THE STORY OF ALBAZ AND ASSOULINE - OR WHY, AT ALL COSTS, WE MUST AVOID SHRINES TO A WOMAN IN TEARS [a field report by Quintan Ana Wikswo]
Between our house and the S ANTA M ARIA , there was a bare patch of land behind our house – the empty place where our esnoga used to stand. In this junk heap, this junk cemetery of stones and glass and twisted scraps of metal, there lived two chickens. It was the year the famine invaded from all directions, a starving seethe of hunger. In this no man’s land between the buildings there lived two chickens named Albaz and Assouline. And when you are a chicken and there is a famine, there is no time to fall in love.
As I might have told you, in this place we’d all been recently cursed (even the chickens). In this new place, it is against the law to harm a chicken. But in that old place, Albaz and Assouline were dinner.
Today, in the place where we are now, I discovered a box of papers somehow rescued and brought with us on the ship that refugeed us to a new land – papers long ago abandoned and deemed irrelevant to our new lives in this place. Papers nearly lost in the archives. To my surprise, these papers concerned the very same Albaz and Assouline whose constant scratching and clucking and shrieking were once the music of my childhood. And now, to my astonishment, these longforgotten water stained pages told the story of what had happened to us all.
Within the first moments of reading, I knew these words from the report arrived with urgency, by tumbling not so much into my hands as into my mind –as though they flung themselves there after an explosion. Propelled themselves there sadly, hopefully flown, not ever wanting to be relics for an archive and now simply wishing to hit the nest and not the ground with its brutal gravity. I caught them. I caught them. And yet‌
If you didn’t hear it before, hear it again now: IN THIS NEW PLACE , IT IS AGAINST THE LAW TO HARM A CHICKEN . But in that other place and time, where Albaz and Assouline lived, chickens were a very popular meal. In my mind’s eye, there is still Assouline’s leg, its blackened claw holding out an enormous green pumpkin seed, willing Albaz to take it. A single seed nearly big enough to keep a chick alive for a week. Or longer. Their avian eyes were already stinging from clarion scent of the fires of S ANTA M ARIA ’ S .
Let me begin a little earlier. Each time I met Albaz and Assouline, it was with letters. The first time their names were on a chalkboard at S ANTA M ARIA ’ S C HICKEN E MPORIUM [trans.]. (At all costs, avoid shrines to a woman in tears.) The handwritten words on the placard outside read like this:
ASSOULINE - baked or fried ALBAZ - stewed or boiled
When she first arrived at the junk heap, when the cooks had weighed Albaz and taken her temperature and blotted her wet feathers and confiscated her eggs in a big wooden box, they handed her the feedbag of the recently deceased and she knew it was going to be bad. Who died and left these seeds behind? and barely a moment later I remember her joking — It’s so strange to eat the feed of the recently fried, and an aside that the faces of the cooks at Santa Maria weren’t shadowed by even a wispy cloud of guilt. That’s how she knew. When Albaz saw the writing on the menu, she wondered about Assouline, this third-try chicken, the one whose neck they’d three times been unsuccessful at chopping off, twelve hours since but she was still alive. Her name still on the menu.
Not only would Albaz and Assouline share a cage at S ANTA M ARIA ’ S C HICKEN E MPORIUM , they shared a common history— like Assouline, Albaz too had moved through the world as a free bird, once upon a time, until times changed and fear had equally disassembled their worth into just a pile of wings, some breasts, a couple thighs. There was barely enough time for Albaz to fall in love with Assouline. Assouline had hammered so hard at the cage that her claws, bruised, had turned black. Albaz admired that. And they shared a chalkboard. The sentences. And they were still chicks, still with their greasy feathers. To the left waited S ANTA M ARIA . To the right, their shattered eggs.
There was a beauty to cleaning their beaks together.
There were no dogs in the lot
yet no tips to their wings
there were fresh earwigs in the dirt
yet no gaps in the fence.
Under these conditions, Albaz and Assouline were defenseless against the potwashers at S ANTA M ARIA ’ S . And yet, there was a beauty to scraping their beaks together. Listen — there was a beauty to sharpening their beaks together. They were baby chickens - just fluff. Do you know the story of the ants? The ones who wash over a chicken in a flicker, leaving only a mass of gelatinous baby bones? Albaz and Assouline could feel the ants approaching, a million ominous footfalls in the sand.
They could hear the potwashers sigh with exhaustion in the kitchen. So many chickens to wring and pluck. So much oil to boil. And as they waited, Albaz and Assouline were pleased by the simplistic: they were amazed by the delicate paths the mites made through the seed chaff. By the distant sound of flower petals fluttering in the wind.
As you can see, there was just enough for the two to fall in love. And as waited, they were entranced. As waited, they watched each other’s feathers emerge, and grow quietly serenely along their chicken skulls.
time they they new and
Assouline was still alive nearly seventeen hours after her third attempt to withstand the wringing. Albaz and Assouline were neither happy nor sad about this, but they tapped out the words, careful not to splash too much water from their bowl.
ASSOULINE IS STILL ALIVE.
They felt the pickling juices boil in their stomachs. Nervous, they waited another two hours, and –
ASSOULINE IS STILL STILL ALIVE!
A scribbling jump, some feathered tricks and swirls as the two chickens leapt up against a perilous sky and betrayed their misplaced enthusiasm for living. And, later, they sunk their sorrowful beaks into the sand of the walk-lot, where the potwashers let them wander in circles, searching for the crumbles of their shells.
According to the report, there was a little marrano pot-washer girl working illegally at S ANTA M ARIA ’ S . She was aware of what was coming – she’d heard the washers would be washing extra pots when the holidays arrived, she’d seen stacks of firewood massing outside the church. And somehow, this girl looked into her heart and chose to tell Albaz and Assouline how they should and could climb in her basket and she could smuggle all three of them out on the next ship out to anywhere, to Brazil maybe, to New York, to someplace far away from the pots and the famine and the saints and the Inquisition and the cemetery, to get away, or else there could and surely would be consequences.
Why us.
Despite everything, Albaz and Assouline were not beyond such questions.
Because I tell you, in spite of everything, perhaps Albaz and Assouline didn’t truly have time to fall in love — why else could they have allowed themselves to be plunged into a turquoise dusk when Assouline chose not to squeeze through the bars of the cage, be deposited into the girl’s basket, and escape across the sea. Albaz begged, convinced – chickens are extremely cogent debaters. Yet through the stomping and clucking, Assouline insisted that she could not be cooked – she had withstood too much, for too long, to run away from the battle now. And so Assouline remained. Assouline remained to watch Albaz leave, watched Albaz break her own wings to slip through the bars, and watched her vanish into the basket, hopefully headed in the direction of the sea.
In another situation, the two would first have shared a whiskey. For there had been a pleasure in touching their beaks together. But instead they shared dignity: Assouline pecked Albaz’s thigh tenderly . It bled a little. Albaz left. When I say Albaz left, I mean to say that Assouline stayed behind, with her black hammered claws, and her neck missing a few rows of feathers. Really, they both knew their deaths would have gone unnoticed – they were not important chickens in the history of common birds. But they were both brave and hopeful in their way. They made their choices (for there were still choices, even if all seemed fatal ones).
And so Assouline watched valiantly as Albaz vanished off in the direction of the sea, gallant, as though Albaz was already on a ship, and the ship already out to sea. According to the report, at the time, the only thing Albaz possessed was one half of a green pumpkin seed, an enormous green seed that heralded freedom, a quiet trumpet telling of exodus. If Albaz hadn’t left, S ANTA M ARIA would have added it to the feedbag of the deceased. Did you know that? But even in the face of the famine, Assouline had saved this pumpkin seed for just this occasion, she did — she cracked it in half with her beak and thrust one half under Albaz’ broken wing before waving her off bravely, bravely, towards the sea.
Both Albaz and Assouline were each bravely holding her half of the same small green seed. The two choices seemed very similar at that moment. But Assouline had the kernal half for Albaz — her claw held it out to Albaz as she left for the docks — and that was the last Albaz saw of Assouline. This week in the archives, nearly a lifetime later and a continent away, I read this report and testimony as told by Assouline, the chicken who did not make it onto the ship. I read this testimony, as told by a chicken I will never meet. A chicken whose cluck and clutter will never again be either my friend or my enemy. And yet I read this artifact of her just this week. Just this week.
She spoke of her cage at S ANTA M ARIA , where eventually the judges and administrators and inquisitors came to inspect the sanitary conditions of the place and asked her are the other chickens diseased here, do they eat their own droppings?
(For chickens were renowned for filthiness.)
(For senseless abominations.)
(For insentient greed.)
They — the yard birds — were commonly understood to be stupid and monstrous, for a variety of reasons. As the authorities explained: domesticity had encouraged them to become even more stupid. (That is to say, they were, you know, filthy and greedy, after all, and as we know, the best is not expected.) Because of this, and with so many dying in the famine, the judges and administrators and inquisitors were most kindly concerned for the well-being of those who ate the chickens of S ANTA M ARIA ’ S . They were checking in through humanitarian interest – to assure everyone of S ANTA M ARIA ’ S cleanliness, humanity, and righteousness.
Yes, cleanliness is what they were the very most concerned about. And like all concerned parties, they wished to speak only with the most senior chicken. And like all important people, they arrived with highly unusual hats and a great many questions.
And so upon request, Assouline described to the judges and to the report readers and inquisitors, she described to these so-called humanitarians the situations of the other chickens who were regularly cooked and served each day. The other chickens whom S ANTA M ARIA ’ S quite often deprived of even their beaks. Chickens deprived of claws, with stolen feathers, yet who were nonetheless still accused of greed and filthiness, who were still accused of pecking without mercy at the potwashers hands as their necks were slowly wrung.
Save them, Assouline told the judges and administrators, her humanitarians— really, she seemed to believe that these judges and administrators were the actual, living, black robed representatives of justice. They held her in the palm of their hand. She beseeched them about the other chickens. Save them, she said, free them. They deserve better. They don’t belong here. From the testimony, it seems she believed that she was only passing through S ANTA M ARIA ’ S . Believed, perhaps, that she didn’t need justice. Eventually the famine would end. She would earn her own freedom– she would once again survive as she always had.
From the notes of the Inquisitors, it seems she expected to deliver more testimony; perhaps she planned to send her appeals to the paper, draft a manifesto, later, after she had gained her freedom. Where are the others, she might have written after she was free, free to write freely from her place of freedom: the ones without beaks, without claws, without feathers, where are they, she might have gone on to ask in a future appeal – perhaps one sent and published in the newspapers. Indeed, she clearly planned to be an advocate.
Maybe she would have said, without their freedom, mine means nothing. But without their freedom, she nonetheless have still been able to out her neck without fear, stretch it pluck the seeds from the flowers garden.
would stretch out to in her
She would have enjoyed the subtle art of digesting apples baked in caramel, and become entranced by how perfectly her feathers slipped perfectly through all the perfect little pores in her clean plump grown-up chicken skin. So clean, so plump, so grown-up. And maybe, when she was all alone, she would have wondered how? and why?
So in this place where I am now, Assouline and her testimony somehow found me. Here I’ve been, mourning those chickens’ silent, wordless deaths almost daily, eating a commemorative pumpkin seed annually in their memory and yet I tell you — on this paper, at the time this yellowed and tattered report was filed,
ASSOULINE WAS STILL ALIVE!
But of course, only in these yellowed and tattered papers.
And even after she was cooked, against all odds, her words have survived! I can’t begin to explain to you how I feel about this. Of course I have questions. After so many dances with the blade? Perhaps an extra bit of gristle in her neck. Perhaps the child laborer’s hands were too small, too slow on the axe blade. It took years for her to finally reach that fateful pot. How did she keep her spirit so long? How did she manage to send out her final plea to the universe?
Maybe Assouline wasn’t really a chicken. Maybe Assouline had special powers. Never you mind all these perhapses — Assouline’s words revealed that she was bona fide: she had earned the respect due to all heroes, her story was a legend, she had laid herself down valiantly into the skillet: the almost immortal clipped-beak chick at S ANTA M ARIA ’ S – indeed, she was amongst the very last chickens to be cooked at that place and time, according to the report.
Near the end of the file I found a newspaper clipping in an envelope sent many years later, by a newer ship, all the way over here to this remote swamp in this new nation. From the newspaper clipping, it seems that shortly after Assouline was served, the illegal pot-washers began making posters and flyers in which her headless chicken body became a symbol for their own struggle as well.
And even later clippings here in the archives reveal that the artistry and expressive beauty of those posters and flyers were eventually discovered by the wealthy people of the city – the only ones in the city who had not been touched by the famine – discovered these primitive drawings hanging in ignominy, tacked up in the hovels of their household pot-washers. It seems their initial anger turned to speculation about these shocking pieces of art: they were actually quite beautiful. In fact, they might perhaps be desirable— even valuable.
And so it wasn’t long before the wealthiest and most successful amongst them devoted private chambers of their mansions to the preservation and display of these posters. They would command their pot washers to light extra candles in the chandeliers, and kill a great number of turkeys and quails and pheasants and stomp on the juiciest of grapes and weave the very most sumptuous of fabrics and sew the most breathtaking garments and when all that was done to their liking and according to their commands – they would invite all their friends over to eat and drink and talk jealously about the amazing works of art they had hanging on their walls.
But I’m telling you this — you should have seen the way her new feathers grew across her skull. So simple, she stayed behind, her sharp grey beak, the way she brushed mites from Albaz’s beak in circles, carefully, just like a baby bird.
As I may have mentioned, I read the report yesterday, and today I read her testimony on the chaise lounge in the garden, just before the clippings blew away. Pinned to the leather backing of the file, I found a later etching, a primitive caricature of a chicken running around with her head cut off. Despite the clumsiness of the drawing and the unskilled nature of the etching, I couldn’t help but recognize the blackened feet, the feathers missing from around the chicken’s neck. Below the drawing spread the words:
WE STARTED IT ALL: EAT AS GOOD AS ASSOULINE AT SAINT MARY’S CHICKEN EMPORIUM
.
RESISTANCE ACCOMPANIES ALL DEPLOYMENTS OF POWER But that’s not how it was explained to me. How it was explained was: first I got a stomachache, and then nightmares. They showed me woodcuts of the cow killing the butcher: I think that was a form of explanation, but it didn’t really help. I was supposed to feel good about how my parents offered their own lives in order to save mine. I had never experienced my parents as cows, although I was certainly all too familiar with butchers. all the same, that’s how it was explained, with stories and metaphors. With all the blanks pointed out, but not filled in.