Chapter 7
“No, no, and no!” Bormental began insistently. “Please tuck it in!”
“Really, what, honest to God,” grumbled Sharikov.
“Thank you, Doctor,” Filipp Filippovich said gently, “I’ve got tired of correcting him.”
“I won’t let you eat until you tuck it in. Zina, receive the mayonnaise from Sharikov.”
“What do you mean, ‘receive’?” Sharikov was upset. “I’ll tuck it in now.”
With his left hand he blocked the dish from Zina and with his right he shoved a napkin inside his collar, coming to resemble someone at the barber’s.
“Use the fork, please,” Bormental added.
Sharikov gave a long sigh and started fishing for pieces of sturgeon in the thick sauce.
“A little more vodka?” he announced interrogatively.
“Haven’t you had enough?” Bormental enquired. “You’ve been hitting the vodka too much lately.”
“Do you begrudge it?” Sharikov enquired and looked up from beneath his brow.
“That’s silly,” Filipp Filippovich interjected severely, but Bormental interrupted him. “Don’t worry, Filipp Filippovich, I’ll handle it. You, Sharikov, speak nonsense and the most outlandish thing is that you say it with aplomb and confidence. Of course, I don’t begrudge the vodka, especially since it’s not even mine but Filipp Filippovich’s. It’s just that it’s harmful. That’s one, and two, you behave improperly as it is without it.”
Bormental pointed to the taped-up buffet.
“Zina, dear, please give me some more fish.”
Sharikov reached for the decanter in the meantime, and with a sidelong glance at Bormental, poured himself a shot.
“You must offer it to others,” said Bormental, “and in this way: first to Filipp Filippovich, then to me, and finally for yourself.”
A barely visible satirical smile touched Sharikov’s lips, and he filled all the shot glasses.
“We have to do everything like on parade,” he said. “Napkin here, tie there, and ‘excuse me’, and ‘please’, ‘merci’, instead of doing it for real. We’re tormenting ourselves the way they did under the tsarist regime.”
“And what is ‘for real’, may I enquire?”
Sharikov did not respond to Filipp Filippovich, instead raising his glass and saying, “Here’s wishing that everything—”
“And the same to you,” Bormental replied with some irony.
Sharikov sloshed the vodka down his throat, frowned, brought a piece of bread to his nose, sniffed it and then swallowed it, his eyes brimming with tears.
“A stage,” Filipp Filippovich suddenly said curtly and as if in a trance.
Bormental glanced at him in amazement. “Sorry?”
“A stage!” repeated Filipp Filippovich and shook his head bitterly. “There’s nothing to be done about it! Klim!”
Bormental peered with extreme interest into Filipp Filippovich’s eyes. “Do you suppose so, Filipp Filippovich?”
“No supposing about it. I’m certain.”
“Could it…” began Bormental and stopped, glancing over at Sharikov.
The latter frowned suspiciously.
“Später,”* said Filipp Filippovich softly.
“Gut,” replied his assistant.
Zina brought in the turkey. Bormental poured some red wine for Filipp Filippovich and offered it to Sharikov.
“I don’t want any. I’d rather have some vodka.” His face looked greasy, sweat beaded his brow, and he was cheerful. Filipp Filippovich also grew kinder after his wine. His eyes were clearer and he regarded Sharikov, whose black head sat in the napkin like a fly in sour cream, with greater condescension.
Bormental, feeling stronger, revealed a tendency towards action. “Well, and what shall we undertake this evening?” he enquired of Sharikov.
He blinked and replied, “We’ll go to the circus, that’s the best.”
“The circus every day?” Filipp Filippovich remarked rather genially. “That’s rather boring, it seems to me. If I were you I’d go to the theatre at least once.”
“I won’t go to the theatre,” Sharikov said with hostility and made the sign of the cross over his mouth.*
“Hiccuping at the table spoils the appetite of others,” Bormental informed him automatically. “Please forgive me… Why, actually, don’t you like the theatre?”
Sharikov looked into his empty shot glass as if it were binoculars, thought, and pouted. “It’s tomfoolery… Talk and talk… Nothing but counter-revolution!”
Filipp Filippovich threw himself against the Gothic chair back and laughed so hard that gold palings sparkled in his mouth. Bormental merely shook his head.
“You should read something,” he proposed, “otherwise, you know—”
“I’m reading and reading as it is,” Sharikov replied and suddenly poured himself half a glass of vodka swiftly, like a predator.
“Zina!” Filipp Filippovich called anxiously. “Take the vodka away, child, we don’t need any more! What are you reading?” He had a sudden picture flash through his mind: an uninhabited island, a palm tree, and a man in an animal skin and hat. “You should read Robinson—”
“That… whatchacallit… correspondence between Engels and that… what’s his name, damn it… and Kautsky.”*
Bormental’s fork with a piece of white meat stopped halfway, and Filipp Filippovich spilt his wine. Sharikov managed to down his vodka in the meantime.
Filipp Filippovich rested his elbows on the table, looked at Sharikov and asked, “Permit me to enquire what you can say in connection with your reading.”
Sharikov shrugged.
“I don’t agree.”
“With whom? Engels or Kautsky?”
“Both of them,” Sharikov replied.
“Marvellous, I swear to God! ‘All who say another!…’* And what would you propose instead?”
“What’s there to propose?… They keep writing and writing… Congress, some Germans… makes my head ache! Just take everything and divide it up.”
“Just as I thought!” exclaimed Filipp Filippovich, smacking the tablecloth with his hand, “That’s just what I thought!”
“Do you know the method as well?” Bormental asked, intrigued.
“What method?” Sharikov had become more talkative under the influence of the vodka. “It’s no secret. Look now: one is spread out over seven rooms, with forty pairs of pants, while another forages, looking for food in rubbish bins.”
“The seven rooms is a dig at me, I take it?” Filipp Filippovich asked, narrowing his eyes haughtily. Sharikov huddled into himself and said nothing.
“Well, all right, I’m not against sharing. Doctor, how many patients did you turn away yesterday?”
“Thirty-nine people,’ Bormental replied instantly.
“Hm… Three hundred and ninety roubles. Well, let the men bear the damage. We won’t count the ladies—Zina and Darya Petrovna. Your share, Sharikov, is one hundred and thirty roubles. Please hand it over.”
“A fine thing,” replied Sharikov in a fright, “what’s all this?”
“For the tap and the cat!” barked Filipp Filippovich, losing his state of ironic calm.
“Filipp Filippovich!” Bormental exclaimed anxiously.
“Wait! For the outrage you created, which made us cancel office hours! It is unacceptable! A man leaping around the apartment, like a savage, tearing off taps!… Who killed Madam Polasukher’s cat? Who—”
“You, Sharikov, the other day you bit a lady on the stairs!” attacked Bormental.
“You stand—” growled Filipp Filippovich.
“She smacked me on the face!” screeched Sharikov. “My mug isn’t public property!”
“Because you pinched her breast,” shouted Bormental, knocking over his wine glass. “You stand—”
“You stand on the lowest step of development!” Filipp Filippovich out-shouted him. “You are a creature still in formation, weak mentally, all your actions are purely animal, and you, in the presence of two people with a university education, permit yourself with totally unbearable aplomb to offer advice of cosmic scale and equally cosmic stupidity on dividing everything up, and at the same time you gobbled up the tooth powder!”
“The other day,” Bormental confirmed.
“So now,” thundered Filipp Filippovich, “I will rub your nose in this… by the way, why did you wipe off the zinc oxide from it?… You will be silent and listen to what you are told! Learn and try to become at least a minimally acceptable member of society. By the way, what scoundrel outfitted you with that book?”
“You think everyone’s a scoundrel,” Sharikov replied fearfully, overwhelmed by the two-sided attack.
“I can guess!” exclaimed Filipp Filippovich, wrathfully turning red.
“Well, all right, then… Well, it was Shvonder. He’s not a scoundrel. For my development—”
“I can see how you’re developing after Kautsky,” Filipp Filippovich shrieked, turning yellow. He furiously pushed the button on the wall. “Today’s incident shows that better than anything! Zina!”
“Zina!” yelled Bormental.
“Zina!” screamed frightened Sharikov.
Zina ran in, pale.
“Zina, in the reception room… Is it in the reception room?”
“In the reception,” Sharikov replied docilely. “Green, like vitriol.”
“A green book—”
“He’s going to fire off now!” Sharikov exclaimed in despair. “It’s not mine, it’s from the library!!”
“The correspondence is called… what’s his name?… Engels with that devil… Into the stove with it!”
Zina turned and flew out.
“I would hang that Shvonder from the nearest tree, upon my word,” Filipp Filippovich exclaimed, furiously clamping his teeth into a turkey wing, “this incomparable rotten creature exists in the building like a boil. It’s not enough that he writes libellous nonsense in the papers…”
Sharikov squinted angrily and ironically at the professor. Filipp Filippovich in turn glared narrowly at him and stopped talking.
“Oh, nothing good will come of us here in the apartment,” Bormental suddenly thought prophetically.
Zina brought in a round tray holding a baba, reddish on the right side and rosy on the left, and the coffee pot.
“I won’t eat that,” Sharikov announced in a threatening and hostile way.
“No one’s asking you to. Behave yourself. Doctor, please.”
The dinner ended in silence.
Sharikov pulled a crumpled papirosa from his pocket and lit up. Finishing his coffee, Filipp Filippovich looked at his watch, pressed the chimes, and they tenderly played quarter-past eight. Filipp Filippovich leant back on the Gothic chair as was his habit and reached for the newspaper on the side table.
“Doctor, please, take him to the circus. But, for God’s sake, check the programme—are there any cats?”
“How can they let that kind of riff-raff into the circus,” Sharikov noted grimly, shaking his head.
“They let all sorts in,” Filipp Filippovich replied ambiguously. “What are they playing?”
“At Solomonovsky’s,” Bormental started reading, “there are four of these… Yussems and some kind of spinning man.”
“What are Yussems?” Filipp Filippovich enquired suspiciously.
“God knows, I’ve never seen the word before.”
“Well, then, you’d better see what Nikitin has. Everything must be clear.”
“Nikitin… Nikitin… hm… Elephants and the extreme of human agility.”
“Sooooo. What do you have to say regarding elephants, dear Sharikov?” Filipp Filippovich asked Sharikov doubtfully.
He was offended. “What, you think I don’t understand, is that it? Cats are different, but elephants are useful animals,” Sharikov replied.
“Fine then. If they’re useful, then go and see them. You must obey Ivan Arnoldovich. And do not get into any conversations at the buffet. Ivan Arnoldovich, I humbly entreat you not to offer beer to Sharikov.”
Ten minutes later, Ivan Arnoldovich and Sharikov, dressed in a duckbill cap and thick woollen overcoat with the collar turned up, left for the circus. It grew quiet in the apartment. Filipp Filippovich appeared in his study. He lit the lamp under the heavy green hood, which made the enormous study very peaceful, and started pacing the room.
The cigar tip burned long and hot with a pale-green fire. The professor tucked his hands into his trouser pockets and a heavy thought tormented his learned brow with its widow’s peak. He smacked his lips, hummed, “To the sacred banks of the Nile,” and muttered something.
At last, he set the cigar in the ashtray, went over to the cupboard that was completely made of glass, and illuminated the entire study with three powerful lights from the ceiling. From the third glass shelf in the cupboard, Filipp Filippovich removed a narrow jar and examined it, frowning, holding it up to the light. In the transparent and viscous liquid there floated, without sinking to the bottom, a small white lump, excised from the depths of Sharikov’s brain. Shrugging, twisting his lips and hemming, Filipp Filippovich devoured it with his eyes, as if trying to find in the white, unsinkable lump the cause of the astonishing events that had turned life upside down in the apartment on Prechistenka.
It is quite possible that the scholarly man did find it. At least, having regarded to his content the appendage of the brain, he put away the jar, locked the cupboard, placed the key in his vest pocket and collapsed, tucking his head into his shoulders and sticking his hands deep into his jacket pocket, onto the leather of the couch. He burned a second cigar for a long time, chewing up its tip, and finally, in total solitude, coloured green like a grey-haired Faust, he exclaimed: “I swear to God, I think I’ll do it!”
No one responded. All sounds had ceased in the apartment. Traffic stops in Obukhov Lane at eleven, as you know. Once in a great while the distant footsteps of a late pedestrian could be heard, thumping somewhere beyond the drapes, and then dying away. The pocket-watch chimes rang gently beneath Filipp Filippovich’s fingers in his pocket. The professor waited impatiently for Doctor Bormental and Sharikov to return from the circus.