as if out of nowhere. One morning he was sitting on top of an old Volga wreck that stood along the road toward the Hole. His paws were hanging nonchalantly out over the edge of the roof and his stained, black, narrow-brimmed hat was shoved back on his head. He was smoking a cigarette, squinting toward the sun that was coming up, and didn’t seem to be bothered by the collection of animals that in a few short moments gathered around him.
He was so haggard and his fur so matted that no one who saw him that morning was especially concerned. Perhaps you could sense that he was an aggressive type—he had presumably made his way to the Garbage Dump of his own free will—but it didn’t appear as though he was in a condition to win a fight. The animals didn’t bother to call a foreman over; they thought they would have a little fun on their own.
“Who are you?” asked a brave rooster.
He was sky blue with a cloud-white comb, aspired to a foreman’s job in due time and therefore had a particular purpose in appearing cocky.
At first the hyena didn’t seem to have heard the question. He sat unmoving, smoking his cigarette and letting the tender rays of the sun stroke his whiskers.
“Who’s asking?” he said at last.
His voice was deep and harsh. Friendly, but commanding respect. When he turned his face toward the rooster it was the first time the animals saw the hyena’s eyes. They glistened like black mirrors, refusing entry to onlookers.
“It’s me who’s asking,” answered the rooster, without letting himself be concerned by the challenge that the hyena had assumed, and reciprocated, without hesitation, “and when I ask I’m used to getting an answer.”
“That sounds about right,” mumbled the hyena in his dark voice, as though he was mostly talking to himself, “I’ve heard that you all have a special way of treating strangers here.”
“And you came here anyway?” said the rooster ironically.
The hyena took a final drag from the cigarette and put it out by crushing the ember against the roof of the car where he was sitting. He furrowed his eyebrows, and his sudden displeasure made the animals standing in a semicircle around the car feel ill at ease.
“Lay off now,” he said, “and leave me in peace. I’m sure we’ll find some way to relate to each other in due course.”
“‘Relate to each other’?” the rooster imitated in a voice full of scorn. “Did you hear? He wants to ‘relate,’ in ‘due course.’ Listen, the only course you need to do is…is…”
But the rooster couldn’t think of any cogent irony because he was uncertain what the word meant.
“Leave me in peace,” said the hyena again.
This time it wasn’t a request, it was a direct order. And for a fraction of a second—a second that could have saved the rooster’s life—the rooster actually considered doing as the stranger asked. But then the blue rooster realized that it was too late, that fate had already brought him here and that fate always knew what it was doing. He was forced to follow it to the end. He took a step forward and kicked at the car door. The sound that arose, an imposing boom, surprised him. It was the acoustics of the car’s empty compartment that caused the rooster to overcome his terror when he heard for himself what powerful legs he had.
“Beat it,” he said to the hyena. “There are already enough mouths to fill here.”
The rest happened in just a minute. Nonetheless, that minute would be talked about for several years.
The hyena jumped down from the roof of the car and in the same movement took out a bottle which he must have had concealed inside his worn-out jacket. The glass bottle reflected in the sun, and the rooster as well as the observers intuitively perceived the bottle as a weapon, something the hyena would strike with. But it was the hyena’s other paw that shot forth like a projectile and encircled the rooster’s neck in a merciless grip. In a moment the hyena screwed off the cap of the bottle with his teeth, and when the rooster opened his beak to gasp for breath—the grip on his neck hardly allowed him to get any air—the hyena forced the bottle down his throat instead. The animals stood bewildered at the sides of the fighters, watching how the contents of the bottle ran down into the rooster.
How many of them understood