The proofreaders roared.
“That’s probably right, it’s an ostrich,” said the makeup man. “Should we use it, Ivan Vonifatievich?”
“Are you crazy?” answered the editor. “I’m amazed that the secretary let it past—it’s simply a drunken telegram.”
“It must have been quite a bender,” the compositors agreed, and the makeup man removed the communication about the ostrich from the table.
Therefore Izvestia came out the next day containing, as usual, a mass of interesting material, but not a hint of the Grachevka ostrich.
Assistant Professor Ivanov, who read Izvestia quite punctiliously, folded the paper in his office, yawned, commented, “Nothing interesting,” and started putting his white smock on. A bit later the burners went on in his office and the frogs began to croak. But Professor Persikov’s office was in confusion. The frightened Pankrat was standing at attention.
“I understand … Yes, sir,” he said.
Persikov handed him an envelope sealed with wax and said, “You go directly to the Department of Animal Husbandry to that director Avis, and you tell him right out that he is a swine. Tell him that l, Professor Persikov, said so. And give him the envelope.”
A fine thing, thought the pale Pankrat, and he took off with the envelope.
Persikov was raging.
“The devil only knows what’s going on,” he whimpered, pacing the office and rubbing his gloved hands. “It’s unprecedented mockery of me and of zoology. They’ve been bringing piles of these damned chicken eggs, but I haven’t been able to get anything essential for two months. As if it were so far to America! Eternal confusion, eternal outrage!” He began to count on his fingers: “Let’s say, ten days at most to locate them … very well, fifteen … even twenty … then two days for air freight across the ocean, a day from London to Berlin … From Berlin to us … six hours. It’s some kind of outrageous bungling!”
He attacked the telephone furiously and started to call someone. In his office everything was ready for some mysterious and highly dangerous experiments; on the table lay strips of cut paper prepared for sealing the doors, diving helmets with air hoses, and several cylinders, shiny as quicksilver, labeled: “Goodchem Trust” and “Do Not Touch.” And with drawings of a skull and crossbones.
It took at least three hours for the professor to calm down and get to some minor tasks. That is what he did. He worked at the institute until eleven in the evening, and therefore he did not know anything about what was happening outside the cream-colored walls. Neither the absurd rumor that had spread through Moscow about some strange snakes nor the strange dispatch in the evening papers, shouted by newsboys, had reached him, because Assistant Professor Ivanov was at the Art Theater watching Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich, and therefore, there was no one to inform the professor of the news.
Around midnight Persikov came home to Prechistenka and went to bed. Before going to sleep he read in bed an English article in the magazine News of Zoology which he received from London. He slept and all of Moscow, which seethes until late at night, slept—and only the huge gray building in a courtyard off Tverskaia Boulevard did not sleep. The whole building was shaken by the terrific roaring and humming of Izvestia’s printing presses. The editor’s office was in a state of incredible pandemonium. The editor, quite furious, red eyed, rushed about not knowing what to do and sending everyone to the devil’s mother. The makeup man was following him around, breathing wine fumes, and saying, “Oh, well, it’s not so bad, Ivan Vonifatievich, let’s publish a special supplement tomorrow. We can’t pull the whole issue out of the presses, you know!”
The compositors did not go home, but walked around in bunches, gathered in groups and read the telegrams that were now coming in every fifteen minutes all night long, each more peculiar and terrifying than the last. Alfred Bronsky’s peaked hat flicked about in the blinding pink light flooding the press room, and the mechanical fat man screaked and limped, appearing here, there, and everywhere. The entrance doors slammed incessantly, and reporters kept appearing all night long. All twelve telephones in the press room rang constantly, and the switchboard almost automatically answered every mysterious call with “busy, busy,” and the signal horns sang and sang in front of the sleepless young ladies at the switchboard.
The compositors clustered around the mechanical fat man, and the sea captain was saying to them, “They’ll have to send in airplanes with gas.”
“No other way,” answered the compositors. “God knows what’s going on out there.”
Then terrible Oedipal oaths shook the air, and someone’s squeaky voice screamed, “That Persikov should be shot!”
“What has Persikov to do with it?” someone answered in the crowd. “That son of a bitch on the sovkhoz—he’s the one should be shot!”
“They should have posted a guard!” someone exclaimed.
“But maybe it’s not the eggs at all!”
The whole building shook and hummed from the rolling presses, and the impression was created that the unprepossessing gray edifice was blazing with an electric fire.
The new day did not stop it. On the contrary, it only intensified it, even though the electricity went out. Motorcycles rolled into the asphalt yard one after the other, alternating with cars. All Moscow had awakened, and the white sheets of newspaper spread over it like birds. The sheets rustled in everyone’s hands, and by eleven in the morning the newsboys had run out of papers, in spite of the fact that Izvestia was coming out in editions of one and a half million that month. Professor Persikov left Prechistenka by bus and arrived at the institute. There something new awaited him. In the vestibule stood wooden boxes, three in number, neatly bound with metal straps and plastered with foreign labels in German—and the labels were dominated by a single Russian inscription in chalk: “Careful—Eggs.”
The professor was overwhelmed with joy. “At last!” he exclaimed. “Pankrat, break open the crates immediately and carefully, so none are crushed. They go into my office.”
Pankrat immediately carried out the order, and within fifteen minutes the professor’s voice began to rage in his office, which was strewn with sawdust and scraps of paper.
“What are they up to? Making fun of me, or what?” the professor howled, shaking his fists and turning the eggs in his hands. “He’s some kind of animal, not an Avis. I won’t allow him to laugh at me. What is this, Pankrat?”
“Eggs, sir,” Pankrat answered dolefully.
“Chicken eggs, you understand, chicken eggs, the devil take them! What to hell do I need them for? Let them send them to that scalawag on his sovkhoz!”
Persikov rushed to the telephone in the corner, but he did not have time to call.
“Vladimir Ipatich! Vladimir Ipatich!” Ivanov’s voice thundered from the institute corridor.
Persikov tore himself away from the phone, and Pankrat dashed aside, making way for the assistant professor. Contrary to his gentlemanly custom, the latter ran into the room without removing his gray hat, which was sitting on the back of his head. He had a newspaper in his hands.
“Do you know what’s happened, Vladimir Ipatich?” he cried, waving in front of Persikov’s face a sheet of paper headed Special Supplement and graced in the center with a brightly colored picture.
“No, but listen to what they’ve done!” Persikov shouted in reply, without listening. “They’ve decided to surprise me with chicken eggs. This Avis is an utter idiot, just look!”
Ivanov was completely dumbfounded. He stared at the opened crates in horror, then at the newspaper, and his eyes almost jumped out of his head. “So that’s it! he muttered, gasping, “Now I see … No, Vladimir Ipatich, just take a look.” He unfolded the newspaper in a flash and pointed to the colored picture with trembling fingers. It showed an olive-colored, yellow-spotted snake, coiling like a terrifying fire hose against a strange green background. It had been taken from above, from a light plane which had cautiously dived over the snake. “What would you say that is,
Vladimir Ipatich?”
Persikov pushed his spectacles up onto his forehead, then slipped them over his eyes, studied the picture, and said with extreme astonishment, “What the devil! It’s … why, it’s an anaconda, a water boa!”
Ivanov threw down his hat, sat down heavily on a chair, and said, punctuating every word with a bang of his fist on the table, “Vladimir Ipatich, this anaconda is from the Smolensk province. It’s something monstrous! Do you understand, that good-for-nothing has hatched snakes instead of chickens, and, do you understand, they have had progeny at the same phenomenal rate as the frogs!”
“What?” Persikov screamed, and his face turned purple. “You’re joking, Peter Stepanovich … Where from?”
Ivanov was speechless for a moment, then he recovered his voice, and jabbing his finger at the open crate, where the tips of the white eggs gleamed in the yellow sawdust, he said, “That’s where from.”
“Wha-a-t!” howled Persikov, beginning to understand.
Ivanov shook both of his clenched fists quite confidently and exclaimed, “You can be sure. They sent your order for snake and ostrich eggs to the sovkhoz and the chicken eggs to you by mistake.”
“My God … my God,” Persikov repeated, and turning green in the face, he began to sink onto the revolving stool.
Pankrat stood utterly dumbfounded at the door, turned pale, and was speechless.
Ivanov jumped up, grabbed the paper, and underscoring a line with a sharp nail, he shouted into the professor’s ears, “Well, they’re going to have fun now. Vladimir Ipatich, you look.” And he bellowed out loud, reading the first passage that caught his eye on the crumpled page, “The snakes are moving in hordes toward Mozhaisk … laying incredible quantities of eggs. Eggs have been seen in the Dukhovsk district … Crocodiles and ostriches have appeared. Special troop units … and detachments of the GPV halted the panic in Viazma after setting fire to the woods outside the town to stop the onslaught of the reptiles …”
Persikov, turning all colors, bluish-white, with insane eyes, rose from his stool and began to scream, gasping for breath, “Anaconda … anaconda … water boa! My God!” Neither Ivanov nor Pankrat had ever seen him in such a state.
The professor tore off his tie in one swoop, ripped the buttons from his shirt, turned a terrible livid purple like a man having a stroke, and staggering, with utterly glazed, glassy eyes, he dashed out somewhere. His shouts resounded under the stone archways of the institute. “Anaconda … anaconda,” thundered the echo.
“Catch the professor!” Ivanov shrieked to Pankrat, who was dancing up and down in place with terror. “Get him some water! He’s having a stroke!”
XI. BATTLE AND DEATH
The frenzied electric night was ablaze in Moscow. Every light was on, and there was not a place in any apartment where there were no lamps on with their shades removed. Not a single person slept in a single apartment anywhere in Moscow, which had a population of four million, except the youngest children. In every apartment people ate and drank whatever was at hand; in every apartment people were crying out; and every minute distorted faces looked out the windows from all floors, gazing up at the sky which was crisscrossed from all directions with search lights. Every now and then white lights flared up in the sky, casting pale, melting cones over Moscow, and they would fade and vanish. The sky hummed steadily with the drone of low-flying planes. It was especially terrible on Tverskaia-Yamskaia Street. Every ten minutes trains arrived at the Alexander Station, made up helter-skelter of freight and passenger cars of every class and even of tank cars, all covered with fear-crazed people who then rushed down Tverskaia-Yamskaia in a dense mass, riding buses, riding on the roofs of trolleys, crushing one another, and falling under the wheels. At the station, rattling, disquieting bursts of gunfire banged out every now and then over the heads of the crowd: the troops were trying to stop the panic of the demented running along the railway tracks from the Smolensk province to Moscow. Now and then the station windows flew out with a crazy light gulping sound, and all the locomotives were howling. All of the streets were strewn with discarded and trampled placards, and the same placards—under fiery red reflectors—stared down from the walls. All of them were already known to everyone, so nobody read them. They proclaimed martial law in Moscow. They threatened penalties for panic and reported that unit after unit of the Red army, armed with gas, was departing for Smolensk province. But the placards could not stop the howling night. In their apartments people were dropping and breaking dishes and flowerpots; they were running around, knocking against corners; they were packing and unpacking bundles and valises in the vain hope of making their way to Kalancha Square, to the Yaroslavl or Nikolaev stations. Alas, all stations leading to the north and east had been cordoned off by the heaviest line of infantry, and huge trucks with rocking and clanging chains, loaded to the top with crates on which sat soldiers in peaked helmets, with bayonets bristling in all directions, were carrying off the gold reserves from the cellars of the People’s Commissariat of Finance and huge boxes marked “Handle with Care. Tretiakov Art Gallery.” Automobiles were roaring and running all over Moscow.
Far on the horizon the sky trembled with the reflection of fires, and the thick August blackness was shaken by the continuous booming of howitzers.
Toward morning a serpent of cavalry passed through utterly sleepless Moscow, which had not put out a single light. Its thousands of hooves clattered on the pavement as it moved up Tverskaia, sweeping everything out of its path, squeezing everything else into doorways and show windows, breaking out the windows as they did so. The ends of its scarlet cowls dangled on the gray backs, and the tips of its lances pierced the sky. The milling, screaming crowd seemed to recover immediately at the sight of the serried ranks pushing forward, splitting apart the seething ocean of madness. People in the crowds on the sidewalks began to roar encouragingly:
“Long live the cavalry!” cried frenzied female voices.
“Long live!” echoed the men.
“They’ll crush me! They are crushing me! …” someone howled somewhere.
“Help!” was shouted from the sidewalks.
Packs of cigarettes, silver coins, and watches began to fly into the ranks from the sidewalks; some women hopped down onto the pavement and risking their bones they trudged along beside the mounted columns, clutching at the stirrups and kissing them. Occasionally the voices of platoon leaders rose over the continuous clatter of hooves: “Shorten up on the reins!”
Somewhere someone began a gay and rollicking song, and the faces under the dashing scarlet caps swayed over the horses in the flickering light of neon signs. Now and then, interrupting the columns of horsemen with their uncovered faces, came strange mounted figures in strange hooded helmets, with hoses flung over their shoulders and cylinders fastened to straps across their backs. Behind them crept huge tank trucks with the longest sleeves and hoses, like fire engines, and heavy, pavement-crushing caterpillar tanks, hermetically sealed and their narrow firing slits gleaming. Also interrupting the mounted columns were cars which rolled along, solidly encased in gray armor, with the same kind of tubes protruding and with white skulls painted on their sides, inscribed: “Gas” and “Goodchem.”
“Save us, brother!” the people cried from the sidewalks.
“Beat the snakes! … Save Moscow!”
“The mothers … The mothers …,” curses rippled through the ranks. Cigarette packs leaped through the illuminated night air, and white teeth grinned at the demented people from atop the horses. A hollow, heart-rending song began to spread through the ranks:
… no ace, no queen, no jack,
We’ll beat the reptiles; without doubt,
Four cards are plenty for this pack …
Rolling peals of “hurrah” rose up over this whole mass, because the rumor had spread that at the head of all the columns, on a horse, rode the aging, graying commander of the huge cavalry who had become legendary ten years before. The crowd howled and the roars of “h
urrah!” “hurrah!” swept up into the sky, somewhat calming frantic hearts.
The institute was sparsely lit. Events reached it only as vague, fragmentary, distant echoes. Once a volley of shots burst fanlike under the fiery clock near the Manège: soldiers were shooting on the spot some looters who had tried to rob an apartment on Volkhonka. There was little automobile traffic on this street—it was all massing toward the railway stations. In the professor’s study, where a single lamp burned dimly, casting light on the table, Persikov sat with his head in his hands, silent. Layers of smoke were floating around him. The ray in the box had gone dark. The frogs in the terraria were silent because they were already asleep. The professor was not reading or working. At one side, on a narrow strip of paper under his left elbow, lay the evening edition of news dispatches reporting that all of Smolensk was in flames, and that the artillery was shelling the Mozhaisk forest all over, sector by sector, to destroy the heaps of crocodile eggs piled in all the damp ravines. It was reported that a squadron of planes had been extremely successful near Viazma, flooding almost the entire district with gas, but that the number of human victims in the area was incalculable, because instead of abandoning the district following the rules for orderly evacuation, the people had panicked and rushed around in divided groups in all directions, at their own risk and terror. It was reported that a separate Caucasus cavalry division near Mozhaisk had won a brilliant victory over flocks of ostriches, hacking them all to pieces and destroying huge caches of ostrich eggs. In doing this the division itself had sustained insignificant losses. It was reported by the government that in case it proved impossible to halt the reptiles within two hundred versts of the capital, the latter would be evacuated in complete order. Workers and employees should maintain complete calm. The government would take the sternest measures to prevent a repetition of the Smolensk events. There, thanks to panic caused by the unexpected attack of rattlesnakes—several thousand of which appeared—the people had started hopeless, wholesale exit, leaving burning stoves—and the city began to catch fire everywhere. It was reported that Moscow had enough provisions to last for at least six months and that the Council of the Commander-in-Chief was undertaking prompt measures to fortify all apartments in order to conduct the battle with the snakes in the very streets of the capital in the event that the Red armies and air forces failed to halt the advance of the reptiles.
Worlds Apart Page 73