The Man Who Spoke Snakish

Six

eeme had talked a lot of piffle, but some of his words had made me think. There was no sense in seeking the key; Meeme had said that the key comes to a person. Naturally! My boyish heart swelled with pride, because I felt that I had understood Meeme’s words and grasped their hidden meaning. It wasn’t possible to find the mysterious key anywhere in the forest or among the moss; it wasn’t a milkcap or a lingonberry, which any berry picker could pop into his own mouth. It had to be some quite well protected and covered object, to be passed on by one adept to another. Hadn’t the old man spoken of watchmen? The key must be passing from one watchman to another. They inherited it, as guardians. That seemed most likely, for why would a watchman just give away a precious treasure? I wouldn’t do that, for any price. But when someone died — that was a different matter. One watchman passed away and another one took his place.

I was biting my nails with anxiety. I felt great satisfaction with my smartness, but I was even more excited by the knowledge that some years ago I had received a gift. A ring! Of course I had no real reason to believe that that ring, given by Meeme, was the coveted key that would help to find the way to the Frog of the North. At the same time there was no denying that there was something strange about the ring coming to me. Why was I the one that Meeme gave it to? Men and boys didn’t wear rings. It would have been much more logical for the ring to go to some woman, even though the women of the forest didn’t care much for jewelry either, and besides, every family had baubles to jingle on every finger. The old treasures acquired in the days of the Frog of the North had mostly survived, and were lying around in chests, unused. But this ring was wrapped in a leather pouch; it was separated from its fellows, had been singled out. My ring must be associated with some mystery, and in my childish enthusiasm I was certain that it had to do with the key to the Frog of the North.

The only thing that made me hesitate was the fact that Meeme gave it to me. Why did he? Did he know what kind of fortune was associated with it? If he knew, why didn’t he keep it for himself? What sort of person was Meeme really? As I have said, I had always seen him alone, lying around swilling wine and, earlier, eating mushrooms. He looked snotty, covered in resin and mud, his eyes blurred and his brows full of scurf. His appearance was not trustworthy. If that ring had been given to me by Uncle Vootele or Ülgas the Sage or even Tambet (of course he would not have given it to anyone born in the village at any price), I would not have doubted a bit that that treasure was somehow noteworthy. With Meeme, though, it could only be the caprice of a drunk. He’d found some old ring somewhere, wrapped it in a bit of leather, and slipped it to me. And now he was sniggering like a jaybird at me putting the ring on my finger and hoping it would lead me to the Frog of the North.

So for a start I sought out Uncle Vootele and said to him: “Tell me about Meeme.”

“Why are you suddenly interested in him?” wondered Uncle Vootele. “Did he offer you wine? You mustn’t drink that; it makes your head swim.”

“He didn’t. Or actually he did, but I didn’t take it. I didn’t take mushrooms either. Tell me who he is! Why is he always lying on the ground and never walking?”

“Oh, he does walk; he doesn’t always loll around in one place,” said Uncle Vootele, fingering his beard. “Look, Leemet, Meeme is a strange person. In his day he was a great warrior, brave and strong. He should have led that battle in which your grandfather was killed. But Meeme didn’t want to go into that battle. In his opinion it was a terribly stupid idea — to fight the iron men with their own weapons. Even the wolves were left at home, and we walked on foot to the battlefield, where the iron men smashed us to a pulp with ease. Meeme could foresee this, and said that such warfare was madness. But no one listened to him.”

“Why?”

“Because many thought the iron men were cleverer than us. They secretly admired their coats of mail and shiny swords, even though they were marching to war against them. They thought that riding on wolves and fighting in the thickets was outmoded and senseless, and that no modern army fights like that. When Meeme explained to them that we ought to stick to our own ancient weapons, many people confirmed that such a tactic was downright suicidal. “We should learn from developed peoples,” they said. “And if the iron men fight on an open field and without wolves, then that is more correct and efficient. They must know what’s good! After all, they sailed here from faraway lands! We should learn from them, not go into battle like some primates. We shouldn’t bring the name of Estonians to shame like that! Let the iron men see that we too know how to fight like humans! We aren’t one iota worse than any other nation! And so they went to war on foot, without wolves, and took with them the weapons they had seized from the iron men. And naturally they were defeated. Apart from my father, no one came off that field alive, and he was saved only by his fangs, the most ancient weapon, one that has now totally disappeared from human mouths.”

Uncle Vootele picked a fiber of meat from between his teeth, swallowed it, and carried on talking.

“Then Meeme started battling the iron men single-handed, and he didn’t use a sword or a spear, but good old Snakish words, which drove all the animals crazy. They went on an enraged attack against the iron men, when Meeme simply gave the command. He conducted his own battles at the edge of the wood, ambushing iron men who had strayed there. Wolves leapt on the iron men from among the trees and dragged these foreigners into the thickets, where Meeme chopped them to bits with a good old ax. It certainly wasn’t the sort of war that the iron men like to wage, and it was far from modern, but very effective. The iron men feared the forest like fire, for they knew that death lay in wait there. And they couldn’t avoid the forest — they had to ride past or through it — and many of them didn’t come out the other side. You can only imagine what we could have achieved if all men had acted like Meeme and slaughtered the foreigners in the forest with the aid of Snakish words and wolves, instead of riding onto the open battlefield. Meeme alone did the work of ten men, but even that didn’t break him.

“But even though Meeme fought like a madman and chopped at the iron men like lightning, that did nothing to stop more and more people moving to live in the village. Meeme cleared the forest of foreigners, but there was no point in that anymore. The forest became ever emptier, and Meeme, who had made it his goal to save his people and kill the iron men, saw that his people were thronging to take up the beliefs of these same iron men, to buy themselves a little plot of land, turn their bums toward the sun, and cut grain from the ground on all fours with a sickle. Why should Meeme carry on fighting? He saw that people didn’t need his help. Then Meeme would only kill iron men when they got in his way; the rest of the time he ate mushrooms and slept.”

“Now he drinks wine,” I said.

“Makes no difference. There’s no order for him anymore; he’s given up on everything, and now he wants to rest alone.”

I thanked Uncle Vootele and set off. Uncle’s story had been very interesting, but the main thing was that it confirmed my belief in the ring. Meeme, the former bold warrior, could be the man to give me the key. He didn’t keep it for himself because nothing interested him anymore, not even the Frog of the North. This was hard for me to imagine. How could he give up even on the Frog of the North? How could he be so tired?

But that was not my concern. I hurried home and looked for my ring. I took it out of the pouch and stuck it on the end of my finger.

I had secretly hoped that some mysterious power would lead me by the fingers toward the cave of the Frog of the North if I simply ran fast enough while wearing the ring, but no such thing happened. The ring sat on the end of my finger as a ring always does, and I understood that the search for the Frog of the North would not be simple.

At any fate I was ready to make the effort. But I didn’t want to search alone. I couldn’t find Pärtel — he wasn’t at home — but I met with Ints and invited him along with me.

The adder agreed readily. Unlike the blooming fern, whose existence he vehemently denied, Ints thought it quite possible that the ring might lead us to the Frog of the North.

“I don’t know anything about rings and other man-made things,” he said. “If you think that’s the key, then let’s try and find out. How does it work?”

“I don’t know that,” I said. “We should simply keep walking, and the ring will lead us itself to the right place.”

We set off. We tried to move completely randomly, not choosing the paths we usually wandered. I even tried shutting my eyes, so as to walk blind, but that proved too complicated in the forest, for I kept stumbling into thickets and scratching my face.

“Open your eyes,” said Ints. “If the ring is really capable of anything, then you don’t need all this trickery and your skin will survive.”

To snakes, skin is very important. Every snake is proud of his skin. Even the smallest scratch they experience as painful, and if anything does happen, they wait patiently for the time when they can slough off the old skin and wear a new undamaged coat. After moulting they are very sensitive about their appearance, and they may fly into a rage if you happen, say, to drip roasting fat onto them, or touch them with fingers stained violet from eating berries. Toward their old moulted skin, torn in several places, they feel only disgust or even horror. In the long winter months, when snakes don’t leave their lairs, mother adders tell their offspring countless horror stories about moulted skins that move of their own accord in a mysterious way, chasing their former owners and wrapping themselves around them. The little adders shiver, and when Mother finishes the story they beg her: “Tell it again! Tell us about the skin again!”

So much for that. For a while Ints wore a still quite fresh and moist glossy skin; he crawled carefully among the tussocks and tried to avoid decaying leaves, which might smudge him. We kept moving forward, chatting with each other, till we came unexpectedly to the edge of the forest, where the trees ended and an open plain began, in the middle of which a narrow path meandered. And on that path a monk was walking.

When I was very small I thought that monks were the wives of the iron men, since they wore the same kinds of wide dresses that women do. True, they weren’t very good-looking, and I did wonder why the iron men had such ugly spouses. The iron men didn’t look nice either, and as a little boy I was sure that their faces were made of iron and that they had no noses or mouths. Only later did I see iron men taking their helmets off, and I understood that they were also human. Likewise, I also once happened to see a monk pissing, and I ran to Uncle Vootele, breathless with anxiety, my eyes burning in my head: “Uncle, Uncle! The monk has a willy!”

“Of course, all men have them,” answered Uncle Vootele.

“Is the monk a man then? I thought she was an iron man’s wife.”

Uncle Vootele laughed and assured me that wasn’t so. At first I couldn’t believe him and put forward some counterclaims.

“But they have tits. I’ve seen them bouncing under their dresses. And they’re pregnant too. Surely a man can’t be pregnant?”

“They’re not pregnant, and they don’t have tits either. They’re simply very fat, the fat runs around them like resin on a spruce.”

The monk who was now striding along the path was also fat. He noticed me and slowed his pace, but then obviously thought I was alone and didn’t present any danger. He didn’t see Ints, because he was hidden in the grass. But the monk did immediately see the ring on my finger. He stared at it and said something in his own language.

“I don’t understand,” I replied, and hissed the same in Snakish, but the monk didn’t understand either language. He came up to me, squinting at my ring, looked around quickly, and seeing that the coast was clear, grabbed me with one hand by the scruff of the neck, while his other hand pulled the ring off my finger.

I hissed the strongest Snakish words into his face, but since the monk didn’t understand them, they had no effect on him. He was like the hedgehog who could calmly attack an adder, since his stupid head defended him from all the Snakish words. The monk gave me a smack on the back of the head and pushed me away, at the same time putting the ring in his mouth — apparently to hide and defend a precious thing from others.

I was hissing frantically and wanted to bite the monk, but Ints got in ahead of me. The monk screamed with pain and collapsed, with two bleeding spots on his shin.

Now he was much lower, and Ints managed to bite him on the throat. The adder jumped; the monk screamed and grabbed with his hand, but that didn’t help. Two little fang marks reddened on his neck, right on a vein.

“Thanks, Ints. But I want my ring back!” I said.

“Let’s wait until he dies, then we’ll take it from his mouth,” suggested Ints. We went back into the forest, for the monk’s painful yells and moans were disturbing us, and we stretched out happily in the cool of the trees, until everything went quiet. Then we came out of the forest. The monk was dead, but when I prized his jaws open, to my great disappointment the creature’s mouth was empty.

“He’s swallowed it,” said Ints.

“What shall we do now?” I cried. “He’s dead now, which means that he won’t shit anymore. Are we supposed to wait until he rots away?”

“Cut him to pieces,” suggested Ints.

“I don’t have such a big knife,” I said. “Just a little sheath knife, I’d be sawing all day with that. And I can’t drag him home; he’s terribly fat and heavy. And I can’t leave him here and go home for a knife, because meanwhile someone might come by and take him away or eat him up — and then I’ll be without my ring. But, say, Ints, couldn’t you squeeze inside him? He’s so big that there’d be easily room for you to crawl in. Then maybe you could bring the ring out in your mouth.”

“I don’t want to go in there,” replied Ints. “He’s bound to be terribly filthy inside. I’ll get covered in smudges, and my skin is so new and beautiful.”

“Please, Ints! You’re my friend, after all. Afterward you can go and wash yourself in the lake.”

“No, I’m not going inside all that mush. But I know what to do. We’ll invite a slowworm.”

Slowworms were not actually snakes, but simply legless lizards. Adders paid them no attention, since they thought that slowworms were trying to compare themselves with snakes, while being nothing like as clever, and therefore not deserving the name of snake. But they used slowworms to carry out irksome tasks, such as this one. Ints hissed, and pretty soon a long slowworm came slithering closer through the grass and lay submissively before the adder.

“Go inside that monk and look for a ring,” Ints commanded.

The slowworm nodded and wriggled nimbly into the monk’s mouth. Soon we saw the neck of the corpse bulging and then falling back; the slowworm had crawled through it.

For a while nothing happened. Finally Ints tilted his head and announced, “I think I hear the slowworm’s voice. Can you hear it?”

I had to admit I couldn’t hear anything, and no wonder. Adders have far sharper hearing. Ints crawled over to the monk’s stomach and listened intently.

“Yes, he says he’s found the ring, but can’t manage to bring it out. It won’t fit in his mouth. I think you’d better make a little hole into the monk with your sheath knife, then the slowworm will push the ring out through it.”

“Where exactly am I supposed to make the hole?” I asked, taking out the knife. Ints showed me the place. I started cutting. It was quite difficult, because apart from the skin of the stomach I had to also cut a thick layer of fat that covered the monk’s belly. The knife had almost vanished among the creases when finally Ints cried, “The slowworm says he can see your knife! Now make the hole wider.”

Now even I could hear the slowworm’s hissing. I twisted the knife in my hand, and in this way I prepared a hole through which the ring would fit.

“Now push!” Ints commanded the slowworm.

Movement could be seen under the hole, and after a while the luster of gold began to appear from inside the monk. The ring emerged into the daylight. I caught it by the fingers and in a moment the ring was in my hand. It was slimy and bloody, but I rubbed it clean against the grass and popped it onto my finger.

“Come out now!” said Ints to the slowworm. “Everything’s all right.”

After a little while the slowworm became visible, but he didn’t come out of the monk’s mouth but out of the fringe of his dress.

“I didn’t turn back,” he hissed.

“Thank you so much,” I said. “Come by our place another time — my mother will give you a haunch of venison.”

“With great pleasure!” promised the slowworm, and disappeared into the forest.

“Did you notice how he looked?” Ints asked in a whisper. “Horrible! I couldn’t imagine crawling through all that. What would be left of my skin? No fountain could ever wash off that filth.”

“The slowworm is the color of shit anyway, so it doesn’t look too bad on him,” I said.

We considered continuing the search for the Frog of the North, but evening had fallen by now, and we both had empty stomachs. We decided to go home and eat, and look for the Frog of the North some other time.

“Anyway I don’t believe this is the right ring anymore,” said Ints when we had set off homeward. “A real ring would never have ended up in a monk’s stomach. The Frog of the North doesn’t live in anyone’s intestines!”

“That was just unlucky!” I said, but Ints shook his head doubtfully.