Guest: Mustafa Deniz Serter
Title of The Work: The Rooster’s Sin
Original Title: Horozun Günahı
Genre: Story
The square of the village, which had been taken captive by the August heat, was groaning with the joyful laughter of the children. Drenched in sweat, the children pulled the taut strings held tightly in their tiny hands with all their strength, then let them go, and the kites soaring in the air danced in the cloudless blue sky.
Sitting on the stone wall adjacent to the village’s only coffee house, four children with scabs on their knees, their feet dangling down, the heels of their shoes tapping involuntarily against the wall, their heads raised, their mouths open, their eyes squinting, were watching the colourful kites with excitement. They were so engrossed in this visual feast that they forgot to put the half loaves of bread with tomato paste into their mouths. The people in the coffeehouse, who were hitting the cards hard on the table, arranging the okey stones carefully on their cues, rolling the backgammon dice on the wooden table with a coffee cup and playing checkers, were killing time under the dense and suffocating cigarette smoke that spread to the ceiling, as if they were free from the troubles of the world for a moment. Occasionally they would look through the large window at children flying kites. The coffeehouse, which was supported by two columns in the centre and the corners of the ceiling were covered with cobwebs, had one storey, three windows, and the exterior and interior facades were whitewashed with lime.
It was in better condition than the village health centre, with its coal stove that had never been removed in summer or winter, copper tea cauldron with three teapots, dark green tablecloths, rows of wooden chairs and red tiled roof.
Black flies flying from here and there landed on the heads and faces of the people in the coffeehouse, giving them no rest. Two men sitting at the round table in the corner of the coffee house were about to turn the heated argument they had just started into a fight. Previously, they had gotten into an altercation while reading the newspaper, the people there had barely separated them, and those who had fallen in the middle of the fight had received their share of the punches thrown. Now they were discussing another topic, and as their voices got louder, they attracted the attention of the people inside. All heads turned towards them and the games were interrupted.
“Swear! Swear!” shouted the stuttering man to the bearded man sitting opposite him.
“By God and by God!”
“No! That’s no way to drink the oath,” said the stammering man confidently.
“How do you take an oath? Show me!”
The stammering man asked for a knife from Rıfat, the café owner, who was brewing the third pot of tea on the stove with the dirty towel he threw over his shoulder. The people in the café had stopped their games and were watching these two men intently. Rıfat took the small sharp knife next to the radio on the counter and handed it to the stuttering man.
“Not by hand! Put it on the table,” said the stutterer. He was having difficulty speaking, stumbling, hesitating, spittle flying from his thick lips.
“Put it on the table. If I take it from your hand, you and I will be at loggerheads!”
Shaking his head in anger, Rıfat reluctantly threw the knife he had brought on the table. The stuttering man dipped the pointed tip of the knife into the plump flesh of his thumb and started to suck the blood.
“This is how you drink an oath,” he said, sucking the thumb of his right hand like a newborn baby, “Drink a drop of blood.”
“What can’t you exchange again?” asked Rıfat, the coffee shop owner. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the towel on his shoulder.
“His breath was very strong. The bullet would not penetrate the animal he read and blew,” said the stuttering man. His pointed chin trembled, his eyelashes opened and closed, and the listeners waited patiently for his words.
Not to be outdone, the bearded man picked up the knife on the table, raised his arm, and made a small scratch on his outstretched thumb. He brought the blood to his dry, cracked lip. He sucked his cut finger, as the stutterer had done. They both had their thumbs in their mouths.
“Is it done?” said the bearded man, taking his finger out of his mouth; “Have I drunk the oath now?”
The stutterer nodded along with the others. They were not interested in the shouting and screaming of the children outside, they were eagerly waiting for what would happen next. Taking his finger out of his mouth, the bearded man tilted his head to the side and scratched his hairy ear with his pinky finger. He felt that everyone was watching him and was proud of it. The light wind blew the kites into the air, and the high-pitched voices of the children, who raised their heads to the sky regardless of the pain in their necks, mingled with the chirping of the sparrows landing on the mulberry tree in front of the coffee house.
“Find an animal and bring it. After reading and blowing, bullets will not pass through it,” said the bearded man.
“Can’t it be a human? Why an animal?” asked Rıfat, showing his teeth yellowed from cigarettes with a grin.
“No, my prayer is for the animal, not the human being” said the bearded man, slamming his fist on the table and trying to get the people to accept his claim.
The laughter of the people in the café drowned out the shouts of the children outside. Unable to notice the children with the strings of their kites tangled together fighting, the people in the café focused on the stutterer and the bearded man and listened to their claim.
“He’s a braggart,” said the stutterer, grimaced, turned his chair to the side, crossed his legs and turned away. His right foot was trembling and shaking as he tried to speak.
“Who the hell is this braggart? Come on, bring an animal, I’ll read it and blow on it. Then shoot it. See if the bullet passes through.” The bearded man continued his claim in a very confident manner.
“Sin sin sin! I don’t shoot animals,” said the stutterer, turning his body and facing the bearded man again.
The argument between the two attracted a lot of attention of the people there. They got up from their seats and gathered around the bearded man and the stutterer.
“I’ll shoot it,” Rıfat the coffee house owner said, “After all, I’m a hunter, alone! Does the animal make a difference?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said the bearded man, “You can bring a bear, an elephant or a pig.”
The stuttering man began to laugh, hitting his knees. His laughter turned into laughter. His right foot was shaking, his shoulders were rising and falling, and tears were flowing from his eyes.
“Where the hell are we going to find a bear or an elephant? Have you ever seen one in your life?” said Rıfat, the smoke of the cigarette he held at the corner of his mouth got into his eyes, he wiped his watery eyes with the back of his hand, but still did not take the cigarette from his lips and press it into the ashtray on the table. His first cigarette, which he smoked three packets a day, was not enough to fill his lungs.
Standing up, the bearded man looked out of the large window. He slowly turned his head left and right. He squinted his eyes and scanned his surroundings like a radar. There was not a single animal in the square. The coop at the foot of the stone-built garden wall of the café caught his eye. There were two roosters and four chickens in the wire-mesh coop. Moving their heads back and forth, the animals were wandering around the coop in their own way.
“That would be the rooster,” said the bearded man, extending his arm and pointing with his finger.
“Go away,” said Rıfat, “Did you find my rooster to read and blow in the whole village? Isn’t there a mangy mutt? Go get him.”
“Don’t be a spoilsport. I trust my breath,” said the bearded man, scratching his beard, which was merging with the hairs on his bosom, with his nails whose roots were full of dirt.
The others in the café were also in favour of this claim, and they were trying to convince Rıfat the Coffee Shop owner. The bearded man insisted that this was not the first time, that he had blown on a chicken before and that neither bullets nor slingshot stones had touched the animal, that his powerful breath had built a wall around the animal like a protective shield.
“When did this happen? We’ve never heard of it,” said Rıfat, who was convinced on one condition. If the rooster died, either the money would be given or a new rooster would be bought. Rıfat was inwardly wondering what would happen, first accepting, then giving up, then accepting again.
“Accept!” said the bearded man, put his hand in his shirt pocket, wet his finger with his tongue, counted and put the money on the table.
Kahveci Rıfat put the rooster he had brought from the coop on the table where the bearded man was sitting. Grasping the animal by the wings with his hands, the bearded man closed his eyes, his lips moving under his carefully trimmed moustache. Occasionally, he blew on the cock’s crest, moved his head with his eyes closed, raised and lowered his chin, and his body moved back and forth. The people in the café looked at him with curious eyes and waited in silence without making a sound. The blue smoke from the cigarettes they were smoking floated towards the ceiling, forming a dense layer of smoke. The rooster, whose tail and neck feathers were shiny, eyes black, legs dark grey, legs dark grey, and big red crest shaking, was shaking its head back and forth rapidly, trying to flutter. The rooster, stamping his feet on the table, tried to escape, but the big hands he could not get away from did not allow him to do so. The reading and blowing ceremony, which lasted for ten minutes, finally came to an end. Rıfat, the café owner, armed himself with the double-breasted shotgun he had hung on the wall behind the tea centre. The bearded man stretched out the cock, which he squeezed like a vice with both hands, against the beak lunge that could come to his face at any moment, and went out safely. Behind him came the crowd inside. The children flying kites were fighting. The children, divided into two groups, first rolled on the ground and fought fist to fist, then hid behind the walls. They were throwing large and small stones at each other. When they saw the crowd coming out of the café, the children, sensing that something was going to happen, suspended the stone fight. A boy cowering behind a wall took off his dirty white undershirt and shook it. A thin arm reaching out from the bush on the opposite side held his white underpants in the air, thus a truce was reached with the white flag agreement. The children, looking at the crowd with puzzled and curious eyes, threw the ammunition they had accumulated in the palms of their hands on the ground. The bearded man, after reciting and blowing for the last time, said, “Tüh tüh tüh maşallah”, and the rooster, which could not rest, stretched out its beak and pulled it back. The bearded man, who had left the animal in the middle of the village square, turned back with heavy steps in order not to frighten the rooster and mingled with the crowd waiting in front of the café. Rıfat, the café owner, warned the children sitting around and gathered everyone in front of the café. The crowd was attentive, not making a sound. Rıfat placed the grip of the rifle on his shoulder, closed his left eye and took aim. He pressed the trigger as soon as he combined the sight, eye and front sight with his right eye. The cockerel, which was shot with the pellets flying out of a single cartridge, was left with jet black shiny feathers flying in the air. After a long silence, the stuttering man and the others were laughing their heads off. The bearded man, his head bowed, was looking at the rooster lying lifeless on the ground with eyes wide open under his bushy eyebrows.
