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chicken-coop.
"What did I tell you? The evil eye," said the guest triumphantly. "You
must get Father Sergius to sprinkle holy water."
At six o'clock in the evening, when the sun's fiery visage was sitting
low among the faces of young sunflowers, Father Sergius, the senior priest
at the church, finished the rite and took off his stole. Inquisitive heads
peeped over the wooden fence and through the cracks. The mournful priest's
widow kissed the crucifix and handed a torn yellow rouble note damp from her
tears to Father Sergius, in response to which the latter sighed and muttered
something about the good Lord visiting his wrath upon us. Father Sergius's
expression suggested that he knew perfectly well why the good Lord was doing
so, only he would not say.
Whereupon the crowd in the street dispersed, and since chickens go to
sleep early no one knew that in the chicken-coop of Drozdova's neighbour
three hens and a rooster had kicked the bucket all at once. They vomited
like Drozdova's hens, only their end came inconspicuously in the locked
chicken-coop. The rooster toppled off the perch head-first and died in that
pose. As for the widow's hens, they gave up the ghost immediately after the
service, and by evening there was a deathly hush in her chicken-coop and
piles of dead poultry.
The next morning the town got up and was thunderstruck to hear that the
story had assumed strange, monstrous proportions. By midday there were only
three chickens still alive in Personal Street, in the last house where the
provincial tax inspector rented lodgings, but they, too, popped off by one
p. m. And come evening, the small town of Glassworks was buzzing like a
bee-hive with the terrible word "plague" passing from mouth to mouth.
Drozdova's name got into The Red Warrior, the local newspaper, in an article
entitled "Does This Mean a Chicken Plague?" and from there raced on to
Moscow.
Professor Persikov's life took on a strange, uneasy and worrisome
complexion. In short, it was quite impossible for him to work in this
situation. The day after he got rid of Alfred Bronsky, he was forced to
disconnect the telephone in his laboratory at the Institute by taking the
receiver off, and in the evening as he was riding along Okhotny Row in a
tram, the Professor saw himself on the roof of an enormous building with
Workers' Paper in black letters. He, the Professor, was climbing into a
taxi, fuming, green around the gills, and blinking, followed by a rotund
figure in a blanket, who was clutching his sleeve. The Professor on the
roof, on the white screen, put his hands over his face to ward off the
violet ray. Then followed in letters of fire: "Professor Persikov in a car
explaining everything to our well-known reporter Captain Stepanov." And
there was the rickety old jalopy dashing along Volkhonka, past the Church of
Christ the Saviour, with the Professor bumping up and down inside it,
looking like a wolf at bay.
"They're devils, not human beings," the zoologist hissed through
clenched teeth as he rode past.
That evening, returning to his apartment in Prechistenka, the zoologist
received from the housekeeper, Maria Stepanovna, seventeen slips of paper
with the telephone numbers of people who had rung during his absence, plus
Maria Stepanovna's oral statement that she was worn out. The Professor was
about to tear the pieces of paper up, but stopped when he saw "People's
Commissariat of Health" scribbled next to one of the numbers.
"What's up?" the eccentric scientist was genuinely puzzled. "What's the
matter with them?"
At ten fifteen on the same evening the bell rang, and the Professor was
obliged to converse with a certain exquisitely attired citizen. The
Professor received him thanks to a visiting card which said (without
mentioning any names) "Authorised Head of Trading Sections for Foreign Firms
Represented in the Republic of Soviets."
"The devil take him," Persikov growled, putting his magnifying glass
and some diagrams down on the baize cloth.
"Send him in here, that authorised whatever he is," he said to Maria
Stepanovna.
"What can I do for you?" Persikov asked in a tone that made the
authorised whatever he was shudder perceptibly. Persikov shifted his
spectacles from his nose to his forehead and back again, and looked his
visitor up and down. The latter glistened with hair cream and precious
stones, and a monocle sat in his right eye. "What a foul-looking face,"
Persikov thought to himself for some reason.
The guest began in circuitous fashion by asking permission to smoke a
cigar, as a result of which Persikov reluctantly invited him to take a seat.
Then the guest began apologising at length for having come so late. "But
it's impossible to catch ... oh, tee-hee, pardon me ... to find the
Professor at home in the daytime." (The guest gave a sobbing laugh like a
hyena.)
"Yes, I'm very busy!" Persikov answered so curtly that the visitor
shuddered visibly again.
Nevertheless he had taken the liberty of disturbing the famous
scientist. Time is money, as they say ... the Professor didn't object to his
cigar, did he?
"Hrmph, hrmph, hrmph," Persikov replied. He'd given him permission."
"You have discovered the ray of life, haven't you, Professor?"
"Balderdash! What life? The newspapers invented that!"
"Oh, no, tee-hee-hee..." He perfectly understood the modesty that is an
invariable attribute of all true scholars... of course... There had been
telegrams today... In the cities of Warsaw and Riga they had already heard
about the ray. Professor Persikov's name was on everyone's lips... The whole
world was following his work with bated breath... But everyone knew how hard
it was for scholars in Soviet Russia. Entre nous, soi-dis... There wasn't
anyone else listening, was there? Alas, they didn't appreciate academic work
here, so he would like to have a little talk with the Professor... A certain
foreign state was offering Professor Persikov entirely disinterested
assistance with his laboratory research. Why cast your pearls here, as the
Scriptures say? This state knew how hard it had been for the Professor in
'nineteen and 'twenty during that tee-hee ... revolution. Of course, it
would all be kept absolutely secret. The Professor would inform the state of
the results of his work, and it would finance him in return. Take that
chamber he had built, for instance. It would be interesting to have a peep
at the designs for it...
At this point the guest took a pristine wad of banknotes out of his
inside jacket pocket...
A mere trifle, a deposit of 5,000 roubles, say, could be given to the
Professor this very moment... no receipt was required. The authorised
whatever he was would be most offended if the Professor even mentioned a
receipt.
"Get out!" Persikov suddenly roared so terrifyingly that the high keys
on the piano in the drawing-room vibrated.
The guest vanished so quickly that after a moment Persikov, who was
shaking with rage, was not sure whether he had been a hallucination or not.
"His galoshes?" Persikov yelled a moment later in the hall.
"The gentleman forgot them, sir," replied a quaking Maria Stepanovna.
"Throw them out!"
"How can I? The gentleman's bound to come back for them."
"Hand them over to the house committee. And get a receipt. Don't let me
ever set eyes on them again! Take them to the committee! Let them have that
spy's galoshes!"
Maria Stepanovna crossed herself, picked up the splendid leather
galoshes and took them out of the back door. She stood outside for a while,
then hid the galoshes in the pantry.
"Handed them over?" growled Persikov.
"Yes, sir."
"Give me the receipt."
"But the Chairman can't write, Vladimir Ipatych!"
"Get. Me. A. Receipt. At. Once. Let some literate rascal sign it for
him."
Maria Stepanovna just shook her head, went off and returned a quarter
of an hour later with a note which said:
"Rcvd for storage from Prof. Persikov I (one) pr. ga's. Kolesov."
"And what might that be?"
"It's a baggage check, sir."
Persikov trampled on the check, but put the receipt under the blotter.
Then a sudden thought made his high forehead darken. He rushed to the
telephone, rang Pankrat at the Institute and asked him if everything was
alright there. Pankrat snarled something into the receiver, which could be
interpreted as meaning that, as far as he could see, everything there was
fine. But Persikov did not calm down for long. A moment later he grabbed the
phone and boomed into the receiver:
"Give me the, what's it called, Lubyanka. Merci... Which of you should
I report this to ... there are some suspicious-looking characters in
galoshes round here, and... Professor Persikov of the Fourth University..."
The receiver suddenly cut the conversation short, and Persikov walked
away, cursing under his breath.
"Would you like some tea, Vladimir Ipatych?" Maria Stepanovna enquired
timidly, peeping into the study.
"No, I would not ... and the devil take the lot of them... What's got
into them!"
Exactly ten minutes later the Professor received some new visitors in
his study. One of them was pleasant, rotund and very polite, in an ordinary
khaki service jacket and breeches. A pince-nez perched on his nose, like a
crystal butterfly. In fact he looked like a cherub in patent leather boots.
The second, short and extremely grim, wore civilian clothes, but they seemed
to constrict him. The third visitor behaved in a most peculiar fashion. He
did not enter the Professor's study, but stayed outside in the dark
corridor. The brightly lit study wreathed in clouds of tobacco smoke was
entirely visible to him. The face of this third man, also in civilian
clothes, was adorned by a tinted pince-nez.
The two inside the study wore Persikov out completely, examining the
visiting card, asking him about the five thousand and making him describe
what the man looked like.
"The devil only knows," Persikov muttered. "Well, he had a loathsome
face. A degenerate."
"Did he have a glass eye?" the small man croaked.
"The devil only knows. But no, he didn't. His eyes darted about all the
time."
"Rubinstein?" the cherub asked the small man quietly. But the small man
shook his head gloomily.
"Rubinstein would never give cash without a receipt, that's for sure,"
he muttered. "This isn't Rubinstein's work. It's someone bigger."
The story about the galoshes evoked the liveliest interest from the
visitors. The cherub rapped a few words down the receiver: "The State
Political Board orders house committee secretary Kolesov to come to
Professor Persikov's apartment I at once with the galoshes." In a flash
Kolesov turned up in thes study, pale-faced and clutching the pair of
galoshes.
"Vasenka!" the cherub called quietly to the man sitting in the hall,
who got up lethargically and slouched into the study. The tinted lenses had
swallowed up his eyes completely.
"Yeh?" he asked briefly and sleepily.
"The galoshes."
The tinted lenses slid over the galoshes, and Persikov thought he saw a
pair of very sharp eyes, not at all sleepy, flash out from under the lenses
for a second. But they disappeared almost at once.
"Well, Vasenka?"
The man called Vasenka replied in a flat voice:
"Well what? They're Polenzhkovsky's galoshes."
The house committee was immediately deprived of Professor Persikov's
present. The galoshes disappeared in a newspaper. Highly delighted, the
cherub in the service jacket rose to his feet and began to pump the
Professor's hand, even delivering a small speech, the gist of which was as
follows: it did the Professor honour ... the Professor could rest assured
... he would not be disturbed any more, either at the Institute or at home
... steps would be taken, his chambers were perfectly safe...
"But couldn't you shoot the reporters?" asked Persikov, looking over
his spectacles.
His question cheered the visitors up no end. Not only the small gloomy
one, but even the tinted one in the hall gave a big smile. Beaming and
sparkling, the cherub explained that that was impossible.
"But who was that scoundrel who came here?"
The smiles disappeared at once, and the cherub replied evasively that
it was just some petty speculator not worth worrying about. All the same he
trusted that the Professor would treat the events of this evening in
complete confidence, and the visitors left.
Persikov returned to his study and the diagrams, but he was not
destined to study them. The telephone's red light went on, and a female
voice suggested that the Professor might like to marry an attractive and
amorous widow with a seven-roomed apartment. Persikov howled down the
receiver:
"I advise you to get treatment from Professor Rossolimo..." and then
the phone rang again.
This time Persikov softened somewhat, because the person, quite a
famous one, who was ringing from the Kremlin enquired at length with great
concern about Persikov's work and expressed the desire to visit his
laboratory. Stepping back from the telephone, Persikov wiped his forehead
and took off the receiver. Then trumpets began blaring and the shrieks of
the Valkyrie rang in the apartment upstairs. The cloth mill director's radio
had tuned in to the Wagner concert at the Bolshoi. To the accompaniment of
howls and rumbles descending from the ceiling, Persikov declared to Maria
Stepanovna that he would take the director to court, smash his radio to
bits, and get the blazes out of Moscow, because somebody was clearly trying
to drive him out. He broke his magnifying glass, spent the night on the
divan in the study and was lulled to sleep by the sweet trills of a famous
pianist wafted from the Bolshoi Theatre.
The following day was also full of surprises. After taking the tram to
the Institute, Persikov found a stranger in a fashionable green bowler hat
standing on the porch. He scrutinised Persikov carefully, but did not
address any questions to him, so Persikov put up with him. But in the
Institute hall, apart from the dismayed Pankrat, a second bowler hat stood
up as Persikov came in and greeted him courteously: "Good morning, Citizen
Professor."
"What do you want?" asked Persikov furiously, tearing off his coat with
Pankrat's help. But the bowler hat quickly pacified Persikov by whispering
in the gentlest of voices that there was no need at all for the Professor to
be upset. He, the bowler hat, was there precisely in order to protect the
Professor from all sorts of importunate visitors. The Professor could rest
assured not only about the laboratory doors, but also about the windows. So
saying the stranger turned back the lapel of his jacket for a moment and
showed the Professor a badge.
"Hm ... you work pretty efficiently, I must say," Persikov growled,
adding naively: "What will you have to eat?"
Whereupon the bowler hat smiled and explained that someone would come
to relieve him.
The next three days were splendid. The Professor had two visits from
the Kremlin and one from the students whom he was to examine. The students
all failed to a man, and you could see from their faces that Persikov now
filled them with a superstitious dread.
"Go and be bus conductors! You're not fit to study zoology," came the
shouts from his laboratory.
"Strict, is he?" the bowler hat asked Pankrat.
"I should say so," Pankrat replied. "If any of 'em stick it to the end,
they come staggerin' out, sweatin' like pigs, and make straight for the
boozer."
With all this going on the Professor did not notice the time pass, but
on the fourth day he was again brought back to reality, thanks to a thin,
shrill voice from the street.
"Vladimir Ipatych!" the voice shouted through the open window from
Herzen Street. The voice was in luck. Persikov had driven himself too hard
in the last few days. And at that moment he was sitting in an armchair
having a rest and a smoke, with a vacant stare in his red-rimmed eyes. He
was exhausted. So it was even with a certain curiosity that he looked out of
the window and saw Alfred Bronsky on the pavement. The Professor recognised
the titled owner of the visiting card from his pointed hat and note-pad.
Bronsky gave a tender and courteous bow to the window.
"Oh, it's you, is it?" asked the Professor. He did not have the
strength to be angry and was even curious to know what would happen next.
Protected by the window he felt safe from Alfred. The ever-vigilant bowler
hat outside immediately turned an ear to Bronsky. The latter's face
blossomed into the smarmiest of smiles.
"Just a sec or two, dear Professor," said Bronsky, raising his voice to
make himself heard. "I have one question only and it concerns zoology. May I
put it to you?"
"You may," Persikov replied in a laconic, ironical tone, thinking to
himself: "There's something American about that rascal, you know."
"What have you to say re the fowls, Professor?" shouted Bronsky,
cupping his hands round his mouth.
Persikov was taken aback. He sat on the window-sill, then got down,
pressed a knob and shouted, pointing at the window: "Let that fellow on the
pavement in, Pankrat!"
When Bronsky walked into the room, Persikov extended his bonhomie to
the point of barking "Sit down!" to him.
Smiling ecstatically, Bronsky sat down on the revolving stool
"Kindly explain something to me," Persikov began. "You write for those
newspapers of yours, don't you?"
"That is so," Alfred replied respectfully.
"Well, what I can't understand is how you can write if you can't even
speak Russian properly. What do you mean by 'a sec or two' and 're the
fowls'?"
Bronsky gave a thin, respectful laugh.
"Valentin Petrovich corrects it."
"And who might Valentin Petrovich be?"
"The head of the literary section."
"Oh, well. I'm not a philologist anyway. Now, leaving aside that
Petrovich of yours, what exactly do you wish to know about fowls?"
"Everything you can tell me, Professor."
At this point Bronsky armed himself with a pencil. Sparks of triumph
flashed in Persikov's eyes.
"You shouldn't have come to me, I don't specialise in our feathered
friends. You should have gone to Yemelian Ivano-vich Portugalov, at the
First University. I personally know very little..."
Bronsky smiled ecstatically to indicate that he had got the Professor's
joke. "Joke-very little!" he scribbled in his pad.
"But if it interests you, of course. Hens, or cristates are a variety
of bird from the fowl species. From the pheasant family," Persikov began in
a loud voice, looking not at Bronsky, but into the far distance where he
could see an audience of thousands. "From the pheasant family ...phasianus.
They are birds with a fleshy skin crown and two gills under the lower jaw...
Hm, although some have only one in the middle under the beak. Now, what
else. Their wings are short and rounded. The tail is of medium length,
somewhat stepped and even, I would say, roof-shaped. The middle feathers are
bent in the form of a sickle... Pankrat... bring me model No. 705 from the
model room, the cross-section of the domestic cock. You don't need it? Don't
bring the model, Pankrat. I repeat, I am not a specialist. Go to Portugalov.
Now let me see, I personally know of six types of wild fowl... Hm,
Portugalov knows more... In India and on the Malaysian archipelago. For
example, the Bankiva fowl, or Callus bankiva. It is found in the foothills
of the Himalayas, throughout India, in Assam and Burma... The Java fowl, or
Gallus varius on Lombok, Sumbawa and Flores. And on the island of Java there
is the splendid Gallus eneus fowl. In south-east India I can recommend the
very beautiful Sonneratii. I'll show you a drawing of it later. As for
Ceylon, here we have the Stanley fowl, which is not found anywhere else."
Bronsky sat there, eyes popping, and scribbled madly.
"Anything else I can tell you?"
"I'd like to hear something about fowl diseases," Alfred whispered
quietly.
"Hm, it's not my subject. You should ask Portugalov. But anyway...
Well, there are tape-worms, leeches, the itchmite, bird-mite, chicken louse,
Eomenacanthus stramineus, fleas, chicken cholera, inflammation of the mucous
membrane, Pneumonomicosis, tuberculosis, chicken mange... all sorts of
things (Persikov's eyes flashed.) ... poisoning, tumours, rickets, jaundice,
rheumatism, Ahorion Schonlein's fungus - that's a most interesting disease.
Small spots like mould appear on the crown..."
Bronsky wiped the sweat off his brow with a coloured handkerchief.
"And what in your opinion, Professor, is the cause of the present
catastrophe?"
"What catastrophe?"
"Haven't you read about it, Professor?" exclaimed Bronsky in surprise,
pulling a crumpled page of Izvestia out of his briefcase.
"I don't read newspapers," Persikov pouted.
"But why not, Professor?" Alfred asked gently.
"Because they write such rubbish," Persikov replied, without thinking.
"But surely not, Professor?" Bronsky whispered softly, unfolding the
page.
"What's the matter?" asked Persikov, even rising to his feet. Bronsky's
eyes were flashing now. He pointed a sharp painted finger at an incredibly
large headline which ran right across the whole page: "Chicken plague in the
Republic".
"What?" asked Persikov, pushing his spectacles onto his forehead...
The city shone, the lights danced, going out and blazing on. In Theatre
Square the white lamps of buses mingled with the green lights of trams;
above the former Muir and Merilees, its tenth floor added later, skipped a
multi-coloured electrical woman, tossing out letter by letter the
multicoloured words:
"Workers' Credit". A crowd thronged and murmured in the small garden
opposite the Bolshoi Theatre, where a multicoloured fountain played at
night. And over the Bolshoi itself a huge loudspeaker kept making
announcements.
"Anti-fowl vaccinations at Lefortovo Veterinary Institute have produced
brilliant results. The number of... fowl deaths for today has dropped by
half..."
Then the loudspeaker changed its tone, something growled inside it, a
spray of green blazed up over the theatre, then went out and the loudspeaker
complained in a deep bass:
"An extraordinary commission has been set up to fight the fowl plague
consisting of the People's Commissar of Health, the People's Commissar of
Agriculture, the head of animal husbandry, Comrade Ptakha-Porosyuk,
Professors Persikov and Portugalov... and Comrade Rabinovich! New attempts
at intervention," the loudspeaker giggled and cried, like a jackal, "in
connection with the fowl plague!"
Theatre Passage, Neglinnaya and Lubyanka blazed with white and violet
neon strips and flickering lights amid wailing sirens and clouds of dust.
People crowded round the large notices on the walls, lit by glaring red
reflectors.
"All consumption of chickens and chicken eggs is strictly forbidden on
pain of severe punishment. Any attempt by private traders to sell them in
markets is punishable by law with confiscation of all property. All citizens
in possession of eggs are urgently requested to take them to local police
stations."
A screen on the roof of the Workers' Paper showed chickens piled up to
the sky as greenish firemen, fragmenting and sparkling, hosed them with
kerosene. Red waves washed over the screen, deathly smoke belched forth,
swirling in clouds, and drifted up in a column, then out hopped the fiery
letters:
"Dead chickens being burnt in Khodynka."
Amid the madly blazing windows of shops open until three in the
morning, with breaks for lunch and supper, boarded-up windows with signs
saying "Eggs for sale. Quality guaranteed" stared out blindly. Hissing
ambulances with "Moscow Health Dept." on them raced past policemen and
overtook heavy buses, their sirens wailing.
"Someone else poisoned himself with rotten eggs," the crowd murmured.
The world-famous Empire Restaurant in Petrovsky Lines glowed with green
and orange lamps, and inside it by the portable telephones on the tables lay
liqueur-stained cardboard notices saying "No omelettes until further notice.
Try our fresh oysters."
In the Hermitage Gardens, where Chinese lanterns shone like sad beads
in dead choked foliage, on a blindingly lit stage the singers Shrams and
Karmanchikov sang satirical songs composed by the poets Ardo and Arguyev,
Oh, Mama, what shall I do
Without my little eggies two?
accompanied by a tap-dance.
The theatre named after the deceased Vsevolod Meyer-hold who, it will
be remembered, met his end in 1927 during a production of Pushkin's Boris
Godunov, when the trapezes with naked boyars collapsed, sported a running
coloured neon strip announcing a new play by the writer Erendors, entitled
"Fowl Farewell" directed by Kuchterman, a pupil of Meyerhold. Next door, at
the Aquarium Gardens, ablaze with neon advertisements and shining half-naked
women, the revue "Son-of-a-Hen" by the writer Lenivtsev was playing to loud
applause among the foliage of the open-air variety stage. And along
Tverskaya trotted a line of circus donkeys, with lanterns under each ear and
gaudy posters. The Korsh Theatre was reviving Rostand's Chantecler.
Newspaper boys bellowed and yelled among the motor wheels:
"Horrific find in underground cave! Poland preparing for horrific war!
Horrific experiments by Professor Persikov!"
In the circus of the former Nikitin, in a rich brown arena smelling
sweetly of dung, the deathly white clown Born was talking to Bim, all
swollen up with dropsy.
"I know why you're so fed up!"
"Why ith it?" squealed Bim.
"You buried your eggs under a gooseberry bush, and the 15th District
police squad has found them."
"Ha-ha-ha-ha," laughed the circus, so hard that the blood curdled
happily and longingly in their veins and the trapezes and cobwebs stirred
under the old dome.
"Allez-oop!" the clowns shouted loudly, and a well-fed white horse
trotted out bearing a stunningly beautiful woman with shapely legs in a
crimson costume.
Not looking at or taking heed of anyone and ignoring the prostitutes'
nudges and soft, enticing invitations, the inspired and solitary Professor
Persikov crowned with unexpected fame made his way along Mokhovaya to the
neon clock by the Manege. Here, engrossed in his thoughts and not looking
where he was going, he collided with a strange, old-fashioned man and banged
his fingers painfully against the wooden holster hanging from the man's
belt.
"What the devil!" squealed Persikov. "My apologies!" "Pardon me!"
replied an unpleasant voice in return, and they managed to disentangle
themselves in the mass of people. The Professor continued on his way to
Prechistenka, putting the incident out of his head straightaway.
Whether or not the Lefortovo veterinary vaccinations were effective,
the Samara quarantine teams efficient, the strict measures taken with regard
to buyers-up of eggs in Kaluga and Voronezh adequate and the work of the
Special Moscow Commission successful, is not known, but what is known is
that a fortnight after Persikov's last meeting with Alfred there was not a
single chicken left in the Republic. Here and there in provincial back-yards
lay plaintive tufts of feathers, bringing tears to the eyes of the owners,
and in hospital the last gluttons recovered from diarrhea and vomiting
blood. The loss in human life for the whole country was not more than a
thousand, fortunately. There were also no large-scale disturbances. True, in
Volokolamsk someone calling himself a prophet announced that the commissars,
no less, were to blame for the chicken plague, but no one took much notice
of him. A few policemen who were confiscating chickens from peasant women at
Volokolamsk market got beaten up, and some windows in the local post and
telegraph office were smashed. Fortunately, the efficient Volokolamsk
authorities took measures as a result of which, firstly, the prophet ceased
his activities and, secondly, the telegraph windows were replaced.
After travelling north as far as Archangel and Syumkin Vyselok, the
plague stopped of its own accord for the simple reason that it could go no
further-there are no chickens in the White Sea, as we all know. It also
stopped in Vladivostok, because after that came the ocean. In the far south
it died down and disappeared somewhere in the scorched expanses of Ordubat,
Djilfa and Karabulak, and in the west it stopped miraculously right at the
Polish and Rumanian frontiers. Perhaps the climate there was different or
the quarantine cordon measures taken by these neighbouring states helped.
But the fact remains that the plague went no further. The foreign press
discussed the unprecedented plague loudly and avidly, and the Soviet
government, without kicking up a racket, worked tirelessly round the clock.
The Extraordinary Commission to combat the chicken plague was renamed the
Extraordinary Commission to encourage and revive poultry-keeping in the
Republic and supplemented by a new extraordinary troika consisting of
sixteen comrades. "Volunteer-Fowl" was founded, of which Persikov and
Portugalov became honorary deputy chairmen. The newspapers carried pictures
of them with the captions "Mass purchase of eggs from abroad" and "Mr Hughes
tries to sabotage egg campaign". A venomous article by the journalist
Kolechkin, ending with the words: "Keep your hands off our eggs, Mr
Hughes-you've got eggs of your own!", resounded all over Moscow.
Professor Persikov had worked himself to a state of complete exhaustion
over the last three weeks. The fowl events had disturbed his usual routine
and placed an extra burden on him. He had to spend whole evenings attending
fowl committee meetings and from time to time endure long talks either with
Alfred Bronsky or the fat man with the artificial leg. And together with
Professor Portugalov and docents Ivanov and Borngart he anatomised and
microscopised fowls in search of the plague bacillus and even wrote a
brochure in the space of only three evenings, entitled "On Changes in the
Liver of Fowls Attacked by Plague".
Persikov worked without great enthusiasm in the fowl field, and
understandably so since his head was full of something quite different, the
main and most important thing, from which the fowl catastrophe had diverted
him, i.e., the red ray. Undermining his already overtaxed health by stealing
time from sleeping and eating, sometimes not returning to Prechistenka but
dozing on the oilskin divan in his room at the Institute, Persikov spent
night after night working with the chamber and the microscope.
By the end of July the commotion had abated somewhat The renamed
commission began to work along normal lines, .and Persikov resumed his
interrupted studies. The microscopes were loaded with new specimens, and
fish- and frog-spawn matured in the chamber at incredible speed. Specially
ordered lenses were delivered from Konigsberg by aeroplane, and in the last
few days of July, under Ivanov's supervision, mechanics installed two big
new chambers, in which the beam was as broad as a cigarette packet at its
base and a whole metre wide at the other end. Persikov rubbed his hands
happily and began to prepare some mysterious and complex experiments. First
of all, he came to some agreement with the People's Commissar of Education
by phone, and the receiver promised him the most willing assistance of all
kinds, then Persikov had a word with Comrade Ptakha-Porosyuk, head of the
Supreme Commission's Animal Husbandry Department. Persikov met with the most
cordial attention form Ptakha-Porosyuk with respect to a large order from
abroad for Professor Persikov. Ptakha-Porosyuk said on the phone that he
would cable Berlin and New York rightaway. After that there was a call from
the Kremlin to enquire how Persikov was getting on, and an
important-sounding voice asked affectionately if he would like a motor-car.
"No, thank you. I prefer to travel by tram," Persikov replied.
"But why?" the mysterious voice asked, with an indulgent laugh.
Actually everyone spoke to Persikov either with respect and awe, or
with an affectionate laugh, as if addressing a silly, although very
important child.
"It goes faster," Persikov said, after which the resonant bass on the
telephone said:
"Well, as you like."
Another week passed, during which Persikov withdrew increasingly from
the subsiding fowl problems to immerse himself entirely in the study of the
ray. His head became light, somehow transparent and weightless, from the
sleepless nights and exhaustion. The red rims never left his eyes now, and
almost every night was spent at the Institute. Once he abandoned his
zoological refuge to read a paper on his ray and its action on the ovule in
the huge hall of the Central Commission for Improving the Living Conditions
of Scientists in Prechistenka. This was a great triumph for the eccentric
zoologist. The applause in the hall made the plaster flake off the ceiling,
while the hissing arc lamps lit up the black dinner jackets of club-members
and the white dresses of their ladies. On the stage, next to the rostrum, a
clammy grey frog the size of a cat sat breathing heavily in a dish on a
glass table. Notes were thrown onto the stage. They included seven love
letters, which Persikov tore up. The club president had great difficulty
persuading him onto the platform. Persikov bowed angrily. His hands were wet
with sweat and his black tie was somewhere behind his left ear, instead of
under his chin. Before him in a breathing haze were hundreds of yellow faces
and white male chests, when suddenly the yellow holster of a pistol flashed
past and vanished behind a white column. Persikov noticed it vaguely and
then forgot about it. But after the lecture, as he was walking down the red
carpet of the staircase, he suddenly felt unwell. For a second the bright
chandelier in the vestibule clouded and Persikov came over dizzy and
slightly queasy. He seemed to smell burning and feel hot, sticky blood
running down his neck... With a trembling hand the Professor clutched the
banisters.
"Is anything the matter, Vladimir Ipatych?" he was besieged by anxious
voices on all sides.
"No, no," Persikov replied, pulling himself together. "I'm just rather
tired. Yes. Kindly bring me a glass of water."
It was a very sunny August day. This disturbed the Professor, so the
blinds were pulled down. One flexible standing reflector cast a pencil of
sharp light onto the glass table piled with instruments and lenses. The
exhausted Persikov was leaning against the back of his revolving chair,
smoking and staring through clouds of smoke with dead-tired but contented
eyes at the slightly open door of the chamber inside which a red sheaf of
light lay quietly, warming the already stuffy and fetid air in the room.
There was a knock at the door.
"What is it?" Persikov asked.
The door creaked lightly, and in came Pankrat. He stood to attention,
pallid with fear before the divinity, and announced:
"Feight's come for you, Professor."
The ghost of a smile flickered on the scientist's face. He narrowed his
eyes and said:
"That's interesting. Only I'm busy."
'"E says 'e's got an official warrant from the Kremlin."
"Fate with a warrant? That's a rare combination," Persikov remarked.
"Oh, well, send him in then!"
"Yessir," Pankrat replied, slithering through the door like a
grass-snake.
A minute later it opened again, and a man appeared on the threshold.
Persikov creaked his chair and stared at the newcomer over the top of his
spectacles and over his shoulder. Persikov was very isolated from real life.
He was not interested in it. But even Persikov could not fail to notice the
main thing about the man who had just come in. He was dreadfully
old-fashioned. In 1919 this man would have looked perfectly at home in the
streets of the capital. He would have looked tolerable in 1924, at the
beginning. But in 1928 he looked positively strange. At a time when even the
most backward part of the proletariat, bakers, were wearing jackets and when
military tunics were a rarity, having been finally discarded at the end of
1924, the newcomer was dressed in a double-breasted leather jacket, green
trousers, foot bindings and army boots, with a big old-fashioned Mauser in
the cracked yellow holster at his side. The newcomer's face made the same
impression on Persikov as on everyone else, a highly unpleasant one. The
small eyes looked out on the world with a surprised, yet confident
expression, and there was something unduly familiar about the short legs
with their flat feet. The face was bluish-shaven. Persikov frowned at once.
Creak' ing the screw mercilessly, he peered at the newcomer over his
spectacles, then through them, and barked:
"So you've got a warrant, have you? Where is it then?"
The newcomer was clearly taken aback by what he saw. In general he was
not prone to confusion, but now he was confused. Judging by his eyes, the
thing that impressed him most was the bookcase with twelve shelves
stretching right up to the ceiling and packed full of books. Then, of
course, the chambers which, hell-like, were flooded with the crimson ray
swelling up in the lenses. And Persikov himself in the semi-darkness by
sharp point of the ray falling from the reflector looked strange and
majestic in his revolving chair. The newcomer stared at him with an
expression in which sparks of respect flashed clearly through the
self-assurance, did not hand over any warrant, but said:
"I am Alexander Semyonovich Feight!"
"Well then? So what?"
"I have been put in charge of the Red Ray Model State Farm," the
newcomer explained.
"So what?"
"And so I have come to see you on secret business, comrade."
"Well, I wonder what that can be. Put it briefly, if you don't mind."
The newcomer unbuttoned his jacket and pulled out some instructions
typed on splendid thick paper. He handed the paper to Persikov, then sat
down uninvited on a revolving stool.
"Don't push the table," said Persikov with hatred.
The newcomer looked round in alarm at the table, on the far edge of
which a pair of eyes glittered lifelessly like diamonds in a damp dark
opening. They sent shivers down your spine.
No sooner had Persikov read the warrant, than he jumped up and rushed
to the telephone. A few seconds later he was already saying hastily in a
state of extreme irritation:
"Forgive me... I just don't understand... How can it be? Without my
consent or advice... The devil only knows what he'll do!"
At that point the stranger, highly offended, spun round on the stool.
"Pardon me, but I'm in charge..." he began.
But Persikov shook a crooked finger at him and went on:
"Excuse me, but I just don't understand. In fact, I object
categorically. I refuse to sanction any experiments with the eggs... Until I
have tried them myself..."
Something croaked and rattled in the receiver, and even at a distance
it was clear that the indulgent voice on the phone was talking to a small
child. In the end a purple-faced Persikov slammed down the receiver,
shouting over it at the wall:
"I wash my hands of the whole business!"
Going back to the table, he picked up the warrant, read it once from
top to bottom over his spectacles, then from bottom to top through them, and
suddenly howled:
"Pankrat!"
Pankrat appeared in the doorway as if he had shot up through the
trap-door in an opera. Persikov glared at him and barked:
"Go away, Pankrat!" And Pankrat disappeared, his face not expressing
the slightest surprise.
Then Persikov turned to the newcomer and said:
"I beg your pardon. I will obey. It's none of my business.
And of no interest to me."
The newcomer was not so much offended as taken aback.
"Excuse me," he began, "but comrade..."
"Why do you keep saying comrade all the time," Persikov muttered, then
fell silent.
"Well, I never," was written all over Feight's face.
"Pard..." "Alright then, here you are," Persikov interrupted him.
"See this arc lamp. From this you obtain by moving the eyepiece,"
Persikov clicked the lid of the chamber, like a camera, "a beam which you
can collect by moving the lenses, number 1 here... and the mirror, number
2." Persikov put the ray out, then lit it again on the floor of the asbestos
chamber. "And on the floor you can put anything you like and experiment with
it. Extremely simple, is it not?"
Persikov intended to express irony and contempt, but the newcomer was
peering hard at the chamber with shining eyes and did not notice them.
"Only I warn you," Persikov went on. "You must not put your hands in
the ray, because from my observations it causes growths of the epithelium.
And whether they are malignant or not, I unfortunately have not yet had time
to establish."
Hereupon the newcomer quickly put his hands behind his back, dropping
his leather cap, and looked at the Professor's hands. They were stained with
iodine, and the right hand was bandaged at the wrist.
"But what about you, Professor?"
"You can buy rubber gloves at Schwabe's on Kuznetsky," the Professor
replied irritably. "I'm not obliged to worry about that"
At this point Persikov stared hard at the newcomer as if through a
microscope.
"Where are you from? And why have you..."
Feight took offence at last.
"Pard..."
"But a person should know what he's doing! Why have you latched on to
this ray?"
"Because it's a matter of the greatest importance..."
"Hm. The greatest importance? In that case... Pankrat!"
And when Pankrat appeared:
"Wait a minute, I must think." " Pankrat dutifully disappeared again.
"There's one thing I can't understand," said Persikov. "Why the need
for all this speed and secrecy?"
"You've got me all muddled up. Professor," Feight replied. "You know
there's not a single chicken left in the whole country."
"Well, what of it?" Persikov howled. "Surely you're not going to try
and resurrect them all at the drop of a hat, are you? And why do you need
this ray which hasn't been properly studied yet?"
"Comrade Professor," Feight replied, "you've got me all muddled, honest
you have. I'm telling you that we must put poultry-keeping back on its feet
again, because they're writing all sorts of rotten things about us abroad.
Yes."
"Well, let them..."
"Tut-tut," Feight replied enigmatically, shaking his head.
"Who on earth, I should like to know, would ever think of using the ray
to hatch chickens..."
"Me," said Feight.
"Oh, I see. And why, if you don't mind my asking? How did you find out
about the properties of the ray?"
"I was at your lecture, Professor."
"But I haven't done anything with the eggs yet! I'm only planning to!"
"It'll work alright, honest it will," said Feight suddenly with great
conviction. "Your ray's so famous it could hatch elephants, not only
chickens."
"Now listen here," Persikov said. "You're not a zoologist, are you?
That's a pity. You would make a very bold experimenter. Yes, only you risk
... failure ... and you're taking up my time."
"We'll give the chambers back to you. Don't you worry!"
"When?"
"After I've hatched out the first batch."
"How confidently you said that! Very well! Pankrat!"
"I've brought some people with me," said Feight. "And a guard..."
By evening Persikov's study was desolate. The tables were empty.
Feight's people took away the three big chambers, only leaving the Professor
the first, the small one which he had used to begin the experiments.
The July dusk was falling. A greyness invaded the Institute, creeping
along the corridors. Monotonous steps could be heard in the study. Persikov
was pacing the large room from window to door, in the dark... And strange
though it may seem all the inmates of the Institute, and the animals too,
were prey to a curious melancholy that evening. For some reason the toads
"What did I tell you? The evil eye," said the guest triumphantly. "You
must get Father Sergius to sprinkle holy water."
At six o'clock in the evening, when the sun's fiery visage was sitting
low among the faces of young sunflowers, Father Sergius, the senior priest
at the church, finished the rite and took off his stole. Inquisitive heads
peeped over the wooden fence and through the cracks. The mournful priest's
widow kissed the crucifix and handed a torn yellow rouble note damp from her
tears to Father Sergius, in response to which the latter sighed and muttered
something about the good Lord visiting his wrath upon us. Father Sergius's
expression suggested that he knew perfectly well why the good Lord was doing
so, only he would not say.
Whereupon the crowd in the street dispersed, and since chickens go to
sleep early no one knew that in the chicken-coop of Drozdova's neighbour
three hens and a rooster had kicked the bucket all at once. They vomited
like Drozdova's hens, only their end came inconspicuously in the locked
chicken-coop. The rooster toppled off the perch head-first and died in that
pose. As for the widow's hens, they gave up the ghost immediately after the
service, and by evening there was a deathly hush in her chicken-coop and
piles of dead poultry.
The next morning the town got up and was thunderstruck to hear that the
story had assumed strange, monstrous proportions. By midday there were only
three chickens still alive in Personal Street, in the last house where the
provincial tax inspector rented lodgings, but they, too, popped off by one
p. m. And come evening, the small town of Glassworks was buzzing like a
bee-hive with the terrible word "plague" passing from mouth to mouth.
Drozdova's name got into The Red Warrior, the local newspaper, in an article
entitled "Does This Mean a Chicken Plague?" and from there raced on to
Moscow.
Professor Persikov's life took on a strange, uneasy and worrisome
complexion. In short, it was quite impossible for him to work in this
situation. The day after he got rid of Alfred Bronsky, he was forced to
disconnect the telephone in his laboratory at the Institute by taking the
receiver off, and in the evening as he was riding along Okhotny Row in a
tram, the Professor saw himself on the roof of an enormous building with
Workers' Paper in black letters. He, the Professor, was climbing into a
taxi, fuming, green around the gills, and blinking, followed by a rotund
figure in a blanket, who was clutching his sleeve. The Professor on the
roof, on the white screen, put his hands over his face to ward off the
violet ray. Then followed in letters of fire: "Professor Persikov in a car
explaining everything to our well-known reporter Captain Stepanov." And
there was the rickety old jalopy dashing along Volkhonka, past the Church of
Christ the Saviour, with the Professor bumping up and down inside it,
looking like a wolf at bay.
"They're devils, not human beings," the zoologist hissed through
clenched teeth as he rode past.
That evening, returning to his apartment in Prechistenka, the zoologist
received from the housekeeper, Maria Stepanovna, seventeen slips of paper
with the telephone numbers of people who had rung during his absence, plus
Maria Stepanovna's oral statement that she was worn out. The Professor was
about to tear the pieces of paper up, but stopped when he saw "People's
Commissariat of Health" scribbled next to one of the numbers.
"What's up?" the eccentric scientist was genuinely puzzled. "What's the
matter with them?"
At ten fifteen on the same evening the bell rang, and the Professor was
obliged to converse with a certain exquisitely attired citizen. The
Professor received him thanks to a visiting card which said (without
mentioning any names) "Authorised Head of Trading Sections for Foreign Firms
Represented in the Republic of Soviets."
"The devil take him," Persikov growled, putting his magnifying glass
and some diagrams down on the baize cloth.
"Send him in here, that authorised whatever he is," he said to Maria
Stepanovna.
"What can I do for you?" Persikov asked in a tone that made the
authorised whatever he was shudder perceptibly. Persikov shifted his
spectacles from his nose to his forehead and back again, and looked his
visitor up and down. The latter glistened with hair cream and precious
stones, and a monocle sat in his right eye. "What a foul-looking face,"
Persikov thought to himself for some reason.
The guest began in circuitous fashion by asking permission to smoke a
cigar, as a result of which Persikov reluctantly invited him to take a seat.
Then the guest began apologising at length for having come so late. "But
it's impossible to catch ... oh, tee-hee, pardon me ... to find the
Professor at home in the daytime." (The guest gave a sobbing laugh like a
hyena.)
"Yes, I'm very busy!" Persikov answered so curtly that the visitor
shuddered visibly again.
Nevertheless he had taken the liberty of disturbing the famous
scientist. Time is money, as they say ... the Professor didn't object to his
cigar, did he?
"Hrmph, hrmph, hrmph," Persikov replied. He'd given him permission."
"You have discovered the ray of life, haven't you, Professor?"
"Balderdash! What life? The newspapers invented that!"
"Oh, no, tee-hee-hee..." He perfectly understood the modesty that is an
invariable attribute of all true scholars... of course... There had been
telegrams today... In the cities of Warsaw and Riga they had already heard
about the ray. Professor Persikov's name was on everyone's lips... The whole
world was following his work with bated breath... But everyone knew how hard
it was for scholars in Soviet Russia. Entre nous, soi-dis... There wasn't
anyone else listening, was there? Alas, they didn't appreciate academic work
here, so he would like to have a little talk with the Professor... A certain
foreign state was offering Professor Persikov entirely disinterested
assistance with his laboratory research. Why cast your pearls here, as the
Scriptures say? This state knew how hard it had been for the Professor in
'nineteen and 'twenty during that tee-hee ... revolution. Of course, it
would all be kept absolutely secret. The Professor would inform the state of
the results of his work, and it would finance him in return. Take that
chamber he had built, for instance. It would be interesting to have a peep
at the designs for it...
At this point the guest took a pristine wad of banknotes out of his
inside jacket pocket...
A mere trifle, a deposit of 5,000 roubles, say, could be given to the
Professor this very moment... no receipt was required. The authorised
whatever he was would be most offended if the Professor even mentioned a
receipt.
"Get out!" Persikov suddenly roared so terrifyingly that the high keys
on the piano in the drawing-room vibrated.
The guest vanished so quickly that after a moment Persikov, who was
shaking with rage, was not sure whether he had been a hallucination or not.
"His galoshes?" Persikov yelled a moment later in the hall.
"The gentleman forgot them, sir," replied a quaking Maria Stepanovna.
"Throw them out!"
"How can I? The gentleman's bound to come back for them."
"Hand them over to the house committee. And get a receipt. Don't let me
ever set eyes on them again! Take them to the committee! Let them have that
spy's galoshes!"
Maria Stepanovna crossed herself, picked up the splendid leather
galoshes and took them out of the back door. She stood outside for a while,
then hid the galoshes in the pantry.
"Handed them over?" growled Persikov.
"Yes, sir."
"Give me the receipt."
"But the Chairman can't write, Vladimir Ipatych!"
"Get. Me. A. Receipt. At. Once. Let some literate rascal sign it for
him."
Maria Stepanovna just shook her head, went off and returned a quarter
of an hour later with a note which said:
"Rcvd for storage from Prof. Persikov I (one) pr. ga's. Kolesov."
"And what might that be?"
"It's a baggage check, sir."
Persikov trampled on the check, but put the receipt under the blotter.
Then a sudden thought made his high forehead darken. He rushed to the
telephone, rang Pankrat at the Institute and asked him if everything was
alright there. Pankrat snarled something into the receiver, which could be
interpreted as meaning that, as far as he could see, everything there was
fine. But Persikov did not calm down for long. A moment later he grabbed the
phone and boomed into the receiver:
"Give me the, what's it called, Lubyanka. Merci... Which of you should
I report this to ... there are some suspicious-looking characters in
galoshes round here, and... Professor Persikov of the Fourth University..."
The receiver suddenly cut the conversation short, and Persikov walked
away, cursing under his breath.
"Would you like some tea, Vladimir Ipatych?" Maria Stepanovna enquired
timidly, peeping into the study.
"No, I would not ... and the devil take the lot of them... What's got
into them!"
Exactly ten minutes later the Professor received some new visitors in
his study. One of them was pleasant, rotund and very polite, in an ordinary
khaki service jacket and breeches. A pince-nez perched on his nose, like a
crystal butterfly. In fact he looked like a cherub in patent leather boots.
The second, short and extremely grim, wore civilian clothes, but they seemed
to constrict him. The third visitor behaved in a most peculiar fashion. He
did not enter the Professor's study, but stayed outside in the dark
corridor. The brightly lit study wreathed in clouds of tobacco smoke was
entirely visible to him. The face of this third man, also in civilian
clothes, was adorned by a tinted pince-nez.
The two inside the study wore Persikov out completely, examining the
visiting card, asking him about the five thousand and making him describe
what the man looked like.
"The devil only knows," Persikov muttered. "Well, he had a loathsome
face. A degenerate."
"Did he have a glass eye?" the small man croaked.
"The devil only knows. But no, he didn't. His eyes darted about all the
time."
"Rubinstein?" the cherub asked the small man quietly. But the small man
shook his head gloomily.
"Rubinstein would never give cash without a receipt, that's for sure,"
he muttered. "This isn't Rubinstein's work. It's someone bigger."
The story about the galoshes evoked the liveliest interest from the
visitors. The cherub rapped a few words down the receiver: "The State
Political Board orders house committee secretary Kolesov to come to
Professor Persikov's apartment I at once with the galoshes." In a flash
Kolesov turned up in thes study, pale-faced and clutching the pair of
galoshes.
"Vasenka!" the cherub called quietly to the man sitting in the hall,
who got up lethargically and slouched into the study. The tinted lenses had
swallowed up his eyes completely.
"Yeh?" he asked briefly and sleepily.
"The galoshes."
The tinted lenses slid over the galoshes, and Persikov thought he saw a
pair of very sharp eyes, not at all sleepy, flash out from under the lenses
for a second. But they disappeared almost at once.
"Well, Vasenka?"
The man called Vasenka replied in a flat voice:
"Well what? They're Polenzhkovsky's galoshes."
The house committee was immediately deprived of Professor Persikov's
present. The galoshes disappeared in a newspaper. Highly delighted, the
cherub in the service jacket rose to his feet and began to pump the
Professor's hand, even delivering a small speech, the gist of which was as
follows: it did the Professor honour ... the Professor could rest assured
... he would not be disturbed any more, either at the Institute or at home
... steps would be taken, his chambers were perfectly safe...
"But couldn't you shoot the reporters?" asked Persikov, looking over
his spectacles.
His question cheered the visitors up no end. Not only the small gloomy
one, but even the tinted one in the hall gave a big smile. Beaming and
sparkling, the cherub explained that that was impossible.
"But who was that scoundrel who came here?"
The smiles disappeared at once, and the cherub replied evasively that
it was just some petty speculator not worth worrying about. All the same he
trusted that the Professor would treat the events of this evening in
complete confidence, and the visitors left.
Persikov returned to his study and the diagrams, but he was not
destined to study them. The telephone's red light went on, and a female
voice suggested that the Professor might like to marry an attractive and
amorous widow with a seven-roomed apartment. Persikov howled down the
receiver:
"I advise you to get treatment from Professor Rossolimo..." and then
the phone rang again.
This time Persikov softened somewhat, because the person, quite a
famous one, who was ringing from the Kremlin enquired at length with great
concern about Persikov's work and expressed the desire to visit his
laboratory. Stepping back from the telephone, Persikov wiped his forehead
and took off the receiver. Then trumpets began blaring and the shrieks of
the Valkyrie rang in the apartment upstairs. The cloth mill director's radio
had tuned in to the Wagner concert at the Bolshoi. To the accompaniment of
howls and rumbles descending from the ceiling, Persikov declared to Maria
Stepanovna that he would take the director to court, smash his radio to
bits, and get the blazes out of Moscow, because somebody was clearly trying
to drive him out. He broke his magnifying glass, spent the night on the
divan in the study and was lulled to sleep by the sweet trills of a famous
pianist wafted from the Bolshoi Theatre.
The following day was also full of surprises. After taking the tram to
the Institute, Persikov found a stranger in a fashionable green bowler hat
standing on the porch. He scrutinised Persikov carefully, but did not
address any questions to him, so Persikov put up with him. But in the
Institute hall, apart from the dismayed Pankrat, a second bowler hat stood
up as Persikov came in and greeted him courteously: "Good morning, Citizen
Professor."
"What do you want?" asked Persikov furiously, tearing off his coat with
Pankrat's help. But the bowler hat quickly pacified Persikov by whispering
in the gentlest of voices that there was no need at all for the Professor to
be upset. He, the bowler hat, was there precisely in order to protect the
Professor from all sorts of importunate visitors. The Professor could rest
assured not only about the laboratory doors, but also about the windows. So
saying the stranger turned back the lapel of his jacket for a moment and
showed the Professor a badge.
"Hm ... you work pretty efficiently, I must say," Persikov growled,
adding naively: "What will you have to eat?"
Whereupon the bowler hat smiled and explained that someone would come
to relieve him.
The next three days were splendid. The Professor had two visits from
the Kremlin and one from the students whom he was to examine. The students
all failed to a man, and you could see from their faces that Persikov now
filled them with a superstitious dread.
"Go and be bus conductors! You're not fit to study zoology," came the
shouts from his laboratory.
"Strict, is he?" the bowler hat asked Pankrat.
"I should say so," Pankrat replied. "If any of 'em stick it to the end,
they come staggerin' out, sweatin' like pigs, and make straight for the
boozer."
With all this going on the Professor did not notice the time pass, but
on the fourth day he was again brought back to reality, thanks to a thin,
shrill voice from the street.
"Vladimir Ipatych!" the voice shouted through the open window from
Herzen Street. The voice was in luck. Persikov had driven himself too hard
in the last few days. And at that moment he was sitting in an armchair
having a rest and a smoke, with a vacant stare in his red-rimmed eyes. He
was exhausted. So it was even with a certain curiosity that he looked out of
the window and saw Alfred Bronsky on the pavement. The Professor recognised
the titled owner of the visiting card from his pointed hat and note-pad.
Bronsky gave a tender and courteous bow to the window.
"Oh, it's you, is it?" asked the Professor. He did not have the
strength to be angry and was even curious to know what would happen next.
Protected by the window he felt safe from Alfred. The ever-vigilant bowler
hat outside immediately turned an ear to Bronsky. The latter's face
blossomed into the smarmiest of smiles.
"Just a sec or two, dear Professor," said Bronsky, raising his voice to
make himself heard. "I have one question only and it concerns zoology. May I
put it to you?"
"You may," Persikov replied in a laconic, ironical tone, thinking to
himself: "There's something American about that rascal, you know."
"What have you to say re the fowls, Professor?" shouted Bronsky,
cupping his hands round his mouth.
Persikov was taken aback. He sat on the window-sill, then got down,
pressed a knob and shouted, pointing at the window: "Let that fellow on the
pavement in, Pankrat!"
When Bronsky walked into the room, Persikov extended his bonhomie to
the point of barking "Sit down!" to him.
Smiling ecstatically, Bronsky sat down on the revolving stool
"Kindly explain something to me," Persikov began. "You write for those
newspapers of yours, don't you?"
"That is so," Alfred replied respectfully.
"Well, what I can't understand is how you can write if you can't even
speak Russian properly. What do you mean by 'a sec or two' and 're the
fowls'?"
Bronsky gave a thin, respectful laugh.
"Valentin Petrovich corrects it."
"And who might Valentin Petrovich be?"
"The head of the literary section."
"Oh, well. I'm not a philologist anyway. Now, leaving aside that
Petrovich of yours, what exactly do you wish to know about fowls?"
"Everything you can tell me, Professor."
At this point Bronsky armed himself with a pencil. Sparks of triumph
flashed in Persikov's eyes.
"You shouldn't have come to me, I don't specialise in our feathered
friends. You should have gone to Yemelian Ivano-vich Portugalov, at the
First University. I personally know very little..."
Bronsky smiled ecstatically to indicate that he had got the Professor's
joke. "Joke-very little!" he scribbled in his pad.
"But if it interests you, of course. Hens, or cristates are a variety
of bird from the fowl species. From the pheasant family," Persikov began in
a loud voice, looking not at Bronsky, but into the far distance where he
could see an audience of thousands. "From the pheasant family ...phasianus.
They are birds with a fleshy skin crown and two gills under the lower jaw...
Hm, although some have only one in the middle under the beak. Now, what
else. Their wings are short and rounded. The tail is of medium length,
somewhat stepped and even, I would say, roof-shaped. The middle feathers are
bent in the form of a sickle... Pankrat... bring me model No. 705 from the
model room, the cross-section of the domestic cock. You don't need it? Don't
bring the model, Pankrat. I repeat, I am not a specialist. Go to Portugalov.
Now let me see, I personally know of six types of wild fowl... Hm,
Portugalov knows more... In India and on the Malaysian archipelago. For
example, the Bankiva fowl, or Callus bankiva. It is found in the foothills
of the Himalayas, throughout India, in Assam and Burma... The Java fowl, or
Gallus varius on Lombok, Sumbawa and Flores. And on the island of Java there
is the splendid Gallus eneus fowl. In south-east India I can recommend the
very beautiful Sonneratii. I'll show you a drawing of it later. As for
Ceylon, here we have the Stanley fowl, which is not found anywhere else."
Bronsky sat there, eyes popping, and scribbled madly.
"Anything else I can tell you?"
"I'd like to hear something about fowl diseases," Alfred whispered
quietly.
"Hm, it's not my subject. You should ask Portugalov. But anyway...
Well, there are tape-worms, leeches, the itchmite, bird-mite, chicken louse,
Eomenacanthus stramineus, fleas, chicken cholera, inflammation of the mucous
membrane, Pneumonomicosis, tuberculosis, chicken mange... all sorts of
things (Persikov's eyes flashed.) ... poisoning, tumours, rickets, jaundice,
rheumatism, Ahorion Schonlein's fungus - that's a most interesting disease.
Small spots like mould appear on the crown..."
Bronsky wiped the sweat off his brow with a coloured handkerchief.
"And what in your opinion, Professor, is the cause of the present
catastrophe?"
"What catastrophe?"
"Haven't you read about it, Professor?" exclaimed Bronsky in surprise,
pulling a crumpled page of Izvestia out of his briefcase.
"I don't read newspapers," Persikov pouted.
"But why not, Professor?" Alfred asked gently.
"Because they write such rubbish," Persikov replied, without thinking.
"But surely not, Professor?" Bronsky whispered softly, unfolding the
page.
"What's the matter?" asked Persikov, even rising to his feet. Bronsky's
eyes were flashing now. He pointed a sharp painted finger at an incredibly
large headline which ran right across the whole page: "Chicken plague in the
Republic".
"What?" asked Persikov, pushing his spectacles onto his forehead...
The city shone, the lights danced, going out and blazing on. In Theatre
Square the white lamps of buses mingled with the green lights of trams;
above the former Muir and Merilees, its tenth floor added later, skipped a
multi-coloured electrical woman, tossing out letter by letter the
multicoloured words:
"Workers' Credit". A crowd thronged and murmured in the small garden
opposite the Bolshoi Theatre, where a multicoloured fountain played at
night. And over the Bolshoi itself a huge loudspeaker kept making
announcements.
"Anti-fowl vaccinations at Lefortovo Veterinary Institute have produced
brilliant results. The number of... fowl deaths for today has dropped by
half..."
Then the loudspeaker changed its tone, something growled inside it, a
spray of green blazed up over the theatre, then went out and the loudspeaker
complained in a deep bass:
"An extraordinary commission has been set up to fight the fowl plague
consisting of the People's Commissar of Health, the People's Commissar of
Agriculture, the head of animal husbandry, Comrade Ptakha-Porosyuk,
Professors Persikov and Portugalov... and Comrade Rabinovich! New attempts
at intervention," the loudspeaker giggled and cried, like a jackal, "in
connection with the fowl plague!"
Theatre Passage, Neglinnaya and Lubyanka blazed with white and violet
neon strips and flickering lights amid wailing sirens and clouds of dust.
People crowded round the large notices on the walls, lit by glaring red
reflectors.
"All consumption of chickens and chicken eggs is strictly forbidden on
pain of severe punishment. Any attempt by private traders to sell them in
markets is punishable by law with confiscation of all property. All citizens
in possession of eggs are urgently requested to take them to local police
stations."
A screen on the roof of the Workers' Paper showed chickens piled up to
the sky as greenish firemen, fragmenting and sparkling, hosed them with
kerosene. Red waves washed over the screen, deathly smoke belched forth,
swirling in clouds, and drifted up in a column, then out hopped the fiery
letters:
"Dead chickens being burnt in Khodynka."
Amid the madly blazing windows of shops open until three in the
morning, with breaks for lunch and supper, boarded-up windows with signs
saying "Eggs for sale. Quality guaranteed" stared out blindly. Hissing
ambulances with "Moscow Health Dept." on them raced past policemen and
overtook heavy buses, their sirens wailing.
"Someone else poisoned himself with rotten eggs," the crowd murmured.
The world-famous Empire Restaurant in Petrovsky Lines glowed with green
and orange lamps, and inside it by the portable telephones on the tables lay
liqueur-stained cardboard notices saying "No omelettes until further notice.
Try our fresh oysters."
In the Hermitage Gardens, where Chinese lanterns shone like sad beads
in dead choked foliage, on a blindingly lit stage the singers Shrams and
Karmanchikov sang satirical songs composed by the poets Ardo and Arguyev,
Oh, Mama, what shall I do
Without my little eggies two?
accompanied by a tap-dance.
The theatre named after the deceased Vsevolod Meyer-hold who, it will
be remembered, met his end in 1927 during a production of Pushkin's Boris
Godunov, when the trapezes with naked boyars collapsed, sported a running
coloured neon strip announcing a new play by the writer Erendors, entitled
"Fowl Farewell" directed by Kuchterman, a pupil of Meyerhold. Next door, at
the Aquarium Gardens, ablaze with neon advertisements and shining half-naked
women, the revue "Son-of-a-Hen" by the writer Lenivtsev was playing to loud
applause among the foliage of the open-air variety stage. And along
Tverskaya trotted a line of circus donkeys, with lanterns under each ear and
gaudy posters. The Korsh Theatre was reviving Rostand's Chantecler.
Newspaper boys bellowed and yelled among the motor wheels:
"Horrific find in underground cave! Poland preparing for horrific war!
Horrific experiments by Professor Persikov!"
In the circus of the former Nikitin, in a rich brown arena smelling
sweetly of dung, the deathly white clown Born was talking to Bim, all
swollen up with dropsy.
"I know why you're so fed up!"
"Why ith it?" squealed Bim.
"You buried your eggs under a gooseberry bush, and the 15th District
police squad has found them."
"Ha-ha-ha-ha," laughed the circus, so hard that the blood curdled
happily and longingly in their veins and the trapezes and cobwebs stirred
under the old dome.
"Allez-oop!" the clowns shouted loudly, and a well-fed white horse
trotted out bearing a stunningly beautiful woman with shapely legs in a
crimson costume.
Not looking at or taking heed of anyone and ignoring the prostitutes'
nudges and soft, enticing invitations, the inspired and solitary Professor
Persikov crowned with unexpected fame made his way along Mokhovaya to the
neon clock by the Manege. Here, engrossed in his thoughts and not looking
where he was going, he collided with a strange, old-fashioned man and banged
his fingers painfully against the wooden holster hanging from the man's
belt.
"What the devil!" squealed Persikov. "My apologies!" "Pardon me!"
replied an unpleasant voice in return, and they managed to disentangle
themselves in the mass of people. The Professor continued on his way to
Prechistenka, putting the incident out of his head straightaway.
Whether or not the Lefortovo veterinary vaccinations were effective,
the Samara quarantine teams efficient, the strict measures taken with regard
to buyers-up of eggs in Kaluga and Voronezh adequate and the work of the
Special Moscow Commission successful, is not known, but what is known is
that a fortnight after Persikov's last meeting with Alfred there was not a
single chicken left in the Republic. Here and there in provincial back-yards
lay plaintive tufts of feathers, bringing tears to the eyes of the owners,
and in hospital the last gluttons recovered from diarrhea and vomiting
blood. The loss in human life for the whole country was not more than a
thousand, fortunately. There were also no large-scale disturbances. True, in
Volokolamsk someone calling himself a prophet announced that the commissars,
no less, were to blame for the chicken plague, but no one took much notice
of him. A few policemen who were confiscating chickens from peasant women at
Volokolamsk market got beaten up, and some windows in the local post and
telegraph office were smashed. Fortunately, the efficient Volokolamsk
authorities took measures as a result of which, firstly, the prophet ceased
his activities and, secondly, the telegraph windows were replaced.
After travelling north as far as Archangel and Syumkin Vyselok, the
plague stopped of its own accord for the simple reason that it could go no
further-there are no chickens in the White Sea, as we all know. It also
stopped in Vladivostok, because after that came the ocean. In the far south
it died down and disappeared somewhere in the scorched expanses of Ordubat,
Djilfa and Karabulak, and in the west it stopped miraculously right at the
Polish and Rumanian frontiers. Perhaps the climate there was different or
the quarantine cordon measures taken by these neighbouring states helped.
But the fact remains that the plague went no further. The foreign press
discussed the unprecedented plague loudly and avidly, and the Soviet
government, without kicking up a racket, worked tirelessly round the clock.
The Extraordinary Commission to combat the chicken plague was renamed the
Extraordinary Commission to encourage and revive poultry-keeping in the
Republic and supplemented by a new extraordinary troika consisting of
sixteen comrades. "Volunteer-Fowl" was founded, of which Persikov and
Portugalov became honorary deputy chairmen. The newspapers carried pictures
of them with the captions "Mass purchase of eggs from abroad" and "Mr Hughes
tries to sabotage egg campaign". A venomous article by the journalist
Kolechkin, ending with the words: "Keep your hands off our eggs, Mr
Hughes-you've got eggs of your own!", resounded all over Moscow.
Professor Persikov had worked himself to a state of complete exhaustion
over the last three weeks. The fowl events had disturbed his usual routine
and placed an extra burden on him. He had to spend whole evenings attending
fowl committee meetings and from time to time endure long talks either with
Alfred Bronsky or the fat man with the artificial leg. And together with
Professor Portugalov and docents Ivanov and Borngart he anatomised and
microscopised fowls in search of the plague bacillus and even wrote a
brochure in the space of only three evenings, entitled "On Changes in the
Liver of Fowls Attacked by Plague".
Persikov worked without great enthusiasm in the fowl field, and
understandably so since his head was full of something quite different, the
main and most important thing, from which the fowl catastrophe had diverted
him, i.e., the red ray. Undermining his already overtaxed health by stealing
time from sleeping and eating, sometimes not returning to Prechistenka but
dozing on the oilskin divan in his room at the Institute, Persikov spent
night after night working with the chamber and the microscope.
By the end of July the commotion had abated somewhat The renamed
commission began to work along normal lines, .and Persikov resumed his
interrupted studies. The microscopes were loaded with new specimens, and
fish- and frog-spawn matured in the chamber at incredible speed. Specially
ordered lenses were delivered from Konigsberg by aeroplane, and in the last
few days of July, under Ivanov's supervision, mechanics installed two big
new chambers, in which the beam was as broad as a cigarette packet at its
base and a whole metre wide at the other end. Persikov rubbed his hands
happily and began to prepare some mysterious and complex experiments. First
of all, he came to some agreement with the People's Commissar of Education
by phone, and the receiver promised him the most willing assistance of all
kinds, then Persikov had a word with Comrade Ptakha-Porosyuk, head of the
Supreme Commission's Animal Husbandry Department. Persikov met with the most
cordial attention form Ptakha-Porosyuk with respect to a large order from
abroad for Professor Persikov. Ptakha-Porosyuk said on the phone that he
would cable Berlin and New York rightaway. After that there was a call from
the Kremlin to enquire how Persikov was getting on, and an
important-sounding voice asked affectionately if he would like a motor-car.
"No, thank you. I prefer to travel by tram," Persikov replied.
"But why?" the mysterious voice asked, with an indulgent laugh.
Actually everyone spoke to Persikov either with respect and awe, or
with an affectionate laugh, as if addressing a silly, although very
important child.
"It goes faster," Persikov said, after which the resonant bass on the
telephone said:
"Well, as you like."
Another week passed, during which Persikov withdrew increasingly from
the subsiding fowl problems to immerse himself entirely in the study of the
ray. His head became light, somehow transparent and weightless, from the
sleepless nights and exhaustion. The red rims never left his eyes now, and
almost every night was spent at the Institute. Once he abandoned his
zoological refuge to read a paper on his ray and its action on the ovule in
the huge hall of the Central Commission for Improving the Living Conditions
of Scientists in Prechistenka. This was a great triumph for the eccentric
zoologist. The applause in the hall made the plaster flake off the ceiling,
while the hissing arc lamps lit up the black dinner jackets of club-members
and the white dresses of their ladies. On the stage, next to the rostrum, a
clammy grey frog the size of a cat sat breathing heavily in a dish on a
glass table. Notes were thrown onto the stage. They included seven love
letters, which Persikov tore up. The club president had great difficulty
persuading him onto the platform. Persikov bowed angrily. His hands were wet
with sweat and his black tie was somewhere behind his left ear, instead of
under his chin. Before him in a breathing haze were hundreds of yellow faces
and white male chests, when suddenly the yellow holster of a pistol flashed
past and vanished behind a white column. Persikov noticed it vaguely and
then forgot about it. But after the lecture, as he was walking down the red
carpet of the staircase, he suddenly felt unwell. For a second the bright
chandelier in the vestibule clouded and Persikov came over dizzy and
slightly queasy. He seemed to smell burning and feel hot, sticky blood
running down his neck... With a trembling hand the Professor clutched the
banisters.
"Is anything the matter, Vladimir Ipatych?" he was besieged by anxious
voices on all sides.
"No, no," Persikov replied, pulling himself together. "I'm just rather
tired. Yes. Kindly bring me a glass of water."
It was a very sunny August day. This disturbed the Professor, so the
blinds were pulled down. One flexible standing reflector cast a pencil of
sharp light onto the glass table piled with instruments and lenses. The
exhausted Persikov was leaning against the back of his revolving chair,
smoking and staring through clouds of smoke with dead-tired but contented
eyes at the slightly open door of the chamber inside which a red sheaf of
light lay quietly, warming the already stuffy and fetid air in the room.
There was a knock at the door.
"What is it?" Persikov asked.
The door creaked lightly, and in came Pankrat. He stood to attention,
pallid with fear before the divinity, and announced:
"Feight's come for you, Professor."
The ghost of a smile flickered on the scientist's face. He narrowed his
eyes and said:
"That's interesting. Only I'm busy."
'"E says 'e's got an official warrant from the Kremlin."
"Fate with a warrant? That's a rare combination," Persikov remarked.
"Oh, well, send him in then!"
"Yessir," Pankrat replied, slithering through the door like a
grass-snake.
A minute later it opened again, and a man appeared on the threshold.
Persikov creaked his chair and stared at the newcomer over the top of his
spectacles and over his shoulder. Persikov was very isolated from real life.
He was not interested in it. But even Persikov could not fail to notice the
main thing about the man who had just come in. He was dreadfully
old-fashioned. In 1919 this man would have looked perfectly at home in the
streets of the capital. He would have looked tolerable in 1924, at the
beginning. But in 1928 he looked positively strange. At a time when even the
most backward part of the proletariat, bakers, were wearing jackets and when
military tunics were a rarity, having been finally discarded at the end of
1924, the newcomer was dressed in a double-breasted leather jacket, green
trousers, foot bindings and army boots, with a big old-fashioned Mauser in
the cracked yellow holster at his side. The newcomer's face made the same
impression on Persikov as on everyone else, a highly unpleasant one. The
small eyes looked out on the world with a surprised, yet confident
expression, and there was something unduly familiar about the short legs
with their flat feet. The face was bluish-shaven. Persikov frowned at once.
Creak' ing the screw mercilessly, he peered at the newcomer over his
spectacles, then through them, and barked:
"So you've got a warrant, have you? Where is it then?"
The newcomer was clearly taken aback by what he saw. In general he was
not prone to confusion, but now he was confused. Judging by his eyes, the
thing that impressed him most was the bookcase with twelve shelves
stretching right up to the ceiling and packed full of books. Then, of
course, the chambers which, hell-like, were flooded with the crimson ray
swelling up in the lenses. And Persikov himself in the semi-darkness by
sharp point of the ray falling from the reflector looked strange and
majestic in his revolving chair. The newcomer stared at him with an
expression in which sparks of respect flashed clearly through the
self-assurance, did not hand over any warrant, but said:
"I am Alexander Semyonovich Feight!"
"Well then? So what?"
"I have been put in charge of the Red Ray Model State Farm," the
newcomer explained.
"So what?"
"And so I have come to see you on secret business, comrade."
"Well, I wonder what that can be. Put it briefly, if you don't mind."
The newcomer unbuttoned his jacket and pulled out some instructions
typed on splendid thick paper. He handed the paper to Persikov, then sat
down uninvited on a revolving stool.
"Don't push the table," said Persikov with hatred.
The newcomer looked round in alarm at the table, on the far edge of
which a pair of eyes glittered lifelessly like diamonds in a damp dark
opening. They sent shivers down your spine.
No sooner had Persikov read the warrant, than he jumped up and rushed
to the telephone. A few seconds later he was already saying hastily in a
state of extreme irritation:
"Forgive me... I just don't understand... How can it be? Without my
consent or advice... The devil only knows what he'll do!"
At that point the stranger, highly offended, spun round on the stool.
"Pardon me, but I'm in charge..." he began.
But Persikov shook a crooked finger at him and went on:
"Excuse me, but I just don't understand. In fact, I object
categorically. I refuse to sanction any experiments with the eggs... Until I
have tried them myself..."
Something croaked and rattled in the receiver, and even at a distance
it was clear that the indulgent voice on the phone was talking to a small
child. In the end a purple-faced Persikov slammed down the receiver,
shouting over it at the wall:
"I wash my hands of the whole business!"
Going back to the table, he picked up the warrant, read it once from
top to bottom over his spectacles, then from bottom to top through them, and
suddenly howled:
"Pankrat!"
Pankrat appeared in the doorway as if he had shot up through the
trap-door in an opera. Persikov glared at him and barked:
"Go away, Pankrat!" And Pankrat disappeared, his face not expressing
the slightest surprise.
Then Persikov turned to the newcomer and said:
"I beg your pardon. I will obey. It's none of my business.
And of no interest to me."
The newcomer was not so much offended as taken aback.
"Excuse me," he began, "but comrade..."
"Why do you keep saying comrade all the time," Persikov muttered, then
fell silent.
"Well, I never," was written all over Feight's face.
"Pard..." "Alright then, here you are," Persikov interrupted him.
"See this arc lamp. From this you obtain by moving the eyepiece,"
Persikov clicked the lid of the chamber, like a camera, "a beam which you
can collect by moving the lenses, number 1 here... and the mirror, number
2." Persikov put the ray out, then lit it again on the floor of the asbestos
chamber. "And on the floor you can put anything you like and experiment with
it. Extremely simple, is it not?"
Persikov intended to express irony and contempt, but the newcomer was
peering hard at the chamber with shining eyes and did not notice them.
"Only I warn you," Persikov went on. "You must not put your hands in
the ray, because from my observations it causes growths of the epithelium.
And whether they are malignant or not, I unfortunately have not yet had time
to establish."
Hereupon the newcomer quickly put his hands behind his back, dropping
his leather cap, and looked at the Professor's hands. They were stained with
iodine, and the right hand was bandaged at the wrist.
"But what about you, Professor?"
"You can buy rubber gloves at Schwabe's on Kuznetsky," the Professor
replied irritably. "I'm not obliged to worry about that"
At this point Persikov stared hard at the newcomer as if through a
microscope.
"Where are you from? And why have you..."
Feight took offence at last.
"Pard..."
"But a person should know what he's doing! Why have you latched on to
this ray?"
"Because it's a matter of the greatest importance..."
"Hm. The greatest importance? In that case... Pankrat!"
And when Pankrat appeared:
"Wait a minute, I must think." " Pankrat dutifully disappeared again.
"There's one thing I can't understand," said Persikov. "Why the need
for all this speed and secrecy?"
"You've got me all muddled up. Professor," Feight replied. "You know
there's not a single chicken left in the whole country."
"Well, what of it?" Persikov howled. "Surely you're not going to try
and resurrect them all at the drop of a hat, are you? And why do you need
this ray which hasn't been properly studied yet?"
"Comrade Professor," Feight replied, "you've got me all muddled, honest
you have. I'm telling you that we must put poultry-keeping back on its feet
again, because they're writing all sorts of rotten things about us abroad.
Yes."
"Well, let them..."
"Tut-tut," Feight replied enigmatically, shaking his head.
"Who on earth, I should like to know, would ever think of using the ray
to hatch chickens..."
"Me," said Feight.
"Oh, I see. And why, if you don't mind my asking? How did you find out
about the properties of the ray?"
"I was at your lecture, Professor."
"But I haven't done anything with the eggs yet! I'm only planning to!"
"It'll work alright, honest it will," said Feight suddenly with great
conviction. "Your ray's so famous it could hatch elephants, not only
chickens."
"Now listen here," Persikov said. "You're not a zoologist, are you?
That's a pity. You would make a very bold experimenter. Yes, only you risk
... failure ... and you're taking up my time."
"We'll give the chambers back to you. Don't you worry!"
"When?"
"After I've hatched out the first batch."
"How confidently you said that! Very well! Pankrat!"
"I've brought some people with me," said Feight. "And a guard..."
By evening Persikov's study was desolate. The tables were empty.
Feight's people took away the three big chambers, only leaving the Professor
the first, the small one which he had used to begin the experiments.
The July dusk was falling. A greyness invaded the Institute, creeping
along the corridors. Monotonous steps could be heard in the study. Persikov
was pacing the large room from window to door, in the dark... And strange
though it may seem all the inmates of the Institute, and the animals too,
were prey to a curious melancholy that evening. For some reason the toads