The Man Who Spoke Snakish

Eight

t home, Mother was waiting for me, her face beaming with pleasure.

“Leemet, guess what I’ve brought you today!” she asked conspiratorially, and immediately announced, “Owls’ eggs! Two for you and two for Salme.”

I felt even lousier. Owls’ eggs were my favorite food, and it was by no means easy for Mother to get them, because at that time she was getting fat, and climbing up a tree to an owl’s nest with a frame like hers was quite a feat. To tell the truth, it was always frightening to watch Mother climb, because you felt that at any moment the branch might break under her weight and she would fall and break her bones. Uncle Vootele had told Mother that she shouldn’t climb to the treetops like that, that I should go in her place, but Mother replied that she knew how to choose eggs, and anyway she liked being up in the trees.

“A bit of movement and exercise can only do me good,” she said, and I often heard her calls as I roamed around the forest and saw her gesturing from some terribly high top of a spruce, a broad grin on her face. Mother was astonishingly nimble when it came to searching for delicate morsels for her children, and food generally.

All those dangers that Mother had to overcome in fetching owls’ eggs made the delicacy especially precious, and I was dreadfully ashamed that in return for the eggs I had nothing to offer except the news that her wolves would that night have to be taken to the lakeside and bled to death. I mumbled that I was terribly glad about the eggs, though I didn’t start eating them, but slipped quietly behind the table and waited for the opportunity to talk about the louse and Ülgas.

At the same time, sister Salme was enjoying the taste of the owls’ eggs, slurping greedily and licking her lips. I felt envious watching her, seeing that her brow with its white hair was not furrowed by trouble, unlike mine. Mother noticed my strange expression and asked if I was sore anywhere.

“No,” I said. “But … Look, I want to tell you something.”

“Eat up your eggs first,” Mother suggested. “And then I’ll bring you a cold flank of venison to the table; you can’t have eaten anything today. Where do you run around all day? Were you with the snakes?”

“Mother, I don’t want to eat now. I was at Pirre and Rääk’s today …”

“Why do you go there?” Salme interrupted me. “I think they look horrible. Why do they go around naked all the time? It’s obscene! I get sick in the tummy when I see that lot. That Rääk’s breasts hanging down to her navel, dangling like two great hairy oak leaves. And Pirre has such a big tool that when he sits he takes it in his lap; otherwise his willy lies on the ground like a tail and the ants get inside.”

“Salme, what are you saying?” gasped Mother. “Why do you stare at such things anyway?”

“How could I not stare, when he shows it off to everyone? That’s just why I’m saying it. I think it’s horrible! I get a pain in the tummy when I see those two. And then there’s their bottoms! They don’t even have hairs growing there! Completely bare and purple, like two big berries in a bunch!”

“Then close your eyes,” said Mother.

“Why should I close my eyes? Let those apes put something on their arses! My eyes don’t bother anyone, but their thingumybobs are completely gross! Other girls say it too. Just thinking about Pirre’s dick and Rääk’s tits makes you lose your appetite.”

“Well, don’t think about them then!” exclaimed Mother. “I don’t think about them at all. I never see them; they don’t move around the forest much.”

“Luckily!” snorted Salme. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if Leemet invited them around here one day. He hangs around those apes all the time. Leemet, I’m telling you: if you bring those purple-arsed Pirre and Rääk around here, I won’t be sleeping or eating in this house anymore!”

“Oh no, Leemet won’t be inviting them,” Mother assured Salme. “And they wouldn’t come either. But what were you doing there, Leemet? What’s so interesting there?”

“They bred a louse the size of a goat,” I said. “And Ints and Pärtel and I took it for a walk.”

I took a deep breath, because now I wanted to get the whole horrible story off my chest, but Mother and Salme wouldn’t let me. For a while they debated why anyone would need to breed a louse the size of a goat, and whether such a louse would be dangerous to humans, and whether Salme dared to go out in the forest at all.

“What can it do to you?” wondered Mother. “You can shout at it, or hit it with a pinecone. That’ll send it running.”

“You don’t know anything,” snorted Salme. “An animal like that wouldn’t be afraid of anything. Only an ape could invent such a stupid thing. But just you wait — I’ll tell Mõmmi about this louse, and Mõmmi will break it to pieces.”

“Who’s Mõmmi?” asked Mother, her voice now becoming icy and wary, because it wasn’t hard to guess what sort of animal was hidden by that very ursine name. “It’s a bear,” replied Salme reluctantly. She realized that she’d said too much, but now it was too late to bite her lip.

“How do you know him?” demanded Mother, and to my dismay I understood that now the conversation was taking a whole different direction, and it would be very difficult for me to come out with my own worries. Bears were a sore point with Mother, and if she feared one thing in this world, it was that her daughter would follow her bad example.

“I saw him one day in the forest,” said Salme. “We don’t really know each other; we’ve just seen each other a couple of times. Mother, don’t go on about it! I know you don’t like any bear, but Mõmmi’s very friendly, and actually I’m not going out with him. We just say hello when we meet.”

“Salme, you’re too young to be carrying on with bears!” said Mother, and sat with a frightened look on her face, as if lightning had just struck the roof of her shack and set fire to the whole place.

“I’m not carrying on! Did you hear what I said, Mother? We just say hello!”

“You don’t need to say hello either.”

“Well, how else — It’s polite! You have to say hello to those you know.”

“You don’t need to know anyone like that.”

“Mother!”

“Salme, bears think about only one thing!”

“Interesting. What thing?”

“You know perfectly well! Salme, I don’t want you to meet that Mõmmi anymore. Bears are very handsome and strong, but they bring trouble.”

Salme snuffled crossly.

“Maybe they bring trouble to you, but not to me! Mõmmi brings me strawberries and lingonberries!”

“Strawberries and lingonberries!” shrieked Mother, and burst into tears. “That’s just it. Strawberries and lingonberries were what they brought me too! That’s how it starts. They’re great ones for bringing strawberries and lingonberries! No, I knew it! If you’ve got a daughter in the house, there’s no getting away from bears. They swarm around like lizards in the sunshine! So what am I supposed to do? Where should I hide you? A bear will get in anywhere, climb up a tree or scratch a hole in the ground. Oh, those dreadful animals!”

Mother’s face flushed and Salme was likewise as red as a rowanberry. They scowled at each other, Salme’s expression full of defiance, Mother’s marked by desperate anguish. She must have felt that she was seeing her daughter for the last time — that soon a big bear would come and take Salme away to his lair. From her own experiences with bears, she knew that once you get to know one, he will pounce on you. For a while they fell silent, and I felt that now was my last chance to talk about what happened by the lake.

Mother listened unmoved at first, still eyeing Salme and thinking about the bear, but by the time I got to the end of my tale, she looked at me in dismay and said, “Now wait, Leemet! Tell me one more time! That’s horrible!”

I told her again. Mother looked by turns at me and at Salme, as if having to decide which child’s tale was more appalling. In any case mine was more urgent, as midnight was fast approaching, whereas nothing could be done at the moment about Mõmmi the bear. But in the state she was in, Mother could not do anything about my situation. Two pieces of bad news following each other had the effect on her of sitting dumbstruck, her arms folded, looking despairingly at me.

Salme, on the other hand, became furious on hearing my story.

“You’re absolutely impossible!” she screamed. “Poor wolves, what are they guilty of? They gave good milk. You’ll ruin us! Have you no shame?”

“What should I do then, Mother?” I asked unhappily, ignoring Salme. Naturally I felt ashamed, so terrible that my guts ached. I would very gladly have curled up in a ball in a corner, but that wasn’t possible. Waiting by the lake was the angry sage, and I wanted my mother to take all the decisions; I didn’t want to undertake anything more myself. “Should I go to the lake or not?”

“I don’t know,” sighed Mother, utterly helpless. She was completely deflated. “All our wolves …”

“Why do you need to mess around with that disgusting louse?” yelled Salme. “Who’s going to give us milk now, you idiot?”

“And what about the cuddly bears?” I muttered, whereupon Salme almost exploded and hit me with a hunk of venison.

“Children, stop it!” begged Mother and started to cry. “All this news … all at once … I really don’t know what to do.”

“It will soon be midnight,” I insisted. “Should I go to the lakeside? Tell me!”

I tugged frantically at Mother’s sleeve.

“I don’t know,” repeated Mother. “It’s so horrible.”

She wept quietly, wiping her eyes with her sleeve.

I started to cry too.

Salme had been crying a long time already, from her deep insult and anger.

Then Uncle Vootele arrived.

He always had the habit of stopping by in the evenings and listening to how the day had gone. This time he of course saw immediately that something was very wrong. He stood perplexed for a moment on the threshold, but I leapt up to meet him, pulled him inside, and started — prattling and sobbing — to relate the terrible misfortune that befell me by the lakeside. Uncle Vootele was my last hope, because Mother certainly couldn’t help me now. But Uncle was wise and clever. I told him everything — about the Primates, the louse, the sage, and the lake-sprite — and Salme studded my tale with some venomous interjections to show that she was much older and smarter, and would never have brought such a calamity on her own family. But I didn’t care about Salme; the important thing for me was the chance to speak. And when I finished, I looked appealingly at Uncle Vootele, with one single entreaty: please do something and save me from my responsibility!

“That’s a completely silly story!” said Uncle Vootele.

“I told you Leemet is completely silly!” Salme chimed in. “How can he let some disgusting thing swim in the lake?”

“The lake is a lake,” replied Uncle Vootele. “Anyone can swim there. I don’t understand why any wolves have to die for a lake. Ülgas has gone mad.”

“He’s a Sage of the Grove, though,” Mother interjected, wiping her tears, although it was evident that Uncle Vootele’s arrival had improved her mood. She blew her nose, got up, and started cutting meat for Uncle. “Might he be satisfied with just one wolf? I think that should be enough to satisfy the lake-sprite. There’s a lot of blood in one wolf.”

“What lake-sprite?” Uncle Vootele asked. “Have you ever seen a sprite in your life?”

“Well, it’s a sort of custom, you know, an old habit. Sacrifices are always being brought to the sprites. Otherwise why would there be a sage?”

“I’ve never really understood that exactly,” said Uncle Vootele. “But all right, there are habits and customs, which bring people together, and sometimes it’s pleasant to stand in the grove and watch Ülgas burning his stalks and singing something. But to kill a whole pack of wolves just like that, that’s plain stupidity. The blood will pollute the lake much more than one unfortunate louse. I’ll come with you myself, Leemet, and I’ll talk to Ülgas.”

“You could take one wolf with you, just in case,” suggested Mother.

“Not a single one,” said Uncle. “Let them rest in the barn. And let’s have something to eat now, and stop fretting. I see you even have owls’ eggs!”

“You can have them,” I said, looking at Uncle, positively enraptured. Suddenly my heart was as light as if a great stone had been cut out of me, and I felt ravenously hungry, as the hollow that had grown had to be filled. But I was happy to give my owls’ eggs to Uncle, because he was my hero. Uncle thanked me with a smile.

“I’ll eat one; you have the other,” he said. “Nice to see you getting your human faces back. When I stepped in, I thought something really awful had happened.”

“I was really terribly shocked when I heard I had to sacrifice all my wolves,” said Mother. She was calm again, as always, and kept bringing more hunks of venison from the larder, although Uncle Vootele had long ago held up a restraining hand. “Now everything’s all right. Off you go and talk to Ülgas.”

“Yes, I’ll talk to him,” promised Uncle. I sucked happily on my owl’s egg and Salme seemed likewise pretty satisfied, since the latest events had chased Mõmmi out of Mother’s mind at least for a while.

A little before midnight Uncle Vootele and I set out on our way. I felt completely secure with him, and no longer feared Ülgas at all. What could he do to me, with Uncle Vootele defending me? Let him sacrifice his own long nose to the sprite, if he wanted to spill some blood!

It was dark by the lake and the water glistened dimly. Even now in the middle of summer, the lake seemed to be covered with a strange black ice, and you could easily believe that underneath lived a bloodthirsty sprite. I felt a little uneasy and would have liked to hold Uncle Vootele by the hand, but I was too ashamed, because I saw myself as a big boy now. So I just stood close enough to Uncle to smell the consolation of his scent.

“Ülgas!” cried Uncle. “Are you here?”

“Yes, I am here,” the sage’s voice resounded. “Very good that you came with the boy, Vootele. You will help me with the sacrifice and keep the wolves’ legs bound. You must have heard what a terrible desecration your nephew committed.”

“I did indeed,” said Uncle. “But I’m afraid I won’t manage to keep anyone’s legs bound if I have to keep scratching my own; there are so many mosquitoes here! We haven’t brought the wolves with us. You must understand, Ülgas, that killing them is not the wisest idea. What use will you get from it?”

“You haven’t brought the wolves with you?” repeated the sage, as I saw him emerge from the bushes, a long knife in his hand. “What is that supposed to mean? I need to sacrifice the wolves to placate the lake-sprite, for otherwise he will flood the whole forest.”

“How will he do that? How can this little lake bury a whole forest under itself?”

“How do you know how big the lake is?” shouted Ülgas. “What you see with your own foolish eyes is only the roof of the lake-sprite’s castle! The depths of the earth are full of water, of which he is the master! If we don’t allay his wrath, he will raise all that water to the surface, and then even the highest spruce trees will be drowned!”

“Do you actually believe what you’re saying? Ülgas, I understand that there are old customs and habits and that our people have always liked to believe that lakes and rivers are not merely large pools and streams but the same kinds of living beings as we are. And that in order to appreciate and imagine it better, all these sprites have been invented, which are supposed to live in the depths of the water. It’s a beautiful legend.”

“Invented!” thundered Ülgas. “Legend! What on earth are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about what is reality,” replied Uncle. “Yes, it might be more exciting and pleasant to walk through the forest if you imagine that living inside each tree is a little tree-spirit, and that the Forest-Mother takes care of the whole forest. And yes, that stops children from simply breaking branches and damaging trees out of mischief. But we mustn’t be silly about these old stories and start cutting up wolves with a knife just because some animal swam in some forest lake. What is the lake for, if not for swimming and drinking? Goats and deer lap at this water every day!”

“Goats and deer are under the potection of the Forest-Mother, and the Forest-Mother has an agreement with the lake-sprite.”

“That’s just another beautiful legend to be told to children in the evenings. Have you, Ülgas, changed back into a child, to be telling me these things with a straight face?”

“I am the Sage of the Grove!” shouted Ülgas. “You’re a child yourself, Vootele, just as much a child as your nephew, who arrogantly disturbs the peace of the sacred lake and knows nothing of the old customs. I have heard that you are teaching him Snakish, but you should also teach him how to respect the sprites and the sacred grove. Obviously you don’t have enough knowledge yourself for that — and no wonder, because I see you very rarely bringing sacrifices to the grove! You think that Snakish words are the only source of wisdom, but you forget that Snakish has no effect on sprites!”

“That is true,” agreed Uncle. “For otherwise I would certainly have been able to converse with them.”

“Don’t mock me! You are just showing your own ignorance. Only a sage may talk to the sprites — one who knows the most secret arts. I am the mediator between men and sprites, and when I say that all your wolves must be sacrificed to placate the lake-sprite, it is your business to obey. So go and bring the wolves here!”

“Be reasonable, Ülgas! You know that I’m not that stupid.”

“Bring the wolves here!” yelled the sage. I began to fear for my uncle. Ülgas had a long knife in his hand, and he looked crazed enough to try it out on Uncle. It was very possible that his lust for sacrifice had so boiled his blood that he simply had to leap at somebody’s throat. But Uncle Vootele didn’t seem afraid of the sage.

“Ülgas, there are very few of us left in this forest. We are the last, and very possibly even some of us will move to the village. Sooner or later our time will end, and all of your sprites will be forgotten. So is there any sense in poisoning these few years we have left to us with silly madness? Ülgas, I’m afraid that you are the last Sage of the Grove, and after your death no one will remember that there lives in this lake a sprite, and if the villagers come around here picking berries, they will swim contentedly here, and their brats will piss in your sacred water.”

“How dare you!” roared Ülgas. “It’s just because of people like you that our life in the forest has become so miserable! A hundred years ago the grove wasn’t large enough to accommodate all of the people who came to pay their respects, and the sacrificial stones were flowing with warm blood, shed for the honor of the sprites and the Forest-Mother. In those days nobody would have dared to speak to a sage in the way you do, railing against him and making a mockery of his commands. Now I know why your nephew holds nothing sacred and associates with the Primates. He learned it all from you! Why don’t you just move to the village, to be with the misfits, your own kind? That’s where you belong!”

“I don’t want to go to the village,” replied Uncle calmly. “I like the forest; it’s my home. I just don’t like you, Ülgas, but luckily the forest is big and we don’t often meet.”

“But if you’re a true Estonian, you must visit the sacred grove!” jeered Ülgas. “There you’ll meet me whether you like me or not!”

“That’s why I don’t go there anymore,” said Uncle. There’s nothing of interest there. And if you want to regard me as a false Estonian in that case, then I don’t care. It’s all the same to me.”

“The sprites will punish you,” warned Ülgas.

“Don’t talk nonsense, Ülgas!” laughed Uncle. “You know yourself that that’s rubbish. Or if you don’t, you must really be feebleminded. Good night!”

He turned to go.

“Are you going to bring the wolves?” shouted Ülgas.

“I can’t be bothered debating with you anymore. I’m going home. If you have to kill some wolves tonight, why not hunt some in the forest? There are enough untamed animals wandering about there. Good hunting!”

“They are no use! I need that boy’s wolves, because he insulted the sprite. You must bring them!”

“I won’t. Go home, Ülgas, and drink some tea to calm yourself down.”

“Then I’ll take your blood!” growled the sage in a terrible voice, flinging himself upon Uncle. But Uncle was quicker, and dodged him. The next moment Ülgas screeched piercingly and dropped the knife, for Uncle had sunk his teeth into his arm and spat a little piece of bloody flesh onto the grass.

“You got what you wanted,” he hissed, and at that moment I didn’t recognize my calm and gentle uncle, for a wild red fire burned in his eyes, and the lines of his face were contorted with a terrible rage. “A pity that I haven’t inherited my father’s fangs, for then you would not see tomorrow. Keep away from me, Ülgas, and leave the boy alone too, if you don’t want me to tear you into little pieces!”

Ülgas did not reply; he had sunk to the grass, wailing as he stroked his arm and staring at Uncle Vootele in terror.

Some time passed in silence. The fire in Uncle’s eyes was slowly extinguished. He went to the lakeshore and washed his mouth clean of the sage’s blood.

“Go and rest for a couple of days in your own grove, then come back here, and you’ll see that the lake is still lapping in the same spot, and everything is nice and peaceful,” he said soothingly. “This lake has never risen above its shores. Don’t panic about the sprites! They won’t even make your feet wet, unless you go for a dip yourself.”

Ülgas did not respond in any way. We left him moping by the lake and set off for home. Uncle Vootele didn’t say a word, seemingly a bit embarrassed in front of me. I had really never seen him lose his self-control like that before. It was as if a wolf had awoken within him. But I felt proud of him. What an uncle he was! The Sage of the Grove had collapsed before his rage like a rotten tree stump.

I took my uncle by the hand. He squeezed my palm tenderly. Striding homeward through the nocturnal forest, I felt safe.