b. physical description of the child.
- Children of men killed in the war, who were entitled to a small stipend for school supplies—Trans.
- sic
c. the reminder.
- collect
- sic
d. come back to him at his death.
e. discovery of the Fatherland in 1940.
f. schoolboy’s cap.
g. The cord and the bell.
h. himself like the rest.
i. Zlabias, Makroud.
j. See the sparrows of Algeria mentioned by Grenier.
k. M. Bernard was loved and admired. At best the lycée teacher could only be admired and you did not dare love him.
l. say which? and develop? - An illegible word.
- An illegible word.
m. the yard less crowded because the day students were gone.
n. to develop.
o. the homosexual’s assault.
p. Lucien—14 EPS—16 Insurance.
The Chicken Coop and Cutting the Hen’s Throat
That dread of death and the unknown, which he always felt when coming home from the lycée, was already taking hold of him at the end of the day, as fast as the darkness that rapidly devoured the light and the earth, and would not cease until his grandmother lit the suspension lamp, setting the glass chimney down on the oilcloth, her [stance] up a bit on the balls of her feet, her thighs pressed against the edge of the table, her body leaning forward, her head twisted so she could better see the burner of the lamp under the shade, one hand holding the copper key that regulated the wick under the lamp, the other scraping the wick with a lit match until it stopped smoldering and gave a beautiful clear light; and then the grandmother would replace the chimney, which would squeak a little against the chiseled tabs of the copper gallery into which she pressed it, and, again standing erect at the table, one arm raised, she adjusted the wick until the hot yellow light was cast evenly on the table in a large and perfect circle, and, as if reflected by the oilcloth, it lit with a gentler glow the faces of the woman and the child who was watching the ritual from the other side of the table—and his heart gradually grew easy as the light grew brighter.
It was the same dread he tried sometimes to overcome out of pride or vanity when his grandmother would on certain occasions order him to go get a hen from the yard. It was always in the evening, before a major holiday—Easter or Christmas—or else before a visit from better-off relatives whom they wished as much to honor as to deceive, for the sake of propriety, about the family’s actual circumstances.
In one of his first years at the lycée, the grandmother had asked Uncle Josephin to bring her some Arab hens from his Sunday trading expeditions, and had drafted Uncle Ernest to build her a crude chicken coop on the sticky damp earth at the far end of the yard, where she kept five or six fowls that gave her their eggs and at times their lives.
The family was at dinner the first time the grandmother decided to conduct an execution, and she asked the older of the boys to go get her the victim. But Louis1 said he couldn’t; he said point-blank that he was afraid. The grandmother sneered, and railed against these children of the rich, not like those in her time—out in the depths of the bush, they were afraid of nothing. “Jacques is braver than that, I’m sure of it. Go ahead, you.” To tell the truth, Jacques did not feel at all braver.
But once it had been said, he could not back down, and so he went to it on that first evening. He had to feel his way in the dark down the stairs, turn left in the hall that was always dark, and find the door to the yard and open it. The night outside was less dark than the hall. You could make out the four slippery greenish steps down to the yard. To the right, a weak light trickled through the blinds of the small building occupied by the barber and the Arab family. Across the yard he could see the whitisha splotches of the animals asleep on the ground or on their manure-splattered perches.
Once he had reached the coop, as soon as he touched the unsteady coop, squatting with his fingers above his head in the big mesh of the cage, a soft cackling began to rise with the warm nauseating smell of the droppings. He opened the little lattice door at ground level, bent over to reach his hand and arm in, was disgusted at the touch of the earth or of a dirty stick, and hastily withdrew his hand, gripped with fear as the coop exploded in a turmoil of wings and feet, the birds fluttering and running all over the place. Yet he had to make up his mind to it, since he had been designated as the more courageous one.
But he was horrified by this commotion among the animals in the dark, in this dim and filthy place—it turned his stomach. He waited, gazing up at the immaculate night above him, the sky full of calm clean stars; then he threw himself forward, grabbed the first claw within reach, dragged the crying terrified animal to the little door, took hold of the second foot with his other hand and roughly yanked the hen out of the coop, already tearing off some of its feathers against the door-jamb, while the whole coop burst into piercing panic-stricken cackling, and the old Arab, vigilant, appeared framed in a sudden rectangle of light. “It’s me, M. Tahar,” the child said in a toneless voice. “I’m getting a hen for my grandmother.”
“Oh, it’s you. All right, I thought it was robbers,” and he went back inside, leaving the yard dark again. Now Jacques ran, while the hen struggled desperately and he bumped it against the wall of the hallway or the rungs of the stairs, sick with fear and disgust at the feel of its cold, thick, scaly claws in his hand, ran still faster on the landing and in the hall of the building, and victoriously entered the dining room. The victor stood framed in the doorway, hair mussed, knees green from the moss in the yard, holding the hen as far as possible from his body, his face white with fear. “You see,” the grandmother said to the older boy. “He’s younger than you are, but he puts you to shame.” Jacques waited to preen with justified pride until the grandmother had taken a firm grip on the feet of the hen, which suddenly grew quiet as if understanding that from now on it was in the hands of the inexorable.
His brother ate his dessert without looking at him, except to make a scornful face that made Jacques even more satisfied with himself. However, that satisfaction was brief. Glad to have found she had a manly grandson, his grandmother invited him to the kitchen to take part in cutting the hen’s throat.
She was already wearing a big blue apron and, still holding the hen’s feet in one hand, she put a deep earthenware dish on the floor, with the long kitchen knife that Uncle Ernest sharpened periodically on a long black stone, so that the blade, worn till it was very thin and narrow, was no more than a shining edge. “You go over there.” Jacques went to the designated place, across the kitchen, while the grandmother placed herself in the doorway, blocking the exit to the hen as well as to the child. His back to the sink, his [left] shoulder against the wall, he watched in horror the sure movements of the sacrificer.
The grandmother pushed the plate just into the light shed by the little kerosene lamp set on a wooden table, to the left of the doorway. She laid the animal on the floor, and, putting her knee to the ground, trapped the hen’s feet, pressed it flat with her hands to keep it from struggling, then seized the head with her left hand and pulled it back over the plate. With the razor-sharp knife she slowly cut its throat at the place where a man has his Adam’s apple, opening the wound by twisting the head while the knife cut with a dreadful sound more deeply into the cartilage, holding still the animal that was shaking all over with terrible twitches while the blood ran bright red into the white dish; and Jacques watched, his legs trembling, as if it were his own blood he felt draining away.
“Take the dish,” the grandmother said after an interminable time. The animal was no longer bleeding. Jacques carefully placed the dish on the table, with the blood already turning dark. The grandmother tossed the hen down next to the dish; its plumage was already dim, and the round creased lid was closing over its glassy eye. Jacques stared at the motionless body, the toes of its feet drawn together and hanging limp, the crest faded and flaccid—death, in short—then he went out to the dining room.b
“Me, I can’t watch that,” his brother said with suppressed anger that first night. “It’s disgusting.”
“No, it’s not,” Jacques said uncertainly. Louis was looking at him with an expression that was both hostile and inquisitorial. And Jacques straightened up. He subdued his fear, the panic that took hold of him in the face of night and that appalling death, and he found in pride, only in pride, a will to courage that finally served as courage itself. “You’re scared, that’s all,” he said at last.
“Yes,” said the grandmother,
