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I. PROFESSOR PERSIKOV’S Curriculum Vitae
ON April, 16, 1928, in the evening, Persikov [Mr. Peach], professor of Zoology at the Fourth State University and director of the Zoological Institute in Moscow, entered his office at the Zoological Institute on Herzen Street. The professor switched on the frosted globe overhead and looked around.
The beginning of the terrifying catastrophe must be set precisely on that ill-fated evening, and just as precisely, Professor Vladimir Ipatievich Persikov must be considered the prime cause of this catastrophe.
He was exactly fifty-eight years old. A remarkable head shaped like a pestle, bald, with tufts of yellowish hair standing out on the sides. A smooth-shaven face with a protruding lower lip. Because of this Persikov always had a somewhat pouting expression on his face. Small, old-fashioned spectacles in a silver frame on a red nose; small, glittering eyes; tall, stoop-shouldered. He spoke in a creaking, high, croaking voice, and among his other idiosyncrasies was this: whenever he spoke of anything emphatically and with assurance, he screwed up his eyes and curled the index finger of his right hand into a hook. And since he always spoke with assurance, for his erudition in his field was utterly phenomenal, the hook appeared very often before the eyes of Professor Persikov’s interlocutors. As for any topics outside his field, i.e., zoology, embryology, anatomy, botany, and geography, Professor Persikov almost never spoke of them.
The professor did not read newspapers and did not go to the theater, and the professor’s wife ran away from him in 1913 with a tenor from the Zimin Opera, leaving him the following note: “Your frogs make me shudder with intolerable loathing. I will be unhappy for the rest of my life because of them.”
The professor never remarried and had no children. He was very short-tempered, but he cooled off quickly; he liked tea with cloudberries; and he lived on Prechistenka [Immaculate Street] in a five-room apartment, one room of which was occupied by his housekeeper Maria Stepanovna, a shriveled little old woman who looked after the professor like a nanny.
In 1919 the government requisitioned three of his five rooms. Then he declared to Maria Stepanovna, “If they don’t cease these outrages, Maria Stepanovna, I’ll leave and go abroad.”
There is no doubt that had the professor realized this plan, he could easily have got settled in the department of zoology at any university in the world, since he was an absolutely first-rate scientist; and with the exception of Professors William Weccle of Cambridge and Giacomo Bartolommeo Beccari of Rome, he had no equals in the field bearing in one way or another on amphibians. Professor Persikov could lecture in four languages besides Russian, and he spoke French and German as fluently as Russian. Persikov did not carry out his intention to emigrate, and 1920 turned out to be even worse than 1919. Events kept happening one after the other. Great Nikitskaia was renamed Herzen Street. Then the clock built into the building on the corner of Herzen and Mokhovaia [Moss Street] stopped at a quarter past eleven, and finally, in the terraria at the Zoological Institute, unable to endure the perturbations of that famous year, first eight splendid specimens of the tree frog died, then fifteen ordinary toads, followed, finally, by a most remarkable specimen of the Surinam toad.
Immediately after the toads, whose deaths decimated the population of the first order of amphibians, which is properly known as tailless, the institute’s permanent watchman, old Vlas, who did not belong to the class of amphibians, moved on into a better world. The cause of his death, however, was the same as that of the poor animals, and Persikov diagnosed it at once: “Lack of feed.”
The scientist was absolutely right: Vlas had to be fed with flour, and the toads with mealworms, but since the former had disappeared, the latter had also vanished. Persikov tried to shift the remaining twenty specimens of the tree-frog to a diet of cockroaches, but the cockroaches had also disappeared somewhere, thus demonstrating their malicious attitude toward War Communism. And so, even the last specimens had to be tossed out into the garbage pits in the institute’s courtyard.
The effect of the deaths, especially that of the Surinam toad, on Persikov is beyond description. For some reason he put the whole blame for the deaths on the current People’s Commissar of Education. Standing in his hat and galoshes in the corridor of the chilly institute, Persikov spoke to his assistant, Ivanov, a most elegant gentleman with a pointed blond beard. “Why, killing him is not enough for this, Peter Stepanovich! Just what are they doing? Why, they’ll ruin the institute! Eh? A singular male, an extraordinary specimen of Pipa americana, thirteen centimeters long …”
As time went on things got worse. After Vlas died, the windows of the institute froze right through, and ice-blossoms covered the inner surface of the glass. The rabbits died, then the foxes, wolves, fish, and every last one of the garter snakes. Persikov started going around in silence for whole days through; then he caught pneumonia, but did not die. When he recovered he went to the institute twice a week, and in the amphitheater, where the temperature for some reason never changed from its constant five degrees below freezing regardless of the temperature outside, wearing his galoshes, a hat with earflaps, and a woolen muffler, exhaling clouds of white steam, he read a series of lectures on “The Reptilia of the Torrid Zone” to eight students. Persikov spent the rest of his time at his place on Prechistenka, covered with a plaid shawl, lying on the sofa in his room, which was crammed to the ceiling with books, coughing, staring into the open maw of the fiery stove which Maria Stepanovna fed gilded chairs, and thinking about the Surinam toad.
But everything in this world comes to an end. Nineteen twenty and 1921 ended, and in 1922 a kind of reverse trend began. First, Pankrat appeared, to replace the late Vlas; he was still young, but he showed great promise as a zoological guard; the institute building was now beginning to be heated a little. And in the summer Persikov managed, with Pankrat’s help, to catch fourteen specimens of the toad vulgairs in the Kliazma River. The terraria once again began to teem with life … In 1923 Persikov was already lecturing eight times a week—three at the institute and five at the university; in 1924 it was thirteen times a week, including the workers’ schools, and in the spring of 1925 he gained notoriety by flunking seventy-six students, all of them on amphibians.
“What? How is it you don’t know how amphibians differ from reptiles?” Persikov would ask. “It’s simply ridiculous, young man. Amphibians have no pelvic buds. None. So, sir, you ought to be ashamed. You’re a Marxist, probably?”
“Yes, a Marxist,” the flunked student would answer, crushed.
“Very well, come back in the fall, please,” Persikov would say politely, and then shout briskly to Pankrat, “Give me the next one!”
As amphibians come back to life after the first heavy rain following a long drought, so Professor Persikov came back to life in 1926 when the united Russo-American Company built fifteen fifteen-story houses in the center of Moscow, starting at the corner of Gazetny Lane [Newspaper Lane] and Tverskaia, and 300 eight-apartment cottages for workers on the outskirts of town, ending once and for all the terrible and ridiculous housing crisis which had so tormented Muscovites in the years 1919 to 1925.
In general, it was a remarkable summer in Persikov’s life, and sometimes he rubbed his hands with a quiet and contented chuckle, recalling how he and Maria Stepanovna had been squeezed into two rooms. Now the professor had gotten all five rooms back; he had spread out, arranged his 2,500 books, his stuffed animals, diagrams, and specimens in their places, and lit the green lamp on the desk in his study.
The institute was unrecognizable too: it had been covered with a coat of cream-colored paint, water was conducted to the reptile room by a special pipeline, all ordinary glass was replaced by plate glass, five new microscopes had been sent to the institute, as had glass-topped dissecting tables, 2,000-watt lamps with indirect lighting, reflectors, and cases for the museum.
Persikov came to life, and the whole world unexpectedly learned of it in December 1926, with the publication of his pamphlet: More on the Problem of the Propagation of the Gastropods, 126 pp., “Bulletin of the Fourth University.”
And in the fall of 1927 his major opus, 350 pages long, later translated into six languages, including Japanese: The Embryology of the Pipidae, Spadefoot Toads, and Frogs, State Publishing House: price, three rubles.
But in the summer of 1928 the incredible, horrible events took place …
II. THE COLORED HELIX
And so, the professor turned on the globe and looked around. He switched on the reflector on the long experiment table, donned a white smock, and tinkled with some instruments on the table …
Many of the thirty thousand mechanical carriages which sped through Moscow in 1928 darted along Herzen Street, wheels humming on the smooth paving stones; and every few minutes a trolley marked 16 or 22 or 48 or 53 rolled, grinding and clattering, from Herzen Street toward Mokhovaia. Reflections of varicolored lights were thrown on the plate-glass windows of the office, and far and high above, next to the dark, heavy cap of the Cathedral of Christ, one could see the misty, pale sickle of the moon.
But neither the moon nor Moscow’s springtime din interested Professor Persikov in the slightest. He sat on a three-legged revolving stool and with fingers stained brown from tobacco, he turned the adjustment screw of the magnificent Zeiss microscope under which an ordinary undyed culture of fresh amoebas had been placed. At the moment that Persikov was shifting the magnification from five to ten thousand, the door opened slightly, a pointed little beard and a leather apron appeared, and his assistant called, “Vladimir Ipatievich, the mesentery is set up—would you like to take a look?”
Persikov nimbly slid off the stool, leaving the adjustment screw turned halfway, and slowly turning a cigarette in his fingers, he went into his assistant’s office. There, on a glass table, a semi-chloroformed frog, fainting with terror and pain, was crucified on a cork plate, its translucent viscera pulled out of its bloody abdomen into the microscope.
“Very good,” said Persikov, bending down to the eyepiece of the microscope.
Apparently one could see something very interesting in the frog’s mesentery, where as clearly as if on one’s hand living blood corpuscles were running briskly along the rivers of the vessels. Persikov forgot his amoebas and for the next hour and a half took turns with Ivanov at the microscope lens. As they were doing this both scientists kept exchanging animated comments incomprehensible to ordinary mortals.
Finally, Persikov leaned back from the microscope, announcing, “The blood is clotting, that’s all there is to that.”
The frog moved its head heavily, and its dimming eyes were clearly saying, “You’re rotten bastards, that’s what …”
Stretching his benumbed legs, Persikov rose, returned to his office, yawned, rubbed his permanently inflamed eyelids with his fingers, and sitting down on his stool, he glanced into the microscope, put his fingers on the adjustment screw intending to turn it—but did not turn it. With his right eye Persikov saw a blurred white disk, and in it some faint, paleoamoebas—but in the middle of the disk there was a colored volute, resembling a woman’s curl. Persikov himself and hundreds of his students had seen this curl very many times, and no one had ever taken any interest in it, nor, indeed, was there any reason to. The little bundle of colored light merely interfered with observation and showed that the culture was not in focus. Therefore it was ruthlessly eliminated with a single turn of the knob, illuminating the whole field with an even white light.
The zoologist’s long fingers already rested firmly on the knob, but suddenly they quivered and slid away. The reason for this was Persikov’s right eye; it had suddenly become intent, amazed, and flooded with excitement. To the woe of the Republic, this was no talentless mediocrity sitting at the microscope. No, this was Professor Persikov! His entire life, all of his intellect, became concentrated in his right eye. For some five minutes of dead silence the higher being observed the lower one, tormenting and straining its eye over the part of the slide which was out of focus. Everything around was silent. Pankrat had already fallen asleep in his room off the vestibule, and only once the glass doors of the cabinets rang musically and delicately in the distance: that was Ivanov locking his office as he left. The front door groaned behind him. And it was only later that the professor’s voice was heard. He was asking, no one knows whom, “What is this? I simply don’t understand.”
A last truck passed by on Herzen Street, shaking the old walls of the institute. The flat glass bowl with forceps in it tinkled on the table. The professor turned pale and raised his hands over the microscope like a mother over an infant threatened by danger. Now there could be no question of Persikov turning the knob, oh no, he was afraid that some outside force might push what he had seen out of the field of vision.
It was bright morning with a gold strip slanting across the cream-colored entrance to the institute when the professor left the microscope and walked up to the window on his numb feet. With trembling fingers he pressed a button, and the thick black shades shut out the morning, and the wise, learned night came back to life in the study. The sallow and inspired Persikov spread his feet wide apart, and staring at the parquet with tearing eyes, he began: “But how can this be? Why, it’s monstrous! … It’s monstrous, gentlemen,” he repeated, addressing the toads in the terrarium—but the toads were sleeping and did not answer.
He was silent for a moment, then walked to the switch, raised the shades, turned off all the lights, and peered into the microscope. His face got tense, and his bushy yellow eyebrows came together. “Uhmmm, uhmmm,” he muttered. “Gone. I see. I see-e-e-e,” he drawled, looking at the extinguished globe overhead madly and inspiredly. “It’s very simple.” And again he lowered the swishing shades, and again he lit the globe. Having glanced into the microscope, he grinned gleefully, and almost rapaciously. “I’ll catch it,” he said solemnly and gravely, raising his finger in the air. “I’ll catch it. Maybe it’s from the sun.”
Again the shades rolled up. Now the sun was out. It poured across the institute walls and lay in slanting planes across the paving stones of Herzen Street. The professor looked out the window, calculating what the position of the sun would be during the day. He stepped away and returned again and again, dancing slightly, and finally he leaned over the windowsill on his stomach.
He got started on some important and mysterious work. He covered the microscope with a glass bell. Melting a chunk of sealing wax over the bluish flame of a Bunsen burner, he sealed the edges of the bell to the table, pressing down the lumps of wax with his thumb. He turned off the gas and went out, and he locked the office door with an English lock.
The institute corridors were in semidarkness. The professor made his way to Pankrat’s room and knocked for a long time with no result. At last there was a sound behind the door something like the growling of a chained dog, hawking and muttering, and Pankrat appeared in a spot of light, wearing striped longjohns tied at his ankles. His eyes fixed wildly on the scientist; he was still groaning somewhat from sleep.
“Pankrat,” said the professor, looking at him over his spectacles. “Forgive me for waking you up. Listen, my friend, don’t go into my office this morning. I left some work out which must not be moved. Understand?”
“U-hm-m, understand,” Pankrat replied, understanding nothing. He was swaying back and forth and grumbling.
“No, listen, wake up, Pankrat,” said the zoologist, and he poked Pankrat lightly in the ribs, which brought a frightened look into his face and a certain shadow of awareness into his eyes. “I locked the office,” continued Persikov. “So you shouldn’t clean up before my return. Understand?”
“Yes, sir-r,” gurgled Pankrat.
“Now that’s excellent, go back to bed.”
Pankrat turned, vanished behind the door, and immediately crashed back into bed, while the professor began to put his things on in the vestibule. He put on his gray summer coat and floppy hat. Then, recalling the picture in the microscope, he fixed his eyes on his galoshes and stared at the overshoes for several seconds, as if he were seeing them for the first time. Then he put on the left overshoe and tried to put the right one over it, but it would not go on.
“What a fantastic accident it was that he called me,” said the scientist, “otherwise I would never have noticed it. But what does it lead to? … Why, the devil only knows what it might lead to!”
The professor grinned, frowned at his galoshes, removed the left one, and put on the right one. “My God! Why, one can’t even imagine all the consequences.” The professor contemptuously kicked away the left overshoe, which annoyed him by refusing to fit over the right, and went to the exit wearing only one. At that point he dropped his handkerchief and walked out, slamming the heavy door. On the stairs he took a long time looking for matches in his pockets, patting his sides; then he found them and headed down the street with an unlit cigarette in his lips.
Not a single person did the scientist meet all the way to the cathedral. There the professor tilted his head back and gaped at the golden cupola. The sun was sweetly licking it on one side.
“How is it I have never seen it before, such a coincidence? … Pfuy, what an idiot.” The professor bent down and fell into thought, looking at his differently shod feet. “Hm … what should I do? Return to Pankrat? No, there’s no waking him up. It’d be a shame to throw it away, the vile thing. I’ll have to carry it.” He took off the overshoe and carried it in his hand with disgust.
Three people in an old fashioned automobile turned the corner from Prechistenka. Two tipsy men and a garishly painted woman wearing silk pajamas in the latest 1928 style, sitting on their knees.
“Hey, Pops!” she cried in a low, rather hoarse voice. “Did ‘ja drink up the other boot!”
“The old boy must have loaded up at the Alcazar,” howled the drunk on the left, while the one on the right leaned out of the car and shouted, “Is the all-night tavern on Volkhonka open, buddy? We’re headed there!”
The professor looked at them sternly above his spectacles, dropped the cigarette from his lips, and immediately forgot their existence. Slanting rays of sunshine appeared, cutting across Prechistensky Boulevard, and the helmet on the Cathedral of Christ began to flame. The sun had risen.
III. PERSIKOV CAUGHT IT
The facts of the matter were as follows. When the professor had brought his eye of genius to that eyepiece, for the first time in his life he had paid attention to the fact that one particularly vivid and thick ray stood out in the multicolored spiral. This ray was a bright red color and it emerged from the spiral in a little sharp point, like a needle, let us say.
It is simply very bad luck that this ray fixed the skilful eye of the virtuoso for several seconds.
In it, in this ray, the professor caught sight of something which was a thousand times more significant and important than the ray itself, that fragile offshoot born accidentally of the movement of the microscope’s lens and mirror. Thanks to the fact that his assistant had called the professor away, the amoebas lay about for an hour and a half subject to the action of the ray, and the result was this: while the granular amoebas outside the ray lay about limp and helpless, strange phenomena were taking place within the area where the pointed red sword lay. The red strip teemed with life. The gray amoebas, stretching out their pseudopods, strove with all their might toward the red strip, and in it they would come to life as if by sorcery. Some force infused them with the spirit of life. They crawled in flocks and fought each other for a place in the ray. Within it a frenzied (no other word can properly describe it) process of multiplication went on. Smashing and overturning all the laws that Persikov knew as well as he knew his own five fingers, the amoebas budded before his eyes with lightning speed. In the ray they split apart, and two seconds later each part became a new, fresh organism. In a few seconds these organisms attained full growth and maturity, only to immediately produce new generations in their turn. The red strip and the entire disk quickly became overcrowded, and the inevitable struggle began. The newborn ones went furiously on the attack, shredding and swallowing each other up. Among the newly-born lay corpses of those which had perished in the battle for existence. The best and strongest were victorious. And the best ones were terrifying. First, they were approximately twice the size of ordinary amoebas, and second, they were distinguished by a special viciousness and motility. Their movements were speedy, their pseudopods much longer than normal, and they used them, without exaggeration, as an octopus uses its tentacles.
The next evening, the professor, drawn and pale, studied the new generation of amoebas—without eating, keeping himself going only by smoking thick, roll-your-own cigarettes. On the third day, he shifted to the prime source—the red ray.
The gas hissed softly in the burner, again the traffic whizzed along the street, and the professor, poisoned by his hundredth cigarette, his eyes half-shut, threw himself back in his revolving chair. “Yes, everything is clear now. The ray brought them to life. It is a new ray, unresearched by anyone, undiscovered by anyone. The first thing to be clarified is whether it is produced only by electric light or by the sun as well,” Persikov muttered to himself.
In the course of one more night this was clarified. He captured three rays in three microscopes, he obtained none from the sun, and he expressed himself thus: “We must hypothesize that it does not exist in the sun’s spectrum … hmmm … in short, we must hypothesize that it can be obtained only from electric light.” He looked lovingly at the frosted globe above him, thought for a moment, inspired, and invited Ivanov into his office. He told him everything and showed him the amoebas.
Assistant Professor Ivanov was astounded, completely crushed; how was it that such a simple thing as this slender arrow had never been noticed before! By anyone, dammit. Not even by him, Ivanov, himself, and this really was monstrous! “You just look! … Just look, Vladimir Ipatievich!” cried Ivanov, his eye gluing itself to the eyepiece in horror. “What’s happening? … They’re growing before my very eyes … Look, look!”
“I have been watching them for three days,” Persikov replied animatedly.
Then there was a conversation between the two scientists, the idea of which may be summed up as follows: Assistant Professor Ivanov undertakes to construct a chamber with the aid of lenses and mirrors in which this ray will be produced in magnified form—and outside of the microscope. Ivanov hopes—indeed, he is absolutely sure—that this is quite simple. He will produce the ray, Vladimir Ipatievich cannot doubt that. Here there was a slight pause.
“When I publish my work, Peter Stepanovich, I will write that the chambers were constructed by you,” Persikov put in, feeling that the pause needed to be resolved.
“Oh, that’s not important … Still, of course …”
And the pause was instantly resolved. From that moment on, the ray utterly absorbed Ivanov too. While Persikov, losing weight and getting exhausted, was sitting all day and half the night over the microscope, Ivanov bustled around the brilliantly-lit physics laboratory juggling lenses and mirrors. A technician assisted him.
After a request was sent through the Commissariat of Education, Persikov received from Germany three parcels containing mirrors and polished lenses—biconvex, biconcave, and even convex-concave. This all ended with Ivanov finishing the construction of a chamber and actually capturing the red ray in it. And in all justice, it really was an expert job: the ray came out thick—almost four centimeters in diameter—sharp and powerful.
On the first of June the chamber was installed in Persikov’s office, and avidly he began experiments with frog roe exposed to the ray. The results of these experiments were staggering. Within two days thousands of tadpoles hatched from the roe. But that is the least of it—within twenty-four hours, growing at a fantastic rate, the tadpoles developed into frogs, and they were so vicious and voracious that half of them immediately devoured the other half. Then the survivors began to spawn, ignoring all normal time-rules, and in another two days they had produced a new generation, this time without the ray, which was absolutely numberless. The devil only knows what had started in the scientist’s office: the tadpoles were crawling out of the office and spreading all over the institute, in the terraria, and on the floor, from every nook and cranny, stentorian choruses began to croak as if it were a bog. Pankrat, who had always feared Persikov like fire anyway, was now experiencing only one feeling for him—mortal terror. After a week, the scientist himself began to feel he was going crazy. The institute was pervaded with the odors of ether and prussic acid, which almost poisoned Pankrat, who had taken off his mask at the wrong time. They finally managed to exterminate the teeming swamp population with poisons, and the rooms were thoroughly aired out.
Persikov said the following to Ivanov: “You know, Peter Stepanovich, the ray’s effect on the deutoplasm and the ovum in general is quite remarkable.”
Ivanov, who was a cool and reserved gentleman, interrupted the professor in an unusual tone. “Vladimir Ipatich, why are you discussing petty details, deutoplasm? Let’s be frank—you have discovered something unprecedented!” Though it cost him obvious great effort, still Ivanov squeezed out the words: “Professor Persikov, you have discovered the ray of life!”
A faint color appeared on Persikov’s pale, unshaven cheekbones. “Now, now, now,” he muttered.
“You,” continued Ivanov, “you will make such a name for yourself … It makes my head spin. Do you understand,” he continued passionately, “Vladimir Ipatich, the heroes of H. G. Wells are simply push-overs compared to you … And I always thought his stories were fairy tales … Do you remember his The Food of the Gods?”
“Oh, that’s a novel,” replied Persikov.
“Why yes, good Lord, a famous one!”
“I’ve forgotten it,” said Persikov.” I remember now, I did read it, but I’ve forgotten it.”
“How can you not remember, why, just look …” From the glass-topped table Ivanov picked up a dead frog of incredible size with a bloated belly and held it up by the leg. Even after death it had a malevolent expression on its face. “Why, this is monstrous!”
IV. DEACONESS DROZDOVA
God knows how it happened, whether Ivanov was to blame for it or sensational news transmits itself through the air, but everyone in gigantic, seething Moscow suddenly started talking about the ray of Professor Persikov. True, this talk was casual and very vague. The news of the miraculous discovery hopped through the glittering capital like a wounded bird, sometimes disappearing, sometimes fluttering up again, until the middle of July when a brief notice treating the ray appeared on the twentieth page of the newspaper Izvestia, under the heading: “Science and Technology News.” It was stated obliquely that a well-known professor of the Fourth State University had invented a ray which greatly accelerated the vital processes of lower organisms and that this ray required further study. The name, of course, was garbled and printed as “Pevsikov,” [suggesting an entirely different morphology of his family name].
Ivanov brought in the newspaper and showed the notice to Persikov.
“Pevsikov,” grumbled Persikov, puttering around with the chamber in his office, “where do these tattlers learn everything?”
Alas, the garbled name did not save the professor from events, and they began the very next day, immediately upsetting Persikov’s whole life.
After a preliminary knock, Pankrat entered the office and handed Persikov a magnificent satiny calling card. “He’s out there,” Pankrat added timidly. Printed on the card in exquisite type was:
Alfred Arkadievich
Bronsky
Contributor to the Moscow Publications
Red Spark, Red Pepper, Red Journal, and Red Projector,
and the newspaper Red Evening Moscow
“Tell him to go to hell,” Persikov said in a monotone, and he threw the card under the table.
Pankrat turned, walked out, and five minutes later he came back with a long-suffering face and a second specimen of the same card.
“Are you making fun of me, or what?” Persikov croaked, and he looked terrifying.
“From the GPU, the man says,” answered Pankrat, turning pale.
Persikov grabbed the card with one hand, almost tearing it in half, and with the other hand he threw a pair of pincers onto the table. On the card there was a note written in curlicued handwriting: “I beg sincerely, with apologies, most esteemed professor, for you to receive me for three minutes in connection with a public matter of the press; I am also a contributor to the satirical journal The Red Raven, published by the GPU.”
“Call him in,” said Persikov, choking.
Immediately a young man with a smooth-shaven, oily face bobbed up behind Pankrat’s back. The face was striking for its permanently raised eyebrows, like an Asiatic’s, and the little agate eyes beneath them, which never for a second met the eyes of his interlocutor. The young man was dressed quite impeccably and fashionably: a long narrow jacket down to the knees, the widest of bell-bottomed trousers, and preternaturally wide patent-leather shoes with toes like hooves. In his hands the young man held a cane, a hat with a sharply pointed crown, and a notebook. “What do you want?” asked Persikov in a voice that made Pankrat step back behind the door immediately. “You were told I am busy.”
Instead of answering, the young man bowed to the professor twice, once to the left and once to the right—and then his eyes wheeled all over the room, and immediately the young man made a mark in his notebook.
“I’m busy,” said the professor, looking with revulsion into the guest’s little eyes, but he had no effect, since the eyes were impossible to catch.
“A thousand apologies, esteemed professor, the young man began in a high-pitched voice, “for breaking in on you and taking up your precious time, but the news of your earth-shaking discovery—which has created a sensation all over the world—compels us to ask you for whatever explanations …”
“What kind of explanations all over the world?” Persikov whined squeakily, turning yellow. “I’m not obliged to give you any explanations or anything of the sort … I’m busy … terribly busy.”
“What exactly is it you are working on?” the young man asked sweetly, making another mark in his notebook.
“Oh, I … why do you ask? Do you intend to publish something?”
“Yes,” answered the young man, and suddenly he started scribbling furiously in his notebook.
“First of all, I have no intention of publishing anything until I complete my work—particularly in these papers of yours … Secondly, how do you know all this?” And Persikov suddenly felt that he was losing control.
“Is the news that you have invented a ray of new life accurate?”
“What new life?” the professor snapped angrily. “What kind of rubbish are you babbling? The ray I am working on has still not been investigated very much, and generally nothing is known about it as yet! It is possible that it may accelerate the vital processes of protoplasm.”
“How much?” the young man inquired quickly. Persikov completely lost control. What a character! The devil only knows what this means! “What sort of philistine questions are these? Suppose I said, oh, a thousand times …”
Rapacious joy flashed through the little eyes of the young man. “It produces giant organisms?”
“Nothing of the sort! Well, true, the organisms I have obtained are larger than normal … Well, they do possess certain new characteristics … But, of course, the main thing is not the size, but the incredible speed of reproduction,” said Persikov to his misfortune, and he was immediately horrified by what he had said. The young man covered a page with his writing, turned it, and scribbled on.
“But don’t you write that!” Persikov said hoarsely, in desperation, already surrendering and feeling that he was in the young man’s hands.
“What are you writing there?”
“Is it true that in forty-eight hours you can obtain two million tadpoles from frog roe?”
“What quantity of roe?” Persikov shouted, again infuriated. “Have you ever seen a grain of roe … well, let’s say, of a tree frog?”
“From half a pound?” the young man asked, undaunted.
Persikov turned purple.
“Who measures it like that? Ugh! What are you talking about? Well, of course, if you took half a pound of frog roe, then … perhaps … well, hell, perhaps about that number or maybe even many more.”
Diamonds began to sparkle in the young man’s eyes, and in a single swoop he scratched out another page. “Is it true that this will cause a world revolution in animal husbandry?”
“What kind of newspaper question is that?” howled Persikov. “And, generally, I’m not giving you permission to write rubbish. I can see by your face that you’re writing some sort of rotten trash!”
“Your photograph, professor, I beg you urgently,” the young man said, slamming his notebook shut.
“What? My photograph? For your stupid little journals? To go with that devilish garbage you’re scribbling there? No, no, no! … And I’m busy. I’II ask you to …”
“Even if it’s an old one. And we’ll return it to you instantly.”
“Pankrat!” the professor shouted in a rage.
“My compliments,” the young man said and vanished.
Instead of Pankrat, Persikov heard the strange rhythmic creaking of some machine behind the door, a metallic tapping across the floor, and in his office appeared a man of extraordinary bulk, dressed in a blouse and trousers made of blanket material. His left leg, a mechanical one, clicked and rattled, and in his hands he held a briefcase. His round shaven face, resembling a bulging yellow headcheese, offered an amiable smile. He bowed to the professor in military fashion and straightened up, causing his leg to twang like a spring. Persikov went numb.
“Mr. Professor,” began the stranger in a pleasant, somewhat husky voice, “forgive an ordinary mortal for breaking in on your privacy.”
“Are you a reporter?” asked Persikov. “Pankrat!”
“Not at all, Mr. Professor,” replied the fat man. “Permit me to introduce myself: sea captain and contributor to the newspaper Industrial News, published by the Council of People’s Commissars.”
“Pankrat!” Persikov shouted hysterically, and at that instant the telephone in the corner flashed a red signal and rang softly. “Pankrat!” repeated the professor. “Hello, what is it?”
“Verzeihen Sie, bitte, Herr Professor,” croaked the telephone in German, “dass ich störe. Ich bin ein Mitarbeiter des Berliner Tageblatts.”
“Pankrat!” The professor shouted into the receiver, “Bin momentan sehr beschäftigt und kann Sie deshalb jetzt nicht empfangen! … Pankrat!” And in the meantime the bell at the front entrance of the institute was starting to ring constantly.
* * *
“Nightmarish murder on Bronny Street!” howled unnatural hoarse voices twisting in and out of the thicket of lights among wheels and flashing headlights on the warm June pavement. “Nightmarish outbreak of chicken plague in the yard of Deacon Drozdov’s [Deacon Thrush’s] widow, with her portrait! … Nightmarish discovery of Professor Persikov’s ray of life!”
Persikov jumped so violently that he nearly fell under the wheels of a car on Mokhovaia, and he furiously grabbed the newspaper.
“Three kopeks, citizen!” shrieked the boy, and squeezing himself into the crowd on the sidewalk, he again started howling, “Red Evening Moscow, discovery of x-ray.”
The stunned Persikov opened the newspaper and leaned against a lamp post. From a smudged frame in the left corner of the second page there stared at him a bald man with mad, unseeing eyes and a drooping jaw—the fruit of Alfred Bronsky’s artistic endeavors. “V. I. Persikov, who discovered the mysterious red ray,” announced the caption under the drawing. Below it, under the heading, “World Riddle,” the article began with the words: “‘Sit down, please,’ the venerable scientist Persikov said to us amiably …”
Under the article was a prominent signature: “Alfred Bronsky (Alonso).”
A greenish light flared up over the roof of the university, the fiery words Speaking Newspaper leapt across the sky, and a crowd immediately jammed Mokhovaia.
“‘Sit down, please!!!’” a most unpleasant high-pitched voice, exactly like the voice of Alfred Bronsky, magnified a thousand times, suddenly boomed from the roof across the way, “the venerable scientist Persikov said to us amiably. ‘I have long desired to acquaint the proletariat of Moscow with the results of my discovery! …’”
Persikov heard a quiet mechanical creaking behind his back, and someone tugged at his sleeve. Turning around, he saw the round yellow face of the mechanical leg’s owner. His eyes were wet with tears and his lips were shaking. “Me, Mr. Professor, me you refused to acquaint with the results of your amazing discovery, professor,” he said sadly, and he sighed heavily, “you made me lose two smackers.”
He looked gloomily at the roof of the university where the invisible Alfred was ranting in the black maw of the speaker. For some reason, Persikov suddenly felt sorry for the fat man. “I didn’t say any ‘sit down, please’ to him!” he muttered, catching the words from the sky with hatred. He is simply a brazen scalawag, an extraordinary type! Forgive me, please, but really now—when you’re working and people break in … I don’t mean you, of course …”
“Perhaps, Mr. Professor, you would give me at least a description of your chamber?” the mechanical man said ingratiatingly and mournfully.
“After all, it makes no difference to you now …”
“In three days, such a quantity of tadpoles hatches out of half a pound of roe that it’s utterly impossible to count them!” roared the invisible man in the loudspeaker.
“Too-too,” shouted the cars on Mokhovaia hollowly.
“Ho, ho, ho … How about that! Ho, ho, ho,” murmured the crowd, heads tilted back.
“What a scoundrel! Eh?” Persikov hissed to the mechanical man, trembling with indignation. “How do you like that? Why I’m going to lodge a complaint against him!”
“Outrageous,” agreed the fat man.
A most dazzling violet ray struck the professor’s eyes, and everything around flared up—the lamp post, a strip of block pavement, a yellow wall, curious faces.
“It’s for you, professor,” the fat man whispered ecstatically and hung on to the professor’s sleeve like a lead weight. Something clicked rapidly in the air.
“To the devil with all of them!” Persikov exclaimed despondently, ripping through the crowd with his lead weight. “Hey, taxi! To Prechistenka!”
The beat-up old car, vintage 1924, clattered to a halt at the curb, and the professor began to climb into the landau while trying to shake loose from the fat man. “You’re in my way,” he hissed, covering his face with his fists against the violet light.
“Did you read it? What are they yelling about? … Professor Persikov and his children were found on Little Bronnaia with their throats slit! …” voices shouted around the crowd.
“I haven’t got any children, the sons of bitches,” Persikov bellowed and suddenly found himself in the focus of a black camera, which was shooting him in profile with an open mouth and furious eyes.
“Krch … too … krch … too,” shrieked the taxi, and it lanced into the thicket of traffic.
The fat man was already sitting in the landau, crowding the professor with his body heat.
V. A CHICKEN’S TALE
In a tiny provincial town, formerly called Troitsk [Trinity] and currently Steklovsk [Glass], in the Steklov district of the Kostroma province, onto the steps of a little house on the street formerly called Cathedral and currently Personal, came out a woman wearing a kerchief and a gray dress with calico bouquets on it—and she began to sob. This woman, the widow of the former Archpriest Drozdov of the former cathedral, sobbed so loudly that soon another woman’s head, in a downy woolen shawl, was stuck out the window of the house across the street, and it cried out, “What is it, Stepanovna? Another one?”
“The seventeenth!” dissolving in sobs the widow Drozdova answered.
“Oh, deary, oh dear,” the woman in the shawl whimpered, and she shook her head. “Why, what is this anyway. Truly, it’s the Lord in His wrath! Is she dead?”
“Just look, look, Matryona,” muttered the deaconess, sobbing loudly and heavily. “Look what’s happening to her!”
The gray, tilting gate slammed, a woman’s bare feet padded across the dusty bumps in the street, and the deaconess, wet with tears, led Matryona to her poultry yard.
It must be said that the widow of Father Savvaty Drozdov, who had passed away in 1926 of anti-religious woes, did not give up, but started some most remarkable chicken breeding. As soon as the widow’s affairs started to go uphill, such a tax was slapped on her that her chicken breeding was on the verge of terminating, had it not been for kind people. They advised the widow to inform the local authorities that she was founding a workers’ cooperative chicken farm. The membership of the cooperative consisted of Drozdova herself, her faithful servant Matrioshka, and the widow’s deaf niece. The widow’s tax was revoked, and the chicken breeding flourished so much that by 1928 the population of the widow’s dusty yard, flanked by rows of chicken coops, had increased to 250 hens, including some Cochin Chinas. The widow’s eggs appeared in the Steklovsk market every Sunday; the widow’s eggs were sold in Tambov, and sometimes they even appeared in the glass showcases of the store that was formerly known as “Chichkin’s Cheese and Butter, Moscow.”
And now a precious Brahmaputra, by count the seventeenth that morning, her tufted baby, was walking around the yard vomiting. “E … rr … url … url … ho-ho-ho,” the tufted hen glugged, rolling her melancholy eyes to the sun as if she were seeing it for the last time. Cooperative member Matrioshka, was dancing before the hen in a squatting position, a cup of water in her hand.
“Here, tufted baby … cheep-cheep-cheep … drink a little water,” Matrioshka pleaded, chasing the hen’s beak with her cup; but the hen did not want to drink. She opened her beak wide and stretched her neck toward the sky. Then she began to vomit blood.
“Holy Jesus!” cried the guest, slapping herself on the thighs. What’s going on? Nothing but gushing blood! I’ve never, may I drop on the spot, I’ve never seen a chicken with a stomach-ache like a human.”
And these were the last words heard by the departing tufted baby. She suddenly keeled over on her side, helplessly pecked the dust a few times and turned up her eyes. Then she rolled over on her back, lifting both feet upwards, and remained motionless. Spilling the water in the cup, Matryoshka burst into a baritone wail, as did the deaconess herself, the chairman of the cooperative, and the guest leaned over to her ear and whispered, “Stepanovna, may I eat dirt, but someone’s jinxed your chickens. Who’s ever seen anything like it before? Why, this ain’t no chicken sickness! It’s that someone’s hexed your chickens.”
“The enemies of my life!” the deaconess cried out to the heavens. “Do they want to run me off the earth?”
A loud roosterish crow answered her words, after which a wiry bedraggled rooster tore out of a chicken coop sort of sideways, like boisterous drunk out of a tavern. He rolled his eyes back wildly at them, stamped up and down in place, spread his wings like an eagle, but did not fly off anywhere—he began to run in circles around the yard like a horse on a rope. On the third circle he stopped, overwhelmed by nausea, because he then began to cough and croak, spat bloody spots all around him, fell over, and his claws aimed toward the sun like masts. Feminine wailing filled the yard. And it was echoed by a troubled clucking, flapping, and fussing in the chicken coops.
“Well, ain’t it the evil eye?” the guest asked victoriously. “Call Father Sergei; let him hold a service.”
At six in the evening, when the sun lay low like a fiery face among the faces of the young sunflowers, Father Sergei, the prior of the Cathedral Church, was climbing out of his vestments after finishing the prayer service at the chicken coops. People’s curious heads were stuck out over the ancient collapsing fence and peering through the cracks. The sorrowful deaconess, kissing the cross, soaked the torn canary-yellow ruble note with tears and handed it to Father Sergei, in response to which, sighing, he remarked something about, well, see how the Lord’s shown us His wrath. As he was saying this, Father Sergei wore an expression which indicated that he knew very well precisely why the Lord had shown His wrath, but that he was just not saying.
After that, the crowd dispersed from the street, and since hens retire early, nobody knew that three hens and a rooster had died at the same time in the hen house of Drozdova’s next-door neighbor. They vomited just like the Drozdov hens, and the only difference was that their deaths took place quietly in a locked hen house. The rooster tumbled off his perch head down and died in that position. As for the widow’s hens, they died off immediately after the prayer service, and by evening her hen houses were deadly quiet—the birds lay around in heaps, stiff and cold.
When the town got up the next morning, it was stunned as if by thunder, for the affair had assumed strange and monstrous proportions. By noon only three hens were still alive on Personal Street, and those were in the last house, where the district financial inspector lived, but even they were dead by one o’clock. And by evening the town of Steklovsk was humming and buzzing like a beehive, and the dread word “plague” was sweeping through it. Drozdova’s name landed in the local newspaper, The Red Warrior, in an article headlined “Can It Be Chicken Plague?” and from there it was carried to Moscow.
* * *
Professor Persikov’s life took on a strange, restless, and disturbing character. In a word, working under such circumstances was simply impossible. The day after he had gotten rid of Alfred Bronsky, he had to disconnect his office telephone at the institute by taking the receiver off the hook, and in the evening, as he was riding the trolley home along Okhotny Row, the professor beheld himself on the roof of a huge building with a black sign on it: WORKERS’ GAZETTE. He, the professor—crumbling and turning green and flickering—was climbing into a landau, and behind him, clutching at his sleeve, climbed a mechanical ball wearing a blanket. The professor on the white screen on the roof covered his face with his fists against a violet ray. Then a golden legend leaped out: “Professor Persikov in a car explaining his discovery to our famous reporter Captain Stepanov.” And, indeed, the wavering car flicked past the Cathedral of Christ along Volkhonka, and in it the professor struggled helplessly, his physiognomy like that of a wolf at bay.
“They’re some sort of devils, not men,” the zoologist muttered through his teeth as he rode past.
That same day in the evening, when he returned to his place on Prechistenka, the housekeeper, Maria Stepanovna, handed the zoologist seventeen notes with telephone numbers of people who had called while he was gone, along with Maria Stepanovna’s verbal declaration that she was exhausted. The professor was getting ready to tear up the notes, but stopped, because opposite one of the numbers he saw the notation “People’s Commissar of Public Health.”
“What’s this?” the learned eccentric asked in honest bewilderment. “What’s happened to them?”
At a quarter past ten the same evening the doorbell rang, and the professor was obliged to converse with a certain citizen in dazzling attire. The professor had received him because of a calling card, which stated (without first name or surname), “Plenipotentiary Chief of the Trade Departments of Foreign Embassies to the Soviet Republic.”
“Why doesn’t he go to hell?” growled Persikov, throwing down his magnifying glass and some diagrams on the green cloth of the table and saying to Maria Stepanovna, “Ask him here into the study, this plenipotentiary.”
“What can I do for you?” Persikov asked in a tone that made the Chief wince a bit. Persikov transferred his spectacles to his forehead from the bridge of his nose, then back, and he peered at his visitor. He glittered all over with patent leather and precious stones, and a monocle rested in his right eye. “What a vile mug,” Persikov thought to himself for some reason.
The guest began in a roundabout way, asked specific permission to light his cigar, in consequence of which Persikov with the greatest of reluctance invited him to sit down. The guest proceeded to make extended apologies for coming so late.
“But … the professor is quite impossible to catch … hee-hee … pardon … to find during the day” (when laughing the guest cachinnated like a hyena.)
“Yes, I’m busy!” Persikov answered so abruptly that the guest twitched a second time.
“Nevertheless, he permitted himself to disturb the famous scientist. Time is money, as they say … Is the cigar annoying the professor?”
“Mur-mur-mur,” answered Persikov, “he permitted …”
“The professor has discovered the ray of life, hasn’t he?”
“For goodness sake, what sort of life! It’s all the fantasies of cheap reporters!” Persikov got excited.
“Oh no, hee-hee-hee … He understands perfectly the modesty which is the true adornment of all real scientists … But why fool around … There were telegrams today … In world capitals such as Warsaw and Riga everything about the ray is already known. Professor Persikov’s name is being repeated all over the world. The world is watching Professor Persikov’s work with bated breath … But everybody knows perfectly well the difficult position of scientists in Soviet Russia. Entre nous soit dit … There are no strangers here? … Alas, in this country they do not know how to appreciate scientific work, and so he would like to talk things over with the professor … A certain foreign state is quite unselfishly offering Professor Persikov help with his laboratory work. Why cast pearls here, as the Holy Scripture says? The said state knows how hard it was for the professor during 1919 and 1920, during this … hee-hee … revolution. Well, of course, in the strictest secrecy … the professor would acquaint this state with the results of his work, and in exchange it would finance the professor. For example, he constructed a chamber—now it would be interesting to become acquainted with the blueprints for this chamber …”
At this point the visitor drew from the inside pocket of his jacket a snow-white stack of banknotes.
“The professor can have a trifling advance, say, five thousand rubles, at this very moment … and there is no need to mention a receipt … the Plenipotentiary Trade Chief would even feel offended if the professor so much as mentioned a receipt.”
“Out!!” Persikov suddenly roared so terrifyingly that the piano in the living room made a sound with its high keys.
The visitor vanished so quickly that Persikov, shaking with rage, himself began to doubt whether he had been there, or if it had been a hallucination.
“His galoshes?” Persikov howled a minute later from the hallway. “The gentleman forgot them,” replied the trembling Maria Stepanovna.
“Throw them out!”
“Where can I throw them? He’ll come back for them.”
“Take them to the house committee. Get a receipt. I don’t want a trace of those galoshes! To the committee! Let them have the spy’s galoshes! …”
Crossing herself, Maria Stepanovna picked up the magnificent leather galoshes and carried them out to the back stairs. There she stood behind the door for a few moments, and then hid the galoshes in the pantry.
“Did you turn them in?” Persikov raged.
“I did.”
“Give me the receipt!”
“But, Vladimir Ipatich. But the chairman is illiterate!”
“This. Very. Instant. I. Want. The. Receipt. Here! Let some literate son of a bitch sign for him!”
Maria Stepanovna just shook her head, went out, and came back fifteen minutes later with a note: “Received from Prof. Persikov 1 (one) pair galo. Kolesov.”
“And what’s this?”
“A tag, sir.”
Persikov stomped all over the tag, and hid the receipt under the blotter. Then some idea darkened his sloping forehead. He rushed to the telephone, roused Pankrat at the institute, and asked him: “Is everything in order?” Pankrat growled something into the receiver, from which one could conclude that everything, in his opinion, was in order.
But Persikov calmed down only for a minute. Frowning, he clutched the telephone and jabbered into the receiver: “Give me … oh, whatever you call it … Lubianka … Merci … Which of you there should be told about this? … I have suspicious characters hanging around here in galoshes, yes … Professor Persikov of the Fourth University …”
Suddenly the conversation was abruptly disconnected and Persikov walked away, muttering some sort of swear words through his teeth.
“Are you going to have some tea, Vladimir Ipatich?” Maria Stepanovna inquired timidly, looking into the study.
“I’m not going to have any tea … mur-mur-mur … and to hell with them all … they’ve gone mad … I don’t care.”
Exactly ten minutes later the professor was receiving new guests in his study. One of them, amiable, rotund, and very polite, was wearing a modest khaki military field jacket and riding breeches. On his nose, like a crystal butterfly, perched a pince-nez. Generally, he looked like an angel in patent leather boots. The second, short and terribly gloomy, was wearing civilian clothes, but they fit in such a way that they seemed to constrain him. The third guest behaved in a peculiar manner; he did not enter the professor’s study but remained in the semidark hallway. From there he had a full view of the well-lit study which was filled with billows of tobacco smoke. The face of this third visitor, who was also wearing civilian clothes, was graced with a dark pince-nez.
The two in the study wore Persikov out completely, carefully examining the calling card and interrogating him about the five thousand, and making him keep describing the earlier visitor.
“The devil only knows,” grumbled Persikov. “A repulsive physiognomy. A degenerate.”
“He didn’t have a glass eye, did he?” the short one asked hoarsely.
“The devil only knows. But no, it isn’t glass; his eyes keep darting around.”
“Rubenstein?” the angel said to the short civilian softly and interrogatively. But the latter shook his head darkly.
“Rubenstein wouldn’t give any money without a receipt, never,” he mumbled. “This is not Rubenstein’s work. This is someone bigger.”
The story of the galoshes provoked a burst of the keenest interest from the guests. The angel uttered a few words into the telephone of the house office: “The State Political Administration invites the secretary of the house committee Kolesov to report at Professor Persikov’s apartment with the galoshes,” and Kolesov appeared in the study instantly, pale, holding the galoshes in his hands.
“Vasenka!” the angel called softly to the man who was sitting in the hall. The latter rose limply and moved into the study like an unwinding toy. His smoky glasses swallowed up his eyes.
“Well?” he asked tersely and sleepily.
“The galoshes.”
The smoky eyes slid over the galoshes, and as this happened it seemed to Persikov that they were not at all sleepy; on the contrary, the eyes that flashed askance for a moment from behind the glasses were amazingly sharp. But they immediately faded out.
“Well, Vasenka?”
The man they addressed as Vasenka replied in a languid voice, “Well, what’s the problem? They’re Pelenzhkovsky’s galoshes.”
The house committee instantly lost Professor Persikov’s gift. The galoshes disappeared into a newspaper. The extremely overjoyed angel in the military jacket got up, began to shake the professor’s hand, and even made a little speech, the content of which boiled down to the following: “This does the professor honor…. The professor may rest assured … no one will bother him again, either at the institute or at home … steps will be taken … his chambers are quite safe.”
“Could you shoot the reporters while you’re at it?” Persikov asked, looking at him over his spectacles.
His question provoked a burst of merriment among his guests.
Not only the gloomy short one, but even the smoky one smiled in the hall. The angel, sparkling and glowing, explained that this was not possible.
“And who was that scalawag who came here?”
At this everyone stopped smiling, and the angel answered evasively that it was nobody, a petty swindler, not worth any attention … but nevertheless, he urged citizen professor to keep the evening’s events in strictest secrecy, and the guests departed.
Persikov returned to his study and diagrams, but he still did not get to do any work. A fiery dot appeared on the telephone, and a female voice offered the professor a seven-room apartment if he would like to marry an interesting and hot-blooded widow. Persikov bawled into the receiver, “I advise you to go to Professor Rossolimo for treatment!” and then the telephone rang a second time.
Here Persikov was somewhat abashed because a rather well-known personage from the Kremlin was calling; he questioned Persikov sympathetically and at great length about his work and made known his wish to visit the laboratory. As he started to leave the phone, Persikov mopped his forehead, and took the receiver off the hook. At that moment there was a sudden blare of trumpets in the upstairs apartment, followed by the shrieking of the Valkyries: the director of the Woolen Fabrics Trust had tuned his radio to a Wagner concert from the Bolshoi Theater. Over the howling and crashing pouring down from the ceiling, Persikov shouted to Maria Stepanovna that he was going to take the director to court, that he was going to smash that radio, that he was going to get the hell out of Moscow, because obviously people had made it their goal to drive him out of it. He broke his magnifying glass and went to bed on the couch in his study, and he fell asleep to the gentle runs of a famous pianist that came wafting from the Bolshoi.
The surprises continued the next day too. When he got to the institute on the trolley, Persikov found an unknown citizen in a stylish green derby waiting at the entrance. He looked Persikov over closely, but addressed no questions to him, and therefore Persikov ignored him. But in the foyer, Persikov, in addition to the bewildered Pankrat, was met by a second derby which rose and greeted him courteously. “Hello there, Citizen Professor.”
“What do you want?” Persikov asked menacingly, pulling off his overcoat with Pankrat’s help. But the derby quickly pacified Persikov, whispering in the tenderest voice that the professor had no cause to be upset. He, the derby, was there for precisely the purpose of protecting the professor from any importunate visitors; the professor could set his mind at ease with regard not only to the doors of his study, but even to the windows. Upon which the stranger turned over the lapel of his suit coat for a moment and showed the professor a certain badge.
“Hm … how about that, you’ve really got things well set up,” Persikov mumbled, and added naively, “and what will you eat here?”
At this the derby grinned and explained that he would be relieved.
The three days after this went by splendidly. The professor had two visits from the Kremlin, and one from students whom he gave examinations. Every last one of the students flunked, and from their faces it was clear that Persikov now inspired only superstitious awe in them.
“Go get jobs as trolleycar conductors! You aren’t fit to study zoology,” came from the office.
“Strict, eh?” the derby asked Pankrat.
“Ooh, a holy terror,” answered Pankrat, “even if someone passes, he comes out reeling, poor soul. He’ll be dripping with sweat. And he heads straight for a beer hall …”
Engrossed in these minor chores, the professor did not notice the three days pass; but on the fourth day he was recalled to reality again, and the cause of this was a thin, squeaky voice from the street. “Vladimir Ipatievich!” the voice screeched from Herzen Street into the open window of the office.
The voice was in luck: the last few days had exhausted Persikov. Just at the moment he was resting in his armchair, smoking, and staring languidly and feebly with his red-circled eyes. He could not go on. And therefore it was even with some curiosity that he looked out the window and saw Alfred Bronsky on the sidewalk. The professor immediately recognized the titled owner of the calling card by his pointed hat and notebook. Bronsky bowed to the window tenderly and deferentially.
“Oh, is it you?” the professor asked. He did not have enough energy left to get angry, and he was even curious to see what would happen next. Protected by the window, he felt safe from Alfred. The ever-present derby in the street instantly cocked an ear toward Bronsky. A most disarming smile blossomed on the latter’s face.
“Just a pair of minutes, dear professor,” Bronsky said, straining his voice from the sidewalk. “Only one small question, a purely zoological one. May I ask it?”
“Ask it,” Persikov replied laconically and ironically, and he thought to himself, “After all, there is something American in this rascal.”
“What do you have to say as for the hens, dear professor?” shouted Bronsky, folding his hands into a trumpet.
Persikov was nonplussed. He sat down on the windowsill, then got up, pressed a button, and shouted, poking his finger toward the window,
“Pankrat, let that fellow on the sidewalk in.”
When Bronsky appeared in the office Persikov extended his amiability to the extent of barking, “Sit down!” at him.
And Bronsky, smiling ecstatically, sat down on the revolving stool.
“Please explain something to me,” began Persikov. “Do you write there—for those papers of yours?”
“Yes, sir,” Alfred replied deferentially.
“Well, it’s incomprehensible to me, how you can write when you don’t even know how to speak Russian correctly. What is this ‘a pair of minutes’ and ‘as for the hens’? You probably meant to ask ‘about the hens’?”
Bronsky burst out into a thin and respectful laugh. “Valentin Petrovich corrects it.”
“Who’s this Valentin Petrovich?”
“The head of the literary department.”
“Well, all right. Besides, I am not a philologist. Let’s forget your Petrovich. What is it specifically that you wish to know about hens?”
“In general everything you have to tell, professor.”
Here Bronsky armed himself with a pencil. Triumphant sparks flickered in Persikov’s eyes.
“You come to me in vain; I am not a specialist on the feathered beasts.
You would be best off to go to Emelian Ivanovich Portugalov of the First University. I myself know extremely little.”
Bronsky smiled ecstatically, giving him to understand that he understood the dear professor’s joke. “Joke: little,” he jotted in his notebook.
“However, if it interests you, very well. Hens, or pectinates … Order, Gallinae. Of the pheasant family …” Persikov began in a loud voice, looking not at Bronsky, but somewhere beyond him, where a thousand people were presumably listening, “of the pheasant family, Phasianidae. They are birds with fleshy combs and two lobes under the lower jaw … hm … although sometimes there is only one in the center of the chin … Well, what else? Wings, short and rounded. Tails of medium length, somewhat serrated, even, I would say, denticulated, the middle feathers crescent shaped … Pankrat, bring me Model No. 705 from the model cabinet—a cock in cross section … but no, you have no need of that? Pankrat, don’t bring the model … I reiterate to you, I am not a specialist—go to Portugalov. Well, I personally am acquainted with six species of wild hens—hm … Portugalov knows more—in India and the Malay Archipelago. For example, the Banki rooster, or Kazintu, found in the foothills of the Himalayas, all over India, in Assam and Burma … Then there’s the swallow-tailed rooster, or Gallus varius, of Lombok, Sumbawa, and Flores. On the island of Java there is a remarkable rooster, Gallus eneus; in southeast India, I can recommend the very beautiful Gallus souneratti to you. As for Ceylon, there we meet the Stanley rooster, not found anywhere else.”
Bronsky sat there, his eyes bulging, scribbling.
“Anything else I can tell you?”
“I would like to know something about chicken diseases,” Alfred whispered very softly.
“Hm, I’m not a specialist, you ask Portugalov … Still, and all … well, there are tapeworms, flukes, scab mites, red mange, chicken mites, poultry lice or Mallophaga, fleas, chicken cholera, croupous-diphtheritic inflammation of the mucous membranes … pneumonomycosis, tuberculosis, chicken mange—there are all sorts of diseases.” There were sparks leaping in Persikov’s eyes. “There can be poisoning, tumors, rickets, jaundice, rheumatism, the Achorion schoenleinii fungus … a quite interesting disease. When it breaks out little spots resembling mold form on the comb.”
Bronsky wiped the sweat from his forehead with a colored handkerchief. “And what, professor, in your opinion is the cause of the present catastrophe?”
“What catastrophe?”
“What, you mean you haven’t read it, professor?” Bronsky cried with surprise, and pulled out a crumpled page of Izvestia from his briefcase.
“I don’t read newspapers,” answered Persikov, grimacing.
“But why, professor?” Alfred asked tenderly.
“Because they write gibberish,” Persikov answered, without thinking.
“But how about this, professor?” Bronsky whispered softly, and he unfolded the newspaper.
“What’s this?” asked Persikov, and he got up from his place. Now the sparks began to leap in Bronsky’s eyes. With a pointed lacquered nail he underlined a headline of incredible magnitude across the entire page:
CHICKEN PLAGUE IN THE REPUBLIC
“What?” Persikov asked, pushing his spectacles onto his forehead.
VI. MOSCOW IN JUNE OF 1928
She gleamed brightly, her lights danced, blinked, and flared on again. The white headlights of buses and the green lights of trolleys circled around Theater Square; over the former Muir and Merilis, above the tenth floor built up over it, a multicolored electric woman was jumping up and down, making up multicolored words letter by letter: WORKERS CREDIT. In the square opposite the Bolshoi, around the multicolored fountain shooting up sprays all night, a crowd was milling and rumbling. And over the Bolshoi a giant loudspeaker was booming: “The anti-chicken vaccinations at the Lefort Veterinary Institute have produced excellent results. The number … of chicken deaths for the day declined by half.”
Then the loudspeaker changed its timbre, something rumbled in it; over the theater a green stream flashed on and off, and the loudspeaker complained in a deep bass: “Special commission set up to combat chicken plague, consisting of the People’s Commissar of Public Health, the People’s Commissar of Agriculture, the Chief of Animal Husbandry, Comrade Avis-Hamska, Professors Persikov and Portugalov, and Comrade Rabinovich! … New attempts at intervention,” the speaker cachinnated and wept like a jackal, “in connection with the chicken plague!”
Theater Lane, Neglinny Prospect, and the Lubianka flamed with white and violet streaks, spraying shafts of light, howling with horns, and whirling with dust. Crowds of people pressed against the wall by the huge pages of advertisements lit by garish red reflectors.
“Under threat of the most severe penalties, the populace is forbidden to employ chicken meat or eggs as food. Private tradesmen who attempt to sell these in the markets will be subject to criminal prosecution and confiscation of all property. All citizens who own eggs must immediately surrender them at their local police precincts.”
On the roof of The Worker’s Gazette chickens were piled skyhigh on the screen, and greenish firemen, quivering and sparkling, were pouring kerosene on them with long hoses. Then red waves swept across the screen; unreal smoke billowed, tossed about like rags, and crept along in streams, and fiery words leaped out: “BURNING OF CHICKEN CORPSES ON THE KHODYNKA.”
Among the wildly blazing show windows of the stores which worked until three in the morning (with breaks for lunch and supper) gaped the blind holes of windows boarded up under their signs: “Egg Store. Quality Guaranteed.” Very often, screaming alarmingly, passing lumbering buses, hissing cars marked “MOSHEALDEPART FIRST AID” swept past the traffic policemen.
“Someone else has stuffed himself with rotten eggs,” the crowd murmured.
On the Petrovsky Lines the world-renowned Empire Restaurant glittered with its green and orange lights, and on its tables, next to the portable telephones, stood cardboard signs stained with liqueurs: “By decree—no omelettes. Fresh oysters have been received.” At the Ermitage, where tiny Chinese lanterns, like beads, glowed mournfully amid the artificial, cozy greenery, the singers Shrams and Karmanchikov on the eye-shattering, dazzling stage sang ditties composed by the poets Ardo and Arguiev:
Oh, Mamma, what will I do without eggs?
while their feet thundered out a tap dance.
Over the theater of the late Vsevolod Meyerhold, who died, as everyone knows, in 1927, during the staging of Pushkin’s Boris Godunov when a plat-form full of naked boiars collapsed on him, there flashed a moving multicolored neon sign promulgating the writer Erendorg’s play, Chicken Croak, produced by Meyerhold’s disciple, Honored Director of the Republic Kukhterman. Next door, at the Aquarium Restaurant, scintillating with neon signs and flashing with half-naked female bodies to thunderous applause, the writer Lazer’s review entitled The Hen’s Children was being played amid the greenery of the stage. And down Tverskaia, with lanterns on either side of their heads, marched a procession of circus donkeys carrying gleaming placards. Rostand’s Chantecler was being revived at the Korsh Theater.
Little newsboys were howling and screaming among the wheels of the automobiles: “Nightmarish discovery in a cave! Poland preparing for nightmarish war! Professor Persikov’s nightmarish experiments!”
At the circus of the former Nikitin, in the greasy brown arena that smelled pleasantly of manure, the dead-white clown Bom was saying to Bim, who was dressed in a huge checkered sack, “I know why you’re so sad!”
“Vhy-y?” squeaked Bim.
“You buried your eggs in the ground, and the police from the fifteenth precinct found them.”
“Ha, ha, ha, ha,” the circus laughed, so that the blood stopped in the veins joyfully and anguishingly—and the trapezes and the cobwebs under the shabby cupola swayed dizzily.
“Oop!” the clowns cried piercingly, and a sleek white horse carried out on its back a woman of incredible beauty, with shapely legs in scarlet tights.
Looking at no one, noticing no one, not responding to the nudging and soft and tender enticements of prostitutes, Persikov, inspired and lonely, crowned with sudden fame, was making his way along Mokhovaia toward the fiery clock at the Manège. Here, without looking around at all, engrossed in his thoughts, he bumped into a strange, old-fashioned man, painfully jamming his fingers directly against the wooden holster of a revolver hanging from the man’s belt.
“Oh, damn!” squeaked Persikov. “Excuse me.”
“Of course,” answered the stranger in an unpleasant voice, and somehow they disentangled themselves in the middle of this human logjam. And heading for Prechistenka the professor instantly forgot the collision.
VII. FEIT
It is not known whether the Lefort Veterinary Institute’s inoculations really were any good, whether the Samara roadblock detachments were skillful, whether the stringent measures taken with regard to the egg salesmen in Kaluga and Voronezh were successful, or whether the Extraordinary Commission in Moscow worked efficiently, but it is well known that two weeks after Persikov’s last interview with Alfred, in a chicken way things had already been completely cleaned up in the Union of Republics. Here and there forlorn feathers still lay about in the backyards of district towns, bringing tears to the eyes of the onlookers, and in hospitals the last of the greedy people were still finishing the last spasms of bloody diarrhea and vomiting. Fortunately, human deaths were no more than a thousand in the entire Republic. Nor did any serious disorders ensue. True, a prophet had appeared briefly in Volokolamsk, proclaiming that the chicken plague had been caused by none other than the commissars, but he had no special success. In the Volokolamsk marketplace several policemen who had been confiscating chickens from the market women were beaten up, and some windows were broken in the local post and telegraph office. Luckily, the efficient Volokolamsk authorities quickly took the necessary measures as a result of which, first, the prophet ceased his activities, and second, the post office’s broken windows were replaced.
Having reached Archangel and Syumkin village in the North, the plague stopped by itself, for the reason that there was nowhere for it to go—as everybody knows, there are no hens in the White Sea. It also stopped at Vladivostok, for there only the ocean is beyond that. In the far South it disappeared, petering out somewhere in the parched expanses of Ordubat, Dzhulfa, and Karabulak; and in the West it halted in an astonishing way exactly on the Polish and Rumanian borders. Perhaps the climate of these countries is different or perhaps the quarantine measures taken by the neighboring governments worked, but the fact remains that the plague went no further. The foreign press noisily and avidly discussed the unprecedented losses, while the government of the Soviet Republics, without any noise, was working tirelessly. The Special Commission to Fight the Chicken Plague was renamed the Special Commission for the Revival and Reestablishment of Chicken Breeding in the Republic and was augmented by a new Special Troika, made up of sixteen members. A “Goodpoul” office was set up, with Persikov and Portugalov as honorary assistants to the chairman. Their pictures appeared in the newspapers over titles such as “Mass Purchase of Eggs Abroad” and “Mr. Hughes Wants to Undermine the Egg Campaign.” All Moscow read the stinging feuilleton by the journalist Kolechkin, which closed with the words, “Don’t whet your teeth on our eggs, Mr. Hughes—you have your own!”
Professor Persikov was completely exhausted from overworking himself for the last three weeks. The chicken events disrupted his routine and put a double burden upon him. Every evening he had to work at conferences of chicken commissions, and from time to time he was obliged to endure long interviews either with Alfred Bronsky or with the mechanical fat man. He had to work with Professor Portugalov and Assistant Professors Ivanov and Bornhart, dissecting and microscoping chickens in search of the plague bacillus, and he even had to write up a hasty pamphlet “On the Changes in Chicken Kidneys as a Result of the Plague” in three evenings.
Persikov worked in the chicken field with no special enthusiasm, and understandably so—his whole mind was filled with something else which was fundamental and important—the problem from which he had been diverted by the chicken catastrophe, i.e., the red ray. Straining still further his already shaken health, stealing hours from sleep and meals, sometimes falling asleep on the oilcloth couch in his institute office, instead of going home to Prechistenka, Persikov spent whole nights puttering with his chamber and his microscope.
By the end of July the race let up a little. The work of the renamed commission fell into a normal groove, and Persikov returned to his interrupted work. The microscopes were loaded with new cultures, and under the ray in the chamber fish and frog roe matured with fantastic speed. Specially ordered glass was brought from Konigsberg by plane, and during the last days of July mechanics laboring under Ivanov’s supervision constructed two large new chambers in which the ray reached the width of a cigarette pack at its source and at its widest point—a full meter. Persikov joyfully rubbed his hands and started to prepare for some sort of mysterious and complicated experiments. To start with he talked to the People’s Commission of Education on the telephone, and the receiver quacked out the warmest assurances of all possible cooperation, and then Persikov telephoned Comrade Avis-Hamska, the director of the Animal Husbandry Department of the Supreme Commission. Persikov received Avis-Hamska’s warmest attention. The matter involved a large order abroad for Professor Persikov. Avis said into the telephone that he would immediately wire Berlin and New York. After this there was an inquiry from the Kremlin about how Persikov’s work was progressing, and an important and affable voice asked whether Persikov needed an automobile.
“No, thank you, I prefer to ride the trolley,” replied Persikov.
“But why?” the mysterious voice asked, laughing condescendingly.
In general everybody spoke to Persikov either with respect and terror, or laughing indulgently, as though he were a small, though overgrown, child.
“It’s faster,” Persikov replied, to which the resonant bass replied into the telephone, “Well, as you wish.”
Another week passed, during which Persikov, withdrawing still further from the receding chicken problems, engrossed himself completely in the study of the ray. From the sleepless nights and overexertion his head felt light, as if it were transparent and weightless. The red circles never left his eyes now, and Persikov spent almost every night at the institute. Once he abandoned his zoological retreat to give a lecture at the huge Tsekubu Hall on Prechistenka—about his ray and its effect on the egg cell. It was a tremendous triumph for the eccentric zoologist. The applause was so thunderous that something crumbled and dropped down from the ceilings of the colonnaded hall; hissing arc lights poured light over the black dinner jackets of the Tsekubu members and the white gowns of the ladies. On the stage, on a glass-topped table next to the lectern, a moist frog as big as a cat sat on a platter, gray and breathing heavily. Many notes were thrown onto the stage. They included seven declarations of love, and Persikov tore them up. The Tsekubu chairman dragged him forcibly onto the stage to bow to the audience. Persikov bowed irritably; his hands were sweaty, and the knot of his black tie rested not beneath his chin, but behind his left ear. There amid the sounds of respiration and the mist before him were hundreds of yellow faces and white shirtfronts and suddenly the yellow holster of a revolver flashed and disappeared somewhere behind a white column. Persikov dimly perceived it, and forgot it. But as he was departing after the lecture, walking down the raspberry-colored carpet of the staircase, he suddenly felt sick. For a moment the dazzling chandelier in the vestibule turned black, and Persikov felt faint and nauseated … He thought he smelled something burning; it seemed to him that blood was dripping, sticky and hot, down his neck … And with a shaky hand the professor caught at the handrail.
“Are you sick, Vladimir Ipatich?” anxious voices flew at him from all sides.
“No, no,” replied Persikov, recovering. “I am just overtired … yes … May I have a glass of water?”
It was a very sunny August day. That bothered the professor, so the shades were lowered. A reflector on a flexible stand threw a sharp beam of light onto a glass table piled with instruments and slides. Leaning against the backrest of the revolving chair in exhaustion, Persikov smoked, and his eyes, dead tired but satisfied, looked through the billows of smoke at the partly open door of the chamber where, faintly warming the already close and impure air of the office, the red sheaf of his ray lay quietly.
Someone knocked on the door.
“Well?” asked Persikov.
The door creaked softly, and Pankrat entered. He put his arms stiffly at his sides, and blanching with fear before the divinity, he said, “Mr. Professor, out there Feit has come to you.”
A semblance of a smile appeared on the scientist’s cheeks. He narrowed his eyes and said, “That’s interesting. But I’m busy.”
“He says he has an official paper from the Kremlin.”
“Fate with a paper? A rare combination,” uttered Persikov, adding, “oh, well, get him in here.”
“Yes, sir,” said Pankrat, and he disappeared through the door like an eel.
A minute later it creaked again and a man appeared on the threshold. Persikov squeaked around an his swivel chair, and, above his spectacles, fixed his eyes on the visitor over his shoulder. Persikov was very remote from life—he was not interested in it—but even Persikov was struck by the predominant, the salient characteristic of the man who had entered: he was peculiarly old-fashioned. In 1919 the man would have been entirely in place in the streets of the capital; he would have passed in 1924, in the beginning of the year—but in 1928 he was odd. At a time when even the most backward section of the proletariat—the bakers—wore ordinary jackets, and the military service jacket was a rarity in Moscow—an old-fashioned outfit irrevocably discarded by the end of 1924—the man who had entered was wearing a double-breasted leather coat, olive-green trousers, puttees, and gaiters on his legs, and at his hip a huge Mauser of antiquated make in a cracked yellow holster. His face produced the same kind of impression on Persikov that it did on everyone else—an extremely unpleasant impression. His little eyes looked at the whole world with surprise, but at the same time with assurance; there was something bumptious in the short legs with their flat feet. His face was blue from close shaving. Persikov immediately frowned. He squeaked the screw of his chair mercilessly, and looking at the man no longer over his spectacles but through them, he asked, “You have some paper? Where is it?”
The visitor was apparently overwhelmed by what he saw. Generally he had little capacity for being taken aback, but here he was taken aback. Judging by his tiny eyes, he was struck most of all by the twelve-shelved bookcase, which reached to the ceiling and was crammed with books. Then, of course, there were the chambers, in which—as though in hell—he scarlet ray flickered, diffused and magnified through the glass. And Persikov himself in the penumbra beside the sharp needle of light emitted by the reflector was sufficiently strange and majestic in his revolving chair. The visitor fixed on the professor a glance in which sparks of deference were clearly leaping through the self-assurance. He presented no paper, but said, “I am Alexander Semionovich Feit!”
“Well? So what?”
“I have been appointed director of the model Sovkhoz—the ‘Red Ray’ Sovkhoz,” explained the visitor.
“And?”
“And so I’ve come to see you, comrade, with a secret memorandum.”
“Interesting to learn. Make it short, if you can.”
The visitor unbuttoned the lapel of his coat and pulled out an order printed on magnificent thick paper. He held it out to Persikov. Then, without invitation, he sat down on a revolving stool. “Don’t jiggle the table,” Persikov said with hatred.
The visitor looked around at the table in fright—at the far end, in a moist dark aperture, some sort of eyes gleamed lifelessly like emeralds. They exuded a chill.
No sooner had Persikov read the paper than he rose from his stool and rushed to the telephone. Within a few seconds he was already speaking hurriedly and with an extreme degree of irritation. “Excuse me … I cannot understand … How can this be? I … without my consent or advice … Why, the devil only knows what he’ll do with it!”
Here the stranger turned on his stool, extremely insulted. “Pardon me,” he began, “I am the direc …”
But Persikov waved him away with his hooked index finger and continued: “Excuse me, I can’t understand … And finally, I categorically refuse. I will not sanction any experiments with eggs … Until I try them myself….”
Something squawked and clicked in the receiver, and even from a distance one could understand that the condescending voice in the receiver was speaking to a small child. It ended with crimson Persikov slamming down the receiver and saying past it into the wall, “I wash my hands of this!”
He returned to the table, took the paper from it, read it once from top to bottom above his spectacles, then from bottom to top through them, and suddenly he yelled, “Pankrat!”
Pankrat appeared in the door as though rising up through a trap door at the opera. Persikov glanced at him and ejaculated, “Get out, Pankrat!”
And without showing the least surprise, Pankrat disappeared.
Then Persikov turned to his guest and began, “All right, sir … I submit. It’s none of my business. And I’m not even interested.”’
The professor not so much offended as amazed his guest. “But pardon me,” he began, “you are a comrade? …”
“Comrade … comrade…. Is that all you know how to say?” Persikov grumbled, and fell silent.
“Well!” was written on Feit’s face.
“Pard …”
“Now, sir, if you please,” interrupted Persikov. “This is the arc light. From it you obtain, by manipulating the ocular,” Persikov snapped the lid of the chamber, which resembled a camera, “a cluster which you can gather by adjusting object-lens No. 1, here, and mirror No. 2.” Persikov turned off the ray, turned it on again—aimed at the floor of the asbestos chamber. “And on the floor you can place whatever you please in the ray and conduct experiments. Extremely simple, don’t you think?”
Persikov meant to show irony and contempt, but his visitor did not notice, peering intently into the chamber with his glittering little eyes.
“But I warn you,” Persikov went on, “one should not put one’s hands in the ray, because, according to my observations, it causes growth of the epithelium—and I unfortunately have not yet been able to establish whether it is malignant or not.”
Here the visitor nimbly hid his hands behind his back, dropping his leather cap, and he looked at the professor’s hands. They were covered with iodine stains, and his right wrist was bandaged.
“And how do you do it, professor?”
“You can buy rubber gloves at Schwab’s on Kuznetsky,” the professor replied irritably. “I’m not obliged to worry about that.”
Here Persikov looked up at his visitor, as though studying him through a magnifying glass. “Where are you from? Why you? In general, why you?”
Feit was finally deeply offended, “Pard …”
“After all, one has to know what it’s all about … Why have you latched on to my ray? …”
“Because it’s a matter of utmost importance.”
“Oh. The utmost? In that case—Pankrat!”
And when Pankrat appeared: “Wait, I’ll think it over.”
And Pankrat obediently disappeared.
“I cannot understand one thing,” said Persikov. “Why are such rushing and secrecy necessary?”
“You have already got me muddled, professor,” Feit answered. “You know that every last chicken has died off?”
“Well, what about it?” shrieked Persikov. “Do you want to resurrect them instantly, or what? And why use a ray that has still been insufficiently studied?”
“Comrade Professor,” replied Feit, “I must say, you do mix me up I am telling you that it is essential for us because they’re writing a all kinds of nasty things about us abroad. Yes.”
“Let them write.”
“Well, you know!” Feit responded mysteriously, shaking his head.
“I’d like to know who got the idea of breeding chickens from eggs …”
“I did,” answered Feit.
“Uhmmm … So … And why, may I inquire? Where did you hear about the characteristics of this ray.
“I attended your lecture, professor.”
“I haven’t done anything with eggs yet! I am just getting ready to!”
“It’ll work, I swear it will,” Feit said suddenly with conviction and enthusiasm. “Your ray is so famous, you could hatch elephants with it, let alone chickens.”
“Tell me,” uttered Persikov. “You aren’t a zoologist, are you. No? A pity … you’d make a very bold experimenter … Yes, but you are risking failure. And you are just taking up my time …”
“We’ll return your chambers.”
“When?”
“Well, as soon as I breed the first group.”
“How confidently you say that! Very well, sir. Pankrat!”
“I have men with me,” said Feit. “And guards …”
By that evening Persikov’s office had been desolated … The tables were bare. Feit’s men had carried off the three large chambers, leaving the professor only the first, his own little one with which he had begun the experiments.
July twilight was settling over the institute; grayness filled it and flowed along the corridors. From the study came the sound of monotonous footsteps—this was Persikov pacing the large room from window to door without turning on the light. It was a strange thing: that evening an inexplicably dismal mood overcame both the people who inhabited the institute and the animals. The toads for some reason raised a particularly dismal concert, twittering ominously, premonitorily. Pankrat had to chase along the corridors after a garter snake that had escaped from its cage, and when he caught it, the snake looked as though it ad decided to flee wherever its eyes would lead it, if only to get away.
In the deep twilight the bell rang from Persikov’s office. Pankrat appeared on the threshold and he saw a strange sight. The scientist was standing solitarily in the center of the room, looking at the tables. Pankrat coughed once and stood still.
“There, Pankrat,” said Persikov, and he pointed to the bare table.
Pankrat was horrified. It seemed to him that the professor’s eyes were tear-stained in the twilight. It was so extraordinary and so terrible.
“Yes, sir,” Pankrat answered lugubriously, thinking, “It’d be better if you’d yell at me.”
“There,” repeated Persikov, and his lips quivered like a child’s when his favorite toy has suddenly, for no reason, been taken away from it. “You know, my good Pankrat,” Persikov went on, turning away to the window, “my wife … who left me fifteen years ago—she joined an operetta … and now it turns out she is dead … What a story, my dear Pankrat … I was sent a letter.”
The toads screamed plaintively, and twilight enveloped the professor. There it is … night. Moscow … here and there outside the windows some sort of white globes began to light up … Pankrat, confused and in anguish held his hands straight down his sides, stiff with fear …
“Go, Pankrat,” the professor murmured heavily, waving his hand. “Go to bed, my dear, kind Pankrat.”
And night came. For some reason Pankrat ran out of the office on his tiptoes, hurried to his cranny, rummaged through the rags in the corner, pulled out a half-full bottle of Russian vodka, and gulped down almost a regular glassful in one breath. He chased it with some bread and salt, and his eyes cheered up a bit.
Later in the evening, close to midnight now, Pankrat was sitting bare-foot on a bench in the dimly lit vestibule, talking to the sleepless derby on duty, and scratching his chest under the calico shirt. “It’d be better if he’d kill me, I swear …”
“He really was crying?” inquired the derby with curiosity.
“I swear …” Pankrat assured him.
“A great scientist,” agreed the derby. “Obviously no frog can take the place of a wife.”
“Absolutely,” Pankrat agreed. Then he thought a bit and added, “I’m thinking of getting my woman permission to come out here” … why should she sit there in the village? Only she can’t stand them snakes no how …”
“Sure, they’re terribly nasty,” agreed the derby.
From the scientist’s office not a sound could be heard. And there was no light in it. No strip under the door.
VIII. EVENTS AT THE SOVKHOZ
There is absolutely no time of year more beautiful than mid-August in, let us say, the Smolensk province. The summer of 1928, as is well known, was one of the finest ever, with spring rains which had come at precisely the right time, a full hot sun, and a fine harvest … The apples were ripening in the former Sheremetiev estate … the woods stood green, the fields lay in yellow squares. A man becomes better in the bosom of nature. And Alexander Semionovich would not have seemed as unpleasant here as in the city. And he no longer wore that obnoxious coat. His face had a coppery tan, his unbuttoned calico shirt betrayed a chest overgrown with the thickest black hair, his legs were clad in canvas trousers. And his eyes had grown calmer and kinder.
Alexander Semionovich ran briskly down the stairs from the becolumned porch over which a sign was nailed, under a star: THE “RED RAY” SOVKHOZ. And he went straight to meet the pickup truck which had brought him three black chambers under guard.
All day Alexander Semionovich bustled around with his helpers, setting up the chambers in the former winter garden—the Sheremetiev greenhouse … By evening all was in readiness. A frosted white globe glowed under the glass ceiling, the chambers were arranged on bricks, and the mechanic who had come with the chambers, clicking and turning the shiny knobs, turned the mysterious red ray onto the asbestos floor of the black boxes.
Alexander Semionovich bustled around, and even climbed the ladder himself to check out the wiring.
On the following day, the same pickup returned from the station and disgorged three crates made of magnificent smooth plywood and plastered all over with labels and warnings in white letters on black backgrounds: “Vorsicht: Eier! Handle with care: Eggs.”
“But why did they send so few?” wondered Alexander Semionovich—however, he immediately started bustling around and unpacking the eggs. The unpacking was done in the same greenhouse with the participation of: Alexander Semionovich himself; his wife Manya, a woman of extraordinary bulk; the one-eyed former gardener of the former Sheremetievs, currently working on the sovkhoz in the universal capacity of watchman; the guard, now condemned to life on the sovkhoz; and Dunia, the cleaning woman. This was not Moscow, and so the nature of everything here was simpler, friendlier, and more homely. Alexander Semionovich supervised, glancing affectionately at the crates, which looked like a really sturdy, compact present under the soft sunset light coming through the upper windows of the greenhouse. The guard, whose rifle rested peacefully by the door, broke open the clamps and metal bindings with a pair of pliers. Crackling filled the room. Dust flew. Flopping along in his sandals, Alexander Semionovich fussed around the crates.
“Take it easy,” he said to the guard. “Careful. Don’t you see the eggs?”
“Don’t worry,” the provincial warrior grunted, drilling away. “Just a second.” T-r-r-r … and the dust flew.
The eggs turned out to be exceedingly well packed: under the wooden lid there was a layer of wax paper, then absorbent paper, then a solid layer of wood shavings, and then sawdust, in which the white tips of the eggs gleamed.
“Foreign packing,” Alexander Semionovich said lovingly digging into the sawdust. “Not the way we do things here. Manya, careful, you’ll break them.”
“You’ve gotten silly, Alexander Semionovich,” replied his wife. “Imagine, such gold. Do you think I’ve never seen eggs before? … Oy! What big ones!”
“Europe,” said Alexander Semionovich. “Did you expect our crummy little Russian peasant eggs? … They must all be Brahmaputras, the devil take ’em! German …”
“Sure they are,” confirmed the guard, admiring the eggs.
“Only I don’t understand why they’re dirty,” Alexander Semionovich said reflectively … “Manya, you look after things. Have them go on with the unloading, and I’m going to make a telephone call.”
And Alexander Semionovich set off for the telephone in the sovkhoz office across the yard.
That evening the telephone cracked in the office of the Zoological Institute. Professor Persikov ruffled his hair and went to the phone.
“Well?” he asked.
“The provinces calling, just a minute,” the receiver replied with a soft hiss in a woman’s voice.
“Well, I’m listening,” Persikov said fastidiously into the black mouth of the phone.
Something clicked in it, and then a distant masculine voice anxiously spoke in his ear. “Should the eggs be washed, professor?”
“What? What is it? What are you asking?” Persikov got irritated.
“Where are you calling from?”
“From Nikolsky, Smolensk province,” the receiver answered.
“I don’t understand any of this. I don’t know any Nikolsky. Who is this?”
“Feit,” said the receiver sternly.
“What Feit? Oh, yes … it’s you … so what is it you’re asking?”
“Should they be washed? … I was sent a batch of chicken eggs from abroad …”
“Well?”
“They seem slimy somehow …”
“You’re mixing something up … How can they be ‘slimy’ as you put it? Well, of course, there can be a little … perhaps some droppings stuck on … or something else …”
“So they shouldn’t be washed?”
“Of course not … What are you doing—are you all ready to load the chambers with the eggs?”
“I am. Yes,” replied the receiver.
“Harumph,” Persikov snorted.
“So long,” the receiver clicked and went silent.
“So long, Persikov repeated with hatred to Assistant Professor Ivanov. “How do you like that character, Peter Stepanovich?”
Ivanov laughed. “Was that him? I can imagine what he’ll cook up with those eggs out there.”
“The id … id … idiot,” Persikov stuttered furiously. “Just imagine, Peter Stepanovich. Fine, it is quite possible that the ray will have the same effect on the deutoplasm of the chicken egg that it did on the plasm of the amphibians. It is quite possible that the hens will hatch. But neither you nor I can say what sort of hens they will be … Maybe they won’t be good for a damned thing. Maybe they’ll die in a day or two. Maybe they’ll be inedible! Can I guarantee that they’ll be able to stand on their feet? Maybe their bones will be brittle.” Persikov got all excited and waved his hands, crooking his index fingers.
“Absolutely right,” agreed Ivanov.
“Can you guarantee, Peter Stepanovich, that they’ll produce another generation? Maybe this character will breed sterile hens. He’ll drive them up to the size of a dog, and then you can wait until the second coming before they’ll have any progeny.”
“No one can guarantee it,” agreed Ivanov.
“And what bumptiousness!” Persikov got himself even more distraught. “What indolence! And note this, I have been ordered to instruct this scoundrel.” Persikov pointed to the paper delivered by Feit (it lay on the experiment table). “How am I to instruct this ignoramus, when I myself cannot say anything on the problem?”
“But was it impossible to refuse?” asked Ivanov.
Persikov turned crimson, picked up the paper, and showed it to Ivanov. The latter read it and smiled ironically.
“Um, yes,” he said very significantly.
“And then, note this … I’ve been waiting for my order for two months—and there’s neither hide nor hair of it. While that one is sent the eggs instantly, and generally gets all kinds of cooperation.”
“He won’t get a damned thing out of it, Vladimir Ipatich. And it will just end by their returning the chambers to you.”
“If only they don’t take too long doing it, otherwise they’re holding up my experiments.”
“That’s what’s really rotten. I have everything ready”
“Did you get the diving suits?”
“Yes, today.”
Persikov calmed down somewhat, and livened up. “Hhmmm … I think we’ll do it this way. We can seal the doors of the operating room tight and open the window …”
“Of course,” agreed Ivanov.
“Three helmets?”
“Three. Yes.”
“Well, so … That means you, I, and possibly one of the students. We’ll give him the third helmet.”
“Greenmut’s possible.”
“The one who’s working on the salamanders with you now? Hmmm, he’s not bad … although, wait, last spring he couldn’t describe the structure of the air bladder of the Gymnodontes,” Persikov added rancorously.
“No, he’s not bad … He’s a good student,” interceded Ivanov.
“We will have to go without sleep for one night,” Persikov went on.
“And one more thing, Peter Stepanovich, you check the gas—otherwise the devil only knows about these so-called Goodchems—they’ll send some sort of trash.”
“No, no,” Ivanov waved his hands. “I already tested it yesterday. We must give them their due, Vladimir Ipatich, it’s excellent gas.”
“On whom did you try it’?”
“On ordinary toads. You let out a little stream and they die instantly. Oh, yes, Vladimir Ipatich, we’ll also do this—you write a request to the GPU, asking them to send an electric revolver.”
“But I don’t know how to use it.”
“I’ll take that on myself,” answered Ivanov. “We used to practice with one on the Kliazma, just for fun … there was a GPU man living next door to me. A remarkable thing. Quite extraordinary. Noiseless, kills outright from a hundred paces. We used to shoot crows … I don’t think we even need the gas.”
“Hmmm, that’s a clever idea … Very.” Persikov went to the corner of the room, picked up the receiver, and croaked, “Let me have that, oh, what d’you call it … Lubianka …”
The days got unbearably hot. One could clearly see the dense transparent heat shimmering over the fields. But the nights were marvelous, deceptive, green. The moon shone brightly, casting such beauty on the former Sheremetiev estate that it is impossible to express it in words. The sovkhoz palace gleamed as though made of sugar, the shadows trembled in the park, and the ponds were cleft into two colors—a slanting shaft of moonlight across it, and the rest, bottomless darkness. In the patches of moonlight you could easily read Izvestia, except for the chess column, which is printed in tiny nonpareil. But, naturally, nobody read Izvestia on nights like these … Dunia, the cleaning woman, turned up in the copse behind the sovkhoz, and as a result of some coincidence, the red-moustachioed driver of a battered sovkhoz pickup turned up there too. What they did there—remains unknown. They took shelter in the melting shadow of an elm, right on the driver’s outspread leather jacket. A lamp burned in the kitchen where two gardeners were having their supper, and Madame Feit, wearing a white robe, was sitting on the becolumned veranda and dreaming as she gazed at the beautiful moon.
At ten in the evening when all of the sounds had subsided in the village of Kontsovka, situated behind the sovkhoz, the idyllic landscape was filled with the charming, delicate sounds of a flute. It is unthinkable to try to express how this suited the copses and former columns of the Sheremetiev palace. Fragile Liza from The Queen of Spades mingled her voice in a duet with the voice of the passionate Polina, and the melody swept up into the moonlit heights like the ghost of an old regime—old, but infinitely lovely, enchanting to the point of tears.
“Waning … waning …,” the flute sang, warbling and sighing.
The copses fell silent, and Dunia, fatal as a wood nymph, listened, her cheek pressed to the prickly, reddish masculine cheek of the driver.
“He blows good, the son of a bitch,” said the driver, encircling Dunia’s waist with his manly arm.
Playing the flute was none other than the sovkhoz director himself, Alexander Semionovich Feit, and we must give him his due, he played extremely well. The fact is that at one time the flute had been Alexander Semionovich’s specialty. Right up until 1917 he had been a member of Maestro Petukhov’s well-known concert ensemble, whose harmonic sounds rang out every night in the lobby of the cozy Magic Dreams Cinema in the city of Yekaterinoslav. The great year of l917, which had broken the careers of many people, had turned Alexander Semionovich onto new roads too. He abandoned the Magic Dreams and the dusty star-spangled satin in the lobby and dove into the open sea of war and revolution, exchanging his flute for a deadly Mauser. For a long time he was tossed on the waves, which cast him up now in the Crimea, now in Moscow, now in Turkestan, and even in Vladivostok. It took a revolution to bring Alexander Semionovich fully into his own. The man’s true greatness was revealed, and naturally he was not meant to sit around the lobby of the Dreams. Without getting into great detail, let us say that late 1927 and early l928 found Alexander Semionovich in Turkestan where he had, first, edited a huge newspaper and, next, as the local member of the Supreme Agricultural Commission, covered himself with glory through his remarkable work in irrigating the Turkestan territory. In l928 Feit arrived in Moscow and got a well-deserved rest. The highest committee of the organization whose card the provincial-looking, old-fashioned man carried in his pocket with honor showed its appreciation and appointed him to a quiet and honorable post. Alas! Alas! To the misfortune of the Republic, the seething brain of Alexander Semionovich had not cooled off; in Moscow Feit ran across Persikov’s discovery, and in his room at the Red Paris Hotel on Tverskaia, Alexander Semionovich conceived the idea of using Persikov’s ray to replenish the chicken population of the Republic in one month. Feit’s plan was heard out by the Commission on Animal Husbandry, they agreed with him, and Feit went with the thick sheet of paper to the eccentric zoologist.
The concert over the glassy waters and copses and park was already drawing to a close when suddenly something happened that interrupted it ahead of time. Namely, the dogs in Kontsovka, who should have been asleep at that hour, suddenly burst out into an incredible fit of barking which gradually turned into a general and very anguished howling. The howling, increasing in volume, flew across the fields, and this howling was suddenly answered by a chattering, million-voiced concert of frogs in all the ponds. All of this was so uncanny that for a minute it even seemed that the mysterious, witching night had grown dim.
Alexander Semionovich laid down his flute and went out onto the veranda, “Manya! Do you hear that? Those damned dogs … What do you think is making them so wild?”
“How should l know?” replied Manya, staring at the moon.
“You know what, Manechka, let’s go and take a look at the eggs,” suggested Alexander Semionovich.
“By God, Alexander Semionovich, you’ve gone completely nuts with your eggs and chickens. Take a little rest!”
A bright bulb was burning in the greenhouse. Dunia also came in, face flushed and eyes flashing. Alexander Semionovich gently opened the observation panes, and everyone started peering inside the chambers. On the white asbestos floor the spotted bright-red eggs lay in even rows; the chambers were silent, and the 15,000 watt bulb overhead was hissing quietly.
“Oh, what chicks I’ll hatch out of here!” Alexander Semionovich said enthusiastically, looking now into the observation slits in the side walls of the chambers, now into the wide air vents above. “You’ll see. What? Won’t I?”
“You know, Alexander Semionovich,” said Dunia, smiling, “the peasants in Kontsovka are saying you’re the Anti-Christ. Them are devilish eggs, they say. It’s a sin to hatch eggs by machine. They wanted to murder you.”
Alexander Semionovich shuddered and turned to his wife. His face had turned yellow. “Well, how do you like that? Such people! What can you do with people like that? Eh? Manechka, we’ll have to arrange a meeting for them. Tomorrow I’ll call some Party workers from the district. I’ll make a speech myself. In general we’ll have to do some work here … It’s some sort of wild country …”
“Dark minds,” said the guard, reposing on his coat at the greenhouse
The next day was marked by the strangest and most inexplicable events. In the morning, at the first flash of the sun, the copses, which usually greeted the luminary with a mighty and ceaseless twittering of birds, met it in total silence. This was noticed by absolutely everyone. As though before a storm. But there was not the slightest hint of a storm. Conversations in the sovkhoz assumed a strange, ambiguous tone, very disturbing to Alexander Semyonovich, especially because from the words of the old Kontsovka peasant nicknamed Goat’s Goiter, a notorious troublemaker and smart aleck, it got spread around that, supposedly, all the birds had gathered into flocks and cleared out of Sheremetievka at dawn, heading north—which was all simply stupid. Alexander Semionovich was very upset and wasted the whole day telephoning the town of Grachevka. From there he was promised two speakers would be sent to the sovkhoz in a day or two with two topics—the international situation and the question of the “Goodpoul” Trust.
Neither was the evening without its surprises. Whether or not in the morning the woods had gone silent, demonstrating with utmost clarity how unpleasant an ominous absence of sound is in a forest, and whether or not all of the sparrows had cleared out of the sovkhoz yards by midday, heading somewhere else—by evening the pond in Sheremetievka had gone silent. This was truly astounding, since the famous croaking of the Sheremetievka frogs was quite well known to everyone for forty versts around. But now all the frogs seemed to have died out. Not a single voice came from the pond, and the sedge was soundless. It must be admitted that Alexander Semionovich completely lost his composure. All of these events began to cause talk, and talk of a very unpleasant kind, i.e., it was behind Alexander Semionovich’s back.
“It’s really strange,” Alexander Semionovich said to his wife at lunch. “I can’t understand why those birds had to fly away.”
“How should l know’?” answered Manya. “Maybe from your ray!”
“Manya, you’re just a plain fool,” said Alexander Semionovich, throwing down his spoon. “You’re like the peasants. What has the ray got to do with it?”
“Well, I don’t know. Leave me alone.”
That evening the third surprise happened—the dogs at Kontsovka again started howling—and how they howled! The moonlit fields were filled with ceaseless wailing, and anguished, angry moans.
To some extent Alexander Semionovich felt rewarded by yet another surprise—a pleasant one in the greenhouse. An uninterrupted tapping began to come from the red eggs in the chambers. “Tap … tap … tap … tap” … came tapping from first one egg, then another, then yet another.
The tapping in the eggs was a triumphant tapping for Alexander Semionovich. The strange events in the woods and the pond were instantly forgotten. Everyone gathered in the greenhouse: Manya, Dunia, the watchman, and the guard, who left his rifle at the door.
“Well? What do you have to say about that?” Alexander Semionovich asked victoriously. They all pressed their ears curiously to the doors of the first chamber. “It’s the chicks—tapping, with their beaks,” Alexander Semionovich continued, beaming. “You say I won’t hatch any chicks! Not so, my friends.” And in an excess of emotion he slapped the guard on the back. “I’ll hatch out such chicks you’ll ooh and ah. Now I have to look sharp,” he added sternly. “As soon as they begin to break through, let me know immediately.”
“Right,” the watchman, Dunia, and the guard answered in chorus. “Tap … tap … tap.” The tapping started again, now in one, now in another egg in the first chamber. Indeed, the picture of new life being born before your eyes within the thin, translucent casings was so interesting that this whole group sat on for a long while on the empty overturned crates, watching the raspberry-colored eggs ripen in the mysterious flickering light. They broke up to go to bed rather late, after the greenish night had poured light over the sovkhoz and the surrounding countryside. It was an eerie night, one might even say terrifying, perhaps because its utter silence was broken now and then by outbursts of causeless, plaintive, and heart-rending howling from the dogs in Kontsovka. What made those damned dogs go mad was absolutely unknown.
In the morning a new unpleasantness awaited Alexander Semionovich. The guard was extremely embarrassed, put his hand over his heart, swore and made God his witness that he had not fallen asleep, but that he had noticed nothing. “It’s a queer thing,” the guard insisted. “I’m not to blame, Comrade Feit.”
“Thank you, my heartfelt thanks,” Alexander Semionovich began the roasting, “What are you thinking about, comrade’? Why were you put here? To watch! So you tell me where they’ve disappeared to! They’ve hatched, haven’t they? That means they’ve escaped. That means you left the door open and went away to your room. I want those chicks back here—or else!”
“There’s nowhere for me to go. Don’t I know my job?” The warrior finally took offense. “You’re blaming me for nothing, Comrade Feit!”
“Where’ve they gone to?”
“Well, how should I know?” the warrior got infuriated at last. “Am I supposed to be guarding them? Why am I posted here? To see that nobody filches the chambers, and I’m doing my job. Here are your chambers. But I’m not obliged by the law to go chasing after your chickens. Who knows what kind of chicks you’ll hatch out of there; you probably couldn’t catch them on a bicycle, maybe!”
Alexander Semionovich was somewhat taken aback, grumbled a bit more, then fell into a state of astonishment. It was indeed a strange thing. In the first chamber, which had been loaded before the others, the two eggs lying closest to the base of the ray turned out to be broken. The shell was scattered on the asbestos floor under the ray.
“What the devil?” muttered Alexander Semionovich. “The windows are shut—they couldn’t have flown out through the roof!” He tilted his head back and looked up where there were several wide holes in the glass transom of the roof.
“What’s wrong with you, Alexander Semionovich,” Dunia cried extremely surprised. “All we need is flying chicks. They are here somewhere. Cheep … cheep … cheep,” she began to call, looking in the corners of greenhouse where there were dust flowerpots, boards, and other rubbish. But no chicks responded anywhere.
All of the personnel ran about the sovkhoz yard for two hours searching for the nimble chicks, but no one found anything anywhere. The day went by in extreme agitation. The guard over the chambers was increased by one watchman, and he had been given the strictest order to look through the windows of the chambers every fifteen minutes and call Alexander Semionovich the second anything happened. The guard sat by the door, sulking, holding his rifle between his knees. Alexander Semionovich was snowed under with chores, and he did not have his lunch until almost two in the afternoon. After lunch he took an hour-long nap in the cools shade on the former ottoman of Prince Sheremetiev, drank some sovkhoz kvass, dropped by the greenhouse and made sure that everything was in perfect order there now. The old watchman was sprawled on his belly on a piece of burlap and staring, blinking, into the observation window of the first chamber. The guard was sitting alertly without leaving the door.
But there was also something new: the eggs inloaded last of all began to make a gulping and clucking sound, as if someone were sobbing inside.
“Oh, they’re ripening, said Alexander Semionovich. “Getting ripe, I see it now. Did you see?” he addressed the watchman …
“Yes, it’s a marvel,” the latter replied in a completely ambiguous tone, shaking his head.
Alexander Semionovich sat by the chambers for a while, but nothing hatched in his presence; he got up, stretched, and declared that he would not leave the estate that day, he would just go down to the pond for a swim, and if anything started to happen, he was to be called immediately. He ran over to the palace to his bedroom, where two narrow spring beds with crumpled linen stood, and on the floor there was a pile of green apples and heaps of millet, prepared for the coming fledglings. He armed himself with a fluffy towel, and after a moment’s thought he picked up his flute, intending to play at leisure over the unruffled waters. He walked out of the palace briskly, cut cross the sovkhoz yard, and headed down the small willow avenue toward the pond. He strode along briskly, swinging the towel and carrying the flute under his arm. The sky was pouring down heat through the willows, and his body ached and begged for water. On his right hand began a thicket of burdocks, into which he spat as he passed by; and immediately there was a rustling in the tangle of broad leaves, as though someone had started dragging a log. Feeling an unpleasant fleeting twinge in his heart, Alexander Semionovich turned his head toward the thicket and looked at it with wonder. The pond had reverberated with no sounds of any kind for two days now. The rustling ceased; the unruffled surface of the pond and the gray roof of the bathhouse flashed invitingly beyond the burdocks. Several dragonflies darted past in front of Alexander Semionovich. He was just about to turn to the wooden planks leading down to the water when the rustle in the greenery was repeated, and it was accompanied by a short hiss, as if a locomotive were discharging steam and oil. Alexander Semionovich got on guard and peered into the dense wall of weeds.
“Alexander Semionovich,” his wife’s voice called at that moment, and her white blouse flashed, disappeared, and flashed again in the raspberry patch. “Wait, I’ll go for a swim too.”
His wife hastened toward the pond, but Alexander Semionovich made no answer, all attention was riveted on the burdocks. A grayish and olive-colored log began to rise from the thicket, growing before his eyes. The log, it seemed to Alexander Semionovich, was splotched with some sort of moist yellowish spots. It began to stretch, flexing and undulating, and it stretched so high that it was above the scrubby little willow … Then the top of the log broke, leaned over somewhat, and over Alexander Semionovich loomed something like a Moscow electric pole in height. But this something was about three times thicker than a pole and far more beautiful, thanks to the scaly tattoo. Still comprehending noting, but his blood running cold, Alexander Semionovich looked at the summit of the terrifying pole, and his heart stopped beating for several seconds. It seemed to him that a frost had suddenly struck the August day, and it turned dim, as though he were looking at the sun through a pair of summer pants.
There turned out to be a head on the upper end of the log. It was flat, pointed, and adorned with a spherical yellow spot on an olive-green background. Lidless, open, icy, narrow eyes sat on the top of the head, and in these eyes gleamed utterly infinite malice. The head made a movement, as though pecking the air, then the pole plunged back into the burdock, and only the eyes remained, staring unblinkingly at Alexander Semionovich. The latter, bathed in sticky sweat, uttered four completely incredulous words, evoked only by terror bordering on insanity. So beautiful were those eyes among the leaves!
“What sort of joke …”
Then he recalled that the fakirs … yes … yes … India … a woven basket and a picture … They charm …
The head arched up again, and the body began to emerge too. Alexander Semionovich lifted the flute to his lips, squeaked hoarsely, and gasping for breath every second, he began to play the waltz from Eugene Onegin. The eyes in the foliage instantly began to smolder with implacable hate for the opera.
“Have you lost your mind, playing in this heat?” Manya’s merry voice resounded, and out of the corner of his eye Alexander Semionovich caught sight of a white spot.
Then a sickening scream pierced through the whole sovkhoz, expanded and flew up into the sky, while the waltz hopped up and down as if it had a broken leg. The head in the thicket shot forward—its eyes left Alexander Semionovich, abandoning his soul to repentance. A snake approximately fifteen yards long and as thick as a man leaped out of the burdock like a steel spring. A cloud of dust whirled from the road and the waltz was over. The snake swept past the sovkhoz manager straight toward the white blouse down the road. Feit saw it all quite distinctly: Manya turned yellow-white, and her long hair stood up like wire a half-yard over her head. Before Feit’s eyes the snake opened its maw for a moment, something like a fork flicked out of it, and as she was sinking to the dust its teeth caught Manya by the shoulder and jerked her a yard above the earth. Manya repeated her piercing death scream. The snake coiled itself into a huge screw, its tail churning up a sandstorm, and it began to crush Manya. She did not utter another sound, and Feit just heard her bones snapping. Manya’s head swept up high over the earth, tenderly pressed to the snake’s cheek. Blood splashed from Manya’s mouth, a broken arm flipped out, and little fountains of blood spurted from under her fingernails. Then, dislocating its jaws, the snake opened its maw, slipped its head over Manya’s all at once, and began to pull itself over her like a glove over a finger. Such hot breath spread all around the snake that it touched Feit’s face, and its tail almost swept him off the road in the acrid dust. It was then that Feit turned gray. First the left, then the right half of his jet-black hair was covered with silver. In mortal nausea he finally tore away from the road, and seeing and hearing nothing, making the countryside resound with wild howls, he took off running …
IX. A LIVING MASS
Shchukin, the agent of the State Political Administration (GPU) at the Dugino Station, was a very brave man. He said thoughtfully to his assistant, redheaded Polaitis, “Oh, well, let’s go. Eh? Get the motorcycle.” Then he was silent for a moment, and added, turning to the man who was sitting on the bench, “Put down the flute.”
But the trembling, gray-haired man on the bench in the office of the Dugino GPU did not put his flute down—he began to cry and mumble. Then Shchukin and Polaitis realized that the flute would have to be taken from him. His fingers seemed frozen to it. Shchukin, who possessed enormous strength, almost that of a circus performer, began to unbend one finger after the other, and he unbent them all. Then he put the flute on the table.
This was in the early, sunny morning the day following Manya’s death. “You will come with us,” said Shchukin, addressing Alexander Semionovich. “You will show us what happened where.” But Feit moved away from him in horror and covered his face with his hands in defense against a terrible vision.
“You must show us,” Polaitis added sternly.
“No, let him alone. Don’t you see, that man is not himself.”
“Send me to Moscow,” Alexander Semionovich begged, crying.
“You mean you won’t return to the sovkhoz at all?”
But instead of answering, Feit again put out his hands as if to ward them off, and horror poured from his eyes.
“Well, all right,” decided Shchukin. “You really aren’t up to it … I see. The express will be arriving soon, you go ahead and take it.”
Then, while the station guard was plying Alexander Semionovich with water, and the latter’s teeth chattered on the blue, cracked cup, Shchukin and Polaitis held a conference. Polaitis felt that, generally, none of this had happened, and that Feit was simply mentally ill and had had a terrifying hallucination. But Shchukin tended to think that a boa constrictor had escaped from the circus which was currently performing in the town of Grachevka. Hearing their skeptical whispers, Alexander Semionovich stood up. He came to his senses somewhat, and stretching out his arms like a Biblical prophet, he said, “Listen to me. Listen. Why don’t you believe me? It was there. Where do you think my wife is?”
Shchukin became silent and serious and immediately sent some sort of telegram to Grachevka. At Shchukin’s order a third agent was to stay with Alexander Semionovich constantly and was to accompany him to Moscow. Meanwhile, Shchukin and Polaitis started getting ready for the expedition. All they had was one electric revolver, but just that was quite good protection. The 1927 fifty-round model, the pride of French technology, for close-range fighting, had a range of only one hundred paces, but it covered a field two meters in diameter and killed everything alive in this field. It was hard to miss. Shchukin strapped on the shiny electric toy, and Polaitis armed himself with an ordinary, twenty-five-round submachine gun, took some cartridge belts, and on a single motorcycle they rolled off toward the sovkhoz through the morning dew and chill. The motorcycle clattered off the twenty versts between the station and the sovkhoz in fifteen minutes (Feit had walked all night, crouching now and then in the roadside shrubbery in spasms of mortal terror) and the sun was really beginning to bake when the sugar-white becolumned palace flashed through the greenery on the rise—at the bottom of which meandered the Top River. Dead silence reigned all around. Near the entrance to the sovkhoz the agents passed a peasant in a cart. He was ambling slowly along, loaded with sacks, and soon he was left behind. The motorcycle swept across the bridge, and Polaitis blew the horn to call someone out. But no one responded anywhere, except for the frenzied Kontsovka dogs in the distance. Slowing down, the motorcycle drove up to the gates with their green lions. The dust-covered agents in yellow leggings jumped off, fastened the machine to the iron railing with a chain lock, and entered the yard. They were struck by the silence.
“Hey, anyone here?” Shchukin called loudly.
No one responded to his bass. The agents walked around the yard, getting more and more astonished. Polaitis frowned. Shchukin began to look more and more serious, knitting his fair eyebrows more and more. They looked through the closed window into the kitchen and saw that no one was there, but that the entire floor was strewn with white fragments of broken china.
“You know, something really has happened here. I see that now. A catastrophe,” said Polaitis.
“Hey, anyone in there? Hey!” called Shchukin, but the only response was an echo from under the kitchen eaves. “What the hell,” grumbled Shchukin, “it couldn’t have gobbled all of them up at once. Unless they ran off. Let’s go into the house.”
The door to the palace with the columned porch was wide open, and inside it was completely empty. The agents even went up to the mezzanine, knocking on and opening all of the doors, but they found absolutely nothing, and they went back out to the courtyard across the deserted porch.
“Let’s walk around back. To the greenhouses,” decided Shchukin. “We’ll go over the whole place, and we can telephone from there.”
The agents walked down the brick path past the flowerbeds to the backyard, crossed it, and saw the gleaming windows of the greenhouse. “Wait just a minute,” Shchukin noted in a whisper, unsnapping the pistol from his belt. Polaitis got on his guard and unslung his submachine gun. A strange and very resonant sound came from the greenhouse and from behind it. It was like the hissing of a locomotive somewhere. “Z-zau-zau … z-zau-zau … ss-s-s-s-s,” the greenhouse hissed.
“Careful now,” whispered Shchukin, and trying not to make noise with their heels, the agents tiptoed right up to the windows and peered into the greenhouse.
Polaitis instantly jumped back, and his face turned pale. Shchukin opened his mouth and froze with the pistol in his hand. The whole greenhouse was alive like a pile of worms. Coiling and uncoiling in knots, hissing and stretching, slithering and swaying their heads, huge snakes were crawling all over the greenhouse floor. Broken eggshells were strewn across the floor, crunching under their bodies. Overhead burned an electric bulb of huge wattage, illuminating the entire interior of the greenhouse in an eerie cinematic light. On the floor lay three dark boxes that looked like huge cameras; two of them, leaning askew, had gone out, but in the third a small, densely scarlet spot of light was still burning. Snakes of all sizes were crawling along the cables, climbing up the window frames, and twisting out through the openings in the roof. From the electric bulb itself hung a jet-black spotted snake several yards long, its head swaying near the bulb like a pendulum. Some sort of rattling clicked through the hissing sound; the greenhouse diffused a weird and rotten smell, like a pond. And the agents could just barely make out the piles of white eggs scattered in the dusty corners, and the terrible, giant, long-legged bird lying motionless near the chambers, and the corpse of a man in gray near the door, beside a rifle.
“Get back,” cried Shchukin, and he started to retreat, pushing Polaitis back with his left hand and raising the pistol with his right. He managed to fire about nine times, his gun hissing and flicking greenish lightning around the greenhouse. The sounds within rose terribly in answer to Shchukin’s fire; the whole greenhouse became a mass of frenzied movement, and flat heads darted through every aperture. Thunderclaps immediately began to crash over the whole sovkhoz, flashes playing on the walls. “Chakhchakhchakh-takh,” Polaitis fired, backing away. A strange quadruped was heard behind him, and Polaitis suddenly gave a terrified scream and tumbled backwards. A creature with splayed paws, a brownish-green color, a massive pointed snout, and a ridged tail resembling a lizard of terrifying dimensions, had slithered around the corner of the barn, and viciously biting through Polaitis’ foot, it threw him to the ground.
“Help!” cried Polaitis, and immediately his left hand was crunched in the maw. Vainly attempting to raise his right hand, he dragged his gun along the ground. Shchukin whirled around and started dashing from side to side. He managed to fire once, but aimed wide of the mark, because he was afraid of killing his comrade. The second time he fired in the direction of the greenhouse, because a huge olive-colored snake head had appeared there among the small ones, and its body sprang straight in his direction. The shot killed the gigantic snake, and again, jumping and circling around Polaitis, already half-dead in the crocodile’s maw, Shchukin was trying to aim so as to kill the terrible reptile without hitting the agent. Finally he succeeded. The electric pistol fired twice, throwing a greenish light on everything around, and the crocodile leaped, stretched out, stiffened, and released Polaitis. Blood was flowing from his sleeve, flowing from his mouth, and leaning on his sound right arm, he dragged his broken left leg along. His eyes were going dim. “Run … Shchukin,” he murmured, sobbing.
Shchukin fired several times in the direction of the greenhouse, and several of its windows flew out. But a huge spring, olive-colored and sinuous, sprang from the basement window behind him, slithered across the yard, filling it with its enormous body, and in an instant coiled around Shchukin’s legs. He was knocked to the ground, and the shiny pistol bounced to one side. Shchukin cried out mightily, then gasped for air, and then the rings covered him completely except for his head. A coil passed over his head once, tearing off his scalp, and his head cracked. No more shots were heard in the sovkhoz. Everything was drowned out by an overlying hissing sound. And in reply to it, the wind brought in the distant howling from Kontsovka, but now it was no longer possible to tell what kind of howling it was—canine or human.
X. CATASTROPHE
Bulbs were burning brightly in the office of Izvestia, and the fat editor at the lead table was making up the second page, using dispatch-telegrams “Around the Union of Republics.” One galley caught his eye; he examined it through his pince-nez and burst out laughing. He called the proofreaders from the proof room and the makeup man and he showed them all the galley. On the narrow strip of paper was printed:
The compositors roared with laughter.
“In my day,” said the editor, guffawing expansively, “when I was working for Vania Sytin on Russkoe Slovo,” some of the men would get so smashed they’d see elephants. That’s the truth. But now, it seems, they’re seeing ostriches.”
The proofreaders roared.
“That’s probably right, it’s an ostrich,” said the makeup man. “Should we use it, Ivan Vonifatievich?”
“Are you crazy?” answered the editor. “I’m amazed that the secretary let it past—it’s simply a drunken telegram.”
“It must have been quite a bender,” the compositors agreed, and the makeup man removed the communication about the ostrich from the table.
Therefore Izvestia came out the next day containing, as usual, a mass of interesting material, but not a hint of the Grachevka ostrich.
Assistant Professor Ivanov, who read Izvestia quite punctiliously, folded the paper in his office, yawned, commented, “Nothing interesting,” and started putting his white smock on. A bit later the burners went on in his office and the frogs began to croak. But Professor Persikov’s office was in confusion. The frightened Pankrat was standing at attention.
“I understand … Yes, sir,” he said.
Persikov handed him an envelope sealed with wax and said, “You go directly to the Department of Animal Husbandry to that director Avis, and you tell him right out that he is a swine. Tell him that l, Professor Persikov, said so. And give him the envelope.”
A fine thing, thought the pale Pankrat, and he took off with the envelope.
Persikov was raging.
“The devil only knows what’s going on,” he whimpered, pacing the office and rubbing his gloved hands. “It’s unprecedented mockery of me and of zoology. They’ve been bringing piles of these damned chicken eggs, but I haven’t been able to get anything essential for two months. As if it were so far to America! Eternal confusion, eternal outrage!” He began to count on his fingers: “Let’s say, ten days at most to locate them … very well, fifteen … even twenty … then two days for air freight across the ocean, a day from London to Berlin … From Berlin to us … six hours. It’s some kind of outrageous bungling!”
He attacked the telephone furiously and started to call someone. In his office everything was ready for some mysterious and highly dangerous experiments; on the table lay strips of cut paper prepared for sealing the doors, diving helmets with air hoses, and several cylinders, shiny as quicksilver, labeled: “Goodchem Trust” and “Do Not Touch.” And with drawings of a skull and crossbones.
It took at least three hours for the professor to calm down and get to some minor tasks. That is what he did. He worked at the institute until eleven in the evening, and therefore he did not know anything about what was happening outside the cream-colored walls. Neither the absurd rumor that had spread through Moscow about some strange snakes nor the strange dispatch in the evening papers, shouted by newsboys, had reached him, because Assistant Professor Ivanov was at the Art Theater watching Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich, and therefore, there was no one to inform the professor of the news.
Around midnight Persikov came home to Prechistenka and went to bed. Before going to sleep he read in bed an English article in the magazine News of Zoology which he received from London. He slept and all of Moscow, which seethes until late at night, slept—and only the huge gray building in a courtyard off Tverskaia Boulevard did not sleep. The whole building was shaken by the terrific roaring and humming of Izvestia’s printing presses. The editor’s office was in a state of incredible pandemonium. The editor, quite furious, red eyed, rushed about not knowing what to do and sending everyone to the devil’s mother. The makeup man was following him around, breathing wine fumes, and saying, “Oh, well, it’s not so bad, Ivan Vonifatievich, let’s publish a special supplement tomorrow. We can’t pull the whole issue out of the presses, you know!”
The compositors did not go home, but walked around in bunches, gathered in groups and read the telegrams that were now coming in every fifteen minutes all night long, each more peculiar and terrifying than the last. Alfred Bronsky’s peaked hat flicked about in the blinding pink light flooding the press room, and the mechanical fat man screaked and limped, appearing here, there, and everywhere. The entrance doors slammed incessantly, and reporters kept appearing all night long. All twelve telephones in the press room rang constantly, and the switchboard almost automatically answered every mysterious call with “busy, busy,” and the signal horns sang and sang in front of the sleepless young ladies at the switchboard.
The compositors clustered around the mechanical fat man, and the sea captain was saying to them, “They’ll have to send in airplanes with gas.”
“No other way,” answered the compositors. “God knows what’s going on out there.”
Then terrible Oedipal oaths shook the air, and someone’s squeaky voice screamed, “That Persikov should be shot!”
“What has Persikov to do with it?” someone answered in the crowd. “That son of a bitch on the sovkhoz—he’s the one should be shot!”
“They should have posted a guard!” someone exclaimed.
“But maybe it’s not the eggs at all!”
The whole building shook and hummed from the rolling presses, and the impression was created that the unprepossessing gray edifice was blazing with an electric fire.
The new day did not stop it. On the contrary, it only intensified it, even though the electricity went out. Motorcycles rolled into the asphalt yard one after the other, alternating with cars. All Moscow had awakened, and the white sheets of newspaper spread over it like birds. The sheets rustled in everyone’s hands, and by eleven in the morning the newsboys had run out of papers, in spite of the fact that Izvestia was coming out in editions of one and a half million that month. Professor Persikov left Prechistenka by bus and arrived at the institute. There something new awaited him. In the vestibule stood wooden boxes, three in number, neatly bound with metal straps and plastered with foreign labels in German—and the labels were dominated by a single Russian inscription in chalk: “Careful—Eggs.”
The professor was overwhelmed with joy. “At last!” he exclaimed. “Pankrat, break open the crates immediately and carefully, so none are crushed. They go into my office.”
Pankrat immediately carried out the order, and within fifteen minutes the professor’s voice began to rage in his office, which was strewn with sawdust and scraps of paper.
“What are they up to? Making fun of me, or what?” the professor howled, shaking his fists and turning the eggs in his hands. “He’s some kind of animal, not an Avis. I won’t allow him to laugh at me. What is this, Pankrat?”
“Eggs, sir,” Pankrat answered dolefully.
“Chicken eggs, you understand, chicken eggs, the devil take them! What to hell do I need them for? Let them send them to that scalawag on his sovkhoz!”
Persikov rushed to the telephone in the corner, but he did not have time to call.
“Vladimir Ipatich! Vladimir Ipatich!” Ivanov’s voice thundered from the institute corridor.
Persikov tore himself away from the phone, and Pankrat dashed aside, making way for the assistant professor. Contrary to his gentlemanly custom, the latter ran into the room without removing his gray hat, which was sitting on the back of his head. He had a newspaper in his hands.
“Do you know what’s happened, Vladimir Ipatich?” he cried, waving in front of Persikov’s face a sheet of paper headed Special Supplement and graced in the center with a brightly colored picture.
“No, but listen to what they’ve done!” Persikov shouted in reply, without listening. “They’ve decided to surprise me with chicken eggs. This Avis is an utter idiot, just look!”
Ivanov was completely dumbfounded. He stared at the opened crates in horror, then at the newspaper, and his eyes almost jumped out of his head. “So that’s it! he muttered, gasping, “Now I see … No, Vladimir Ipatich, just take a look.” He unfolded the newspaper in a flash and pointed to the colored picture with trembling fingers. It showed an olive-colored, yellow-spotted snake, coiling like a terrifying fire hose against a strange green background. It had been taken from above, from a light plane which had cautiously dived over the snake. “What would you say that is, Vladimir Ipatich?”
Persikov pushed his spectacles up onto his forehead, then slipped them over his eyes, studied the picture, and said with extreme astonishment, “What the devil! It’s … why, it’s an anaconda, a water boa!”
Ivanov threw down his hat, sat down heavily on a chair, and said, punctuating every word with a bang of his fist on the table, “Vladimir Ipatich, this anaconda is from the Smolensk province. It’s something monstrous! Do you understand, that good-for-nothing has hatched snakes instead of chickens, and, do you understand, they have had progeny at the same phenomenal rate as the frogs!”
“What?” Persikov screamed, and his face turned purple. “You’re joking, Peter Stepanovich … Where from?”
Ivanov was speechless for a moment, then he recovered his voice, and jabbing his finger at the open crate, where the tips of the white eggs gleamed in the yellow sawdust, he said, “That’s where from.”
“Wha-a-t!” howled Persikov, beginning to understand.
Ivanov shook both of his clenched fists quite confidently and exclaimed, “You can be sure. They sent your order for snake and ostrich eggs to the sovkhoz and the chicken eggs to you by mistake.”
“My God … my God,” Persikov repeated, and turning green in the face, he began to sink onto the revolving stool.
Pankrat stood utterly dumbfounded at the door, turned pale, and was speechless.
Ivanov jumped up, grabbed the paper, and underscoring a line with a sharp nail, he shouted into the professor’s ears, “Well, they’re going to have fun now. Vladimir Ipatich, you look.” And he bellowed out loud, reading the first passage that caught his eye on the crumpled page, “The snakes are moving in hordes toward Mozhaisk … laying incredible quantities of eggs. Eggs have been seen in the Dukhovsk district … Crocodiles and ostriches have appeared. Special troop units … and detachments of the GPV halted the panic in Viazma after setting fire to the woods outside the town to stop the onslaught of the reptiles …”
Persikov, turning all colors, bluish-white, with insane eyes, rose from his stool and began to scream, gasping for breath, “Anaconda … anaconda … water boa! My God!” Neither Ivanov nor Pankrat had ever seen him in such a state.
The professor tore off his tie in one swoop, ripped the buttons from his shirt, turned a terrible livid purple like a man having a stroke, and staggering, with utterly glazed, glassy eyes, he dashed out somewhere. His shouts resounded under the stone archways of the institute. “Anaconda … anaconda,” thundered the echo.
“Catch the professor!” Ivanov shrieked to Pankrat, who was dancing up and down in place with terror. “Get him some water! He’s having a stroke!”
XI. BATTLE AND DEATH
The frenzied electric night was ablaze in Moscow. Every light was on, and there was not a place in any apartment where there were no lamps on with their shades removed. Not a single person slept in a single apartment anywhere in Moscow, which had a population of four million, except the youngest children. In every apartment people ate and drank whatever was at hand; in every apartment people were crying out; and every minute distorted faces looked out the windows from all floors, gazing up at the sky which was crisscrossed from all directions with search lights. Every now and then white lights flared up in the sky, casting pale, melting cones over Moscow, and they would fade and vanish. The sky hummed steadily with the drone of low-flying planes. It was especially terrible on Tverskaia-Yamskaia Street. Every ten minutes trains arrived at the Alexander Station, made up helter-skelter of freight and passenger cars of every class and even of tank cars, all covered with fear-crazed people who then rushed down Tverskaia-Yamskaia in a dense mass, riding buses, riding on the roofs of trolleys, crushing one another, and falling under the wheels. At the station, rattling, disquieting bursts of gunfire banged out every now and then over the heads of the crowd: the troops were trying to stop the panic of the demented running along the railway tracks from the Smolensk province to Moscow. Now and then the station windows flew out with a crazy light gulping sound, and all the locomotives were howling. All of the streets were strewn with discarded and trampled placards, and the same placards—under fiery red reflectors—stared down from the walls. All of them were already known to everyone, so nobody read them. They proclaimed martial law in Moscow. They threatened penalties for panic and reported that unit after unit of the Red army, armed with gas, was departing for Smolensk province. But the placards could not stop the howling night. In their apartments people were dropping and breaking dishes and flowerpots; they were running around, knocking against corners; they were packing and unpacking bundles and valises in the vain hope of making their way to Kalancha Square, to the Yaroslavl or Nikolaev stations. Alas, all stations leading to the north and east had been cordoned off by the heaviest line of infantry, and huge trucks with rocking and clanging chains, loaded to the top with crates on which sat soldiers in peaked helmets, with bayonets bristling in all directions, were carrying off the gold reserves from the cellars of the People’s Commissariat of Finance and huge boxes marked “Handle with Care. Tretiakov Art Gallery.” Automobiles were roaring and running all over Moscow.
Far on the horizon the sky trembled with the reflection of fires, and the thick August blackness was shaken by the continuous booming of howitzers.
Toward morning a serpent of cavalry passed through utterly sleepless Moscow, which had not put out a single light. Its thousands of hooves clattered on the pavement as it moved up Tverskaia, sweeping everything out of its path, squeezing everything else into doorways and show windows, breaking out the windows as they did so. The ends of its scarlet cowls dangled on the gray backs, and the tips of its lances pierced the sky. The milling, screaming crowd seemed to recover immediately at the sight of the serried ranks pushing forward, splitting apart the seething ocean of madness. People in the crowds on the sidewalks began to roar encouragingly:
“Long live the cavalry!” cried frenzied female voices.
“Long live!” echoed the men.
“They’ll crush me! They are crushing me! …” someone howled somewhere.
“Help!” was shouted from the sidewalks.
Packs of cigarettes, silver coins, and watches began to fly into the ranks from the sidewalks; some women hopped down onto the pavement and risking their bones they trudged along beside the mounted columns, clutching at the stirrups and kissing them. Occasionally the voices of platoon leaders rose over the continuous clatter of hooves: “Shorten up on the reins!”
Somewhere someone began a gay and rollicking song, and the faces under the dashing scarlet caps swayed over the horses in the flickering light of neon signs. Now and then, interrupting the columns of horsemen with their uncovered faces, came strange mounted figures in strange hooded helmets, with hoses flung over their shoulders and cylinders fastened to straps across their backs. Behind them crept huge tank trucks with the longest sleeves and hoses, like fire engines, and heavy, pavement-crushing caterpillar tanks, hermetically sealed and their narrow firing slits gleaming. Also interrupting the mounted columns were cars which rolled along, solidly encased in gray armor, with the same kind of tubes protruding and with white skulls painted on their sides, inscribed: “Gas” and “Goodchem.”
“Save us, brother!” the people cried from the sidewalks.
“Beat the snakes! … Save Moscow!”
“The mothers … The mothers …,” curses rippled through the ranks. Cigarette packs leaped through the illuminated night air, and white teeth grinned at the demented people from atop the horses. A hollow, heart-rending song began to spread through the ranks:
… no ace, no queen, no jack,
We’ll beat the reptiles; without doubt,
Four cards are plenty for this pack …
Rolling peals of “hurrah” rose up over this whole mass, because the rumor had spread that at the head of all the columns, on a horse, rode the aging, graying commander of the huge cavalry who had become legendary ten years before. The crowd howled and the roars of “hurrah!” “hurrah!” swept up into the sky, somewhat calming frantic hearts.
The institute was sparsely lit. Events reached it only as vague, fragmentary, distant echoes. Once a volley of shots burst fanlike under the fiery clock near the Manège: soldiers were shooting on the spot some looters who had tried to rob an apartment on Volkhonka. There was little automobile traffic on this street—it was all massing toward the railway stations. In the professor’s study, where a single lamp burned dimly, casting light on the table, Persikov sat with his head in his hands, silent. Layers of smoke were floating around him. The ray in the box had gone dark. The frogs in the terraria were silent because they were already asleep. The professor was not reading or working. At one side, on a narrow strip of paper under his left elbow, lay the evening edition of news dispatches reporting that all of Smolensk was in flames, and that the artillery was shelling the Mozhaisk forest all over, sector by sector, to destroy the heaps of crocodile eggs piled in all the damp ravines. It was reported that a squadron of planes had been extremely successful near Viazma, flooding almost the entire district with gas, but that the number of human victims in the area was incalculable, because instead of abandoning the district following the rules for orderly evacuation, the people had panicked and rushed around in divided groups in all directions, at their own risk and terror. It was reported that a separate Caucasus cavalry division near Mozhaisk had won a brilliant victory over flocks of ostriches, hacking them all to pieces and destroying huge caches of ostrich eggs. In doing this the division itself had sustained insignificant losses. It was reported by the government that in case it proved impossible to halt the reptiles within two hundred versts of the capital, the latter would be evacuated in complete order. Workers and employees should maintain complete calm. The government would take the sternest measures to prevent a repetition of the Smolensk events. There, thanks to panic caused by the unexpected attack of rattlesnakes—several thousand of which appeared—the people had started hopeless, wholesale exit, leaving burning stoves—and the city began to catch fire everywhere. It was reported that Moscow had enough provisions to last for at least six months and that the Council of the Commander-in-Chief was undertaking prompt measures to fortify all apartments in order to conduct the battle with the snakes in the very streets of the capital in the event that the Red armies and air forces failed to halt the advance of the reptiles.
The professor read none of this; he stared ahead, glassy-eyed, and smoked. Besides him, there were only two other people at the institute—Pankrat and the housekeeper, Maria Stepanovna, who every now and then would break into tears. The old woman had not slept for three nights, spending them in the professor’s office, where he adamantly refused to leave his only remaining, now extinguished chamber. Now Maria Stepanovna was huddled on the oilcloth couch in a shadow in the corner, and she was keeping silent in sorrowful meditation, watching the kettle with some tea for the professor coming to a boil on the tripod over the gas burner. The institute was silent, and everything happened abruptly.
From the sidewalk there was suddenly such an outburst of rancorous shouts that Maria Stepanovna started and cried out. Flashlights flickered in the street, and Pankrat’s voice was heard in the vestibule. The professor was hardly aware of this noise. He raised his head for a second and muttered “Ooh … they’re going crazy … What can I do now’?” And he again fell into his stupor. But it was rudely broken. The iron doors of the institute on Herzen Street began a terrible clangor, and all of the walls began to shake. Then the solid mirrored wall in the adjoining office crashed. The glass in the professor’s office began to tinkle and fly to pieces, and a gray brick bounced through the window smashing the glass table. The frogs scuttled around in their terraria and set up a cry. Maria Stepanovna ran around shrieking, rushed to the professor, seized him by the hands, and shouted, “Run, Vladimir Ipatich, run!”
The professor rose from his revolving stool, straightened himself up, and curled his index finger into a little hook, his eyes recovering for an instant the old sharp glitter reminiscent of the old, inspired Persikov. “I’m not going anywhere,” he pronounced. “This is simply stupidity. They are rushing around like lunatics … And if all Moscow has gone insane, then where can l go? And please stop screaming. What do I have to do with this. Pankrat!” he called, pressing a button.
He probably wanted Pankrat to stop all the commotion, something which generally he had never liked. But Pankrat could no longer do anything. The banging had ended with the institute doors flying open and a distant popping of shots; and then the whole stone institute shook with the thunder of running feet, shouts, and crashing windows. Maria Stepanovna clutched at Persikov’s sleeve and began to drag him back; but he pushed her away, drew himself up to his full height, and just as he was, in his white lab coat, he walked out into the corridor. “Well?” he asked. The doors swung open, and the first thing to appear in them was the back of a military uniform with a red chevron and a star on the left sleeve. He was retreating from the door, through which a furious mob was surging forward, and he was firing his revolver. Then he started to run past Persikov, shouting to him, “Save yourself, professor! I can’t do anything else!”
His words were answered by a shriek from Maria Stepanovna. The officer shot past Persikov, who was standing there like a white statue, and vanished in the darkness of the winding corridors at the opposite end.
People flew through the door, howling.
“Beat him! kill him!”
“Public enemy!”
“You let the snakes loose!”
Distorted faces and ripped clothing jumped through the corridors, and someone fired a shot. Sticks flashed. Persikov stepped back a little, barring the door to his office, where Maria Stepanovna was kneeling on the floor in terror; and he spread out his arms, as one crucified … he did not want to let the mob in, and he yelled irascibly, “This is utter lunacy … You are absolute wild animals. What do you want?” And he bellowed, “Get out of here!” and completed his speech with a shrill, familiar cry, “Pankrat, throw them out!”
But Pankrat could no longer throw anyone out. Pankrat, trampled and torn, his skull crushed, lay motionless in the vestibule, while more and more crowds tore past him, paying no attention to the fire of the police in the street.
A short man with crooked, apelike legs, wearing a torn jacket and a torn shirt twisted to one side, dashed out ahead of the others, leaped toward Persikov, and with a terrible blow from his stick he split open Persikov’s skull. Persikov tottered and began to collapse sideways. His last words were, “Pankrat … Pankrat …”
Maria Stepanovna, who was guilty of nothing, was killed and torn to pieces in the office; the chamber in which the ray had gone out was smashed to bits, the terraria were smashed to bits, and the crazed frogs were flailed with sticks and trampled underfoot. The glass tables were dashed to pieces, the reflectors were dashed to pieces, and an hour later the institute was a mass of flames. Corpses were strewn around, cordoned off by a line of troops armed with electric pistols; and fire engines, pumping water from the hydrants, were pouring streams through all the windows, from which long, roaring tongues of flame were bursting.
XII. A FROSTY Deus ex Machina
On the night of August 19 to 20 an unprecedented frost fell on the country, unlike anything any of its oldest inhabitants had ever seen. It came and lasted two days and two nights, bringing the thermometer down to eleven degrees below zero. Frenzied Moscow locked all doors, all windows. Only toward the end of the third day did the populace realize that the frost had saved the capital, and the boundless expanses which it governed, and on which the terrible catastrophe of 1928 had fallen. The cavalry at Mozhaisk had lost three-quarters of its complement and was near prostration, and the gas squadrons had not been able to stop the onslaught of the vile reptiles, which were moving toward Moscow in a semicircle from the West, Southwest, and South.
The frost killed them. Two days and two nights at eleven below zero had proved too much for the abominable herds, and when the frost lifted after the 20th of August, leaving nothing but dampness and wetness, leaving the air dank, leaving all the greenery blasted by the unexpected cold, there was no longer anything left to fight. The calamity was over. Woods, fields, and infinite bogs were still piled high with multicolored eggs, often covered with the strange, unearthly, unique pattern that Feit—who had vanished without a trace—had once mistaken for mud, but now these eggs were quite harmless. They were dead, the embryos within lifeless.
For a long time the infinite expanses of land were still putrescent with numberless corpses of crocodiles and snakes which had been called to life by the mysterious ray born under the eyes of genius on Herzen Street—but they were no longer dangerous; the fragile creatures of the putrescent, hot, tropical bogs had perished in two days, leaving a terrible stench, disintegration, and decay throughout the territory of three provinces.
There were long epidemics; there were widespread diseases for a long time, caused by the corpses of snakes and men; and for a long time the army combed the land, no longer equipped with gases, but with sapper gear, kerosene tanks and hoses, clearing the earth. It cleared the earth, and everything was over toward the spring of 1929.
And in the spring of 1929 Moscow again began to dance, glitter, and flash lights; and again, as before, the mechanical carriages rolled through the traffic, and the lunar sickle hung as if on a fine thread over the helmet of the Cathedral of Christ; and on the site of the two-storey institute that had burned down in August 1928, a new zoological palace rose, and Assistant Professor Ivanov directed it, but Persikov was no longer there. Never again did the persuasively hooked index finger rise before anyone’s eyes, and never again was the squeaking, croaking voice heard by anyone. The ray and the catastrophe of 1928 were long talked and written about by the whole world, but then the name of Professor Vladimir Ipatievich Persikov was shrouded in mist and sank into darkness, as did the red ray he had discovered on that April night. The ray itself was never again captured, although the elegant gentleman and now full professor, Peter Stepanovich Ivanov, had occasionally made attempts. The raging mob had smashed the first chamber on the night of Persikov’s murder. Three chambers were burned up in the Nikolsky sovkhoz, the “Red Ray,” during the first battle of an air squadron with the reptiles, and no one succeeded in reconstructing them. No matter how simple the combination of lenses and mirrored clusters of light had been, the combination was never achieved again, in spite of Ivanov’s efforts. Evidently this required something special, besides knowledge, something which was possessed by only one man in the world—the late Professor Vladimir Ipatievich Persikov.
(Moscow, October 1924)
Translated by Carl R. Proffer; ed. by A.L. and M.K.
AZAZELLO’S CRÈME (From Chapter 20)
The moon hung, full, in the clear evening sky, visible through the branches of a maple. Lime-trees and acacias patterned the ground in the garden with intricate blotches. The streetlamp’s three-sided aperture, open but masked by a blind, gave off a maniacal electric glow. In Margarita Nikolaevna’s boudoir all the lights were on and they illuminated the complete disorder of the room. <… >
Margarita Nikolaevna sat before her vanity with nothing more than a bathrobe thrown over her naked body, wearing black suede slippers. The gold bracelet-watch lay before her, together with the little box she had received from Azazello, and Margarita did not shift her gaze from the face.
At times it seemed to her that the watch must be broken and the hands not in motion. But they were moving, if very slowly, as if they were sticking, and at long last the big hand reached twenty-nine minutes into the tenth hour. Margarita’s heart was pounding terribly, so that she wasn’t even able to reach for the box. Getting hold of herself, Margarita opened it and saw inside a greasy yellowish cream. It seemed to smell of swamp mud. With the tip of her finger Margarita smeared a small dollop of the cream on her palm, whereupon the smell of the swamp and the forest grew stronger, and then with her palm began to massage the cream into her forehead and cheeks.
The cream was easy to work in, and, it seemed to Margarita was already evaporating. After several applications Margarita glanced in the mirror and dropped the box straight onto the watch crystal, so it was instantly covered with cracks. Margarita closed her eyes, glanced into the mirror a second time, and burst into wild laughter.
Her brows, which had been tweezed to a thread, had thickened and stretched in even black arches over eyes that had suddenly turned green. The delicate vertical wrinkle across the bridge of her nose, which had appeared in October when the Master disappeared, had faded without a trace. Gone as well were the yellowish shadows at the her temples and the two barely perceptible webs at the outer corners of her eyes. The skin on her cheeks was infused with an even rosy tint, her brow had become white and smooth, and her salon coiffure had come undone.
From the mirror the thirty-year-old Margarita was regarded by a woman of twenty, with dark naturally curly hair, who was shaking with laughter.
When she had her laugh Margarita took one bound that left the robe behind, dipped deep into light greasy cream and with strong strokes began to rub it over her body. Her body immediately became rose pink and warm. Then in an instant, as if someone had withdrawn a needle from her brain, the pain in her temple, which had ached all evening after her encounter in the Alexander Gardens, went away. The muscles in her arms and legs grew stronger, and then Margarita’s body lost all its weight.
She leapt upwards and hovered in the air over the carpet, then she was slowly pulled downwards and alit.
“Hurrah for the crème, the crème!”—Margarita cried, flinging herself into an armchair.
The anointing had changed not only her external appearance. Within her now everywhere, in each tiny part, joy was seething, joy which she perceived as tiny bubbles prickling over her entire body. Margarita felt herself to be free, free of everything. Moreover she understood with all possible clarity that precisely what her morning presentiment had spoken of had happened, and that she was leaving the apartment and her past life forever. < … >
Her mind completely relieved, Margarita flew back to the bedroom and on her heels came Natasha with her arms full of things. And at once all these things, the wooden hangers with their dresses, the lace scarves, the dark-blue silk sandals with their straps and laces—all this fell to the floor, and Natasha threw up her freed hands.
“Well? How do I look?” Margarita Nikolaevna shrilled loudly.
“How can it be?” whispered Natasha, stumbling back. “How are you doing that, Margarita Nikolaevna?”
“It’s the crème! Yes, the crème, the crème!” Margarita replied, pointing to the shiny gold box and twirling before the mirror.
Natasha, forgetting the crumpled dress on the floor, ran to the vanity and with greedy sparkling eyes stared at the remains of the ointment. Her lips whispered something. She turned back to Margarita and murmured, with a sort of reverence:
“And your skin? Your skin! Margarita Nikolaevna, your skin is glowing!” But then she remembered herself, ran to the dress, picked it up and began to shake it out.
“Let it be! Stop it!”—Margarita cried—“The hell with it. Throw it all out. Better yet, keep it to remember me by. I’m telling you, to remember me by. Take everything in the room!”
As if dazed, a motionless Natasha gazed at Margarita, then threw her arms around her, kissing her and crying:
“Like satin! It glows! Satin! And your eyebrows!”
Take all these rags, take the perfume, and haul it off to your trunk, hide it,” cried Margarita, “but don’t take the jewelry or they’ll say you stole it!”
Whatever came to hand Natasha gathered up into a bundle, dresses, shoes, stockings and lingerie, and ran out of the bedroom.
Through the open window at that moment, from somewhere across the way a thunderous virtuoso waltz rang out, and one could hear the puffing of a car approaching the gates. < … > The car roared past. The gate banged open and footsteps were heard on the stones of the walkway.
“That’s Nikolai Ivanovich, I know his walk,” thought Margarita. “I must do something amusing and interesting as a farewell.” < … >
Just then behind Margarita in the bedroom the phone rang. Margarita tore herself away from the windowsill and, forgetting Nikolai Ivanovich, seized the receiver.
“Azazello here,” came through the receiver.
“Dear, dear Azazello!” cried Margarita.
“It’s time. Fly away,” said Azazello, and by his tone it was clear that he was pleased by Margarita’s sincere, joyful outburst. “When you fly over the gates shout out—‘Invisible.’ First fly around a little above the city, to get used to it, then go south, away from town, and head straight for the river. They’re waiting for you!”
Margarita hung up and just then, in the next room something began to thump woodenly and beat against the door. Margarita threw it open and a broom, bristles up, dancing, flew into the room. Its handle kept up a tattoo on the floorboards, it kicked and strained towards the window. Margarita shrieked in ecstasy and leapt astride it. Only then did the rider consider that in all the tumult she had forgotten to get dressed. She galloped over to the bed and seized the first thing that came to hand, some sort of light blue chemise. Waving it like a battle-flag she flew through the window. And above the garden the waltz rang out more strongly.
Margarita slid down from the windowsill and saw Nikolai Ivanovich sitting on the garden bench. He gaze was fixed on her as he listened in complete stupefaction to the cries and the din coming from the bedroom of the upstairs tenants.
“Farewell, Nikolai Ivanovich!” shouted Margarita, doing a little dance in front of him.
He moaned and moved closer, groping his way down the bench and letting his briefcase fall to the ground.
“Farewell forever! I’m flying away!” cried Margarita, drowning out the waltz. Whereupon she understood that the blouse she was holding was completely useless to her, and, laughing maliciously, she dropped it over Nikolai Ivanovich’s head. Blinded, Nikolai Ivanovich tumbled from the bench onto the brick walkway.
Margarita turned to look once more at the apartment where she had been unhappy for so long, and in the glowing window she saw the face of Natasha, distorted by amazement.
“Good-bye, Natasha!” cried Margarita and shook the broom. “Invisible, Invisible!” still louder she shouted and through the branches of the maple that lashed at her face, over the gates, she flew out above the street. And in her wake flew a waltz gone mad.
THE FLIGHT (From Chapter 21)
Invisible and free! Invisible and free!—Flying the length of her own street brought Margarita to a second street, which intersected the first at a right angle. This patched, darned, crooked and long street with its fuel shop with the crooked door, where they sold kerosene by the pitcher and insecticide by the bottle, she flew over in an instant and immediately grasped that, completely free and invisible as she was, all the same she must be a bit more circumspect in her delight. It was only by some sort of miracle that she was able to brake and did not dash herself to pieces on the old crooked lamp post at the corner. Swerving away from it, Margarita grasped the broom more firmly and flew on at a slower speed, watching out for electrical wires and for signs hung out over the sidewalk. < … >
The street beneath her rolled and fell away. In its place beneath Margarita’s feet was only an assemblage of roofs, dissected at the corners by glowing pathways. All of this unexpectedly veered to one side, and the chain of lights blurred and brightened.
Margarita made another bound, and then the whole roof assemblage fell through the earth and in its place there appeared below her a lake of trembling electric lights, and that lake made an abrupt vertical ascent and reappeared above her head, while the moon shone below her feet. Understanding that she had turned upside down, Margarita righted herself and glancing back, saw that there was no more lake, just a rosy glow on the horizon. That too disappeared in a second and Margarita saw she was alone with the moon sailing above her and to her left. Her hair had long since arranged itself in a shock, and the moonlight, whistling by, bathed her body. Judging by the fact that beneath her the two rows of scattered lights had merged into two uninterrupted lines, and by the speed of their retreat, Margarita guessed that she was flying at a monstrous speed, and was surprised she wasn’t out of breath.
After another few seconds, far below, in the earthy blackness, a new dawn of electric light flared up and streamed past the flyer’s feet, but it immediately turned into a ribbon of light and was swallowed up. Another few seconds, the same again.
“Cities! It’s cities!” cried Margarita.
After this, two or three times she saw beneath her dimly sparkling sabres nestled in their black cases, and she understood that these were rivers.
Looking up and to the left, the flyer saw that the moon above her was streaking madly back in the direction of Moscow and at the same time in a strange way was standing still, so that clearly visible on its face was some sort of enigmatic, dark marking, a dragon, or a winged horse, its sharp muzzle turned towards the abandoned city.
At that point Margarita was seized by the idea that, really, it was useless for her to fly her broom at such a frenzied speed, that she was depriving herself of the opportunity to look at anything properly, to truly drink in the flight. Something told her that wherever she was going they would wait for her, and that she had no reason to bore herself flying at such an insane speed and altitude. Margarita pointed the broom’s bristles forward, so that the handle rose and, sharply decreasing its speed, headed towards the ground. And this swoop downwards, as if on a transparent sled, gave her the very greatest pleasure. The surface grew nearer, and from what had been formless dark lees now materialized the mysteries and delights of the earth on a moonlit night. The earth rose to meet her, and Margarita was already enveloped by the scent of the greening forest. Margarita flew just above the mists rising from a dewy meadow, then over a pond. Beneath her there sang a chorus of frogs and somewhere in the distance a train whistle sounded, which for some reason troubled her heart. In a moment Margarita caught sight of it. It crawled along slowly, like a caterpillar, spitting sparks into the air. Passing it, Margarita flew over another watery mirror in which a second moon swam beneath her feet, she sank still lower went on, her feet nearly brushing the tops of immense pines.
A deep hum of rushing air became audible and began to overtake Margarita. To this noise of something speeding like a bullet there gradually accrued the sound of a woman’s laughter, audible for many miles. Margarita glanced back and saw that some sort of complicated dark shape was catching up with her. Closing in on Margarita it became more distinct, making it possible to see that it was someone riding astride. And then it became perfectly distinct: Natasha was pulling up, overtaking Margarita.
Completely naked, tousled hair flying on the wind, Natasha was riding on a fat pig which clutched a briefcase in its front trotters while its rear trotters thrashed the air agonizingly. A pince-nez which had slipped off his nose dangled along side of the pig by its cord and kept winking on and off in the moonlight. His hat kept slipping over his eyes. Looking closely, Margarita recognized the pig as Nikolai Ivanovich, whereupon her own laughter pealed out above the forest, merging with Natasha’s.
“Natashka!”shouted Margarita in a piercing voice. “Did you use the crème?
“Darling!!” Natasha’s cries roused the slumbering piney woods.” My Queen of France, I used it on his bald spot too, on him too!”
“My princess!” the pig moaned tearfully as he carried his rider at a gallop.
“Darling, Margarita Nikolaevna,” screamed Natasha, cantering abreast of Margarita, “I confess, I did use the crème. We want to live and to fly the same as you. Forgive me, my lady, but I’m not going back, not for anything. Oh it’s so good, Margarita Nikolaevna!—He made me an offer,” here Natasha’s finger poked the neck of the bewildered, panting pig, “an offer! What did you call me, eh?” she screamed, bending level with the pig’s ear.
“Goddess!” he set up a wail, “I can’t fly this fast. I could lose important papers, Natalia Prokofievna, I protest!”
“The hell with you and your papers!” cried Natasha with a mocking laugh.
“Really Natalia Prokofievna, somebody might hear us!” the pig moaned imploringly. < … >
“Margarita! Majesty! Ask them to leave me a witch! They’ll do anything for you, you have the power! And Margarita replied: “Done, I promise.”
“Thank you,” shrieked Natasha and suddenly shouted sharply and somehow plaintively: “Hey there, hey! Faster! Faster! Get moving!”
She dug her heels into the pig’s flanks, depleted by the flight, and the latter bolted so that once again the air unraveled and in an instant Natasha was already visible in the distance, then completely disappeared, and the roar of her wake dispersed.
Margarita flew on slowly as before over a deserted and unfamiliar spot, above some hills dotted with occasional boulders lying between immense lone pines. Margarita was not flying over the tops of these, but between their trunks, silvered on one side by the moon. The flyer’s delicate shadow slid over the ground in front of her, the moon was now shining on Margarita’s back.
Margarita felt the proximity of water and guessed that her destination was near. The pines parted and Margarita slowly floated towards a chalk cliff. Over the cliff down below, in shadow there lay a river. Mist hovered above and clung to the shrubs on the cliff, but the opposite shore was flat and low-lying. On it, beneath a lone group of spreading trees, a bonfire flickered and some sort of moving figures could be made out. It seemed to Margarita that a buzzing, raucous music emanated from the spot. Beyond it as far as the eye could reach on the silvered plain there was no other sign of life or humanity.
Translanslated by A. L. and M. K.