Authors: Mikhail Bulgakov
"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 gave a very mournful concert, croaking in a
most sinister, ominous fashion.
Pankrat had to chase a grass-snake
that slipped out of its chamber, and when he caught it in the corridor the
snake looked as if it would do anything just to get away from there.
Late that evening the bell from Persikov's
study rang. Pankrat appeared on the threshold to be greeted by a strange sight.
The scientist was standing alone in the middle of the study, staring at the
tables. Pankrat coughed and froze to attention.
"There, Pankrat," said Persikov,
pointing at the empty table. Pankrat took fright. It looked in the dark as if
the Professor had been crying. That was unusual, terrifying.
"Yessir," Pankrat replied
plaintively, thinking, "If only you'd bawl at me!"
"There," Persikov repeated, and his
lips trembled like a little boy's whose favourite toy has suddenly been taken
away from him.
"You know, my dear Pankrat,"
Persikov went on, turning away to face the window. "My wife who left me
fifteen years ago and joined an operetta company has now apparently died... So
there, Pankrat, dear chap... I got a letter..."
The toads croaked mournfully, and darkness
slowly engulfed the Professor. Night was falling. Here and there white lamps
went on in the windows. Pankrat stood to attention with fright, confused and
miserable.
"You can go, Pankrat," the Professor
said heavily, with a wave of the hand. "Go to bed, Pankrat, my dear
fellow."
And so night fell. Pankrat left the study
quickly on tiptoe for some
reason,
ran to his
cubby-hole, rummaged among a pile of rags in the corner, pulled out an already
opened bottle of vodka and gulped down a large glassful. Then he ate some bread
and salt, and his eyes cheered up a bit.
Late that evening, just before midnight,
Pankrat was sitting barefoot on a bench in the poorly lit vestibule, talking to
the indefatigable bowler hat on duty and scratching his chest under a calico
shirt.
"Honest, it would've been better if he'd
done me in..."
"Was he really crying?" asked the
bowler hat, inquisitively.
"Honest he was," Pankrat insisted.
"A great scientist," the bowler hat
agreed. "A frog's no substitute for a wife, anyone knows that."
"It sure isn't," Pankrat agreed.
Then he paused and added:
"I'm thinking of bringing the wife up
here... No sense her staying in the country. Only she couldn't stand them there
reptiles..."
"I'm not surprised, the filthy
things," agreed the bowler hat.
Not a sound could be heard from the
Professor's study. The light was not on either. There was no strip under the
door.
There is no better time of the year than
mid-August in Smolensk Province, say. The summer of 1928 was a splendid one, as
we all know, with rains just at the right time in spring, a full hot sun, and a
splendid harvest... The apples on the former Sheremetev family estate were
ripening, the forests were a lush green and the fields were squares of rich
yellow...