The Man Who Spoke Snakish

Thirty-Seven

ccording to Pirre and Rääk, Salme should still be living in her old cave, and that is where I bent my steps. Although some trees had grown taller and others been broken by autumn storms, it was easy for me to find my sister’s dwelling. I pushed aside the deerskin hung in front of the cave entrance and stepped inside.

“Hello!” I said in a loud voice. “Still recognize me, sister?”

“You, Leemet!”

Salme got up in astonishment. The cave was dim, but still you could clearly see that in the meanwhile my sister had grown very old. Her hair hung untidily, faded and tangled like last year’s grass stalks under melted snow. Her leather cape was torn in places and sooty, as was her face. I must have looked quite taken aback at my sister. At any rate she seemed to feel a slight embarrassment at her appearance; she pushed away the wisps of hair in front of her face.

“I wasn’t expecting you,” she mumbled in confusion. “Such a long time … Where have you been? I really didn’t know … Nobody ever visits us anymore. Mõmmi, look who’s come!”

Mõmmi looked at me and I looked at him, and I saw the fattest bear I had ever chanced to meet. He took up half of the cave. Fat had swallowed up his snout, so that his face was flat and round, as if he were no longer a bear but an eagle owl. Thick folds of flab hung everywhere on him. It seemed that the old fur couldn’t manage to cover the gigantically expanded body, and so there were yawning hairless gaps on his skin in several places, like stains or large scabs. Mõmmi’s feet weren’t visible at all; a rampant paunch covered them like soft brown moss.

“Hello, Leemet,” mumbled this mountain of lard, peering at me with his tiny eyes, which hardly peeped out over the fat cheeks. “Haven’t seen you in a long time. Nice that you dropped by! Salme, offer your brother something to eat.”

“No, thanks!” I said rapidly. In the presence of such a fat animal I couldn’t force a mouthful down my throat. Besides, I could smell a strong stink, which filled the whole cave and nauseated me. I presumed that Mõmmi had grown so obese that he couldn’t go outside the cave to do his business, and therefore would shit right there. I imagined what might be hidden in that fat furry belly, which covered the bear’s feet like flayed skin, and it made me feel bilious. What’s more, I saw gnawed bones lying everywhere along with rotting bits of meat; for some reason Salme had not bothered to throw them out, and they stank as well. Great black flies were strutting all over and rubbing their front legs together, as if expressing pleasure at such a grand feast. Mother would never have tolerated such slovenliness and filth in her own shack. Apart from being disgusting, it was shameful. What would the neighbors say about such squalor!

But at the same time I understood that neighbors were what Salme and Mõmmi no longer had. They lived all alone in the forest. Nobody stepped over their threshold; nobody had anything to do with them. They were the only people left in the forest — and actually Mõmmi was a bear. No wonder, then, that their residence had gone wild and was now more like an animal’s lair than a human dwelling.

“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.

I got up, stretched, and moved my arms to get warm. I had to seek some shelter, since the autumnal forest was not warm enough for me to lie under the open sky. I didn’t want to go to my sister’s; it would be silly in the darkness of the night to start building a new dwelling, so all that was left was my old home. For a long time I had been reluctant to visit it, but now suddenly I felt its absence. Why not go there and sleep a little? In the end it was only a shack; so what if for me it was full of sad memories? I thought of my mother and Hiie, but I could find no emotion in myself. The past seemed just like a distant legend, which might be sadder or happier but had no connection with the present moment. Mother and Hiie were just figures in a story that had been told to the end; now there was just the dark, cool forest, which aroused repugnance in me, and an empty shack somewhere on the other side of the forest, where it would be so pleasant to lie down and stretch out. Nothing else was important.

I started heading for my old home, and the road took me along the edge of the forest. I couldn’t resist the temptation to take a look at Magdaleena’s village; from here it should be quite visible. I turned aside from the path and in a few moments I got to where the trees ended and the fields and meadows began.

From here I should have seen the roofs of the village houses, but there weren’t any. The village had vanished, and in the dim light my eyes could not make out exactly whether it had been wiped off the face of the earth or whether there were still at least traces of buildings, ruins, or something similar. I was dismayed, because I hadn’t realized how an entire village could suddenly disappear. Grandfather and I hadn’t burned it down, and yet there was no village. Had they moved away and taken their houses with them?

Then I saw a human figure off in the distance. I went closer to him out of curiosity, hoping to meet someone I knew. This man certainly was familiar. Elder Johannes was tottering along the narrow road, a stick in his hand and a tattered cloak on his back.

“Hello, Elder,” I said, stepping out of the darkness. “Isn’t it nice to meet again after such a long while?”

Johannes gazed at me and clutched his stick with both hands, to protect himself from me with it. But I had no thought of attacking him. My hatred had abated and at that moment I felt only pleasure that I had met a person whom I could ask about the mysterious disappearance of the village.

“Don’t wave your stick about,” I said. “I haven’t come to kill you. Tell me what’s happened to the village! Were you struck by a fire? Where are all the houses?”

“Damned spawn of hell!” growled Elder Johannes. “Now you come and ask where the houses are! Yes, our village burned to the ground, and it’s your fault!”

“I didn’t put your eaves to the torch,” I protested.

“Our village burned to the ground because of unprecedented wickedness, and that wickedness was committed by you,” replied Johannes. “With your flying accomplice you killed the holy bishop himself, and for that evil murder we had to pay. The noble knights came and set our village on fire, because the murder of a holy man is a horrible sin. You’ll burn in hell for this! I tried to explain to the esteemed knights that we had not raised our hand against the holy father, that it would never occur to us to commit such a terrible murder. I explained that the bishop had been attacked by a savage, a werewolf whose dwelling place is the thick forest and who had previously bitten to death my unhappy daughter and the son in the flesh of a noble knightly lord. But the gentlemen said that it was all the same to them which boor had committed the crime. They said that we were all only brutes and savages, with no culture and no respect. They said they didn’t have time to make the distinction which of us was Christian and which wasn’t, so in any case we could all bear responsibility for the brutality of our countrymen. Then they set fire to our village and rode away on the backs of their thoroughbreds.”

“Why didn’t you resist and kill them?” I asked.

“Because we are Christians!” declared Johannes, and raised his hand to heaven, as was always his habit when he was in full spate and starting to shout. “We are not wild animals like you, and we know how to behave in the new world. In the end the noble knightly gentlemen were right; the killing of the bishop is the most terrible murder and someone had to be punished for it. If we started to rebel and attack the knightly lords, we would only be confirming their opinion that we do not belong in the ranks of civilized peoples. Therefore we took the just punishment with Christian humility, and we will build a new village. Just today I went to the castle to request permission for one, and the noble knight was good enough to give us a new chance to prove ourselves. We will rise from the ashes and one day we will stand proudly beside the other modern nations and will be precisely as good.”

I had been hearing this talk all the time I was living with Magdaleena; they all talked this kind of rubbish.

“Very nice. Carry on building a new village and become a cultured people,” I said. “Be modern and pray to your new God. I sincerely wish you success. Farewell!”

I wanted to go, but Johannes was just getting into his stride and didn’t want to stop talking so soon.

“Don’t mock, you Satan!” he screeched. “Where are you going now? Into the dark forest, to bow down before your abominable sprites and pray for the forces of hell to torment us!”

“My dear man,” I said, exasperated. “I promise you I won’t bow down in the dark forest before any sprite or pray for anything.”

“Faithless!” screamed Johannes.

“That’s true,” I replied. “I’m not ashamed of that name.”

“Murderer!”

“That’s not a lie either. But the same could be said of you, old man. Do you remember how you set fire to all the adders? By the way, what’s become of Peetrus, who put my friend onto an ants’ nest? I hope he was burned up when the iron men punished you.”

“Peetrus is the pride of our village!” declared Johannes. “It was he who discovered the dead bodies of the holy bishop and his companions and quickly called the knightly lords to strike at the house and visit punishment. As a mark of thanks he was made a servant of a knight. Just a few days ago he left these parts with his master, on a trip to the holy land, to do battle with the heathens. This is a great honor for our whole people; Peetrus is the first one of us to go so far. Along with the great and powerful peoples, our boy is now making his contribution to creating a new world.”

“I hope those heathens flay his skin,” I said. “Good night now, old man. I hope you will get chain mail before you die too; you’ve earned it in every way.”

“I’m hardly likely to get such an honor,” replied Johannes, yet from his tone I felt that he was pleased by my words. His voice became solemn. “Go on then, boy, and carry on living in your dark past like some primeval animal, a tail still growing out of your backside. I’m going the other way, and as long as I breathe, I shall strive toward the light and a new, better world!”

“Go then,” I responded. “And so that the way is easier for you …”

I pulled out my knife and stabbed the village elder in the backside.

“There!” I said, laughing, for honestly, there wasn’t an ounce of hate in that blow. I had done it simply from a sudden whim. “Now you needn’t fear that you’ve got a tail on you. Now march away in peace; now you’re really a modern person!”

“Werewolf!” screamed Johannes, holding his hand over his bleeding backside. “Murderer! Hell is your place. That is where you’ll burn! You killed me! I’ll bleed to death!”

“Does cutting off your tail really seem so bad?” I exclaimed. “A modern person doesn’t need one. Don’t scream horribly now, like some savage! What must the noble knights think of you if you can’t behave like a civilized person? Now don’t look back at all; keep looking forward! You still have your nose to sniff the wind. What more do you need? Farewell, village elder, and good luck!”

I ran off, suppressing my laughter, but I could hear Johannes’s dreadful screaming for a long time afterward.