The Snake Stone

61

Widow Matalya went out into the yard with the big fan she used for beating her carpets, to shepherd her chickens into their run.

“Come along, pretty one,” she crooned. She put out a leathery hand. The hen crouched close to the ground, its feathered shoulders raised. The widow took it gently in two hands, lifted it under her arm, and snapped its neck.

“You were too old anyway,” she said admonishingly.

She carried the hen through the house, picking up a basket from behind the door, and sat down on a small stool in the alley. The sun had gone, but the wall was still warm against her back. She began to pluck the hen, dropping the feathers into the basket.

“Soup’s best,” she muttered to the hen. “And this one makes a good stock. A bit of rice. Nice, after a shock.”

She turned the bird on her lap and began to snatch the underfeathers from its breast.

“Not but what I’m in shock, too,” she went on. The hen’s head dangled over her knee. “It’s a disturbance, and not at all what I expect at my age. A foreign woman, too. An unbeliever-in my house!”

She gave an angry little twitch and tore the bird’s skin.

“Now look what I’ve gone and done.” She paused and made a shape with her fingers, against the Evil Eye. “She ought to go to her own people, poor thing. No husband now, and such a way from her own mother!”

She worked over the legs, and then the wings. She wondered how many chickens she’d plucked in her life. It must be hundreds. Not that she was greedy. She fed them and they fed her, and that was the way it was.

How she’d howled when Matalya died! A full day, a real clamor. She was that upset! Not the way it took those Frankish women, perhaps. Thin blood, it might be.

Widow Matalya made a mighty effort of imagination: perhaps you needed to be around your own people to properly let go, she concluded.

And there was no denying, it was good to have a bit of soup, for when you got a shock.