The Man Who Spoke Snakish

Eighteen

y suspicions didn’t let me down. On the table was a big loaf of bread, and around it bowls and dishes of different sizes, full of strange, sticky glistening substances. I felt sick at the very sight of them, but Magdaleena sat next to me, and I sensed the scent of her hair penetrating the carrion stench, conquering my nostrils completely and flowing into my throat, so that I thought I could taste Magdaleena in my mouth. At once I didn’t care anymore about the disgusting things on the table and was prepared to sacrifice my digestion for the sake of Magdaleena.

Johannes settled himself at the end of the table, crossed his hands, lowered his eyes, and mumbled something. Magdaleena followed her father’s example. I guessed that this too was some useless spell, much the same as the incantations of Ülgas the Sage before he started to chop up animal sacrifices. Johannes and Magdaleena did not mumble for long; soon Johannes lifted his head, took the loaf of bread in one hand, a knife in the other, and cut a coarse slice.

“This is for you, visitor from afar!” he said, handing me the slice. “Bread is the main food of the people of the cross. Bread is sacred. Bread is older than we are.”

I accepted the piece of bread with barely disguised disgust, drew a breath, and bit a piece off the side. It tasted just as bad as I remembered; it turned in my mouth and stuck to my teeth.

“Spread some butter on it too!” said Magdaleena, passing me a little dish, in which some strange putrid yellow grease stared back at me. Only under the threat of death might I have been prepared to eat it.

“Go on, take it. It’s good!” said Magdaleena, herself spreading the yellow grease on a piece of bread with the edge of a knife, biting it, and making such a sweet face that she might have been eating a strawberry.

I summoned up my courage, insinuated a fragment of the butter onto my own piece of bread, and tried to eat it. It wasn’t as horrible as I feared, but loathsome all the same.

“Don’t you eat meat at all?” I asked.

“We do on holy days,” replied Johannes, devouring his bread with great gusto. “Then we always have pig or lamb on the table.”

“Why only on holy days? Why not every day?”

“We’re not so rich. Our people are still poor,” explained Johannes. “Only the gentlemen knights in their fortress can afford meat every day. If we started squandering like that, we’d soon be eating our way to ruin.”

“There are plenty of animals in the forest,” I asserted. “Deer, goats, hares … Why don’t you eat those?”

Johannes snorted.

“Who can get hold of them? The knights, of course, they go hunting; they have fast horses and sharp foreign-made spears. But for an old man like me it’s downright impossible to catch a goat. Now hares — you can put cords out for them, but they’re cunning too; they don’t go into the trap.”

Again I felt depressed. Here sat a man who had abandoned Snakish and even violently denied its existence. And he was proud of his decision, believed he was going the right way, and wanted to lead me on it too. But in fact he was like a person who has bitten his own hands off and now lies on the ground, as helpless as a bundle of rags. My mother was no younger than Johannes, moreover she was a woman and quite fat, yet she would have no trouble slaughtering one big stag every day. Of course we wouldn’t be able to eat a whole stag every day, far from it, but in principle it was possible. This man here, who boasted that he had seen someone called the Pope, wasn’t even capable of killing a hare. He fooled around with ridiculous cords and complained that a stupid hare was more cunning than him! He was deadly certain that to kill a goat you need a horse and a spear, and this was accompanied by a hunt lasting hours! Why didn’t he believe in Snakish words, with whose help you can force a goat to submit within one minute? I felt once more that I had come from a completely different world.

“Try some porridge too,” said Magdaleena, handing me a wooden spoon. In the middle of the table stood a large bowl of gunk that I’d never seen before, which both Johannes and Magdaleena were eating hungrily.

“What’s this?” I asked, digging suspiciously in the contents of the bowl.

“Flour porridge,” replied Johannes. “Good solid food. Get your fill of that and you’ve got the strength to work.”

“Where does this food come from?” I asked with disgust. I couldn’t imagine my mother offering guests such slops. She would fling slime like this out; she would take it into the forest and bury it in the ground so it wouldn’t pollute nature. “Does the Pope of Rome eat this?”

Johannes shook his head.

“What does this have to do with the Pope of Rome?” he asked reproachfully. “He is God’s deputy on earth; we can’t compare ourselves with him. Of course his table of fare is richer: his servants bring him the choicest kinds of meat from game birds and animals; rare fruits are sent to him from distant lands to feed his guests. It would be silly for us to try to live the same way. A person has to know his place: we are a small and poor nation!”

“I eat meat every day,” I declared.

“Forgive me, but you, my boy, are only a forest lad,” said Johannes sternly. “A wolf devours meat too — but should we follow his example? We aspire toward the light and we serve God, and in return he gives us our daily bread and other things besides.”

“I see no sense in this,” I said, flinging away my piece of bread. I couldn’t finish it, because the sight of the porridge had finally made me feel nauseous. “I’d rather be a wolf, then, and at least be able to eat properly, than to live in the village here and chew on droppings cooked from some sort of straw.”

Johannes and Magdaleena remained silent and looked at me oddly.

“Don’t talk like that,” said Johannes slowly and cautiously at length. “Boy, tell me honestly, haven’t you committed the most terrible sin that a person can take upon his soul? Haven’t you become a werewolf?”

“What is a werewolf?” I wanted to know.

“It is a person who takes on the shape of a wolf by means of bad magic,” replied Johannes. “Pious monks have told me that such a thing is possible; in their home country there are vile people who practice this art. Tell me, really, haven’t you done that yourself? It is a terrible crime!”

“Such a thing isn’t possible,” I said with indifference. “A human is a human and a wolf is a wolf. A wolf is for milking and riding. No human would want to change into a wolf, because nobody wants to be milked or to have someone climb on its back. Those monks are fools.”

“They are learned and wise men,” contested Johannes. “But I believe you when you say you’re not involved with such witchcraft. You have an honest face, and one day you’ll become a good Christian.”

“Hardly,” I muttered, getting up from the table. Johannes nodded to Magdaleena.

“Go now and show the boy the village. I hope he won’t be going back to the forest anymore.”

“We could go to the monastery,” said Magdaleena. “The monks sing there. All the young villagers go to listen to them. It’s wonderfully beautiful!”

“Yes, go there,” agreed Johannes. “The sacred church singing refreshes the soul. Go on, go on. I still have work to do. A human being is like an ant; it is his lot to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow.”

This comparison was quite apt, considering that neither an ant nor Johannes could speak Snakish, and therefore, from the forest folks’ point of view, were among the most miserable kinds of creatures. I was not about to say this to the village elder, because I was pleased to be able to go somewhere now with Magdaleena, and I didn’t want to stoke up an argument. We walked side by side, and every time my shoulder or fingertip brushed against Magdaleena, something was startled within me. I wanted to wave my hand in such a way that it bounced against Magdaleena over and over again, but I was afraid the girl would take it as an intrusion and so I did the opposite, shrinking from contact like a stick, and tried to brush against her as little as possible. How stupidly bashful that seems to me now, years later! No wonder that shy people like me are dying out. We were still only shadows, lengthening for a while before the sun goes down, to finally vanish afterward. I too have vanished. Nobody knows that I am still alive.

Magdaleena and I walked along, as I vacillated between a wish to touch her on the one hand and a fear of disturbing her on the other, but Magdaleena was thinking of different things entirely. Suddenly she stopped, pulled me behind a tree, and asked in an excited whisper: “Were you lying to Father when you said you don’t turn into a werewolf? Actually you do know how to do that, don’t you?”

“I don’t,” I said. “That sort of thing isn’t possible. One creature can’t change into another. An adder sheds its skin, but that doesn’t change it into a grass snake or a slowworm. No human has ever changed into a wolf. It’s completely stupid to believe such a thing.”

“I believe it!” said Magdaleena, and I was immediately terribly embarrassed that I hadn’t chosen my words better. “The monks talk about it too. Leemet, I understand that you don’t want to tell me about it. Father said it’s a terrible sin, and now you think I believe the same. But I don’t; I think it’s awfully exciting. I’d love to be able to change into a wolf!”

To this I could do nothing other than shrug my shoulders.

“Tell me, how is it done?” insisted Magdaleena.

“I really don’t know!” I replied. I would have liked to help Magdaleena; she was so beautiful that I would have done anything for her, but I couldn’t change her into a wolf, because that was impossible. But then I had a good idea.

“You want me to teach you Snakish words?” I offered.

“Can you change into a wolf with their help?” Magdaleena asked.

“No, you can’t. But with their help you can talk to all the animals. Of course I mean those that can speak themselves. Many of them can’t. But even they understand Snakish words and obey them. For example, without much trouble you can get food for yourself; you simply call a deer to you and kill it. You want me to teach you? It’s simple!”

“How does it go then?” asked Magdaleena. She didn’t seem to be particularly enthusiastic; Snakish words weren’t a good enough compensation against changing into a wolf.

I hissed to her one of the simplest sibilations and Magdaleena tried to repeat it after me, but her mouth managed only a sort of fizzling that didn’t sound anything like Snakish.

“Not bad,” I said. “It’s hard to start with; even I used to twist my tongue until it hurt. Try again. Listen carefully to how I do it, and try to repeat after me.”

I hissed again, very slowly and carefully, to make it easier for Magdaleena to catch the vibrations of the sound. She tried cautiously, tensely, so her face went red and mucus sprayed between her teeth. But it wasn’t Snakish.

“No, that’s not it,” I sighed.

“I did exactly the same thing as you,” said Magdaleena.

“Actually you didn’t,” I said, trying to offend her as little as possible. I wanted so much for Magdaleena to be my pupil. We could start having lessons in the most beautiful places in the forest that I could find, sitting together under a tree and hissing in competition with each other. And perhaps other things might happen under that tree too. I didn’t want to give up this wonderful future for any price, so I took up a new hiss and asked Magdaleena to try it.

“It’s just the same as the previous one,” said Magdaleena, when she had listened through my hiss.

“How do you mean? Didn’t you hear the difference? Those hisses are not alike at all. Listen again!”

I hissed the first word to her, and then the second.

“To me it’s all the same fizzle,” said Magdaleena, now a little peevishly. “And I said it the same way too.” She hissed again, but this hiss didn’t mean anything; if an adder had heard it, he would have said that the hisser had a dead rat in his mouth and he should swallow it first if he wanted to say anything.

I didn’t say that to Magdaleena, of course, and there was no rat in her mouth. The fault was in her tongue. Her pretty little pink tongue, which she was poking out of her mouth at my request so I could find out what was wrong with it, was surprisingly clumsy. Magdaleena’s tongue didn’t move; it was meant only for chewing bread and swallowing pap. I recalled the sad look that Pirre and Rääk always gave to my bottom when I went swimming in their presence; there was no trace of a tail. It had vanished, just as the muscles that made uttering Snakish words possible had vanished from Magdaleena’s tongue. Her tongue sat too deep; it was overgrown and weak. People were devolving before our very eyes: I no longer had my grandfather’s fangs; Magdaleena didn’t even have a proper tongue. Likewise her hearing was blunted; she really couldn’t tell one hiss from another. For her, Snakish was simply one endless sibilation, with no meaning, rather like the lapping of the waves of the sea.

I was forced to give in. It wasn’t possible for Magdaleena to learn Snakish; she was destined to live forever in the village, among the rakes and spinning wheels. True, that was how she wanted to live anyway. She had lost a priceless treasure, but she didn’t care about it.

“I can’t teach you Snakish,” I said awkwardly. “You’d never be able to pronounce it freely. Your tongue isn’t flexible.”

Magdaleena didn’t seem particularly concerned.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I don’t want to talk to snakes anyway. I’m afraid of them. Listen, let’s talk about something else. Have you seen sprites?”

“What sprites?” I asked reluctantly, because this subject immediately brought the Sage of the Grove to mind.

“Sprites live in the forest!” whispered Magdaleena. “Father believes that too, and he’s a very clever man after all, who has been in a foreign land and seen all the wonders of the world. He speaks the foreigners’ language and has talked with them. They also say that the forest is full of spirits, fairies, and little leprechauns who live under the ground. They’re all in the service of Satan, and that’s why it’s not good for a human to go into the forest. At least not deep into it, because then the spirits and the sprites lead them off the path and take them to their castle. You must have seen them!”

Wasn’t this dreadful? These people denied Snakish; everything worthwhile to be found in the forest was unknown and alien to them — but the sprites, those fairy-tale characters made up by Ülgas the Sage, had spread to the village and settled there! I was desperate. What was I supposed to say? If I assured her that the sprites didn’t exist, Magdaleena wouldn’t believe me anyway, and would think that I was hiding them from her, like the trick that allowed humans to change into wolves. But it was repulsive to me to spout the same drivel that droned on and on from the mouths of Ülgas and Tambet. I shrugged.

“I haven’t met many of them.”

“But you have met one or two? What are they like?”

“Ohh … Magdaleena, weren’t we supposed to be going to listen to some singing?”

“You don’t want to tell me about them!” whispered Magdaleena. “I understand. The sprites won’t let you reveal their secrets. But at least I know now that you’ve seen them. I can tell other people that — that I know a boy from the forest who’s seen fairies and spirits! Oh, they’ll be amazed!”

She grabbed my hand and pulled me quickly along the road, and I felt her warm palm and feared more than anything that my hands might get sweaty from the excitement. We passed several houses and finally arrived at the same place where Ints had killed a monk many years before. Near the place was a monastery. Magdaleena drew me over by a wall and signaled to me to sit down.

“Aren’t we going to go in?” I asked.

“Of course not! This is a monastery; no woman is allowed in there. Not you either, since you’re not a knight or a monk, but an ordinary peasant boy. The foreigners don’t allow peasants into their castles.”

“But your father has been in there,” I said. “I think — to see the Pope and …”

“Father’s an exception. That’s why everyone respects him; he’s the most honored man in our village. He knows how to talk to the foreigners in their own language and he’s taught me that too. You know what I long for most of all? For a knight to invite me into his castle! I’d like so much to see how they live. They’re so handsome and splendid and dignified! Those suits of mail they have! Their feathered helmets! Sometimes they invite peasant girls into their castles, quite rarely, and not all of them. But I hope I’ll be taken in there. I must be taken! I won’t stand it if I’m not!”

From behind the walls of the monastery, protracted singing began to be heard. Magdaleena snuggled against a wall and closed her eyes.

“Isn’t it divine?” she whispered. “How well they sing! I’m crazy about this music!”

I couldn’t form any opinion about the monks’ singing. It sounded like someone moaning and groaning with a stomachache, and moreover I soon discovered that the monks’ singing makes you sleepy. I was overcome with enervation; the singing curled around my ears and wafted into my head like a cap made of moss. With the scent of Magdaleena beside me, I would have liked to rest my head on her shoulder and fall happily asleep. But I didn’t dare to do that and forced my eyes open. The singing dragged on and echoed like someone groaning deep in a cave. I yawned, and a fly flew into my mouth. I spat it out again and the sleepiness subsided a bit. I gazed at Magdaleena.

The girl was humming along with the monks, resting her head on her knees, with her long skirt tucked under her legs. She looked so sweet and pretty that for me the monks’ singing faded somewhere into the background. I concentrated on Magdaleena and started subtly inching myself toward her. My neck became hot and my heart beat with excitement, but I reached my goal and was finally sitting right beside Magdaleena. I slipped my hand onto the girl’s bare leg and lightly touched her ankle. At this the blood rushed to my head with such force that it all went misty before my eyes. I stroked Magdaleena’s leg again. But then voices could be heard, and around the corner of the monastery came some village boys. Among them was my old friend Pärtel, who I had not seen for years.