After getting thoroughly tired from the sunless and heavy heat of a rainy summer day, this vast, solitary inn that gave me an exhausted, dormant spring morning rest pleased me very much. I had satisfied my violently hungry stomach with plenty of eggs and fried chicken, and to facilitate digestion, I’d stretched out on my right side and sunk into impossible, far-from-reality, but sweet and noble reveries. The innkeeper, thinking I would sleep, had left me alone and gone about his business. The wide courtyard was spotless. There was no dust, no manure, no litter. On the steep roof of the stable whose distant dark mouth resembled the entrance to a rare cave, several pigeons were walking quickly; in front of the clean bench where I sat, a scattered flock of chickens, orderly and seemingly preoccupied with thought, were wandering about. There were more than fifty of them. Among them were all colors. A large, shiny, red rooster was making advances to the hens around him, puffing up, shaking, scratching, arranging the feathers of his wings and tail with his beak. All their faces were turned toward me. I noticed they were looking with their red and round eyes at the door next to the bench. It must definitely be feeding time. They were waiting for their owners. In that transparent radiant air following the rains, they appeared more shiny, cleaner, more beautiful. I wanted to walk among these lovable animals that reminded one of the pleasure and happy peace of imaginary village worlds in poems. I got up. I stretched. I breathed deeply a sharp earth smell. I went out through the small door. All the chickens in front of the bench looked at me at once. Then, seeing me walk, they all suddenly ran away as if a command had been given. They gathered far away, behind a low building next to the stable. “Strange thing, they were scared,” I said. I turned back. I went back inside. I stretched out on the bench. The chickens, with their magnificent rooster before them, slowly came back again. They gathered in front of the door next to the bench. They seemed to be waiting for someone to come out. Leaning from the bench, I waved my arm. I said “Shoo!” They paid no attention, weren’t scared, didn’t run away. I got up again, slowly went outside. All of them, running away, again gathered behind the low building next to the stable. I went back inside. Let’s see if they would return?… In less than three minutes they came again. They gathered in front of the small door. These undoubtedly weren’t afraid of me. Because when I’d entered the courtyard at a gallop on horseback earlier, they hadn’t run away at all. In fact, I’d suddenly slowed my horse not to crush them and had dismounted among them. Now why were they running away like this? Looking at their waiting in front of the small door, they were definitely waiting for something. It was evening. They must be waiting for food. To test, I went out once more. Again like before, they ran behind that small building where their coop must be, stood orderly. “Intelligent little animals!” I was saying. It was clear from the cleanliness of this inn with its raw white whitewash! The innkeeper was a very orderly and disciplined man. He wasn’t feeding them randomly, here and there. They were eating their daily food in their coops. He’d accustomed them to absolute order like a valuable and obedient troop of soldiers. Now it was probably feeding time. Seeing someone come out of the door, they were running to their coops. I entered, stretched out on the bench again. Watching their slow return, their gathering again in front of the door: “Intelligent little animals!” I was saying. At this time the innkeeper was passing before me with a barley sieve in his hand. The chickens, as if they hadn’t seen him, paid no attention. Smiling at me, he said, “If you’re very tired, go up to your room, sir. I’ve made your bed.”
“No,” I replied, “I like it better here…”
The innkeeper laughed. He was going to leave. I wanted to tell this man about his chickens’ intelligence, his own orderliness, I don’t know why. Smiling and involuntarily: “Your chickens are very smart…” I said. The innkeeper cast a strange gaze at my face, as if he didn’t understand anything. Then he looked at the chickens standing in a dense flock in front of the door as if inspecting them.
“They’re very purebred,” he said. “Thirteen of them lay eggs twice a day. But sir, how did you understand that they’re very smart?”
He was looking at my face, showing his rotten and missing teeth, laughing. I answered: “They’re hungry. Look how they’re waiting in front of the door. When someone comes out, thinking they’ll be given their food, they run straight to their coops…”
The innkeeper’s torn and dirty smile closed. Looking at my face with double confusion characteristic of those who don’t understand anything and suddenly realize that what they understood until that moment was also empty: “They don’t have coops, they sleep in the stable,” he was saying. “And we never give them feed…”
The innkeeper’s confusion had completely passed to me. I paused a bit. Then, pointing with my hand to the small and low building behind which the chickens gathered running at every exit from the distant door, I asked: “Then what is that?”
The innkeeper looked curiously toward the direction I indicated. He turned and, quite naturally and indifferently, as if not at all surprised at what I didn’t know, answered: “The outhouse…”
Ömer Seyfettin
