The Man Who Spoke Snakish by Andrus Kivirähk

Author:Andrus Kivirähk [Kivirähk, Andrus]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780802190956
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2007-12-04T16:00:00+00:00

Twenty

had hardly got among the trees when I stepped in the darkness on something soft. This soft thing belched and then swore obscenely, and I realized my foot had hit upon Meeme’s stomach as he lay on the ground.

“I’m sorry!” I said. “It’s so dark here.”

“Dark!” sneered Meeme. “Yes, of course, eyes that come from the village can’t make things out. Everything gets blunted there, starting with your common sense. I’d just been having a drink when you stepped on my belly, you damn idiot.” He wiped some spilled wine off his face and licked his hand.

“I apologize,” I said. “But there’s no need to be in the middle of the road; you could at least go and sleep under the bushes.”

“Where is there a road in this forest, then?” asked Meeme. “There are no longer any roads here. Animals walk in the bushes, but humans don’t live here anymore. The forest is empty; only you and a couple of other fools roam around and disturb the peaceful sleepers. Why did you come here? You went to the village, could’ve stayed there. What are you looking for here? Is there no one in the village with a belly to trample on?”

“No, there’s no one lying on the ground, and no one like leaf mold as you are,” I replied angrily. Meeme laughed.

“I’m not only like leaf mold; it’s what I actually am. Can you smell the stink of decay?”

“I can,” I replied. That stench had indeed returned to my nostrils, and although a very small whiff of the sweet Magdaleena still clung to my clothes, it soon evaporated in the forest. “I’m not surprised. Look at you!”

Meeme laughed again.

“Yes, I’m decaying,” he said. “Not just me. You are too. You can smell your own scent, you unhappy lop-ear! We’re all crumbling to dust, starting with your uncle, then me, and finally you. We’re like last year’s leaves, which melt away under the snow in spring, brown and rotten. We belong to last year and our fate is to quietly change into ashes, because new life has already sprouted on the tips of the trees and new fresh green buds are bursting forth. You can march around the forest and imagine to yourself that you’re young and that you have something important to do, but actually you’re old and moldy, like me. You stink! Sniff yourself! Sniff carefully! That decay is inside you!”

He started coughing and I quickly took to my heels, my back wet with fearful sweat. Meeme had uttered what I myself had long feared—that the torturous stink of decay that clung around came from me. I had caught it from Uncle Vootele like an infection. When I smelt decay in Elder Johannes’s house, I was smelling myself!

Of course it wasn’t a visible, open wound that spread this stench; nor was it an internal focus of disease, a swelling hiding in the abdominal cavity or the chest, and you could quite surely claim that apart from me no one else was aware of the smell.

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