Heart of a Dog. Mikhail Bulgakov

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СКАЧАТЬ the lady answered, shrinking with fear.

      “Take off your pants, madam,” Philip Philippovich said with relief and pointed to a high white platform in the corner.

      “I swear, Professor,” the lady mumbled, undoing some snaps on her belt with trembling fingers. “That Maurice . . . I tell this to you as at confessional . . . .”

      “From Seville and to Granada,” Philip Philippovich sang absently and pressed the pedal of the marble washstand. The water rushed out.

      “I swear by God,” the lady said, and spots of genuine red stood out under the artificial ones on her cheeks. “I know—this is my last passion. But he is such a scoundrel! Oh, Professor! He is a cardsharp, all of Moscow knows it. He’s ready to take up with every nasty little seamstress. He is so fiendishly young!” The lady muttered, kicking off a crumpled bit of lace from under her rustling skirts.

      The dog was utterly bewildered, and everything turned upside down in his head.

      The devil with you, he thought dimly, putting his head down on his paws and dozing off with shame. I wouldn’t even try to figure it out—I couldn’t make head or tail of it anyway.

      He was awakened by a clinking sound and saw that Philip Philippovich had thrown some shiny tubes into a basin.

      The spotty lady, her hands pressed to her chest, was looking at Philip Philippovich with anxious hope. The latter frowned importantly, then sat down at his desk and wrote something.

      “We’ll do a transplant. A monkey’s ovaries,” he declared, looking at her sternly.

      “Ah, Professor, a monkey’s?”

      “Yes,” he replied implacably.

      “And when is the operation?” she asked in a faint voice, turning pale.

      “From Seville and to Granada. . . Uhm . . . on Monday. You’ll come to the hospital in the morning. My assistant will prepare you.”

      “Ah, Professor, I’d rather not go to the hospital. Can’t it be done here, Professor?”

      “Well, you see, I operate here only in special cases. And it will be very expensive—fifty chervontsy,”

      “I am willing, Professor!”

      The water clattered again, the hat with the feathers swayed, a head appeared, bare as a platter, and embraced Philip Philippovich. The dog dozed, his nausea gone. His side no longer troubled him, he luxuriated in the warmth, and even caught a quick nap and saw a fragment of a pleasant dream, in which he managed to pull a whole tuft of feathers out of the owl’s tail. . . . And then an agitated voice barked over his head:

      “I am too well known in Moscow, Professor. What am I to do?”

      “Gentlemen,” Philip Philippovich cried indignantly, “this is impossible. A man must control himself. How old is she?”

      “Fourteen, Professor . . . You understand, the publicity will ruin me. I am slated to receive an assignment abroad in a day or two.”

      “But I am not a lawyer, my friend . . . . Well, wait two years and marry her.”

      “I am married, Professor.”

      “Ah, gentlemen, gentlemen!”

      The doors opened and closed, faces succeeded one another, the instruments in the cases clattered, and Philip Philippovich worked without a moment’s respite.

      What an obscene place, the dog thought, but how pleasant! And what the devil did he need me for? Will he really let me stay here? Such an eccentric! Why, he need only blink an eye and he could have the finest dog in town! But maybe I am handsome? I guess I’m lucky! But that owl is trash . . . . Insolent trash.

      The dog came to completely only late in the evening, when the bell ceased ringing, and precisely at the moment when the door opened and let in a special group of visitors. There were four of them at once. All of them young men, and all very modestly dressed.

      What do they want? the dog thought with astonishment. Philip Philippovich met his guests with even less cordiality. He stood near his desk and stared at them as a general would at the enemy. The nostrils of his hawklike nose flared out. The visitors shifted their feet on the rug.

      “We’ve come to you, Professor,” began the one with a shock of thick curly hair standing up at least six inches above his face, “to talk about . . .”

      “You should not go about without galoshes in such weather, gentlemen,” Philip Philippovich interrupted him didactically. “To begin with, you will catch colds. Secondly, you’ve tracked up my rugs, and all my rugs are Persian.”

      The fellow with the shock of hair fell silent, and all four stared at Philip Philippovich with astonishment. The silence lasted several seconds, broken only by the tapping of Philip Philippovich’s fingers on the painted wooden platter on his desk.

      “To begin with,” the youngest of the four, with a peachlike face, brought out finally, “we are not gentlemen.”

      “And secondly,” Philip Philippovich interrupted him, “are you a man or a woman?”

      The four lapsed into silence again, gaping with open mouths. This time the fellow with the hair recovered first.

      “What is the difference, comrade?” he asked proudly.

      “I am a woman,” confessed the peach-faced youth in the leather jacket, blushing violently. And for some unknown reason, another visitor—with blond hair and a cossack hat—also turned a vivid red.

      “In that case, you may keep your cap on. As for you, dear sir, I must ask you to remove your headgear,” Philip Philippovich said weightily.

      “I’m no dear sir to you,” the blond man answered sharply, removing his hat.

      “We have come to you,” the dark one with the shock of hair began once more.

      “First of all, who is ‘we’?”

      “We are the new house management committee,” the dark one said with controlled rage. “I am Shvonder, she is Vyazemskaya, he is Comrade Pestrukhin, and this is Sharovkyan. And so, we . . .”

      “Are you the people they’ve moved into Fyodor Pavlovich Sablin’s apartment?”

      “We are,” confirmed Shvonder.

      “Good God, the Kalabukhov house is finished!” Philip Philippovich exclaimed in despair, clapping his hands together.

      “Are you joking, Professor?”

      “Joking? I am in total despair,” Philip Philippovich cried. “What’s going to happen to the steam heat now?”

      “You’re mocking us, Professor Preobrazhensky?”

      “What business brought you to me? Make it short, I am just going to dinner.”

      “We are the house management,” СКАЧАТЬ