Ocenite etot tekst:


---------------------------------------------------------------
     Copyright 1968 in the English translation by Michael Glenny
     Collins and Harvill Press
     London, and Harcourt, Brace & World Inc, New York.
     OCR:Scout
---------------------------------------------------------------



     Ooow-ow-ooow-owow!  Oh, look  at me,  I'm  dying.  There's  a snowstorm
moaning  a requiem  for  me  in  this  doorway and I'm howling  with it. I'm
finished. Some bastard in a dirty white cap - the cook in the office canteen
at the National Economic Council - spilled some boiling water and scalded my
left side.  Filthy swine -  and a proletarian, too. Christ, it  hurts!  That
boiling water scalded me right through to the bone. I can howl and howl, but
what's the use?
     What  harm was  I  doing  him,  anyway? I'm  not  robbing the  National
Economic Council's  food supply if I  go  foraging in their  dustbins, am I?
Greedy pig! Just take a look at  his ugly mug  - it's almost fatter than  he
is. Hard-faced crook. Oh people, people. It was midday when that fool doused
me with boiling water, now it's getting dark, must be  about four o'clock in
the afternoon judging by  the smell  of onion coming  from the  Prechistenka
fire station. Firemen have soup for supper, you know. Not that I care for it
myself. I can manage without soup -  don't like mushrooms either. The dogs I
know  in Prechistenka  Street, by the  way, tell me there's  a restaurant in
Neglinny Street where  they get the chef's special every day - mushroom stew
with  relish  at 3 roubles  and  75  kopecks  the  portion.  All  right  for
connoisseurs, I  suppose. I  think  eating mushrooms  is about  as tasty  as
licking a pair of galoshes . . . Oow-owowow . . .
     My side hurts like hell and I  can see just what's going to  become  of
me. Tomorrow it will break out in ulcers and then how can I make them  heal?
In  summer you can go  and roll  in Sokolniki Park where  there's  a special
grass that does you good. Besides,  you  can get a free meal of sausage-ends
and  there's  plenty of greasy bits  of food-wrappings  to lick.  And  if it
wasn't  for  some  old groaner singing '0 celeste Aida' out in the moonlight
till it makes you  sick, the place would be perfect. But where can I go now?
Haven't  I  been  kicked around  enough? Sure  I have.  Haven't I had enough
bricks thrown at me? Plenty . . . Still, after what I've been through, I can
take  a lot. I'm only whining now because  of the pain and cold - though I'm
not licked yet ... it takes a lot to keep a good dog down.
     But my poor old body's been knocked about by people once too often. The
trouble  is that when  that cook  doused  me  with boiling water it  scalded
through right under my  fur and now there's nothing  to keep the cold out on
my left side. I could easily  get pneumonia - and if I  get that,  citizens,
I'll die of hunger. When you get pneumonia the only thing to do is to lie up
under  someone's front doorstep,  and  then  who's  going  to run  round the
dustbins looking for food for a sick bachelor dog? I shall get a chill on my
lungs, crawl on my belly  till I'm so  weak that it'll only need one poke of
someone's stick to finish me  off. And the  dustmen  will pick  me up by the
legs and sling me on to their cart . . .
     Dustmen are the lowest form of proletarian life. Humans' rubbish is the
filthiest  stuff there is. Cooks vary  - for instance,  there was Vlas  from
Prechistenka,  who's dead now. He saved I don't know how many  dogs'  lives,
because when  you're sick you've simply got to be able to eat  and keep your
strength  up. And when Vlas used to throw you a bone there was always a good
eighth of an  inch of meat on  it. He  was  a great character. God  rest his
soul, a gentleman's cook  who worked for Count Tolstoy's family and  not for
your stinking Food Rationing Board. As for the muck they dish  out there  as
rations, well  it makes even a  dog wonder. They make soup  out of salt beef
that's gone rotten, the cheats. The poor fools who eat there can't  tell the
difference. It's just grab, gobble and gulp.
     A typist on salary scale 9 gets 60 roubles a month. Of course her lover
keeps her  in silk stockings,  but  think  what  she  has to put up with  in
exchange for silk. He won't just want to make the usual sort of love to her,
he'll  make  her  do it  the French way. They're  a  lot  of bastards, those
Frenchmen,  if  you  ask me - though they know how to  stuff their  guts all
right, and red wine with everything. Well,  along comes  this little  typist
and wants a meal. She can't afford to go into the restaurant on 60 roubles a
month  and go  to  the  cinema as well.  And  the  cinema  is a woman's  one
consolation in life. It's agony for  her to have to choose a meal . . . just
think:40 kopecks for two courses, and neither  of them is worth more than 15
because the  manager has pocketed the other  25 kopecks-worth. Anyhow, is it
the  right sort of  food for her? She's got a patch  on the top of her right
lung, she's having  her  period,  she's had her pay docked  at work and they
feed her  with any old muck at the canteen, poor girl . .  . There  she goes
now,  running into the doorway in her lover's stockings. Cold legs, and  the
wind  blows up her belly because even  though she has some hair  on it  like
mine  she  wears such cold, thin,  lacy little pants  - just  to please  her
lover. If  she tried to wear flannel ones he'd soon bawl her out for looking
a frump.  'My  girl  bores me',  he'll say, 'I'm  fed up with those  flannel
knickers of hers,  to  hell with her. I've made good  now  and all I make in
graft goes on women, lobsters and champagne. I went hungry often enough as a
kid. So what - you can't take it with you.'
     I feel sorry for her, poor  thing. But I feel a lot sorrier for myself.
I'm not  saying  it out of  selfishness, not a  bit,  but because  you can't
compare us. She at least has a warm home to go  to, but what about me? . . .
Where can I go? Oowow-owow!
     'Here, doggy, here, boy! Here, Sharik . .  . What  are you whining for,
poor little fellow? Did somebody hurt you, then?'
     The terrible snowstorm howled around the doorway, buffeting  the girl's
ears.  It blew  her  skirt up to her knees, showing her fawn stockings and a
little  strip of badly washed lace underwear, drowned  her words and covered
the dog in snow.
     'My God . . . what weather .  . . ugh  . . . And my stomach aches. It's
that awful salt beef. When is all this going to end?'
     Lowering her head the girl  launched into  the attack and rushed out of
the  doorway. On  the street  the violent storm spun her like a  top, then a
whirlwind of snow spiralled around her and she vanished.
     But the dog stayed  in the doorway. His scalded  flank was  so  painful
that he  pressed himself against  the  cold wall,  gasping  for  breath, and
decided  not to  move from the spot.  He would die in  the doorway.  Despair
overcame him. He was so bitter and sick  at heart,  so lonely and  terrified
that little dog's tears, like pimples, trickled down  from his  eyes, and at
once dried up.  His injured side  was covered with frozen, dried blood-clots
and between them peeped the angry red patches of the scald. All the fault of
that vicious,  thickheaded, stupid  cook. 'Sharik' she had  called him . . .
What a name to choose! Sharik is the sort of  name for a round, fat,  stupid
dog  that's fed on porridge, a  dog  with a pedigree, and he was a tattered,
scraggy, filthy stray mongrel with a scalded side.
     Across  the street  the door  of a  brightly  lit  store  slammed and a
citizen came through it. Not a comrade, but a citizen, or even more likely -
a gentleman. As he  came closer it  was  obvious that he was a  gentleman. I
suppose  you  thought I recognised  him by  his overcoat?  Nonsense. Lots of
proletarians even wear  overcoats nowadays. I admit they don't usually  have
collars like this one, of course, but even so you can sometimes be  mistaken
at a distance. No,  it's  the eyes:  you can't  go wrong with those, near or
far. Eyes mean a lot. Like a barometer. They tell you everything - they tell
you  who  has a heart of stone, who  would poke the  toe of his boot in your
ribs as soon as look at you - and who's afraid of you. The cowards - they're
the ones whose ankles I  like to  snap at. If they're scared, I go for them.
Serve them right . . . grrr . . . bow-wow . . .
     The gentleman  boldly crossed  the street in a pillar  of whirling snow
and  headed for the doorway.  Yes,  you  can tell  his sort  all  right.  He
wouldn't eat rotten salt beef, and if anyone did happen to give him any he'd
make a fuss and write to the  newspapers - someone has been trying to poison
me - me, Philip Philipovich.
     He came nearer and nearer. He's the kind who always eats well and never
steals, he wouldn't kick you, but he's not afraid of anyone either. And he's
never afraid because he always has enough to eat. This man's a brain worker,
with a carefully trimmed, sharp-pointed beard  and grey moustaches, bold and
bushy ones like the knights of old. But the smell of him, that came floating
on the wind, was a bad, hospital smell. And cigars.
     I wonder why the hell he wants to go into that Co-op? Here he is beside
me . . . What does he want? Oowow, owow .  . . What would he  want to buy in
that filthy store,  surely he can afford to go to  the Okhotny Ryad?  What's
that he's holding? Sausage. Look sir,  if  you knew what  they put into that
sausage you'd never go near that store. Better give it to me.
     The dog gathered the last of his strength and crawled  fainting out  of
the doorway on to the pavement. The blizzard  boomed like  gunfire over  his
head,  flapping  a  great  canvas  billboard  marked  in huge  letters,  'Is
Rejuvenation Possible?'
     Of course it's possible.  The mere smell has rejuvenated me, got  me up
off my belly, sent scorching waves through my stomach that's  been empty for
two days.  The  smell  that overpowered the hospital smell was the  heavenly
aroma of minced horsemeat with garlic and pepper. I feel it, I know -there's
a sausage in his  right-hand coat pocket. He's standing over me. Oh, master!
Look at me. I'm dying. I'm so wretched, I'll be your slave for ever!
     The dog crawled tearfully forward on his stomach. Look  what  that cook
did to me. You'll  never give me anything, though. I know these rich people.
What good is it to you? What do you want with a bit of rotten old horsemeat?
The Moscow State Food  Store only sells muck  like  that. But you've  a good
lunch under  your belt, haven't you, you're a world-famous figure thanks  to
male sex  glands. Oowow-owow .  . . What can I do?  I'm too young to die yet
and despair's a sin. There's nothing for it, I shall have to lick his hand.
     The   mysterious  gentleman  bent  down  towards   the  dog,  his  gold
spectacle-rims  flashing,  and  pulled  a  long  white  package out  of  his
right-hand coat pocket. Without taking  off  his tan  gloves he broke  off a
piece of the sausage, which was labelled 'Special Cracower'. And gave  it to
the dog. Oh, immaculate personage! Oowow-oowow!
     'Here, doggy,' the  gentleman whistled,  and  added sternly,  'Come on!
Take it, Sharik!'
     He's christened me Sharik too. Call me what  you like. For this you can
do anything you like to me,
     In a moment the dog had ripped off the sausage-skin. Mouth watering, he
bit into the Cracower and gobbled  it down in two swallows. Tears started to
his  eyes as  he  nearly choked on the  string, which in his greed he almost
swallowed. Let me lick your hand again, I'll kiss your boots -  you've saved
my life.
     'That's enough .  . .' The gentleman barked as though giving  an order.
He  bent  over Sharik,  stared  with  a  searching  look  into his eyes  and
unexpectedly stroked the dog gently  and  intimately along the stomach  with
his gloved hand.
     'Aha,' he pronounced meaningly. 'No collar. Excellent. You're just what
I want. Follow me.' He clicked his fingers. 'Good dog!'
     Follow you? To the end of the earth. Kick me with your felt boots and I
won't say a word.
     The street  lamps were alight all  along Prechistenka Street. His flank
hurt  unbearably, but for the moment Sharik forgot  about it, absorbed  by a
single thought:  how to avoid losing  sight  of  this  miraculous fur-coated
vision in the hurly-burly of  the storm and  how  to  show him his love  and
devotion. Seven times  along the whole length  of Prechistenka Street as far
as the cross-roads at  Obukhov Street  he  showed  it. At Myortvy  Street he
kissed his boot, he cleared the way by barking  at a lady and frightened her
into falling flat on the pavement, and twice he gave a howl to make sure the
gentleman still felt sorry for him.
     A filthy, thieving stray torn cat slunk out from behind a drainpipe and
despite the  snowstorm, sniffed the Cracower. Sharik went blind with rage at
the thought that this rich eccentric  who picked up injured dogs in doorways
might take pity on  this robber and make  him share the sausage. So he bared
his  teeth  so fiercely that  the cat, with  a  hiss like a  leaky hosepipe,
shinned back up the drainpipe right to the second floor.  Grrrr! Woof! Gone!
We can't go handing out Moscow  State groceries  to all the  strays  loafing
about Prechistenka Street.
     The  gentleman  noticed  the dog's  devotion  as  they  passed the fire
station window, out of which came the pleasant sound of a  French  horn, and
rewarded him with a second piece that was an ounce or two smaller.
     Queer chap.  He's  beckoning to me. Don't  worry, I'm not going to  run
away. I'll follow you wherever you like. 'Here, doggy, here, boy!'
     Obukhov Street? OK by me. I know the place - I've been around.
     'Here, doggy!'
     Here? Sure . . . Hey, no, wait a minute. No. There's  a porters on that
block of flats. My worst enemies, porters, much worse than dustmen. Horrible
lot. Worse than cats. Butchers in gold braid.
     'Don't be  frightened, come  on.' 'Good evening,  Philip  Philipovich.'
'Good evening, Fyodor.'
     What a character. I'm in luck, by God. Who is this genius, who can even
bring stray dogs  off the street past a porter? Look at the bastard -  not a
move, not a word! He looks grim enough, but he doesn't seem to mind, for all
the gold braid on his  cap. That's how  it should be, too. Knows  his place.
Yes, I'm with this gentleman, so you can keep your hands to yourself. What's
that - did  he make  a  move? Bite him. I wouldn't  mind  a mouthful of homy
proletarian leg. In exchange  for the trouble  I've had  from  all the other
porters and all the times they've poked a broom in my face.
     'Come on, come on.'
     OK, OK, don't  worry.  I'll go wherever  you go. Just show me the  way.
I'll be right behind you. Even if my side does hurt like hell.
     From hallway up the staircase: 'Were there any letters for me, Fyodor?'
     From below,  respectfully: 'No  sir, Philip  Philipovich' (dropping his
voice and adding intimately), 'but they've just moved some more tenants into
No. 3.'
     The dog's dignified benefactor turned sharply round on the step, leaned
over the railing and asked in horror: 'Wh-at?'
     His eyes went quite round and his moustache bristled.
     The porter  looked upwards, put his hand to his lips, nodded and  said:
'That's right, four of them.'
     'My God! I can just imagine what it must be like in that apartment now.
What sort of people are they?'
     'Nobody special, sir.'
     'And what's Fyodor Pavolovich doing?'
     'He's gone to get some screens  and a load of bricks.  They're going to
build some partitions in the apartment.'
     'God - what is the place coming to?'
     'Extra tenants  are  being moved into  every apartment,  except  yours,
Philip Philipovich. There was a meeting the other  day; they elected  a  new
house committee and kicked out the old one.'
     'What will happen next? Oh, God . . .
     'Come on, doggy.'
     I'm coming as fast as  I can. My side is giving me trouble, though. Let
me lick your boot.
     The porter's gold braid disappeared from the lobby.
     Past warm  radiators on a marble landing, another flight of stairs  and
then - a mezzanine.


     Why bother to leam to  read when you can smell meat a mile away? If you
live in Moscow, though, and if you've got an ounce of brain in your head you
can't help learning to read -and without going to night-school either. There
are forty-thousand dogs in Moscow and I'll  bet  there's not  one of them so
stupid he can't spell out the word 'sausage'.
     Sharik had begun by learning from colours. When he was just four months
old, blue-green signs started  appearing  all  over Moscow with the  letters
MSFS - Moscow  State Food Stores - which meant a butcher and delicatessen. I
repeat that he had no need to  learn his letters because he could smell  the
meat anyway. Once  he made a bad  mistake:  trotting  up  to  a  bright blue
shop-sign one day when  the smell was drowned  by car exhaust, instead of  a
butcher's shop  he ran  into the Polubizner Brothers' electrical goods store
on  Myasnitzkaya Street.  There the  brothers taught him all about insulated
cable,  which  can be sharper than a cabman's whip. This famous occasion may
be regarded as  the  beginning of Sharik's education.  It  was here  on  the
pavement  that Sharik began  to  realise  that  'blue'  doesn't always  mean
'butcher',  and as he  squeezed his burningly painful tail between  his back
legs and howled, he remembered that on every butcher's shop the first letter
on  the  left  was  always  gold  or brown,  bow-legged,  and looked  like a
toboggan.
     After  that  the  lessons were  rather easier. 'A' he learned  from the
barber on the comer of Mokhovaya Street, followed by 'B' (there was always a
policeman  standing in front  of the last four letters of the word).  Corner
shops faced with tiles  always meant 'CHEESE' and the black half-moon at the
beginning of the word stood for the name of  their former owners 'Chichkin';
they were full  of mountains  of red Dutch cheeses, salesmen who hated dogs,
sawdust on the floor and reeking Limburger.
     If  there was accordion music (which was slightly better than  'Celeste
Aida'), and the  place smelted  of  frankfurters,  the first  letters on the
white  signboards very conveniently | spelled out the word 'NOOB', which was
short for 'No obscene  language. No tips.'  Sometimes at these places fights
would break out, people  would  start  punching each other in the face  with
their fists - sometimes even with napkins or boots.
     If there were  stale bits of ham and  mandarin oranges in the window it
meant  a  grrr . . .  grrocery.  If  there were black  bottles full  of evil
liquids it was . . . li-li-liquor . . . formerly Eliseyev Bros.
     The unknown gentleman had led the dog to the door of his luxurious flat
on the  mezzanine floor, and rang the doorbell. The dog at once looked up at
a big, black,  gold-lettered  nameplate hanging beside a pink  frosted-glass
door. He deciphered the first three letters at once: P-R-O- 'Pro . . .', but
after tliat there was a funny tall thing with  a  cross bar which he did not
know.  Surely he's  not  a  proletarian? thought Sharik with amazement... He
can't  be. He lifted up his nose,  sniffed the fur  coat and  said firmly to
himself:
     No, this doesn't smell proletarian.  Some high-falutin' word. God knows
what it means.
     Suddenly  a light  flashed on  cheerfully behind the  pink glass  door,
throwing the nameplate into even deeper shadow.  The door opened soundlessly
and a beautiful young  woman in a white apron  and lace cap stood before the
dog and his master. A wave of delicious  warmth flowed over the dog  and the
woman's skirt smelled of carnations.
     This I like, thought the dog.
     'Come  in,  Mr  Sharik,'  said  the  gentleman  ironically  and  Sharik
respectfully obeyed, wagging his tail.
     A great  multitude of objects filled the richly  furnished hall. Beside
him  was  a mirror  stretching  right  down to  the floor,  which  instantly
reflected  a  second  dirty,  exhausted  Sharik. High  up on the wall  was a
terrifying pair  of antlers, there  were countless  fur coats  and  pairs of
galoshes and an electric tulip made of opal glass hanging from the ceiling.
     'Where  on earth did you  get that from, Philip  Philipovich?' enquired
the woman,  smiling as  she helped to take off the heavy brown, blue-flecked
fox-fur coat.
     'God, he looks lousy.'
     'Nonsense. He doesn't look lousy to me,' said the gentleman abruptly.
     With his fur coat off he was seen to be wearing a black suit of English
material; a gold chain across his stomach shone with a dull glow.
     'Hold  still, boy, keep still doggy . .  .  keep still you little fool.
H'm . . . that's not lice . . . Stand still, will you . . . H'mm . . . aha -
yes . . . It's a scald. Who was mean enough to throw boiling water over you,
I wonder? Eh? Keep still, will you . . .!'
     It was that miserable cook, said the dog with his pitiful eyes and gave
a little whimper.
     'Zina,' ordered  the gentleman, 'take him  into the consulting-room  at
once and get me a white coat.'
     The  woman  whistled,  clicked her fingers  and  the dog  followed  her
slightly hesitantly. Together they walked down a narrow, dimly-lit corridor,
passed a varnished  door, reached the end then turned left and  arrived in a
dark little room which the dog instantly disliked for its ominous smell. The
darkness clicked and was transformed into blinding white  which flashed  and
shone from every angle.
     Oh, no,  the dog whined to himself, you  won't  catch  me as easily  as
that! I see it now - to hell with them and their sausage. They've tricked me
into a  dogs'  hospital.  Now  they'll  force  me to swallow  castor oil and
they'll cut up my side with knives - well, I won't let them touch it.
     'Hey - where are you trying to go?' shouted the girl called Zina.
     The animal  dodged, curled up like a spring and  suddenly hit  the door
with his unharmed side so hard that the noise reverberated through the whole
apartment. Then  he jumped back,  spun around on the spot  like a top and in
doing so knocked over a white bucket,  spilling wads of  cotton  wool. As he
whirled round there flashed past him shelves full of glittering instruments,
a white apron and a furious woman's face.
     'You little  devil,'  cried  Zina  in desperation, 'where  d'you  think
you're going?'
     Where's the back door? the dog wondered.  He swung round, rolled into a
ball  and hurled himself bullet-fashion at  a glass in the hope that  it was
another door. With a crash and  a tinkle a shower of splinters fell down and
a pot-bellied glass jar of  some reddish-brown  filth  shot  out and  poured
itself over the  floor, giving off a  sickening  stench. The real door swung
open.
     'Stop  it, you little beast,' shouted  the  gentleman  as he rushed  in
pulling  on one  sleeve  of his  white coat.  He seized the dog by the legs.
'Zina, grab him by the scruff of the neck, damn him.' 'Oh - these  dogs  . .
.!'
     The door opened wider still and another  person of the  male sex dashed
in, also wearing a white coat. Crunching  over the broken glass he went past
the dog to a cupboard, opened it and the whole room was filled with a sweet,
nauseating  smell. Then  the  person turned the animal  over on his back, at
which the dog enthusiastically bit him just above his shoelaces. The  person
groaned but kept his head. The nauseating liquid  choked the dog's breathing
and his head began  to spin, then  his legs  collapsed  and he  seemed to be
moving sideways.  This is it, he thought dreamily as he collapsed on  to the
sharp  slivers of  glass.  Goodbye, Moscow!  I  shan't see  Chichkin  or the
proletarians  or  Cracow  sausages  again.  I'm  going  to  the  heaven  for
long-suffering dogs. You butchers -  why did you have to do this to me? With
that he finally collapsed on to his back and passed out.
     When he awoke  he  felt  slightly dizzy  and sick  to his  stomach. His
injured side did not seem to be  there at all, but was blissfully  painless.
The  dog opened a languid  right eye and saw out  of its corner that he  was
tightly bandaged  all around his flanks and  belly. So those sons of bitches
did cut me up, he thought dully, but I must admit they've made a neat job of
it.
     . . . "from Granada to Seville . . . those soft southern nights" . . .'
a muzzy, falsetto voice sang over his head.
     Amazed, the dog  opened both eyes  wide  and saw two yards away a man's
leg  propped  up on a stool. Trousers and sock had  been rolled back and the
yellow, naked ankle was smeared with dried blood and iodine.
     Swine! thought the dog. He must be  the one I bit, so that's my  doing.
Now there'll be trouble.
     '. . . "the murmur of sweet serenades, the clink of  Spanish blades . .
." Now, you little tramp, why did you bite the doctor? Eh? Why did you break
all that glass?  M'm?' Oowow, whined the dig miserably. 'All right, lie back
and relax, naughty  boy.'  'However did you manage to entice such a nervous,
excitable  dog  into  following  you  here,  Philip Philipovich?' enquired a
pleasant  male voice, and  a long knitted underpant lowered  itself  to  the
ground. There  was a smell of  tobacco,  and  glass  phials  tinkled in  the
closet.
     'By  kindness. The  only  possible  method when  dealing  with a living
creature. You'll  get nowhere  with an animal  if  you use terror, no matter
what its  level of development may be. That  I  have maintained, do maintain
and always  will maintain. People who think  you can use  terror  are  quite
wrong. No, terror's useless, whatever its colour - white, red or even brown!
Terror completely paralyses the nervous  system. Zina! I bought  this little
scamp some Cracow sausage for 1 rouble 40 kopecks. Please see that he is fed
when he gets over his nausea.'
     There  was  a crunching noise as glass splinters were  swept  up  and a
woman's voice said  teasingly: 'Cracower! Goodness,  you  ought  to buy  him
twenty kopecks-worth of scraps from the butcher. I'd rather eat the Cracower
myself!'
     'You  just  try!  That stuff's poison for human stomachs. A grown woman
and  you're ready to poke anything  into your mouth  like a child. Don't you
dare! I warn you that neither I nor Doctor Bormenthal will lift a finger for
you when your stomach finally gives out . . .'
     Just then a bell tinkled all through the flat and from far  away in the
hall came the sound of voices. The telephone rang. Zina disappeared.
     Philip Philipovich threw his cigar butt  into  the bucket, buttoned  up
his  white coat, smoothed his bushy moustache in  front of a  mirror  on the
wall and called the dog.
     'Come on, boy, you'll be all right. Let's go and see our visitors.'
     The dog stood up  on  wobbly legs, staggered and  shivered but  quickly
felt better and set off behind the napping hem of Philip Philipovich's coat.
Again the dog walked down the narrow corridor, but saw that this time it was
brightly  lit from above by a round cut-glass lamp  in the ceiling. When the
varnished door opened he trotted into Philip Philipovich's study. Its luxury
blinded him. Above all it was blazing  with light: there was a light hanging
from the moulded ceiling, a light on the desk,  lights on the walls,  lights
on the glass-fronted cabinets. The light poured over countless knick-knacks,
of which  the most striking was an enormous owl perched on a branch fastened
to the wall.
     'Lie down,' ordered Philip Philipovich.
     The carved  door  at the other end of  the room opened and in  came the
doctor who had been bitten. In the bright light he now looked very young and
handsome, with a pointed beard. He put  down a sheet of paper and said: 'The
same as before . . .'
     Then  he  silently  vanished  and  Philip  Philipovich,  spreading  his
coat-tails, sat down  behind the huge  desk and immediately looked extremely
dignified and important.
     No, this can't  be  a hospital, I've landed up  somewhere else, the dog
thought  confusedly  and  stretched  out  on the patterned  carpet beside  a
massive leather-covered couch. I wish I knew what  that owl was doing here .
. .
     The  door gently opened  and in came a man who looked  so extraordinary
that the dog gave a timid yelp . . .
     'Shut up! . . . My dear fellow, I hardly recognised you!'
     Embarrassed, the  visitor  bowed  politely to  Philip  Philipovich  and
giggled nervously.
     'You're a wizard, a magician, professor!' he said bashfully.
     'Take down  your  trousers, old man,'  ordered Philip Philip-ovich  and
stood up.
     Christ, thought  the  dog, what  a sight! The man's hair was completely
green,  although at  the back it shaded off into a  brownish tobacco colour,
wrinkles covered his face yet his  complexion was  as pink as a  boy's.  His
left  leg would not  bend and had  to be dragged across  the carpet, but his
right leg  was as springy as a jack-in-the-box.  In  the  buttonhole  of his
superb jacket there shone, like an eye, a precious stone.
     The  dog was  so fascinated that he even forgot his  nausea. Oow-ow, he
whined softly.
     'Quiet! . . . How have you been sleeping!'
     The  man giggled. 'Are  we alone, professor? It's  indescribable,' said
the  visitor coyly. 'Parole d'honneur - I haven't known anything like it for
twenty-five years . . .' the creature started struggling with his flybuttons
. . . 'Would you believe it, professor - hordes of naked girls every  night.
I am absolutely entranced. You're a magician.'
     'H'm,' grunted Philip Philipovich,  preoccupied  as he stared into  the
pupils  of his  visitor's  eyes. The man finally succeeded in mastering  his
flybuttons  and   took  off   his  checked   trousers,  revealing  the  most
extraordinary  pair  of pants.  They  were cream-coloured,  embroidered with
black silk cats and they smelled of perfume.
     The dog could not resist the cats and  gave such a  bark  that the  man
jumped.
     'Oh!'
     'Quiet - or I'll beat you! . . . Don't worry, he won't bite.'
     Won't I? thought the dog in amazement.
     Out of the man's trouser pocket a little envelope fell to the floor. It
was decorated  with a picture  of a naked girl with flowing hair. He  gave a
start, bent down to pick it up and blushed violently.
     'Look here,' said Philip Philipovich in a tone of grim warning, wagging
a threatening finger, 'you shouldn't overdo it, you know.'
     'I'm  not  overdo  . . .' the creature muttered in  embarrassment as he
went on undressing. 'It was just a sort of experiment.'
     'Well, what were the results?' asked Philip Philipovich sternly.
     The  man  waved his  hand in ecstasy. 'I  swear  to  God,  professor, I
haven't  known anything like it for twenty-five years. The last  time was in
1899 in Paris, in the Rue de la Paix.'
     'And why have you turned green?'
     The  visitor's  face  clouded  over.  'That damned  stuff! You'd  never
believe, professor, what those rogues palmed  off on me instead of dye. Just
take a look,' the  man muttered, searching  for a mirror. 'I'd like to punch
him on the snout,' he added in a rage. 'What am I to do now, professor?'  he
asked tearfully.
     'H'm. Shave all your hair off.'
     'But, professor,' cried the visitor miserably, 'then it would only grow
grey  again. Besides,  I daren't show my  face  at the office  like  this. I
haven't been there for three days. Ah, professor, if only you had discovered
a way of rejuvenating hair!'
     'One thing  at a time, old man, one thing at  a time,' muttered  Philip
Philipovich. Bending down, his glittering  eyes examined the patient's naked
abdomen.
     'Splendid, everything's in great shape. To tell you the  truth I didn't
even expect such results. You can get dressed now.'
     '  "Ah, she's  so  lovely .  .  ." ' sang the patient  in  a voice that
quavered  like the  sound  of  someone  hitting  an old,  cracked  saucepan.
Beaming, he started to dress. When he was  ready he skipped across the floor
in  a cloud  of  perfume,  counted  out  a heap  of  white banknotes on  the
professor's desk and shook him tenderly by both hands.
     'You needn't  come back for two weeks,' said Philip Philipovich, 'but I
must beg you - be careful.'
     The  ecstaticvoice  replied   from   behind   thedoor:  'Don't   worry,
professor.' The creature gave  a delighted giggle  and  went.  The  doorbell
tinkled through  the apartment  and the varnished door opened, admitting the
other doctor, who handed Philip Philipovich a sheet of paper and announced:
     'She has lied about her age.  It's probably about  fifty or fifty-five.
Heart-beats muffled.'
     He disappeared, to be succeeded by a  rustling lady with  a hat planted
gaily on one side of her head and  with a glittering  necklace on her slack,
crumpled neck. There  were black bags under her  eyes and her cheeks were as
red as a painted doll. She was extremely nervous.
     'How  old  are  you,  madam?'  enquired Philip  Philipovich  with great
severity.
     Frightened, the  lady paled  under her coating  of rouge. 'Professor, I
swear that if you knew the agony I've been going through . . .!'
     'How  old  are  you,  madam?'  repeated  Philip  Philipovich  even more
sternly.
     'Honestly . . . well, forty-five . . .'
     'Madam,' groaned Philip  Philipovich,  I am a  busy man.  Please  don't
waste my time. You're not my only patient, you know.'
     The lady's bosom heaved violently. 'I've come to you, a great scientist
... I swear to you - it's terrible . . .'
     'How old are you?' Philip Philipovich screeched in fury, his spectacles
glittering.
     'Fifty-one!' replied the lady, wincing with terror.
     'Take off your underwear, please,' said Philip Philipovich with relief,
and pointed to a high white examination table in the comer.
     'I swear, professor,' murmured  the lady as  with trembling fingers she
unbuttoned the fasteners on  her belt, 'this boy Moritz ... I honestly admit
to you . . .'
     '  "From Granada  to  Seville  .  .  ."  '  Philip  Philipovich  hummed
absentmindedly and pressed the foot-pedal of his marble washbasin. There was
a sound of running water.
     'I swear to God,' said the lady, patches of real colour showing through
the  rouge on  her cheeks, 'this will  be my last affair. Oh,  he's  such  a
brute! Oh,  professor!  All Moscow knows he's  a  card-sharper and  he can't
resist  any little  tart of  a dressmaker  who catches his  eye. But he's so
deliciously young . . .'As she talked the lady pulled out a crumpled blob of
lace from under her rustling skirts.
     A  mist  came  in  front  of  the  dog's eyes  and his brain  turned  a
somersault. To  hell with you, he  thought vaguely, laying his  head  on his
paws and closing his eyes with embarrassment. I'm not going to try and guess
what all this is about -it's beyond me, anyway.
     He was wakened by a tinkling sound and saw that Philip  Philipovich had
tossed some little shining tubes into a basin.
     The painted lady, her hands pressed to  her bosom, was gazing hopefully
at Philip Philipovich. Frowning impressively he had sat down at his desk and
was writing something.
     'I  am going  to implant some monkey's  ovaries into  you,  madam,'  he
announced with a stern look.
     'Oh, professor - not monkey's ?'
     'Yes,' replied Philip Philipovich inexorably.

     'When will you operate?' asked the lady in a weak voice, turning pale.
     ' ". . . from Granada to Seville . . ." H'm ...  on Monday. You must go
into hospital on Monday morning. My assistant will prepare you.'
     'Oh, dear. I don't want to go into hospital. Couldn't you operate here,
professor?'
     'I only operate here in extreme cases. It would be very expensive - 500
roubles.'
     'I'll pay, professor!'
     Again came the sound of running water, the feathered hat swayed out, to
be replaced  by  a  head as  bald as a  dinner-plate which  embraced  Philip
Philipovich. As  his  nausea  passed, the dog dozed off, luxuriating in  the
warmth and the sense of relief as his injury healed. He even snored a little
and managed to enjoy a snatch of a pleasant dream - he dreamed he had torn a
whole tuft of feathers out of the  owl's tail .  . . until an agitated voice
started yapping above his head.
     'I'm too well known in Moscow, professor. What am I to do?'
     'Really,' cried Philip Philipovich indignantly, 'you can't behave  like
that. You must restrain yourself. How old is she?'
     'Fourteen,  professor . . . The scandal would ruin me, you see. I'm due
to go abroad on official business any day now.'
     'I'm afraid I'm not a  lawyer . . . you'd better wait a couple of years
and then marry her.'
     'I'm married already, professor.'
     'Oh, lord!'
     The door  opened,  faces  changed,  instruments  clattered  and  Philip
Philipovich worked on unceasingly.
     This place is indecent, thought the  dog,  but I like it! What the hell
can he want me for, though? Is he just going to let me live here? Maybe he's
eccentric.  After  all,  he could  get  a pedigree dog  as  easy as winking.
Perhaps  I'm good-looking! What  luck.  As for that  stupid owl . . . cheeky
brute.
     The dog  finally woke up late in the evening when the bells had stopped
ringing and at the very moment when the door admitted some special visitors.
There were four of them at once, all young people and all extremely modestly
dressed.
     What's all this?  thought the dog in  astonishment.  Philip Philipovich
treated these visitors with  considerable  hostility. He stood at  his desk,
staring  at  them like a general confronting the enemy.  The nostrils of his
hawk-like nose were dilated. The party shuffled awkwardly across the carpet.
     'The  reason why we've come  to see you, professor . . .'  began one of
them, who had a six-inch shock of hair sprouting straight out of his head.
     'You  ought not to go  out  in this  weather  without wearing galoshes,
gentlemen,'  Philip  Philipovich  interrupted  in a  schoolmasterish  voice.
'Firstly you'll catch cold and secondly you've muddied my carpets and all my
carpets are Persian.'
     The young man with the  shock of hair broke off, and all four stared at
Philip  Philipovich in consternation. The silence lasted several minutes and
was only broken by the drumming of Philip Philipovich's fingers on a painted
wooden platter on his desk.
     'Firstly, we're not gentlemen,' the youngest of  them, with a face like
a peach, said finally.
     'Secondly,'  Philip Philipovich interrupted him,  'are you a  man or  a
woman?'
     The four were silent again and their mouths dropped open. This time the
shock-haired young man pulled himself together.
     'What difference does it make, comrade?' he asked proudly.
     'I'm a  woman,' confessed  the peach-like  youth,  who  was  wearing  a
leather jerkin,  and blushed  heavily. For some  reason one of the others, a
fair young man in a sheepskin hat, also turned bright red.
     'In  that case you may leave your cap  on, but  I must ask you, my dear
sir, to remove your headgear,' said Philip Philipovich imposingly.
     'I  am not your dear sir,' said the fair youth sharply, pulling off his
sheepskin hat.
     'We have come to see you,' the dark shock-headed boy began again.
     'First of all - who are 'we'?'
     'We are the new management committee of this block  of flats,' said the
dark youth with suppressed fury. 'I am Shvonder, her name is Vyazemskaya and
these two are comrades Pestrukhin and Sharovkyan. So we . . .'
     'Are you the  people  who were  moved in as  extra  tenants into Fyodor
Pavlovich Sablin's apartment?' 'Yes, we are,' replied Shvonder.
     'God, what is this place  coming to!'  exclaimed  Philip Philipovich in
despair and wrung his  hands.  'What are you laughing for, professor?' 'What
do  you  mean   -  laughing?  I'm  in  absolute   despair,'  shouted  Philip
Philipovich. 'What's going to become of the central heating now?'
     'Are you making fun of  us.  Professor  Preobrazhensky?'  'Why have you
come to  see  me?  Please  be as  quick as possible. I'm  just  going in  to
supper.'
     'We, the house management,' said  Shvonder with  hatred, 'have come  to
see you as a result of a general meeting of the  tenants of this block,  who
are  charged with the problem  of increasing the occupancy of this house . .
.' 28

     'What d'you mean - charged?' cried  Philip Philipovich. 'Please try and
express yourself more clearly.'
     'We are charged with increasing the occupancy.'
     'All right, I  understand! Do you realise that under  the regulation of
August  12th  this  year  my  apartment  is  exempt  from  any  increase  in
occupancy?'
     'We know that,' replied Shvonder,  'but when  the  general  meeting had
examined this  question  it came to the conclusion that  taken all round you
are occupying too much space. Far too much. You are living,  alone, in seven
rooms.'
     'I live and work in seven  rooms,'  replied Philip Philipovich,  'and I
could do with eight. I need a room for a library.'
     The four were struck dumb.
     'Eight! Ha, ha!' said the hatless fair youth. 'That's rich, that is!'
     'It's indescribable!' exclaimed the youth  who had turned  out to be  a
woman.
     'I have a waiting-room, which you will notice  also has to  serve as my
library,  a dining-room, and my  study - that makes three. Consulting-room -
four, operating  theatre  -five.  My bedroom -  six, and the  servant's room
makes seven. It's not  really enough. But that's not the point. My apartment
is exempt, and our  conversation  is  therefore at an end. May I go and have
supper?'
     'Excuse me,' said the fourth, who looked like a fat beetle.
     'Excuse me,' Shvonder interrupted him, 'but it was just because of your
dining-room  and your consulting-room  that we came to see you.  The general
meeting  requests you,  as a  matter of  labour discipline, to give  up your
dining-room voluntarily. No one in Moscow has a dining-room.'
     'Not  even Isadora Duncan,' squeaked  the woman. Something  happened to
Philip Philipovich which made his face turn gently purple.  He said nothing,
waiting to hear what came next.
     'And give up your  consulting-room too,'  Shvonder went  on. '  You can
easily combine your consulting-room with your study.'
     'Mm'h,'  said  Philip Philipovich in a strange  voice. 'And where am  I
supposed to eat?'
     'In the bedroom,' answered the four in chorus.
     Philip Philipovich's purple complexion took on a faintly grey tinge.
     'So  I can  eat in the bedroom,'  he  said in a slightly muffled voice,
'read in the consulting-room, dress in the hall, operate in the  maid's room
and  examine  patients in the  dining-room.  I expect that is  what  Isadora
Duncan does.  Perhaps  she eats in her  study  and  dissects rabbits in  the
bathroom. Perhaps.  But I'm not Isadora Duncan. . . !' he turned  yellow. 'I
shall eat in the dining-room and operate in the operating theatre! Tell that
to the general meeting, and meanwhile kindly go  and mind  your own business
and  allow me to have  my supper in the place where all normal people eat. I
mean in the dining-room - not in the hall and not in the nursery.'
     'In that case,  professor, in view of your obstinate refusal,' said the
furious  Shvonder,  'we  shall  lodge  a complaint  about  you  with  higher
authority.'
     'Aha,' said  Philip  Philipovich, 'so that's your game, is it?' And his
voice took on a suspiciously polite note. 'Please wait one minute.'
     What a man, thought the dog with delight, he's just like me. Any minute
now and he'll bite them. I don't know how, but he'll bite them all right ...
Go on!  Go  for 'em! I could  just get  that long-legged swine in the tendon
behind his knee . . . ggrrr . . .
     Philip Philipovich lifted the telephone receiver, dialled and said into
it:  'Please  give  me  . . . yes . . .  thank  you. Put me through to Pyotr
Alexandrovich,   please.   Professor    Preobraz-hensky    speaking.   Pyotr
Alexandrovich? Hello,  how are you?  I'm  so glad  I  was able  to get  you.
Thanks,  I'm  fine.  Pyotr  Alexandrovich,  I'm  afraid  your  operation  is
cancelled. What? Cancelled. And  so are all  my other  operations. I'll tell
you why:
     I  am not going to work in  Moscow, in fact  I'm  not going to work  in
Russia any longer . . .  I am just having a visit from four  people,  one of
whom  is  a  woman  disguised  as  a man,  and  two of  whom are armed  with
revolvers. They are terrorising  me in  my own  apartment and threatening to
evict me.'
     'Hey, now, professor . . .' began Shvonder, his expression changing.
     'Excuse me ... I  can't repeat  all they've been  saying. I  can't make
sense of it, anyway. Roughly  speaking  they  have told  me to  give  up  my
consulting-room,  which will oblige me  to operate in  the room I  have used
until  now  for dissecting rabbits.  I  not  only  cannot  work  under  such
conditions - I have no  right to. So I am closing down my practice, shutting
up my apartment and going to Sochi. I will give the keys to Shvonder. He can
operate for me.'
     The four  stood rigid. The snow  was melting on their boots. 'Can't  be
helped,  I'm afraid  . . . Of course I'm very  upset,  but ... What? Oh, no,
Pyotr  Alexandrovich! Oh,  no. That I  must flatly  refuse. My patience  has
snapped.  This is  the second time since August  . . . What? H'm .  . .  All
right, if you  like. I suppose so. Only this time on  one condition: I don't
care who issues it, when they issue it or what they issue, provided it's the
sort of  certificate  which will mean that neither Shvonder  nor anyone else
can so much as knock on my  door.  The ultimate in  certificates. Effective.
Real.  Armour-plated! I  don't even want my name  on it. The end. As  far as
they are concerned, I  am dead. Yes, yes.  Please do.  Who? Aha . .  . well,
that's another matter. Aha  . .  .  good. I'll just  hand him  the receiver.
Would you  mind,'  Philip Philipovich  spoke to Shvonder in a  voice like  a
snake's, 'you're wanted on the telephone.'
     'But, professor,' said Shvonder, alternately flaring  up and  cringing,
'what you've told him is all wrong' -
     'Please don't speak to me like that.'
     Shvonder nervously picked up the receiver and said:
     'Hello. Yes ... I'm the chairman of the house management  committee . .
. We were only acting according to the regulations . . . the professor is an
absolutely special case .  .  .  Yes, we know about his work  . . . We  were
going to leave him five whole  rooms .  . . Well, OK ... if that's how it is
... OK.'
     Very red in the face, he hung up and turned round.
     What a fellow! thought the dog rapturously.  Does he know how to handle
them! What's his secret, I wonder? He can beat me as much  as he likes now -
I'm not leaving this place!'
     The three young people stared open-mouthed at the wretched Shvonder.
     'This is a disgrace!' he said miserably.
     'If that Pyotr Alexandrovich had been here,' began the woman, reddening
with anger, 'I'd have shown him . . .'
     'Excuse  me, would you  like  to  talk  to him  now?'  enquired  Philip
Philipovich politely.
     The woman's eyes flashed.
     'You can be as sarcastic as you like, professor, but we're going  now .
. . Still, as manager of the cultural department of this house . . .'
     ' Manager,' Philip Philipovich corrected her.
     'I want  to ask you' -  here the  woman pulled  a  number  of  coloured
magazines wet with snow, from out  of the front of her tunic - 'to buy a few
of these magazines in aid of the children of Germany. 50 kopecks a copy.'
     'No, I will not,' said  Philip Philipovich curtly after a glance at the
magazines.
     Total  amazement   showed   on   the   faces,  and  the   girl   turned
cranberry-colour.
     'Why not?'
     'I don't want to.'
     'Don't you feel sorry for the children of Germany?'
     'Yes, I do.'
     'Can't you spare 50 kopecks?'
     'Yes, I can.'
     'Well, why won't you, then?'
     'I don't want to.'
     Silence.
     'You know, professor,' said the girl with a deep sigh,  'if you weren't
world-famous and if  you weren't  being  protected by certain  people in the
most disgusting way,' (the fair  youth tugged at the hem of  her jerkin, but
she  brushed  him away),  'which we propose to  investigate, you  should  be
arrested.'
     'What for?' asked Philip Philipovich with curiosity.
     'Because you hate the proletariat!' said the woman proudly.
     'You're right, I don't like the proletariat,' agreed Philip Philipovich
sadly, and pressed a button. A bell rang in the distance. The door opened on
to the corridor.
     'Zina!' shouted  Philip Philipovich. 'Serve the  supper, please. Do you
mind, ladies and gentlemen?'
     Silently the  four left  the study,  silently  they  trooped  down  the
passage and through  the  hall. The front  door  closed  loudly  and heavily
behind them.
     The  dog  rose  on  his  hind legs  in front of Philip  Philipovich and
performed obeisance to him.






     On  gorgeous flowered plates  with  wide  black rims lay thin slices of
salmon and soused eel; a slab of over-ripe cheese on a heavy wooden platter,
and in a silver bowl packed  around  with snow  - caviare. Beside the plates
stood delicate  glasses and  three crystal  decanters of  different-coloured
vodkas.  All these  objects  were  on a  small marble table, handily  placed
beside  the huge carved oak sideboard which  shone with glass and silver. In
the middle of the room was a table, heavy as a gravestone and covered with a
white tablecloth set with two places, napkins folded into the shape of papal
tiaras, and three dark bottles.
     Zina brought in a  covered silver dish beneath which something bubbled.
The dish gave off such a smell that the dog's mouth  immediately filled with
saliva. The  gardens  of Semiramis! he thought as  he thumped the floor with
his tail.
     'Bring  it  here,' ordered  Philip  Philipovich greedily.  'I  beg you,
Doctor Bormenthal, leave the caviare alone. And if  you want a piece of good
advice, don't touch the English vodka but drink the ordinary Russian stuff.'
     The handsome  Bormenthal -  who  had taken off  his white coat  and was
wearing a smart black suit - shrugged his  broad shoulders, smirked politely
and poured out a glass of clear vodka.
     'What make is it?' he enquired.
     'Bless  you,  my dear fellow,'  replied his  host, 'it's  pure alcohol.
Darya Petrovna makes the most excellent homemade vodka.'
     'But surely, Philip Philipovich, everybody says that 30-degree vodka is
quite good enough.'
     'Vodka should be at least 40 degrees, not 30 - that's firstly,'  Philip
Philipovich interrupted him didactically, 'and  secondly  -  God knows  what
muck they make into vodka nowadays. What do you think they use?'
     'Anything they like,' said the other doctor firmly.
     'I quite agree,' said Philip Philipovich and hurled the contents of his
glass down his throat  in one gulp. 'Ah .  . . m'm . . . Doctor Bormenthal -
please drink that at once  and if  you ask me what it is, I'm your enemy for
life. "From Granada to Seville . . ." '
     With these  words he speared something  like  a little  piece of  black
bread  on his silver  fish-fork.  Bormenthal  followed  his example.  Philip
Philipovich's eyes shone.
     'Not  bad, eh?' asked  Philip  Philipovich,  chewing. 'Is  it? Tell me,
doctor.'
     'It's excellent,' replied the doctor sincerely.
     'So  I should think . .  . Kindly note, Ivan Arnoldovich, that the only
people who  eat cold hors d'oeuvres nowadays are the few remaining landlords
who  haven't had their throats cut.  Anybody with  a  spark of  self-respect
takes  his  hors d'oeuvres  hot. And of all the hot hors d'oeuvres in Moscow
this is the best. Once they used to do them magnificently at  the Slavyansky
Bazaar restaurant. There, you can have some too.'
     'If you feed a dog at table,' said  a woman's voice, 'you won't get him
out of here afterwards for love or money.'
     'I don't  mind. The  poor thing's  hungry.' On  the  point of his  fork
Pliilip Philipovich handed the dog a tit-bit, which the animal took with the
dexterity of  a conjuror.  The professor  then threw the fork with a clatter
into the slop-basin.
     The  dishes  now steamed with an  odour of lobster; the  dog sat in the
shadow  of the tablecloth with the look of a sentry by a  powder magazine as
Philip Philipovich,  thrusting the end  of  a thick  napkin into his collar,
boomed on:
     'Food, Ivan Arnoldovich, is a subtle thing.  One must know how to  eat,
yet just think - most people don't know how to eat at all. One must not only
know what to  eat,  but when  and how.'  (Philip Philipovich  waved his fork
meaningfully.)  'And  what to say while you're eating.  Yes, my dear sir. If
you care about your digestion, my advice is - don't talk about bolshevism or
medicine at table.  And,  God  forbid - never  read Soviet newspapers before
dinner.'
     'M'mm . . . But there are no other newspapers.'
     'In  that case don't read any at all.  Do  you know  I once made thirty
tests in my clinic. And  what  do  you  think?  The patients  who never read
newspapers felt  excellent. Those whom I specially made read Pravda all lost
weight.
     'H'm . . .' rejoined Bormenthal with interest, turning gently pink from
the soup and the wine.
     'And not only did they lose weight. Their knee reflexes were  retarded,
they lost appetite and exhibited general depression.'
     'Good heavens . . .'
     'Yes, my dear sir. But listen to me - I'm talking about medicine!'
     Leaning  back,  Philip Philipovich  rang  the  bell and  Zina  appeared
through  the cerise  portiere.  The  dog  was given a thick, white piece  of
sturgeon, which he  did  not like, then  immediately  afterwards  a chunk of
underdone roast beef. When he had gulped it  down the dog suddenly felt that
he  wanted to  sleep and could not bear the sight of any more  food. Strange
feeling,  he  thought,  blinking his heavy eyelids, it's as if my eyes won't
look at food any longer. As for smoking after they've eaten - that's crazy.
     The  dining-room  was filling  with  unpleasant blue smoke.  The animal
dozed,  its head on its forepaws. 'Saint  Julien is a very decent wine,' the
dog heard sleepily, 'but there's none of it to be had any more.'
     A dull mutter of voices in chorus,  muffled by the ceiling and carpets,
was heard coming from above and to one side.
     Philip Philipovich rang for Zina. 'Zina my dear, what's that noise?'
     'They're  having another general  meeting, Philip Philipovich,' replied
Zina.
     'What, again?' exclaimed Philip Philipovich mournfully. 'Well,  this is
the end of this house. I'll have to go away -but where to? I can see exactly
what'll happen. First of all there'll be  community  singing in the evening,
then the pipes will  freeze  in  the lavatories, then  the  central  heating
boiler will blow up and so on. This is the end.'
     'Philip Philipovich worries himself  to death,' said  Zina with a smile
as she cleared away a pile of plates.
     'How can I help it?'  exploded Philip Philipovich. 'Don't you know what
this house used to be like?'
     'You take too black a view of things, Philip Philipovich,' objected the
handsome Bormenthal. 'There is a considerable change for the better now.'
     'My dear fellow, you know me, don't you? I am a man of facts, a man who
observes. I'm the enemy of unsupported hypotheses. And I'm known as such not
only in Russia but in Europe too. If I say something,  that means that it is
based on some fact from which I draw my conclusions. Now there's  a fact for
you: there is a hat-stand and a rack for boots and galoshes in this house.'
     'Interesting . . .'
     Galoshes - hell. Who cares  about galoshes, thought the dog, but he's a
great fellow all the same.
     'Yes, a rack for galoshes. I have been living in this house since 1903.
And from then until  March 1917 there was not one case - let me underline in
red pencil not one case  -  of a single pair of  galoshes  disappearing from
that rack even when the front door was open.  There are, kindly note, twelve
flats  in  this  house  and  a  constant  stream  of  people  coming  to  my
consulting-rooms. One fine  day in March 1917 all the  galoshes disappeared,
including two pairs of  mine, three  walking  sticks,  an overcoat  and  the
porter's samovar.  And since then the rack has ceased  to exist. And I won't
mention the boiler. The rule apparently is -  once a social revolution takes
place there's no  need to stoke the  boiler.  But I ask you:  why, when this
whole business started, should everybody suddenly start clumping up and down
the marble staircase in  dirty galoshes and felt boots? Why must we now keep
our  galoshes under lock  and key? And  put a soldier on guard over  them to
prevent  them  from  being stolen? Why has the carpet been removed from  the
front staircase? Did Marx forbid  people to  keep their staircases carpeted?
Did Karl Marx say anywhere that the front door of No. 2 Kalabukhov  House in
Prechistenka Street  must be boarded up so that people have to go  round and
come in  by the  back door?  WTiat  good does  it  do anybody? Why can't the
proletarians  leave  their  galoshes  downstairs  instead  of  dirtying  the
staircase?'
     'But the  proletarians don't  have  any  galoshes, Philip Philipovich,'
stammered the doctor.
     'Nothing  of  the  sort!'  replied  Philip Philipovich  in  a voice  of
thunder,  and poured himself a glass of wine. 'H'mm  ... I  don't approve of
liqueurs after dinner. They weigh on the digestion and are bad for the liver
. .  . Nothing of the sort! The proletarians do have  galoshes now and those
galoshes are - mine! The very ones that  vanished in the spring of 1917. Who
removed them,  you may ask?  Did I  remove  them? Impossible. The  bourgeois
Sablin?'  (Philip  Philipovich pointed  upwards to the ceiling.)  'The  very
idea's laughable.  Polozov,  the  sugar manufacturer?'  (Philip  Philipovich
pointed to one side.) 'Never! You see? But if they'd only take them off when
they  come  up the  staircase!' (Philip Philipovich started to turn purple.)
'Why on earth do they  have to remove the flowers from the landing? Why does
the electricity, which to the best of my recollection has only failed  twice
in the  past twenty  years, now go  out regularly  once a month? Statistics,
Doctor Bormenthal, are  terrible  things.  You who know  my latest work must
realise  that  better than  anybody.'  'The  place is going  to ruin, Philip
Philipovich.'
     'No,' countered Philip Philipovich quite firmly. 'No. You must first of
all refrain, my dear  Ivan Arnoldovich, from using that word. It's a mirage,
a vapour,  a fiction,'  Philip  Philipovich  spread  out  his short fingers,
producing a double shadow  like two  skulls on the tablecloth. 'What do  you
mean by ruin? An  old woman with a broomstick? A witch who smashes  all  the
windows and puts out all the lights? No such thing. What do you mean by that
word?' Philip Philipovich angrily enquired of an unfortunate cardboard  duck
hanging  upside down  by  the sideboard, then answered the question himself.
'I'll tell you  what it is: if instead of  operating every evening I were to
start a glee club in my apartment, that would mean that I was on the road to
ruin.  If  when I go  to the  lavatory I don't  pee,  if  you'll  excuse the
expression, into the  bowl but on to the floor instead and if Zina and Darya
Petrovna were  to do  the same  thing,  the lavatory would be ruined.  Ruin,
therefore,  is not  caused by  lavatories but it's  something that starts in
people's heads. So  when these clowns  start shouting "Stop the  ruin!"  - I
laugh!'  (Philip  Philipovich's face became so distorted  that  the doctor's
mouth fell open.)  'I swear to you,  I find it laughable! Every one of  them
needs  to hit himself on the back of the  head and then  when he has knocked
all  the  hallucinations  out of  himself  and  gets  on  with sweeping  out
backyards  -  which is  his real  job  - all this  "ruin" will automatically
disappear. You can't serve two gods!  You  can't sweep the  dirt out of  the
tram tracks and settle the fate of the Spanish beggars at the  same time! No
one can  ever manage it, doctor - and  above all it can't be  done by people
who are two hundred years behind  the  rest of  Europe and who  so far can't
even manage to do up their own fly-buttons properly!'
     Philip Philipovich had worked himself up  into  a frenzy. His hawk-like
nostrils  were  dilated. Fortified  by his ample dinner he thundered like an
ancient prophet and his hair shone like a silver halo.
     His words sounded to the sleepy dog like a dull subterranean rumble. At
first he  dreamed uneasily  that  the owl  with  its  stupid yellow eyes had
hopped  off its branch, then he  dreamed about the vile face of that cook in
his dirty white cap, then of Philip Philipovich's dashing moustaches sharply
lit by  electric light from the lampshade. The dreamy sleigh-ride came to an
end as the  mangled piece of roast beef, floating in  gravy, stewed away  in
the dog's stomach.
     He could earn plenty of money by talking at political meetings, the dog
thought sleepily.  That  was  a great speech.  Still,  he's rolling in money
anyway.
     'A policeman!' shouted Philip Philipovich. 'A policeman!'
     Policeman? Ggrrr ... - something snapped inside the dog's brain.
     'Yes, a policeman!  Nothing  else will do. Doesn't  matter  whether  he
wears  a number or a red  cap. A policeman should  be posted alongside every
person in the country with the job  of moderating the vocal outbursts of our
honest citizenry. You talk about ruin. I tell you, doctor, that nothing will
change for the better in this  house, or in any other house for that matter,
until you can make these  people stop  talking claptrap! As soon as they put
an end to this  mad  chorus the situation will automatically change  for the
better.'
     'You sound like a counter-revolutionary, Philip  Philipovich,' said the
doctor jokingly. 'I hope to God nobody hears you.'
     'I'm doing  no harm,' Philip Philipovich  objected  heatedly.  'Nothing
counter-revolutionary  in  all that. Incidentally,  that's  a  word I simply
can't tolerate. What the devil is it supposed to mean, anyway? Nobody knows.
That's why I say  there's nothing counter-revolutionary  in what I say. It's
full of sound sense and a lifetime of experience.'
     At this point Philip Philipovich pulled the end of his luxurious napkin
out of his collar. Crumpling it up he laid it beside his unfinished glass of
wine. Bormenthal at once rose and thanked his host.
     'Just  a  minute, doctor,' Philip Philipovich  stopped  him  and took a
wallet out of his hip pocket. He frowned,  counted out some white  10-rouble
notes and handed them to the doctor,  saying,  'You  are due for 40  roubles
today, Ivan Arnoldovich. There you are.'
     Still  in  slight  pain from his dog-bite, the  doctor thanked him  and
blushed as he stuffed the money into his coat pocket.
     'Do you need me this evening, Philip Philipovich?' he enquired.
     'No  thanks, my dear fellow. We shan't be doing  anything this evening.
For one thing the rabbit has died and for another Aida is on at the  Bolshoi
this evening. It's  a  long time  since  I heard it.  I  love it  ... Do you
remember that duet? Pom-pom-ti-pom . . .'
     'How do  you find  time for  it,  Philip Philipovich?' asked the doctor
with awe.
     'One  can  find  time  for everything  if  one is  never  in  a hurry,'
explained  his  host didactically. 'Of course if I started going to meetings
and  carolling like a  nightingale all  day long, I'd never  find time to go
anywhere' - the repeater in Philip Philipovich's pocket struck its celestial
chimes as he pressed the button - 'It starts at  nine. I'll  go  in time for
the second act. I believe in the division of labour. The Bolshoi's job is to
sing,  mine's to operate. That's how things should be. Then there'd  be none
of this "ruin" . . . Look, Ivan Arnoldovich, you must  go and take a careful
look:  as soon  as  he's properly dead, take  him  off the  table,  put  him
straight into nutritive fluid and bring him to me!'
     'Don't worry, Philip Philipovich, the pathologist has promised me.'
     'Excellent. Meanwhile, we'll examine this neurotic street arab  of ours
and stitch him up. I want his flank to heal . . .'
     He's worrying  about me, thought the dog, good for him. Now I know what
he is. He's the wizard, the magician,  the sorcerer out of those dogs' fairy
tales ... I can't have dreamed it all. Or have I? (The dog shuddered  in his
sleep.) Any  minute now  I'll  wake  up  and  there'll be  nothing  here. No
silk-shaded lamp, no warmth, no food. Back on the streets, back in the cold,
the frozen  asphalt,  hunger,  evil-minded humans . . . the factory canteen,
the snow . . . God, it will be unbearable . . .!
     But none  of that happened. It was the freezing doorway which  vanished
like a bad dream and never came back.
     Clearly the country was not yet in a  total state  of ruin. In spite of
it the  grey accordion-shaped radiators under the windows  filled  with heat
twice a day and warmth flowed in waves through the  whole apartment. The dog
had obviously drawn the winning ticket in the dogs' lottery. Never less than
twice a  day  his eyes filled with tears  of gratitude towards  the  sage of
Prechistenka.  Every  mirror  in  the  living-room or the hall  reflected  a
good-looking, successful dog.
     I am handsome. Perhaps I'm really a dog prince, living incognito, mused
the  dog as  he  watched  the  shaggy,  coffee-coloured dog  with  the  smug
expression strolling about in the mirrored distance. I wouldn't be surprised
if my grandmother didn't have an affair with a labrador. Now  that I look at
my muzzle, I see there's a white  patch  on  it. I wonder how it  got there.
Philip Philipovich is a man  of great taste -he  wouldn't just  pick  up any
stray mongrel.
     In two weeks  the dog  ate as much as in his previous six  weeks on the
street.  Only by weight, of course.  In  quality the food at the professor's
apartment was incomparable. Apart from the fact that Darya Petrovna bought a
heap  of meat-scraps for 18 kopecks  every day at the Smolensk market, there
was dinner every  evening in the dining-room  at seven o'clock, at which the
dog was always present despite protests from the elegant Zina. It was during
these  meals that Philip Philipovich acquired his final  title  to divinity.
The dog stood on his hind legs and nibbled his jacket,  the  dog learned  to
recognise  Philip  Philipovich's  ring  at  the  door  -  two  loud,  abrupt
proprietorial pushes on  the bell - and would run barking out into the hall.
The master was enveloped in a dark brown fox-fur coat, which  glittered with
millions  of  snowflakes  and smelled of mandarin oranges, cigars,  perfume,
lemons, petrol, eau de cologne  and cloth,  and his voice, like a megaphone,
boomed all through the apartment.
     'Why did you ruin the owl, you little monkey? Was the owl doing you any
harm? Was it, now? Why did you smash the portrait of Professor Mechnikov?'
     'He  needs at  least one good whipping, Philip Philipovich,' said  Zina
indignantly, 'or he'll become completely  spoiled. Just look what he's  done
to your galoshes.'
     'No one  is to be beaten,' said Philip Philipovich  heatedly, 'remember
that  once  and for  all.  Animals and  people  can  only be  influenced  by
persuasion. Have you given him his meat today?'
     'Lord, he's eaten us out of  house and  home.  What a question,  Philip
Philipovich. He eats so much I'm surprised he doesn't burst.'
     'Fine. It's good for him . . . what harm did the owl do you, you little
ruffian?'
     Ow-ow, whined the dog, crawling on his belly and splaying out his paws.
     The dog was forcefully  dragged by the scruff  of his neck  through the
hall and  into the study. He whined, snapped, clawed  at the carpet and slid
along  on  his rump as if he were doing a  circus act.  In the middle of the
study floor lay the glass-eyed owl. From  its disembowelled stomach flowed a
stream of red rags that smelled of mothballs. Scattered on the desk were the
fragments of a portrait.
     'I purposely didn't  clear it up so that you  could  take a good look,'
said Zina distractedly. 'Look - he jumped  up  on  to the  table, the little
brute, and then - bang! - he had the owl by the tail. Before I knew what was
happening  he  had  torn  it to  pieces. Rub his  nose  in  the owl,  Philip
Philipovich, so that he learns not to spoil things.'
     Then the howling began. Clawing at the carpet, the dog was dragged over
to have his nose rubbed in the  owl. He wept bitter tears and  thought: Beat
me, do what you like, but don't throw me out.
     'Send  the owl to the  taxidermist  at once. There's 8  roubles, and 16
kopecks for the tram-fare, go down to  Murat's and buy him a good collar and
a lead.'
     Next  day the dog was given a  wide,  shiny collar. As soon as  he  saw
himself in the mirror he was very upset, put his tail between  his  legs and
disappeared  into  the  bathroom, where he planned to pull  the  collar  off
against  a box or  a  basket. Soon, however, the dog realised  that  he  was
simply a  fool. Zina took him walking on  the lead along Obukhov Street. The
dog trotted  along like a prisoner  under arrest, burning with shame, but as
he  walked along  Prechistenka Street as far  as the  church  of  Christ the
Saviour  he  soon  realised exactly what a collar means  in life.  Mad  envy
burned  in the eyes of  every dog he  met  and at  Myortvy  Street  a shaggy
mongrel with a docked tail barked at him that he was a 'master's  pet' and a
'lackey'. As they crossed  the tram tracks a policeman looked  at the collar
with approval and respect. When they returned home the most amazing thing of
all happened - with his own hands Fyodor the porter opened the front door to
admit Sharik and Zina, remarking to Zina as he did so: 'What a  sight he was
when Philip Philipovich brought him in. And now look how fat he is.'
     'So he  should be -  he eats enough for six,'  said the beautiful Zina,
rosy-cheeked from the cold.
     A  collar's just like  a briefcase,  the dog smiled to himself. Wagging
his tail, he climbed up to the mezzanine like a gentleman.
     Once having  appreciated the proper value of a collar, the dog made his
first  visit  to  the  supreme  paradise  from which  hitherto  he had  been
categorically barred - the realm  of the  cook, Darya Petrovna.  Two  square
inches  of  Darya's kitchen  was worth more  than all  the rest of the flat.
Every day  flames  roared and  flashed in  the  tiled,  black-leaded  stove.
Delicious crackling sounds  came from  the  oven. Tortured by perpetual heat
and unquenchable passion, Darya Petrovna's face was a constant livid purple,
slimy and greasy. In the neat coils over  her ears and in the blonde  bun on
the back of her head flashed twenty-two imitation diamonds. Golden saucepans
hung on hooks round the walls, the  whole kitchen seethed with smells, while
covered pans bubbled and hissed . . .
     'Get out!' screamed Darya Petrovna. 'Get out, you no-good little thief!
Get out of here at once or I'll be after you with the poker!'
     Hey, why all the barking? signalled the dog pathetically with his eyes.
What  d'you mean  -  thief? Haven't  you noticed  my  new collar? He  backed
towards the door, his muzzle raised appealingly towards her.
     The dog Sharik possessed some secret which enabled him to  win people's
hearts. Two days later he was stretched out beside the coal-scuttle watching
Darya Petrovna  at work. With  a thin sharp  knife she cut off the heads and
claws of  a  flock  of  helpless grouse, then  like  a merciless executioner
scooped the guts out of the fowls, stripped the flesh from the bones and put
it into  the mincer. Sharik meanwhile gnawed a grouse's head. Darya Petrovna
fished lumps of  soaking bread out of a  bowl of milk, mixed them on a board
with the minced meat, poured cream over the whole mixture, sprinkled it with
salt and kneaded it into cutlets.  The stove was roaring like a furnace, the
frying pan  sizzled, popped  and  bubbled. The  oven door swung  open with a
roar, revealing a terrifying inferno of heaving, crackling flame.
     In  the  evening  the  fiery  furnace subsided  and  above the  curtain
half-way  up  the  kitchen  window  hung  the  dense,  ominous night sky  of
Prechistenka Street  with its single star.  The  kitchen floor was damp, the
saucepans  shone with  a  dull,  mysterious  glow  and  on  the table  was a
fireman's cap. Sharik lay on the warm stove, stretched out like a lion above
a gateway, and  with one  ear cocked in  curiosity  he  watched through  the
half-open  door  of  Zina's  and  Darya  Petrovna's  room  as  an   excited,
black-moustached man in a broad  leather belt embraced  Darya Petrovna.  All
her face, except her powdered nose, glowed with agony and passion. A  streak
of light  lay across a picture of a man  with  a black moustache and  beard,
from which hung a little Easter loaf.
     'Don't go too far,' muttered Darya Petrovna in the half-darkness. 'Stop
it! Zina will be back  soon. What's the  matter  with  you -  have you  been
rejuvenated too?'
     'I don't  need  rejuvenating,'  croaked  the  black-moustached  fireman
hoarsely, scarcely able to control himself. 'You're so passionate!'
     In  the evenings  the  sage  of  Prechistenka Street retired behind his
thick blinds and if there was no A'ida at the Bolshoi Theatre and no meeting
of the All-Russian Surgical Society, then the great man would settle down in
a deep armchair  in  his study. There were no ceiling lights; the only light
came from a green-shaded lamp  on the desk. Sharik lay on the  carpet in the
shadows, unable to take his eyes off the horrors that lined the room.
     Human brains floated  in a  disgustingly  acrid, murky liquid  in glass
jars. On his  forearms, bared to  the elbow,  the  great man wore red rubber
globes  as  his  blunt, slippery  fingers  delved  into  the convoluted grey
matter. Now  and again he would pick up a small glistening knife  and calmly
slice off a spongey yellow chunk of brain.
     '. . . "to the banks of the sa-acred Nile  . . .," ' he hummed quietly,
licking  his lips as  he remembered  the gilded  auditorium  of the  Bolshoi
Theatre.
     It was the time of evening when the central heating was at its warmest.
The heat from it floated up to the ceiling,  from there dispersing all  over
the  room. In the dog's  fur  the warmth wakened  the last flea,  which  had
somehow  managed  to  escape Philip Philipovich's comb. The carpets deadened
all sound in the flat. Then, from far away, came the sound of the front door
bell.
     Zina's gone  out to the cinema, thought the dog, and  I  suppose  we'll
have supper when  she gets  home.  Something  tells me that  it's veal chops
tonight!
     On  the morning  of  that  terrible  day  Sharik had  felt  a sense  of
foreboding, which had  made him suddenly break into  a howl and he had eaten
his  breakfast  -  half a  bowl of  porridge and  yesterday's  mutton-bone -
without  the least relish. Bored, he  went  padding up and  down  the  hall,
whining at his own reflection. The rest of the morning, after Zina had taken
him for his walk along the  avenue, passed normally.  There were no patients
that day  as  it was Tuesday -  a  day  when as  we  all know  there  are no
consulting  hours.  The master was in  his study, several large  books  with
coloured pictures spread  out  in front of him  on  the desk.  It was nearly
supper-time. The dog was slightly cheered by  the news from the kitchen that
the second course tonight was turkey. As he was walking down the passage the
dog  heard the startling, unexpected noise of Philip Philipovich's telephone
bell  ringing.  Philip  Philipovich  picked  up  the  receiver, listened and
suddenly became very excited.
     'Excellent,' he was heard saying, 'bring it round at once, at once!'
     Bustling about, he rang  for  Zina  and  ordered  supper  to be  served
immediately: 'Supper! Supper!'
     Immediately there  was a clatter of  plates in the dining-room and Zina
ran in, pursued by the voice of Darya Petrovna grumbling that the turkey was
not ready yet. Again the dog felt a tremor of anxiety.
     I don't  like it when there's a commotion  in the house, he mused . . .
and no sooner had the thought entered his head than the commotion took on an
even more disagreeable nature. This was  largely due  to the  appearance  of
Doctor  Bormenthal, who brought with  him an evil-smelling trunk and without
waiting to  remove his  coat started heaving it  down the  corridor into the
consulting-room. Philip Philipovich put down  his  unfinished cup of coffee,
which  normally he would never do, and ran out to  meet  Bormenthal, another
quite untypical thing for him to do.
     'When did he die?' he cried.
     'Three hours ago,'  replied  Bormenthal, his snow-covered  hat still on
his head as he unstrapped the trunk.
     Who's died? wondered  the  dog  sullenly and disagreeably  as he  slunk
under the table. I can't bear it when they dash about the room like that.
     'Out of my way, animal! Hurry, hurry, hurry!' cried Philip Philipovich.
     It seemed to  the dog that the master was ringing every  bell  at once.
Zina ran  in. 'Zina! Tell Darya Petrovna to take  over the telephone and not
to let anybody in. I need you here. Doctor Bormenthal - please hurry!'
     I  don't  like this, scowled  the dog, offended, and wandered off round
the  apartment.   All  the  bustle,   it  seemed,   was  confined   to   the
consulting-room. Zina suddenly  appeared in  a  white coat like a shroud and
began running back and forth between the consulting-room and the kitchen.
     Isn't it time I had  my supper? They seem  to have forgotten about  me,
thought the dog. He at once received an unpleasant surprise.
     'Don't  give  Sharik  anything  to  eat,'  boomed  the  order  from the
consulting-room.
     'How am I to keep an eye on him?'
     'Lock him up!'
     Sharik was enticed into the bathroom and locked in.
     Beasts, thought Sharik as he sat  in the semi-darkness of the bathroom.
What an outrage ... In an odd frame of mind, half resentful, half depressed,
he spent about  a quarter of an hour in the bathroom.  He felt irritated and
uneasy.
     Right.  This  means   the  end   of  your  galoshes   tomorrow,  Philip
Philipovich, he thought. You've already had to buy two new pairs. Now you're
going to have to buy another. That'll teach you to lock up dogs.
     Suddenly  a  violent thought crossed his mind. Instantly and clearly he
remembered a scene from his  earliest youth -a huge sunny courtyard near the
Preobrazhensky  Gate,  slivers  of sunlight  reflected  in  broken  bottles,
brick-rubble, and a free world of stray dogs.
     No, it's no use. I could never leave this place now. Why pretend? mused
the dog,  with a sniff. I've got used to  this life. I'm a  gentleman's  dog
now, an  intelligent being,  I've  tasted  better things.  Anyhow,  what  is
freedom? Vapour, mirage, fiction . . . democratic rubbish . . .
     Then the gloom of  the bathroom began to frighten  him and  he  howled.
Hurling himself at the door, he started scratching it.
     Ow-ow . . ., the noise echoed round the apartment like someone shouting
into a barrel.
     I'll  tear  that owl  to  pieces again, thought  the  dog, furious  but
impotent. Then he felt weak  and lay down. When he  got up his coat suddenly
stood up on end, as he had an eerie feeling that a horrible, wolfish pair of
eyes was staring at him from the bath.
     In  the midst of his agony the  door  opened.  The  dog went out, shook
himself, and made gloomily for the kitchen,  but Zina firmly dragged him  by
the collar into the consulting-room. The dog felt a sudden  chill around his
heart.
     What do they want me for?  he wondered suspiciously. My side has healed
up - I don't get it. Sliding along on his paws over the slippery parquet, he
was pulled into the consulting-room. There he was immediately shocked by the
unusually brilliant lighting. A white globe on the ceiling shone so brightly
that it hurt his  eyes. In the  white glare  stood  the high priest, humming
through  his  teeth  something  about  the  sacred  Nile.  The  only way  of
recognising  him as Philip Philipovich was a vague smell. His  smoothed-back
grey  hair  was hidden  under a  white cap, making  him  look as if he  were
dressed up as a patriarch; the divine figure was all in  white and over  the
white, like  a stole, he wore a narrow rubber apron. His hands were in black
gloves.
     The other doctor was also there. The long table  was fully unfolded,  a
small square box placed beside it on a shining stand.
     The dog hated the other doctor more than anyone else and more than ever
because of  the look in his eyes. Usually frank and bold, they now flickered
in  all directions  to avoid the dog's eyes. They were watchful, treacherous
and in their depths lurked something mean and nasty, even criminal. Scowling
at him, the dog slunk into a comer.
     'Collar,  Zina,' said  Philip Philipovich  softly,  'only don't  excite
him.'
     For a  moment  Zina's eyes had the  same vile look as Bormenthal's. She
walked up to the dog and with obvious treachery, stroked him.
     What're you doing ... all three of you? OK, take me if you want me. You
ought to be ashamed ... If only I knew what you're going to do to me . . .
     Zina  unfastened  his  collar,  the  dog shook  his  head  and snorted.
Bormenthal rose up in front of him, reeking of that foul, sickening smell.
     Ugh, disgusting . . . wonder why I feel so queer . . ., thought the dog
as he dodged away.
     'Hurry,  doctor,'  said Philip  Philipovich  impatiently.  There  was a
sharp, sweet smell  in the air.  The  doctor,  without  taking his  horrible
watchful eyes off  the  dog slipped his right hand  out from behind his back
and quickly  clamped  a pad of damp cotton wool over the dog's  nose. Sharik
went dumb, his head spinning a little, but he still  managed  to jump  back.
The doctor jumped after him and rapidly smothered his whole muzzle in cotton
wool.  His breathing  stopped, but again  the dog jerked  himself away.  You
bastard . . .,  flashed through his mind. Why? And  down came the pad again.
Then  a lake suddenly  materialised  in the  middle of  the  consulting-room
floor. On it  was a boat, rowed  by a crew of  extraordinary pink  dogs. The
bones in his legs gave way and collapsed.
     'On  to  the table!'  Philip  Philipovich boomed from  somewhere  in  a
cheerful voice  and  the sound disintegrated into  orange-coloured  streaks.
Fear vanished and gave way to joy. For two seconds the dog loved the man  he
had bitten.  Then the whole world  turned upside down and he felt a cold but
soothing hand on his belly. Then - nothing.
     The dog Sharik  lay  stretched out on  the narrow operating  table, his
head lolling helplessly  against a  white oilcloth pillow.  His  stomach was
shaven  and now Doctor Bormenthal,  breathing heavily, was hurriedly shaving
Sharik's head  with clippers that ate  through his  fur. Philip Philipovich,
leaning  on the edge  of the table,  watched the process through  his shiny,
gold-rimmed spectacles. He spoke urgently:
     'Ivan  Arnoldovich,  the most vital moment is when I enter  the turkish
saddle. You  must then  instantly pass me the gland and  start  suturing  at
once. If we  have a haemorrhage then we shall lose time and lose the dog. In
any case, he hasn't a chance .  . .'  He was  silent, frowning,  and gave an
ironic  look at the dog's half-closed eye, then added: 'Do you  know, I feel
sorry for him. I've actually got used to having him around.'
     So saying  he raised his hands as though calling down a blessing on the
unfortunate Sharik's great  sacrificial venture.  Bormenthal laid  aside the
clippers and picked up a razor. He lathered the  defenceless little head and
started  to shave it. The blade scraped across the  skin, nicked it and drew
blood. Having shaved the head the doctor wiped it with an alcohol swab, then
stretched  out the  dog's  bare  stomach and  said with  a sigh  of  relief:
'Ready.'
     Zina turned on  the  tap  over the washbasin and  Bormenthal  hurriedly
washed his hands. From a phial Zina poured alcohol over them.
     'May  I  go, Philip Philipovich?' she asked, glancing nervously  at the
dog's shaven head.
     'You may.'
     Zina  disappeared. Bormenthal busied  himself  further.  He  surrounded
Shank's head with tight gauze wadding, which framed the odd sight of a naked
canine scalp and a muzzle that by comparison seemed heavily bearded.
     The priest  stirred. He straightened up, looked at  the dog's  head and
said: 'God bless us. Scalpel.'
     Bormenthal took a short, broad-bladed knife from the glittering pile on
the small table and handed it to the great man. He too then donned a pair of
black gloves.
     'Is he asleep?' asked Philip Philipovich.
     'He's sleeping nicely.'
     Philip  Philipovich clenched his  teeth, his  eyes  took  on  a  sharp,
piercing  glint  and  with  a  flourish of his scalpel he  made a long, neat
incision  down the  length of  Sharik's  belly. The  skin parted  instantly,
spurting  blood  in several  directions. Bormenthal swooped like  a vulture,
began  dabbing  Sharik's wound with swabs  of gauze,  then gripped its edges
with  a  row  of  little clamps like sugar-tongs, and the  bleeding stopped.
Droplets of sweat oozed from  Bormenthal's forehead. Philip Philipovich made
a  second incision and  again  Sharik's  body  was  pulled apart  by  hooks,
scissors and little  clamps. Pink  and yellow tissues emerged,  oozing  with
blood.  Philip  Philipovich  turned the scalpel  in  the wound, then barked:
'Scissors!'
     Like a  conjuring trick  the  instrument  materialised  in Bormenthal's
hand. Philip  Philipovich delved deep and with a few  twists  he removed the
testicles and some dangling attachments from  Sharik's  body. Dripping  with
exertion and  excitement Bormenthal leapt to a glass jar and removed from it
two  more  wet, dangling testicles,  their  short,  moist, stringy  vesicles
dangling like  elastic in  the hands of the professor and his assistant. The
bent needles clicked faintly 54

     against the clamps as the new testicles were sewn in place of Sharik's.
The priest drew back from the incision, swabbed it and gave the order:
     'Suture, doctor. At once.' He turned around  and  looked at  the  white
clock on the wall.
     'Fourteen  minutes,'  grunted Bormenthal through  clenched teeth  as he
pierced the flabby  skin with  his crooked needle. Both grew as tense as two
murderers working against the clock.
     'Scalpel!' cried Philip Philipovich.
     The scalpel seemed  to leap into  his hand as though of its own accord,
at which point Philip Philipovich's expression grew quite fearsome. Grinding
his  gold  and porcelain  bridge-work, in a single  stroke he incised a  red
fillet around Sharik's head. The scalp, with  its shaven hairs, was removed,
the skull bone laid bare. Philip Philipovich shouted: 'Trepan!'
     Bormenthal  handed   him  a  shining  auger.  Biting  his  lips  Philip
Philipovich began to insert the auger and  drill a complete circle of little
holes, a centimetre apart, around the top  of Sharik's skull. Each hole took
no more than five  seconds to  drill.  Then with  a saw  of the most curious
design  he  put its point into  the first hole and began sawing  through the
skull  as  though he were  making a lady's fretwork sewing-basket. The skull
shook and squeaked faintly.  After three minutes the roof of the dog's skull
was removed.
     The  dome of  Sharik's  brain was  now  laid bare - grey, threaded with
bluish veins and  spots of red.  Philip  Philipovich  plunged  his  scissors
between  the membranes and  eased them  apart.  Once a thin  stream of blood
spurted up, almost hitting the professor in the eye and spattering his white
cap.  Like a tiger Bormenthal  pounced  in with a  tourniquet and  squeezed.
Sweat streamed down his face, which  was growing puffy and mottled. His eyes
flicked to and fro from the professor's hand to the instrument-table. Philip
Philipovich was positively awe-inspiring. A hoarse snoring noise  came  from
his nose,  his teeth were  bared  to the gums.  He peeled  aside  layers  of
cerebral membrane and penetrated  deep between the hemispheres of the brain.
It was then that Bor-menthal went pale, and seizing Sharik's breast with one
hand he said hoarsely: 'Pulse falling sharply . . .'
     Philip Philipovich flashed  him a  savage look,  grunted something  and
delved further still.  Bormenthal snapped  open  a glass  ampoule, filled  a
syringe with the liquid and treacherously injected the dog near his heart.
     'I'm coming  to  the turkish saddle,'  growled Philip Philipovich. With
his  slippery, bloodstained gloves he removed Sharik's greyish-yellow  brain
from his  head. For a second  he glanced at  Sharik's muzzle  and Bormenthal
snapped open a second ampoule of  yellow liquid and sucked it into  the long
syringe.
     'Shall I do it straight into the heart?' he enquired cautiously.
     'Don't waste time asking questions!' roared  the professor angrily. 'He
could die five  times  over while you're  making up your  mind. Inject, man!
What are  you  waiting for?'  His face had  the look  of an  inspired robber
chieftain.
     With a flourish the doctor plunged the needle into the dog's heart.
     'He's alive, but only just,' he whispered timidly.
     'No time  to  argue whether  he's  alive or not,'  hissed the  terrible
Philip Philipovich. 'I'm at  the saddle.  So  what  if he does die  ... hell
..."... the banks of the sa-acred Nile" . . . give me the gland.'
     Bormenthal  handed  him a beaker containing a white blob suspended on a
thread in some fluid. With  one hand ('God, there's no one  like him  in all
Europe,'  thought Bormenthal) he fished out the dangling blob  and  with the
other hand, using  the scissors, he  excised a similar blob from deep within
the separated  cerebral hemispheres. Sharik's  blob he threw  on to a plate,
the  new  one  he inserted into the brain with  a piece of  thread. Then his
stumpy   fingers,  now  miraculously  delicate  and  sensitive,  sewed   the
amber-coloured  thread cunningly into place. After  that  he removed various
stretchers  and  clamps from  the  skull, replaced the  brain  in  its  bony
container, leaned back and said in a much calmer voice:
     'I suppose he's died?'
     'There's just a flicker of pulse,' replied Bormenthal.
     'Give him another shot of adrenalin.'
     The  professor replaced  the membranes over  the  brain,  restored  the
sawn-off  lid  to  its exact place, pushed  the scalp back into position and
roared: 'Suture!'
     Five  minutes later  Bormenthal  had sewn up  the dog's  head, breaking
three needles.
     There on the bloodstained pillow lay Sharik's slack, lifeless muzzle, a
circular  wound  on  his  tonsured  head.  Like  a  satisfied vampire Philip
Philipovich finally  stepped back, ripped off one glove, shook  out of it  a
cloud  of sweat-drenched  powder, tore off the other  one, threw it  on  the
ground and rang the bell in the wall. Zina appeared in  the doorway, looking
away to avoid seeing the blood-spattered dog.  With  chalky hands  the great
man pulled off his skull-cap and cried:
     "Give me a cigarette, Zina. And then some clean clothes and a bath.'
     Layino- his chin on the edge  of the  table he parted  the  dog's right
eyelids, peered into the obviously moribund eye and said:
     'Well, I'll be  ... He's not dead  yet. Still,  he'll die. I feel sorry
for the dog, Bormenthal. He was naughty but I couldn't help liking him.'



     Subject of experiment: Male dog aged approx. 2 years.
     Breed: Mongrel.
     Name: 'Sharik'.
     Coat  sparse, in  tufts,  brownish  with traces  of singeing.  Tail the
colour  of baked milk. On right flank  traces of  healed second-degree burn.
Previous   nutritional   state  -poor.  After   a  week's  stay  with  Prof.
Preobrazhensky -extremely  well nourished. Weight: 8 kilograms (!). Heart: .
. . Lungs: . . . Stomach: . . . Temperature: . . .
     December 23rd  At  8.05pm  Prof.  Preobrazhensky  commenced  the  first
operation of  its kind to be performed in Europe: removal under  anaesthesia
of the dog's testicles and their replacement by implanted human testes, with
appendages and seminal ducts, taken from a 28-year-old  human male,  dead  4
hours and 4 minutes before the operation and kept by Prof. Preobrazhensky in
sterilised physiological fluid.
     Immediately thereafter, following a trepanning operation on the cranial
roof,  the  pituitary  gland  was removed and replaced by  a human pituitary
originating from the  above-mentioned human male. Drugs used: Chloroform - 8
cc.
     Camphor - 1 syringe.
     Adrenalin - 2 syringes (by cardiac injection ).
     Purpose of  operation: Experimental observation by Prof. Preobrazhensky
of  the effect of combined  transplantation  of  the pituitary and testes in
order to study both the functional viability in a host-organism and its role
in cellular etc. rejuvenation.
     Operation performed by; Prof.  P. P. Preobrazhensky. Assisted by: Dr I.
A. Bormenthal. During the night following the operation, frequent  and grave
weakening of the pulse. Dog apparently in terminal state.
     Preobrazhensky prescribes camphor injections in massive dosage.
     December  24th am Improvement.  Respiration rate  doubled. Temperature:
42C. Camphor and caffeine injected subcutaneously.
     December 25th Deterioration.
     Pulse  barely  detectable,  cooling of  the extremities,  no  pupillary
reaction. Preobrazhensky orders  cardiac injection of adrenalin and camphor,
intravenous injections of physiological solution.
     December 26th Slight improvement. Pulse: 180.
     Respiration: 92. Temperature: 41C. Camphor. Alimentation per rectum.
     December  27th  Pulse:  152.   Respiration:  50.   Temperature:  39.8C.
Pupillary reaction. Camphor - subcutaneous.
     December   28th   Significant   improvement.   At  noon   sudden  heavy
perspiration. Temperature: 37C.
     Condition of surgical wounds unchanged. Re-bandaged. Signs of appetite.
Liquid alimentation.

     December  29th  Sudden  moulting  of  hair on forehead  and  torso. The
following were summoned for consultation:
     1. Professor of Dermatology - Vasily Vasilievich Bundaryov.
     2. Director, Moscow Veterinary Institute.
     Both stated the case to be without precedent in medical literature.
     No diagnosis established.
     Temperature: (entered in pencil).
     8.15pm. First bark.
     Distinct alteration of timbre and lowering of pitch
     noticeable. Instead of  diphthong  'aow-aow',  bark  now  enunciated on
vowels 'ah-oh', in intonation reminiscent
     of a groan.
     December 30th Moulting process has progressed to almost total baldness.
     Weighing  produced  the  unexpected  result  of 80 kg., due  to  growth
(lengthening of the bones). Dog still lying prone.

     December 31st Subject exhibits colossal appetite.
     (Ink-blot.   After   the   blot   the   following   entry  in  scrawled
hand-writing):  At   12.12pm  the  dog  distinctly  pronounced   the  sounds
'Nes-set-a'.
     (Gap in entries. The following entries show errors due to excitement):
     December   1st  (deleted;   corrected   to):  January  1st  1925.   Dog
photographed a.m.
     Cheerfully  barks  'Nes-set-a',  repeating  loudly  and  with  apparent
pleasure.
     3.0pm  (in heavy lettering): Dog laughed,  causing maid Zina to  faint.
Later, pronounced the  following 8  times  in  succession:  'Nesseta-ciled'.
(Sloping characters, written in pencil):
     The professor has  deciphered the word 'Nesseta-ciled' by  reversal: it
is 'delicatessen' . . . Quite extraord . . .

     January 2nd Dog photographed by magnesium  flash while smiling. Got  up
and remained confidently on hind legs for a half-hour. Now nearly my height.
(Loose page inserted into  notebook): Russian science almost suffered a most
serious blow. History of Prof. P. P. Preobrazhensky's illness:
     1.13pm Prof. Preobrazhensky  falls into deep faint. On falling, strikes
head on edge of table.
     Temp.: . . .
     The  dog  in  the  presence  of  Zina  and  myself,  had  called  Prof.
Preobrazhensky a 'bloody bastard'.
     January 6th (entries made partly in pencil, partly in violet ink):
     Today, after the dog's tail had fallen out, he quite clearly pronounced
the word 'liquor'.
     Recording apparatus switched on. God knows what's happening.
     (Total confusion.)
     Professor has ceased to see  patients. From 5pm this evening  sounds of
vulgar  abuse issuing  from the consulting-room, where the creature is still
confined. Heard to ask for 'another one, and make it a double.'

     January 7th  Creature  can now  pronounce  several words: 'taxi', 'full
up', 'evening  paper',  'take  one  home for  the  kiddies' and  every known
Russian swear-word. His appearance is strange. He  now only has  hair on his
head, chin  and chest. Elsewhere he is bald,  with flabby skin.  His genital
region  now  has the  appearance of an  immature  human  male. His skull has
enlarged considerably. Brow low and receding.
     My God, I must be going mad. . . .
     Philip  Philipovich  still  feels  unwell.  Most  of  the  observations
(pictures and recordings) are being carried out by myself.
     Rumours  are  spreading  round  the  town  .  . .  Consequences  may be
incalculable. All day today the whole street was full of loafing rubbernecks
and old women  . . . Dogs still crowding round beneath the  windows. Amazing
report in the morning papers: The rumours of a Martian in Obukhov Street are
totally unfounded. They have been spread by  black-market traders and  their
repetition will be severely punished.  What Martian, for God's sake? This is
turning into a nightmare.
     Reports in today's evening paper even worse - they say that a child has
been born who could play the violin from birth. Beside it is a photograph of
myself  with  the  caption:  'Prof.  Preobrazhensky  performing a  Caesarian
operation on the mother.' The situation is  getting out of hand ...  He  can
now say a new word - 'policeman' . . .
     Apparently Darya Petrovna was in love with me and  pinched the snapshot
of  me out  of Philip Philipovich's photograph album. After I had kicked out
all the reporters one of them sneaked back into the kitchen, and so ...
     Consulting hours are now  impossible. Eighty-two telephone calls today.
The telephone has been cut off. We are besieged by child-less women . . .
     House committee appeared  in full  strength,  headed by Shvonder - they
could not explain why they had come.

     January  8th  Late  this evening  diagnosis finally  agreed.  With  the
impartiality  of  a  true  scholar Philip Philipovich has  acknowledged  his
error:  transplantation of the  pituitary induces not rejuvenation but total
humanisation  (underlined three  times).  This does not, however, lessen the
value of his stupendous discovery.
     The creature walked round the flat today for the first time. Laughed in
the  corridor  after looking  at the  electric light.  Then,  accompanied by
Philip Philipovich  and myself, he went into the study. Stands firmly on his
hind (deleted) ... his legs and  gives  the impression  of a short, ill-knit
human male.
     Laughed in the study. His smile is disagreeable and somehow artificial.
Then he  scratched the  back  of  his  head,  looked round and registered  a
further,  clearly-pronounced  word:  'Bourgeois'.  Swore.  His  swearing  is
methodical,  uninterrupted  and  apparently  totally  meaningless.  There is
something mechanical about it - it is as if this creature had heard all this
bad  language  at  an  earlier  phase,  automatically  recorded  it  in  his
subconscious  and  now   regurgitates  it   wholesale.  However,  I   am  no
psychiatrist.
     The   swearing  somehow  has  a  very   depressing   effect  on  Philip
Philipovich.  There  are moments  when  he  abandons  his cool,  unemotional
observation of  new phenomena and  appears  to  lose patience. Once when the
creature  was swearing, for instance,  he  suddenly  burst out  impulsively:
'Shut up!' This had no effect.
     After his visit to  the study Sharik was shut up in the consulting-room
by  our joint efforts. Philip Philipovich  and I  then  held a conference. I
confess that this was the first time I had seen this self-assured and highly
intelligent  man at a loss. He  hummed a little, as he  is  in the  habit of
doing,  then  asked: 'What  are  we  going to  do  now?' He answered himself
literally as follows:
     'Moscow State Clothing Stores, yes . . . "from Granada  to Seville" . .
.  M.S.C.S., my  dear  doctor  . .  .'  I could not understand him, then  he
explained: 'Ivan Arnold-ovich, please go and buy him some underwear,  shirt,
jacket and trousers.'
     January 9th The  creature's vocabulary is being enriched  by a new word
every five minutes (on average) and, since this morning, by sentences. It is
as if they had been lying frozen in his mind, are melting and emerging. Once
out, the word remains  in  use.  Since yesterday  evening  the  machine  has
recorded the following: 'Stop pushing', 'You swine', 'Get off the bus - full
up', 'I'll show you', 'American recognition', 'kerosene stove'.
     January10th The creature was  dressed. He took to a vest quite readily,
even laughing  cheerfully. He  refused underpants,  though, protesting  with
hoarse shrieks:
     'Stop  queue-barging, you bastards!'  Finally we dressed him. The sizes
of his clothes were too big for him.
     (Here  the   notebook  contains  a   number  of  schematised  drawings,
apparently depicting the  transformation of a  canine into a human leg.) The
rear  lialf of the skeleton of  the foot  is lengthening.  Elongation of the
toes. Nails. (With appropriate sketches.)
     Repeated  systematic  toilet  training.  The  servants  are  angry  and
depressed.
     However,  the creature is  undoubtedly intelligent.  The experiment  is
proceeding satisfactorily.

     January llth Quite reconciled to wearing clothes, although was heard to
say, 'Christ, I've got ants in my pants.'
     Fur on  head  now thin and  silky; almost indistinguishable  from hair,
though  scars  still  visible in parietal  region. Today last  traces of fur
dropped from his  ears.  Colossal appetite.  Enjoys  salted herring.  At 5pm
occurred a significant  event: for the first time the words  spoken  by  the
creature  were  not  disconnected  from  surrounding  phenomena but  were  a
reaction  to  them.  Thus  when  the  professor said  to  him,  'Don't throw
food-scraps on the floor,' he  unexpectedly replied:  'Get stuffed.'  Philip
Philipovich was appalled, but recovered and said: 'If you swear at me or the
doctor again, you're in trouble.' I photographed Sharik at that moment and I
swear that he understood what the  professor said. His face clouded over and
he gave a sullen look, but said nothing. Hurrah - he understands!

     January 12th. Put  hands in pockets. We  are teaching him not to swear.
Whistled,  'Hey,  little  apple'. Sustained  conversation.  I  cannot resist
certain  hypotheses:  we must  forget  rejuvenation for the time  being. The
other  aspect  is  immeasurably  more   important.   Prof.  Preobrazhensky's
astounding experiment has revealed  one of  the secrets of  the human brain.
The mysterious function of the pituitary as an adjunct to the brain  has now
been  clarified.  It determines human  appearance.  Its hormones  may now be
regarded as the most important in the whole organism - the hormones of man's
image. A new  field has been opened up to  science; without  the  aid of any
Faustian retorts  a homunculus has been  created.  The surgeon's scalpel has
brought to life a new  human entity. Prof. Preobrazhensky-you are a creator.
(ink blot)
     But I digress ... As stated,  he can now sustain a conversation.  As  I
see  it, the situation is as follows:  the implanted pituitary has activated
the speech-centre in the canine brain and words have poured out in a stream.
I do not  think that we  have before  us a newly-created brain but  a  brain
which  has been  stimulated to develop. Oh, what a  glorious confirmation of
the theory  of  evolution! Oh,  the sublime  chain  leading from  a  dog  to
Mendeleyev the great chemist! A  further hypothesis  of mine  is that during
its canine  stage  Sharik's  brain  had  accumulated  a massive  quantity of
sense-data. All the  words which  he used initially were the language of the
streets which he had picked up and stored in his brain. Now as I  walk along
the streets I look at every dog I meet with secret horror. God knows what is
lurking in their minds.
     Sharik can  read. He can read (three exclamation marks).  I  guessed it
from  his  early use  of  the word  'delicatessen'. He could read  from  the
beginning. And  I even  know the solution  to  this puzzle - it lies in  the
structure of the canine optic nerve. God alone knows what is now going on in
Moscow.  Seven black-market traders are  already  behind bars for  spreading
rumours that the  end of the  world  is imminent and has been caused by  the
Bolsheviks.  Darya Petrovna told me about  this  and  even named the  date -
November  28th, 1925,  the day of St Stephen the Martyr, when the earth will
spiral off into infinity. . .  . Some charlatans are already giving lectures
about it.  We have started such a rumpus with this pituitary experiment that
I  have had to leave my flat. I  have moved in with Preobrazhensky and sleep
in  the waiting-room with Sharik. The consulting-room has been turned into a
new waiting-room. Shvender  was  right.  Trouble is  brewing with  the house
committee.  There  is not a  single glass left, as he will  jump  on  to the
shelves. Great difficulty in teaching him not to do this.
     Something  odd  is happening  to  Philip.  When  I  told him  about  my
hypotheses and my hopes of developing Sharik into an intellectually advanced
personality, he hummed  and hahed, then said: 'Do  you really think so?' His
tone  was ominous. Have I made a mistake? Then he had an idea. While I wrote
up these case-notes, Preobrazhensky made  a careful study  of the life-story
of the man from whom we took the pituitary.
     (Loose page inserted into the notebook.)
     Name: Elim Grigorievich Chugunkin. Age: 25.
     Marital status: Unmarried.
     Not a Party member, but  sympathetic to the Party. Three  times charged
with theft and acquitted - on the  first occasion for lack of  evidence,  in
the second case saved by his social origin, the third  time put on probation
with a conditional sentence of 15 years hard labour.
     Profession: plays  the balalaika in bars.  Short, poor physical  shape.
Enlarged  liver  (alcohol).  Cause  of  death:  knife-wound  in  the  heart,
sustained in the Red Light Bar at Preobrazhensky Gate.

     The  old man continues to study Chugunkin's case exhaustively, although
I cannot understand  why. He grunted something about the  pathologist having
failed  to  make  a complete examination of Chugunkin's body. What  does  he
mean? Does it matter whose pituitary it is?

     January 17th Unable  to make  notes for several days,  as I have had an
attack  of  influenza.  Meanwhile  the  creature's  appearance  has  assumed
definitive form:
     (a) physically a complete human being.
     (b) weight about 108 Ibs.
     (c) below medium height.
     (d) small head.
     (e) eats human food.
     (f) dresses himself.
     (g) capable of normal conversation.
     So much for the pituitary (ink blot).
     This concludes the notes on this case. We now have a new organism which
must be studied as such. appendices: Verbatim reports of speech, recordings,
photographs. Signed: I. A. Bormenthal, M.D.
     Asst. to Prof. P. P. Preobrazhensky.



     A winter afternoon in late January,  the  time before supper,  the time
before the  start of evening consulting hours. On the  drawing-room doorpost
hung a sheet of paper, on which was written in Philip Philipovich's hand:


     I forbid the consumption of sunflower seeds in this flat.
     P. Preobrazhensky
     Below this in big, thick letters Bormenthal had written in blue pencil:
     Musical instruments may not be played between 7pm and 6am.
     Then from Zina:
     When  you  come back tell  Philip Philipovich that  he's gone out and I
don't know where to. Fyodor says he's with Shvonder.
     Preobrazhensky's hand:
     How much longer do I have to wait before the glazier comes?
     Darya Petrovna (in block letters):
     Zina has, gone out to the store, says she'll bring him back.
     In  the dining-room there  was a cosy evening feeling, generated by the
lamp on  the sideboard shining beneath its dark cerise  shade. Its light was
reflected in random shafts all over the room, as the mirror was cracked from
side to side and had been stuck in place with a criss-cross of tape. Bending
over the  table, Philip Philipovich was absorbed in the large double page of
an open newspaper. His face  was working with  fury  and through  his  teeth
issued a jerky stream of abuse. This is what he was reading:
     There's no doubt that it  is his illegitimate (as  they  used to say in
rotten bourgeois society) son. This is how the pseudo-learned members of our
bourgeoisie amuse  themselves. He will  only keep  his seven rooms until the
glittering sword ofjustice fi'ashes over him like a red ray. Sh . . . r.
     Someone  was hard at work playing a rousing  tune  on the balalaika two
rooms away and the sound of a series of intricate variations on 'The Moon is
Shining'  mingled  in  Philip  Philipovich's  head  with  the words  of  the
sickening newspaper article. When he  had read it  he pretended to spit over
his shoulder  and hummed absentmindedly through his teeth: ' "The moo-oon is
shining . .  .  shining bright . . .  the moon  is shining . . ."  God, that
damned tune's on my brain!'
     He rang. Zina's face appeared in the doorway.
     'Tell him it's five o'clock and he's  to shut up. Then tell him to come
here, please.'
     Philip Philipovich sat  down  in an  armchair beside his desk, a  brown
cigar butt  between  the  fingers  of  his  left  hand. Leaning against  the
doorpost there stood, legs crossed, a  short man  of unpleasant  appearance.
His hair grew in clumps of bristles like a stubble field and on his face was
a  meadow of unsliaven fluff. His brow was  strikingly low. A thick brush of
hair began almost immediately above his spreading eyebrows.
     His jacket, torn under the left armpit, was covered with bits of straw,
his  checked  trousers  had a hole on  the  right knee and the left  leg was
stained with violet  paint.  Round  the man's neck was  a poisonously bright
blue  tie with a gilt tiepin. The  colour  of  the  tie was so  garish  that
whenever Philip Philipovich covered his tired eyes and gazed at the complete
darkness of the ceiling or the wall, he imagined he saw a flaming torch with
a blue halo. As soon as he  opened  them he was  blinded again, dazzled by a
pair of patent-leather boots with white spats.
     'Like galoshes,'  thought Philip Philipovich  with disgust.  He sighed,
sniffed  and  busied himself with relighting his  dead cigar. The man in the
doorway stared at the professor with lacklustre eyes and smoked a cigarette,
dropping the ash down his shirtfront.
     The  clock  on  the  wall  beside a  carved  wooden grouse  struck five
o'clock.  The inside of the clock was still  wheezing as  Philip Philipovich
spoke.
     'I think  I  have asked  you  twice  not to sleep by  the stove in  the
kitchen - particularly in the daytime.'
     The man  gave  a hoarse cough as though he  were choking on a  bone and
replied:
     'It's nicer in the kitchen.'
     His  voice had an  odd quality, at once muffled yet resonant, as if  he
were far away and talking into a small barrel.
     Philip Philipovich shook his head and asked:
     'Where on  earth  did you get that  disgusting thing  from? I mean your
tie.'
     Following the direction of the pointing finger, the man's eyes squinted
as he gazed lovingly down at his tie.
     'What's disgusting about  it?' he said. 'It's a very  smart  tie. Darya
Petrovna gave it to me.'
     'In that case Darya  Petrovna  has  very  poor  taste. Those boots  are
almost as bad. Why did you get such  horrible shiny ones? Where did you  buy
them?  What did I tell you? I  told you  to find yourself  a  pair of decent
boots. Just look  at them. You don't mean to  tell me that Doctor Bormenthal
chose them, do you?'
     'I  told him  to get  patent leather ones. Why  shouldn't I  wear them?
Everybody  else  does.  If you go down  Kuznetzky  Street  you'll see nearly
everybody wearing patent leather boots.'
     Philip Philipovich shook his head and pronounced weightily:
     'No more sleeping in  the kitchen. Understand? I've never heard of such
behaviour. You're a nuisance there and the women don't like it.'
     The man scowled and his lips began to pout.
     'So what? Those women act  as though they owned the place. They're just
maids,  but you'd  think they were commissars.  It's  Zina  -  she's  always
bellyaching about me.'
     Philip Philipovich gave him a stern look.
     'Don't you dare talk about Zina in that tone of voice! Understand?'
     Silence.
     'I'm asking you - do you understand?'
     'Yes, I understand.'
     'Take that trash off your  neck. Sha  . .  . if  you saw  yourself in a
mirror you'd realise what a fright it makes you look. You look like a clown.
For  the hundredth time - don't throw  cigarette ends on to the floor. And I
don't  want to  hear  any  more  swearing  in  this  flat!  And  don't  spit
everywhere! The spittoon's over there. Kindly  take better aim when you pee.
Cease all further conversation with Zina.  She complains that you lurk round
her room at night. And don't be rude to my patients! Where do'you think  you
are - in some dive?'
     'Don't be  so hard on me. Dad,'  the  man suddenly  said  in  a tearful
whine.
     Philip Philipovich turned red and his spectacles flashed.
     'Who are you calling  "Dad"? What impertinent familiarity! I never want
to hear that word again! You will address me by my name and patronymic!'
     The man flared up impudently: 'Oh,  why can't you lay off? Don't spit .
. . don't smoke  . . .  don't go  there, don't do this, don't  do that . . .
sounds like  the rules in a  tram. Why don't you leave  me alone, for  God's
sake? And why shouldn't I call you "Dad", anyway? I didn't ask you to do the
operation, did I?' - the man barked indignantly - 'A nice business -you  get
an  animal,  slice his  head open  and  now you're sick of  him.  Perhaps  I
wouldn't have given permission for  the operation. Nor would . . . (the  man
stared up at the ceiling as though trying  to remember a phrase he  had been
taught) . . . nor would my relatives. I bet I could sue you if I wanted to.'
     Philip Philipovich's eyes grew quite round and  his cigar  fell out  of
his fingers. 'Well, I'll be . . .' he thought to himself.
     'So you  object to having  been turned into a human being,  do you?' he
asked,  frowning  slightly. 'Perhaps  you'd  prefer to  be  sniffing  around
dustbins again? Or freezing in doorways? Well, if  I'd known that I wouldn't
. . .'
     'So  what if I had to eat out  of  dustbins? At least it  was an honest
living.  And supposing I'd died on your operating  table? What d'you  say to
that, comrade?'
     'My name  is Philip  Philipovich!' exclaimed  the  professor irritably.
'I'm not your comrade!  This is monstrous!' ('I can't stand it much longer,'
he thought to himself.)
     'Oh,  yes!' said the man  sarcastically,  triumphantly  uncrossing  his
legs. 'I know! Of course we're not comrades! How could we be? I didn't go to
college,  I don't  own a  flat  with  fifteen rooms and a bathroom. Only all
that's changed now - now everybody has the right to . . .'
     Growing  rapidly  paler,  Philip  Philipovich  listened  to  the  man's
argument. Then the creature stopped and swaggered demonstratively over to an
ashtray with a chewed butt-end in his fingers. He spent a long time stubbing
it out, with a look on his face which clearly said:  'Drop dead!' Having put
out his cigarette he suddenly clicked his teeth and poked his nose under his
armpit.
     'You're  supposed to  catch  fleas  with your  fingersV  shouted Philip
Philipovich in fury. 'Anyhow, how is it that you still have any fleas?'
     'You  don't  think I breed  them  on purpose,  do  you?' said the  man,
offended. 'I suppose fleas just like me, that's all.' With this he poked his
fingers through the lining of his jacket,  scratched  around  and produced a
tuft of downy red hair.
     Philip Philipovich  turned his gaze upwards  to  the plaster rosette on
the ceiling and started drumming his fingers  on the desk. Having caught his
flea, the man sat down in a chair, sticking  his thumbs behind the lapels of
his  jacket.  Squinting  down at the parquet, he  inspected his boots, which
gave  him  great  pleasure.  Philip  Philipovich  also looked  down  at  the
highlights glinting on the man's blunt-toed boots, frowned and enquired:
     'What else were you going to say?'
     'Oh, nothing, really. I need some papers, Philip Philipovich.'
     Philip Philipovich  winced. 'H'm  . .  . papers, eh? Really, well . . .
H'm . . . Perhaps we might . . .' His voice sounded vague and unhappy.
     'Now, look,' said the man firmly. 'I can't manage without papers. After
all you know  damn well that people who don't have any papers aren't allowed
to exist nowadays. To begin with, there's the house committee.'
     'What does the house committee have to do with it?'
     'A lot. Every time I meet one of them they ask me when I'm going to get
registered.'
     'Oh, God,'  moaned Philip  Philipovich. '  "Every time you meet  one of
them ..." I can just imagine what you tell them. I thought I told you not to
hang about the staircases, anyway.'
     'What  am I -  a  convict?'  said  the  man in amazement. His  glow  of
righteous indignation made even his fake ruby tiepin light up.  "Hang about"
indeed! That's an insult. I walk about just like everybody else.'
     So saying he wriggled his patent-leather feet.
     Philip  Philipovich said nothing, but  looked  away. 'One must restrain
oneself,' he  thought,  as  he  walked over  to  the sideboard  and  drank a
glassful of water at one gulp.
     'I  see,'  he said rather  more  calmly. 'All right, I'll overlook your
tone  of voice  for the moment. What does your precious house committee say,
then?'
     'Hell, I don't know exactly. Anyway, you needn't be sarcastic about the
house committee. It protects people's interests.'
     'Whose interest, may I ask?'
     'The workers', of course.'
     Philip  Philipovich  opened his eyes  wide.  'What makes you think that
you're a worker?'
     'I must be - I'm not a capitalist.'
     'Very well. How does the  house committee propose to  stand up for your
revolutionary rights?'
     'Easy. Put me on  the register. They say they've never heard of anybody
being allowed  to live  in  Moscow without  being registered.  That's  for a
start. But the most important thing  is an identity card. I don't want to be
arrested for being a deserter.'
     'And  where, pray, am I supposed to register you? On that tablecloth or
on my own passport? One must, after all, be realistic. Don't forget that you
are  . . .  h'm, well. . . you are  what you might call  a ... an  unnatural
phenomenon, an artefact . .  .' Philip  Philipovich  sounded less  and  less
convincing.
     Triumphant, the man said nothing.
     'Very well. Let's assume that in the end we shall have to register you,
if only to  please this house committee of yours. The  trouble is - you have
no name.'
     'So  what?  I can easily  choose one. Just put it in the newspapers and
there you are.'
     'What do you propose to call yourself?'
     The man straightened his tie and replied: Toligraph Poligraphovich.'
     'Stop  playing  the  fool,'  groaned Philip Philipovich.  'I  meant  it
seriously.'
     The man's face twitched sarcastically.
     'I  don't  get it,'  he  said ingenuously. 'I  mustn't swear. I mustn't
spit. Yet  all you ever do is call me names. I suppose  only professors  are
allowed to swear in the RSFSR.'
     Blood rushed to Philip Philipovich's face.  He filled a glass, breaking
it  as he did so. Having drunk from  another  one, he thought: 'Much more of
this, and he'll start teaching me how to behave,  and he'll be right. I must
control myself.'
     He turned round, made an exaggeratedly polite  bow  and said with  iron
self-control: 'I  beg your pardon. My nerves are  slightly  upset. Your name
struck me as a  little odd, that is all. Where, as a matter of interest, did
you dig it up?'
     'The house committee helped me.  We looked in the calendar. And I chose
a name.'
     'That name cannot possibly exist on any calendar.'
     'Can't  it?'  The  man grinned.  'Then  how was  it I found  it  on the
calendar in your consulting-room?'
     Without getting  up Philip  Philipovich leaned over to the knob  on the
wall and Zina appeared in answer to the bell.
     'Bring me the calendar from the consulting-room.'
     There  was  a  pause.  When Zina  returned  with  the  calendar, Philip
Philipovich asked: 'Where is it?'
     'The name-day is March 4th.'
     'Show me . .  .  h'm  . . . dammit, throw the  thing into the stove  at
once.'  Zina, blinking with fright, removed the calendar. The man  shook his
head reprovingly.
     'And what surname will you take?'
     'I'll use my real name.'
     'You're real name? What is it?'
     'Sharikov.*
     Shvonder the house committee chairman was standing in his leather tunic
in  front  of  the professor's  desk.  Doctor Bormen-thal  was seated  in an
armchair. The doctor's glowing face (he had just come in from the cold) wore
an  expression  whose  perplexity  was  only  equalled  by  that  of  Philip
Philipovich.
     'Write it?' he asked impatiently.
     'Yes,' said Shvonder, 'it's not very  difficult. Write  a  certificate,
professor. You know the sort of thing - 'This is to  certify that the bearer
is  really Poligraph Poligraphovich Sharikov . .  .  h'm, born in, h'm . . .
this flat.'
     Bormenthal wriggled uneasily in his armchair. Philip Philipovich tugged
at his moustache.
     'God dammit,  I've never heard  anything so ridiculous in  my  life. He
wasn't born at all, he simply . . . well, he sort of..'
     'That's your problem,' said Shvonder with quiet malice. 'It's up to you
to decide whether he  was born or not ... It was your experiment, professor,
and you brought citizen Sharikov into the world.'
     'It's  all  quite  simple,'  barked  Sharikov  from  the  glass-fronted
cabinet, where he was admiring the reflection of his tie.
     'Kindly  keep  out  of this conversation,' growled  Philip Philipovich.
'It's not at all simple.'
     'Why shouldn't I join  in?' spluttered Sharikov  in an  offended voice,
and Shvonder instantly supported him.
     'I'm sorry,  professor,  but citizen Sharikov is absolutely correct. He
has a  right to take part in a  discussion about his affairs,  especially as
it's  about  his  identity  documents.  An  identity  document  is the  most
important thing in the world.'
     At that  moment  a  deafening  ring from  the telephone  cut  into  the
conversation. Philip Philipovich said into the receiver:
     'Yes . . .', then reddened and shouted: 'Will  you  please not distract
me with trivialities. What's it to do with you?' And  he hurled the receiver
back on to the hook.
     Delight spread over Shvonder's face.
     Purpling, Philip Philipovich roared: 'Right, let's get this finished.'
     He tore a sheet of paper from a notepad and scribbled a few words, then
read it aloud in a voice of exasperation:
     ' "I  hereby certify . . ." God, what am I  supposed to certify?  . . .
let's  see .  . . "That  the  bearer  is  a man created during  a laboratory
experiment by  means of an  operation  on  the  brain  and  that he requires
identity  papers" .  . .'I object in principle to his  having these  idiotic
documents, but still . . . Signed:
     "Professor Preobrazhensky!" '
     'Really, professor,' said Shvonder in  an offended voice.  'What do you
mean  by  calling  these  documents idiotic?  I can't allow  an undocumented
tenant  to  go  on  living in this house,  especially one  who  hasn't  been
registered  with  the police  for military service.  Supposing  war suddenly
breaks out with the imperialist aggressors?'
     'I'm not going to fight!' yapped Sharikov.
     Shvonder  was  dumbfounded, but  quickly  recovered  himself  and  said
politely  to  Sharikov: 'I'm afraid you  seem to be  completely  lacking  in
political  consciousness, citizen  Sharikov. You must  register for military
service at once.'
     'I'll  register,  but  I'm dammed if  I'm  going  to  fight,'  answered
Sharikov nonchalantly, straightening his tie.
     Now it was Shvonder's turn to be embarrassed. Preobraz-hensky exchanged
a look of grim complicity with Bormenthal, who nodded meaningly.
     'I was badly wounded  during the  operation,'  whined Sharikov. 'Look -
they cut  me  right  open.' He  pointed  to  his head. The scar of  a  fresh
surgical wound bisected his forehead.
     'Are  you  an  anarchist-individualist?'  asked  Shvonder, raising  his
eyebrows.
     'I ought to be exempt on medical grounds,' said Sharikov.
     'Well,  there's  no hurry  about it,'  said  the disconcerted Shvonder.
'Meanwhile we'll send the professor's certificate  to the police and they'll
issue your papers.'
     'Er, look here  . .  .'  Philip  Philipovich  suddenly interrupted him,
obviously struck by  an idea. 'I suppose you don't liave a room to spare  in
the house, do you? I'd be prepared to buy it.'
     Yellowish sparks flashed in Shvonder's brown eyes.
     'No, professor,  I  very much regret to say that we don't  have a room.
And aren't likely to, either.'
     Philip  Philipovich clenched  his teeth  and  said  nothing.  Again the
telephone rang as though to order. Without a word Philip Philipovich flicked
the receiver off the  rest  so that it hung down, spinning  slightly, on its
blue  cord.  Everybody jumped.  'The  old  man's getting  rattled,'  thought
Bormenthal. With a glint in his eyes Shvonder bowed and went out.
     Sharikov disappeared after him, his boots creaking.
     The professor and  Bormenthal  were left  alone. After a short silence,
Philip Philipovich shook his head gently and said:
     'On my word of honour,  this  is becoming an absolute nightmare.  Don't
you see?  I swear, doctor, that I've suffered  more these last fourteen days
than in the past fourteen years! I tell you, he's a scoundrel . . .'
     From a distance  came the faint tinkle of breaking glass, followed by a
stifled woman's  scream,  then  silence.  An  evil  spirit dashed  down  the
corridor, turned into the  consulting-room where it produced  another  crash
and immediately turned  back. Doors slammed and Darya Petrovna's low cry was
heard from the kitchen. There was a howl from Sharikov.
     'Oh, God, what now!' cried Philip Philipovich, rushing for the door.
     'A  cat,' guessed  Bormenthal and  leaped  after him. They ran down the
corridor into the  hall, burst  in, then  turned into the passage leading to
the bathroom and the kitchen.  Zina came dashing  out of the kitchen and ran
full tilt into Philip Philipovich.
     'How many times have I told you not to let cats into the flat,' shouted
Philip Philipovich in fury. 'Where is he? Ivan Amoldovich, for God's sake go
and calm the patients in the waiting-room!'
     'He's  in  the  bathroom,  the  devil,'  cried  Zina,  panting.  Philip
Philipovich hurled himself at the bathroom door, but it would not give way.
     'Open up this minute!'
     The only answer from  the locked  bathroom  was the sound  of something
leaping up  at  the walls,  smashing glasses, and  Sharikov's  voice roaring
through the door: 'I'll kill you . . .'
     Water  could be heard gurgling through the pipes and pouring  into  the
bathtub. Philip Philipovich leaned against  the door and  tried to break  it
open. Darya  Petrovna, clothes torn and face distorted with anger,  appeared
in the kitchen doorway. Then  the glass  transom window, high up in the wall
between the  bathroom and the kitchen, shattered  with a multiple crack. Two
large fragments crashed into the kitchen followed by a tabby cat of gigantic
proportions with a face like a  policeman and  a blue bow round its neck. It
fell on to the middle  of the  table, right  into a long  platter,  which it
broke in half. From there it fell to  the floor, turned round on  three legs
as it waved  the fourth in  the air as  though executing  a dance-step,  and
instantly  streaked out through the  back door, which  was slightly ajar.The
door opened wider  and the cat was replaced by the face of an old woman in a
headscarf, followed by her polka-dotted skirt. The old woman wiped her mouth
with her index and second fingers, stared round the kitchen with  protruding
eyes that burned with curiosity and she said:
     'Oh, my lord!'
     Pale, Philip Philipovich crossed the kitchen and asked threateningly:
     'What do you want?'
     'I wanted to have  a look at the  talking dog,' replied the  old  woman
ingratiatingly and  crossed herself.  Philip  Philipovich  went even  paler,
strode up to her and hissed: 'Get out of my kitchen this instant!'
     The old woman tottered back toward the door and said plaintively:
     'You needn't be so sharp, professor.'
     'Get  out, I  say!' repeated Philip  Philipovich and  his eyes  went as
round as the owl's. He personally slammed the door behind the old woman.
     'Darya Petrovna, I've asked you before . . .'
     'But  Philip  Philipovich,'  replied  Darya  Petrovna  in  desperation,
clenching  her  hands, 'what can I do?  People keep coming in all  day long,
however often I throw them out.'
     A  dull, threatening roar of water  was still coming from the bathroom,
although Sharikov was now silent. Doctor Bormenthal came in.
     'Please,  Ivan Amoldovich ... er... how  many patients are there in the
waiting-room?'
     'Eleven,' replied Bormenthal.
     'Send them all away, please. I can't see any patients today.'
     With a bony finger Philip Philipovich knocked on the bathroom door  and
shouted: 'Come out at once! Why have you locked yourself in?'
     'Oh . . . oh . . .!' replied Sharikov in tones of misery.
     'What on earth ... I can't hear you - turn off the water.'
     'Ow-wow! . . .'
     'Turn off the water! What has he done? I don't understand  . . .' cried
Philip  Philipovich, working himself into a frenzy.  Zina and Darya Petrovna
opened  the  kitchen door  and peeped  out.  Once again  Philip  Philipovich
thundered on the bathroom door with his fist.
     'There  he  is!'  screamed  Darya  Petrovna from  the  kitchen.  Philip
Philipovich rushed in. The distorted  features  of Poligraph  Poligraphovich
appeared  through  the broken transom and  leaned out  into the kitchen .His
eyes were tear-stained and there was a long scratch down his nose, red with
     fresh blood.
     'Have you gone out of your mind?' asked Philip Philipovich.  'Why don't
you come out of there?'
     Terrified and miserable, Sharikov stared around and replied:
     'I've shut myself in.'
     'Unlock the door, then. Haven't you ever seen a lock before?'
     'The blasted thing won't open!' replied Poligraph, terrified.
     'Oh, my God,  he's shut the  safety-catch too!' screamed Zina, wringing
her hands.
     'There's  a sort of  button on the lock,'  shouted  Philip Philipovich,
trying to  out-roar  the water. 'Press  it downwards  .  . .  press it down!
Downwards!'
     Sharikov vanished, to reappear over the transom a minute later.
     'I can't see a thing!' he barked in terror.
     'Well, turn the light on then! He's gone crazy!'
     'That damned cat smashed the bulb,' replied Sharikov, 'and when I tried
to  catch  the  bastard by the leg I turned on the tap  and now I can't find
it.'
     Appalled, all three wrung their hands in horror.
     Five minutes later Bormenthal,  Zina and Darya Petrovna were sitting in
a  row on a  damp  carpet that had been  rolled  up against the foot of  the
bathroom  door, pressing  it hard with  their bottoms. Fyodor the porter was
climbing up a  ladder into the  transom window, with the lighted candle from
Darya Petrovna's ikon in his hand. His posterior, clad in broad grey checks,
hovered in the air, then vanished through the opening.
     'Ooh! . .  . ow!' came Sharikov's  strangled shriek above  the  roar of
water.
     Fyodor's  voice was heard: 'There's nothing for it, Philip Philipovich,
we'll have to open the door and let the water out. We can mop it up from the
kitchen.'
     'Open it then!' shouted Philip Philipovich angrily.
     The three got  up  from the carpet  and pushed  the bathroom door open.
Immediately a tidal wave gushed out into the  passage, where it divided into
three streams -  one  straight  into the lavatory opposite, one to the right
into  the kitchen and one to the left into the hall. Splashing and prancing,
Zina shut the door into the hall. Fyodor emerged, up to his ankles in water,
and for some reason grinning. He was  soaking  wet and looked as if he  were
wearing oilskins.
     'The water-pressure was so strong, I only just managed to turn it off,'
he explained.
     'Where  is he?' asked Philip Philipovich, cursing as he  lifted one wet
foot.
     'He's afraid to come out,' said Fyodor, giggling stupidly.
     'Will  you  beat  me.  Dad'  came  Sharikov's tearful  voice  from  the
bathroom.
     'You idiot!' was Philip Philipovich's terse reply.
     Zina and  Darya Petrovna, with bare legs  and skirts tucked up to their
knees, and  Sharikov  and  the porter  barefoot with rolled-up trousers were
hard at work mopping up the kitchen  floor with  wet cloths,  squeezing them
out  into  dirty buckets and into the sink. The abandoned stove roared away.
The water swirled out of  the back door, down the well of the back staircase
and into the cellar.
     On  tiptoe,  Bormenthal  was standing in  a deep puddle  on the parquet
floor of the hall  and talking  through the crack of the  front door, opened
only as far as the chain would allow.
     'No consulting  hours  today,  I'm  afraid, the  professor's  not well.
Please keep away from the door, we have a burst pipe.
     'But when can the professor see me?' a voice came through the door. 'It
wouldn't take a minute . . .'
     'I'm  sorry.'  Bormenthal rocked back  from his toes to his heels. 'The
professor's in bed and a pipe  has burst. Come tomorrow. Zina  dear, quickly
mop up the hall or it will start running down the front staircase.'
     'There's too much - the cloths won't do it.'
     'Never mind,' said Fyodor. 'We'll scoop it up with jugs.'
     While the doorbell rang ceaselessly,  Bormenthal stood up to his ankles
in water.
     'When is the operation?' said an insistent  voice as  it tried to force
its way through the crack of the door.
     'A pipe's burst . . .'
     'But I've come in galoshes . . .'
     Bluish silhouettes appeared outside the door.
     'I'm sorry, it's impossible, please come tomorrow.'
     'But I have an appointment.'
     'Tomorrow. There's been a disaster in the water supply.'
     Fyodor splashed about in the lake, scooping it up  with a jug,  but the
battle-scared Sharikov had thought up a new method. He rolled up an enormous
cloth, lay on his stomach in the water and pushed it backwards from the hall
towards the lavatory.
     'What d'you think  you're doing,  you  fool, slopping it all round  the
flat?' fumed Darya Petrovna. 'Pour it into the sink.'
     'How can  I?'  replied Sharikov,  scooping up  the murky water with his
hands. 'If  I don't push it back into  the  flat  it'll run out of the front
door.'
     A  bench  was  pushed  creaking  out  of   the  corridor,  with  Philip
Philipovich riding unsteadily on it in his blue striped socks.
     'Stop answering the door, Ivan Amoldovich. Go into the bedroom, you can
borrow a pair of my slippers.'
     'Don't bother, Philip Philipovich, I'm all right.'
     'You're wearing nothing but a pair of galoshes.'
     'I don't mind. My feet are wet anyway.'
     'Oh, my God!' Philip Philipovich was exhausted and depressed.
     'Destructive animal!' Sharikov suddenly burst out as he squatted on the
floor, clutching a soup tureen.
     Bormenthal slammed the  door, unable to  contain himself any longer and
burst into  laughter.  Philip Philipovich  blew  out  his nostrils  and  his
spectacles glittered.
     'What are  you talking about?' he asked Sharikov from  the eminence  of
his bench.
     'I  was  talking about the  cat. Filthy swine,' answered  Sharikov, his
eyes swivelling guiltily.
     'Look here,  Sharikov,'  retorted  Philip  Philipovich, taking  a  deep
breath. 'I swear I have never seen a more impudent creature than you.'
     Bormenthal giggled.
     'You,' went on Philip  Philipovich, 'are nothing but a lout.  How  dare
you say  that? You caused  the whole thing and you have the  gall  . . . No,
really! It's too much!'
     'Tell me, Sharikov,' said Bormenthal, 'how much longer are you going to
chase cats? You  ought to be ashamed of yourself. It's disgraceful! You're a
savage!'
     'Me - a savage?' snarled  Sharikov. 'I'm no  savage.  I won't stand for
that cat in  this flat. It  only  comes  here to find  what it can pinch. It
stole Darya's mincemeat. I wanted to teach it a lesson.'
     'You should teach yourself a lesson!' replied Philip Philipovich. 'Just
take a look at your face in the mirror.'
     'Nearly scratched my eyes out,' said Sharikov gloomily,  wiping a dirty
hand across his eyes.
     By  the time that the water-blackened  parquet  had dried out a little,
all the mirrors were covered in a veil of  condensed vapour and the doorbell
had stopped ringing. Philip Philipovich in red morocco slippers was standing
in the hall.
     'There you are, Fyodor. Thank you.'
     'Thank you very much, sir.'
     'Mind you  change your clothes straight away. No, wait -have a glass of
Darya Petrovna's vodka before you go.'
     'Thank you, sir,' Fyodor squirmed awkwardly, then said:
     'There is one more thing, Philip  Philipovich. I'm sorry, I hardly like
to  mention  it,  but it's the  matter of the window-pane  in  No 7. Citizen
Sharikov threw some stones at it, you see . . .'
     'Did he throw them at a cat?' asked Philip Philipovich, frowning like a
thundercloud.
     'Well,  no,  he  was  throwing  them  at the owner  of  the flat.  He's
threatening to sue.'
     'Oh, lord!'
     'Sharikov tried to kiss their cook and they  threw  him out. They had a
bit of a fight, it seems.'
     'For God's sake, do you  have  to  tell me all these disasters at once?
How much?'
     'One rouble and 50 kopecks.'
     Philip Philipovich  took out three shining 50-kopeck pieces  and handed
them to Fyodor.
     'And on  top of it  all you have to pay 1 rouble and 50 kopecks because
of  that damned cat,'  grumbled a voice  from  the doorway. 'It was  all the
cat's fault . . .'
     Philip Philipovich  turned  round, bit his  lip  and  gripped Sharikov.
Without a  word  he  pushed  him into the waiting-room  and locked the door.
Sharik immediately started to hammer on the door with his fists.
     'Shut  up!'  shouted  Philip Philipovich  in  a  voice  that was nearly
deranged.
     'This is the limit,'  said  Fyodor meaningfully.  'I've never seen such
impudence in my life.'
     Bormenthal seemed to materialise out of the floor.
     'Please, Philip Philipovich, don't upset yourself.'
     The doctor thrust open the door into the waiting-room.
     He could be heard saying: 'Where d'you think you are? In some dive?'
     'That's it,' said Fyodor approvingly. 'Serve him right . . .a punch  on
the ear's what he needs . . .'
     'No,  not that,  Fyodor,' growled  Philip Philipovich  sadly.  'I think
you've just about had all you can take, Philip Philipovich.'





     'No, no, no!' insisted Bormenthal. 'You must tuck in vour napkin.'
     'Why the hell should I,' grumbled Sharikov.
     'Thank you, doctor,'  said  Philip  Philipovich gratefully.  'I  simply
haven't the energy to reprimand him any longer.'
     'I shan't allow you to start eating until you put on your napkin. Zina,
take the mayonnaise away from Sharikov.'
     'Hey, don't  do  that,'  said  Sharikov plaintively. 'I'll  put  it  on
straight away.'
     Pushing away the  dish  from  Zina with  his  left hand and  stuffing a
napkin  down  his  collar with  the right hand,  he looked  exactly  like  a
customer in a barber's shop.
     'And eat with your fork, please,' added Bormenthal.
     Sighing long and heavily Sharikov chased slices of sturgeon around in a
thick sauce.
     'Can't I have some vodka?' he asked.
     'Will you kindly keep  quiet?'  said Bormenthal.  'You've been  at  the
vodka too often lately.'
     'Do you  grudge me it?' asked Sharikov, glowering sullenly  across  the
table.
     'Stop talking such damn nonsense . .  .'  Philip  Philipovich  broke in
harshly, but Bormenthal interrupted him.
     'Don't worry, Philip Philipovich, leave  it to  me. You,  Sharikov  are
talking  nonsense and the most disturbing thing of all is that you  talk  it
with  such  complete  confidence.  Of course  I  don't grudge you the vodka,
especially as it's not mine but belongs  to Philip Philipovich. It's  simply
that  it's harmful.  That's for a start; secondly  you behave  badly  enough
without vodka.' Bormenthal  pointed  to where  the sideboard had been broken
and glued together.
     'Zina, dear, give me a little more fish please,' said the professor.
     Meanwhile Sharikov had stretched out his hand towards the decanter and,
with a sideways glance at Bormenthal, poured himself out a glassful.
     'You should offer it to  the others first,' said Bormenthal. 'Like this
- first to Philip Philipovich, then to me, then yourself.'
     A faint, sarcastic grin nickered  across Sharikov's mouth and he poured
out glasses of vodka all round.
     'You act just as if you were on parade here,' he said. 'Put your napkin
here, your tie  there, "please",  "thank you",  "excuse me" -why  can't  you
behave naturally? Honestly,  you stuffed shirts act  as if it was still  the
days oftsarism.'
     'What do you mean by "behave naturally"?'
     Sharikov did not answer Philip Philipovich's question,  but raised  his
glass and said: 'Here's how . . .'
     'And you too,' echoed Bormenthal with a tinge of irony.
     Sharikov tossed  the glassful down his throat, blinked, lifted a  piece
of bread  to his nose, sniffed it, then swallowed it as his eyes filled with
tears.
     'Phase,' Philip Philipovich suddenly blurted out, as if preoccupied.
     Bormenthal gave him an astonished look. 'I'm sorry? . . .'
     'It's  a phase,'  repeated  Philip  Philipovich  and  nodded  bitterly.
'There's nothing we can do about it. Klim.'
     Deeply interested, Bormenthal glanced sharply into Philip Philipovich's
eyes: 'Do  you  suppose  so, Philip  Philipovich?'  'I  don't  suppose;  I'm
convinced.'
     'Can it be that . . .' began Bormenthal, then stopped after a glance at
Sharikov,  who  was  frowning  suspiciously.  'Spdter  .  .  .' said  Philip
Philipovich softly. 'Gut,' replied his assistant.
     Zina brought in  the turkey.  Bormenthal poured  out some red wine  for
Philip Philipovich, then offered some to Sharikov.
     'Not  for me,  I  prefer vodka.' His face  had  grown  puffy, sweat was
breaking  out  on  his  forehead  and  he  was  distinctly  merrier.  Philip
Philipovich also cheered up slightly after drinking some wine. His eyes grew
clearer and  he looked rather more approvingly at Sharikov, whose black head
above his white napkin now shone like a fly in a pool of cream.
     Bormenthal however, when fortified, seemed to want activity.
     'Well now,  what  are you and  I  going to  do this evening?'  he asked
Sharikov.
     Sharikov  winked and replied:  'Let's go  to  the  circus. I  like that
best.'
     'Why go to  the  circus every day?'  remarked  Philip Philipovich  in a
good-humoured voice. 'It sounds so boring to me. If I were you I'd go to the
theatre.'
     'I won't  go to the theatre,' answered Sharikov  nonchalantly and  made
the sign of the cross over his mouth.
     'Hiccuping  at   table  takes  other  people's  appetites  away,'  said
Bormenthal   automatically.  'If   you  don't  mind   my  mentioning   it...
Incidentally, why don't you like the theatre?' Sharikov held his empty glass
up to his eye and looked through it as though it were an opera  glass. After
some thought he pouted and said:
     'Hell, it's just rot . . . talk, talk. Pure counter-revolution.'
     Philip Philipovich leaned against his high, carved gothic chairback and
laughed  so hard  that  he  displayed  what  looked  like two  rows of  gold
fence-posts. Bormenthal merely shook his head.
     'You should do some reading,' he suggested, 'and then, perhaps . . .'
     'But I read a lot . . .' answered Sharikov, quickly and surreptitiously
pouring himself half a glass of vodka.
     'Zina!' cried Philip  Philipovich anxiously.  'Clear away the vodka, my
dear. We don't need it any more . . . What have you been reading?'
     He suddenly  had a mental picture of a desert island, palm trees, and a
man  dressed  in goatskins.  'I'll bet  he  says  Robinson Crusoe  .  . .'he
thought.
     'That guy . . . what's his name . . . Engels' correspondence with . . .
hell, what d'you call him ... oh - Kautsky.'
     Bormenthal's  forkful  of  turkey meat  stopped  in  mid-air and Philip
Philipovich choked on his wine. Sharikov seized this moment to gulp down his
vodka.
     Philip Philipovich put his elbows on  the table, stared at Sharikov and
asked:
     'What comment can you make on what you've read?'
     Sharikov shrugged. 'I don't agree.'
     'With whom - Engels or Kautsky?'
     'With neither of 'em,' replied Sharikov.
     'That is most  remarkable. Anybody who says that . . . Well, what would
you suggest instead?'
     'Suggest? I dunno . . . They just write and write all  that rot ... all
about some  congress  and  some  Germans .  .  . makes  my  head reel.  Take
everything away from the bosses, then divide it up . . .'
     'Just  as  I  thought!'  exclaimed  Philip  Philipovich,  slapping  the
tablecloth with his palm. 'Just as I thought.'
     'And how is this to be done?' asked Bormenthal with interest.
     'How  to  do  it?'  Sharikov,  grown loquacious  with  wine,  explained
garrulously:
     'Easy. Fr'instance - here's one guy with seven rooms and forty pairs of
trousers and there's another guy who has to eat out of dustbins.'
     'I suppose that remark about the seven rooms is a hint about me?' asked
Philip Philipovich with a haughty raise of the eyebrows.
     Sharikov  hunched his  shoulders and  said  no  more. 'All  right, I've
nothing against fair shares. How  many patients did you turn away yesterday,
doctor?'  'Thirty-nine,'  was Bormenthal's immediate reply. 'H'm  .  . . 390
roubles,  shared  between us  three. I won't  count Zina and Darya Petrovna.
Right, Sharikov  -  that  means your  share  is 130  roubles. Kindly hand it
over.'
     'Hey, wait  a  minute,' said  Sharikov, beginning to be scared. 'What's
the idea? What d'you mean?'
     'I  mean the  cat  and the tap,'  Philip  Philipovich  suddenly roared,
dropping  his  mask  of   ironic  imperturbability.  'Philip   Philipovich!'
exclaimed Bormenthal anxiously. 'Don't  interrupt.  The  scene  you  created
yesterday  was  intolerable, and  thanks  to you I had  to turn  away all my
patients. You were leaping around in  the bathroom like  a savage,  smashing
everything and jamming the taps. Who killed Madame Polasukher's cat? Who . .
.'
     'The  day  before  yesterday, Sharikov,  you bit a lady  you met on the
staircase,' put in Bormenthal.
     'You ought to be . . .' roared Philip Philipovich.
     'But she  slapped me  across  the mouth,' whined Sharikov 'She can't go
doing that to me!'
     'She  slapped  you  because you  pinched  her  on the  bosom,'  shouted
Bormenthal, knocking over a glass. 'You stand there and . . .'
     'You belong  to  the  lowest  possible  stage  of development,'  Philip
Philipovich shouted him down. 'You are still in the formative stage. You are
intellectually  weak,  all your actions are purely  bestial. Yet  you  allow
yourself  in  the  presence of two  university-educated men to offer advice,
with  quite intolerable familiarity, on  a cosmic scale  and of quite cosmic
stupidity, on the redistribution of  wealth . .  . and at the same time  you
eat toothpaste . . .'
     'The day before yesterday,' added Bormenthal.
     'And now,' thundered Philip Philipovich, 'that you have nearly got your
nose scratched off - incidentally, why have you wiped the zinc ointment  off
it? - you can just shut up  and listen to what you're told. You are going to
leam to  behave and try to become a marginally acceptable member of society.
By the way, who was fool enough to lend you that book?'
     'There  you go  again  -  calling everybody  fools,'  replied  Sharikov
nervously, deafened by the attack on him from both sides.
     'Let me guess,' exclaimed Philip Philipovich, turning red with fury.
     'Well, Shvonder gave it to me ... so  what? He's not  a fool ... it was
so I could get educated.'
     'I  can see which way your education  is going  after reading Kautsky,'
shouted Philip  Philipovich, hoarse and turning faintly yellow. With this he
gave the bell a furious jab. 'Today's incident shows it better than anything
else. Zina!'
     'Zina!' shouted Bormenthal.
     'Zina!' cried the terrified Sharikov.
     Looking pale, Zina ran into the room.
     'Zina,  there's  a  book  in  the  waiting-room   ...  It  is  in   the
waiting-room, isn't it?'
     'Yes, it is,' said  Sharikov obediently. 'Green, the  colour  of copper
sulphate.'
     'A green book . . .'
     'Bum it if  you  like,'  cried  Sharikov in desperation. 'It's  only  a
public library book.'
     'It's called Correspondence . .  . between,  er, Engels  and that other
man, what's his name . . . Anyway, throw it into the stove!'
     Zina flew out.
     'I'd like to  hang that Shvonder,  on my word  of honour, on  the first
tree,' said  Philip  Philipovich, with a  furious  lunge at  a  turkey-wing.
'There's a  gang  of poisonous  people  in  this  house - it's just like  an
abscess. To say nothing of his idiotic newspapers . . .'
     Sharikov gave  the  professor  a  look  of  malicious  sarcasm.  Philip
Philipovich in his turn shot him a sideways glance and said no more.
     'Oh,  dear,  it  looks  as  if  nothing's  going  to  go  right,'  came
Bormenthal's sudden and prophetic thought.
     Zina brought in a layer cake on a dish and a coffee pot.
     'I'm not eating any of that,' Sharikov growled threateningly.
     'No  one has offered  you  any.  Behave  yourself.  Please  have  some,
doctor.'
     Dinner ended in silence.
     Sharikov pulled a crumpled cigarette out  of  his  pocket and  lit  it.
Having drunk his coffee, Philip Philipovich looked at  the clock. He pressed
his  repeater and it gently  struck  a quarter past eight.  As was his habit
Philip Philipovich leaned  against  his gothic chairback and  turned  to the
newspaper on a side-table.
     'Would you like to go to the circus with him tonight,  doctor?  Only do
check the programme in advance and make sure there are no cats in it.'
     'I don't know how they let such filthy  beasts into the circus at all,'
said Sharikov sullenly, shaking his head.
     'Well never mind what filthy  beasts they let  into the circus for  the
moment,' said Philip Philipovich ambiguously. 'What's on tonight?'
     'At Solomon's,' Bormenthal began to read out, 'there's something called
the Four. . . . the Four Yooshems and the Human Ball-Bearing.'
     'What are Yooshems?' enquired Philip Philipovich suspiciously.
     'God knows. First time I've ever come across the word.'
     'Well in that case you'd better look at Nikita's. We must be absolutely
sure about what we're going to see.'
     'Nikita's . .  . Nikita's . . . h'm . . . elephants and the Ultimate in
Human Dexterity.'
     'I see. What is your attitude to elephants, my dear Sharikov?' enquired
Philip Philipovich mistrustfully. Sharikov was immediately offended.
     'Hell  - I don't  know. Cats are a special  case. Elephants are  useful
animals,' replied Sharikov.
     'Excellent.  As long  as you think they're useful you  can go and watch
them. Do as Ivan Arnoldovich tells  you. And  don't get talking to anyone in
the bar! I beg you, Ivan Arnoldovich, not to offer Sharikov beer to drink.'
     Ten  minutes later  Ivan  Arnoldovich and Sharikov, dressed in a peaked
cap  and  a raglan overcoat with turned-up  collar, set  off for the circus.
Silence descended  on  the flat. Philip Philipovich went  into his study. He
switched  on the lamp under  its heavy  green shade,  which gave the study a
great sense of calm, and began to pace the room. The tip of his cigar glowed
long and hard with its pale green fire. The professor put his hands into his
pockets and deep thoughts racked his balding, learned brow. Now and again he
smacked  his lips,  hummed  'to  the banks of the sacred  Nile  .  . .'  and
muttered something. Finally he put his cigar into the ashtray, went over  to
the glass cabinet and  lit up the entire study with the three powerful lamps
in the ceiling. From the  third  glass  shelf Philip Philipovich took  out a
narrow jar and began, frowning, to examine it by the lamplight. Suspended in
a transparent, viscous  liquid there swam a little white blob that had  been
extracted from the depths  of Sharik's brain. With a shrug of his shoulders,
twisting his lips and murmuring  to himself, Philip  Philipovich devoured it
with his eyes as though the floating white blob  might unravel the secret of
the  curious events  which had  turned  life  upside  down  in that flat  on
Prechistenka.
     It could  be  that this  most  learned man  did succeed in divining the
secret. At  any rate,  having gazed his full  at this cerebral appendage  he
returned the  jar to the cabinet, locked it, put the key into his  waistcoat
pocket and  collapsed,  head pressed down between  his  shoulders and  hands
thrust  deep into his jacket pockets,  on  to  the leather-covered couch. He
puffed  long  and  hard  at another cigar,  chewing  its  end to  fragments.
Finally, looking  like a  greying  Faust in the  green-tinged  lamplight, he
exclaimed aloud:
     'Yes, by God, I will.'
     There  was  no one  to reply.  Every sound in  the flat was  hushed. By
eleven o'clock the traffic  in  Obukhov  Street always died  down. The  rare
footfall of a belated walker echoed in  the distance,  ringing out somewhere
beyond  the lowered blinds, then  dying away. In  Philip Philipovich's study
his repeater chimed gently beneath his fingers in his waistcoat pocket . . .
Impatiently the  professor  waited for  Doctor Bormenthal  and  Sharikov  to
return from the circus.




     We do  not know  what  Philip Philipovich  had  decided  to  do. He did
nothing in particular during the subsequent week and  perhaps as a result of
this things began happening fast.
     About six days after the affair  with  the bath-water  and the cat, the
young person from the house committee who had turned out to  be a woman came
to Sharikov and  handed him some papers. Sharikov put  them  into his pocket
and immediately called Doctor Bormenthal.
     'Bormenthal!'
     'Kindly address me by my name and patronymic!' retorted Bormenthal, his
expression  clouding.  I should mention that  in the past six days the great
surgeon had managed  to  quarrel eight times with his  ward Sharikov and the
atmosphere in the flat was tense.
     'All  right, then you  can call me  by  my  name and  patronymic  too!'
replied Sharikov with complete justification.
     'No!'  thundered  Philip Philipovich from the doorway. 'I forbid you to
utter such an idiotic name  in my flat. If you want  us  to stop calling you
Sharikov, Doctor Bormenthal and I will call you "Mister Sharikov".'
     'I'm not mister - all the "misters" are in Paris!' barked Sharikov.
     'I see Shvonder's been  at  work on you!'  shouted  Philip Philipovich.
'Well, I'll fix that rascal. There will only be "misters" in my flat as long
as I'm  living in it! Otherwise either I or  you will get out, and it's more
likely to be you. I'm  putting  a "room wanted" advertisement in the  papers
today and believe me I intend to find you a room.'
     'You  don't think  I'm  such a  fool  as to leave  here,  do  you?' was
Sharikov's crisp retort.
     'What?'   cried  Philip  Philipovich.  Such  a  change  came  over  his
expression that Bormenthal rushed anxiously to his side  and gently took him
by the sleeve.
     'Don't you  be  so  impertinent,  Monsieur  Sharikov!' said Bormenthal,
raising his voice. Sharikov  stepped back and pulled  three pieces  of paper
out  of his pocket -  one green, one yellow and one  white, and  said  as he
tapped them with his fingers:
     'There. I'm now a member of this residential association and the tenant
in charge of flat No.  5, Preobrazhensky, has got to give  me my entitlement
of thirty-seven square feet .  . .' Sharikov  thought for a  moment and then
added  a  word  which  Bormenthal's mind automatically  recorded  as  new  -
'please'.
     Philip Philipovich bit his lip and said rashly:
     'I swear I'll shoot that Shvonder one of these days.'
     It was obvious  from  the  look  in Sharikov's  eyes  that he had taken
careful note of the remark.
     'Vorsicht, Philip Philipovich . . .' warned Bormenthal.
     'Well,  what do you expect? The gall  of  it  .  .  .!' shouted  Philip
Philipovich in Russian.
     'Look here, Sharikov  ... Mister  Sharikov ...  If  you commit one more
piece  of impudence I shall deprive  you of your dinner, in fact of all your
food. Thirty-seven square feet may  be all very well, but there's nothing on
that stinking little bit of paper which says that I have to feed you!'
     Frightened, Sharikov opened his mouth.
     'I can't go without food,' he mumbled. 'Where would I eat?'
     'Then behave yourself!' cried both doctors in chorus. Sharikov relapsed
into  meaningful silence and  did  no  harm  to anybody that  day  with  the
exception of himself - taking advantage of Bormenthal's brief absence he got
hold of the  doctor's razor and cut  his  cheek-bone  so badly  that  Philip
Philipovich and Doctor Bormenthal had to  bandage the cut with much  wailing
and weeping on Sharikov's part.
     Next evening two men sat in the green twilight of the professor's study
-  Philip Philipovich  and the faithful, devoted Bormenthal. The  house  was
asleep.  Philip Philipovich was wearing his sky-blue dressing gown  and  red
slippers, while  Bormenthal was  in his shirt and blue braces. On  the round
table between the doctors, beside a thick album, stood a bottle of brandy, a
plate of sliced lemon and a box of cigars.  Through  the smoke-laden air the
two scientists were heatedly  discussing  the  latest  event:  that  evening
Sharikov had  stolen  two  10-rouble  notes  which  had been lying  under  a
paperweight in Philip Philipovich's study, had disappeared from the flat and
then returned later  completely drunk. But that  was not  all. With him  had
come two unknown characters who  had created a great deal  of  noise on  the
front staircase and expressed a desire to spend the night with Sharikov. The
individuals in question were  only removed after  Fyodor,  appearing  on the
scene  with  a coat  thrown  over his  underwear,  had telephoned  the  45th
Precinct  police  station. The  individuals  vanished instantly as  soon  as
Fyodor  had replaced the receiver. After they had  gone it was  found that a
malachite ashtray had mysteriously vanished from a console in the hall, also
Philip  Philipovich's  beaver  hat  and his walking-stick with a  gold  band
inscribed: 'From the grateful hospital staff to Philip Philipovich in memory
of "X"-day with affection and respect/
     'Who were  they?' said Philip  Philipovich aggressively, clenching  his
fists. Staggering and  clutching the fur-coats,  Sharikov muttered something
about  not knowing  who they  were,  that they were a couple of bastards but
good chaps.
     'The strangest thing of all was that they were both drunk . . . How did
they manage  to lay  their  hands on the stuff?' said  Philip Philipovich in
astonishment, glancing at the place where his presentation walking-stick had
stood until recently.
     'They're experts,' explained Fyodor as he  returned home  to bed with a
rouble in his pocket.
     Sharikov  categorically  denied having stolen the 20  roubles, mumbling
something indistinct about himself not being the only person in the flat.
     'Aha, I  see - I suppose  Doctor Bormenthal  stole the money?' enquired
Philip  Philipovich  in  a voice  that  was  quiet  but  terrifying  in  its
intonation.
     Sharikov staggered, opened his bleary eyes and offered the suggestion:
     'Maybe Zina took it . . .*
     'What?'  screamed  Zina,  appearing  in  the  doorway like  a  spectre,
clutching an unbuttoned cardigan across her bosom.
     'How could he . . .'
     Philip Philipovich's neck flushed red.
     'Calm down, Zina,' he said, stretching out  his arm  to her, 'don't get
upset, we'll fix this.'
     Zina immediately burst into tears, her  mouth  fell wide  open  and her
hand dropped from her bosom.
     'Zina  -  aren't you  ashamed? Who could imagine you taking it? What  a
disgraceful exhibition!' said Bormenthal in deep embarrassment.
     'You silly girl, Zina, God forgive you . . .' began Philip Philipovich.
     But at that moment Zina stopped crying and the others froze in horror -
Sharikov  was feeling unwell.  Banging his  head  against the  wall, he  was
emitting a moan that was pitched  somewhere between the vowels 'i' and 'o' -
a sort of 'eeuuhh'. His face turned pale and his jaw twitched convulsively.
     'Look out - get the swine that bucket from the consulting-room!'
     Everybody rushed to help  the ailing  Sharikov. As he staggered  off to
bed  supported  by  Bormenthal he  swore  gently and melodiously,  despite a
certain difficulty in enunciation.
     The whole affair had occurred around  1 am and now it was Sam, but  the
two men  in the study talked  on, fortified by brandy and lemon. The tobacco
smoke in the room was so dense that it moved about in slow, flat,  unruffled
swathes.
     Doctor Bormenthal, pale but determined, raised his thin-stemmed glass.
     'Philip Philipovich,'  he exclaimed with great feeling, 'I  shall never
forget how  as a half-starved student I came to you and  you took  me  under
your wing.  Believe  me,  Philip Philipovich, you are much more to me than a
professor, a teacher . . . My respect for you is boundless . . . Allow me to
embrace you, dear Philip Philipovich . . .'
     'Yes,  yes,  my  dear  fellow  .  . .'  grunted  Philip Philipovich  in
embarrassment and rose  to meet  him. Bormenthal embraced him and kissed him
on his bushy, nicotine-stained moustaches.
     'Honestly, Philip Phili . . .'
     'Very  touching,  very   touching  .  .  .  Thank  you,'  said   Philip
Philipovich. 'I'm afraid I sometimes bawl at you during operations. You must
forgive an old man's testiness.  The fact is  I'm  really so lonely  ..."...
from Granada to Seville . . ." '
     'How can  you say that, Philip Philipovich?'  exclaimed Bormenthal with
great  sincerity.  'Kindly don't talk  like  that  again  unless you want to
offend me . . .'
     'Thank you, thank you ..."... to the banks of  the sacred  Nile ..."...
thank you ... I liked you because you were such a competent doctor.'
     'I  tell  you,  Philip  Philipovich, it's  the  only  way  . . .' cried
Bormenthal passionately. Leaping up from his  place he firmly shut the  door
leading  into  the corridor, came back  and went on in a whisper: 'Don't you
see, it's  the only way  out? Naturally I wouldn't dare to offer you advice,
but  look  at yourself, Philip  Philipovich  - you're completely  worn  out,
you're in no fit state to go on working!'
     'You're quite right,' agreed Philip Philipovich with a sigh.
     'Very well, then, you agree this can't go on,' whispered Bormenthal.
     'Last time you said you were afraid for me and I wish you knew, my dear
professor,  how that  touched me. But I'm not  a child either  and I can see
only too  well  what  a  terrible  affair  this could  be.  But  I am deeply
convinced that there is no other solution.'
     Philip Philipovich stood up, waved his arms at him and cried:
     'Don't tempt me. Don't  even mention it.' The professor  walked  up and
down the  room, disturbing the grey swathes. 'I won't  hear of it. Don't you
realise  what would happen if  they  found us  out? Because of  our  "social
origins"  you  and I  would never get away with it, despite the  fact of  it
being our  first offence. I don't suppose your "origins" are any better than
mine, are they?'
     'I suppose not. My father was a plain-clothes policeman in Vilno,' said
Bormenthal as he drained his brandy glass.
     'There you are, just as I thought.  From the  Bolshevik's point of view
you couldn't  have come from a more  unsuitable background.  Still,  mine is
even worse. My father  was dean of a cathedral. Perfect. ". . . from Granada
to Seville ... in the silent shades of night. . ." So there we are.'
     'But  Philip  Philipovich, you're a celebrity, a figure  of  world-wide
importance, and just because of some, forgive the expression, bastard  . . .
Surely they can't touch you!'
     'All   the   same,  I  refuse  to  do  it,'  said  Philip   Philipovich
thoughtfully.
     He stopped and stared at the glass-fronted cabinet. 'But why?'
     'Because you are not a figure of world importance.' 'But what . . .'
     'Come now, you don't think I could let you take the rap while I shelter
behind  my  world-wide reputation,  do  you?  Really  . .  .  I'm  a  Moscow
University graduate, not a Sharikov.'
     Philip Philipovich  proudly squared  his  shoulders and looked like  an
ancient king of France.
     'Well, then,  Philip Philipovich,'  sighed  Bormenthal. 'What's  to  be
done?  Are  you  just going to  wait until that hooligan turns into  a human
being?'
     Philip Philipovich stopped him with a gesture, poured himself a brandy,
sipped it, sucked a slice of lemon and said:
     'Ivan Arnoldovich. Do you think I understand a little about the anatomy
and physiology of, shall we say, the human brain? What's your opinion?'
     'Philip Philipovich -  what  a question!'  replied Bormenthal with deep
feeling and spread his hands.
     'Very well.  No need, therefore, for any false  modesty. I also believe
that I am perhaps not entirely unknown in this field in Moscow.'
     'I  believe there's no one to touch  you,  not  only in Moscow  but  in
London and Oxford too!' Bormenthal interrupted furiously.
     'Good. So be it. Now listen to me,  professor-to-be-Bor-menthal: no one
could  ever pull it off. It's obvious. No need to  ask. If anybody asks you,
tell them that Preobrazhensky said so. Finite. Klim!'  -  Philip Philipovich
suddenly  cried triumphantly  and the glass  cabinet  vibrated  in response.
'Klim,' he repeated. 'Now, Bormenthal, you are the first  pupil of my school
and apart  from that my friend, as I was able to convince myself today. So I
will  tell you as  a friend, in secret - because of course  I know that  you
wouldn't expose me - that this old ass Preobrazhensky bungled that operation
like a third-year medical student. It's true that it resulted in a discovery
- and  you  know  yourself just what  sort of a discovery that  was' -  here
Philip Philipovich pointed  sadly with both hands towards  the window-blind,
obviously pointing  to  Moscow  - 'but just remember, Ivan Arnoldovich, that
the sole result of that discovery will be that from now on we shall all have
that creature Sharik hanging  round our necks' - here Preobrazhensky slapped
himself on his bent and slightly  sclerotic neck - 'of that you may be sure!
If someone,'  went on Philip Philipovich with relish, 'were to knock me down
and skewer me right now, I'd give him 50 roubles reward! ". . . from Granada
to  Seville ..."... Dammit, I spent five years  doing nothing but extracting
cerebral appendages . . . You know how much work I  did on the subject -  an
unbelievable amount. And now comes the crucial question -  what for? So that
one  fine day a  nice  litde  dog  could  be  transformed into a specimen of
so-called humanity so revolting that he makes one's hair stand on end.'
     'Well, at least it is a unique achievement.'
     'I  quite  agree  with  you.  This,  doctor, is  what  happens  when  a
researcher, instead of  keeping in step with nature, tries to force the pace
and lift the veil. Result - Sharikov. We have made  our bed and  now we must
lie on it.'
     'Supposing the brain had been Spinoza's, Philip Philipovich?'
     'Yes!'  bellowed  Philip Philipovich. 'Yes! Provided the  wretched  dog
didn't die under the  knife -  and you saw how  tricky the operation was. In
short - I, Philip Preobrazhensky would perform the most difficult feat of my
whole career  by transplanting Spinoza's, or  anyone  else's  pituitary  and
turning  a dog into  a highly  intelligent being. But what  in heaven's name
for? That's the point. Will you kindly  tell me  why one has  to manufacture
artificial Spinozas when  some peasant woman may  produce a real one any day
of  the week? After all, the great Lomonosov  was the son of a peasant woman
from Kholmogory. Mankind, doctor, takes care  of that. Every  year evolution
ruthlessly  casts aside the mass  of dross and  creates a  few  dozen men of
genius who become an ornament to the whole world. Now I hope  you understand
why  I condemned  the  deductions you  made from Sharikov's case history. My
discovery,  which you  are so concerned about, is  worth about as much  as a
bent penny . . . No, don't argue,  Ivan Arnoldovich, I have given it careful
thought. I don't give my views lightly, as you well know. Theoretically  the
experiment  was  interesting. Fine.  The  physiologists  will be  delighted.
Moscow will go mad  ...  But  what is  its  practical value?  What  is  this
creature?'  Preobrazhensky pointed toward the consulting-room where Sharikov
was asleep.
     'An unmitigated scoundrel.'
     'But what  was Klim . . .  Klim,'  cried the  professor. 'What was Klim
Chugunkin?' (Bormenthal opened his mouth.) 'I'll tell you:  two convictions,
an alcoholic,  "take  away all property and divide it up", my beaver hat and
20  roubles gone' - (At this point  Philip  Philipovich  also remembered his
presentation walking-stick and turned  purple.) - 'the swine! ...  I'll  get
that stick back somehow  ... In short the  pituitary is  a  magic box  which
determines the individual human image.  Yes,  individual ..."... from Granda
to Seville . . ." ' shouted Philip Philipovich,  his eyes rolling furiously,
'but not the universal human image. It's the brain itself  in miniature. And
it's of  no use to me at all -  to  hell  with  it.  I was  concerned  about
something  quite  different, about eugenics,  about the  improvement of  the
human race. And now I've ended up by specialising in rejuvenation. You don't
think I do these rejuvenation operations because of the money, do you? I  am
a scientist.'
     'And a great scientist!'  said Bormenthal, gulping down his brandy. His
eyes grew bloodshot.
     'I wanted  to do a  little experiment as a follow-up to my  success two
years ago in extracting sex hormone from the pituitary. Instead of that what
has happened? My God!  What use were  those  hormones in the pituitary . . .
Doctor, I am faced by despair. I confess I am utterly perplexed.'
     Suddenly Bormenthal rolled up his  sleeves  and said, squinting  at the
tip of his nose:
     'Right then, professor, if you don't want to, I will  take the  risk of
dosing  him  with  arsenic  myself.  I   don't  care  if  my  father  was  a
plain-clothes policeman under the old regime. When all's  said and done this
creature is yours - your own experimental creation.'
     Philip  Philipovich, limp  and exhausted, collapsed  into his chair and
said:
     'No, my dear boy, I  won't let you do it. I'm sixty, old enough to give
you advice. Never do anything criminal, no matter for what reason. Keep your
hands clean all your life.'
     'But just think,  Philip Philipovich,  what he  may  turn  into if that
character Shvonder  keeps on at him! I'm only just beginning to realise what
Sharikov may become, by God!'
     'Aha, so you realise now, do you? Well I realised it ten days after the
operation. My only comfort is that Shvonder is the  biggest fool of all.  He
doesn't realise that Sharikov is much more of a  threat to him than he is to
me.  At the  moment he's doing all he can  to turn Sharikov  against me, not
realising  that  if  someone in their turn  sets  Sharikov against  Shvonder
himself, there'll  soon  be nothing left of Shvonder but the bones  and  the
beak.'
     'You're right. Just think  of the way he goes for cats. He's a man with
the heart of a dog.'
     'Oh, no, no,' drawled Philip Philipovich in reply. 'You're making a big
mistake, doctor. For heaven's sake  don't insult  the dog. His  reaction  to
cats is purely temporary . . . It's a question of discipline, which could be
dealt with in two or  three weeks, I  assure you.  Another  month  or so and
he'll stop chasing them.'
     'But why hasn't he stopped by now?' 'Elementary, Ivan Arnoldovich . . .
think  what you're  saying. After all, the pituitary  is  not suspended in a
vacuum. It is, after all, grafted on to a canine brain, you must  allow time
for it to take root. Sharikov now only shows traces of canine  behaviour and
you must remember this - chasing after cats is the least objectionable thing
he does! The whole horror of the situation is that he now has a human heart,
not a dog's heart. And about the rottenest heart in all creation!'
     Bormenthal,  wrought  to  a  state  of  extreme anxiety,  clenched  his
powerful sinewy hands, shrugged and said firmly:
     'Very well, I shall kill him!'
     'I forbid it!' answered Philip Philipovich categorically.
     'But...'
     Philip Philipovich was suddenly on the alert. He raised his finger.
     'Wait ... I heard footsteps.'
     Both listened intently, but there was silence in the corridor.
     'I thought.  . .'  said Philip Philipovich  and  began speaking German,
several times using the Russian word 'crime'.
     'Just a minute,' Bormenthal suddenly warned  him and strode over to the
door.
     Footsteps could be clearly heard approaching the study, and there was a
mumble  of  voices. Bormenthal  flung  open the  door  and started  back  in
amazement. Appalled, Philip Philipovich froze in his armchair. In the bright
rectangle of the doorway stood Darya Petrovna in nothing but her nightdress,
her face  hot  and furious.  Both doctor and  professor were  dazzled by the
amplitude of her powerful body, which their  shock  caused them  to  see  as
naked. Darya Petrovna was dragging something along in her enormous hands and
as that 'something' came  to a halt it  slid down and sat on its bottom. Its
short legs, covered  in  black  down, folded  up on  the parquet  floor. The
'something',  of  course,  was  Sharikov, confused,  still  slightly  drunk,
dishevelled and wearing only a shirt.
     Darya  Petrovna, naked and magnificent, shook Sharikov like  a  sack of
potatoes and said:
     'Just look at  our precious lodger Telegraph Telegraphovich. I've  been
married, but Zina's an innocent girl. It was a good thing I woke up.'
     Having said  her piece, Darya Petrovna was  overcome by  shame,  gave a
scream, covered her bosom with her arms and vanished.
     'Darya Petrovna, please  forgive us,' the red-faced  Philip Philipovich
shouted after her as soon as he had regained his senses.
     Bormenthal  rolled up his shirtsleeves higher  still  and bore down  on
Sharikov. Philip Philipovich caught  the look in his eye and said in horror:
'Doctor! I forbid you . . .'
     With his right hand Bormenthal picked up Sharikov by  the scruff of his
neck and shook him so violently that the material of his shirt tore.
     Philip  Philipovich  threw himself  between them and began to drag  the
puny Sharikov free from Bormenthal's powerful surgeon's hands.
     'You haven't  any right to beat me,' said Sharikov in  a stifled  moan,
rapidly  sobering as  he  slumped to  the  ground. 'Doctor!' shrieked Philip
Philipovich.  Bormenthal pulled  himself together slightly  and let Sharikov
go. He at once began to whimper.
     'Right,' hissed Bormenthal, 'just wait till tomorrow. I'll fix a little
demonstration for him when he sobers up.'  With  this  he  grabbed  Sharikov
under the  armpit and dragged him to his bed in the  waiting-room.  Sharikov
tried to kick, but his legs refused to obey him.
     Philip Philipovich spread his legs wide, sending the skirts of his robe
flapping,  raised his arms  and  his eyes towards the  lamp in  the corridor
ceiling and sighed.



     The 'little demonstration' which Bormenthal had promised  to lay on for
Sharikov  did  not,  however,  take  place  the  following morning,  because
Poligraph Poligraphovich had disappeared from the house. Bormenthal gave way
to despair, cursing himself for a fool for not having hidden  the key of the
front  door.  Shouting  that this  was  unforgivable,  he ended  by  wishing
Sharikov would fall under a bus. Philip Philipovich, who was  sitting in his
study running his fingers through his hair, said:
     'I can just imagine what he must be up to on the street. . . I can just
imagine .. . "from Granada to Seville .. ." My God.'
     'He may  be with  the house  committee,' said Bormenthal furiously, and
dashed off.
     At the house committee he swore at the chairman, Shvonder, so violently
that Shvonder sat down  and wrote a  complaint  to the local People's Court,
shouting  as  he  did  so  that he  wasn't Sharikov's  bodyguard.  Poligraph
Poligraphovich  was not very popular at the house committee either, as  only
yesterday he had taken 7 roubles from the funds, with the excuse that he was
going to buy text books at the co-operative store.
     For a  reward of 3 roubles  Fyodor searched the whole house from top to
bottom. Nowhere was there a trace to be found of Sharikov.
     Only one thing was clear - that Poligraph had left at dawn wearing cap,
scarf and overcoat, taking with him a bottle  of rowanberry brandy  from the
sideboard.  Doctor  Bormenthal's gloves,  and all his own  documents.  Darya
Petrovna  and Zina  openly expressed  their delight  and hoped that Sharikov
would  never come back again. Sharikov  had  borrowed  50 roubles from Darya
Petrovna only the day before.
     'Serve you right!' roared  Philip Philipovich,  shaking  his fists. The
telephone rang all that day and all the next day. The doctors saw an unusual
number of  patients and by  the  third day the two  men were  faced with the
question of  what to tell  the police, who  would have to start looking  for
Sharikov in the Moscow underworld.
     Hardly had the word 'police' been  mentioned than the reverent  hush of
Obukhov Street was broken by the roar of a lorry  and all the windows in the
house shook. Then with a confident ring at the bell Poligraph Poligraphovich
appeared and entered  with an air of unusual dignity. In absolute silence he
took off  his  cap and hung  his  coat  on the  hook.  He  looked completely
different. He had on a  second-hand leather tunic, worn leather breeches and
long  English riding-boots laced up to the  knee. An incredible odour of cat
immediately  permeated the whole hall.  As  though  at an  unspoken  word of
command  Preobrazhensky and  Bormenthal  simultaneously crossed their  arms,
leaned against the doorpost and waited for Poligraph  Poligraphovich to make
his  first remark. He smoothed  down his rough hair and cleared his  throat,
obviously wanting to hide his embarrassment by a nonchalant air.
     At last he spoke. 'I've taken a job, Philip Philipovich.'
     Both doctors uttered a  vague  dry  noise in  the  throat  and  stirred
slightly.  Preobrazhensky was the first to collect his wits. Stretching  out
his hand he said: 'Papers.'
     The typewritten  sheet read: 'It is hereby  certified that the  bearer,
comrade Poligraph Poligraphovich Sharikov,  is  appointed in  charge  of the
sub-department  of  the   Moscow  Cleansing   Department   responsible   for
eliminating vagrant quadrupeds (cats, etc.)'
     'I see,' said Philip Philipovich gravely. 'Who  fixed this for you? No,
don't tell me - I can guess.'
     'Yes, well, it was Shvonder.'
     'Forgive my asking, but why are you giving off such a revolting smell?'
     Sharikov anxiously sniffed at his tunic.
     'Well,  it may  smell a  bit -  that's  because of my job. I spent  all
yesterday strangling cats . . .'
     Philip  Philipovich  shuddered and looked  at  Bormenthal,  whose  eyes
reminded him of two black gun-barrels aimed  straight at  Sharikov.  Without
the  slightest warning he stepped up to Sharikov  and took him  in a  light,
practised grip around the throat.
     'Help!' squeaked Sharikov, turning pale.
     'Doctor!'
     'Don't  worry, Philip  Philipovich,  I  shan't  do  anything  violent,'
answered Bormenthal in an iron voice and roared:
     'Zina and Darya Petrovna!'
     The two women appeared in the lobby.
     'Now,' said  Bormenthal, giving  Sharikov's throat a  very slight  push
toward  the  fur-coat hanging up  on  a  nearby hook, 'repeat  after me:  "I
apologise .  . ." ' 'All right,  I'll repeat it . . .'  replied the defeated
Sharikov in a husky
     voice.
     Suddenly he took a deep breath, twisted, and tried to shout 'help', but
no sound came out and his head was pushed right into the fur-coat.
     'Doctor, please . . .' Sharikov nodded as a sign that he submitted  and
would
     repeat what he had to do.
     '. . . I apologise, dear Darya Petrovna and Zinaida? . . .'
     "Prokofievna,' whispered Zina nervously.
     'Ow . . . Prokofievna . . . that I allowed myself. . .'
     '.  .  .to  behave  so  disgustingly  the  other  night in  a state  of
intoxication.'
     'Intoxication . . .'
     'I shall never do it again . . .'
     'Do it again . . .'
     'Let  him  go, Ivan  Arnoldovich,'  begged both women at once.  'You're
throttling him. '
     Bormenthal released Sharikov and said:
     'Is that lorry waiting for you?'
     'It just brought me here,' replied Poligraph submissively.
     'Zina, tell the  driver he can go. Now tell me -  have you come back to
Philip Philipovich's flat to stay?'
     'Where  else  can  I go?' asked  Sharikov  timidly, his  eyes nickering
around the room.
     'Very  well.  You will be  as good  as gold and as  quiet as  a  mouse.
Otherwise  you  will  have  to  reckon  with  me  each  time you  misbehave.
Understand?'
     'I understand,' replied Sharikov.
     Throughout Bormenthal's attack  on Sharikov Philip Philipovich had kept
silent. He had leaned against the doorpost with a miserable look, chewed his
nails and stared  at the floor.  Then he suddenly looked up  at Sharikov and
asked in a toneless, husky voice:
     'What do you  do with them ... the dead cats,  I mean?' 'They  go to  a
laboratory,' replied  Sharikov,  'where they make them into protein  for the
workers.'
     After this silence  fell on the flat and lasted for two days. Poligraph
Poligraphovich went to work in the morning by truck, returned in the evening
and dined quietly with Philip Philipovich and Bormenthal.
     Although  Bormenthal  and  Sharikov  slept  in  the  same  room  -  the
waiting-room - they did not talk to  each other, which Bormenthal soon found
boring.
     Two days later, however, there appeared a  thin girl wearing eye shadow
and pale fawn stockings, very embarrassed by  the magnificence of  the flat.
In  her  shabby  little coat  she trotted  in behind Sharikov  and  met  the
professor in the hall.
     Dumbfounded, the professor frowned and asked:
     'Who is this?'
     'Me and her's getting married.  She's our typist.  She's coming to live
with me. Bormenthal  will have to move out of the waiting-room. He's got his
own flat,' said Sharikov in a sullen and very off-hand voice.
     Philip  Philipovich blinked,  reflected for a  moment as he watched the
girl  turn crimson, then  invited  her with  great courtesy to step into his
study for a moment.
     'And I'm going with her,' put in Sharikov quickly and suspiciously.
     At that moment Bormenthal materialised from the floor.
     'I'm sorry,' he said, 'the professor wants to  talk to the lady and you
and I are going to stay here.'
     'I  won't,'  retorted   Sharikov  angrily,   trying  to  follow  Philip
Philipovich and the girl. Her face burned with shame.
     'No, I'm sorry,' Bormenthal took Sharikov by the wrist and led him into
the consulting-room.
     For about five minutes  nothing was heard from the study, then suddenly
came the sound of the girl's muffled sobbing.
     Philip Philipovich stood beside his desk as the girl  wept into a dirty
little lace handkerchief.
     'He told me he'd  been wounded  in  the  war,'  sobbed the  girl. 'He's
lying,'  replied Philip  Philipovich  inexorably. He shook his head and went
on. 'I'm  genuinely sorry for you, but you can't just  go off and  live with
the first  person you  happen  to  meet at  work  . . . my dear child,  it's
scandalous. Here . . .' He opened a desk drawer and took out three 10-rouble
notes.
     'I'd kill  myself,' wept the girl.  'Nothing but salt beef every day in
the  canteen . . . and he threatened me  . . .  then he said he'd been a Red
Army  officer  and he'd  take me to live  in  a posh flat . .  . kept making
passes at me . . . says he's kind-hearted really,  he only hates cats ... He
took my ring as a memento . . .'
     'Well, well... so he's kind-hearted ..."... from Granada to Seville . .
.".' muttered Philip Philipovich. 'You'll get over it, my dear. You're still
young.'
     'Did you really find him in a doorway?'
     'Look, I'm offering to  lend you this money -  take it,' grunted Philip
Philipovich.
     The door was then  solemnly  thrown open  and at  Philip  Philipovich's
request Bormenthal led in Sharikov, who glanced shiftily around. The hair on
his head stood up like a scrubbing-brush.
     'You beast,' said the girl, her eyes flashing, her mascara running past
her streakily powdered nose.
     'Where did you get that scar  on your forehead? Try  and explain to the
lady,' said Philip Philipovich softly.
     Sharikov staked his all on one preposterous card:
     'I was wounded at the front fighting against Kolchak,' he barked.
     The girl stood up and went out, weeping noisily.
     'Stop crying!' Philip Philipovich  shouted after her. 'Just  a minute -
the ring, please,' he said, turning  to Sharikov,  who  obediently removed a
large emerald ring from his finger.
     'I'll  get  you,'  he  suddenly said with malice.  'You'll remember me.
Tomorrow I'll make sure they cut your salary.'
     'Don't  be afraid of him,' Bormenthal shouted  after the girl. *I won't
let him do you any harm.' He turned round and gave Sharikov such a look that
he stumbled backwards and hit his head on the glass cabinet.
     'What's  her  surname?'  asked Bormenthal.  'Her  surname!' he  roared,
suddenly terrible.
     'Basnetsova,' replied Sharikov, looking round for a way of escape.
     'Every day,' said Bormenthal, grasping the lapels of Sharikov's  tunic,
'I shall personally make enquiries at the City  Cleansing Department to make
sure that  you haven't been interfering with citizeness Basnetsova's salary.
And if I find out that you have . . . then I will shoot you down with my own
hands. Take care, Sharikov - I mean what I say.' Transfixed, Sharikov stared
at  Bormenthal's nose.  'You're  not  the  only  one with  a revolver . . .'
muttered Poligraph quietly.
     Suddenly he dodged and  spurted for the door. 'Take care!' Bormenthal's
shout pursued him as he fled.  That night and the  following morning were as
tense  as  the  atmosphere before a thunderstorm. Nobody spoke. The next day
Poligraph Poligraphovich went gloomily off to work by lorry, after waking up
with an uneasy  presentiment, while Professor  Preobrazhensky saw  a  former
patient, a tall, strapping man in uniform, at a quite abnormal hour. The man
insisted on a consultation and  was admitted. As he walked into the study he
politely clicked his heels to the professor.
     'Have your pains come back?' asked Philip Philipovich pursing his lips.
'Please sit down.'
     'Thank you. No, professor,'  replied his visitor, putting down his  cap
on the  edge of the  desk. 'I'm very  grateful  to you ... No ... I've come,
h'm, on another matter, Philip Philipovich ... in view of  the great respect
I feel .  .  . I've come to ...  er,  warn you. It's obviously nonsense,  of
course. He's simply a scoundrel.' The patient searched in  his briefcase and
took out  a piece of paper. 'It's a  good thing I  was told about this right
away . . .'
     Philip Philipovich slipped a pince-nez over his spectacles and began to
read.  For a  long time he mumbled half-aloud, his expression changing every
moment.  '. .  . also  threatening  to murder  the  chairman  of  the  house
committee, comrade Shvonder, which  shows that he must be keeping a firearm.
And  he makes  counter-revolutionary speeches, and even ordered his domestic
worker,  Zinaida Prokofievna Bunina, to burn Engels  in the stove. He  is an
obvious Menshevik and so is his assistant Ivan Arnoldovich Bormenthal who is
living secretly in his flat without being registered. Signed: P. P. Sharikov
     Sub-Dept. Controller City Cleansing Dept. Countersigned: Shvonder
     Chairman, House Committee. Pestrukhin Secretary, House Committee.
     'May  I keep this?'  asked  Philip  Philipovich,  his face blotchy. 'Or
perhaps you need it so that legal proceedings can be made?'
     'Really, professor.' The patient was  most  offended  and blew out  his
nostrils.  'You seem to regard us  with contempt.  I . . .' And  he began to
puff himself up like a turkeycock.
     'Please forgive  me, my dear  fellow!' mumbled  Philip  Philipovich. 'I
really  didn't mean to offend you. Please don't be angry.  You can't believe
what this creature has done to my nerves . . .'
     'So  I can  imagine,' said  the  patient, quite  mollified. 'But what a
swine! I'd be curious to have a look at him. Moscow is full of stories about
you . . .'
     Philip Philipovich could only  gesture in despair. It was then that the
patient  noticed how hunched the professor was looking and that he seemed to
have recently grown much greyer.



     The crime ripened, then fell like a stone, as usually happens.  With an
uncomfortable feeling round his heart Poligraph Poligraphovich returned that
evening   by  lorry.   Philip  Philipovich's  voice  invited  him  into  the
consulting-room.  Surprised,  Sharikov  entered and  looked  first,  vaguely
frightened, at Bormenthal's steely face, then at Philip Philipovich. A cloud
of  smoke surrounded the  doctor's head  and  his left  hand, trembling very
slightly, held a cigarette and rested on the shiny handle of the obstetrical
chair.
     With ominous calm Philip Philipovich said:
     'Go  and collect your things at once - trousers,  coat, everything  you
need - then get out of this flat!'
     'What is all this?' Sharikov was genuinely astonished. 'Get out of this
flat  - and today,'  repeated  Philip  Philipovich,  frowning  down  at  his
fingernails.
     An evil  spirit  was at  work inside Poligraph Poligraphovich.  It  was
obvious that his end was in sight and  his  time  nearly up, but  he  hurled
himself towards the inevitable and barked in an angry staccato:
     'Like hell  I  will!  You got  to  give me  my rights. I've a  right to
thirty-seven square feet and I'm staying right here.'
     'Get out of  this  flat,' whispered Philip  Philipovich in a  strangled
voice.
     It was Sharikov himself who invited  his own death.  He raised his left
hand,  which stank  most  horribly of cats,  and cocked a  snook  at  Philip
Philipovich. Then with  his right  hand he  drew  a revolver  on Bormenthal.
Bormenthal's cigarette fell like a shooting star. A few seconds later Philip
Philipovich was hopping  about on broken glass and running  from the cabinet
to the couch.  On  it,  spreadeagled  and  croaking,  lay  a  sub-department
controller of  the City  Cleansing Department;  Bormenthal  the surgeon  was
sitting astride his chest and suffocating him with a small white pad.
     After some minutes Bormenthal, with a most unfamiliar  look, walked out
on to the landing and stuck a notice beside the doorbell:
     The Professor regrets that owing to indisposition he  will be unable to
hold consulting hours  today. Please do not disturb the Professor by ringing
the bell.
     With a  gleaming  penknife  he then cut  the bell-cable,  inspected his
scratched  and  bleeding  face  in  the  mirror and his lacerated,  slightly
trembling  hands. Then he went into the kitchen and said to the anxious Zina
and Darya Petrovna:
     'The professor says you mustn't leave the fiat on any account.'
     'No, we won't,' they replied timidly.
     'Now  I must  lock the back  door  and keep the key,'  said Bormenthal,
sidling round the room  and covering his  face  with  his  hand.  'It's only
temporary, not because we don't trust you. But if anybody came you might not
be able to keep them out and we mustn't be disturbed. We're busy.'
     'All right,' replied the two women, turning pale. Bormenthal locked the
back door, locked the front door, locked the door from the corridor into the
hall and his footsteps faded away into the consulting-room.
     Silence  filled the flat, flooding into every comer. Twilight crept in,
dank and sinister and gloomy. Afterwards the neighbours across the courtyard
said that every light burned that evening in the windows of Preobrazhensky's
consulting-room and that they even saw the professor's white skullcap ... It
is  hard to be  sure. When it  was  all over Zina did say, though, that when
Bormenthal and the professor emerged from the consulting-room, there, by the
study fireplace, Ivan Amoldovich  had frightened her to  death. It seems  he
was squatting down  in  front  of the fire and burning one of the blue-bound
notebooks which contained the medical notes on the professor's patients. The
doctor's face, apparently, was quite  green and completely - yes, completely
- scratched to pieces.  And that evening  Philip  Philipovich had  been most
peculiar. And then there was  another thing  -  but maybe that innocent girl
from the flat in Prechistenka Street was talking rubbish . . .
     One  thing, though, was  certain:  there was  silence in the flat  that
evening - total, frightening silence.



     One night, exactly ten days to the day after  the struggle in Professor
Preobrazhensky's consulting-room in his flat on Obukhov  Street, there was a
sharp ring of the doorbell.
     'Criminal police. Open up, please.'
     Footsteps  approached, people knocked and entered until  a considerable
crowd  filled the  brightly-lit waiting-room with  its newly-glazed cabinet.
There  were two in police uniform, one in a black  overcoat  and carrying  a
brief-case; there was  chairman Shvonder, pale and  gloating,  and the youth
who had turned out to  be a woman; there was Fyodor  the porter, Zina, Darya
Petrovna and Bormenthal, half dressed and  embarrassed as he tried  to cover
up his tieless neck.
     The door from the study opened to admit Philip Philipovich. He appeared
in his familiar  blue dressing gown and everybody  could  tell  at once that
over  the past  week Philip Philipovich had begun to  look very much better.
The old  Philip Philipovich,  masterful, energetic  and dignified, now faced
his nocturnal visitors and apologised for appearing in his dressing gown.
     'It  doesn't matter, professor,'  said the man in civilian  clothes, in
great embarrassment. He faltered and then said:
     'I'm sorry to say we have a warrant to  search  your flat and' -the men
stared  uneasily  at Philip Philipovich's moustaches  and  ended: 'to arrest
you, depending on the results of our search.'
     Philip Philipovich frowned and asked:
     'What, may I ask, is the charge, and who is being charged?'
     The man scratched his  cheek  and began  reading from a piece  of paper
from his briefcase.
     'Preobrazhensky,  Bormenthal,  Zinaida  Bunina  and  Darya  Ivanova are
charged   with   the   murder   of   Poligraph   Poligraph-ovich   Sharikov,
sub-department controller. City of Moscow Cleansing Department.'
     The end of his speech was drowned by  Zina's  sobs.  There was  general
movement.
     'I don't understand,' replied Philip Philipovich  with  a regal  shrug.
'Who  is this  Sharikov?  Oh, of  course, you mean my  dog . . . the  one  I
operated on?'
     'I'm sorry, professor,  not a  dog. This happened  when  he  was a man.
That's the trouble.'
     'Because he talked?' asked  Philip Philipovich.  'That doesn't mean  he
was a man. Anyhow, it's irrelevant. Sharik is alive  at this  moment and  no
one has killed him.'
     'Really,  professor?'  said  the  man  in black,  deeply astonished and
raised his eyebrows. 'In that case you must produce him. It's  ten days  now
since  he disappeared and the evidence, if you'll forgive my saying  so,  is
most disquieting.'
     'Doctor Bormenthal, will you please produce Sharik for the  detective,'
ordered Philip Philipovich, pocketing the charge-sheet. Bormenthal went out,
smiling enigmatically.
     As he  returned he  gave a whistle  and from  the door into  the  study
appeared a dog of the most extraordinary appearance. In patches he was bald,
while in other patches his coat had grown.  He entered like a trained circus
dog walking on his hind legs, then dropped on to all fours and looked round.
The waiting-room froze into a sepulchral  silence as tangible as jelly.  The
nightmarish-looking dog with the crimson scar on the forehead stood up again
on his hind legs, grinned and sat down in an armchair.
     The second policeman suddenly crossed  himself with a sweeping  gesture
and in stepping back knocked Zina's legs from under her.
     The man in black, his mouth still wide open, said:
     'What's been going on? ... He worked in the City Cleansing Department .
. .'
     'I  didn't  send  him  there,' answered  Philip  Philipovich.  'He  was
recommended for the job by Mr Shvonder, if I'm not mistaken.'
     'I don't get it,' said the man in black, obviously confused, and turned
to the first policeman. 'Is that him?'
     'Yes,' whispered the policeman, 'it's him all right.'
     'That's him,' came Fyodor's voice, 'except the little devil's got a bit
fatter.'
     'But he talked . . .' the man in black giggled nervously.
     'And  he still talks, though less  and less, so if you want to hear him
talk now's the time, before he stops altogether'.
     'But why?' asked the man in black quietly.
     Philip Philipovich shrugged his shoulders.
     'Science has  not yet found the means of turning animals into people. I
tried,  but  unsuccessfully, as you can see. He talked and then he began  to
revert back to his primitive state. Atavism.'
     'Don't swear  at me,' the dog suddenly barked from  his chair and stood
up.
     The man in black turned instantly pale, dropped his briefcase and began
to fall sideways.  A policeman caught him on  one  side and Fyodor supported
him  from behind. There  was  a  sudden  turmoil, clearly pierced  by  three
sentences:
     Philip Philipovich: 'Give him valerian. He's fainted.'
     Doctor Bormenthal: 'I shall personally throw Shvonder downstairs  if he
ever appears in Professor Preobrazhensky's flat again.'
     And Shvonder said: 'Please enter that remark in the report.'
     The  grey accordion-shaped radiators hissed gently. The blinds shut out
the thick Prechistenka Street night sky with  its  lone star. The great, the
powerful benefactor  of dogs sat in his chair while Sharik lay stretched out
on the carpet beside the leather couch. In the  mornings the  March fog made
the dog's head ache, especially around  the circular scar on his  skull, but
by evening the warmth banished the pain. Now it  was easing all the time and
warm, comfortable thoughts flowed through the dog's mind.
     I've  been very, very lucky, he thought sleepily. Incredibly lucky. I'm
really settled in this flat. Though I'm  not  so sure now about my pedigree.
Not a drop of labrador blood. She was  just a tart, my old grandmother.  God
rest her soul. Certainly they  cut my head around a bit, but who cares. None
of my business, really.
     From the  distance came a tinkle of glass. Bormenthal  was tidying  the
shelves of the cabinet in the consulting-room.
     The grey-haired magician sat and hummed: '  ". . .  to the banks of the
sacred Nile . . ." '
     That evening the dog saw terrible  things. He saw the great roan plunge
his  slippery, rubber-gloved hands into  a  jar  to  fish out a  brain; then
relentlessly,  persistently  the  great  man  pursued  his  search. Slicing,
examining, he frowned and sang:
     ' "To the banks of the sacred Nile . . ." '

Last-modified: Thu, 07 Dec 2000 12:05:42 GMT
Ocenite etot tekst: