Good rearing, said Durden, reaching out to a hen, would not be any problem. And after today he felt any amount of love for these proud creatures.
Ditzsche didn’t like to hear chickens called proud. Their swelling breasts, raised heads and erect bearing are physical and not mental attributes.
The Mayor stopped outside one pen with a solitary rooster in it, blue-black, with a golden back and a bright red comb, stalking thoughtfully about in circles. The little man linked his hands behind his back and walked round the pen, instinctively imitating the bird.
“An Old English Dwarf Game Fowl,” said Ditzsche.
“Old English,” whispered Durden. “Game Fowl,” he whispered. “How many hens does a rooster like that need?”
The rooster stared at Durden, or the sky above Durden, and fluffed up his plumage. The decision was made.
If you are building a chicken run, think about electricity. However, remember that an electric shock will irritate the fox but not drive him away for ever. Foxes do not give up before they have reached their limits. Count on needing at least 3,500 volts. The electric wiring is fixed on the outside of the enclosure. Only chickens that leave it are endangered.
Durden wanted to put up an enclosure for his chickens. Ditzsche offered to help him, and warned him about the fox. Then it must be secure, said Durden. Ditzsche told him about keeping chickens, told him about the fox. Durden drew a plan. Ditzsche improved the plan and got hold of the materials. They built the enclosure together. Two days later the chickens were delivered. Three of them were killed the following night.
When Durden discovered the massacre in the morning, he summoned Ditzsche and demanded an explanation. Ditzsche examined the scene of the crime. The chickens had been killed in their henhouse. The fence was intact, there were no holes in the ground. Then Ditzsche noticed the goat. She was grazing close to the fence; Durden had tied her up to its corner post overnight. Ditzsche studied the animal. He found reddish hairs on her back. He showed them to Durden.
What the hell did that mean, Durden asked.
Ditzsche smelled his fingers. “Fox. The goat is too close to the fence. The fox used her as a springboard.”
Durden, lost in thought, repeated the word “springboard” several times. In an even voice, rather too even a voice, he then asked why Ditzsche, with his alleged knowledge of the subject, hadn’t taken this eventuality into account.
Ditzsche had no answer. A surviving hen clucked quietly. Durden compressed his lips; his chin was shaking. “How are they ever going to trust their home now?” he whispered, as if he didn’t want the hen to hear him. “They’ll always be thinking they hear a beast of prey outside. Instead of the hand that feeds them they’ll expect the jaws that eat them. Those chickens,” said Durden, clutching the wire netting of the fence, “can never be happy again.”
Once your chicken run is up, let two roosters fight for the hens. The winner will protect his hens all the better the harder he had to fight for them. He will warn them when danger threatens, and the hens will take refuge in the henhouse. If a fox threatens the hens, the rooster will sometimes save their lives, but often he will not.
Durden refused to pay Ditzsche even for the materials. In the village he told everyone how that idiot had cost him three pedigree fowls, and blamed it on a goat. He didn’t tell the story himself, of course. He had other people do that for him.
The gossip did not win out. Foxes eat chickens, full stop. If I were a fox, said the village, I guess I’d find pedigree fowls particularly delicious. Instead of talking about Ditzsche, people discussed possible ways of fox-proofing a chicken run. The ferryman said, “Ditzsche is above suspicion when it comes to chickens,” and the ferryman’s word had always carried more weight than anything the top brass of the village said. The matter was forgotten. Except by Ditzsche.
Once your chicken run is up, sprinkle plenty of pepper round the fence. Put human hairs in the netting at close intervals, rub your sweat on the fence. Urinate regularly near the enclosure.
Durden once joined us when we were drinking at Blissau’s. It was late, some of the customers were falling asleep at their tables. Durden began talking about his chickens. He could hear them clucking all the time, he said, even now. They complain, he said, they’re feeling sorry for themselves. They’re not happy.
The little man was remorseful. He ran his hand through his hair, ordered a beer and didn’t drink it. We comforted him, because everyone deserves comfort after midnight. We said the chickens aren’t sensitive to feelings. They don’t regret anything. They ask only for the necessities. Durden either listened or he didn’t. He lay down to sleep at home, and in his mayoral dreams he heard the Dwarf Game Fowl clucking.
The fox came back. Durden watched him. The fox slunk round the enclosure in broad daylight, provocatively slowly. The rooster led his hens into the henhouse. One of them stayed outside it. The fox put his nose up against the fence here and there. Scraped the ground a little with his paws. Then went away without success. The goat was standing somewhere else now.
Would the Mayor have intervened if the fox had got in? We’ll refrain from making assumptions. Next day Durden gave the chickens away to the others in the Small Animal Breeders’ Association, keeping only the hen who had stood her ground.
Ditzsche said: if a chicken is fearless, that doesn’t make it brave.
After the fall of the Wall, Durden wanted to join the Free Democratic Party and stand for Mayor again. When Ditzsche heard about that, he went to Blissau’s and told people there about Heinrich Durden’s letter to Hans Modrow. Ditzsche was landing himself in the soup. Because how did he know about that? And then again: it surely wouldn’t have been the only letter he had opened. The informer’s revenge on the local politician. Some of them at Blissau’s sounded almost flattered to think an informer could have been spying on them. Ditzsche said he wasn’t an informer. He didn’t say he hadn’t read the letter.
In his letter, Durden had fulminated against the Church and argued for the continuation of the Stasi in another form. He was saying all that, he claimed, on behalf of the village. Although the village didn’t know the first thing about it. What else was in the letter hardly mattered. No one writes letters in our name. Durden never stood as candidate for any post in Fürstenfelde again.
Ditzsche lost his job. To this day we don’t know whether it was only Durden’s post that he read, or everyone else’s too.
When you have put up your chicken run, prepare the chickens for battle. Arm them with iron spurs overnight.
Heini “Tiny” Durden died in 2005. The inscription on his gravestone says: His Star Is Extinguished. The Schliebenhöners have come back and are living in the big house again. The chicken run is also inhabited. Not by pedigree fowl, by good healthy chickens with golden plumage. The vixen prowls round the cherry tree. And beside the chicken run, a wheelbarrow stands.
IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1618, UPON THE NINETEENTH day of May, six suns were seen in the sky here.
JOHANN IS KEEPING HIS COOL AGAIN. BUT SERIOUSLY, who wouldn’t have screamed (briefly, anyway), on finding himself locked up in the cellar? A few minutes later Ma turned up. Again, he should say; Ma turned up again. When he heard her voice, of course he was relieved at first. And then she didn’t let him out.
Ma. Honestly.
Ma misunderstood everything that Johann said, or ignored it, and asked him questions that he couldn’t answer through the door. Who was behind the break-in, where were the others? In the end she threatened to take Johann’s top hat away if he wouldn’t cooperate. Johann thought that was almost funny.
So then she went away, and he shouted after her, but the leather skins swallowed up the sound of his voice.