The Man Who Spoke Snakish

Thirty-Five

e went to war. It was an odd crusade, because we had not the slightest hope of winning. In the end there were just the two of us against the whole wide world. We were like two aphids who could gobble up individual leaves voraciously, but with no possibility of felling the whole tree. We moved from battle to battle and had no place to turn back to after a successful strike, to rest and to report to those back home: We won! We were warring only for our own pleasure and because we couldn’t do anything else in the new world. We didn’t need anyone’s gratitude or a place to lick our wounds. We kept rushing onward, attacking everyone who stood in our way, killing, stinging, beating, and bashing. We were both burning with a crazed fever, and we knew that when the fever abated, it would mean death.

We were reckless and we didn’t retreat in the face of any opponent, for we had no thought of saving ourselves. It made no difference whether we fell now or later. We paid no attention to defense. We were indifferent whether an arrow pierced our chests or whether some iron man could run us through with his lance, and this carelessness was to our advantage. We overcame opponents who were several times our number in strength, and we left their corpses stacked on the road. The arrows they fired in our direction didn’t hit us; the sword blows swished past us. We roared with laughter; we howled like wolves and hissed like snakes. We never washed ourselves, and the spattered blood of our enemies covered almost our whole bodies, so that we looked like flayed carrion. We were no longer human, but the living dead, who had risen from death to harass the new world, and that new world could not rid itself of us.

On our travels we passed through villages, and if any villager stood in our way, we would lash out at him. We noticed how, when they saw us, they would abandon their rye fields, toss their scythes over their shoulders, and run for their lives, and we yelled abuse after them. I shouted to them that the Frog of the North had returned, and Grandfather took vigorous turns in the sky, at which the villagers fell to their knees and begged for protection from their new God against the forest-sprites. Nobody helped them and if we had wanted to, we could have bludgeoned them all to death.

I watched as they clustered together, trembling, and I recalled the time when Mõmmi and I went to peep at the beautiful village girls on the edge of the forest, secretly lusting after them, and how I hated the stupid village boys with whom the girls had mischievous conversations, while I, being so wise and understanding the ancient Snakish words, had to suck my thumbs on my own in the woods. I would sit at the edge of the forest, longing and ashamed, and I felt so lonely. And I felt the same now when I saw these same girls — or rather, not actually the same, but very similar — snuggling behind the thickheaded boys, looking to them for protection from Grandfather and me.

Protection from me! Ridiculous! What could be done to me by those miserable creatures whose tongues were too fat and blunt to pronounce Snakish words! How silly these girls were, and how deeply ignorant was their choice! All the same, sometimes I didn’t resist, and rushed into a village and killed as many men as I could, and Grandfather, who never shied away from combat, followed, hooting at me. Let these new people once again see the powerful Frog of the North. Never mind that it isn’t the real one. This will do! Let them feel one last time the force of his attack! But while the Frog of the North had once fought for them, now he was fighting against them, since they had changed sides and forgotten Snakish. The ancient memories, which in the meantime had degenerated into mere legends, were reawakened and proven to be true. You girls have made the wrong choice! This new world is weak; a bite from the old world will break it like a cobweb. Can all these new tricks save your thickheaded men? No, they are strewn across the ground, and in the evenings Grandfather makes drinking cups out of them by the fire. They wanted a modern life, but they ended it in an ancient way; people will drink water from their skulls, just as they did thousands of years ago.

Do you see how strong and powerful the old world is? Admire it. Love it, girls!

But instead they weep, yell, and flee without looking back. And they’re right, because the old world isn’t actually strong. Grandfather and I are just like an unexpected snowfall in summer, which in one night can destroy the buds and leaves, but that melts away in the next morning’s sun. We would kill and burn, but then we would leave a village. The girls would come from their hiding places and carry on living, finding new men for themselves and bringing forth children, none of whom understood Snakish.

I understood perfectly how useless our fighting was, and every time after destroying yet another village I had the same sick feeling. But I still had battle fever in my blood, and didn’t suffer for long.

In the end, who cares? Let the whole new world go to hell!

In the main we concentrated on the iron men. We invented new ways of hunting them. We made use of goats and deer, which we drove into the path of the knights using Snakish words. The iron men could never resist the urge to hunt, and they rushed on horseback after the animals. We would direct the deer and goats into a thicket, where we would lie in wait. And then we would make a quick end to the iron men.

In the evenings Grandfather would polish his skulls while I would roast goats over a fire, because the work of killing all day makes you tired and hungry. We didn’t have any use for the skulls, because we couldn’t take them with us; otherwise we wouldn’t have been warriors anymore, but a walking pile of beakers, our noses just poking out of the heap of beautifully carved skulls. Right at the beginning of our crusade I told Grandfather that there was no point in fussing over skulls, but Grandfather didn’t agree.

“It’s an old warrior custom that you don’t just leave your enemy’s skull lying around, but you polish it up nicely and make a cup out of it,” he said. “It’s polite. If you have enough time to kill a man, then you’ll find the time to polish his skull.”

“We can’t haul all these skulls around with us,” I argued.

“That’s true,” agreed Grandfather. “I didn’t say that we have to carry them with us. We simply make the cups ready and leave them on the road. Anyone who wants to can take them and drink from them.”

So Grandfather would spend the night making chalices out of all the dead people who passed through our hands, and in the morning we would leave them by the roadside, like a peculiar kind of droppings, which gave the message that two warriors from the old world had passed through.

One evening we came upon a wide clearing on a path winding through a forest, in the middle of which towered a stone stronghold of the iron men. Grandfather alighted on a branch and looked me in the eye.

“Shall we take them on, boy?”

“Of course, Grandfather!” I replied, and we croaked with laughter. It was a completely crazy notion for two men to attack a fortress, within whose walls dozens of mail-coated warriors were moving. Grandfather could of course fly over them, but in order for me to help him I would need at least a ladder, and before I could get over the tops of the walls, more arrows than a bird has feathers would certainly be fired into my body. What could Grandfather do alone up there if the iron men were able to go into hiding in the towers and pepper him with arrows? The decision to attack the fortress was mad, but we didn’t care.

“Where do we start, Grandfather?” I asked.

“Let’s wait till night,” replied the old man. “I smell the scent of bears. They keep them inside the fortress. If the bears come to help us from inside, we’ll attack from the outside, and tomorrow I’ll have a lot of work polishing all the skulls that will fall our way today.”

We hid in the forest until the sun had set; then I crept to the fortress and hissed a few Snakish words. Those words can be heard through walls and simply must be answered, even when one doesn’t want to betray oneself, so it was no wonder that I immediately heard a weak and somewhat confused hissing, the sort that bears produce.

I crawled up to where the hissing was coming from and pressed myself against the wall.

“How many of you are there?” I hissed to the bears.

“Ten,” came the reply.

“Good!” I said. “We have a plan to capture the fortress and kill all the iron men. If you help us, you’ll be released from your prison and you can run back to the forest.”

“We’re not in prison,” came the response through the wall to my great surprise. “We like it here. The chief of the iron men feeds us well.”

“Idiots!” I hissed angrily. “Is there so little for you to eat in the forest? What fun can it be to sit in the cellar of a stone fortress behind bars! Don’t you long to see the sun?”

“We go for a walk every day,” the bears answered. “We all have a strong leather leash. Oh, how beautiful it is! It has silver studs on it, attached by colored ribbons. No bear in the forest has such a beautiful collar. They’re made over the seas, in foreign lands. No, we’re not going to escape from the fortress.”

I hissed a couple of insulting words to them, but the bears didn’t seem to care; evidently they were very satisfied to be able to tell someone of their incredible good fortune.

“It’s very fine here!” they explained. “All the women have terribly splendid dresses that make them so beautiful it could drive you mad. Sometimes they take us into the banqueting hall, where all the people eat and dance and we’re allowed to look on and we’re given bones. Not only that, they’re teaching us to dance! There’s a hunchbacked man here who wears on his head a big forked red cap, with a golden bell on each tip. He’s a foreigner, no doubt an important and famous man, who always talks the most at feasts and does somersaults on the floor. Then they all laugh and applaud him. At the feasts he plays on a pipe, and not just with his mouth. Oh no! He can even blow on the pipe with his bottom! Yes, he pulls down his pants, gets down on his back, shoves the pipe into his arsehole, and plays so prettily that all the other lords and ladies roar with laughter and clap their hands together. This same man is our teacher; he blows his pipe and shows us how to move in time to it. He’s very kind, and if our dancing goes well, he strokes us and gives us dainty things to eat. Of course we try our very best, because we appreciate that dancing is in fashion these days. All the great lords dance, although not as well as this hunchbacked man with the little golden bells. Oh, how we want to be like him! We want to learn to dance well, because then maybe we’ll get a forked red cap and golden bells that tinkle so prettily. We have one great dream. That is we’d like him to teach us to play on the pipe with our mouths and our arseholes, but we’re afraid that we’re too clumsy and inexperienced for that. We’ve lived too long in the forest. But who knows!”

“You should kill all those lords and ladies, starting with the hunchback,” I declared.

“No!” replied the bears. “We love and admire them, especially our dear teacher. We don’t want to kill anyone at all; that’s an old-fashioned custom. They only still do that in the dark forest. Now we’re dancing bears.”

“You should kill all those lords and ladies, starting with the hunchback,” I repeated pitilessly.

“Oh no, we won’t do that!” came the reply. “Stop it! Who are you anyway, to be demanding such horrible things from us?”

“I’m a man who knows Snakish,” I said, sibilating a very long and complex hiss. For once it was silent beyond the wall, and then some crazed roaring was heard. And so there should have been, for that Snakish word took away the bears’ free will and awakened their wild desire to kill.

Without being able to see through the wall, I knew what was happening to the bears now. Their eyes were burning, they were foaming at the mouth, they were twisting their bars, biting their collars, and breaking with a roar into the castle. They were striking down every person who stood in their way, smashing up the rooms and flinging down the guards from the walls. The iron men were certainly putting up a resistance, trying to stop the unexpectedly crazed animals, calm them down, and if that failed kill them. They were battling with the bears, and when both parties were running with blood, when the bears had overturned the whole castle and murdered most of the iron men, Grandfather and I would come in and finish off the job.

I could hear horrid screams from the fortress and I understood that the bears had attacked the humans. Maybe just now they were eating the piper with the red cap who had been teaching them to dance. Now he would be dancing between the paws of the flock of bears driven mad by Snakish words.

I saw one guard flying headfirst down from the wall, and I realized that at least a few bears had got up there. I took a look at him — all was well; he’d broken his neck — and hissed to Grandfather. He had already realized that the time had come and came flying like a great owl.

“Take hold of me. I’ll lift you up!” he shouted, and I clung to Grandfather’s hips and felt myself rising into the air. A moment later I was on the walls and a large bear was rushing toward me, its jaws open.

I quickly hissed what was necessary, and the animal turned around to seek another victim, one who didn’t understand Snakish and couldn’t command it. It found an iron man and leapt onto him, but the iron man ran a spear straight into its heart, and the animal rolled down the stairs into the courtyard.

A moment later it was followed by the victorious iron man, the useless spear still in his hand, for Grandfather had stung him on the cheek straight from the air.

There was actually very little left for us to do, because the bears had ravaged savagely, and although their corpses also lay everywhere, they had killed off nearly all the residents of the fortress. We finished off the last ones.

It only remained to calm the bears down. There were two left, and they were so enraged that they wanted to attack each other. One single Snakish word stopped them, and the bears looked around uncomprehendingly, astonished at the sight of their own bloody paws.

“All right, bears!” said Grandfather. “Finished! The fortress has fallen and all the iron men and their women are dead. You can slip back into the forest.”

The bears stared at us dumbly.

“Didn’t you understand?” asked Grandfather. “Go back to the forest! You’ve been good; you did a lot of damage. You can keep the dead bodies if you like. Only the heads belong to me. I won’t give you those to gnaw on.”

He hovered low over the courtyard of the fortress and fished out from the heap of corpses the body of a slightly built hunchbacked man, from whose head hung a red two-pronged cap. Grandfather ripped the cap off him.

“Remarkable head, this one,” he said. “Knobbly like a tree root. This skull will make a splendid chalice.”

“That’s the piper!” said one of the bears. “He taught us to dance and gave us sugar. What have you done?”

“We haven’t broken a single bone in this little man’s body,” replied Grandfather. “There are a bear’s tooth marks on his throat. Maybe you bit him yourself.”

He cut the piper’s head from the body and stuffed it in his pouch.

“The head for me, the body for you,” he said cheerily. “Enjoy it!”

The bears stepped slowly up to the piper’s dead body. They nudged it with their snouts. One of the bears took the red cap with the golden bells in its teeth and put it on the corpse’s chest. They licked the little man’s hands. They wept.

“Eat up quickly, you fools!” shouted Grandfather from up in the air. “We’re going to set fire to this heap of lumber now! Boy, come down. I’m putting fire under the eaves!”

A little while later the conquered fortress was blazing and a cloud of sparks rose to the moon. I strode along the road, lit up by the firelight, Grandfather flapping overhead, and I heard him saying, “It’s good that they built their house in the middle of a wide clearing, so there’s no danger of the forest catching fire.”

I was just then wondering whether the bears had left the fortress or stayed to lick their teacher, who was able to play the pipe with his mouth and his arse. But then — what did it matter to me? Let them get scorched and perish if they wanted, together with their hunchback of the golden bells and his pipe.

Who would pity this new world?

“Grandfather, there’s another fortress!” I shouted, pointing ahead. “Now it’s its turn!”

“Exactly!” replied Grandfather. “Let’s attack it now, while we’re still warm from the last commotion!”

“Are there any bears here?” I asked.

“Can’t smell them,” answered Grandfather. “But what the hell, we can do it ourselves.”

“Yes we can!” I agreed, feeling the blood rushing to my head. “Let’s go, Grandfather! Lift me up over the walls again like last time!”

I grabbed hold of Grandfather and we flew. The fortress, which had seemed in the dark to be a fuzzy dark lump, was right here. I was ready to get into the thick of the iron men’s spears and swords, to struggle for my life, and if necessary even to perish. It was all the same to me, but looking at the building from above I suddenly realized that this wasn’t a knights’ castle but a monastery.

“Grandfather, we’re in luck!” I yelled. “There aren’t any iron men here, only monks! Grandfather, this will be just like going mushrooming; just cut with your knife!”

One monk was staring at me from down in the monastery yard. He raised his hands and shouted something in his incomprehensible language. The monastery bells started ringing. Not half an hour passed before they were silent again.