Then I heard hissing at the door. Ints had come looking for me.
“What’s wrong? Are you sick?” he asked.
“No, quite well,” I replied, getting up and walking into the yard with Ints. Everything there was just as it had been yesterday, except that I had a feeling that the forest was completely empty, and the tussocks echoed under my footfalls.
Thirteen
ärtel and his parents were not the only ones to leave. It was just like the spring thaw, when the first broken pieces of ice are soon followed by others. Apparently quite a few had been weighing up whether to move to the village or not, and Pärtel’s parents’ decision ended their hesitation. The very next day, one of Salme’s friends left with her mother, and after them, more and more and more. Even beforehand there had not been many of us left in the forest, but after a week or two, the only ones who remained were our family, Hiie and her mother and father, Ülgas, Meeme, the Primates Pirre and Rääk, as well as a couple of decrepit old gaffers, for whom the sight of every new morning was a quite unexpected surprise.
In those days I walked around the forest frightened and bewildered and had a feeling that it was crumbling away before my eyes. All at once, trees felled in a storm appeared before me, branches blown down by the wind, and withered bushes, which I wouldn’t have noticed earlier, and it seemed to me that their collapse was somehow connected to the people leaving for the village. I can’t deny that I asked myself the question at that time: wouldn’t it be wiser for us to follow the others’ example, because the mass migration of people made the forest altogether less welcoming for me. Some peril seemed to be lurking there, something that had made others flee, and when a strong wind arose and tousled the treetops with a murmur, I flinched with fear: was this the beginning? I didn’t know what I was supposed to fear, but the people’s departure had somehow bored a hole in the forest, and from that hole there seeped something alien and nasty into the cozy old woods.
Uncle Vootele, who roamed around with me very often in those days, consoled me and told me he had seen many such departures. They had always come in waves: for a few years everyone stays put, but then suddenly dozens of families make a move. Then again many peaceful years pass, when it never even occurs to anyone to leave the forest, but it usually happens that one family decides to go for some reason, and others follow soon after. Those who move to the village are like flocks of birds, heading south in the autumn; some set off as soon as the weather gets cooler, but others only when the first snow covers the ground.
“Those who are going now waited for the snow,” said Uncle Vootele. “You can’t blame them; they stayed a long time.”
“What about us?” I asked.
“We’re like the crows and owls,” said Uncle, laughing. “We stay for the winter. At least as far as your mother and I are concerned. You and Salme are basically still children, and of course you’ll stay with your mother, but when you grow up, you’ll be deciding for yourselves whether to go or stay. And if you go, that will be it. Then there will be just the animals and snakes left in the forest.”
“I’m not going,” I assured him firmly.
“Who knows what the future will bring,” said Uncle Vootele. “Of course I would like life in the forest not to die out completely. But just think, Leemet—what kind of a life is it for you here, all alone? One day your mother and I will die, then there will be just you and Salme. Won’t that be terribly lonely?”
“There will still be Hiie, and Ints and the other adders.”
“Hiie, of course. And the adders won’t be going anywhere. So, we’ll wait and see. Just don’t ever think that your mother or I are commanding you to stay on in the forest at any price. We won’t condemn you if you decide to move to the village. Life is like that; all things come to an end. There are some trees where owls have nested for hundreds of years, and yet at some point they leave it empty, don’t return there. That’s simply how it is. At least you know the Snakish words, and I know that they will live on within you when I’m dead. That’s the most important thing. And who knows—maybe you will manage to pass them on to someone else.”
Uncle’s talk made me unhappy; my future looked miserable and dark. Moving to the village seemed extremely unpleasant, but if I tried to imagine myself as an adult in the middle of a forest abandoned by everybody, I got a lump in my throat. Uncle seemed to understand that, and he patted me on the back, saying with a laugh, “Don’t think about those far-off things now! Right now you only know we’re going to your place, and your dear mother and my precious sister will offer us a meal of goat that will take your breath away. Everything’s fine with us today, and it will be tomorrow too, and so on for years and years to come. What is to come after that, no one knows. Unpleasant things are like rain: sometimes they visit us, but there’s no point in worrying about them while the sun shines. And anyway, you can take shelter from the rain, and many things that seem nasty from far away are not so terrible at all seen close up. Let’s go and eat!”
And that is what we did. Mother was glad that Uncle came visiting us nearly every day, as he always came on an empty stomach and Mother was able to feed him on haunches and legs of goat.
“You’re a fine man, Vootele,” Mother said appreciatively to her brother. “You eat so well! If only Leemet were like you! I keep offering him one thing and another, but he only picks at it!”
“Mother, today I ate half a haunch of venison!” I argued.
“Well, what is half a haunch of venison to a growing boy like you? Only half a haunch! Eat the whole haunch! Who are you saving it for? I’ve got my own. Eat one; you get another.”
“Mother, it’s impossible to eat a whole deer!”
“Why is it impossible, if your stomach is empty? Look at how Uncle Vootele eats!”
“Mm!” mumbled Uncle. “Very good. I’ll take another leg.”
“Take it, do! Take two! You too, Leemet, take one! Take it and at least taste it!”
I sighed and picked up a roasted goat leg for myself. I wasn’t especially hungry, but sitting in the home kitchen, gnawing on goat legs, helped to give the impression that everything in the forest was as before and that the dewy grass of the next morning would not be full of the footprints of people leaving it.
I hadn’t seen Pärtel for several weeks, although he’d promised to come and see me soon. I was waiting impatiently for him, wondering why my friend wasn’t keeping his word. What was he up to in the village? It would be natural for him to escape from that loathsome place at the first opportunity, to breathe the forest air again and complain to his old buddy about all the terrible things he was experiencing there. If I were he I would have shown up long ago. He knew where to find me, and also that I couldn’t visit him. A couple of times I had in fact walked to the edge of the forest and nervously stared toward the village, hoping to see Pärtel somewhere there, but I couldn’t. I did see other villagers, including the familiar Magdaleena and a few of my sister’s friends, who had only recently left the forest. They were already wearing villagers’ clothes, and once I saw one of them with a rake. It didn’t make me envious; actually it made me feel strange, sort of sick. I imagined my sister Salme walking with a rake over the shoulder, and it disgusted me even more than the thought of her kissing with a bear.
At that time my only playmate was Ints, for Hiie was no longer allowed out at all. Tambet had shut himself and his family indoors in their shack, as if afraid that those going to the village had caught some dangerous disease that might also infect his own people. So all Hiie’s wanderings had to stop. I saw her a couple of times looking sadly out the window; I waved to her and she gestured back to me—carefully, so that no one in the room would notice.
Tambet did venture out sometimes, hunting for unhusbanded wolves who wandered freely just as in ancient days. In this way his wolf pack continued to grow, but thanks to Hiie and the Snakish words even the new wolves soon learned that they ought to sleep in the daytime, not eat. One time, Tambet caught a glimpse of
me; he glared at me and shouted, “What are you waiting for? Why don’t you move to the village, like the other traitors!”
I didn’t answer him and ran quickly into the bushes.
I was saddened that Hiie was not allowed out to play anymore. Pärtel moved away, Hiie was stuck at home—and I felt completely alone. There was only Ints, who tried to console me by saying that all the emigrants to the village were fools, but his jokes didn’t improve my mood. Ultimately, adders can’t really understand humans, even when they are speaking the same language. They regarded humans rather as younger brothers, whom they have indulgently taught a secret language, honored with a precious gift that the humans have stupidly thrown away, willfully choosing to become like hedgehogs or insects. Snakes were proud creatures, and they didn’t tolerate stupidity, nor did they have any sympathy for the humans who were leaving the forest. Evidently they had already given up on the human race, like a piece of food that has fallen into the river and is carried out of reach by the current.
I understood this, and I hadn’t suggested to Ints that he make poisonous jokes about those who had moved away, but I couldn’t laugh along with him. I couldn’t laugh about Pärtel, because I remembered how sad he had been and how he hadn’t wanted to leave. The only thing I didn’t understand was why he still hadn’t come to see me. More and more often I went to the edge of the forest to lurk, and ended up spending whole days there, having decided to wait as long as it took to see Pärtel. If the villagers hadn’t killed him, he must turn up in the end! Ints was with me; he wasn’t particularly interested in Pärtel, but they were beautiful warm autumn evenings and in the sunshine of the forest edge it did him good to coil up and doze.
Finally one morning my waiting bore fruit. I saw Pärtel. He suddenly appeared from behind the corner of a house, a scythe in his hand. I hissed at him a long and piercing Snakish word, scarcely audible at all. Pärtel flinched, turned around, and saw me.
The worst thing was that he hesitated. He didn’t hiss back; he didn’t run at full speed toward me or express anything like the great joy I felt when I saw him stepping out from behind the corner. He stopped and considered. Finally he started walking toward me, his arm covered behind his back by the scythe, a forced smile on his face.
“Hi!” he said. “Ah, here you are.”
“I came to watch you gad about the village,” I said sarcastically. Pärtel’s attitude had made me defiant. I had imagined us hugging each other and then chatting at great length about what had happened to us since we had seen each other. But now I was standing, glaring at Pärtel, while he smiled a forced smile at me. Evidently he was embarrassed about his village clothes and the scythe hidden behind his back. But I didn’t intend to be merciful.
“What have you got behind your back?” I asked. “Some tree root or something?”
“It’s a scythe,” replied Pärtel awkwardly. “I was just on my way to the field. That’s why I haven’t been able to come and see you; there’s so much work. Right now it’s harvesting time.”
“What do you cut that junk for?” I persisted. I was furious and terribly unhappy that the longed-for meeting with my friend had been such a shabby failure. I felt I had to choose whether to burst into tears or keep my composure by insulting Pärtel, and I chose the latter.
“They make bread from the grain,” mumbled Pärtel. He was looking down, avoiding my gaze.
“That mush! Don’t you have anything else to eat?”
“Bread is actually very useful,” said Pärtel. He looked truly embarrassed; he must have wanted to run away from me back to the field, to cut straws along with the other villagers with his new toy. But he just stood there, asking after my mother’s and Salme’s health. Never before had Pärtel been interested in my mother’s and sister’s health, and I told him so to his face.
“You’ve very quickly turned strange in the village,” I said. “What have they done to you? Remember how you told me that evening you didn’t want to leave the forest? And now you tell me you couldn’t come to see me, because you have some sort of crop cutting to do. What does that have to do with you? You’re from the forest! You know Snakish!”
“You don’t understand anything!” said Pärtel, suddenly very angry. “Why are you attacking me? I didn’t want to come away from the forest because I didn’t know what kind of life they live in the village, but now I do. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s actually very nice here. There are so many people here, other boys and girls. We play together and have fun. And harvesting crops is great too; I’m pretty good at cutting with a scythe. Later they’re going to teach me how to thresh grain and how to mill it. It’s very interesting here, and I don’t have any need for Snakish words, so it doesn’t matter whether I know them or not.”
“Ha!” scoffed Ints, who up to now had been lying peacefully coiled. “Only insects live without Snakish words. What kind of life is that?”
Pärtel was startled at the sight of Ints and stared at him for a moment somewhat fearfully.
“Do you want to strike him down with a stick?” I asked. “Have those jolly boys and girls already taught you that all adders must be bludgeoned to death?”
“No,” said Pärtel. “But just by the way—in the village they really don’t like snakes. They are the enemies of God.”
“So who is this God then?” I asked.
“That is the most powerful of the sprites,” said Pärtel. “He has made us. He has made all the things in the world and can still make them. He can do everything. He helps those who worship him and fulfills their wishes. But those who are his enemies will perish.”
“Who told you that?” I asked. “That’s just the same sort or drivel that Ülgas drones on about in the forest.”
“Johannes, the village elder,” said Pärtel. “By the way, my name isn’t Pärtel anymore. I was christened and I’m now Peetrus. God doesn’t care for people called Pärtel. But he loves a Peetrus and when I ask him for something he gives it.”
“That’s just stupid!” I protested. “How can you believe a thing like that? There aren’t any spirits!”
“There might not be any spirits, but there is a God,” contested Pärtel. “Johannes the village elder spent a long time telling me about it. It was very interesting. He was put on a cross and then rose from the dead.”
“You can’t rise from the dead,” said Ints. “That has never happened.”
“But Johannes the village elder says it has!” Pärtel-Peetrus eyed Ints with completely evident disgust. “The whole world believes that he rose from the dead, and all the people can’t be stupid.”
“All the adders in the world know you can’t rise from the dead!” I said. “And I believe them!”
“Adders can’t read!” Pärtel gave me a stubborn look. “You think that only you and your snakes are smart. But Johannes has told me things that … You’ve only lived in the forest, but he has been beyond the seas, in far foreign lands. There are huge numbers of people living there and they all believe in God and know that he rose from the dead. And they all harvest grain and eat bread and none of them lives in the forest or talks to snakes. Maybe you’re the one who’s half-witted. Johannes said that in other places in the world they think that people who live in the forest and talk to animals are complete fools.”
“You lived in the forest yourself!”
“I don’t anymore! Everyone’s left the forest. Everyone!”
“Go to hell!” I shouted. I didn’t know how to argue with Pärtel; I didn’t want to argue with him. I wanted everything to be just as it was before and Pärtel to be Pärtel again, not Peetrus. But he stood there wearing his village clothes and carrying a scythe, talking to me with a serious face about God and grain harvesting, and behind his back the whole world and the myriads of people who didn’t live in the forest and hungrily munched on bread all glared at me. I only had the Snakish words. I turned my back on Peetrus and ran back among the trees.
I kept on walking, striding through the forest, p
ushing branches away and stumbling through thickets. I passed Pirre and Rääk’s cave and saw the louse getting hopefully to its feet; it must have been pining for Hiie, but the girl had to stay at home and couldn’t come visiting her friend. Pirre and Rääk were looking out of their cave, but I didn’t go up to them. These last Primates were just living in their own strange past, bare bottomed, not having even learned to wear animal skins. I was a primate in comparison to Pärtel in his village clothes. I rushed onward, enraged with the whole world.
I kept on walking all day, through the whole forest, getting to places where I’d never been before. I saw many animals: deer, goats, and elk, who stopped still when they saw me and looked at me thoughtfully with big eyes; bears, who tried clumsily to greet me; a few wandering wolves. I met no humans. Finally, toward evening, when I was dead tired, the forest started to thin out. I kept going until I got to the forest’s edge. Yonder was an unknown village. I saw humans there too; they were gathered in a great cleared square, making fire and swaying. They were screaming and laughing. There were many of them.
The forest was surrounded on every side by people and their villages.
“So, what now?” someone was asking, and only now did I notice that Ints had been crawling along with me the whole way. He didn’t seem tired at all, coiling himself up and looking up at me benignly. “Let them live in clumps, on each other’s backs. That’s how ants live, because they are just tiny specks of dirt with legs, not even worth noticing. They have to stick together to survive. They have no other option; they don’t know Snakish. Don’t worry about them!”
I was too tired to reply. I threw myself down on the moss and closed my eyes.
“I can’t get back home today,” I said. “I’ll sleep right here.”
“You’ll catch cold here,” said Ints. “It’s autumn already. But there’s an adders’ burrow just near here. Actually they’re everywhere; our kind has burrowed everywhere throughout the forest. Let’s go inside; it’s warm there. It’ll be good for you to sleep there.”
The Man Who Spoke Snakish Page 13