The Little Rooster
a short story by Miguel Coletti
translated by David Brendan O’Meara
My father had rigged up a poultry pen on the roof of the house. In an out-of-the-way corner, it was just a bunch of old wood slapped up to make sure we always had some fresh meat in bad times, a rustic shack where poultry were segregated by social class. In those days, in my childish fantasies, I would imagine that our house was a ship sailing the waters of a calm sea — unlike now, when I feel that we’ve already run aground, and we’re just waiting to be swept away by a ferocious whirlpool. Our little rooftop terrace was the wide deck of my boat, the lookout perch where I could get closer to those other birds, the ones that buzzed my over head, the unreachable birds, gannets and boobies floating effortlessly through the air, their cries cutting across the sky, their paths tracing patterns over the sea, the waiting sea with its load of live bait on display. You could see the sea from Callao, the misery of the seaside slum encircled by malevolent clouds and battered by cresting waves, the water bursting over the buttressed walls of the port.
In the summer, the neighborhood would come to a boil, the ruckus of sunny days that always seemed to fall on a Sunday, and everyone wanted to get out and enjoy life. On these summer days, the delinquent street kids would wave their hands and peel off their t-shirts, showing their bodies in the flesh, brown skin marked with prison ink, tattoos drawn with the infinite patience of confinement, the fake red fruit of hard time. Each tattoo was a symbol of an indelible memory, pain and permanent revenge sealed in the epidermis. They’d cool themselves off by spraying chilled beer over their outlaw bodies.
The other months — that is, most of the year — we walked very carefully through the streets so as not to slip in the fine drizzle. The streets would be taking it easy, resting, lonely — wide, dead-end passageways. You could go for blocks without seeing a face. Only a few smokers would defy the portside chill, protecting themselves with sweaters so thick you could barely see their cold eyes. Breathing that dank air, day after day, led to remorseless diseases of the lungs.
Amid the old wood, speckled with bird shit and reeking of acid, the bright colors of the Chilean cockerel would always stand out. Cholito was a rooster with radiant feathers and a golden chest, and you could always tell him from the others by his fine figure and confident appearance. A bird with few fleas, zero patience, and a tense, aggressive look in his eyes. His unusual gait suggested violence: not so much walking, as lunging forward with his neck.
My father loved and watched over this bird, the pride of his poultry pen, the beneficiary of all his attention and class prejudices. Mostly he had a motley collection of mixed-breed roosters, the ones whose only value as living creatures was to impregnate the powerful black and red hens, which were kept apart, in their own pen. Once the deed was done, these mutt roosters would find their way to our stomachs, in the form of meat so tough you had to chew it forever.
As soon as my father arrived home from his job down at the beach, he would go up to visit the pen and caress the little bird with unbridled love, shooing off the others and glaring at them bitterly for intruding upon the private space of his favorite. He would examine Cholito’s body carefully for any scars or dirt. He would hold the bird by the crop and give it quick pecking kisses, as if he too were a fine, loving rooster. My Cholito, he would say excitedly, soon you will turn 18 months old and it will be your turn to face death instinctively. You will go to fight at the Red House.
It was boundless, the love my father had developed for this little animal. Perhaps he had found a way to share his immense sorrows with this bird, which did in fact reciprocate his tenderness, allowing itself to be petted like a household pet. My father put everything he knew, the best of his education, into the care of the cockerel. He put himself in charge of its hygiene, cleaning up with great care any droppings he found in the separate compartment, the golden jail, that he had built for it in the corral. He revered the bird so much that he seemed like its servant. He gave the little rooster more respect than any human; he saw it as a transfigured warrior, a winged gladiator who had taken the golden body of a celestial bird.
In those months — before Cholito’s “escape” — my father spent almost all his free time inside the corral, as if he were just another rooster, an ordinary one, serving as a lackey for the fine and famous Cholito.
He brought over everyone he knew to see the rooster, including possible buyers of the Chilean Cholito and the owners of its future adversaries. After saying goodbye to these casual friends, he’d come down to the kitchen, where we hardly ever saw him anymore. We’d hear him on the stairs, shouting about the bad vibes picked up from whoever he’d been talking to. I could actually see his envy! Jealousy, extreme avarice in his pupils of his eyes! I can’t even trust my friends anymore! And then, after giving us a quick update about some odd behavior of the birds in their pen, he’d leave the table, where he had interrupted whatever my mother had been talking about. For her part, she always put up with his craziness, as if it were just another seasonal hardship to be endured. He, on the other hand, had a one-track mind, and headed back up to the roof.
Just before his 18-month birthday, before he could be conscripted into the most exclusive cockfighting pit in the port, Cholito disappeared from his private pen, his golden cell. The escape of the Chilean cockerel — the chosen one — remains a mystery to me: how could he just abandon such a comfortable life? Did someone offer him to the wind or the sea as a sacrifice? Or did we in the family end up swallowing him? Secretly, without knowing what we were doing, in some casserole? Do we carry him with us forever in our guts?
One cold day in Callao the Chilean rooster was gone, his tidy room in the pen left empty. My father didn’t seem to mind, and found some other hobby the next day. The little rooster never reached his brave and beautiful destiny, never got to face the cocks bred for battle, never had a knife strapped to his ankle, never buried his beak, never had his chance to kill or be killed…
The original of this story, in Spanish, can be found here.
Miguel Coletti grew up in the port city of Callao and currently lives in the neighboring metropolis of Lima. His work includes La casa de cartón (The Cardboard House), Los cachorros (The Pups), Los inocentes (The Innocents), and Prepucio carmesí (The Scarlet Foreskin).