Read 'On Chicken', the New Short Story From Gabriel Krauze

We were all sitting round the kitchen table as a family – my older brother Kola was over from Sweden for a few days – and I was telling everyone how I’d stopped eating red meat. Dinner was served. Boiled potatoes rolling about in butter and dill. Salmon steaming straight from the oven, smell of salt and squeezed lemon and white wine. The light over the table dimmed, holding us in a warm glow while evening seeped into the rest of the kitchen, muting colours under a cloth of darkness. So I tell Kola I’ve given up red meat and he says Well Done and my father laughs gently as he often does instead of using words and Mama says I stopped eating red meat last year and my father laughs again. My older brother asks What made you do it? and I say Well recently these studies came out in the papers, scientists are officially saying it is fully a fact that eating red meat raises your chances of getting cancer and it takes four days to digest which can’t be good for you, and when I started going out with Joanna she told me the same thing, because she doesn’t eat red meat or any meat for that matter, but in the beginning when we were first going out we used to go to Gourmet Burger Kitchen a lot and she would tell me about how red meat is bad for you while I ate my favourite cheeseburger with skinny rosemary fries and she had the bean burger, so I started to think about it from then and my father laughs again. Kola says Well done, now we just have to get you to stop eating those nice fluffy little chickens and— oh, I’ll never do that I say. You see it’s not a moral decision not to eat red meat, it’s just to do with health, with what I’ve read, my research, my belief system and I’m not looking to push it onto anyone else. But what about the poor chickens who have babies and lives and everything says Kola. But I don’t care about them I say, they’re there for me to eat them, like in terms of the food chain and the animal kingdom they’re beneath me so it’s natural for us to eat them. Put me naked in a ring against a tiger, without a gun or any other man-made weapon, and that tiger is tearing me apart every time, no question. But put me in the ring naked with a chicken, and I’m winning every time no problem, that chicken ain’t got a chance. And that’s why we’re above chickens and they’re there for us to eat.

Chicken was one brer who lived in South Kilburn and he had a house party in his flat in the block opposite the one I used to live in. Chicken’s cousin had robbed a couple of serious brers from South Kilburn and then ghosted from the ends so no one could find him. So when my friend Gotti sees Chicken in the house party he makes a phone call and about half an hour later Bugz Bunny runs into the house party and shoots Chicken in the chest and Chicken runs onto his balcony and jumps off. But it’s two floors up so he breaks his legs when he lands and then Bugz Bunny runs outside and finishes Chicken off with three shots to the head. And everyone knows who killed Chicken but nobody tells the feds. Later, one of my other friends who was there when it happened, tells me how everyone ran outside when Chicken jumped off the balcony and some woman was shouting Help him Help him and that’s when Bugz Bunny came back out the block and said Help him yeah? Move back, move back, waving his gun at people so everyone backed off, and then he shot Chicken in one side of his face and using his foot he carefully turned Chicken’s face over and shot him twice in the other side before disappearing into the night. And every time I think of my friendship with Gotti I think of Chicken and every time I think of Bugz Bunny I think of Chicken and whenever I think of South Kilburn I think of Chicken, and there’s basically no trace of him and what happened to him out there other than peoples’ memories – no one got arrested, you can’t get any Google results for him, it’s almost like he never existed. But everyone who lived in SK when it happened and even people like me who moved into the blocks years after the killing, remember what happened to Chicken.

Chicken is often the essential prop in many of the daily dramas which unfold on the stage of modern life. In London, Nando’s is often the scene of the beginning (or end) of real life love stories, fights, friendships, business deals, gym recoveries and indulgence. An ex-girlfriend once walked out on me when we’d just sat down five minutes earlier to eat in Nando’s and when that happened I was like right that’s it, that’s the final straw, walking out on me in Nando’s – I’m not having that. Nando’s often underpins the development and the denouement of individual plots and narratives. Like this one time I was in the library in uni talking to this Nigerian chick called Anuli who was proper feeling me, and I’m sitting at a computer, typing up some essay on the screen and she’s sitting next to me, she’d just bought herself some Nando’s takeaway and it was sitting in the standard brown paper bag just under the desk by her feet and we’re talking in loud whispers. My friend Ben comes over and for whatever reason Anuli doesn’t like this and she interrupts him sharp like Excuse me I’m talking to Gabriel don’t interrupt our conversation – and something like have some manners and wait your turn. Ben says Are you mad I’ll boot your Nando’s across the fucking library and I start bussing up and Anuli goes to get the security guard but Ben is fully calm and the security guard isn’t going to turf any students just for making that kind of comment. And the more laid back the security guard is and the more blank-faced Ben is, the more she’s getting upset and all desperate to get Ben thrown out the library and then she goes for it and says He threatened me and I’m proper bussing up laughing and Ben’s just like what the fuck and the security guard starts walking off and she starts crying and she picks up her bag of Nando’s chicken and cuts out of the library. We never ended up doing a ting anyway.

Get a packet of chicken fillets.
Pour 2 cups of plain flour into a large sealable plastic container.
Add 1½ tablespoons of all-purpose seasoning, 2 teaspoons of black pepper and a pinch of Italian herbs.
Add a tablespoon of cornmeal. Seal plastic container and shake vigorously to blend mixture.
In a shallow bowl, beat one egg with ⅓ cup of cold water.
Dip each chicken fillet in the egg mixture and put in the plastic container with flour mix, one piece at a time. Once all dipped fillets are in the plastic container, seal and shake to coat.
Fill a deep pan with vegetable oil and heat on a medium-high heat until a sprinkle of flour bubbles upon contact with the oil.
Fry the chicken, several pieces at a time for 5-6 minutes on each side or until golden brown and juices run clear. Place on a plate lined with paper towels to drain excess oil.

Here’s another one for an intergenerational dish; three generations to be precise. Get a nice big mature organic chicken. Get a poussin, which is basically a butcher’s term for a young chicken – less than 28 days old when it is killed. Stuff the fully-grown organic chicken with the younger one. Stuff a boiled egg into the poussin. Put in the oven and roast. That’s an unborn chicken inside a young chicken inside an adult chicken. Three generations of chicken.

Chickens are the closest genetic relatives to dinosaurs. Ingredients for making a chicken: If you are God, or a god, mix raptor blood and feathers with muscle and claw. Wrap in skin. Attach sharp yellow eyes and a bright red crest on its head. Don’t worry about perfecting its ability to fly. Put it in the jungle and wait for humans to discover and domesticate it. Create a deadly virus that it will catch and poison humans with due to improper cooking.

Solo was my bredrin in prison. He was twenty-one, the youngest brer on the wing, and his latest charge had happened while he was already behind the door in HMP Reading which was for young offenders. The screws were doing the whole gladiator ting with the mandem there and one morning they moved Solo into a cell with his enemy who he had mad beef with, already three proper fights on the wing and more. He woke up that night while the brer was strangling him with the plastic cord from the kettle in their cell. Throat tearing for breath, he pulled out the chicken bone he’d been sharpening for a week from under his pillow and stabbed the brer who was strangling him again and again. Eight times in the neck and face. Blood on the walls and ceiling and all over the bed. He got an attempted murder charge for that and was moved to an adult prison as soon as they could do it to him and that’s how we met in HMP Bullingdon. He wasn’t allowed to share a cell because of that. If it hadn’t been for that sharpened chicken bone I’d be finished fam he said to me as we stood on the third floor landing during association, the 45 minutes a day we’d get outside of our cells, looking at the rows of solid metal doors, scratched up cold, and everyone walking to nowhere in grey tracksuit bottoms and sky blue t-shirts.

It was my first Christmas with Joanna. We were at her mother’s house and her mother roasted a chicken especially for me because Joanna is vegetarian. After eating most of it, I found the wishbone, chewed off the remnants of dry white meat, rinsed it off under the cold tap and put it on the radiator to dry. Later in the evening we sat on the sofa pressed into each other and I was playing with her braids when I said to her let’s do the wishbone and make a wish. So we wrapped one little finger each around either branch of the bone and broke it and I don’t remember who got the bigger part and she didn’t tell me what her wish was and I’ve forgotten mine.

London is full of chicken shops. Late in the night they glow like chapels made of fluorescent lights. Freezing girls in symbolic garms try not to fall over after a lit night out at a rave. Shotters who make bags and bags – thousands of pounds – every weekend and wear rose gold Audemar Piguet watches worth ten bags or more, stop off to buy £3.99 chicken burger chips and drink meals. Four gang boys patrolling the roads for ops stop off to get some wings and a drink, black Nike rain jackets, hoods up. Rival gang members spot them and run into the chicken shop with zombie knives and two boys get shanked. A police forensic team pads about on the floor of the chicken shop in white hooded plastic boiler suits, rubber gloves, masks, blue bags on feet. The blood hasn’t been cleaned away yet but it’s turning into a brown smudge on the dirty floor of the shop. Looking down on the scene from above the counter, unblinking and silent as if the electricity never turns off, are the signs for different meal deals, all bright lights, juicy photoshoot burgers and special offers. A suit walks in, businessman back from a late night drinking, maybe with new work colleagues, staggers up to the counter, orders the bucket with 10 pieces of chicken 6 wings and 4 chips, goes and sits down alone at a dirty metal table and starts to eat the chicken before going home, greasy bits of chicken skin dancing down his loosened tie. A tramp comes in smelling sour dirty and the brer working behind the chicken shop counter is a Muslim and charity is one of the five pillars of Islam so he gives the tramp some chicken wings and a bottle of water for free and then silently hopes the tramp will leave. I once got rushed by 11 brers in a chicken shop - there’s nothing quite like fighting for your name in a narrow space surrounded by piles of fried dead birds glistening in grease under fluorescent lights. But that’s another story. Bare man get rushed in chicken shops.

During the first Punic War between Carthage and the Roman Republic in 249 BC, the senior consul of Rome, Publius Claudius Pulcher, decided to launch a surprise attack on the Carthaginian fleet which was blockading the harbour of Drepana. He consulted the oracle before going into battle by observing the eating habits/feeding of sacred chickens on the morning of the planned attack. If the chickens ate the grain, the gods would favour the Romans and give them a victory. However, on that particular morning the chickens refused to eat the grain, signifying certain doom. Confronted with this terrifying omen, as well as a superstitious and panicking crew, Plubius Claudius Pulcher threw every single one of the chickens (still locked in their cages) into the sea, proclaiming ‘Since they do not want to eat, let them drink!’. The result of the ensuing battle was utter defeat for the Romans with almost all the ships of the Roman fleet sunk by the Carthaginians.

Chickens with swollen chests, pumped up with steroids and water, stumble awkwardly, losing their balance and falling over due to the disproportionate weight of their chests, falling over in dark barns amidst an endless din of scratched-throat squawking, getting trampled on by other chickens, getting injured, resisting all sorts of diseases due to eating antibiotic-drenched feed. It produces more white boneless meat, more chicken breasts that way, more chicken breasts for fried chicken, frozen chicken dippers, ready meals, nuggets etc. A lot of us are eating those chickens without ever realising.

Daniel Omari Smith was 22 years old when he walked into the KFC that used to be open round the corner from my mum’s on Harrow Road till four in the morning. There was always a mad vibe there because it was open so late. Heads from as far as Willesden and Harlesden and them places would be there, stopping off on the way back from raving or whatever, always cars parked outside and people lurking about. The counter was closed off by a massive shatterproof screen to protect the staff working behind the counter from getting attacked (bare man get rushed in chicken shops) and you’d get your order through a kind of hatch in the screen. So Daniel was just coming back from a first date with some girl he liked, it was nine minutes past midnight on a Saturday, he parked his car, went into the KFC and got some chicken. As he walked back to his car, someone walked up behind him and blasted him in the back with a 9millimetre, the bullet blowing out of his chest. He staggered back into the KFC and died on the floor, customers running out of the shop or pressing themselves against the walls. He was an electrician. In the grainy CCTV footage from the shop just before the shooting he looked happy, clearly on his phone, striped polo shirt, smiling, maybe he was on the phone to the girl he’d just gone out on a date with or maybe he was telling a friend Oi I’m proper feeling this gyal you kna… No one’s ever been convicted of his murder. The KFC shut down soon after and it was replaced with another chicken shop but that one closes at 11pm like most of the others do and you can’t get that dry but juicy KFC side breast which I love or Mini Variety Meals.

If you cut off a chicken’s head it runs about aimlessly for a while, perhaps aware of its blindness but clearly unaware that it is meant to be dead. Hence the expression, ‘running around like a headless chicken’. In 1791 chickens in Haiti get their throats cut in voodoo ceremonies. The blood is transfused to the Loa – the invisibles, the spirits of Haitian vodou – via chanting, trances, service and worship, and the gods are re-energised. Voodoo unites the Haitian slaves and helps them to overthrow their French masters. White oppressor bodies rot in the sun, armies of muskets and Napoleonic modernity crushed by the energy of ancient beliefs. Lots of chickens getting their throats cut. Lots of blood spattering steaming black on cold grey stones.

We were on holiday in Italy in Forte Dei Marmi. My twin brother Danny and I followed Mama to get some pizzas from Il Platano, the best pizzeria in the area. Mama went into the restaurant to order the pizzas. We were four years old and Danny and I got bored easily and had constant energy. It was dusk, but the sky had a freshness to it and the air was soft and warm on our bare arms. Outside Il Platano was a narrow one-way road. On the other side of the road was a high black wire fence and dark green bushes bulged out from behind the fence. We decided to play chicken. Cars came driving down the narrow road every now and then, slowing down a bit to avoid scraping against parked cars or stopping to collect a pizza. Every time a car came down the road, Danny and I would run out in front of it and get to the other side of the road just before the car passed. After a few minutes it became about really seeing how late you could time your run – how close could you make running in front of the car before it hit you, how close did you dare. We were on the other side of the road from the restaurant and we could see Mama ordering the pizza inside. We had our backs to the black fence and we hooked our fingers into the wire mesh and leaned forward, ready to sprint across while staring down the road as we waited for the next car. Daniel left it late, really late, the car just meters away when he let go of the fence and started to run, but I wanted to be even closer to missing it than him so I pushed myself off the fence and started running just a second after he had. The next thing I know I’m lying in the middle of the road, my hands and arms feeling warm dusty black tarmac and everything is still. The car must have hit me in the side of the head, but what’s strange is even now I remember every single detail and that’s probably because I had my first genuine out of body experience. I mean I remember seeing the shiny metal grill on the front of the car bonnet and the car stopped and then I could see myself from above, sprawled out in the middle of the road, lying still with my legs looking like they were frozen in mid-run and I had a grey Batman t shirt on and the car was just a foot away from me and everything felt very still and peaceful. The woman who was driving the car got out and went into the pizzeria. She was wearing tight black leather trousers, black high-heeled boots and a Versace gold girdle, you know those ones where every other link is a disc with a snarling lion’s head embossed on it, very Italian chic and she had blonde hair. And I’m like why hasn’t she noticed me? I couldn’t move and I couldn’t make a noise but I could see everything very calmly and I’m thinking she’s knocked me down and now she’s going into Il Platano to order a pizza and no one knows I’m here on the ground – no one’s even noticed – and I can’t get up. And another strange thing happened where my perspective was back to looking across the road from the black fence at the entrance of the pizzeria. I can see the woman who’d got out of the car and she was in there ordering pizza and Mama was on the payphone by the counter, talking to some relative in Poland, and I was baffled as to why no one had noticed I’d been knocked down by a car, how come Mama was chatting on the phone to friends, surely someone could see me since it was right in front of the restaurant – but no one did. The next thing I remember is being in the back of an ambulance and I was crying and screaming and the paramedics were holding a massive block of ice to my head and Mama was holding me. I was 24 years old when I told my mother about the out of body experience – it was actually talking to her that made me realise I’d had one. She said I’d described everything totally accurately and in great detail, however she pointed out that since I was knocked down I couldn’t have possibly seen the entrance of the restaurant, let alone her on the payphone or the driver walking into the restaurant. The first thing I asked was why no one had noticed I’d been run over but she told me everyone had noticed. The woman who hit me got out of her car and ran into the pizzeria saying I’ve just hit a little boy who ran into in to the road. The ambulance was called straight away. My mum wasn’t on the phone talking to relatives in Poland but was calling Italian friends and my father to let them know what had happened. No one wanted to touch me in case my neck or back or something else important was broken. I was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Carrara which is in the mountains, mountains which are made of pure marble. I had major bruising and swelling up one side of my head but all the doctors were amazed I hadn’t sustained a skull fracture or even concussion. I was kept in the hospital for a few days and then I went home. My mother asked me What were you doing when the car hit you? and I said Oh me and Danny were just playing chicken.

@Gabriel_Krauze

More of Gabriel's work:

When the Sky Fell Down

Rough Emeralds

The Rape of Dina