Mikhail Bulgakov. The Fateful Eggs -
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blood.
"Lord Jesus!" cried the guest, slapping her thighs. "Just look at that!
Clots of blood. I've never seen a hen bring up like that before, so help me
God!"
These words accompanied the poor hen on her last journey. She suddenly
keeled over, digging her beak helplessly into the dust, and swivelled her
eyes. Then she rolled onto her back with her legs sticking up and lay
motionless. Matryoshka wept in her deep bass voice, spilling the water, and
the Chairman of the cooperative, the priest's widow, wept too while her
guest lent over and whispered in her ear:
"Stepanovna, I'll eat my hat if someone hasn't put the evil eye on your
hens. Whoever heard of it! Chickens don't have diseases like this! Someone's
put a spell on them."
"Tis devils' work!" the priest's widow cried to heaven. "They want to
see me good and done for!"
Her words called forth a loud cock-a-doodle-doo, and lurching sideways
out of the chicken-coop, like a restless drunk out of a tavern, came a tatty
scrawny rooster. Rolling his eyes at them ferociously, he staggered about on
the spot and spread his wings like an eagle, but instead of flying up, he
began to run round the yard in circles, like a horse on a rope. On his third
time round he stopped, vomited, then began to cough and choke, spitting
blood all over the place and finally fell down with his legs pointing up at
the sun like masts. The yard was filled with women's wails, which were
answered by an anxious clucking, clattering and fidgeting from the
chicken-coop.
"What did I tell you? The evil eye," said the guest triumphantly. "You
must get Father Sergius to sprinkle holy water."
At six o'clock in the evening, when the sun's fiery visage was sitting
low among the faces of young sunflowers, Father Sergius, the senior priest
at the church, finished the rite and took off his stole. Inquisitive heads