This Translation Tuesday, we present a child’s eye view of the habits of a beloved pet hen. Marília Arnaud’s girl is filled with the intense curiosity that true love engenders; watching her Clarice for hours on end, she is alert to every detail, her wonder unending. Compassion abounds in this story, which has been translated by Ilze Duarte with all concomitant warmth and care.
“Why don’t we eat chicken feet?”
“Don’t you know who pecked at the straw where Jesus was born?”
No animal should be cursed, innocent as it was of its own existence, the Girl mused in her own, peculiar musing way, while Esmeralda treated the chicken’s wounded foot.
Clarice, as the Girl decided to call the chicken, arrived on a Saturday. Esmeralda had bought her at the street market, and Mother didn’t seem to mind, maybe because chickens were animals of little noise and presentation. She would always move about in the green, sun-bathed rectangle behind the laundry area in the back of the house, pecking at worms in the dirt here and there in her silly way, shaking off the rest of the world with her indifference.
Clarice was a chicken of much elegance in her reddish-brownish color. Her comb, a bit paler and drooping to one side, gave her a playful look. She would hop on her spring-coil feet when the Girl came near her. Teek, teek, teek… Clarice would scratch the warm dirt and swallow corn kernels as the Girl threw them on the ground for her. Then, she would wet her beak under the dripping faucet and close her eyes in a trembling of the greatest pleasure.
The Girl soon found a place for Clarice. The unoccupied kennel at the edge of the backyard, set up with a pole and everything because Esmeralda said chickens only liked to sleep perched up. The Girl herself would sweep and wash the little henhouse every other day so that Clarice could spend her nights in comfort.
During the day, the Girl would look at the chicken for a long time, sitting on the doorstep in the laundry room, her chin resting on one hand, smitten. That’s because before there had been nothing. Dolls she had never liked. Neither did she enjoy school with all the yelling kids and the boring lessons. And friends she had none.
For months she had begged Mother to let her raise a puppy, but all manner of animals repulsed her. Animals should live in the wild or in a zoo. And Mother always had the last word.
Until Esmeralda went out and, taking pity on the girl, brought Clarice home, still fearing her employer might decide to turn the beastie into roast. But upon the chicken’s arrival, Mother only looked at the animal, bunched up her mouth, and returned to her bedroom without a comment. Clarice’s narrow escape brought the Girl much joy, for now she had a playmate. They played, really, at a distance, for in truth she wasn’t fond of people, skittish if the Girl grabbed her by the wings and squeezed her in her arms, the poor thing all ruffled up, her heart beating fast under the bulge of swallowed grain.
She imagined stories, the Girl did. If Clarice scurried around in dizzy spurts or hopped lightly forward and backward, she would turn into a ballerina. She would even sing on a live-audience TV show, as she loosened up in nasal, repeated clucks.
She also had sorrows, Clarice did. The Girl noticed they would come with the late afternoon, as the sun gradually tucked away in the sky. Clarice would go hide in the kennel that was now called henhouse and would stay there, quiet, letting out a hapless cluck every now and then.
Esmeralda assured the Girl this was no sorrow, it was chicken stuff that all chickens did. But the Girl knew it very well. When she retired to her bedroom at night, she too would think of things that must have been sad because sometimes they would make her cry. If Clarice didn’t cry, it was because she wasn’t a person, but she had a soul, a gentle soul the Girl could almost touch, there in the grayish twinkle of her little eyes.
She went to Mother’s bedroom and peeked at her, sitting up in bed, a book in front of her face. She pushed the door open and tiptoed in. That’s because Mother didn’t like to be interrupted when she was reading. She walked a bit closer and stood, waiting, gathering courage.
“Mother?”
The woman moved the book sideways and showed one hard, impatient eye.
The Girl stepped in closer still. Her hands in fists, thumbs between index and middle fingers for luck, she asked in a small voice:
“Will you let Esmeralda buy a rooster to be Clarice’s husband, will you, Mother?”
The woman closed her book and rubbed her eyes. She stretched slowly across the bed and then burst into laughter.
The Girl forgot about thumbs and fingers for luck and started to play with the hem of her skirt. She didn’t like it when Mother laughed that way. She felt embarrassed. She tried to describe the chicken’s feelings. Because if Mother had Father, Aunt was soon to be married, and Esmeralda had a boyfriend too, then…
No. Chickens were nothing but animals. No sorrows, no joys. Only hunger, thirst, and sleepiness. She wouldn’t put up with another animal in her backyard. Forget it. And Mother returned to her book.
How could she forget it if Esmeralda, always so wise about such matters, had told her everything about roosters and chickens and eggs and chicks? Why, chicks! Clarice would never feel sad again.
The rooster arrived. From another backyard, for a few days only. He arrived under Esmeralda’s complicity and Mother’s retreat into her books.
There were the eggs. These weren’t good for omelets or for Esmeralda’s cakes because they were full. Of life, of future chicks. Touched, the Girl would watch Clarice as she sat on them, ten altogether, clucking all aflutter then calming down with the air of one who understands the importance of being a chicken. Clarice’s care and devotion to the eggs were such that she wouldn’t venture out of the nest even for a drink of water.
Twenty-one days, Esmeralda said. Too long. The Girl would cross out the days on the kitchen calendar, her heart tight with hope, as broody as Clarice, Esmeralda said with a smile, all day long her eyes trained on the chicken.
Twenty X’s, and early in the morning the Girl took her post near the nest. First, the morning went by. Then the afternoon… Esmeralda didn’t seem worried, busy as she was with her work in the kitchen.
“You said twenty-one, Esmeralda, you did…”
“Let the chicken be, Girl, you’re going to jinx the hatching!”
The Girl returned to the backyard. Soon it would be dark, and she would have to go inside, take her bath, and wait for Father to come for dinner. Later, the bedroom. And how hard it would be to get through the night…
“What are you doing there?”
The Girl opened her eyes wide and saw Mother in front of her, with that same sternness the Girl met with every time she asked for something Mother didn’t like. Worse, much worse. She seemed furious as she stuck her head in the kennel. And when she had that look on her face…
“Go to your room now!”
The Girl picked up a feather and stroked her face with it. Clarice had a strange smell of syrup, talcum, and stinky feet all mixed together.
She kept looking at the feather through her tears until the whole world swayed. A world that would be warm and soft like a mother’s lap when one is really small, if only she could have a chicken once again.
Translated from the Brazilian Portuguese by Ilze Duarte
Marilia Arnaud is an attorney and award-winning writer living in João Pessoa, Brazil. Arnaud’s short stories have appeared in collections and anthologies, including 30 Women Who Are Making the New Brazilian Literature, edited by Luiz Ruffato (2005). She has also penned two novels and a children’s book. Her story Senhorita Bruna (Miss Bruna) appears in the spring 2018 issue of The Massachusetts Review.
Ilze Duarte lives in Milpitas, California, where she writes short prose and translates literary fiction by contemporary Brazilian authors into English. Her original work has been published in New Plains Review, Dear Damsels, Please See Me, and FlashFood. Her translations appear in Your Impossible Voice, Massachusetts Review, Columbia Journal Online, Ambit, and Northwest Review. Her essay on becoming a translator is featured in Hopscotch Translation.
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Read more from Translation Tuesdays on the Asymptote blog:
Translation Tuesday: Two Poems by Michael Benítez Ortiz
Translation Tuesday: [Not the Truth] by Riccardo Benzina
Translation Tuesday: Two Poems by Hagiwara Sakutaro