by Julia Kissina

Short story from The Art of Extermination

Translated from the Russian by Alex Cigale

The day I decided to stop eating meat was a bright and sunny one, the kind that abound in South Vietnam in winter— eighty-six degrees. And so, on that day, I set out for the market to buy vegetables. In a hotel courtyard, the restaurant of which served snake meat and God knows what else, the chickens were cackling, the crows crowing, seagulls screeched, and the air seemed filled specifically with the sounds and calls of birds. But that wasn't the only reason I was thinking about birds. Were I not thinking of them, I would probably never have heard all these sounds. I was thinking about their ability to fly and trying to understand how they were able to push away from the earth and hang suspended in midair. I had learned of a bird's mental processes from my observation of crows, several of which I had regularly fed on my apartment balcony in Berlin. And then, I happened to see a film about a bird inspecting itself in a mirror. It was an experiment: they would dirty the bird's wing and it would try to remove the stain, recognizing that in the mirror was her reflection. The friends with whom I had lived with last winter had started raising chickens as domestic animals. These broiler hens lived in felt hats, laid eggs under antique French dressers, and were conditioned not to step over the green lines with which the stone floors of their colonial villa were lined. One of the hens even responded to her name. They called her Miranda. This Miranda had pecked all the other hens to death.

Now, at that moment, listening to all that clucking in the yard, I was thinking: and why not, I will get myself an exotic cock. They say that on Sumatra, there is a variety of chicken that is all black, even its comb, even its bones and eggshells, are black. I will go ahead and raise myself a Russian tufted or a Dutch fighting cock, only I will never allow it to fight. I recalled someone saying a long time ago: “Cocks and hens are a study in oil painting!” Ever since then, I have known that chickens come in brush strokes, drops, stripes, and dots, and in a vermilion red out of the ebony depths. And that is precisely how they appeared to me in my imagination: gesso and oil — Velasquez! Especially, Velasquez! Voyages beyond the seven seas. They brought back much gold and spices, erected the El Escorial, populated it with cocks — Goya! Golden collars, yellow wings and cock combs — Rubens! Suprematist white and black angular chickens — Malevich!

As I descended into the yard filled with hope, my eyes were blinded by the bright light of day. Reality reaffirmed itself. The chicken as an aesthetic object vanished, transforming into a puddle of blood. Two plastic sacks were hopping about in the yard — one with live chickens and the other with dead ones. The sacks were jumping. Feathers were flying everywhere. On the ground, a pot. Before me were the glittering edge of a knife, a peasant woman's face focused in concentration, and death throes — the woman had been struggling with a chicken she had just beheaded, perching over her with her entire body, plucking it clean, and stuffing it away in a sack. That's when I decided that the market can wait a bit and, approaching closer to her, asked: “May I have a look?” “So you're from the city?” the peasant woman smiled and grabbed another victim out of her sack. It was a remarkable, swarthy one with a bright red comb, long legs, and with a radiant mother of pearl feathers. Such a beauty was capable of outshining any royal court.

While tightly gripping the bird, which was frightened to death, the woman explained to me where the incision had to be made so that it all ended quickly. Then, with a single, nimble motion of her hand, she cut this black beauty's throat. Blood spattered out of the wound and the body of the chicken, becoming enlarged in the hands of her murderer, began pulsing like a huge heart, blossoming into a deafeningly bright blackness. The peasant woman, straddling the headless body, held it still in her thick hands for several minutes, until its impulses subsided and the body became lifeless. And then she immediately set about plucking the bird. This came easily to her. Lush bouquets were all that remained in her hands.

I received a tuft of rainbow feathers as a parting gift from her. They were burning hot, as though in its agony, the bird's temperature had spiked. Now, there could not even be a thought of my going to the market. I returned to my shoe box of a place, sat down in a ray of light, and looked down at these feathers for a very long time. I could no longer hear a single sound from the yard. When the feathers had cooled, their purple and green sheen disappeared and their art of oil painting vanished together with the chicken's soul as it departed the earth. Out of all the colors, now only black remained.