Читать книгу Heart of a Dog - Mikhail Bulgakov - Страница 6

I

Whoo-oo-oo-oo-hooh-hoo-oo! Oh, look at me, I am perishing in this gateway. The blizzard roars a prayer for the dying, and I howl with it. I am finished, finished. That bastard in the dirty cap—the cook of the Normal Diet Cafeteria for employees of the People’s Central Economic Soviet—threw boiling water at me and scalded my left side. The scum, and he calls himself a proletarian! Lord, oh lord, how it hurts! My side is cooked to the bone. And now I howl and howl, but what’s the good of howling?

What harm did I do him? Would the People’s Economic Soviet get any poorer if I rooted in the garbage heap? The greedy brute! Take a look at that mug of his sometimes—it’s wider than it’s long. A crook with a brass jowl. Ah, people, people! It was at noontime that Dirty Cap gave me a taste of boiling water, and now it’s getting dark, it must be about four in the afternoon, judging from the smell of onions from the Prechistenka firehouse. The firemen get kasha for supper, as you know. But kasha is the last thing I’d eat, like mushrooms. However, some mutts of my acquaintance, from the Prechistenka, have told me that at the Bar-Restaurant on Neglinny people gobble a fancy dish—mushrooms en sauce piquant—at three rubles and

seventy-five kopeks a portion. To each his own—to me it is like licking galoshes! Ooh-oo-oo-oo-oo . . .

My side hurts dreadfully, and I can see my future quite clearly: tomorrow I’ll have sores, and, I ask you, what am I going to cure them with? In summertime, you can run down to Sokolniki Park. There is a special kind of grass there, excellent grass. Besides, you can gorge yourself on free sausage ends. And there’s the greasy paper left all over by the citizens—lick it to your heart’s content! And if it weren’t for that nuisance who sings “Celeste Aida” in the field under the moon so that your heart sinks, it would be altogether perfect. But where can you go now? Were you kicked with a boot? You were. Were you hit with a brick in the ribs? Time and again. I’ve tasted everything, but I’ve made peace with my fate, and if I’m whining now, it’s only because of the pain and the cold—because my spirit hasn’t yet gone out of my body. . . . A dog is hard to kill, his spirit clings to life.

But my body is broken and battered, it’s taken its share of punishment from people. And the worst of it is that the boiling water he slopped over me ate right through the fur, and now my left side is without protection of any kind. I can very easily contract pneumonia, and once I do, my dear citizens, I’ll die of hunger. With pneumonia, you’re supposed to lie under the stairs in a front hallway. But who will run around for me, a sick bachelor dog, and look for sustenance in garbage heaps? Once my lung is affected, I’ll be crawling on my belly, feeble as a pup, and anyone can knock the daylight out of me with a stick. And then the janitors with their badges will grab me by the feet and throw me on the garbage collector’s cart.

Of all the proletarians, janitors are the worst trash. Human dregs—the lowest category. Cooks can be of all sorts. For example, the late Vlas from Prechistenka.

How many lives he saved! Because the main thing is to get a bite to eat when you’re sick. All the old dogs still talk of how Vlas would throw them a bone, and with a solid chunk of meat on it. May he be blessed for it in the Heavenly Kingdom—a real personality he was, the gentry’s cook for the Counts Tolstoy, not one of those nobodies from the Soviet of Normal Diet. The things they do in that Normal Diet, it’s more than a dog’s brain can comprehend. Those scoundrels make soup of stinking corned beef, and the poor wretches don’t know what they’re eating. They come running, gobbling it down, lapping it up.

Take that little typist, ninth grade, getting four and a half chervontsy. True enough, her lover will give her a pair of Persian cotton stockings once in a while. But what won’t she have to put up with for that Persian cotton? You may be sure he will not take her in some ordinary way, no, he’ll insist on French love. They’re scum, those Frenchmen, between you and me. Although they know how to eat, and everything with red wine. Yes . . . So she’ll come running, this little typist. On four and a half chervontsy, after all, you can’t afford to eat at the Bar-Restaurant. She doesn’t even have enough for a movie, and a movie is the only solace in a woman’s life. She shudders and makes faces, but she puts away the stinking soup. . . . Just to think of it: a two-course meal for forty kopeks; and both courses together aren’t worth fifteen kopeks, because the manager has pocketed the other twenty-five. And is that the kind of nourishment she needs? The tip of her right lung isn’t quite right, and she has female trouble from that French love of his, and they’ve deducted from her wages at work, and fed her putrid meat at the cafeteria. But there she is, there she is . . . running toward the gateway in her lover’s stockings. Her feet are cold, her stomach’s cold because her fur’s

like mine now, and her panties give no warmth, a bit of lacy fluff. For her lover’s sake. Let her just try and put on flannel panties, and he’ll yell: but how inelegant you are! I’m fed up with my Matrena, I’ve had enough of flannel pants, it’s my turn to have some fun in life. I’m chairman now, and whatever I filch, all of it goes for female flesh, for lobster tails, for Abrau-D’urso wine. Because I’ve been starved long enough in my youth, I’ve had it, and there’s no life after death.

I am sorry for her, so sorry! But I’m even sorrier for myself. I’m not saying this out of selfishness, but because our conditions really don’t compare. At least, she is warm at home, and I, I . . . Where can I go? Oo-oo-oo-ooh!

“Tsk, tsk, tsk ! Sharik, hey, Sharik . . . Why are you whimpering, poor beast? Who hurt you? Ah-h!”

The wind, that raging witch, rattled the gate and boxed the young lady on the ear with its broom. It blew up her skirt above her knees, baring the cream-colored stockings and a narrow strip of the poorly laundered lace panties. It drowned out her words and swept across the dog.

“Good God . . . What weather . . . Oh . . . And my stomach hurts. It’s that corned beef, that corned beef! When will it all end?”

Ducking her head, the young lady threw herself into attack, broke through the gates, and out into the street; the blizzard began to spin and spin her around, push her this way and that, till she became a column of swirling snow and disappeared.

And the dog remained in the gateway. Suffering from his mutilated side, he pressed himself to the cold wall, gasped for air, and firmly decided that he would not go anywhere from there, he’d die right there in the gateway. Despair overwhelmed him. He felt so bitter and sore at heart, so lonely and terrified, that tiny dog’s tears like little bubbles exuded from his eyes and dried at once. Frozen tufts of fur hung from his mangled side, and among them the bare scalded spots showed ominously red. How senseless, stupid, and cruel cooks are. “Sharik” she called him. . . . “Little Ball” . . . What kind of a “Sharik” is he, anyway? Sharik is somebody round, plump, silly, a son of aristocratic parents who gobbles oatmeal, and he is shaggy, lanky, tattered, skinny as a rail, a homeless mutt. But thanks for a kind word, anyway.

The door of the brightly lit store across the street swung open and a citizen came out of it. Yes, precisely, a citizen, not a comrade. Or even, to be more exact, a gentleman. The closer he came, the clearer it was.

A gentleman. Do you think I judge by the coat? Nonsense. Many proletarians are also wearing coats nowadays. True, their collars aren’t quite like this one, naturally. But from a distance it is easy to confuse them. No, it is the eyes I’m talking about. When you look at the eyes, you can’t mistake a man, from near or far. Oh, the eyes are an important thing. Like a barometer. You can see everything in them—the man whose soul is dry as dust, the man who’ll never kick you in the ribs with the tip of his boot, and the man who is afraid of everything himself. It’s the last kind, the lickspittle, whom it is sometimes a pleasure to grab by the ankle. Afraid? Get it, then. If you’re afraid, you must deserve it. . . . Rr-r-r . . . Rr-r-r! . . .

The gentleman confidently crossed the street wrapped in a column of swirling snow and stepped into the gateway. Oh, yes, you can tell everything about him. This one won’t gobble moldy corned beef, and if anybody serves it to him, he’ll raise hell, he’ll write to the newspapers: “I, Philip Philippovich, was fed such and such.”

He is coming closer and closer. This one eats well and does not steal. He won’t kick you, but he isn’t afraid of anything himself. And he is not afraid because he is never hungry. He is a gentleman engaged in mental work, with a sculptured, pointed goatee and a gray, fluffy, dashing mustache, like those worn by the old French knights. But the smell he spreads through the snow is rotten, a hospital smell. And cigars.

What devil, do you think, could have brought him to the Central Economic Administration cooperative? There he is, right by me . . . What is he waiting for? Oo-oo-oo-oo . . . What could he have bought in that shabby little store, isn’t Okhotny Ryad enough for him? What’s that? Sausage! Sir, if you could see what this sausage is made of, you’d never come near that store. Better give it to me.

The dog gathered his last remnant of strength and crawled in a frenzy from under the gateway to the sidewalk. The blizzard clattered over his head like gunshots, and swept up the huge letters on a canvas placard, IS REJUVENATION POSSIBLE?

Naturally, it’s possible. The smell rejuvenated me, lifted me from my belly, contracted my stomach, empty for the last two days, with fiery spasms. The smell that conquered the hospital smells, the heavenly smell of chopped horsemeat with garlic and pepper. I sense, I know—the sausage is in the right-hand pocket of his overcoat. He stands over me. Oh, my lord and master! Glance at me. I am dying. We have the souls of slaves, and a wretched fate!

The dog crawled on his belly like a snake, weeping bitter tears. Observe the cook’s work. But you’ll never give me anything. Oh, I know the rich very well! But actually, what do you need it for? What do you want with putrid horsemeat? You’ll never get such poison as they sell you at the Moscow Agricultural Industries stores anywhere else. And you have had your lunch today, you, a personage of world importance, thanks to male sex glands. Oo-oo-oo-oo . . . What’s happening in this world? But it seems too early to die, and despair is truly a sin. I must lick his hands, there’s nothing else left.

The mysterious gentleman bent over the dog, the gold rims of his glasses flashed, and he took a long, white package from his right pocket. Without removing his brown gloves, he unwrapped the paper, which was immediately snatched up by the blizzard, and broke off a piece of what is known as “special Cracow sausage.” And he held it out to the dog. Oh, generous soul! Oo-oo-oo!

“Whuit-whuit,” the gentleman whistled and added in the sternest tone: “Take it! Sharik, Sharik!”

Sharik again. They’d christened me. But call me what you will. For such an exceptional deed!

The dog instantly pulled off the skin, sank his teeth with a sob into the Cracow sausage, and gobbled it up in a wink. And almost choked to tears on the sausage and the snow, because in his greed he had almost swallowed the cord. I’ll lick your hand now, again, again. I kiss your trousers, my benefactor!

“Enough for now . . .” The gentleman spoke curtly, as though issuing commands. He bent down to Sharik, peered into his eyes, and suddenly passed his gloved hand intimately and caressingly over Sharik’s belly.

“Ah,” he said significantly. “No collar. That’s fine, you’re just what I need. Come on, follow me.” He snapped his fingers, “Whuit, whuit!”

Follow you? Why, to the end of the world. You may kick me with your fine suede shoes, I wouldn’t say a word.

The street lights gleamed all along the Prechistenka. His side ached intolerably, but Sharik forgot the pain from time to time, possessed by a single thought: he must not lose the wonderful vision in the overcoat in the crowd, he must do something to express his love and devotion. And he expressed it seven times along the stretch of Prechistenka up to Obukhov Lane. At Dead Man’s Alley he kissed the man’s overshoe. He cleared the way for him. Once he frightened a lady so badly with his wild howl that she plopped down on a fire pump. Twice he whimpered, to keep alive the man’s sympathy for him.

A mangy stray torn, pretending to be Siberian, dived out from behind a drainpipe; he had caught a whiff of the sausage despite the storm. Sharik went blind with rage at the thought that the rich eccentric who picked up wounded mutts in gateways might take it into his head to bring along that thief as well, and then he’d be obliged to share the product of the Moscow Agricultural Industries with him. He snapped his teeth at the torn so furiously that the torn shot up the drainpipe to the second story, hissing like a torn hose. Gr-r-r-r . . . Wow! Feed every ragged tramp hanging around the Prechistenka !

The gentleman appreciated his devotion: as they reached the firehouse, he stopped by the window from which the pleasant rumbling of a French horn could be heard and rewarded him with a second piece, a bit smaller, just a couple of ounces.

Ah, the silly man. He’s trying to tempt me on. Don’t worry, I won’t run off. I’ll follow you anywhere you say.

“Whuit-whuit-whuit! Here!”

Obukhov Lane? Certainly. I know the lane very well.

“Whuit-whuit!”

Here? With plea . . . Oh, no, if you don’t mind. No. There’s a doorman here. And there’s nothing worse in the world. Much more dangerous than janitors. A thoroughly hateful breed. Even viler than toms. Murderers in gold braid.

“Don’t be afraid, come.”

“How do you do, Philip Philippovich?”

“Hello, Fyodor.”

That’s a man for you! Heavens, to whom has my dog’s fate brought me? What sort of personage is this who can bring dogs from the street past doormen into the house? Look at that scoundrel—not a sound, not a move! True, his eyes are chilly, but on the whole he is indifferent under that gold-braided cap. As if everything’s just as it should be. He respects the gentleman, and how he respects him! Well, and I am with him, and walk in after him. Didn’t dare to touch me, did you? Put that in your craw. Wouldn’t I love to sink my teeth into your calloused proletarian foot! For all we’ve suffered from your kind. How many times did you bloody my nose with a broom, eh?

“Come on, come on.”

I understand, I understand, don’t worry. Wherever you go, I’ll follow. Just show the way, I won’t fall back, despite my miserable side.

From the staircase, calling down: “Were there no letters for me, Fyodor?”

From below, up the stairs, deferentially: “No, Sir, Philip Philippovich.” Then confidentially, intimately, in a lowered voice, “They’ve moved in some more tenants, settled them in Number Three.”

The lordly benefactor of dogs turned sharply on the step, bent over the rail and asked in a horrified voice:

“Real-ly?”

His eyes became round and his mustache bristled.

The doorman turned up his face, put his cupped hand to his lips, and confirmed it:

“Yes, sir, four of them.”

“Good God! I can imagine what bedlam they’ll have in the apartment now. And what do they say?”

“Why, nothing.”

“And Fyodor Pavlovich?”

“He went to get some screens and brick. They’ll build partitions.”

“Damned outrage!”

“They’ll be moving additional tenants into all the apartments, Philip Philippovich, except yours. There’s just been a meeting, they elected a new committee and kicked the old one out.”

“The things that are going on. Ai-ai-ai . . . Whuit, whuit.”

I’m coming, I’m keeping up. My side is bothering me, you know. Allow me to lick your boot.

The doorman’s braid disappeared below. The radiators on the marble landing exuded warmth. Another turn, and we’re on the second floor.