"Well, Vasenka?"
The man called Vasenka replied in a flat voice: "Well what? They're Polenzhkovsky's galoshes."
The house committee was immediately deprived of Professor Persikov's present. The galoshes disappeared in a newspaper. Highly delighted, the cherub in the service jacket rose to his feet and began to pump the Professor's hand, even delivering a small speech, the gist of which was as follows: it did the Professor honour ... the Professor could rest assured ... he would not be disturbed any more, either at the Institute or at home ... steps would be taken, his chambers were perfectly safe...
"But couldn't you shoot the reporters?" asked Persikov, looking over his spectacles.
His question cheered the visitors up no end. Not only the small gloomy one, but even the tinted one in the hall gave a big smile. Beaming and sparkling, the cherub explained that that was impossible.
"But who was that scoundrel who came here?"
The smiles disappeared at once, and the cherub replied evasively that it was just some petty speculator not worth worrying about. All the same he trusted that the Professor would treat the events of this evening in complete confidence, and the visitors left.
Persikov returned to his study and the diagrams, but he was not destined to study them. The telephone's red light went on, and a female voice suggested that the Professor might like to marry an attractive and amorous widow with a seven-roomed apartment. Persikov howled down the receiver:
"I advise you to get treatment from Professor Rossolimo..." and then the phone rang again.
This time Persikov softened somewhat, because the person, quite a famous one, who was ringing from the Kremlin enquired at length with great concern about Persikov's work and expressed the desire to visit his laboratory. Stepping back from the telephone, Persikov wiped his forehead and took off the receiver. Then trumpets began blaring and the shrieks of the Valkyrie rang in the apartment upstairs. The cloth mill director's radio had tuned in to the Wagner concert at the Bolshoi. To the accompaniment of howls and rumbles descending from the ceiling, Persikov declared to Maria Stepanovna that he would take the director to court, smash his radio to bits, and get the blazes out of Moscow, because somebody was clearly trying to drive him out. He broke his magnifying glass, spent the night on the divan in the study and was lulled to sleep by the sweet trills of a famous pianist wafted from the Bolshoi Theatre.
The following day was also full of surprises. After taking the tram to the Institute, Persikov found a stranger in a fashionable green bowler hat standing on the porch. He scrutinised Persikov carefully, but did not address any questions to him, so Persikov put up with him. But in the Institute hall, apart from the dismayed Pankrat, a second bowler hat stood up as Persikov came in and greeted him courteously: "Good morning, Citizen Professor."
"What do you want?" asked Persikov furiously, tearing off his coat with Pankrat's help. But the bowler hat quickly pacified Persikov by whispering in the gentlest of voices that there was no need at all for the Professor to be upset. He, the bowler hat, was there precisely in order to protect the Professor from all sorts of importunate visitors. The Professor could rest assured not only about the laboratory doors, but also about the windows. So saying the stranger turned back the lapel of his jacket for a moment and showed the Professor a badge.
"Hm ... you work pretty efficiently, I must say," Persikov growled, adding naively: "What will you have to eat?"
Whereupon the bowler hat smiled and explained that someone would come to relieve him.
The next three days were splendid. The Professor had two visits from the Kremlin and one from the students whom he was to examine. The students all failed to a man, and you could see from their faces that Persikov now filled them with a superstitious dread.
"Go and be bus conductors! You're not fit to study zoology," came the shouts from his laboratory.
"Strict, is he?" the bowler hat asked Pankrat.
"I should say so," Pankrat replied. "If any of 'em stick it to the end, they come staggerin' out, sweatin' like pigs, and make straight for the boozer."
With all this going on the Professor did not notice the time pass, but on the fourth day he was again brought back to reality, thanks to a thin, shrill voice from the street.
"Vladimir Ipatych!" the voice shouted through the open window from Herzen Street. The voice was in luck. Persikov had driven himself too hard in the last few days. And at that moment he was sitting in an armchair having a rest and a smoke, with a vacant stare in his red-rimmed eyes. He was exhausted. So it was even with a certain curiosity that he looked out of the window and saw Alfred Bronsky on the pavement. The Professor recognised the titled owner of the visiting card from his pointed hat and note-pad.
Bronsky gave a tender and courteous bow to the window.
"Oh, it's you, is it?" asked the Professor. He did not have the strength to be angry and was even curious to know what would happen next.
Protected by the window he felt safe from Alfred. The ever-vigilant bowler hat outside immediately turned an ear to Bronsky. The latter's face blossomed into the smarmiest of smiles.
"Just a sec or two, dear Professor," said Bronsky, raising his voice to make himself heard. "I have one question only and it concerns zoology. May I put it to you?"
"You may," Persikov replied in a laconic, ironical tone, thinking to himself: "There's something American about that rascal, you know."
"What have you to say re the fowls, Professor?" shouted Bronsky, cupping his hands round his mouth.
Persikov was taken aback. He sat on the window-sill, then got down, pressed a knob and shouted, pointing at the window: "Let that fellow on the pavement in, Pankrat!"
When Bronsky walked into the room, Persikov extended his bonhomie to the point of barking "Sit down!" to him.
Smiling ecstatically, Bronsky sat down on the revolving stool "Kindly explain something to me," Persikov began. "You write for those newspapers of yours, don't you?"
"That is so," Alfred replied respectfully.
"Well, what I can't understand is how you can write if you can't even speak Russian properly. What do you mean by 'a sec or two' and 're the fowls'?"
Bronsky gave a thin, respectful laugh.
"Valentin Petrovich corrects it."
"And who might Valentin Petrovich be?"
"The head of the literary section."
"Oh, well. I'm not a philologist anyway. Now, leaving aside that Petrovich of yours, what exactly do you wish to know about fowls?"
"Everything you can tell me, Professor."
At this point Bronsky armed himself with a pencil. Sparks of triumph flashed in Persikov's eyes.
"You shouldn't have come to me, I don't specialise in our feathered friends. You should have gone to Yemelian Ivano-vich Portugalov, at the First University. I personally know very little..."
Bronsky smiled ecstatically to indicate that he had got the Professor's joke. "Joke-very little!" he scribbled in his pad.
"But if it interests you, of course. Hens, or cristates are a variety of bird from the fowl species. From the pheasant family," Persikov began in a loud voice, looking not at Bronsky, but into the far distance where he could see an audience of thousands. "From the pheasant family ...phasianus.
They are birds with a fleshy skin crown and two gills under the lower jaw...
Hm, although some have only one in the middle under the beak. Now, what else. Their wings are short and rounded. The tail is of medium length, somewhat stepped and even, I would say, roof-shaped. The middle feathers are bent in the form of a sickle... Pankrat... bring me model No. 705 from the model room, the cross-section of the domestic cock. You don't need it? Don't bring the model, Pankrat. I repeat, I am not a specialist. Go to Portugalov.
Now let me see, I personally know of six types of wild fowl... Hm, Portugalov knows more... In India and on the Malaysian archipelago. For example, the Bankiva fowl, or Callus bankiva. It is found in the foothills of the Himalayas, throughout India, in Assam
and Burma... The Java fowl, or Gallus varius on Lombok, Sumbawa and Flores. And on the island of Java there is the splendid Gallus eneus fowl. In south-east India I can recommend the very beautiful Sonneratii. I'll show you a drawing of it later. As for Ceylon, here we have the Stanley fowl, which is not found anywhere else."
Bronsky sat there, eyes popping, and scribbled madly.
"Anything else I can tell you?"
"I'd like to hear something about fowl diseases," Alfred whispered quietly.
"Hm, it's not my subject. You should ask Portugalov. But anyway...
Well, there are tape-worms, leeches, the itchmite, bird-mite, chicken louse, Eomenacanthus stramineus, fleas, chicken cholera, inflammation of the mucous membrane, Pneumonomicosis, tuberculosis, chicken mange... all sorts of things (Persikov's eyes flashed.) ... poisoning, tumours, rickets, jaundice, rheumatism, Ahorion Schonlein's fungus - that's a most interesting disease.
Small spots like mould appear on the crown..."
Bronsky wiped the sweat off his brow with a coloured handkerchief.
"And what in your opinion, Professor, is the cause of the present catastrophe?"
"What catastrophe?"
"Haven't you read about it, Professor?" exclaimed Bronsky in surprise, pulling a crumpled page of Izvestia out of his briefcase.
"I don't read newspapers," Persikov pouted.
"But why not, Professor?" Alfred asked gently.
"Because they write such rubbish," Persikov replied, without thinking.
"But surely not, Professor?" Bronsky whispered softly, unfolding the page.
"What's the matter?" asked Persikov, even rising to his feet. Bronsky's eyes were flashing now. He pointed a sharp painted finger at an incredibly large headline which ran right across the whole page: "Chicken plague in the Republic".
"What?" asked Persikov, pushing his spectacles onto his forehead...
CHAPTER VI.
Moscow. June 1928
The city shone, the lights danced, going out and blazing on. In Theatre Square the white lamps of buses mingled with the green lights of trams; above the former Muir and Merilees, its tenth floor added later, skipped a multi-coloured electrical woman, tossing out letter by letter the multicoloured words:
"Workers' Credit". A crowd thronged and murmured in the small garden opposite the Bolshoi Theatre, where a multicoloured fountain played at night. And over the Bolshoi itself a huge loudspeaker kept making announcements.
"Anti-fowl vaccinations at Lefortovo Veterinary Institute have produced brilliant results. The number of... fowl deaths for today has dropped by half..."
Then the loudspeaker changed its tone, something growled inside it, a spray of green blazed up over the theatre, then went out and the loudspeaker complained in a deep bass:
"An extraordinary commission has been set up to fight the fowl plague consisting of the People's Commissar of Health, the People's Commissar of Agriculture, the head of animal husbandry, Comrade Ptakha-Porosyuk, Professors Persikov and Portugalov... and Comrade Rabinovich! New attempts at intervention," the loudspeaker giggled and cried, like a jackal, "in connection with the fowl plague!"
Theatre Passage, Neglinnaya and Lubyanka blazed with white and violet neon strips and flickering lights amid wailing sirens and clouds of dust.
People crowded round the large notices on the walls, lit by glaring red reflectors.
"All consumption of chickens and chicken eggs is strictly forbidden on pain of severe punishment. Any attempt by private traders to sell them in markets is punishable by law with confiscation of all property. All citizens in possession of eggs are urgently requested to take them to local police stations."
A screen on the roof of the Workers' Paper showed chickens piled up to the sky as greenish firemen, fragmenting and sparkling, hosed them with kerosene. Red waves washed over the screen, deathly smoke belched forth, swirling in clouds, and drifted up in a column, then out hopped the fiery letters:
"Dead chickens being burnt in Khodynka."
Amid the madly blazing windows of shops open until three in the morning, with breaks for lunch and supper, boarded-up windows with signs saying "Eggs for sale. Quality guaranteed" stared out blindly. Hissing ambulances with "Moscow Health Dept." on them raced past policemen and overtook heavy buses, their sirens wailing.
"Someone else poisoned himself with rotten eggs," the crowd murmured.
The world-famous Empire Restaurant in Petrovsky Lines glowed with green and orange lamps, and inside it by the portable telephones on the tables lay liqueur-stained cardboard notices saying "No omelettes until further notice.
Try our fresh oysters."
In the Hermitage Gardens, where Chinese lanterns shone like sad beads in dead choked foliage, on a blindingly lit stage the singers Shrams and Karmanchikov sang satirical songs composed by the poets Ardo and Arguyev,
Oh, Mama, what shall I do
Without my little eggies two?
accompanied by a tap-dance.
The theatre named after the deceased Vsevolod Meyer-hold who, it will be remembered, met his end in 1927 during a production of Pushkin's Boris Godunov, when the trapezes with naked boyars collapsed, sported a running coloured neon strip announcing a new play by the writer Erendors, entitled "Fowl Farewell" directed by Kuchterman, a pupil of Meyerhold. Next door, at the Aquarium Gardens, ablaze with neon advertisements and shining half-naked women, the revue "Son-of-a-Hen" by the writer Lenivtsev was playing to loud applause among the foliage of the open-air variety stage. And along Tverskaya trotted a line of circus donkeys, with lanterns under each ear and gaudy posters. The Korsh Theatre was reviving Rostand's Chantecler.
Newspaper boys bellowed and yelled among the motor wheels: "Horrific find in underground cave! Poland preparing for horrific war!
Horrific experiments by Professor Persikov!"
In the circus of the former Nikitin, in a rich brown arena smelling sweetly of dung, the deathly white clown Born was talking to Bim, all swollen up with dropsy.
"I know why you're so fed up!"
"Why ith it?" squealed Bim.
"You buried your eggs under a gooseberry bush, and the 15th District police squad has found them."
"Ha-ha-ha-ha," laughed the circus, so hard that the blood curdled happily and longingly in their veins and the trapezes and cobwebs stirred under the old dome.
"Allez-oop!" the clowns shouted loudly, and a well-fed white horse trotted out bearing a stunningly beautiful woman with shapely legs in a crimson costume.
Not looking at or taking heed of anyone and ignoring the prostitutes'
nudges and soft, enticing invitations, the inspired and solitary Professor Persikov crowned with unexpected fame made his way along Mokhovaya to the neon clock by the Manege. Here, engrossed in his thoughts and not looking where he was going, he collided with a strange, old-fashioned man and banged his fingers painfully against the wooden holster hanging from the man's belt.
"What the devil!" squealed Persikov. "My apologies!" "Pardon me!"
replied an unpleasant voice in return, and they managed to disentangle themselves in the mass of people. The Professor continued on his way to Prechistenka, putting the incident out of his head straightaway.
CHAPTER VII.
Feight
Whether or not the Lefortovo veterinary vaccinations were effective, the Samara quarantine teams efficient, the strict measures taken with regard to buyers-up of eggs in Kaluga and Voronezh adequate and the work of the Special Moscow Commission successful, is not known, but what is known is that a fortnight after Persikov's last meeting with Alfred there was not a single chicken left in the Republic. Here and there in provincial back-yards lay plaintive tufts of feathers, bringing tears to the eyes of the owners, and in hospital the last gluttons recovered from diarrhea and vomiting blood. The loss in human life for the whole country was not more than a thousand, fortunately. There were also no large-scale disturbances. True, in Volokolamsk someone calling himself a prophet announced that the commi
ssars, no less, were to blame for the chicken plague, but no one took much notice of him. A few policemen who were confiscating chickens from peasant women at Volokolamsk market got beaten up, and some windows in the local post and telegraph office were smashed. Fortunately, the efficient Volokolamsk authorities took measures as a result of which, firstly, the prophet ceased his activities and, secondly, the telegraph windows were replaced.
After travelling north as far as Archangel and Syumkin Vyselok, the plague stopped of its own accord for the simple reason that it could go no further-there are no chickens in the White Sea, as we all know. It also stopped in Vladivostok, because after that came the ocean. In the far south it died down and disappeared somewhere in the scorched expanses of Ordubat, Djilfa and Karabulak, and in the west it stopped miraculously right at the Polish and Rumanian frontiers. Perhaps the climate there was different or the quarantine cordon measures taken by these neighbouring states helped.
But the fact remains that the plague went no further. The foreign press discussed the unprecedented plague loudly and avidly, and the Soviet government, without kicking up a racket, worked tirelessly round the clock.
The Extraordinary Commission to combat the chicken plague was renamed the Extraordinary Commission to encourage and revive poultry-keeping in the Republic and supplemented by a new extraordinary troika consisting of sixteen comrades. "Volunteer-Fowl" was founded, of which Persikov and Portugalov became honorary deputy chairmen. The newspapers carried pictures of them with the captions "Mass purchase of eggs from abroad" and "Mr Hughes tries to sabotage egg campaign". A venomous article by the journalist Kolechkin, ending with the words: "Keep your hands off our eggs, Mr Hughes-you've got eggs of your own!", resounded all over Moscow.
Professor Persikov had worked himself to a state of complete exhaustion over the last three weeks. The fowl events had disturbed his usual routine and placed an extra burden on him. He had to spend whole evenings attending fowl committee meetings and from time to time endure long talks either with Alfred Bronsky or the fat man with the artificial leg. And together with Professor Portugalov and docents Ivanov and Borngart he anatomised and microscopised fowls in search of the plague bacillus and even wrote a brochure in the space of only three evenings, entitled "On Changes in the Liver of Fowls Attacked by Plague".