“Oh, deary, oh dear,” the woman in the shawl whimpered, and she shook her head. “Why, what is this anyway. Truly, it’s the Lord in His wrath! Is she dead?”
“Just look, look, Matryona,” muttered the deaconess, sobbing loudly and heavily. “Look what’s happening to her!”
The gray, tilting gate slammed, a woman’s bare feet padded across the dusty bumps in the street, and the deaconess, wet with tears, led Matryona to her poultry yard.
It must be said that the widow of Father Savvaty Drozdov, who had passed away in 1926 of anti-religious woes, did not give up, but started some most remarkable chicken breeding. As soon as the widow’s affairs started to go uphill, such a tax was slapped on her that her chicken breeding was on the verge of terminating, had it not been for kind people. They advised the widow to inform the local authorities that she was founding a workers’ cooperative chicken farm. The membership of the cooperative consisted of Drozdova herself, her faithful servant Matrioshka, and the widow’s deaf niece. The widow’s tax was revoked, and the chicken breeding flourished so much that by 1928 the population of the widow’s dusty yard, flanked by rows of chicken coops, had increased to 250 hens, including some Cochin Chinas. The widow’s eggs appeared in the Steklovsk market every Sunday; the widow’s eggs were sold in Tambov, and sometimes they even appeared in the glass showcases of the store that was formerly known as “Chichkin’s Cheese and Butter, Moscow.”
And now a precious Brahmaputra, by count the seventeenth that morning, her tufted baby, was walking around the yard vomiting. “E … rr … url … url … ho-ho-ho,” the tufted hen glugged, rolling her melancholy eyes to the sun as if she were seeing it for the last time. Cooperative member Matrioshka, was dancing before the hen in a squatting position, a cup of water in her hand.
“Here, tufted baby … cheep-cheep-cheep … drink a little water,” Matrioshka pleaded, chasing the hen’s beak with her cup; but the hen did not want to drink. She opened her beak wide and stretched her neck toward the sky. Then she began to vomit blood.
“Holy Jesus!” cried the guest, slapping herself on the thighs. What’s going on? Nothing but gushing blood! I’ve never, may I drop on the spot, I’ve never seen a chicken with a stomach-ache like a human.”
And these were the last words heard by the departing tufted baby. She suddenly keeled over on her side, helplessly pecked the dust a few times and turned up her eyes. Then she rolled over on her back, lifting both feet upwards, and remained motionless. Spilling the water in the cup, Matryoshka burst into a baritone wail, as did the deaconess herself, the chairman of the cooperative, and the guest leaned over to her ear and whispered, “Stepanovna, may I eat dirt, but someone’s jinxed your chickens. Who’s ever seen anything like it before? Why, this ain’t no chicken sickness! It’s that someone’s hexed your chickens.”
“The enemies of my life!” the deaconess cried out to the heavens. “Do they want to run me off the earth?”
A loud roosterish crow answered her words, after which a wiry bedraggled rooster tore out of a chicken coop sort of sideways, like boisterous drunk out of a tavern. He rolled his eyes back wildly at them, stamped up and down in place, spread his wings like an eagle, but did not fly off anywhere—he began to run in circles around the yard like a horse on a rope. On the third circle he stopped, overwhelmed by nausea, because he then began to cough and croak, spat bloody spots all around him, fell over, and his claws aimed toward the sun like masts. Feminine wailing filled the yard. And it was echoed by a troubled clucking, flapping, and fussing in the chicken coops.
“Well, ain’t it the evil eye?” the guest asked victoriously. “Call Father Sergei; let him hold a service.”
At six in the evening, when the sun lay low like a fiery face among the faces of the young sunflowers, Father Sergei, the prior of the Cathedral Church, was climbing out of his vestments after finishing the prayer service at the chicken coops. People’s curious heads were stuck out over the ancient collapsing fence and peering through the cracks. The sorrowful deaconess, kissing the cross, soaked the torn canary-yellow ruble note with tears and handed it to Father Sergei, in response to which, sighing, he remarked something about, well, see how the Lord’s shown us His wrath. As he was saying this, Father Sergei wore an expression which indicated that he knew very well precisely why the Lord had shown His wrath, but that he was just not saying.
After that, the crowd dispersed from the street, and since hens retire early, nobody knew that three hens and a rooster had died at the same time in the hen house of Drozdova’s next-door neighbor. They vomited just like the Drozdov hens, and the only difference was that their deaths took place quietly in a locked hen house. The rooster tumbled off his perch head down and died in that position. As for the widow’s hens, they died off immediately after the prayer service, and by evening her hen houses were deadly quiet—the birds lay around in heaps, stiff and cold.
When the town got up the next morning, it was stunned as if by thunder, for the affair had assumed strange and monstrous proportions. By noon only three hens were still alive on Personal Street, and those were in the last house, where the district financial inspector lived, but even they were dead by one o’clock. And by evening the town of Steklovsk was humming and buzzing like a beehive, and the dread word “plague” was sweeping through it. Drozdova’s name landed in the local newspaper, The Red Warrior, in an article headlined “Can It Be Chicken Plague?” and from there it was carried to Moscow.
* * *
Professor Persikov’s life took on a strange, restless, and disturbing character. In a word, working under such circumstances was simply impossible. The day after he had gotten rid of Alfred Bronsky, he had to disconnect his office telephone at the institute by taking the receiver off the hook, and in the evening, as he was riding the trolley home along Okhotny Row, the professor beheld himself on the roof of a huge building with a black sign on it: WORKERS’ GAZETTE. He, the professor—crumbling and turning green and flickering—was climbing into a landau, and behind him, clutching at his sleeve, climbed a mechanical ball wearing a blanket. The professor on the white screen on the roof covered his face with his fists against a violet ray. Then a golden legend leaped out: “Professor Persikov in a car explaining his discovery to our famous reporter Captain Stepanov.” And, indeed, the wavering car flicked past the Cathedral of Christ along Volkhonka, and in it the professor struggled helplessly, his physiognomy like that of a wolf at bay.
“They’re some sort of devils, not men,” the zoologist muttered through his teeth as he rode past.
That same day in the evening, when he returned to his place on Prechistenka, the housekeeper, Maria Stepanovna, handed the zoologist seventeen notes with telephone numbers of people who had called while he was gone, along with Maria Stepanovna’s verbal declaration that she was exhausted. The professor was getting ready to tear up the notes, but stopped, because opposite one of the numbers he saw the notation “People’s Commissar of Public Health.”
“What’s this?” the learned eccentric asked in honest bewilderment. “What’s happened to them?”
At a quarter past ten the same evening the doorbell rang, and the professor was obliged to converse with a certain citizen in dazzling attire. The professor had received him because of a calling card, which stated (without first name or surname), “Plenipotentiary Chief of the Trade Departments of Foreign Embassies to the Soviet Republic.”
“Why doesn’t he go to hell?” growled Persikov, throwing down his magnifying glass and some diagrams on the green cloth of the table and saying to Maria Stepanovna, “Ask him here into the study, this plenipotentiary.”
“What can I do for you?” Persikov asked in a tone that made the Chief wince a bit. Persikov transferred his spectacles to his forehead from the bridge of his nose, then back, and he peered at his visitor. He glittered all over with patent leather and precious stones, and a monocle rested in his right eye. “What a vile mug,” Persikov thought to himself for some reason.
The guest bega
n in a roundabout way, asked specific permission to light his cigar, in consequence of which Persikov with the greatest of reluctance invited him to sit down. The guest proceeded to make extended apologies for coming so late.
“But … the professor is quite impossible to catch … hee-hee … pardon … to find during the day” (when laughing the guest cachinnated like a hyena.)
“Yes, I’m busy!” Persikov answered so abruptly that the guest twitched a second time.
“Nevertheless, he permitted himself to disturb the famous scientist. Time is money, as they say … Is the cigar annoying the professor?”
“Mur-mur-mur,” answered Persikov, “he permitted …”
“The professor has discovered the ray of life, hasn’t he?”
“For goodness sake, what sort of life! It’s all the fantasies of cheap reporters!” Persikov got excited.
“Oh no, hee-hee-hee … He understands perfectly the modesty which is the true adornment of all real scientists … But why fool around … There were telegrams today … In world capitals such as Warsaw and Riga everything about the ray is already known. Professor Persikov’s name is being repeated all over the world. The world is watching Professor Persikov’s work with bated breath … But everybody knows perfectly well the difficult position of scientists in Soviet Russia. Entre nous soit dit … There are no strangers here? … Alas, in this country they do not know how to appreciate scientific work, and so he would like to talk things over with the professor … A certain foreign state is quite unselfishly offering Professor Persikov help with his laboratory work. Why cast pearls here, as the Holy Scripture says? The said state knows how hard it was for the professor during 1919 and 1920, during this … hee-hee … revolution. Well, of course, in the strictest secrecy … the professor would acquaint this state with the results of his work, and in exchange it would finance the professor. For example, he constructed a chamber—now it would be interesting to become acquainted with the blueprints for this chamber …”
At this point the visitor drew from the inside pocket of his jacket a snow-white stack of banknotes.
“The professor can have a trifling advance, say, five thousand rubles, at this very moment … and there is no need to mention a receipt … the Plenipotentiary Trade Chief would even feel offended if the professor so much as mentioned a receipt.”
“Out!!” Persikov suddenly roared so terrifyingly that the piano in the living room made a sound with its high keys.
The visitor vanished so quickly that Persikov, shaking with rage, himself began to doubt whether he had been there, or if it had been a hallucination.
“His galoshes?” Persikov howled a minute later from the hallway. “The gentleman forgot them,” replied the trembling Maria Stepanovna.
“Throw them out!”
“Where can I throw them? He’ll come back for them.”
“Take them to the house committee. Get a receipt. I don’t want a trace of those galoshes! To the committee! Let them have the spy’s galoshes! …”
Crossing herself, Maria Stepanovna picked up the magnificent leather galoshes and carried them out to the back stairs. There she stood behind the door for a few moments, and then hid the galoshes in the pantry.
“Did you turn them in?” Persikov raged.
“I did.”
“Give me the receipt!”
“But, Vladimir Ipatich. But the chairman is illiterate!”
“This. Very. Instant. I. Want. The. Receipt. Here! Let some literate son of a bitch sign for him!”
Maria Stepanovna just shook her head, went out, and came back fifteen minutes later with a note: “Received from Prof. Persikov 1 (one) pair galo. Kolesov.”
“And what’s this?”
“A tag, sir.”
Persikov stomped all over the tag, and hid the receipt under the blotter. Then some idea darkened his sloping forehead. He rushed to the telephone, roused Pankrat at the institute, and asked him: “Is everything in order?” Pankrat growled something into the receiver, from which one could conclude that everything, in his opinion, was in order.
But Persikov calmed down only for a minute. Frowning, he clutched the telephone and jabbered into the receiver: “Give me … oh, whatever you call it … Lubianka … Merci … Which of you there should be told about this? … I have suspicious characters hanging around here in galoshes, yes … Professor Persikov of the Fourth University …”
Suddenly the conversation was abruptly disconnected and Persikov walked away, muttering some sort of swear words through his teeth.
“Are you going to have some tea, Vladimir Ipatich?” Maria Stepanovna inquired timidly, looking into the study.
“I’m not going to have any tea … mur-mur-mur … and to hell with them all … they’ve gone mad … I don’t care.”
Exactly ten minutes later the professor was receiving new guests in his study. One of them, amiable, rotund, and very polite, was wearing a modest khaki military field jacket and riding breeches. On his nose, like a crystal butterfly, perched a pince-nez. Generally, he looked like an angel in patent leather boots. The second, short and terribly gloomy, was wearing civilian clothes, but they fit in such a way that they seemed to constrain him. The third guest behaved in a peculiar manner; he did not enter the professor’s study but remained in the semidark hallway. From there he had a full view of the well-lit study which was filled with billows of tobacco smoke. The face of this third visitor, who was also wearing civilian clothes, was graced with a dark pince-nez.
The two in the study wore Persikov out completely, carefully examining the calling card and interrogating him about the five thousand, and making him keep describing the earlier visitor.
“The devil only knows,” grumbled Persikov. “A repulsive physiognomy. A degenerate.”
“He didn’t have a glass eye, did he?” the short one asked hoarsely.
“The devil only knows. But no, it isn’t glass; his eyes keep darting around.”
“Rubenstein?” the angel said to the short civilian softly and interrogatively. But the latter shook his head darkly.
“Rubenstein wouldn’t give any money without a receipt, never,” he mumbled. “This is not Rubenstein’s work. This is someone bigger.”
The story of the galoshes provoked a burst of the keenest interest from the guests. The angel uttered a few words into the telephone of the house office: “The State Political Administration invites the secretary of the house committee Kolesov to report at Professor Persikov’s apartment with the galoshes,” and Kolesov appeared in the study instantly, pale, holding the galoshes in his hands.
“Vasenka!” the angel called softly to the man who was sitting in the hall. The latter rose limply and moved into the study like an unwinding toy. His smoky glasses swallowed up his eyes.
“Well?” he asked tersely and sleepily.
“The galoshes.”
The smoky eyes slid over the galoshes, and as this happened it seemed to Persikov that they were not at all sleepy; on the contrary, the eyes that flashed askance for a moment from behind the glasses were amazingly sharp. But they immediately faded out.
“Well, Vasenka?”
The man they addressed as Vasenka replied in a languid voice, “Well, what’s the problem? They’re Pelenzhkovsky’s galoshes.”
The house committee instantly lost Professor Persikov’s gift. The galoshes disappeared into a newspaper. The extremely overjoyed angel in the military jacket got up, began to shake the professor’s hand, and even made a little speech, the content of which boiled down to the following: “This does the professor honor…. The professor may rest assured … no one will bother him again, either at the institute or at home … steps will be taken … his chambers are quite safe.”
“Could you shoot the reporters while you’re at it?” Persikov asked, looking at him over his spectacles.
His question provoked a burst of merriment among his guests.
Not only the gloomy short one, but even the smoky one smiled in the h
all. The angel, sparkling and glowing, explained that this was not possible.
“And who was that scalawag who came here?”
At this everyone stopped smiling, and the angel answered evasively that it was nobody, a petty swindler, not worth any attention … but nevertheless, he urged citizen professor to keep the evening’s events in strictest secrecy, and the guests departed.
Persikov returned to his study and diagrams, but he still did not get to do any work. A fiery dot appeared on the telephone, and a female voice offered the professor a seven-room apartment if he would like to marry an interesting and hot-blooded widow. Persikov bawled into the receiver, “I advise you to go to Professor Rossolimo for treatment!” and then the telephone rang a second time.
Here Persikov was somewhat abashed because a rather well-known personage from the Kremlin was calling; he questioned Persikov sympathetically and at great length about his work and made known his wish to visit the laboratory. As he started to leave the phone, Persikov mopped his forehead, and took the receiver off the hook. At that moment there was a sudden blare of trumpets in the upstairs apartment, followed by the shrieking of the Valkyries: the director of the Woolen Fabrics Trust had tuned his radio to a Wagner concert from the Bolshoi Theater. Over the howling and crashing pouring down from the ceiling, Persikov shouted to Maria Stepanovna that he was going to take the director to court, that he was going to smash that radio, that he was going to get the hell out of Moscow, because obviously people had made it their goal to drive him out of it. He broke his magnifying glass and went to bed on the couch in his study, and he fell asleep to the gentle runs of a famous pianist that came wafting from the Bolshoi.
The surprises continued the next day too. When he got to the institute on the trolley, Persikov found an unknown citizen in a stylish green derby waiting at the entrance. He looked Persikov over closely, but addressed no questions to him, and therefore Persikov ignored him. But in the foyer, Persikov, in addition to the bewildered Pankrat, was met by a second derby which rose and greeted him courteously. “Hello there, Citizen Professor.”
Worlds Apart Page 68