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Back                      Hamlet And Eggs                            Matthew Stanley

This story that they tell about Mr Papadopoulos, about the time when he was a chicken farmer, before he bought the hotel. He lived in a village then with his wife who never speaks and never spoke then, too. They say that his madness stems from that time, although I believe he's been insane for much longer..

He had a stone house on the road leading out of the village on the way up to the castle. His chickens ran wild for most of the day, often sprinting jerkily under the wheels of tractors to be squashed flat and feathery for cats to lick after dusk. There was something quite suicidal about their willingness to jump under wheels as if trying to escape their master, and some would loiter in the corn to be beheaded by the scythe. Mr P cried for each poultry death, for he loved his birds.

As chicken farmers go, he was considered eccentric. He read to his chickens as they cooed and warbled in their hay after dark. What he read to them or whether they understood him were matters of perpetual speculation, but the villagers maintain the eggs laid by these most literate of hens were superior to anything else.

One night, as red-faced Mr Papadopoulos sat hunched in the coup with book in hand, he became angered by one of the hens which seemed to be cackling at him. Never one to tolerate insolence, he tossed a clod of earth at the recalcitrant bird but she ruffled her feathers indignantly and continued to cackle as he read. No one knows better than a chicken farmer that the average chicken is exceptionally stupid, but occasionally a bird rises above the brood to develop an uncanny perceptiveness. They are usually the ones which hide their eggs in obscure places so that the farmer has to hunt around in nettles and adders' nests to locate them.

"So, we have a know-it-all, do we?" interrogated Mr P. "Is there something you'd prefer to hear instead, Ms Critic?" His crossed eyes goggled alarmingly and his usual scarlet hue seemed to hiss with anger. Distressed warbles arose. "Prefer a little Plato, would we,? Or something from Homer, perhaps? Don't keep us in suspense."

Even the most open-minded of farmers wouldn't have expected an answer, or for that matter wasted a rhetorical question on a potential casserole. But the haughty hen did reply ; not in the usual manner but by squeezing out, with great drama, an egg which wobbled uneasily towards Mr Papadopoulos and came to rest against his foot. From the sound alone it was clear that the egg was hollow. An eerie silence came over the coup.