Summary of “The Golden Rooster”
I can not say for sure when this miracle happened. In any case – if not on the day of the summer solstice, on June 21, it is very close to it. And it happened at the dacha, in Ville d’Avray, ten kilometers from Paris.
I then woke up before the light, woke up somehow suddenly, without a turbid transition from sleep to reality, with a sense of light freshness and with the sweet confidence that there, outside the windows, in the open air, in the gentle clarity of the morning doing, there is some simple and a lovely miracle. So, sometimes I was kindly aroused to the dawn – the cheerful song of the starling or the daring, but melodic whistle of the blackbird.
I opened the window and sat down on the windowsill. In the still cold air stood the naive aromas of herbs, leaves, bark, earth. In the dark chandeliers of the chestnut trees, the fragments of the night mist, which were stuck at night like a very thin muslin, were still confused. But the trees have already
But the cheerful starliveless chatterer and the carefree whistler-thrush were silent this morning. Perhaps they, just like me, listened attentively, with astonishment, to those strange, incomprehensible, never-before-heard sounds-powerful and sonorous-from which every particle of air seemed to tremble.
I did not suddenly realize that it was the cocks singing. It took many seconds, until I guessed it. It seemed to me that gold and silver pipes trumpeted all over the earth, sending up sounds of amazing purity, beauty and sonority.
I know the power and piercing of the cock-crowing. In former times, hunting for spring wood-grouse currents in the vast Russian forests, ten or fifteen versts from some dwelling, before sunrise I caught only two sounds reminiscent of a man with his tense hearing: a remote locomotive whistle and cockshows in neighbors villages. The last earthly sounds I heard rising in a silent balloon flight were always the whistles of street boys, but even longer they could hear the
At times the near cocks fell silent for a few moments, as if maintaining a strict, precise pause, and then I heard the wave of sounds rolling farther and farther, to the most remote places, and, as if reflected there, returned back, increasing, growing, The singing shaft to my window, to the roofs, to the tops of trees. These wide sound rolls rolled from north to south, from west to east in some wonderful, incomprehensible fugue. So, probably, the troops of the magnificent Ancient Rome met their triumphant Caesar. The cohorts, located on hills and heights, were the first to see his solemn chariot and greeted her with distant exclamations of joy, and below shouted with metallic voices rave legions whose rows one by one were already shining with the glowing gaze of his radiant eyes.
I listened to this wonderful music with excitement, almost with delight. She did not deafen the ear, but sweetly filled and satiated the ear. What a strange thing, what an extraordinary morning! What happened today with the roosters of the whole neighborhood, maybe the entire country, maybe the entire globe? Do they celebrate the longest sunny day and joyfully sing all the charms of the summer: the warmth of the sun’s rays, hot sand, fragrant tasty herbs, the endless pleasures of love and the stormy joy of battle, when two powerful cock bodies fiercely collide in the air, in the meat curves steel beaks and feathers and blood spatter from the cloud of spinning dust. Or maybe today is celebrated the day of the 300th millennium of the memory of the Ancient Cock – the forefather of all the cocks in the world, the one who, like a warrior and a king who did not know anyone’s power above himself,
“And, finally, maybe,” I thought, “today, before the longest summer work day, the clouds in the east were detained by the sun for a few moments, and the sun-worshiping cocks, deified with light and warmth, echo in the sacred impatience of their fire-breathed god.”
Here is the sun. Never before has anyone – neither man nor beast nor bird – been able to catch the moment when it appears, and to notice the seconds when everything in the world becomes pale, pink – pink-gold, gold. Now the golden fire has pierced everything: the sky, the air, and the earth. Stringing the last forces, in ecstatic ecstasy, trembling with bliss, closing his eyes in ecstasy, the countless crow’s chorus sings magnificent splendor! And now I do not understand anymore – are the golden rays ringing with golden tubes, or does the cock’s hymn shine with the sun’s rays? The Great Golden Rooster emerges into the sky in his fiery loneliness. Here it is, the old beautiful myth about Phoenix, the mysterious bird that burned itself yesterday in the magnificent bonfire of the evening dawn, and today it rose again in the East from ash, smoke and hot coals!
Gradually cease ground cocks. First, the near, then distant, even further, and finally, somewhere completely at the edge of the world, almost beyond the limits of hearing, I catch the tenderest pianissimo. Here it melted.
The whole day I was under the impression of this charming and powerful music. At about two I had to go to one house. In the middle of the courtyard stood a huge Lonshan cock. In the bright sunlight, the gold of his uniform glittered almost blindingly, the green and blue tints of his armor of blued steel glistened, the satin ribbons fluttered: red, black and white. Carefully bypassing this handsome man, I bent down and asked:
“Did you sing so well today at dawn?”
He threw a sidelong glance at me, turned away, lowered his head, drew his beak across the sand and there and muttered something with a dissatisfied, hoarse bass. I can not vouch that I understand it, but I heard him say: “And what’s it to you?”
I was not offended. I was just embarrassed. I know myself that I’m just a weak, pitiful person, nothing more. My dry heart will not contain the frenzied sacred ecstasies of the cock, chanting his golden god. But is it not allowed me to be modest, in my own way, to be in love with the eternal, beautiful, life-giving, kind sun?
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