Curious passersby began to gather around us, some of them laughing, others giving advice.
At that point, Yura and I came to our senses.
“Catch them! First the rooster!” Yura yelled.
We began to steal up to the fugitive from two sides down in the dry clay arik, trying not to scare him away. But the rooster didn’t have escape on his mind. On the contrary, he was eager for a fight. With tattered wings and tied-up legs, he still looked like an enraged eagle. Hopping up, he scratched the earth with his claws, which were sharp as knives. His eyes sparkled, the beak on his head with its outstretched neck was ready to inflict blows.
I stopped. The rooster and I were looking at each other intently when I saw Yura closing in on him from the other side of the arik, his arms outstretched.
At that moment, the rooster lunged at me. Wild sounds reminiscent of a crow cawing issued from his mighty beak. He was coming at me at very high speed, hopping springily. He seemed like the devil incarnate to me, like a monstrous, fantastic one-eyed bird, ready to kill me.
I was a very fast runner, and now, the wind hissed in my ears, my body felt weightless but, at the same time, acquired unusual sensitivity. It seemed to me that the rooster’s beak was about to pierce my lean bottom… or my spine… and break through it. I would fall down, and the enraged bird would press me to the ground with its mighty claws and begin tearing me apart.
Yes, that escape attempt was a moment of truth sent to me deliberately by fate. I turned from butcher to prey for a short time, the same sort of prey the rooster had been in our hands.
I stopped upon hearing Yura’s voice. The rooster was no longer chasing me. Yura had grabbed it by a leg, though it dangled in the air, all the while trying to break away, flapping its wings and wailing.
“Redhead, over here!” my cousin yelled. “Hurry! Let’s tie it to the carriage!”
As soon as the rooster was in Yura’s hands, I recovered my courage. I dashed to the carriage and found a shoelace on the bottom. We tied the poor rooster, whom I hated bitterly at that moment, to the frame. Dealing with the hens wasn’t a problem, for they were thrashing around not far from the carriage, to everyone’s amusement. The unfortunate inhabitants of the henhouse were so tired from their unsuccessful escape attempt that they didn’t cause any more trouble for the rest of the way. But we continued to grumble for a long time, cursing our captives and threatening the vicious rooster with his upcoming inevitable execution.
The synagogue was located in a small two-story, U-shaped private house.
The yard, formed by the house and its outbuildings, was paved with bricks and stone slabs. There was a long green awning attached to the roofs on three sides of the yard. There were tables and chairs under it.
The light that came through the awning tinted the walls of the house and the yard a pleasant turquoise color, soothing to the eyes. It was very cozy there. Perhaps it seemed to people who prayed in the shade of the awning that they were actually under the protection and auspices of the One to whom they appealed with hope. There were a few synagogues in Tashkent, but that was not enough, and worshipers usually suffered from crowded conditions. Grandpa attended that very synagogue to which we had come, and he often grumbled that there was no room to stand and no seats to sit on. But on that weekday the synagogue was empty.
An elderly man with a beard and bright skull cap, which Bukharan Jews wore instead of kippahs, appeared upon hearing the squeak of the door. He was the synagogue’s shochet. After asking us what we had come for, he nodded and came out to the yard.
It is well known that the Torah doesn’t allow Jews to eat all meat and fish products, but even the permitted ones must be prepared in a special way, and only an expert, a shochet, can butcher animals and poultry. He must butcher them in a particular way so that all the blood drains from them, because the use of blood is forbidden by the Torah.
If we consider the numerous holidays, family celebrations, birthdays, bar mitzvahs and weddings, it’s not difficult to imagine how much work a shochet has.
“Which one shall we begin with?” the shochet asked, looking into the carriage.
Neither Yura nor I answered him. Our grudge with the rooster and our thirst for revenge had left us. We stood silently in front of the carriage. We didn’t look at the chickens. We looked at a strange structure in the yard, close to the exit. It was quite tall and made of wood. There were cone-shaped chutes sticking out of it. On one of them was a straight razor with clotted blood and chicken fluff on its blade. I couldn’t turn my eyes away from that razor once I had caught sight of it.
The chickens were silent and didn’t even stir in the carriage.
The shochet didn’t ask us any more questions. He took one of the hens by the wings, pulled them back and slashed its throat with the razor. Blood spurted out in a scarlet jet. The hen started, as if an electric current had run through it, its legs shook convulsively, and it fluttered, trying to break away. Its eyes and beak were wide open, and the yard resounded with its hoarse screeching.
That terrible screech pierced Yura and me like an electric shock, but the shochet’s hand didn’t shake. Holding the hen firmly, as if gripping it in a vise, he lowered its head down into the chute, and in a few moments all life had left its body, along with its blood.
The carriage was soon empty. Five pairs of legs, their claws spread apart, stuck out of the five chutes. The shochet then placed the chickens into the carriage. We paid him and left.
Kirk-kirk – the wheels squeaked slightly, as before. The carriage rocked gently. Its bottom was covered with a fluffy white mat of chicken bodies, speckled with blood here and there.
The chickens looked as if they were asleep. We walked without talking, as if we were afraid to wake them.
The hot air still hung over the city.
Chapter 31. The Battle Near the Old Fortress
There are, most likely, no boys in the world for whom the notion “a useless thing” exists. Boys have their own ideas, scale of values, and needs. A bent nail thrown out by someone can be either an excellent piece for a slingshot or a fishhook. An empty shampoo bottle can be turned into a spray bottle – you just need to make a hole in the lid. Cherry pits can serve as excellent bullets for a sawed-off shotgun handmade out of all sorts of “useless things.” That was what we were busy with that morning.
I had just parted with Grandpa, who had gone to work, when Yura, still sleepy and disheveled, yet businesslike and anxious, darted out into the yard.
That evening, we were supposed to take part in a battle, a big battle near the Old Fortress behind the CentCom building. And our arms, those very sawed-off shotguns, were not ready. We had no time to lose.
We started with some cherry pits, which I had had the foresight to save from the preserve making: bullets always came in handy. I had kept them in a paper bag, so they were somewhat damp with bits of pulp stuck to some of them. We spread the cherry pits on the table near the trestle bed so they could dry out in the sun. Bullets had to be very dry.
Now, we could get busy on our weapons.
A wooden barrel, approximately twenty centimeters long formed the base of a shotgun. A clothespin could be attached to the front end of the wooden barrel. An elastic band from lingerie or, even better, a rubber band like they used in stores for packing, could be nailed to each side of the rear end. A pit, or rather bullet, was placed in the rubber band just as in a slingshot. But that was its only similarity to a slingshot.
A shotgun was more complex to use. The rubber band with the pit had to be pulled back cautiously and clutched in the clothespin. Then, you took aim, pressed the clothespin, and … b-b-bang! In a word, our shotgun could shoot almost like a real gun. One only needed to make it properly, so that the rubber band held firm and the clothespin didn’t move.