The Man Who Spoke Snakish (3 page)

Then he patted me on the cheek, telling me by all means to come back to the grove soon—”because those who don’t visit the grove will be torn apart by the dogs”—and left. But I was torn by terror and hesitation, because I just couldn’t cut a live frog in half. I bathed very rarely and as close to the shore as possible, so I could scramble out of the water before the bloodthirsty water-sprite, without the propitiation of a frog-corpse, would leap at me on the shore. Even when I did go to the sacred grove, I always felt uncomfortable, looking around everywhere for those horrible dogs that lived there and kept watch, according to Ülgas, but all I met was the withering gaze of Tambet, who no doubt took offense that a “villager” like me was gazing around a sacred place, instead of concentrating on the conjurings of the Sage of the Grove.

Being thought of as a villager didn’t really worry me, because, as I said, I liked the village. I was always pressing my mother to
know why we moved away from there and asking if we could go back—if not for good, then at least for a while. Of course my mother wouldn’t agree, and tried to explain to me how nice it was in the forest, and how tedious and hard the life of the village people was.

“They eat bread and barley gruel there,” she would say, clearly wanting to scare me, but I couldn’t remember the taste of either of them, and the words didn’t provoke any disgust in me. On the contrary, those unknown foods sounded alluring; I would have liked to try them. And I told my mother so.

“I want bread and barley gruel!”

“Ah, you don’t know how horrible they are. We’ve got plenty of roast meat! Come and take some, boy! Believe me, it’s a hundred times nicer.”

I didn’t believe her. Roast meat I ate every day; it was ordinary food, with nothing mysterious about it.

“I want bread and barley gruel!” I insisted.

“Leemet, stop talking nonsense now! You don’t even know what you’re saying. You don’t need any bread. You just think you want it, but actually you’d spit it straight out. Bread is as dry as moss; it gets stuck in your mouth. Look, I’ve got owls’ eggs here!”

Owls’ eggs were my favorite, and at the sight of them I stopped whining and set about sucking the eggs empty. Salme came into the room, saw me, and screamed that our mother was spoiling me. She wanted to drink owls’ eggs too!

“But of course, Salme,” said my mother. “I’ve put aside eggs for you. You each get just as many.”

Then Salme grabbed her own eggs, sat down next to me, and we competed with each other. And I no longer thought of bread or barley gruel.

uite naturally, however, a few owls’ eggs couldn’t kill my curiosity for long, and the very next day I was roaming on the edge of the forest, looking greedily toward the village. My friend Pärtel was with me, and it was he who finally said, “Why are we watching from so far away? Let’s sneak a bit closer.”

The suggestion seemed extremely dangerous; the very thought of it made my heart race. Nor did Pärtel look all that brave; he looked at me with an expression that expected me to shake my head and refuse; his words had indicated his dread. I didn’t shake my head; I just said, “Let’s go then.”

As I said it, I had the feeling that I was expected to jump into some dark forest lake. We went a couple of steps and stopped, hesitating; I looked at Pärtel and saw that my friend’s face was as white as a sheet.

“Shall we go on?” he asked.

“I guess so.”

So we did. It was horrible. The first house was already quite close, but luckily no one appeared. Pärtel and I hadn’t agreed
how far we would go. As far as the house? And then—should we take a look in the doorway? We surely wouldn’t dare to. Tears overcame me; I would have liked to run headlong back into the forest, but since my friend was walking beside me, it wouldn’t do to look so scared. Pärtel must have been thinking the same thing, because I heard him whimpering now and then. And yet, as if bewitched, we kept inching forward, step by step.

Then a girl came out of the house, about our age. We came to a stop. If some adult had appeared before us, we probably would have made off back to the forest with a loud cry, but there was no need to flee because of a girl of our own age. She didn’t seem very dangerous, even if she was a village child. Nevertheless we were very cautious, staring at her and not going any closer.

The girl looked back at us. She didn’t seem to feel any fear.

“Did you come from the forest?” she asked.

We nodded.

“Have you come to live in the village?”

“No,” replied Pärtel, and I saw my chance to do a bit of bragging, informing her that I had already lived in the village, but moved away.

“Why did you go back to the forest?” The girl was amazed. “Nobody goes back to the forest; they all come from the forest to the village. They’re fools that live in the forest.”

“You’re a fool yourself,” I said.

“No I’m not; you are. Everyone says only fools live in the forest. Look what you’re wearing! Skins! Awful! Like an animal.”

We compared our own clothing with the village girl’s, and we had to admit that the girl was right; our wolf and goat skins really were a lot uglier than hers, and hung off us like bags. The girl, on the other hand, was wearing a long, slim shirt, which
was nothing like an animal skin; it was thin, light, and moved in the wind.

“What kind of skin is that?” asked Pärtel.

“It isn’t skin; it’s cloth,” replied the girl. “It’s woven.”

That word meant nothing to us. The girl burst out laughing.

“You don’t know what weaving is?” she shrieked. “Have you even seen a loom? A spinning wheel? Come inside. I’ll show you.”

This invitation was both frightening and alluring. Pärtel and I looked at each other, and we decided that we ought to take the risk. These things with strange names ought to be seen. And whatever that girl might do to us, there were two of us after all. That is, unless she had allies inside …

“Who else is in there?” I asked.

“No one else. I’m alone at home; the others are all making hay.”

That too was an incomprehensible thing, but we didn’t want to appear too stupid, so we nodded as if we understood what “making hay” meant. Our hearts were in our throats as we went inside.

It was an amazing experience. All the strange contraptions that filled the room were a feast for the eyes. We stood as if thunderstruck, and didn’t dare sit down or move. The girl, on the other hand, felt right at home and was delighted to show off in front of us.

“Well, there’s a spinning wheel for you!” she said, patting one of the queerest objects I’ve ever seen in my life. “You spin yarn on it. I can already do it. Want me to show you?”

We mumbled something. The girl sat down at the spinning wheel and immediately a strange gadget started turning and whirring. Pärtel sighed with excitement.

“Mighty!” he muttered.

“You like it?” the girl inquired proudly. “Okay, I can’t do any more spinning just now.” She got up. “What else can I show you? Look, this is a bread shovel.”

The bread shovel, too, made a deep impression on us.

“But what’s that?” I asked, pointing to a cross shape hanging on the wall, to which was attached a human figure.

“That is Jesus Christ, our God,” someone answered. It wasn’t the girl; it was a man’s voice. Pärtel and I were as startled as mice and wanted to rush out the door, but our way was barred.

“Don’t run away!” said the voice. “No need to tremble like that. You’re from the forest, aren’t you? Calm down, now, boys. Nobody means you any harm.”

“This is my father,” said the girl. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you afraid?”

Timidly we eyed the man who had stepped into the room. He was tall, and looked very grand with his golden hair and beard. To our eyes he was also enviably well dressed, wearing the same sort of light-colored shirt as his daughter, the same furry breeches, and around his neck the same figure on a cross that I had seen on the wall.

“Tell me, are there still many people living in the forest?” he asked. “Please do tell your parents to give up their benighted ways! All the sensible people are moving now from the forest to the village. In this day and age it’s silly to go on living in some dark thicket, doing without all the benefits of modern science. It’s pathetic to think of those poor people who still carry on a miserable existence in caves, while others are living in castles and palaces! Why do our folk have to be the last? We want to enjoy the same pleasures that other folk do! Tell that to your fathers
and mothers. If they won’t think of themselves, then they ought to show some pity for their children. What will become of you if you don’t learn to talk German and serve Jesus?”

We couldn’t utter a word in response, but strange words like “castles” and “palaces” made our hearts tremble. They must surely be finer things than spinning wheels and bread shovels. We would have liked to see them! We should really talk our parents into letting us spend at least some time in the village, just to look at all these marvels.

“What are your names?” asked the man.

We mumbled our names. The man patted us on the shoulders.

“Pärtel and Leemet—those are heathen names. When you come to live in the village, you’ll be christened, and you’ll get names from the Bible. For instance, my name used to be Vambola, but for many years now I’ve had the name Johannes. And my daughter’s name is Magdaleena. Isn’t that beautiful? Names from the Bible are all beautiful. The whole world uses them, the fine boys and pretty girls from all the great peoples. Us too—the Estonians. The wise man does as other wise men do, and doesn’t just run around berserk like some piglet let out of a pen.”

Johannes patted us on the shoulder once more and led us into the yard.

“Now go home and talk to your parents. And come back soon. All Estonians have to come out of the dark forest, into the sun and the open wind, because those winds carry the wisdom of distant lands to us. I’m an elder of this village. I’ll be expecting you. And Magdaleena will be expecting you too; it would be nice to play with you and go to church on Sunday to pray to God. Till we meet again, farewell, boys! May God protect you!”

Obviously something was troubling Pärtel; he opened his mouth a few times, but didn’t dare utter a sound. Finally, when we really did turn to leave, he couldn’t contain his question any longer: “What is that long stick in your hand? And all those spikes in it!”

“It’s a rake!” replied Johannes with a smile. “When you come to live in the village, you can have one of these!”

Pärtel’s face broke into a smile of joy. We ran into the forest.

For a little while we ran together, then we each scurried off to our own homes. I rushed into the shack, as if someone were chasing me, in the certain knowledge that now I would make it clear to my mother: life in the village was much more interesting than in the forest.

Mother wasn’t at home. Nor was Salme. Only Uncle Vootele was sitting in a corner, nibbling on some dried meat.

“What happened to you?” he asked. “Your face is on fire.”

“I went to the village,” I replied and told him rapidly, gabbling, and sometimes losing my voice with excitement, about everything I had seen in Johannes’s house.

Uncle Vootele did not change his expression on hearing all these marvels, even though I drew a rake for him on the wall with a piece of charcoal.

“I’ve seen a rake, yes,” he said. “It’s no use to us here.”

This seemed to me unbelievably stupid and old-fashioned. How? If something as crazily exciting as a rake has been invented, then it’s definitely of use! Magdaleena’s father Johannes is using it, after all!

“He might really need it, because you can scrape hay together with a rake,” explained Uncle Vootele. But they need to cultivate hay so that their animals won’t die of hunger in winter.
We don’t have that problem. Our deer and goats can fend for themselves in winter; they look for their own food in the forest. But the villagers’ animals don’t go out in winter. They’re afraid of the cold and anyway they’re so stupid that they might get lost in the forest and the villagers would never find them again. They don’t know Snakish, so they can’t summon living beings to them. That’s why they keep their animals all winter penned in and feed them with the hay they’ve gone to great trouble to collect in the summer. You see that’s why the villagers need that ridiculous rake, but we get by very well without it.”

“But what about the spinning wheel!” The wheel had left a more powerful impression on me than the rake. All those skeins and wheels and other whirring fiddly bits were to my mind so magnificent that it wasn’t possible to describe it in words.

Uncle smiled.

“Children like toys like that,” he said. “But we don’t need a spinning wheel either, because an animal skin is a hundred times warmer and more comfortable than woven cloth. The villagers simply can’t get hold of animal skins, because they don’t remember Snakish anymore, and all the lynxes and wolves run off into the bushes away from them, or, otherwise, attack them and eat them up.”

“Then they had a cross, and on it was a human figure, and Johannes the village elder said it was a god whose name is Jesus Christ,” I said. Uncle had to understand for once just what inspiring things there were in the village!

Uncle Vootele just shrugged.

“One person believes in sprites and visits the sacred grove, and another believes in Jesus and goes to the church. It’s just a matter of fashion. There’s no use in getting involved with just
one god; they’re more like brooches or pearls, just for decoration. For hanging around your neck, or for playing with.”

I was offended at my uncle, for flinging mud at all my marvels like that, so I didn’t start talking about the bread shovel. Uncle would certainly have said something foul about it—something about us not eating bread anyway. I kept quiet, glowering at him.

Uncle smirked.

“Don’t get angry. I do understand that when you see for the first time how the villagers live all that flapdoodle turns a kid’s head. Not only a kid—a grown-up too. Look how many of them have moved from the forest to the village. Including your own father—he used to talk about how fine and nice it was to live in the village, his eyes glowing like a wildcat’s. The village drives you crazy, because they have so many peculiar gadgets there. But you’ve got to understand that all these things have been dreamed up for only one reason: they’ve forgotten the Snakish words.”

“I don’t understand Snakish either,” I faltered.

“No, you don’t, but you’re going to start learning it. You’re a big enough boy now. And it’s not easy, and that’s why many people today can’t be bothered with it, and they’d rather invent all sorts of scythes and rakes. That’s a lot easier. When your head isn’t working, your muscles do. But you’re going to start on it. That’s what I think. I’ll teach you myself.”