I often came to hibernate with the snakes. Those times were just a repetition of the enjoyment; that winter, though, being completely buried in sleep was new and especially thrilling.

I lost my sense of time and didn’t know whether I’d slept a long or a short time, but at one moment I woke up. At first I thought I simply had an empty stomach, and I crawled on all fours over to the stone, licked it, and wanted to fall back to sleep. But unexpectedly I was no longer sleepy. The sweet pleasure had vanished; I no longer sank into dreams headfirst like a stone thrown into a lake. My leg started to itch, then my ear, and finally I felt I could not lie down a moment longer, and I quickly stood up.

The adders around me were curled around each other, slumbering, and a little way away I saw Mother and Salme, also asleep. But Uncle Vootele was awake. He was sitting, scratching the beard that had grown half as long again in the winter and fixed his eyes on me.

“Good morning!” he said. “Time to get up.”

“Is it spring already?” I asked incredulously. It seemed to me that we had arrived here in the cave only yesterday.

“Who would know that in this darkness?” answered Uncle. “But let’s go and look. I believe it’s beautiful weather outside.”

“But the others are still asleep,” I said.

“Let them sleep,” replied Uncle. “We can be the first to see the new spring.”

We climbed out of the cave and, for the first moment, were dazzled by the bright light. The sun, which we had not seen for so long, shimmered through the treetops at us. We kept our eyes shut for a while, and only later did we dare to peep out through our eyelashes.

It really was spring. Here and there was still some snow, but you could see the first flowers by the forest and the air smelled of freshly fallen rain. We gulped down the fresh air and rubbed our faces with the last of the snow; it was so good after a long sleep underground. The last of the sleepiness vanished from our bodies and I felt that I didn’t want to sleep again for several years; the fresh spring air in my lungs for a long time made me feel so alive.

“Let’s go and walk around a bit,” said Uncle. “Our legs have withered away after lying around so long.”

It was very exciting to see the forest again after the winter months I’d spent in the snakes’ cave. Here and there was a tree half-broken under the weight of snow, and in the bushes you could find traces of wolves’ meals — the strong bones of deer, the more delicate skeletons of goats. The forest was familiar, but at the same time a little different, and the change was fascinating and arousing, like a girl’s new hairstyle. The forest was like an adder that had moulted. The tempering carpet of snow had given it a youthful flush; the first spring rain had washed it clean.

“Shall we go and eat a little?” suggested Uncle. “We’ve been licking the sugar-stone all winter; now we’d like something a bit more substantial. How would a cold haunch of venison do? I wouldn’t say no!”

I agreed enthusiastically. The sugar-stone, which had filled our stomachs so well up to now, suddenly seemed mushy, and my mouth started to water when I imagined a properly dry-cured piece of meat, tough and good tasting between the teeth.

We went to Uncle Vootele’s place. Under his shack he had a deep cellar, where he kept his store of food, and there was a decent stack of venison left from the autumn. Uncle Vootele opened the hatch and we climbed down inside.

“If you don’t mind, I think we’ll eat right here,” said Uncle. “Then I don’t have to worry about setting the table. We’ll eat simply, like men. You take that shank, I’ll take this one, and let’s get on with it.”

I sank my teeth into the shank and with great pleasure tore off tasty pieces of meat, which cleared away the last remnants of the snakes’ sugar-stone from my mouth, and with that, the winter was over for me. Everything was again as before: I was awake, eating meat, and had a whole long year ahead of me. At that moment I was extremely pleased with my life. I had everything I needed — Uncle beside me, a hunk of venison in my hand, and the Snakish words in my mouth. I felt strong and vigorous.

It was at that moment that Uncle started coughing.

He had a bone picked half clean in his hand; he picked at it in a frenzy, and his face turned so red that the skin of it seemed to be ripped off, revealing raw flesh. He was choking wildly, his cough turned into a croak and a horrible rattle. He threw the bone from his hand and tried to beat his own back with his fist.

Only now did I realize that something was stuck in his throat, apparently a piece of meat not chewed small enough, or a little bone. I rushed to Uncle’s aid, pounded on his shoulder blade, but now he was making even more horrifying sounds, whimpering, wheezing, and finally fell on his belly, his eyes bulging and his mouth agape.

He fell silent. He was dead.

Of course I didn’t realize this immediately. I shook my uncle, turned him onto his back, beat on his belly, even put my hand between his jaws and groped around, hoping to find the piece that had lodged in his throat and pull the meat out, to save my uncle, wake him up again, do something to make that horrible expression leave his face, something to make him get up, spit, and start chatting to me again, as he did before, as he had always done.

But I didn’t find anything in Uncle’s mouth apart from a swollen tongue, and then I decided to drag him out of the cellar, into the fresh air, so that Uncle could recover in the spring wind and not die.

Uncle was big and heavy; I was slender and weak. It was terribly difficult to haul him out of the cellar, but I tried anyway, pulling as hard as I could, snuffling profusely but not crying — which is strange, but evidently I was in such a state that I still hoped to save Uncle and had no time to fall into despair. I had to get him out of the cellar, because outside there was fresh air, there were snakes, there was my mother — yet none of them could help my precious uncle.

Pushing from below and hauling from above, I managed to get Uncle halfway up the ladder, and I whispered to myself under my breath, “Just a little more!” The tip of my tongue was hanging out from my great effort, my hair covered with sweat from the exertion and the terrible fear. I climbed past Uncle, seized him with one arm, clutching the side of the hatch with the other, and tried to pull. The next moment I plunged with Uncle’s corpse back into the cellar, the hatch fell onto the hole, the light vanished, and I realized, with a shooting pain that made me yelp, that I had broken my arm.

It was a dreadful pain; I lay for a while in the middle of the pitch-darkness, whimpering and weeping on the ground. Then I started to scream: I yelled for help with all my might until my voice broke and I was barely able to croak, needles prodding my torn throat. Then I wept again, realizing that no one could hear me, for Uncle and I were the first to wake; the snakes were still asleep, so were Mother and Salme, and a long time would pass before they would wake and come looking for me.

I didn’t dare move, because my broken arm was burning with pain, and in the end I fell asleep from exhaustion and despair. When I awoke, I no longer knew if it was day or night, since in the darkness of the cellar I couldn’t see even my own finger, and I had no idea how long I’d been asleep.

My arm was still hurting, but I understood that it would do me no good to lie motionless like that, and so cautiously got to my knees, supporting the damaged arm delicately with the other. It was an awful pain, but I took no notice of it, and began slowly moving forward on my knees, until I bumped into the wall. Then I turned around and went to the other side, and came across a mass that was lying on the floor.

At first I thought it was Uncle, and I got a fright, because I was now reconciled to the fact that my uncle was dead. Stumbling over a human corpse in a dark space is not the most pleasant experience. It was strange that Uncle, whom I loved so much, had now changed into something frightening; I saw in front of me his face swollen from suffocation, his bulging eyes and wide open mouth, his grinning teeth, and the darkness multiplied the intensity of my memory. Cold shivers ran up my back when I thought that that corpse with its gaping jaws was lying right here and maybe staring through the darkness right at me now with its glassy eyes. I swiftly jumped aside when the mass touched my knees, and whimpered as a shooting pain ran through my arm.

Then I recalled that somewhere on the cellar floor had lain a large dried haunch of venison. I pulled myself together and stretched out my good arm to find out what it was. I was terribly afraid, because I had to stretch it out in the darkness, and my fingers could very easily find themselves between my dead uncle’s teeth. But I was lucky: it was a piece of venison. I ate it; there was a great deal of meat, and I knew that at least for now I wasn’t threatened with starvation.

For a while I didn’t dare to leave the venison, because although it was also dead, that hunk of meat was somehow safe — nourishing and friendly — whereas my dead uncle was metamorphosing in my mind into an ever more horrible and dangerous being, lurking for me in the darkness and deathly silence somewhere. At the same time there was still a place in my thoughts for that other uncle, the smiling, genial Uncle Vootele, and as much as I feared that bug-eyed corpse, I yearned for the living Uncle Vootele, and I started quietly sobbing when I realized anew that Uncle was dead and we would never meet again. That awareness came in waves and was just as painful as the gnawing ache of my broken arm, bringing me to despair and then receding, only to return a little while later. I squatted by the venison, wept, and ate, mourning Uncle Vootele and fearing his corpse.

Finally I fell asleep again and when I awoke again I tried to call out a little, but my voice was as hoarse and weak as before. Then, since my arm was hurting a little less for the moment, I hit upon the idea of trying to break out of the cellar by my own effort. That meant, of course, that I had to move around again and risk stumbling over the corpse, but after a moment’s hesitation I crawled from my spot. I managed to reach the ladder without coming across Uncle Vootele’s body, and with a little effort managed to get onto the first rung. But when I reached the closed hatch and tried to push it up with my good arm, I soon realized that it wasn’t possible. The hatch was too heavy; it would have been hard for me to get it open even with two hands, but with only one arm, moreover in a position where every movement caused such pain that I whimpered out loud, it was an unworkable task. I went down the ladder, but in the darkness I slipped on one rung, rolled to the floor, did more damage to my injured arm, and in the horrible rush of agony lost consciousness.

I don’t know whether the time was short or long, but in the end I recovered. I was stunned and so weak that I couldn’t even get to my knees. I crawled slowly to where I thought the venison was, but naturally I now bumped almost immediately into Uncle Vootele.

I was really afflicted by the pain radiating from my arm, and if I had wanted to escape, I simply wouldn’t have had enough strength. So I restricted myself to simply turning my face away after coming across the corpse.

Uncle Vootele did not smell good; he gave off an unpleasant stench, but otherwise he remained quiet and gentle as a corpse should. Suddenly I no longer feared him, I put my whole arm out boldly, and touched the body resting beside me. I had bumped against Uncle’s shoulder. There was his arm, on the other side his neck and from there I could go up to the face, but I didn’t want to touch that. I left Uncle to rest in peace and crawled away. I was hungry and needed venison, not a dead human.

In the following days I hardly left the pile of meat. Uncle had begun to stink and the stench made me feel ill. I no longer feared Uncle’s corpse; it had become repulsive to me. Somewhere in the dark he lay slowly rotting, contaminating the air which I, his nephew, had to breathe. At one time he had taught me Snakish; now he was gradually poisoning me.

I cowered in the dark, having lost all sense of time passing, drowsy and almost stupefied with pain, despair, and the stench of death, and strange ideas and visions revolved in my head. In my exhausted brain the fresh leafless forest that I had seen when I climbed out of the snakes’ den and my rotting uncle blended together, and I saw apparitions of those same snow-thawed trees, the leafless branches like putrefied forked joints, and from that forest emerged a suffocating corpse stench.

Then in my thoughts Uncle was transformed into the Frog of the North, a gigantic winged snake, but he too was oozing and decaying. I could almost see him; he was lying beside me, and in my ramblings I lifted my arm and patted the darkness around me, consoling the imaginary Frog: “Never mind. You’ll get well!” But my arm passed through the giant snake’s scales, for it was decayed and brittle, and fetid air escaped from it with a hiss. In that hiss I recognized Snakish words and answered them; I was hissing on my own in the darkness of Uncle Vootele’s cellar, and the air grew thicker and heavier. When I chewed the venison, it too stank of death and I was not sure whether I was eating deer or my own deceased uncle. But even that gruesome doubt couldn’t shock me anymore, so weak was I.

Yet it was the hissing that saved me, those same Snakish words that this beloved uncle, now decomposing on the ground, had taught me, choked on the venison that he so loved to eat. I drove the image of the dead Frog of the North from my mind and rambled on, pressing from my parched lips the most diverse hisses. And those quiet, barely audible Snakish words penetrated through the ground surface, to where not even the loudest screams produced by the human mouth could penetrate.

The adders, now awoken from their hibernation, heard me, and the king of the snakes, Ints’s father, bit through the trapdoor. They brought me out and carried me home to Mother, who had to spend a long time nursing and feeding me before I could walk and talk again.

My left arm remained crooked forever, broken in two places. Likewise the smell of the corpse never left my nostrils. Sometimes it seems to have gone. For many days I can’t smell it, but in a moment it again strikes my nose, ranker than ever, and turns my stomach. It was the last gift I received from my beloved uncle, who taught me Snakish and who moldered away beside me.