Читать книгу A dog's heart (A Monstrous Story) / Собачье сердце (Чудовищная история). Книга для чтения на английском языке - Михаил Булгаков, Михаил Афанасьевич Булгаков - Страница 3

There’s absolutely no reason to learn how to read when you can smell meat a mile away. Nevertheless, if you live in Moscow and you have a modicum of sense in your head, you learn some reading willy-nilly, and without taking any courses. Of the forty thousand Moscow dogs there must only be one total idiot who can’t make out the word “sausage” syllable by syllable. Sharik started learning by colour. He had just turned four months when they hung greenish blue signs all over Moscow with the words “MSPO Meat Trade”[15]. We repeat, none of that is needed because you can smell meat anyway. And there was some confusion once: going by the toxic blue colour, Sharik, whose nose was masked by the petrol fumes of cars, ran into the Golubizner Brothers’ electrical-goods shop on Myasnitskaya Street instead of a butcher shop. There, at the brothers’ shop, the dog felt the sting of insulated wire, which is a lot tougher than a coachman’s whip. That famous moment should be considered the start of Sharik’s education. Back on the pavement, Sharik immediately understood that “blue” doesn’t always mean “meat” and, tucking his tail between his hind legs and howling with pain, he recalled that all the butchers’ signs started on the left with a gold or reddish squat squiggle that looks like a sled: “M”.

Things went more successfully after that. He learnt “A” from “Glavryba”, the fish store on the corner of Mokhovaya, and then the “B” (because it was easier to run over from the tail end of the word for fish, “ryba", since there always was a policeman standing at the beginning of the word).

Tile squares on the façades of corners in Moscow always and inevitably meant “Cheese”. The black tap of a samovar (the letter “Ch”) that started the word stood for the former owner Chichkin, mountains of Dutch red cheese, vicious salesmen who hated dogs, sawdust on the floor and the most vile, stinky Backstein cheese[16].

If someone was playing a concertina – which wasn’t much better than ‘Celeste Aida’ – and it smelt of hotdogs, the first letters on the white signs quite conveniently formed the word “Foul…” which meant: “Foul language not permitted and no tipping[17].” Here brawls cycloned sporadically, people were punched in the face – albeit rarely – while dogs were beaten continually with napkins or boots.

If the windows displayed leathery hanging hams and piles of mandarin oranges, it was a delicatessen. If there were dark bottles with a bad liquid, it was a woof, wow.„w… ine store. The former Yeliseyev Brothers’ store.

The unknown gentleman, who had lured the dog to the door of his luxurious apartment on the second floor, rang and the dog looked up at the big card, black with gold letters, hanging to the side of the wide door with panes of wavy, rosy glass. He combined the first three letters right away: puh-ar-o – “Pro”. But then came a tubby, double-sided bitch of a letter that didn’t stand for anything he knew.[18]

“Could it be proletariat?” wondered Sharik doubtfully. “That can’t be.” He raised his nose and sniffed the fur coat once again, and thought confidently: “No, there’s no smell of the proletariat here. It’s a scholarly word, and God only knows what it means.”

Behind the rosy glass an unexpected and joyful light came on, casting the black card deeper into shadow. The door opened without a sound and a pretty young woman in a white apron and lace cap appeared before dog and man. The former was enveloped in divine warmth, and the woman’s skirt gave off the scent of lily of the valley.

“Now you’re talking, this is it,[19]” thought the dog.

“Please enter, Mr Sharik,” the man invited sarcastically, and Sharik entered reverently, tail waggⁱⁿg.

A great number of objects cluttered the rich entrance. The floor-length mirror that instantly reflected the second bedraggled and scruffy Sharik, the scary antlers up high, the endless fur coats and rubber boots and the opal tulip with electricity on the ceiling – all stuck in his head immediately.

“Where did you pick up this one, Filipp Filippovich?” asked the woman with a smile and helped him remove his heavy coat, lined with dark-brown fox with a bluish tinge. “Lord! What a mangy thing!”

“Nonsense. Where is he mangy?” the gentleman asked severely and gruffly.

Upon removing his fur coat, he appeared in a black suit of English cloth, and a gold chain twinkled happily and subtly across his belly.

“Just wait, stop wriggling, phweet. stop twisting, silly. Hmmm. That’s not mange. will you stand still, damn you!. Hmmm. Ah! It’s a burn. What bastard scalded you? Eh? Stand still, will you!”

“The cook, the criminal. The cook!” The dog spoke with his piteous eyes and whined a bit.

“Zina,” ordered the man, “bring him to the examining room and me my coat!”

The woman whistled and clicked her fingers and the dog, after a brief hesitation, followed her. Together, they entered a narrow, dimly lit corridor, passed a lacquered door and came to the end, and then went left and ended up in a dark cubbyhole, which instantly displeased the dog by its evil smell. The darkness clicked and turned into blinding daylight, and it sparkled, lit up, and turned white from all sides.

“Oh, no,” the dog howled mentally, “sorry, not for me! I get it! Damn them and their sausage! They’ve lured me into a dog hospital. They’ll force me to eat castor oil and they’ll cut up my side with knives, and it hurts too much to touch as it is!”

“Hey, no! Where do you think you’re going!” shouted the one called Zina.

The dog twisted away, coiled up, and then hit the door with its healthy side so hard that the whole apartment shuddered. Then he flew back, spun around in place like a top, and knocked over a white bucket that scattered clumps of cotton wool. As he spun, walls flew by, fitted with cupboards of gleaming instruments, and the white apron and distorted female face jumped up.

“Where are you going, you shaggy devil!” Zina shouted desperately. “Damn you!”

“Where’s the back stairs?” thought the dog. He reversed and smashed himself against the glass, hoping that it was a second door. A cloud of glass shards flew out with thunder and ringing, a tubby jar with reddish crap jumped out, spilling all over the floor and stinking up the room. The real door swung open.

“Stop! B-bastard!” The man shouted, jumping around in his white coat with only one sleeve on, and grabbed the dog by its legs. “Zina, hold him by the scruff of his neck, the scoundrel!”

“Wow! What a dog!”

The door opened even wider and another person of the male gender in a white coat burst in. Crushing broken glass, he rushed not towards the dog but the cupboard, opened it, and the whole room was filled with a sweet and nauseating odour. Then the person fell onto the dog with his belly, and the dog took pleasure in nipping him above the shoelaces. The person gasped but held on. The nauseating liquid filled the dog’s breathing and everything in his head spun, then he couldn’t feel his legs and he slid off somewhere sideways, crookedly.

“Thanks, it’s over,” he thought dreamily, falling right on the sharp pieces of glass, “farewell, Moscow! I’ll never see Chichkin and proletarians and Cracow sausages again! I’m going to Heaven for my canine suffering. Fellows, knackers, why did you do me in?”

And then he fell over on his side completely and croaked.

When he was resurrected, his head spun lightly and he had a bit of nausea in his belly, but it was if he had no side; his side was deliciously silent. The dog half-opened his right eye and out of the corner saw that he was tightly bandaged across his sides and belly. “They had their way after all[20], the sons-of-bitches,” he thought woozily, “but cleverly, you have to give them that.”

“From Seville to Granada… in the quiet twilight of the nights,”[21] a distracted falsetto voice sang above him.

The dog was surprised; he opened both eyes fully and saw two steps away from him a man’s foot on a white stool. The trouser leg and long underpants were hiked up and the bare yellow shin was smeared with dried blood and iodine.

“Saints alive!” thought the dog. “That must be where I bit him. My work. They’ll whip me now!”

“‘Serenades abound, swords clash all around!’ Why did you bite a doctor, you mutt? Eh? Why did you break the glass? Eh?”

“Ooo-ooo-ooo,” the dog whimpered piteously.

“Well, all right, you’re conscious, so just lie there, you dummy.”

“How did you manage to lure such a nervous dog, Filipp Filippovich?” asked a pleasant male voice, and the knit underpants slid down. Tobacco smoke filled the air, and glass bottles rattled in the cupboard.

“With kindness. It’s the only way possible in dealing with a living creature. Terror won’t work at all with an animal, at whatever level of development it may be. I’ve said it before and I say it again and will continue saying it. They’re wrong to think that terror will help them. No, no, it won’t, whatever its colour: white, red or even brown! Terror paralyses the nervous system completely. Zina! I bought this wastrel a rouble and forty copecks’ worth of Cracow sausage. Be so kind as to feed him when he’s no longer nauseated.”

Broken glass tinkled as it was swept up, and a woman’s voice noted flirtatiously: “Cracow sausage! God, you should have gotten him two copecks’ worth of scraps at the butcher! I’ll eat the Cracow sausage myself.”

“Just try! I’ll eat you! It’s poison for the human stomach. A grown young woman and you’re like a baby sticking all kinds of nasty things in your mouth. Don’t you dare! I’m warning you, neither Doctor Bormental nor I will bother with you when you get the runs[22]. ‘Everyone who says that another is your match…’”

Soft staccato bells jingled throughout the apartment, and in the distance voices sounded frequently in the entrance. The telephone rang. Zina vanished.

Filipp Filippovich tossed his cigarette butt in the bucket, buttoned his coat, smoothed his luxurious moustache in the mirror on the wall and called the dog.

“Phweet, phweet… come on, come on, it’s fine! Let’s go receive.”

The dog got up on unsteady legs, swayed and trembled, but quickly got his bearings[23] and followed the fluttering coat-tails of Filipp Filippovich. Once again the dog crossed the narrow corridor, but now he saw that it was brightly lit from above. When the lacquered door opened, he followed Filipp Filippovich into the office, which blinded the dog with its interior. First of all, it was blazing with light: it burned on the plaster ornamented ceiling, it burned on the desk, it burned on the wall and in the cupboard glass. Light poured over a myriad of objects, of which the most amusing was an enormous owl, sitting on a branch on the wall.

“Stay,” ordered Filipp Filippovich.

The carved door opposite opened and the bitten man came in, and now in the bright light revealed as a very handsome young fellow with a pointy beard, and handed over a piece of paper, muttering, “The previous.”

He vanished silently, while Filipp Filippovich smoothed the tails of his lab coat and sat behind the huge desk, thereby becoming incredibly important and imposing.

“No, this isn’t a hospital, I’ve landed in some other place,” the dog thought in confusion and flopped on the carpet by the heavy leather sofa, “and we’ll figure out that owl too.”

The door opened softly and someone came in, astonishing the dog enough to make him yap, but very diffidently.

“Quiet! Well, well, well! You’re unrecognizable, dear fellow.”

The newcomer bowed very respectfully and awkwardly to Filipp Filippovich.

“Hee-hee! You are a magician and sorcerer, professor,” he muttered in embarrassment.

“Take off your pants, dear fellow,” Filipp Filippovich commanded and stood up.

“Jesus!” thought the dog. “What a fruitcake!”

The fruitcake’s head was covered with completely green hair, and at the back it had a rusty tobacco shimmer. Wrinkles spread out on the fruitcake’s face, but his complexion was as pink as a baby’s. His left leg couldn’t bend and he had to drag it along the carpet, but the right one jerked like a toy nutcracker. On the lapel of his magnificent jacket, a precious stone protruded like an eye.

The dog was so interested that his nausea passed.

“Yip, yip,” he barked softly.

“Quiet! How are you sleeping, dear fellow?”

“Hee-hee… Are we alone, professor? It’s indescribable,” the visitor said in embarrassment. “Parole d'honneur[24], I’ve seen nothing like it for twenty-five years!” The subject touched the button of his trousers. “Can you believe it, Professor? Every night there are herds of naked girls. I am positively delighted. You are a sorcerer!”

“Hmmm,” grunted Filipp Filippovich in concern, peering into his guest’s pupils.

The latter had finally mastered the buttons and removed his striped trousers. Beneath them were unimaginable underpants. They were cream-coloured, with embroidered black silk cats, and they smelt of perfume. The dog couldn’t resist the cats and barked, making the subject jump.

“Ai!”

“I’ll whip you! Don’t be afraid, he doesn’t bite.” “I don’t bite?” the dog was surprised.

A small envelope, with a picture of a beautiful girl with loosened tresses, fell out of the trousers pocket onto the floor. The subject jumped up, bent over, picked it up and blushed a deep red.

“You’d better watch it,” Filipp Filippovich warned grimly, wagging his finger, “Do be careful not to abuse it!”

‘I’m not abu…” the subject muttered in embarrassment, still undressing. “This was just an experiment, dear Professor.”

“Well, and what were the results?” Filipp Filippovich asked sternly.

The subject waved his arm ecstatically.

“In twenty-five years, I swear to God, Professor, there was nothing like it! The last time was in 1899 in Paris on the Rue de la Paix[25].”

“And why have you turned green?”

The visitor’s face darkened.

“That damned Zhirkost![26] You cannot imagine what those useless louts fobbed off on me instead of dye. Just look,” he babbled, his eyes searching for a mirror. “It’s terrible! They should be punched in the face,” he added, growing angrier. “What I am supposed to do now, Professor?” he asked snivelling.

“Hm… Shave it all off.”

“Professor!” the visitor exclaimed piteously, “It will grow back grey again! Besides which, I won’t be able to show my face at work, I’ve been out three days now as it is. The car comes for me and I send it away. Oh, Professor, if you could discover a way of rejuvenating hair as well!”

“Not right away, not right away, dear fellow,” muttered Filipp Filippovich.

Bending over, he examined the patient’s bare belly with glistening eyes. “Well, it’s lovely, everything is perfectly fine… I didn’t expect such a fine result, truth to tell. ‘Lots of blood and lots of songs!’. Get dressed, dear fellow!”

“‘And for the loveliest of all!..’ the patient sang the next line in a voice as resonant as a frying pan and, glowing, started dressing. Having brought himself back to order, hopping and exuding perfume, he counted out a wad of white banknotes for Filipp Filippovich and tenderly pressed both of his hands.

“You need not return for two weeks,” Filipp Filippovich said, “but I do ask that you be careful.”

“Professor!” from beyond the door, in ecstasy, the guest exclaimed. “Do not worry in the least.” He giggled sweetly and vanished.

The tinkling bell flew through the apartment, the lacquered door opened, the bitten one entered, handing Filipp Filippovich a piece of paper and announced: “The dates are incorrectly given. Probably 54–55. Heart tones low.”

He vanished and was replaced by a rustling lady with a hat at a rakish angle and a sparkling necklace on her flabby and wrinkled neck. Terrible black bags sagged beneath her eyes, but her cheeks were a doll’s rouge colour.

She was very agitated.

“Madam! How old are you?” Filipp Filippovich asked very severely.

The lady took flight and even paled beneath the crust of rouge.

“I, Professor… I swear, if you only knew, my drama…”

“How old, Madam?” Filipp Filippovich repeated even more severely.

“Honestly. well, forty-five-”

“Madam!” Filipp Filippovich cried out. “People are waiting! Don’t hold me up, please, you are not the only one!”

The lady’s bosom heaved mightily.

“I’ll tell you alone, as a luminary of science, but I swear, it is so terrible-”

“How old are you?” Filipp Filippovich demanded angrily and squeakily, and his glasses flashed.

“Fifty-one,” the lady replied, cowering in fear.

“Take off your pants, Madame[27],” Filipp Filippovich said in relief and indicated a tall white scaffold in the corner.

“I swear, Professor,” the lady muttered, undoing some snaps on her belt with trembling fingers, “That Moritz… I am confessing to you, hiding nothing…”

“‘From Seville to Granada,’” Filipp Filippovich sang distractedly and stepped on the pedal under the marble sink. Water poured noisily.

“I swear to God!” the lady said, and live spots of colour broke through the artificial ones on her cheeks, “I know that this is my last passion. He’s such a scoundrel! Oh, Professor! He’s a card shark, all of Moscow knows it. He can’t let a single lousy model get by. He’s so devilishly young!” The lady mumbled and pulled out a crumpled lacy clump from beneath her rustling skirts.

The dog was completely confused and everything went belly up in his head.

“The hell with you,” he thought dimly, resting his head on his paws and falling asleep from the shame, “I won’t even try to understand what this is, since I won’t get it anyway.”

He was awaked by a ringing sound and saw that Filipp Filippovich had tossed some glowing tubes into a basin.

The spotted lady, pressing her hands to her breast, gazed hopefully at Filipp Filippovich. He frowned importantly and, sitting at his desk, made a notation.

“Madame, I will transplant ape ovaries in you,” he announced and looked severe.

“Ah, Professor, must it be an ape?”

“Yes,” Filipp Filippovich replied inexorably.

“When will the operation take place?” the lady asked in a weak voice, turning pale.

“‘From Seville to Granada’… hm… Monday. You will check into the clinic in the morning and my assistant will prepare you.”

“Ah, I don’t want to be in the clinic. Can’t you do it here, Professor?”

“You see, I do surgery here only in extreme situations. It will be very expensive, five thousand.”

“I’m willing, Professor!”

The water thundered again, the feathered hat billowed, and then a head as bald as a plate appeared and embraced Filipp Filippovich. The dog dozed, the nausea had passed, and the dog enjoyed the calmed side and warmth, even snored a little and had time for a bit of a pleasant dream: he had torn a whole bunch of feathers from the owl’s tail. Then an agitated voice bleated overhead:

“I am a well-known figure, Professor! What do I do now?”

“Gentlemen!” Filipp Filippovich shouted in outrage. “You can’t behave this way! You have to control yourself! How old is she?”

“Fourteen, Professor… You realize that the publicity will destroy me. I’m supposed to be sent to London on business any day now.”

“I’m not a lawyer, dear fellow. So, wait two years and marry her.”

“I’m married, Professor!”

“Ah, gentlemen, gentlemen!”

Doors opened, faces changed, instruments clattered in the cupboard, and Filipp Filippovich worked without stop.

“A vile apartment,” the dog thought, “but how good it is here! What the hell did he need me for? Is he really going to let me live? What a weirdo! A single wink from him and he’d get such a fine dog it would take your breath away! Maybe I’m handsome too. It’s my good luck! But the owl is garbage. Arrogant.”

The dog woke up at last late in the evening, when the bells stopped and just at the instant when the door let in special visitors. There were four at once. All young people, and all dressed very modestly.

“What do these want?” the dog thought with surprise. Filipp Filippovich greeted them with much greater hostility. He stood at his desk and regarded them like a general looking at the enemy. The nostrils of his aquiline nose flared. The arrivals shuffled their feet on the carpet.

“We are here, Professor,” said the one with a topknot of about a half foot of thick, curly black hair, “on this matter-”

“Gentlemen, you shouldn’t go around without galoshes in this weather,” Filipp Filippovich interrupted edifyingly. “First, you will catch cold, and second, you’ve left tracks on my carpets, and all my carpets are Persian.”

The one with the topknot shut up and all four stared in astonishment at Filipp Filippovich. The silence extended to several seconds and it was broken by Filipp Filippovich’s fingers drumming on the painted wooden plate on his desk.

“First of all, we’re not gentlemen,” said the youngest of the four, who had a peachy look.

“First of all,” interrupting him as well, Filipp Filippovich asked, “are you a man or a woman?”

The four shut up and gaped once again. This time the first one, with the hair, responded. “What difference does it make, Comrade?” he asked haughtily.

“I’m a woman,” admitted the peachy youth in the leather jacket and blushed mightily. After him, one of the other arrivals, a blond man in a tall fur hat, blushed dark red for some reason.

“In that case, you may keep your cap on; but you, gracious sir, I ask to remove your headgear,” Filipp Filippovich said imposingly.

“I’m not your ‘gracious sir’,” the blond youth muttered in embarrassment, removing his hat.

“We have come to you-” the dark-haired one began again.

“First of all, who is this ‘we’?”

“We are the new managing board of our building,” the dark one said with contained fury. “I am Shvonder, she is Vyazemskaya, he is Comrade Pestrukhin, and Sharovkin. And so we-”

“You’re the ones who have been moved into the apartment of Fyodor Pavlovich Sablin?”

“We are,” Shvonder replied.

“God! The Kalabukhov house is doomed!” Filipp Filippovich exclaimed in despair and threw his hands up in the air.

“What are you laughing about, Professor?”

“I’m not laughing! I’m in complete despair!” shouted Filipp Filippovich. “What will happen to the central heating now?”

“You are mocking us, Professor Preobrazhensky!”

“What business brings you here? Make it fast, I’m on my way to dinner.”

“We, the Building Committee,” Shvonder said with hatred, “have come to you after the general meeting of the residents of our building, on the agenda of which was the question of consolidating the apartments.”

“Where was this agenda?” screamed Filipp Filippovich. “Make an effort to express your ideas more clearly.”

“The question of consolidating-”

“Enough! I understand! You know that by the resolution of 12th August of this year my apartment is exempt from all and any consolidation and resettlement?”

“We know,” Shvonder replied, “but the general meeting examined your case and came to the conclusion that in particular and on the whole you occupy an excessive space. Completely excessive. You live alone in seven rooms.”

“I live and work alone in seven rooms,” replied Filipp Filippovich, “and I would like to have an eighth. I need it as a library.”

The foursome froze.

“An eighth! Ho-ho-ho,” said the blond man deprived of his headgear, “that’s really something!”

“It’s indescribable!” explained the youth who turned out to be a girl.

“I have a reception – note that it is also the library – a dining room and my study – that’s three. Examining room, four. Operating room, five. My bedroom makes six, and the maids’ room is seven. Basically, it’s not enough… But that’s not important. My apartment is exempt and that’s the end of the conversation. May I go to dinner?”

“Sorry,” said the fourth, who looked like a sturdy beetle.

“Sorry,” Shvonder interrupted, “it is precisely the dining room and examining room that we came to discuss. The general meeting asks you voluntarily, as part of labour discipline, to give up the dining room. No one has dining rooms in Moscow anymore.”

“Not even Isadora Duncan!”[28] the woman cried out resoundingly.

Something happened to Filipp Filippovich, the consequence of which was a gentle reddening of the face, but he did not utter a sound, waiting for what would come next.

“And the examining room too,” Shvonder continued. “The examining room can easily be combined with the study.”

“Ah-ha,” said Filipp Filippovich in a strange voice. “And where am I supposed to partake of meals?”

“In the bedroom,” all four chorused.

Filipp Filippovich’s crimson colour took on a greyish cast.

“Take food in the bedroom,” he said in a slightly stifled voice, “read in the examining room, dress in the reception room, operate in the maid’s room, and examine people in the dining room? It’s quite possible that Isadora Duncan does just that. Maybe she dines in the study and cuts up rabbits in the bathroom. Perhaps. But I am not Isadora Duncan!” he burst out, and his purple colour turned yellow. “I will eat in the dining room and operate in the operating room! Tell this to the general meeting, and I entreat you humbly to return to your affairs and allow me to take food where all normal people do – that is, in the dining room, and not in the entrance and not in the nursery.”

“Then, Professor, in view of your stubborn resistance,” said agitated Shvonder, “we will file a complaint against you higher up.”

“Aha,” Filipp Filippovich said, “is that so?” His voice took on a suspiciously polite tone. “I’ll ask you to wait a minute.”

“That’s some guy,” thought the dog delightedly. “Just like me. Oh, he’s going to nip them now, oh, he will! I don’t know how yet, but he’ll nip them!.. Hit them! Take that long-legged one right above the boot on his knee tendon. Grrrrr.”

Filipp Filippovich picked up the telephone receiver with a bang and said this into it: “Please. yes. thank you. Vitaly Alexandrovich, please. Professor Preobrazhensky. Vitaly Alexandrovich? Very glad to find you in. Thank you, I’m fine. Vitaly Alexandrovich, your operation is being cancelled. What? No, cancelled completely, just like all the other operations. Here is why: I am stopping work in Moscow and in Russia in general. Four people just came in to see me, one of them is a woman dressed as a man and two are armed with revolvers, and they terrorized me in my apartment with the goal of taking part of it away-”

“Excuse me, Professor,” Shvonder began, his expression changed.

“Sorry. I do not have the opportunity to repeat everything they said, I’m not interested in nonsense. It is enough to say that they proposed I give up my examining room, in other words, making it necessary to operate on you where I have been slaughtering rabbits until now. In such conditions I not only cannot work but I do not have the right to work. Therefore, I am ending my activity, closing up the apartment, and moving to Sochi. I can turn over the keys to Shvonder, let him perform the operations.”

The foursome froze. Snow melted on their boots.

“What else can I do?… I’m very unhappy about it myself. What? Oh, no, Vitaly Alexandrovich! Oh no! I will not continue this way. My patience has run out. This is the second time since August. What? Hm… As you wish. But at least. But only on this condition: from whomever, whenever, whatever, but it must be a paper that will keep Shvonder and everyone else from even approaching the door to my apartment. A final paper. Factual. Real. A seal. So that my name is not even mentioned. Of course. I am dead to them. Yes, yes. Please. Who? Aha. Well, that’s better. Aha. All right. I’ll pass the phone over. Please be so kind,” Filipp Filippovich said in a snake-like voice, “someone wants to speak to you.”

“Excuse me, Professor,” Shvonder said, flaring up and then fading, “you perverted our words.”

“I will ask you not to use such expressions.”

Shvonder distractedly took the receiver and said, “I’m listening. Yes. chairman of the BuildCom. We were acting in accordance with the rules… the professor is in a completely exceptional situation as it is. We know about his work. we were going to leave an entire five rooms. well, all right. if that’s the case. all right…”

Completely red, he hung up and turned.

“He really showed him! What a guy!” the dog thought in delight. “Does he know some special word? You can beat me all you like now, but I’m not ever leaving here!”

Three of them, mouths agape, stared at the humiliated Shvonder.

“This is shameful,” he muttered diffidently.

“If we were to have a discussion now,” the woman began, excited and with flaming cheeks, “I would prove to Vitaly Alexandrovich…”

“Forgive me, you’re not planning to open the discussion this minute, are you?” Filipp Filippovich asked politely.

The woman’s eyes burned.

“I understand your irony, Professor, we will be leaving. Only. As chairman of the cultural section of the building-”

“Chair-wo-man,” Filipp Filippovich corrected.

“I want to ask you,” and here the woman pulled out several bright and snow-sodden magazines from inside her coat, “to buy a few magazines to help the children of France. Half a rouble each.”

“No, I won’t,” Filipp Filippovich replied brusquely, squinting at the magazines.

Total astonishment showed on their faces, and the woman’s complexion took on a cranberry hue.

“Why are you refusing?”

“I don’t want to.”

“Don’t you feel sympathy for the children of France?”

“I do.”

“Do you begrudge the fifty copecks?”

“No.”

“Then why?”

“I don’t want to.”

A silence ensued.

“You know, Professor,” said the girl after a deep sigh, “If you weren’t a European luminary and you weren’t protected in the most outrageous manner (the blond man tugged at the hem of her jacket, but she waved him off) by people whom, I am certain, we will discover, you should be arrested!”

“For what exactly?” Filipp Filippovich asked with curiosity.

“You hate the proletariat!” the woman said hotly.

“Yes, I don’t like the proletariat,” Filipp Filippovich agreed sadly and pressed a button. A bell rang somewhere. The door to the hallway opened.

“Zina,” Filipp Filippovich shouted. “Serve dinner. Do you mind, gentlemen?”

The foursome silently left the study, silently went through the reception, silently through the entrance, and behind them came the sound of the front door shutting heavily and resoundingly.

The dog stood on his hind legs and performed a kind of prayer dance before Filipp Filippovich.