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"Роковые яйца"
Translated by Kathleen Gook-Horujy
OCR: http://home.freeuk.net/russica2/
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Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) was born in Kiev into the family of a
teacher at a religious academy, endured the hardships of wars and
revolutions, starved, became a playwright for the country's finest theatre,
knew fame, persecution, public ovations and forced muteness. His best works,
including the famous The Master and Margarita, were not published until
after his death. His dramas were struck off the repertoire-The Days of the
Turbins at the Moscow Arts Theatre and his plays about Moliere and Pushkin.
During his lifetime, not a single major anthology of his short stories was
ever published
Bulgakov's works have since been recognised as classics; his books have
been published in all the languages of the civilised world, studies of him
have reached the four-figure mark and the number is still rising; editions
of his books in the USSR have run into millions. He has won the highest
praise from Gabriel Garcia Marquez of Columbia and Kendzaburo Oe of Japan.
Kirghiz writer Chinghiz Aitmatov looks on Bulgakov as his teacher. Mikhail
Bulgakov's books have at last come into their own with their wild fantasy
and their prophetic ideas about man and humanity. Our collection includes
one of his most vivid stories, "The Fateful Eggs".
On the evening of 16 April, 1928, the Zoology Professor of the Fourth
State University and Director of the Moscow Zoological Institute, Persikov,
went into his laboratory at the Zoological Institute in Herzen Street. The
Professor switched on the frosted ceiling light and looked around him.
This ill-fated evening must be regarded as marking the beginning of the
appalling catastrophe, just as Professor Vladimir Ipatievich Persikov must
be seen as the prime cause of the said catastrophe.
He was fifty-eight years old. With a splendid bald head, like a pestle,
and tufts of yellowish hair sticking out at the sides. His face was
clean-shaven, with a slightly protruding lower lip which gave it a slightly
cantankerous expression. Tall and round-shouldered, he had small bright eyes
and tiny old-fashioned spectacles in silver frames on a red nose. He spoke
in a grating, high, croaking voice and one of his many idiosyncrasies was to
crook the index finger of his right hand and screw up his eyes, whenever he
was saying something weighty and authoritative. And since he always spoke
authoritatively, because his knowledge in his field was quite phenomenal,
the crooked finger was frequently pointed at those with whom the Professor
was conversing. Outside his field, that is, zoology, embriology, anatomy,
botany and geography, however, Professor Persikov said almost nothing at
all.
Professor Persikov did not read the newspapers or go to the theatre.
His wife had run away with a tenor from the Zimin opera in 1913, leaving him
a note which read as follows:
"Your frogs make me shudder with intolerable loathing. I shall be
unhappy all my life because of them."
The Professor did not marry again and had no children. He was
short-tempered, but did not bear grudges, liked cloudberry tea and lived in
Prechistenka Street in a flat with five rooms, one of which was occupied by
the old housekeeper, Maria Stepanovna, who looked after the Professor like a
nanny.
In 1919 three of the Professor's five rooms were taken away. Whereupon
he announced to Maria Stepanovna:
"If they don't stop this outrageous behaviour, I shall leave the
country, Maria Stepanovna."
Had the Professor carried out this plan, he would have experienced no
difficulty in obtaining a place in the zoology department of any university
in the world, for he was a really first-class scholar, and in the particular
field which deals with amphibians had no equal, with the exception of
professors William Weckle in Cambridge and Giacomo Bartolomeo Beccari in
Rome. The Professor could read four languages, as Mvell as Russian, and
spoke French and German like a native. Persikov did not carry out his
intention of going abroad, and 1920 was even worse than 1919. All sorts of
things happened, one after the other. Bolshaya Nikitskaya was renamed Herzen
Street. Then the clock on the wall of the corner building in Herzen Street
and Mokhovaya stopped at a quarter past eleven and, finally, unable to
endure the perturbations of this remarkable year, eight magnificent
specimens of tree-frogs died in the Institute's terrariums, followed by
fifteen ordinary toads and an exceptional specimen of the Surinam toad.
Immediately after the demise of the toads which devastated that first
order of amphibians rightly called tailless, old Vlas, the Institute's
caretaker of many years' standing, who did not belong to any order of
amphibians, also passed on to a better world. The cause of his death,
incidentally, was the same as that of the unfortunate amphibians, and
Persikov diagnosed it at once:
"Undernourishment!"
The scientist was perfectly right. Vlas should have been fed with flour
and the toads with flour weevils, but the disappearance of the former
determined that of the latter likewise, and Persikov tried to shift the
twenty surviving specimens of tree-frogs onto a diet of cockroaches, but
then the cockroaches disappeared too, thereby demonstrating their hostile
attitude to war communism. Consequently, these last remaining specimens also
had to be thrown into the rubbish pits in the Institute yard.
The effect of these deaths on Persikov, particularly that of the
Surinam toad, is quite indescribable. For some reason he blamed them
entirely on the People's Commissar for Education.
Standing in his fur cap and galoshes in the corridor of the freezing
Institute, Persikov said to his assistant Ivanov, an elegant gentleman with
a fair pointed beard:
"Hanging's too good for him, Pyotr Stepanovich! What do they think
they're doing! They'll ruin the whole Institute! Eh? An exceptionally rare
male specimen of Pipa americana, thirteen centimetres long..."
Things went from bad to worse. When Vlas died the Institute windows
froze so hard that there were icy scrolls on the inside of the panes. The
rabbits, foxes, wolves and fish died, as well as every single grass-snake.
Persikov brooded silently for days on end, then caught pneumonia, but did
not die. When he recovered, he started coming to the Institute twice a week
and in the round hall, where for some reason it was always five degrees
below freezing point irrespective of the temperature outside, he delivered a
cycle of lectures on "The Reptiles of the Torrid Zone" in galoshes, a fur
cap with ear-flaps and a scarf, breathing out white steam, to an audience of
eight. The rest of the time he lay under a rug on the divan in Prechistenka,
in a room with books piled up to the ceiling, coughing, gazing into the jaws
of the fiery stove which Maria Stepanov-na stoked with gilt chairs, and
remembering the Surinam toad.
But all things come to an end. So it was with 'twenty and 'twenty-one,
and in 'twenty-two a kind of reverse process began. Firstly, in place of the
dear departed Vlas there appeared Pankrat, a young, but most promising
zoological caretaker, and the Institute began to be heated again a little.
Then in the summer with Pankrat's help Persikov caught fourteen common
toads. The terrariums came to life again... In 'twenty-three Persikov gave
eight lectures a week, three at the Institute and five at the University, in
'twenty-four thirteen a week, not including the ones at workers' schools,
and in the spring of 'twenty-five distinguished himself by failing no less
than seventy-six students, all on amphibians.
"What, you don't know the difference between amphibians and reptilia?"
Persikov asked. "That's quite ridiculous, young man. Amphibia have no
kidneys. None at all. So there. You should be ashamed of yourself. I expect
you're a Marxist, aren't you?"
"Yes," replied the devastated student, faintly.
"Well, kindly retake the exam in the autumn," Persikov said politely
and shouted cheerfully to Pankrat: "Send in the next one!"
Just as amphibians come to life after a long drought, with the first
heavy shower of rain, so Professor Persikov revived in 1926 when a joint
Americano-Russian company built fifteen fifteen-storey apartment blocks in
the centre of Moscow, beginning at the corner of Gazetny Lane and Tverskaya,
and 300 workers' cottages on the outskirts, each with eight apartments,
thereby putting an- end once and for all to the terrible and ridiculous
accommodation shortage which made life such a misery for Muscovites from
1919 to 1925.
In fact, it was a marvellous summer in Persikov's life, and
occasionally he would rub his hands with' a quiet, satisfied giggle,
remembering how he and Maria Stepanovna had been cooped up in two rooms. Now
the Professor had received all five back, spread himself, arranged his
two-and-a-half thousand books, stuffed animals, diagrams and specimens, and
lit the green lamp on the desk in his study.
You would not have recognised the Institute either. They painted it
cream, equipped the amphibian room with a special water supply system,
replaced all the plate glass with mirrors and donated five new microscopes,
glass laboratory tables, some 2,000-amp. arc lights, reflectors and museum
cases.
Persikov came to life again, and the whole world suddenly learnt of
this when a brochure appeared in December 1926 entitled "More About the
Reproduction of Polyplacophora or Chitons", 126 pp, Proceedings of the
Fourth University.
And in the autumn of 1927 he published a definitive work of 350 pages,
subsequently translated into six languages, including Japanese. It was
entitled "The Embryology of Pipae, Spadefoots and Frogs", price 3 roubles.
State Publishing House.
But in the summer of 1928 something quite appalling happened...
So, the Professor switched on the light and looked around. Then he
turned on the reflector on the long experimental table, donned his white
coat, and fingered some instruments on the table...
Of the thirty thousand mechanical carriages that raced" around Moscow
in 'twenty-eight many whizzed down Herzen Street, swishing over the smooth
paving-stones, and every few minutes a 16,22, 48 or 53 tram would career
round the corner from Herzen Street to Mokhovaya with much grinding and
clanging. A pale and misty crescent moon cast reflections of coloured lights
through the laboratory windows and was visible far away and high up beside
the dark and heavy dome of the Church of Christ the Saviour.
But neither the moon nor the Moscow spring bustle were of the slightest
concern to the Professor. He sat on his three-legged revolving stool turning
with tobacco-stained fingers the knob of a splendid Zeiss microscope, in
which there was an ordinary unstained specimen of fresh amoebas. At the very
moment when Persikov was changing the magnification from five to ten
thousand, the door opened slightly, a pointed beard and leather bib
appeared, and his assistant called:
"I've set up the mesentery, Vladimir Ipatych. Would you care to take a
look?"
Persikov slid quickly down from the stool, letting go of the knob
midway, and went into his assistant's room, twirling a cigarette slowly in
his fingers. There, on the glass table, a half-suffocated frog stiff with
fright and pain lay crucified on a cork mat, its transparent micaceous
intestines pulled out of the bleeding abdomen under the microscope.
"Very good," said Persikov, peering down the eye-piece of the
microscope.
He could obviously detect something very interesting in the frog's
mesentery, where live drops of blood were racing merrily along the vessels
as clear as daylight. Persikov quite forgot about his amoebas. He and Ivanov
spent the next hour-and-a-half taking turns at the microscope and exchanging
animated remarks, quite incomprehensible to ordinary mortals.
At last Persikov dragged himself away, announcing:
"The blood's coagulating, it can't be helped."
The frog's head twitched painfully and its dimming eyes said clearly:
"Bastards, that's what you are..."
Stretching his stiff legs, Persikov got up, returned to his laboratory,
yawned, rubbed his permanently inflamed eyelids, sat down on the stool and
looked into the microscope, his fingers about to move the knob. But move it
he did not. With his right eye Persikov saw the cloudy white plate and
blurred pale amoebas on it, but in the middle of the plate sat a coloured
tendril, like a female curl. Persikov himself and hundreds of his students
had seen this tendril many times before but taken no interest in it, and
rightly so. The coloured streak of light merely got in the way and indicated
that the specimen was out of focus. For this reason it was ruthlessly
eliminated with a single turn of the knob, which spread an even white light
over the plate. The zoologist's long fingers had already tightened on the
knob, when suddenly they trembled and let go. The reason for this was
Persikov's right eye. It tensed, stared in amazement and filled with alarm.
No mediocre mind to burden the Republic sat by the microscope. No, this was
Professor Persikov! All his mental powers were now concentrated in his right
eye. For five minutes or so in petrified silence the higher being observed
the lower one, peering hard at the out-of-focus specimen. There was complete
silence all around. Pankrat had gone to sleep in his cubby-hole in thes
vestibule, and only once there came a far-off gentle and musical tinkling of
glass in cupboards-that was Ivanov going out and locking his laboratory. The
entrance door groaned behind him. Then came the Professor's voice. To whom
his question was addressed no one knows.
"What on earth is that? I don't understand..."
A late lorry rumbled down Herzen Street, making the old walls of the
Institute shake. The shallow glass bowl with pipettes tinkled on the table.
The Professor turned pale and put his hands over the microscope, like a
mother whose child is threatened by danger. There could now be no question
of Persikov turning the knob. Oh no, now he was afraid that some external
force might push what he had seen out of his field of vision.
It was a full white morning with a strip of gold which cut across the
Institute's cream porch when the Professor left the microscope and walked
over to the window on stiff legs. With trembling fingers he pressed a
button, dense black shutters blotted out the morning and a wise scholarly
night descended on the room. Sallow and inspired, Persikov placed his feet
apart, staring at the parquet floor with his watering eyes, and exclaimed:
"But how can it be? It's monstrous! Quite monstrous, gentlemen," he
repeated, addressing the toads in the terrarium, who were asleep and made no
reply.
He paused, then went over to the button, raised the shutters, turned
out all the lights and looked into the microscope. His face grew tense and
he raised his bushy yellow eyebrows.
"Aha, aha," he muttered. "It's gone. I see. I understand," he drawled,
staring with crazed and inspired eyes at the extinguished light overhead.
"It's simple."
Again he let down the hissing shutters and put on the light. Then
looked into the microscope and grinned happily, almost greedily.
"I'll catch it," he said solemnly and gravely, crooking his finger.
"I'll catch it. Perhaps the sun will do it too."
The shutters shot up once more. Now you could see the sun. It was
shining on the walls of the Institute and slanting down onto the pavements
of Herzen Street. The Professor looked through the window, working out where
the sun would be in the afternoon. He kept stepping back and forwards, doing
a little dance, and eventually lay stomach down on the window-sill.
After that he got down to some important and mysterious work. He
covered the microscope with a bell glass. Then he melted a piece of
sealing-wax in the bluish flame of the Bun-sen burner, sealed the edge of
the glass to the table and made a thumb print on the blobs of wax. Finally
he turned off the gas and went out, locking the laboratory door firmly
behind him.
There was semi-darkness in the Institute corridors.
The Professor reached Pankrat's door and knocked for a long time to no
effect. At last something inside growled like a watchdog, coughed and
snorted and Pankrat appeared in the lighted doorway wearing long striped
underpants tied at the ankles. His eyes glared wildly at the scientist and
he whimpered softly with sleep.
"I must apologise for waking you up, Pankrat," said the
Professor, peering at him over his spectacles. "But please don't go
into my laboratory this morning, dear chap. I've left some work there that
must on no account be moved. Understand?"
"Grrr, yessir," Pankrat replied, not understanding a thing.
He staggered a bit and growled.
"Now listen here, Pankrat, you just wake up," the zoologist ordered,
prodding him lightly in the ribs, which produced a look of fright on
Pankrat's face and a glimmer of comprehension in his eyes. "I've locked the
laboratory," Persikov went on, "so you need not clean it until I come back.
Understand?"
"Yessir," Pankrat croaked.
"That's fine then, go back to bed."
Pankrat turned round, disappeared inside and collapsed onto the bed.
The Professor went into the vestibule. Putting on his grey summer coat and
soft hat, he remembered what he had observed in the microscope and stared at
his galoshes for a few seconds, as if seeing them for the first time. Then
he put on the left galosh and tried to put the right one over it, but it
wouldn't go on.
"What an incredible coincidence that he called me away," said the
scientist. "Otherwise I would never have noticed it. But what does it mean?
The devil only knows!.."
The Professor smiled, squinted at his galoshes, took off the left one
and put on the right. "Good heavens! One can't even imagine all the
consequences..." The Professor prodded off the left galosh, which had
irritated him by not going on top of the right, and walked to the front door
wearing one galosh only. He also lost his handkerchief and went out,
slamming the heavy door. On the porch he searched in his pockets for some
matches, patting his sides, found them eventually and set off down the
street with an unlit cigarette in his mouth.
The scientist did not meet a soul all the way to the church. There he
threw back his head and stared at the golden dome. The sun was licking it
avidly on one side.
"Why didn't I notice it before? What a coincidence! Well, I never!
Silly ass!" The Professor looked down and stared pensively at his strangely
shod feet. "Hm, what shall I do? Go back to Pankrat? No, there's no waking
him. It's a pity to throw the wretched thing away. I'll have to carry it."
He removed the galosh and set off carrying it distastefully.
An old car drove out of Prechistenka with three passengers. Two men,
slightly tipsy, with a garishly made-up woman in those baggy silk trousers
that were all the rage in 1928 sitting on their lap.
"Hey, Dad!" she shouted in a low husky voice. "Did you sell the other
galosh for booze?"
"The old boy got sozzled at the Alcazar," howled the man on the left,
while the one on the right leaned out of the car and shouted:
"Is the night-club in Volkhonka still open, Dad? That's where we're
making for!"
The Professor looked at them sternly over the top of his glasses, let
the cigarette fall out of his mouth and then immediately forgot they
existed. A beam was cutting its way through Prechistensky Boulevard, and the
dome of Christ the Saviour had begun to burn. The sun had come out.
What had happened was this. When the Professor put his discerning eye
to the microscope, he noticed for the first time in his life that one
particular ray in the coloured tendril stood out more vividly and boldly
than the others. This ray was bright red and stuck out of the tendril like
the tiny point of a needle, say.
Thus, as ill luck would have it, this ray attracted the attention of
the great man's experienced eye for several seconds.
In it, the ray, the Professor detected something a thousand
times more significant and important than the ray itself, that
precarious offspring accidentally engendered by the movement of a microscope
mirror and lens. Due to the assistant calling the Professor away, some
amoebas had been subject to the action of the ray for an hour-and-a-half and
this is what had happened: whereas the blobs of amoebas on the plate outside
the ray simply lay there limp and helpless, some very strange phenomena were
taking place on the spot over which the sharp red sword was poised. This
strip of red was teeming with life. The old amoebas were forming pseudopodia
in a desperate effort to reach the red strip, and when they did they came to
life, as if by magic. Some force seemed to breathe life into them. They
flocked there, fighting one another for a place in the ray, where the most
frantic (there was no other word for it) reproduction was taking place. In
defiance of all the laws which Persikov knew like the back of his hand, they
gemmated before his eyes with lightning speed. They split into two in the
ray, and each of the parts became a new, fresh organism in a couple of
seconds. In another second or two these organisms grew to maturity and
produced a new generation in their turn. There was soon no room at all in
the red strip or on the plate, and inevitably a bitter struggle broke out.
The newly born amoebas tore one another to pieces and gobbled the pieces up.
Among the newly born lay the corpses of those who had perished in the fight
for survival. It was the best and strongest who won. And they were
terrifying. Firstly, they were about twice the size of ordinary amoebas and,
secondly, they were far more active and aggressive. Their movements were
rapid, their pseudopodia much longer than normal, and it would be no
exaggeration to say that they used them like an octopus's tentacles.
On the second evening the Professor, pale and haggard, his only
sustenance the thick cigarettes he rolled himself, studied the new
generation of amoebas. And on the third day he turned to the primary source,
i.e., the red ray.
The gas hissed faintly in the Bunsen burner, the traffic clattered
along the street outside, and the Professor, poisoned by a hundred
cigarettes, eyes half-closed, leaned back in his revolving chair.
"I see it all now. The ray brought them to life. It's a new ray, never
studied or even discovered by anyone before. The first thing is to find out
whether it is produced only by electricity, or by the sun as well," Persikov
muttered to himself.
The next night provided the answer to this question. Persikov caught
three rays in three microscopes from the arc light, but nothing from the
sun, and summed this up as follows:
"We must assume that it is not found in the solar spectrum... Hm, well,
in short we must assume it can only be obtained from electric light." He
gazed fondly at the frosted ball overhead, thought for a moment and invited
Ivanov into the laboratory, where he told him all and showed him the
amoebas.
Decent Ivanov was amazed, quite flabbergasted. Why on earth hadn't a
simple thing as this tiny arrow been noticed before? By anyone, or even by
him, Ivanov. It was really appalling! Just look...
"Look, Vladimir Ipatych!" Ivanov said, his eye glued to the microscope.
"Look what's happening! They're growing be" fore my eyes... You must take a
look..."
"I've been observing them for three days," Persikov replied animatedly.
Then a conversation took place between the two scientists, the gist of
which was as follows. Decent Ivanov undertook with the help of lenses and
mirrors to make a chamber in which they could obtain the ray in magnified
form without a microscope. Ivanov hoped, was even convinced, that this would
be extremely simple. He would obtain the ray, Vladimir Ipatych need have no
doubts on that score. There was a slight pause.
"When I publish a paper, I shall mention that the chamber was built by
you, Pyotr Stepanovich," Persikov interspersed, feeling that the pause
should be ended.
"Oh, that doesn't matter... However, if you insist..."
And the pause ended. After that the ray devoured Ivanov as well. While
Persikov, emaciated and hungry, spent all day and half the night at his
microscope, Ivanov got busy in the brightly-lit physics laboratory, working
out a combination of lenses and mirrors. He was assisted by the mechanic.
Following a request made to the Commissariat of Education, Persikov
received three parcels from Germany containing mirrors, convexo-convex,
concavo-concave and even some convexo-concave polished lenses. The upshot of
all this was that Ivanov not only built his chamber, but actually caught the
red ray in it. And quite brilliantly, it must be said. The ray was a thick
one, about four centimetres in diameter, sharp and strong.
On June 1st the chamber was set up in Persikov's laboratory, and he
began experimenting avidly by putting frog spawn in the ray. These
experiments produced amazing results. In the course of forty-eight hours
thousands of tadpoles hatched out from the spawn. But that was not all.
Within another twenty-four hours the tadpoles grew fantastically into such
vicious, greedy frogs that half of them were devoured by the other half. The
survivors then began to spawn rapidly and two days later, without the
assistance of the ray, a new generation appeared too numerous to count. Then
all hell was let loose in the Professor's laboratory. The tadpoles slithered
out all over the Institute. Lusty choirs croaked loudly in the terrariums
and all the nooks and crannies, as in marshes. Pankrat, who was scared stiff
of Persikov as it was, now went in mortal terror of him. After a week the
scientist himself felt he was going mad. The Institute reeked of ether and
potassium cyanide, which nearly finished off Pankrat when he removed his
mask too soon. This expanding marshland generation was eventually
exterminated with poison and the laboratories aired.
"You know, Pyotr Stepanovich," Persikov said to Ivanov, "the effect of
the ray on deuteroplasm and on the ovule in general is quite extraordinary."
Ivanov, a cold and reserved gentleman, interrupted the Professor in an
unusual voice:
"Why talk of such minor details as deuteroplasm, Vladimir Ipatych?
Let's not beat about the bush. You have discovered something unheard-of..."
With a great effort Ivanov managed to force the words out. "You have
discovered the ray of life, Professor Persikov!"
A faint flush appeared on Persikov's pale, unshaven cheekbones.
"Well, well," he mumbled.
"You," Ivanov went on, "you will win such renown... It makes my head go
round. Do you understand, Vladimir Ipatych," he continued excitedly, "H. G.
Wells's heroes are nothing compared to you... And I thought that was all
make-believe... Remember his Food for the Gods'!"
"Ah, that's a novel," Persikov replied.
"Yes, of course, but it's famous!"
"I've forgotten it," Persikov said. "I remember reading it, but I've
forgotten it."
"How can you have? Just look at that!" Ivanov picked up an incredibly
large frog with a swollen belly from the glass table by its leg. Even after
death its face had a vicious expression. "It's monstrous!"
Goodness only knows why, perhaps Ivanov was to blame or perhaps the
sensational news just travelled through the air on its own, but in the huge
seething city of Moscow people suddenly started talking about the ray and
Professor Persikov. True, only in passing and vaguely. The news about the
miraculous discovery hopped like a wounded bird round the shining capital,
disappearing from time to time, then popping up again, until the middle of
July when a short item about the ray appeared in the Science and Technology
News section on page 20 of the newspaper Izvestia. It announced briefly that
a well-known professor at the Fourth University had invented a ray capable
of increasing the activity of lower organisms to an incredible degree, and
that the phenomenon would have to be checked. There was a mistake in the
name, of course, which was given as "Pepsikov".
Ivanov brought the newspaper and showed Persikov the article.
"Pepsikov," muttered Persikov, as he busied himself with the chamber in
his laboratory. "How do those newsmongers find out everything?"
Alas, the misprinted surname did not save the Professor from the events
that followed, and they began the very next day, immediately turning
Persikov's whole life upside down.
After a discreet knock, Pankrat appeared in the laboratory and handed
Persikov a magnificent glossy visiting card.
"'E's out there," Pankrat added timidly.
The elegantly printed card said:
Alfred Arkadyevich Bronsky
Correspondent for the Moscow magazines Red Light, Red Pepper, Red
Journal and Red Searchlight and the newspaper Red Moscow Evening News
"Tell him to go to blazes," said Persikov flatly, tossing the card
under the table.
Pankrat turned round and went out, only to return five minutes later
with a pained expression on his face and a second specimen of the same
visiting card.
"Is this supposed to be a joke?" squeaked Persikov, his voice shrill
with rage.
"Sez 'e's from the Gee-Pee-Yoo," Pankrat replied, white as a sheet.
Persikov snatched the card with one hand, almost tearing it in half,
and threw his pincers onto the table with the other. The card bore a message
in ornate handwriting: "Humbly request three minutes of your precious time,
esteemed Professor, on public press business, correspondent of the satirical
magazine Red Maria, a GPU publication."
"Send him in," said Persikov with a sigh.
A young man with a smoothly shaven oily face immediately popped out
from behind Pankrat's back. He had permanently raised eyebrows, like a
Chinaman, over agate eyes which never looked at the person he was talking
to. The young man was dressed impeccably in the latest fashion. He wore a
long narrow jacket down to his knees, extremely baggy trousers and
unnaturally wide glossy shoes with toes like hooves. In his hands he held a
cane, a hat with a pointed top and a note-pad.
"What do you want?" asked Persikov in a voice which sent Pankrat
scuttling out of the room. "Weren't you told that I am busy?"
In lieu of a reply the young man bowed twice to the Professor, to the
left and to the right of him, then his eyes skimmed over the whole
laboratory, and the young man jotted a mark in his pad.
"I am busy," repeated the Professor, looking with loathing into the
visitor's eyes, but to no avail for they were too elusive.
"A thousand apologies, esteemed Professor," the young man said in a
thin voice, "for intruding upon you and taking up your precious time, but
the news of your incredible discovery which has astounded the whole world
compels our journal to ask you for some explanations."
"What explanations, what whole world?" Persikov whined miserably,
turning yellow. "I don't have to give you any explanations or anything of
the sort... I'm busy... Terribly busy."
"What are you working on?" the young man asked ingratiatingly, putting
a second mark in his pad.
"Well, I'm... Why? Do you want to publish something?"
"Yes," replied the young man and suddenly started scribbling furiously.
"Firstly, I do not intend to publish anything until I have finished my
work ... and certainly not in your newspapers... Secondly, how did you find
out about this?" Persikov suddenly felt at a loss.
"Is it true that you have invented a new life ray?"
"What new life?" exploded the Professor. "You're talking absolute
piffle! The ray I am working on has not been fully studied, and nothing at
all is known yet! It may be able to increase the activity of protoplasm..."
"By how much?" the young man asked quickly.
Persikov was really at a loss now. "The insolent devil! What the blazes
is going on?" he thought to himself.
"What ridiculous questions! Suppose I say, well, a thousand times!"
Predatory delight flashed in the young man's eyes.'
"Does that produce gigantic organisms?" "Nothing of the sort! Well, of
course, the organisms I have obtained are bigger than usual. And they do
have some new properties. But the main thing is not the size, but the
incredible speed of reproduction," Persikov heard himself say to his utmost
dismay. Having filled up a whole page, the young man turned over and went on
scribbling.
"Don't write it down!" Persikov croaked in despair, realising that he
was in the young man's hands. "What are you writing?"
"Is it true that in forty-eight hours you can hatch two million
tadpoles from frog-spawn?"
"From how much spawn?" exploded Persikov, losing his temper again.
"Have you ever seen the spawn of a tree-frog, say?"
"From half-a-pound?" asked the young man, unabashed. Persikov flushed
with anger.
"Whoever measures it like that? Pah! What are you talking about? Of
course, if you were to take half-a-pound of frog-spawn, then perhaps...
Well, about that much, damn it, but perhaps a lot more!"
Diamonds flashed in the young man's eyes, as he filled up yet another
page in one fell swoop.
"Is it true that this will cause a world revolution in animal
husbandry?"
"Trust the press to ask a question like that," Persikov howled. "I
forbid you to write such rubbish. I can see from your face that you're
writing sheer nonsense!"
"And now, if you'd be so kind, Professor, a photograph of you," said
the young man, closing his note-pad with a snap.
"What's that? A photograph of me? To put in those magazines of yours?
Together with all that diabolical rubbish you've been scribbling down. No,
certainly not... And I'm extremely busy. I really must ask you to..."
"Any old one will do. And we'll return it straightaway." "Pankrat!" the
Professor yelled in a fury. "Your humble servant," said the young man and
vanished. Instead of Pankrat came the strange rhythmic scraping sound of
something metallic hitting the floor, and into the laboratory rolled a man
of unusual girth, dressed in a blouse and trousers made from a woollen
blanket. His left, artificial leg clattered and clanked, and he was holding
a briefcase. The clean-shaven round face resembling yellowish meat-jelly was
creased into a welcoming smile. He bowed in military fashion to the
Professor and drew himself up, his leg giving a springlike snap. Persikov
was speechless.
"My dear Professor," the stranger began in a pleasant, slightly throaty
voice, "forgive an ordinary mortal for invading your seclusion."
"Are you a reporter?" Persikov asked. "Pankrat!"
"Certainly not, dear Professor," the fat man replied. "Allow me to
introduce myself-naval captain and contributor to the Industrial Herald,
newspaper of the Council of People's Commissars."
"Pankrat!" cried Persikov hysterically, and at that very moment a red
light went on in the corner and the telephone rang softly. "Pankrat!" the
Professor cried again. "Hello."
"Verzeihen Sie bitte, Herr Professor," croaked the telephone in German,
"das ich store. Ich bin Mitarbeiter des Berliner Tageblatts..."
"Pankrat!" the Professor shouted down the receiver. "Bin momental sehr
beschaftigt und kann Sie deshalb jetzt nicht empfangen. Pankrat!"
And just at this moment the bell at the main door started ringing.
"Terrible murder in Bronnaya Street!" yelled unnaturally hoarse voices,
darting about between wheels and flashing headlights on the hot June
roadway. "Terrible illness of chickens belonging to the priest's widow
Drozdova with a picture of her! Terrible discovery of life ray by Professor
Persikov!"
Persikov dashed out so quickly that he almost got run over by a car in
Mokhovaya and grabbed a newspaper angrily.
"Three copecks, citizen!" cried the newsboy, squeezing into the crowd
on the pavement and yelling: "Red Moscow Evening News, discovery of X-ray!"
The flabbergasted Persikov opened the newspaper and huddled against a
lamp-post. On page two in the left-hand corner a bald man with crazed,
unseeing eyes and a hanging lower jaw, the fruit of Alfred Bronsky's
artistic endeavours,
stared at him from a smudged frame. The caption beneath it read: "V I.
Persikov who discovered the mysterious ray." Lower down, under the heading
World-Wide Enigma was an article which began as follows:
"'Take a seat,' the eminent scientist Persikov invited me
hospitably..."
The article was signed with a flourish "Alfred Bronsky (Alonso)".
A greenish light soared up over the University roof; the words "Talking
Newspaper" lit up in the sky, and a crowd jammed Mokhovaya.
"Take a seat!' an unpleasant thin voice, just like Alfred Bronsky's
magnified a thousand times, yelped from a loudspeaker on the roof, "the
eminent scientist Persikov invited me hospitably. 'I've been wanting to tell
the workers of Moscow the results of my discovery for some time...'"
There was a faint metallic scraping behind Persikov's back, and someone
tugged at his sleeve. Turning round he saw the yellow rotund face of the
owner of the artificial leg. His eyes were glistening with tears and his
lips trembled.
"You wouldn't tell me the results of your remarkable discovery,
Professor," he said sadly with a deep sigh. "So that's farewell to a few
more copecks."
He gazed miserably at the University roof, where the invisible Alfred
raved on in the loudspeaker's black jaws. For some reason Persikov felt
sorry for the fat man.
"I never asked him to sit down!" he growled, catching words from the
sky furiously. "He's an utter scoundrel! You must excuse me, but really when
you're working like that and people come bursting in... I'm not referring to
you, of course..."
"Then perhaps you'd just describe your chamber to me, Professor?" the
man with the artificial leg wheedled mournfully. "It doesn't make any
difference now..."
"In three days half-a-pound of frog-spawn produces more tadpoles than
you could possibly count," the invisible man in the loudspeaker boomed.
"Toot-toot," cried the cars on Mokhovaya.
"Ooo! Ah! Listen to that!" the crowd murmured, staring upwards.
"What a scoundrel! Eh?" hissed Persikov, shaking with anger, to the
artificial man. "How do you like that? I'll lodge an official complaint
against him."
"Disgraceful!" the fat man agreed.
A blinding violet ray dazzled the Professor's eyes, lighting up
everything around-a lamp-post, a section of pavement, a yellow wall and the
avid faces.
"They're photographing you, Professor," the fat man whispered
admiringly and hung on the Professor's arm like a ton weight. Something
clicked in the air.
"To blazes with them!" cried Persikov wretchedly, pushing his way with
the ton weight out of the crowd. "Hey, taxi! Prechistenka Street!"
A battered old jalopy, a 'twenty-four model, chugged to a stop, and the
Professor climbed in, trying to shake off the fat man.
"Let go!" he hissed, shielding his face with his hands to ward off the
violet light.
"Have you read it? What they're shouting? Professor Persikov and his
children've had their throats cut in Malaya Bronnaya!" people were shouting
in the crowd.
"I don't have any children, blast you!" yelled Persikov, suddenly
coming into the focus of a black camera which snapped him in profile with
his mouth wide open and eyes glaring.
"Chu... ug, chu... ug," revved the taxi and barged into the crowd.
The fat man was already sitting in the cab, warming the Professor's
side.
In the small provincial town formerly called Trinity, but now
Glassworks, in Kostroma Province (Glassworks District), a woman in a grey
dress with a kerchief tied round her head walked onto the porch of a little
house in what was formerly Church, but now Personal Street and burst into
tears. This woman, the widow of Drozdov, the former priest of the former
church, sobbed so loudly that soon another woman's head in a fluffy scarf
popped out of a window in the house across the road and exclaimed:
"What's the matter, Stepanovna? Another one?"
"The seventeenth!" replied the former Drozdova, sobbing even louder.
"Dearie me," tutted the woman in the scarf, shaking her head, "did you
ever hear of such a thing? Tis the anger of the Lord, and no mistake! Dead,
is she?"
"Come and see, Matryona," said the priest's widow, amid loud and bitter
sobs. "Take a look at her!"
Banging the rickety grey gate, the woman padded barefoot over the dusty
hummocks in the road to be taken by the priest's widow into the chicken run.
It must be said that instead of losing heart, the widow of Father
Sawaty Drozdov, who had died in twenty-six of anti-religious mortification,
set up a nice little poultry business. As soon as things began to go well,
the widow received such an exorbitant tax demand that the poultry business
would have closed down had it not been for certain good folk. They advised
the widow to inform the local authorities that she, the widow, was setting
up a poultry cooperative. The cooperative consisted of Drozdova herself, her
faithful servant Matryoshka and the widow's dear niece. The tax was reduced,
and the poultry-farm prospered so much that in twenty-eight the widow had as
many as 250 chickens, even including some Cochins. Each Sunday the widow's
eggs appeared at Glassworks market. They were sold in Tambov and were even
occasionally displayed in the windows of the former Chichkin's Cheese and
Butter Shop in Moscow.
And now, the seventeenth brahmaputra that morning, their dear little
crested hen, was walking round the yard vomiting. The poor thing gurgled and
retched, rolling her eyes sadly at the sun as if she would never see it
again. In front of her squatted co-operative-member Matryoshka with a cup of
water.
"Come on, Cresty dear... chuck-chuck-chuck... drink some water,"
Matryoshka begged, thrusting the cup under the hen's beak, but the hen would
not drink. She opened her beak wide, threw back her head and began to vomit
blood.
"Lord Jesus!" cried the guest, slapping her thighs. "Just look at that!
Clots of blood. I've never seen a hen bring up like that before, so help me
God!"
These words accompanied the poor hen on her last journey. She suddenly
keeled over, digging her beak helplessly into the dust, and swivelled her
eyes. Then she rolled onto her back with her legs sticking up and lay
motionless. Matryoshka wept in her deep bass voice, spilling the water, and
the Chairman of the cooperative, the priest's widow, wept too while her
guest lent over and whispered in her ear:
"Stepanovna, I'll eat my hat if someone hasn't put the evil eye on your
hens. Whoever heard of it! Chickens don't have diseases like this! Someone's
put a spell on them."
"Tis devils' work!" the priest's widow cried to heaven. "They want to
see me good and done for!"
Her words called forth a loud cock-a-doodle-doo, and lurching sideways
out of the chicken-coop, like a restless drunk out of a tavern, came a tatty
scrawny rooster. Rolling his eyes at them ferociously, he staggered about on
the spot and spread his wings like an eagle, but instead of flying up, he
began to run round the yard in circles, like a horse on a rope. On his third
time round he stopped, vomited, then began to cough and choke, spitting
blood all over the place and finally fell down with his legs pointing up at
the sun like masts. The yard was filled with women's wails, which were
answered by an anxious clucking, clattering and fidgeting from the
"Роковые яйца"
Translated by Kathleen Gook-Horujy
OCR: http://home.freeuk.net/russica2/
---------------------------------------------------------------
Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) was born in Kiev into the family of a
teacher at a religious academy, endured the hardships of wars and
revolutions, starved, became a playwright for the country's finest theatre,
knew fame, persecution, public ovations and forced muteness. His best works,
including the famous The Master and Margarita, were not published until
after his death. His dramas were struck off the repertoire-The Days of the
Turbins at the Moscow Arts Theatre and his plays about Moliere and Pushkin.
During his lifetime, not a single major anthology of his short stories was
ever published
Bulgakov's works have since been recognised as classics; his books have
been published in all the languages of the civilised world, studies of him
have reached the four-figure mark and the number is still rising; editions
of his books in the USSR have run into millions. He has won the highest
praise from Gabriel Garcia Marquez of Columbia and Kendzaburo Oe of Japan.
Kirghiz writer Chinghiz Aitmatov looks on Bulgakov as his teacher. Mikhail
Bulgakov's books have at last come into their own with their wild fantasy
and their prophetic ideas about man and humanity. Our collection includes
one of his most vivid stories, "The Fateful Eggs".
On the evening of 16 April, 1928, the Zoology Professor of the Fourth
State University and Director of the Moscow Zoological Institute, Persikov,
went into his laboratory at the Zoological Institute in Herzen Street. The
Professor switched on the frosted ceiling light and looked around him.
This ill-fated evening must be regarded as marking the beginning of the
appalling catastrophe, just as Professor Vladimir Ipatievich Persikov must
be seen as the prime cause of the said catastrophe.
He was fifty-eight years old. With a splendid bald head, like a pestle,
and tufts of yellowish hair sticking out at the sides. His face was
clean-shaven, with a slightly protruding lower lip which gave it a slightly
cantankerous expression. Tall and round-shouldered, he had small bright eyes
and tiny old-fashioned spectacles in silver frames on a red nose. He spoke
in a grating, high, croaking voice and one of his many idiosyncrasies was to
crook the index finger of his right hand and screw up his eyes, whenever he
was saying something weighty and authoritative. And since he always spoke
authoritatively, because his knowledge in his field was quite phenomenal,
the crooked finger was frequently pointed at those with whom the Professor
was conversing. Outside his field, that is, zoology, embriology, anatomy,
botany and geography, however, Professor Persikov said almost nothing at
all.
Professor Persikov did not read the newspapers or go to the theatre.
His wife had run away with a tenor from the Zimin opera in 1913, leaving him
a note which read as follows:
"Your frogs make me shudder with intolerable loathing. I shall be
unhappy all my life because of them."
The Professor did not marry again and had no children. He was
short-tempered, but did not bear grudges, liked cloudberry tea and lived in
Prechistenka Street in a flat with five rooms, one of which was occupied by
the old housekeeper, Maria Stepanovna, who looked after the Professor like a
nanny.
In 1919 three of the Professor's five rooms were taken away. Whereupon
he announced to Maria Stepanovna:
"If they don't stop this outrageous behaviour, I shall leave the
country, Maria Stepanovna."
Had the Professor carried out this plan, he would have experienced no
difficulty in obtaining a place in the zoology department of any university
in the world, for he was a really first-class scholar, and in the particular
field which deals with amphibians had no equal, with the exception of
professors William Weckle in Cambridge and Giacomo Bartolomeo Beccari in
Rome. The Professor could read four languages, as Mvell as Russian, and
spoke French and German like a native. Persikov did not carry out his
intention of going abroad, and 1920 was even worse than 1919. All sorts of
things happened, one after the other. Bolshaya Nikitskaya was renamed Herzen
Street. Then the clock on the wall of the corner building in Herzen Street
and Mokhovaya stopped at a quarter past eleven and, finally, unable to
endure the perturbations of this remarkable year, eight magnificent
specimens of tree-frogs died in the Institute's terrariums, followed by
fifteen ordinary toads and an exceptional specimen of the Surinam toad.
Immediately after the demise of the toads which devastated that first
order of amphibians rightly called tailless, old Vlas, the Institute's
caretaker of many years' standing, who did not belong to any order of
amphibians, also passed on to a better world. The cause of his death,
incidentally, was the same as that of the unfortunate amphibians, and
Persikov diagnosed it at once:
"Undernourishment!"
The scientist was perfectly right. Vlas should have been fed with flour
and the toads with flour weevils, but the disappearance of the former
determined that of the latter likewise, and Persikov tried to shift the
twenty surviving specimens of tree-frogs onto a diet of cockroaches, but
then the cockroaches disappeared too, thereby demonstrating their hostile
attitude to war communism. Consequently, these last remaining specimens also
had to be thrown into the rubbish pits in the Institute yard.
The effect of these deaths on Persikov, particularly that of the
Surinam toad, is quite indescribable. For some reason he blamed them
entirely on the People's Commissar for Education.
Standing in his fur cap and galoshes in the corridor of the freezing
Institute, Persikov said to his assistant Ivanov, an elegant gentleman with
a fair pointed beard:
"Hanging's too good for him, Pyotr Stepanovich! What do they think
they're doing! They'll ruin the whole Institute! Eh? An exceptionally rare
male specimen of Pipa americana, thirteen centimetres long..."
Things went from bad to worse. When Vlas died the Institute windows
froze so hard that there were icy scrolls on the inside of the panes. The
rabbits, foxes, wolves and fish died, as well as every single grass-snake.
Persikov brooded silently for days on end, then caught pneumonia, but did
not die. When he recovered, he started coming to the Institute twice a week
and in the round hall, where for some reason it was always five degrees
below freezing point irrespective of the temperature outside, he delivered a
cycle of lectures on "The Reptiles of the Torrid Zone" in galoshes, a fur
cap with ear-flaps and a scarf, breathing out white steam, to an audience of
eight. The rest of the time he lay under a rug on the divan in Prechistenka,
in a room with books piled up to the ceiling, coughing, gazing into the jaws
of the fiery stove which Maria Stepanov-na stoked with gilt chairs, and
remembering the Surinam toad.
But all things come to an end. So it was with 'twenty and 'twenty-one,
and in 'twenty-two a kind of reverse process began. Firstly, in place of the
dear departed Vlas there appeared Pankrat, a young, but most promising
zoological caretaker, and the Institute began to be heated again a little.
Then in the summer with Pankrat's help Persikov caught fourteen common
toads. The terrariums came to life again... In 'twenty-three Persikov gave
eight lectures a week, three at the Institute and five at the University, in
'twenty-four thirteen a week, not including the ones at workers' schools,
and in the spring of 'twenty-five distinguished himself by failing no less
than seventy-six students, all on amphibians.
"What, you don't know the difference between amphibians and reptilia?"
Persikov asked. "That's quite ridiculous, young man. Amphibia have no
kidneys. None at all. So there. You should be ashamed of yourself. I expect
you're a Marxist, aren't you?"
"Yes," replied the devastated student, faintly.
"Well, kindly retake the exam in the autumn," Persikov said politely
and shouted cheerfully to Pankrat: "Send in the next one!"
Just as amphibians come to life after a long drought, with the first
heavy shower of rain, so Professor Persikov revived in 1926 when a joint
Americano-Russian company built fifteen fifteen-storey apartment blocks in
the centre of Moscow, beginning at the corner of Gazetny Lane and Tverskaya,
and 300 workers' cottages on the outskirts, each with eight apartments,
thereby putting an- end once and for all to the terrible and ridiculous
accommodation shortage which made life such a misery for Muscovites from
1919 to 1925.
In fact, it was a marvellous summer in Persikov's life, and
occasionally he would rub his hands with' a quiet, satisfied giggle,
remembering how he and Maria Stepanovna had been cooped up in two rooms. Now
the Professor had received all five back, spread himself, arranged his
two-and-a-half thousand books, stuffed animals, diagrams and specimens, and
lit the green lamp on the desk in his study.
You would not have recognised the Institute either. They painted it
cream, equipped the amphibian room with a special water supply system,
replaced all the plate glass with mirrors and donated five new microscopes,
glass laboratory tables, some 2,000-amp. arc lights, reflectors and museum
cases.
Persikov came to life again, and the whole world suddenly learnt of
this when a brochure appeared in December 1926 entitled "More About the
Reproduction of Polyplacophora or Chitons", 126 pp, Proceedings of the
Fourth University.
And in the autumn of 1927 he published a definitive work of 350 pages,
subsequently translated into six languages, including Japanese. It was
entitled "The Embryology of Pipae, Spadefoots and Frogs", price 3 roubles.
State Publishing House.
But in the summer of 1928 something quite appalling happened...
So, the Professor switched on the light and looked around. Then he
turned on the reflector on the long experimental table, donned his white
coat, and fingered some instruments on the table...
Of the thirty thousand mechanical carriages that raced" around Moscow
in 'twenty-eight many whizzed down Herzen Street, swishing over the smooth
paving-stones, and every few minutes a 16,22, 48 or 53 tram would career
round the corner from Herzen Street to Mokhovaya with much grinding and
clanging. A pale and misty crescent moon cast reflections of coloured lights
through the laboratory windows and was visible far away and high up beside
the dark and heavy dome of the Church of Christ the Saviour.
But neither the moon nor the Moscow spring bustle were of the slightest
concern to the Professor. He sat on his three-legged revolving stool turning
with tobacco-stained fingers the knob of a splendid Zeiss microscope, in
which there was an ordinary unstained specimen of fresh amoebas. At the very
moment when Persikov was changing the magnification from five to ten
thousand, the door opened slightly, a pointed beard and leather bib
appeared, and his assistant called:
"I've set up the mesentery, Vladimir Ipatych. Would you care to take a
look?"
Persikov slid quickly down from the stool, letting go of the knob
midway, and went into his assistant's room, twirling a cigarette slowly in
his fingers. There, on the glass table, a half-suffocated frog stiff with
fright and pain lay crucified on a cork mat, its transparent micaceous
intestines pulled out of the bleeding abdomen under the microscope.
"Very good," said Persikov, peering down the eye-piece of the
microscope.
He could obviously detect something very interesting in the frog's
mesentery, where live drops of blood were racing merrily along the vessels
as clear as daylight. Persikov quite forgot about his amoebas. He and Ivanov
spent the next hour-and-a-half taking turns at the microscope and exchanging
animated remarks, quite incomprehensible to ordinary mortals.
At last Persikov dragged himself away, announcing:
"The blood's coagulating, it can't be helped."
The frog's head twitched painfully and its dimming eyes said clearly:
"Bastards, that's what you are..."
Stretching his stiff legs, Persikov got up, returned to his laboratory,
yawned, rubbed his permanently inflamed eyelids, sat down on the stool and
looked into the microscope, his fingers about to move the knob. But move it
he did not. With his right eye Persikov saw the cloudy white plate and
blurred pale amoebas on it, but in the middle of the plate sat a coloured
tendril, like a female curl. Persikov himself and hundreds of his students
had seen this tendril many times before but taken no interest in it, and
rightly so. The coloured streak of light merely got in the way and indicated
that the specimen was out of focus. For this reason it was ruthlessly
eliminated with a single turn of the knob, which spread an even white light
over the plate. The zoologist's long fingers had already tightened on the
knob, when suddenly they trembled and let go. The reason for this was
Persikov's right eye. It tensed, stared in amazement and filled with alarm.
No mediocre mind to burden the Republic sat by the microscope. No, this was
Professor Persikov! All his mental powers were now concentrated in his right
eye. For five minutes or so in petrified silence the higher being observed
the lower one, peering hard at the out-of-focus specimen. There was complete
silence all around. Pankrat had gone to sleep in his cubby-hole in thes
vestibule, and only once there came a far-off gentle and musical tinkling of
glass in cupboards-that was Ivanov going out and locking his laboratory. The
entrance door groaned behind him. Then came the Professor's voice. To whom
his question was addressed no one knows.
"What on earth is that? I don't understand..."
A late lorry rumbled down Herzen Street, making the old walls of the
Institute shake. The shallow glass bowl with pipettes tinkled on the table.
The Professor turned pale and put his hands over the microscope, like a
mother whose child is threatened by danger. There could now be no question
of Persikov turning the knob. Oh no, now he was afraid that some external
force might push what he had seen out of his field of vision.
It was a full white morning with a strip of gold which cut across the
Institute's cream porch when the Professor left the microscope and walked
over to the window on stiff legs. With trembling fingers he pressed a
button, dense black shutters blotted out the morning and a wise scholarly
night descended on the room. Sallow and inspired, Persikov placed his feet
apart, staring at the parquet floor with his watering eyes, and exclaimed:
"But how can it be? It's monstrous! Quite monstrous, gentlemen," he
repeated, addressing the toads in the terrarium, who were asleep and made no
reply.
He paused, then went over to the button, raised the shutters, turned
out all the lights and looked into the microscope. His face grew tense and
he raised his bushy yellow eyebrows.
"Aha, aha," he muttered. "It's gone. I see. I understand," he drawled,
staring with crazed and inspired eyes at the extinguished light overhead.
"It's simple."
Again he let down the hissing shutters and put on the light. Then
looked into the microscope and grinned happily, almost greedily.
"I'll catch it," he said solemnly and gravely, crooking his finger.
"I'll catch it. Perhaps the sun will do it too."
The shutters shot up once more. Now you could see the sun. It was
shining on the walls of the Institute and slanting down onto the pavements
of Herzen Street. The Professor looked through the window, working out where
the sun would be in the afternoon. He kept stepping back and forwards, doing
a little dance, and eventually lay stomach down on the window-sill.
After that he got down to some important and mysterious work. He
covered the microscope with a bell glass. Then he melted a piece of
sealing-wax in the bluish flame of the Bun-sen burner, sealed the edge of
the glass to the table and made a thumb print on the blobs of wax. Finally
he turned off the gas and went out, locking the laboratory door firmly
behind him.
There was semi-darkness in the Institute corridors.
The Professor reached Pankrat's door and knocked for a long time to no
effect. At last something inside growled like a watchdog, coughed and
snorted and Pankrat appeared in the lighted doorway wearing long striped
underpants tied at the ankles. His eyes glared wildly at the scientist and
he whimpered softly with sleep.
"I must apologise for waking you up, Pankrat," said the
Professor, peering at him over his spectacles. "But please don't go
into my laboratory this morning, dear chap. I've left some work there that
must on no account be moved. Understand?"
"Grrr, yessir," Pankrat replied, not understanding a thing.
He staggered a bit and growled.
"Now listen here, Pankrat, you just wake up," the zoologist ordered,
prodding him lightly in the ribs, which produced a look of fright on
Pankrat's face and a glimmer of comprehension in his eyes. "I've locked the
laboratory," Persikov went on, "so you need not clean it until I come back.
Understand?"
"Yessir," Pankrat croaked.
"That's fine then, go back to bed."
Pankrat turned round, disappeared inside and collapsed onto the bed.
The Professor went into the vestibule. Putting on his grey summer coat and
soft hat, he remembered what he had observed in the microscope and stared at
his galoshes for a few seconds, as if seeing them for the first time. Then
he put on the left galosh and tried to put the right one over it, but it
wouldn't go on.
"What an incredible coincidence that he called me away," said the
scientist. "Otherwise I would never have noticed it. But what does it mean?
The devil only knows!.."
The Professor smiled, squinted at his galoshes, took off the left one
and put on the right. "Good heavens! One can't even imagine all the
consequences..." The Professor prodded off the left galosh, which had
irritated him by not going on top of the right, and walked to the front door
wearing one galosh only. He also lost his handkerchief and went out,
slamming the heavy door. On the porch he searched in his pockets for some
matches, patting his sides, found them eventually and set off down the
street with an unlit cigarette in his mouth.
The scientist did not meet a soul all the way to the church. There he
threw back his head and stared at the golden dome. The sun was licking it
avidly on one side.
"Why didn't I notice it before? What a coincidence! Well, I never!
Silly ass!" The Professor looked down and stared pensively at his strangely
shod feet. "Hm, what shall I do? Go back to Pankrat? No, there's no waking
him. It's a pity to throw the wretched thing away. I'll have to carry it."
He removed the galosh and set off carrying it distastefully.
An old car drove out of Prechistenka with three passengers. Two men,
slightly tipsy, with a garishly made-up woman in those baggy silk trousers
that were all the rage in 1928 sitting on their lap.
"Hey, Dad!" she shouted in a low husky voice. "Did you sell the other
galosh for booze?"
"The old boy got sozzled at the Alcazar," howled the man on the left,
while the one on the right leaned out of the car and shouted:
"Is the night-club in Volkhonka still open, Dad? That's where we're
making for!"
The Professor looked at them sternly over the top of his glasses, let
the cigarette fall out of his mouth and then immediately forgot they
existed. A beam was cutting its way through Prechistensky Boulevard, and the
dome of Christ the Saviour had begun to burn. The sun had come out.
What had happened was this. When the Professor put his discerning eye
to the microscope, he noticed for the first time in his life that one
particular ray in the coloured tendril stood out more vividly and boldly
than the others. This ray was bright red and stuck out of the tendril like
the tiny point of a needle, say.
Thus, as ill luck would have it, this ray attracted the attention of
the great man's experienced eye for several seconds.
In it, the ray, the Professor detected something a thousand
times more significant and important than the ray itself, that
precarious offspring accidentally engendered by the movement of a microscope
mirror and lens. Due to the assistant calling the Professor away, some
amoebas had been subject to the action of the ray for an hour-and-a-half and
this is what had happened: whereas the blobs of amoebas on the plate outside
the ray simply lay there limp and helpless, some very strange phenomena were
taking place on the spot over which the sharp red sword was poised. This
strip of red was teeming with life. The old amoebas were forming pseudopodia
in a desperate effort to reach the red strip, and when they did they came to
life, as if by magic. Some force seemed to breathe life into them. They
flocked there, fighting one another for a place in the ray, where the most
frantic (there was no other word for it) reproduction was taking place. In
defiance of all the laws which Persikov knew like the back of his hand, they
gemmated before his eyes with lightning speed. They split into two in the
ray, and each of the parts became a new, fresh organism in a couple of
seconds. In another second or two these organisms grew to maturity and
produced a new generation in their turn. There was soon no room at all in
the red strip or on the plate, and inevitably a bitter struggle broke out.
The newly born amoebas tore one another to pieces and gobbled the pieces up.
Among the newly born lay the corpses of those who had perished in the fight
for survival. It was the best and strongest who won. And they were
terrifying. Firstly, they were about twice the size of ordinary amoebas and,
secondly, they were far more active and aggressive. Their movements were
rapid, their pseudopodia much longer than normal, and it would be no
exaggeration to say that they used them like an octopus's tentacles.
On the second evening the Professor, pale and haggard, his only
sustenance the thick cigarettes he rolled himself, studied the new
generation of amoebas. And on the third day he turned to the primary source,
i.e., the red ray.
The gas hissed faintly in the Bunsen burner, the traffic clattered
along the street outside, and the Professor, poisoned by a hundred
cigarettes, eyes half-closed, leaned back in his revolving chair.
"I see it all now. The ray brought them to life. It's a new ray, never
studied or even discovered by anyone before. The first thing is to find out
whether it is produced only by electricity, or by the sun as well," Persikov
muttered to himself.
The next night provided the answer to this question. Persikov caught
three rays in three microscopes from the arc light, but nothing from the
sun, and summed this up as follows:
"We must assume that it is not found in the solar spectrum... Hm, well,
in short we must assume it can only be obtained from electric light." He
gazed fondly at the frosted ball overhead, thought for a moment and invited
Ivanov into the laboratory, where he told him all and showed him the
amoebas.
Decent Ivanov was amazed, quite flabbergasted. Why on earth hadn't a
simple thing as this tiny arrow been noticed before? By anyone, or even by
him, Ivanov. It was really appalling! Just look...
"Look, Vladimir Ipatych!" Ivanov said, his eye glued to the microscope.
"Look what's happening! They're growing be" fore my eyes... You must take a
look..."
"I've been observing them for three days," Persikov replied animatedly.
Then a conversation took place between the two scientists, the gist of
which was as follows. Decent Ivanov undertook with the help of lenses and
mirrors to make a chamber in which they could obtain the ray in magnified
form without a microscope. Ivanov hoped, was even convinced, that this would
be extremely simple. He would obtain the ray, Vladimir Ipatych need have no
doubts on that score. There was a slight pause.
"When I publish a paper, I shall mention that the chamber was built by
you, Pyotr Stepanovich," Persikov interspersed, feeling that the pause
should be ended.
"Oh, that doesn't matter... However, if you insist..."
And the pause ended. After that the ray devoured Ivanov as well. While
Persikov, emaciated and hungry, spent all day and half the night at his
microscope, Ivanov got busy in the brightly-lit physics laboratory, working
out a combination of lenses and mirrors. He was assisted by the mechanic.
Following a request made to the Commissariat of Education, Persikov
received three parcels from Germany containing mirrors, convexo-convex,
concavo-concave and even some convexo-concave polished lenses. The upshot of
all this was that Ivanov not only built his chamber, but actually caught the
red ray in it. And quite brilliantly, it must be said. The ray was a thick
one, about four centimetres in diameter, sharp and strong.
On June 1st the chamber was set up in Persikov's laboratory, and he
began experimenting avidly by putting frog spawn in the ray. These
experiments produced amazing results. In the course of forty-eight hours
thousands of tadpoles hatched out from the spawn. But that was not all.
Within another twenty-four hours the tadpoles grew fantastically into such
vicious, greedy frogs that half of them were devoured by the other half. The
survivors then began to spawn rapidly and two days later, without the
assistance of the ray, a new generation appeared too numerous to count. Then
all hell was let loose in the Professor's laboratory. The tadpoles slithered
out all over the Institute. Lusty choirs croaked loudly in the terrariums
and all the nooks and crannies, as in marshes. Pankrat, who was scared stiff
of Persikov as it was, now went in mortal terror of him. After a week the
scientist himself felt he was going mad. The Institute reeked of ether and
potassium cyanide, which nearly finished off Pankrat when he removed his
mask too soon. This expanding marshland generation was eventually
exterminated with poison and the laboratories aired.
"You know, Pyotr Stepanovich," Persikov said to Ivanov, "the effect of
the ray on deuteroplasm and on the ovule in general is quite extraordinary."
Ivanov, a cold and reserved gentleman, interrupted the Professor in an
unusual voice:
"Why talk of such minor details as deuteroplasm, Vladimir Ipatych?
Let's not beat about the bush. You have discovered something unheard-of..."
With a great effort Ivanov managed to force the words out. "You have
discovered the ray of life, Professor Persikov!"
A faint flush appeared on Persikov's pale, unshaven cheekbones.
"Well, well," he mumbled.
"You," Ivanov went on, "you will win such renown... It makes my head go
round. Do you understand, Vladimir Ipatych," he continued excitedly, "H. G.
Wells's heroes are nothing compared to you... And I thought that was all
make-believe... Remember his Food for the Gods'!"
"Ah, that's a novel," Persikov replied.
"Yes, of course, but it's famous!"
"I've forgotten it," Persikov said. "I remember reading it, but I've
forgotten it."
"How can you have? Just look at that!" Ivanov picked up an incredibly
large frog with a swollen belly from the glass table by its leg. Even after
death its face had a vicious expression. "It's monstrous!"
Goodness only knows why, perhaps Ivanov was to blame or perhaps the
sensational news just travelled through the air on its own, but in the huge
seething city of Moscow people suddenly started talking about the ray and
Professor Persikov. True, only in passing and vaguely. The news about the
miraculous discovery hopped like a wounded bird round the shining capital,
disappearing from time to time, then popping up again, until the middle of
July when a short item about the ray appeared in the Science and Technology
News section on page 20 of the newspaper Izvestia. It announced briefly that
a well-known professor at the Fourth University had invented a ray capable
of increasing the activity of lower organisms to an incredible degree, and
that the phenomenon would have to be checked. There was a mistake in the
name, of course, which was given as "Pepsikov".
Ivanov brought the newspaper and showed Persikov the article.
"Pepsikov," muttered Persikov, as he busied himself with the chamber in
his laboratory. "How do those newsmongers find out everything?"
Alas, the misprinted surname did not save the Professor from the events
that followed, and they began the very next day, immediately turning
Persikov's whole life upside down.
After a discreet knock, Pankrat appeared in the laboratory and handed
Persikov a magnificent glossy visiting card.
"'E's out there," Pankrat added timidly.
The elegantly printed card said:
Alfred Arkadyevich Bronsky
Correspondent for the Moscow magazines Red Light, Red Pepper, Red
Journal and Red Searchlight and the newspaper Red Moscow Evening News
"Tell him to go to blazes," said Persikov flatly, tossing the card
under the table.
Pankrat turned round and went out, only to return five minutes later
with a pained expression on his face and a second specimen of the same
visiting card.
"Is this supposed to be a joke?" squeaked Persikov, his voice shrill
with rage.
"Sez 'e's from the Gee-Pee-Yoo," Pankrat replied, white as a sheet.
Persikov snatched the card with one hand, almost tearing it in half,
and threw his pincers onto the table with the other. The card bore a message
in ornate handwriting: "Humbly request three minutes of your precious time,
esteemed Professor, on public press business, correspondent of the satirical
magazine Red Maria, a GPU publication."
"Send him in," said Persikov with a sigh.
A young man with a smoothly shaven oily face immediately popped out
from behind Pankrat's back. He had permanently raised eyebrows, like a
Chinaman, over agate eyes which never looked at the person he was talking
to. The young man was dressed impeccably in the latest fashion. He wore a
long narrow jacket down to his knees, extremely baggy trousers and
unnaturally wide glossy shoes with toes like hooves. In his hands he held a
cane, a hat with a pointed top and a note-pad.
"What do you want?" asked Persikov in a voice which sent Pankrat
scuttling out of the room. "Weren't you told that I am busy?"
In lieu of a reply the young man bowed twice to the Professor, to the
left and to the right of him, then his eyes skimmed over the whole
laboratory, and the young man jotted a mark in his pad.
"I am busy," repeated the Professor, looking with loathing into the
visitor's eyes, but to no avail for they were too elusive.
"A thousand apologies, esteemed Professor," the young man said in a
thin voice, "for intruding upon you and taking up your precious time, but
the news of your incredible discovery which has astounded the whole world
compels our journal to ask you for some explanations."
"What explanations, what whole world?" Persikov whined miserably,
turning yellow. "I don't have to give you any explanations or anything of
the sort... I'm busy... Terribly busy."
"What are you working on?" the young man asked ingratiatingly, putting
a second mark in his pad.
"Well, I'm... Why? Do you want to publish something?"
"Yes," replied the young man and suddenly started scribbling furiously.
"Firstly, I do not intend to publish anything until I have finished my
work ... and certainly not in your newspapers... Secondly, how did you find
out about this?" Persikov suddenly felt at a loss.
"Is it true that you have invented a new life ray?"
"What new life?" exploded the Professor. "You're talking absolute
piffle! The ray I am working on has not been fully studied, and nothing at
all is known yet! It may be able to increase the activity of protoplasm..."
"By how much?" the young man asked quickly.
Persikov was really at a loss now. "The insolent devil! What the blazes
is going on?" he thought to himself.
"What ridiculous questions! Suppose I say, well, a thousand times!"
Predatory delight flashed in the young man's eyes.'
"Does that produce gigantic organisms?" "Nothing of the sort! Well, of
course, the organisms I have obtained are bigger than usual. And they do
have some new properties. But the main thing is not the size, but the
incredible speed of reproduction," Persikov heard himself say to his utmost
dismay. Having filled up a whole page, the young man turned over and went on
scribbling.
"Don't write it down!" Persikov croaked in despair, realising that he
was in the young man's hands. "What are you writing?"
"Is it true that in forty-eight hours you can hatch two million
tadpoles from frog-spawn?"
"From how much spawn?" exploded Persikov, losing his temper again.
"Have you ever seen the spawn of a tree-frog, say?"
"From half-a-pound?" asked the young man, unabashed. Persikov flushed
with anger.
"Whoever measures it like that? Pah! What are you talking about? Of
course, if you were to take half-a-pound of frog-spawn, then perhaps...
Well, about that much, damn it, but perhaps a lot more!"
Diamonds flashed in the young man's eyes, as he filled up yet another
page in one fell swoop.
"Is it true that this will cause a world revolution in animal
husbandry?"
"Trust the press to ask a question like that," Persikov howled. "I
forbid you to write such rubbish. I can see from your face that you're
writing sheer nonsense!"
"And now, if you'd be so kind, Professor, a photograph of you," said
the young man, closing his note-pad with a snap.
"What's that? A photograph of me? To put in those magazines of yours?
Together with all that diabolical rubbish you've been scribbling down. No,
certainly not... And I'm extremely busy. I really must ask you to..."
"Any old one will do. And we'll return it straightaway." "Pankrat!" the
Professor yelled in a fury. "Your humble servant," said the young man and
vanished. Instead of Pankrat came the strange rhythmic scraping sound of
something metallic hitting the floor, and into the laboratory rolled a man
of unusual girth, dressed in a blouse and trousers made from a woollen
blanket. His left, artificial leg clattered and clanked, and he was holding
a briefcase. The clean-shaven round face resembling yellowish meat-jelly was
creased into a welcoming smile. He bowed in military fashion to the
Professor and drew himself up, his leg giving a springlike snap. Persikov
was speechless.
"My dear Professor," the stranger began in a pleasant, slightly throaty
voice, "forgive an ordinary mortal for invading your seclusion."
"Are you a reporter?" Persikov asked. "Pankrat!"
"Certainly not, dear Professor," the fat man replied. "Allow me to
introduce myself-naval captain and contributor to the Industrial Herald,
newspaper of the Council of People's Commissars."
"Pankrat!" cried Persikov hysterically, and at that very moment a red
light went on in the corner and the telephone rang softly. "Pankrat!" the
Professor cried again. "Hello."
"Verzeihen Sie bitte, Herr Professor," croaked the telephone in German,
"das ich store. Ich bin Mitarbeiter des Berliner Tageblatts..."
"Pankrat!" the Professor shouted down the receiver. "Bin momental sehr
beschaftigt und kann Sie deshalb jetzt nicht empfangen. Pankrat!"
And just at this moment the bell at the main door started ringing.
"Terrible murder in Bronnaya Street!" yelled unnaturally hoarse voices,
darting about between wheels and flashing headlights on the hot June
roadway. "Terrible illness of chickens belonging to the priest's widow
Drozdova with a picture of her! Terrible discovery of life ray by Professor
Persikov!"
Persikov dashed out so quickly that he almost got run over by a car in
Mokhovaya and grabbed a newspaper angrily.
"Three copecks, citizen!" cried the newsboy, squeezing into the crowd
on the pavement and yelling: "Red Moscow Evening News, discovery of X-ray!"
The flabbergasted Persikov opened the newspaper and huddled against a
lamp-post. On page two in the left-hand corner a bald man with crazed,
unseeing eyes and a hanging lower jaw, the fruit of Alfred Bronsky's
artistic endeavours,
stared at him from a smudged frame. The caption beneath it read: "V I.
Persikov who discovered the mysterious ray." Lower down, under the heading
World-Wide Enigma was an article which began as follows:
"'Take a seat,' the eminent scientist Persikov invited me
hospitably..."
The article was signed with a flourish "Alfred Bronsky (Alonso)".
A greenish light soared up over the University roof; the words "Talking
Newspaper" lit up in the sky, and a crowd jammed Mokhovaya.
"Take a seat!' an unpleasant thin voice, just like Alfred Bronsky's
magnified a thousand times, yelped from a loudspeaker on the roof, "the
eminent scientist Persikov invited me hospitably. 'I've been wanting to tell
the workers of Moscow the results of my discovery for some time...'"
There was a faint metallic scraping behind Persikov's back, and someone
tugged at his sleeve. Turning round he saw the yellow rotund face of the
owner of the artificial leg. His eyes were glistening with tears and his
lips trembled.
"You wouldn't tell me the results of your remarkable discovery,
Professor," he said sadly with a deep sigh. "So that's farewell to a few
more copecks."
He gazed miserably at the University roof, where the invisible Alfred
raved on in the loudspeaker's black jaws. For some reason Persikov felt
sorry for the fat man.
"I never asked him to sit down!" he growled, catching words from the
sky furiously. "He's an utter scoundrel! You must excuse me, but really when
you're working like that and people come bursting in... I'm not referring to
you, of course..."
"Then perhaps you'd just describe your chamber to me, Professor?" the
man with the artificial leg wheedled mournfully. "It doesn't make any
difference now..."
"In three days half-a-pound of frog-spawn produces more tadpoles than
you could possibly count," the invisible man in the loudspeaker boomed.
"Toot-toot," cried the cars on Mokhovaya.
"Ooo! Ah! Listen to that!" the crowd murmured, staring upwards.
"What a scoundrel! Eh?" hissed Persikov, shaking with anger, to the
artificial man. "How do you like that? I'll lodge an official complaint
against him."
"Disgraceful!" the fat man agreed.
A blinding violet ray dazzled the Professor's eyes, lighting up
everything around-a lamp-post, a section of pavement, a yellow wall and the
avid faces.
"They're photographing you, Professor," the fat man whispered
admiringly and hung on the Professor's arm like a ton weight. Something
clicked in the air.
"To blazes with them!" cried Persikov wretchedly, pushing his way with
the ton weight out of the crowd. "Hey, taxi! Prechistenka Street!"
A battered old jalopy, a 'twenty-four model, chugged to a stop, and the
Professor climbed in, trying to shake off the fat man.
"Let go!" he hissed, shielding his face with his hands to ward off the
violet light.
"Have you read it? What they're shouting? Professor Persikov and his
children've had their throats cut in Malaya Bronnaya!" people were shouting
in the crowd.
"I don't have any children, blast you!" yelled Persikov, suddenly
coming into the focus of a black camera which snapped him in profile with
his mouth wide open and eyes glaring.
"Chu... ug, chu... ug," revved the taxi and barged into the crowd.
The fat man was already sitting in the cab, warming the Professor's
side.
In the small provincial town formerly called Trinity, but now
Glassworks, in Kostroma Province (Glassworks District), a woman in a grey
dress with a kerchief tied round her head walked onto the porch of a little
house in what was formerly Church, but now Personal Street and burst into
tears. This woman, the widow of Drozdov, the former priest of the former
church, sobbed so loudly that soon another woman's head in a fluffy scarf
popped out of a window in the house across the road and exclaimed:
"What's the matter, Stepanovna? Another one?"
"The seventeenth!" replied the former Drozdova, sobbing even louder.
"Dearie me," tutted the woman in the scarf, shaking her head, "did you
ever hear of such a thing? Tis the anger of the Lord, and no mistake! Dead,
is she?"
"Come and see, Matryona," said the priest's widow, amid loud and bitter
sobs. "Take a look at her!"
Banging the rickety grey gate, the woman padded barefoot over the dusty
hummocks in the road to be taken by the priest's widow into the chicken run.
It must be said that instead of losing heart, the widow of Father
Sawaty Drozdov, who had died in twenty-six of anti-religious mortification,
set up a nice little poultry business. As soon as things began to go well,
the widow received such an exorbitant tax demand that the poultry business
would have closed down had it not been for certain good folk. They advised
the widow to inform the local authorities that she, the widow, was setting
up a poultry cooperative. The cooperative consisted of Drozdova herself, her
faithful servant Matryoshka and the widow's dear niece. The tax was reduced,
and the poultry-farm prospered so much that in twenty-eight the widow had as
many as 250 chickens, even including some Cochins. Each Sunday the widow's
eggs appeared at Glassworks market. They were sold in Tambov and were even
occasionally displayed in the windows of the former Chichkin's Cheese and
Butter Shop in Moscow.
And now, the seventeenth brahmaputra that morning, their dear little
crested hen, was walking round the yard vomiting. The poor thing gurgled and
retched, rolling her eyes sadly at the sun as if she would never see it
again. In front of her squatted co-operative-member Matryoshka with a cup of
water.
"Come on, Cresty dear... chuck-chuck-chuck... drink some water,"
Matryoshka begged, thrusting the cup under the hen's beak, but the hen would
not drink. She opened her beak wide, threw back her head and began to vomit
blood.
"Lord Jesus!" cried the guest, slapping her thighs. "Just look at that!
Clots of blood. I've never seen a hen bring up like that before, so help me
God!"
These words accompanied the poor hen on her last journey. She suddenly
keeled over, digging her beak helplessly into the dust, and swivelled her
eyes. Then she rolled onto her back with her legs sticking up and lay
motionless. Matryoshka wept in her deep bass voice, spilling the water, and
the Chairman of the cooperative, the priest's widow, wept too while her
guest lent over and whispered in her ear:
"Stepanovna, I'll eat my hat if someone hasn't put the evil eye on your
hens. Whoever heard of it! Chickens don't have diseases like this! Someone's
put a spell on them."
"Tis devils' work!" the priest's widow cried to heaven. "They want to
see me good and done for!"
Her words called forth a loud cock-a-doodle-doo, and lurching sideways
out of the chicken-coop, like a restless drunk out of a tavern, came a tatty
scrawny rooster. Rolling his eyes at them ferociously, he staggered about on
the spot and spread his wings like an eagle, but instead of flying up, he
began to run round the yard in circles, like a horse on a rope. On his third
time round he stopped, vomited, then began to cough and choke, spitting
blood all over the place and finally fell down with his legs pointing up at
the sun like masts. The yard was filled with women's wails, which were
answered by an anxious clucking, clattering and fidgeting from the