The Man Who Spoke Snakish

Andrus Kivirähk

• Publisher: Black Cat
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780802190956
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

The runaway Estonian bestseller tells the imaginative and moving story of a boy tasked with preserving ancient traditions in the face of modernity. Set in a fantastical version of medieval Estonia, The Man Who Spoke Snakish follows a young boy, Leemet, who lives with his hunter-gatherer family in the forest and is the last speaker of the ancient tongue of snakish, a language that allows its speakers to command all animals. But the forest is gradually emptying as more and more people leave to settle in villages, where they break their backs tilling the land to grow wheat for their "bread" (which Leemet has been told tastes horrible) and where they pray to a god very different from the spirits worshipped in the forest's sacred grove. With lothario bears who wordlessly seduce women, a giant louse with a penchant for swimming, a legendary flying frog, and a young charismatic viper named Ints, The Man Who Spoke Snakish is a totally inventive novel for readers of David Mitchell, Sjón, and Terry Pratchett.

Nineteen

here were three boys: apart from Pärtel two little men who were shorter than him (and me), but with the same astonishingly broad shoulders, so that they looked almost square. Later I got to know that their powerful shoulder muscles came from the dull tilling of the fields and walking behind an ox supporting a plow. Their stunted growth was the consequence of poor diet; of course you don’t grow close to the heavens by munching plenty of bread and porridge. Tallness is not desirable for the villagers anyway: to cut grain with a scythe you have to be stooping all the time anyway, and if your backbone is too long, it gets hurt terribly. Life is altogether easier for those who have remained stunted and unnaturally stocky. Those are the bastards who are suitable for village life.

Pärtel towered over these toadstool-shaped men, while being no worse than his companions in the breadth of his shoulders. He had become a real strong man, and there was not much left of the boy I used to know, the boy who had accompanied me to spy on the whisking women, the boy who had been my best friend. And yet I recognized him immediately. And he recognized me. He stared straight at me and said, “It’s really you. Have you finally come to live in the village? I thought you wouldn’t come.”

“I haven’t come anywhere,” I retorted. “Magdaleena simply invited me here to listen to some music. Hello, Pärtel.”

Pärtel screwed up his face.

“I’ve completely forgotten that name, but you still remember it. I told you that last time we met. My name is now …”

“Peetrus, yes, I remember.”

“That’s it!” said Pärtel-Peetrus. “And these are my friends, Jaakop and Andreas. This is Leemet. He’s from the forest.”

Jaakop and Andreas gazed at me and stretched out their hands. This was another village habit that I didn’t understand. Why did they have to keep on touching each other? I understand it if you want to touch a girl you love; that’s a different matter. Sister Salme has told me how nice it is to rumple a bear’s soft fur; I’ve never done it, but I do really think that a bear’s thick fur feels warm to the touch and tickles your palm. An adder’s skin is silky too, and it’s pleasant to stroke it. But the village boys’ hands are rough, filthy, and clammy, full of breadcrumbs under the fingernails. After a touch like that you want to soak your hand for a few hours in cold stream water. Yet I didn’t show my feelings, but pressed both the young men’s hands out of respect for their local custom; they were unpleasantly big and coarse, like the Primates’ feet.

“We thought there weren’t any people left in the forest,” said Andreas. “What was wrong with you that you didn’t come earlier? Were you sick, or what?”

I wanted to say that I had been sick only once in my life—after eating the disgusting rye bread—but it isn’t my habit to be cheeky and start quarrels with people. I simply shrugged my shoulders and mumbled something.

“Never mind,” said Jaakop paternally. “Better late than never. You’ve already looked around this place, for some land to clear and start your own field?”

“No, I haven’t,” I said, my honest answer for once not being insulting.

Jaakop started immediately to give recommendations, but fortunately Magdaleena interrupted this useless chitchat.

“Boys, be quiet,” she begged. “The monks are singing now! Let’s listen!”

Pärtel and his mates sat down and were silent.

After a little while, Pärtel said, “It’s wonderful. I don’t suppose you’ve heard them before, Leemet?”

“The monks don’t go singing to the forest, do they?” scoffed Andreas. “We were lucky that they decided to build their monastery near our village. You’d have to go overseas otherwise, to listen to a proper hymn.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Hymn,” repeated Andreas. “The name of this music is ‘hymn.’ It’s highly respected all over the world these days. You like it too, eh?”

“Yes,” I replied cautiously, since agreement seemed safest, while saying no would quite clearly have ended in an argument. “But I don’t understand a single word.”

“Well, it’s Latin you see,” said Pärtel. “Hymns are sung in Latin; they do that everywhere. It’s the music of the world!”

“Boys, you can’t keep quiet at all!” snapped Magdaleena angrily, getting up and walking away from us. Then she sat down again, pressed her ear to the monastery wall, and even closed her eyes, to concentrate better.

“We’ve been thinking about learning to sing hymns too,” said Andreas in a whisper. “The girls go mad for it. The monks have swarms of women, and they always start singing when the ladies give them the eye.”

“Yes, we’ve even been practicing,” said Pärtel. “It’s gone pretty well, too, but we have the problem that we don’t have any castrati in our choir.”

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“Castrati are the most famous singers,” explained Jaakop. “There’s one of them here in the monastery; he sings with a high voice like a lark. Because he’s had his balls cut off.”

“But that would be so painful!” I said. I had never heard anything so obscene.

Andreas snorted contemptuously.

“Easy to see that you’re from the forest!” he said. “Painful! Who cares if it’s painful! People cut balls off all over the world! Elder Johannes himself told me that in Rome, where the Pope lives, half the men don’t have balls and they sing so beautifully it’d knock you flat. It’s the fashion there. Johannes told me they actually wanted to cut his balls off too. Some bishop had suggested that. But unfortunately something got in the way and he had to leave, so the plan came to nothing. They don’t cut balls off hereabouts. We’re out in the sticks here!”

Mentally I was thanking fate that Elder Johannes had kept his balls, for otherwise there would be no Magdaleena, just an old man warbling like a lark. What a ghastly thought; it gives you gooseflesh! But Pärtel and his friends really looked sorrowful. They sat listening to the monks’ singing and scratching their crotches occasionally, and the scratching constantly reminded them of their own imperfection.

“You can sing with balls too,” I remarked.

“It’s not that,” replied Jaakop. “In every proper chorus there has to be a castrato. Of course, somewhere by the river or by the cooking stove any man can drone away, but you don’t get famous that way. Proper choirs work in monasteries.”

“So go into a monastery and become a monk,” I suggested. The boys shook their heads.

“You don’t get it,” said Pärtel. “They don’t take people like us into monasteries. Who would sow the fields and make hay, if everyone was singing in a chorale? There’s a division of labor, understand?”

“We’ve got nothing against sowing and cutting,” added Jaakop. “Toiling with a plow is just fine. Have you ever stood behind a plow?”

No was my honest answer.

The other three laughed.

“So you’re completely in the dark,” said Andreas. “The plow is a mighty thing. With it you can sow … It’s great. Sowing is good, but I want to do the choir thing to get women. Look how Magdaleena’s out of her mind about these chorales. Most of all I’d like it if I sowed in the morning and sung in the evening in the chorale and then got with the dames.”

“A monk’s haircut would be cool too,” added Pärtel dreamily. “The girls like it too, but we’re not allowed to cut our heads that way. The monks won’t allow it. Peasants aren’t allowed to look like monks.”

“Why do you listen to them?” I asked.

“How do you mean?” exclaimed Jaakop. “They’ve come from a foreign country; they know better how things are done in the world. We only came out of the forest recently. What do we have to teach them?”

“Snakish words,” I said. The trio stared at me scornfully.

“You know them, do you?” asked Andreas.

“Of course I do,” I replied. “And at least Pärtel—I mean Peetrus—used to know them. Didn’t you, Peetrus?”

Pärtel screwed up his face.

“I don’t remember,” he said somewhat reluctantly. “As a child I used to play all sorts of games and you can make up all kinds of nonsense. It was so long ago I can’t recall.”

“You have to remember,” I said excitedly. “You can’t claim that Snakish doesn’t exist. I’ve heard you hissing it yourself.”

“Well, maybe I did hiss something,” agreed Pärtel. “But I no longer remember a single Snakish word. And I’m not interested either. What would I do with those Snakish words? I’m not a snake! I’m a human being, I live in a human village, and I talk human language.”

“It would be a different matter if you knew Latin well,” said Andreas. “Then you’d sing hymns and you’d get all the women into bed.” He didn’t seem to be thinking of anything else.

“German is important too,” added Jaakop. “That’s what the knights speak. If you understand German, some knight might take you as his servant.”

“Do you want to be a servant then?” I asked, taken aback.

“Of course,” answered Jaakop. “That would be great. You could live in a castle and travel with the gentleman knight into foreign lands. It’s very hard to become a servant, because everyone wants to, but the knights take on very few former peasants. They prefer to bring their own servants from abroad, because our people are still too stupid and might embarrass the knights in fine society.”

“Elder Johannes was a servant to a bishop for a while,” said Pärtel, adding kindly for my benefit: “A bishop is about the same as a monk, but much richer and more important. It was when Johannes was still young, well, at the same time as when he visited the Pope in Rome. Johannes was allowed to live in the bishop’s castle and eat from his table. He even slept with the bishop in the same bed, because it’s the custom in foreign lands for important men to sleep with both women and boys.”

“What?” I was shocked.

“There you go—straight from the forest, straight from the forest!” sneered Andreas. “Shut your mouth and don’t make such a stupid face! Yes, that is the custom in the world! Only a man from the forest would be amazed at that. Johannes has said that in Rome sleeping with boys is a divine everyday thing. I’ve tried that sort of thing myself, with my own brother, but nothing much came of it. It just made you sweaty and ripped your trousers. Obviously you’d have to get trained by some knight or monk; otherwise you end up in a tangle like some amateur.”

“But it happens very rarely that some knight or monk lets peasants into his bed,” sighed Jaakop. “They don’t think we’re really worthy of them.”

I told them that even in the forest that custom wasn’t unknown; it happens quite often that a male fox in heat gets on the back of another male fox. This annoyed all of them.

“So you think I’m like some male fox?” asked Andreas angrily. “Who’s interested in what some animals do in your stupid forest? I’m talking about what goes on in the world. You don’t know anything about it. You don’t know any languages!”

“Only Snakish,” added Jaakop, grinning. “I guess snakes don’t get the latest news from Rome?”

“Don’t boast, Leemet,” said Pärtel, admonishing me. “You’ve only just come to the village; it would be best if you kept your eyes and ears open and tried to learn as much as possible about living as humans live, not like the animals in the forest. Where are you going to live anyway? You have to build a house, clear some land, get yourself all the tools you need. I can lend you a quern. I’ve got two.”

I wanted to tell him that he could shove his quern up his arse, but this was when the monks’ singing ended. Magdaleena slid her hand over her eyes, as if releasing herself from a spell, and came over to us.

“You boys are strange,” she said. “Why do you come to listen to hymns at all if you chatter among yourselves all the time? Today that castrato sounded so wonderful that my heart went to my throat. I worship that voice!”

“Didn’t I tell you that women melt before those monks?” droned Andreas. “I can sing too. Haven’t you heard me at haymaking time? I even sang a song in Latin.”

“Ah, Andreas, you do understand that you’re not a monk,” said Magdaleena. “I’ve got nothing against peasants singing by the bonfire, but that isn’t real music. Real music is only in the monastery.”

“Well now,” sighed Jaakop. “What do you want from us? We’ve just come out of the forest; our voices still have a bit of the wild animal’s growl about them. I do believe that one day great choir singers and castrati will come up out of our people and be famous all over the world. But for that to happen, our country will have to get so far ahead that they start cutting off balls here as well. It’s shameful; we’re like some backwoods! Your father mixes with those knights and other important men. Hasn’t he heard anything about when we’re going to start cutting balls off here?”

“No, Father hasn’t talked about it,” replied Magdaleena. “I have to go home now. I’ve got a lot to do there.”

“Well, so have we,” agreed the trio. “We grabbed some time to listen to music, but now we have to get back to work. You have to earn your bread. God doesn’t just give you anything.” I wasn’t in any hurry, on the other hand. I knew there was a whopping hunk of venison waiting for me at home, but I wasn’t hungry yet. And I didn’t have the heart to leave Magdaleena; this sudden rush of love was like a leaf attaching me to her skirt tails, and I couldn’t and wouldn’t tear myself away. “I’ll come with you,” I said to Magdaleena.

Pärtel chimed in enthusiastically, “Right, the village elder can give you the best advice about how to start a new life.” The five of us traipsed toward the village.

When we got to Magdaleena’s house, Johannes was just coming out of the cottage, a sheath knife in his hand.

“What are you doing, Father?” cried Magdaleena.

“Miira is worse,” replied Johannes anxiously. “She won’t take to her feet anymore.”

“Is there something wrong with the cow?” asked Pärtel.

“Yes, she’s been sickly for a week or so,” said Magdaleena. “She won’t eat or anything, just lows quiet...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• One
• Two
• Three
• Four
• Five
• Six
• Seven
• Eight
• Nine
• Ten
• Eleven
• Twelve
• Thirteen
• Fourteen
• Fifteen
• Sixteen
• Seventeen
• Eighteen
• Nineteen
• Twenty
• Twenty-One
• Twenty-Two
• Twenty-Three
• Twenty-Four
• Twenty-Five
• Twenty-Six
• Twenty-Seven
• Twenty-Eight
• Twenty-Nine
• Thirty
• Thirty-One
• Thirty-Two
• Thirty-Three
• Thirty-Four
• Thirty-Five
• Thirty-Six
• Thirty-Seven
• Thirty-Eight
• Back Cover