Persikov worked without great enthusiasm in the fowl field, and understandably so since his head was full of something quite different, the main and most important thing, from which the fowl catastrophe had diverted him, i.e., the red ray. Undermining his already overtaxed health by stealing time from sleeping and eating, sometimes not returning to Prechistenka but dozing on the oilskin divan in his room at the Institute, Persikov spent night after night working with the chamber and the microscope.
By the end of July the commotion had abated somewhat The renamed commission began to work along normal lines, .and Persikov resumed his interrupted studies. The microscopes were loaded with new specimens, and fish- and frog-spawn matured in the chamber at incredible speed. Specially ordered lenses were delivered from Konigsberg by aeroplane, and in the last few days of July, under Ivanov's supervision, mechanics installed two big new chambers, in which the beam was as broad as a cigarette packet at its base and a whole metre wide at the other end. Persikov rubbed his hands happily and began to prepare some mysterious and complex experiments. First of all, he came to some agreement with the People's Commissar of Education by phone, and the receiver promised him the most willing assistance of all kinds, then Persikov had a word with Comrade Ptakha-Porosyuk, head of the Supreme Commission's Animal Husbandry Department. Persikov met with the most cordial attention form Ptakha-Porosyuk with respect to a large order from abroad for Professor Persikov. Ptakha-Porosyuk said on the phone that he would cable Berlin and New York rightaway. After that there was a call from the Kremlin to enquire how Persikov was getting on, and an important-sounding voice asked affectionately if he would like a motor-car.
"No, thank you. I prefer to travel by tram," Persikov replied.
"But why?" the mysterious voice asked, with an indulgent laugh.
Actually everyone spoke to Persikov either with respect and awe, or with an affectionate laugh, as if addressing a silly, although very important child.
"It goes faster," Persikov said, after which the resonant bass on the telephone said:
"Well, as you like."
Another week passed, during which Persikov withdrew increasingly from the subsiding fowl problems to immerse himself entirely in the study of the ray. His head became light, somehow transparent and weightless, from the sleepless nights and exhaustion. The red rims never left his eyes now, and almost every night was spent at the Institute. Once he abandoned his zoological refuge to read a paper on his ray and its action on the ovule in the huge hall of the Central Commission for Improving the Living Conditions of Scientists in Prechistenka. This was a great triumph for the eccentric zoologist. The applause in the hall made the plaster flake off the ceiling, while the hissing arc lamps lit up the black dinner jackets of club-members and the white dresses of their ladies. On the stage, next to the rostrum, a clammy grey frog the size of a cat sat breathing heavily in a dish on a glass table. Notes were thrown onto the stage. They included seven love letters, which Persikov tore up. The club president had great difficulty persuading him onto the platform. Persikov bowed angrily. His hands were wet with sweat and his black tie was somewhere behind his left ear, instead of under his chin. Before him in a breathing haze were hundreds of yellow faces and white male chests, when suddenly the yellow holster of a pistol flashed past and vanished behind a white column. Persikov noticed it vaguely and then forgot about it. But after the lecture, as he was walking down the red carpet of the staircase, he suddenly felt unwell. For a second the bright chandelier in the vestibule clouded and Persikov came over dizzy and slightly queasy. He seemed to smell burning and feel hot, sticky blood running down his neck... With a trembling hand the Professor clutched the banisters.
"Is anything the matter, Vladimir Ipatych?" he was besieged by anxious voices on all sides.
"No, no," Persikov replied, pulling himself together. "I'm just rather tired. Yes. Kindly bring me a glass of water."
It was a very sunny August day. This disturbed the Professor, so the blinds were pulled down. One flexible standing reflector cast a pencil of sharp light onto the glass table piled with instruments and lenses. The exhausted Persikov was leaning against the back of his revolving chair, smoking and staring through clouds of smoke with dead-tired but contented eyes at the slightly open door of the chamber inside which a red sheaf of light lay quietly, warming the already stuffy and fetid air in the room.
There was a knock at the door.
"What is it?" Persikov asked.
The door creaked lightly, and in came Pankrat. He stood to attention, pallid with fear before the divinity, and announced: "Feight's come for you, Professor."
The ghost of a smile flickered on the scientist's face. He narrowed his eyes and said:
"That's interesting. Only I'm busy."
'"E says 'e's got an official warrant from the Kremlin."
"Fate with a warrant? That's a rare combination," Persikov remarked.
"Oh, well, send him in then!"
"Yessir," Pankrat replied, slithering through the door like a grass-snake.
A minute later it opened again, and a man appeared on the threshold.
Persikov creaked his chair and stared at the newcomer over the top of his spectacles and over his shoulder. Persikov was very isolated from real life.
He was not interested in it. But even Persikov could not fail to notice the main thing about the man who had just come in. He was dreadfully old-fashioned. In 1919 this man would have looked perfectly at home in the streets of the capital. He would have looked tolerable in 1924, at the beginning. But in 1928 he looked positively strange. At a time when even the most backward part of the proletariat, bakers, were wearing jackets and when military tunics were a rarity, having been finally discarded at the end of 1924, the newcomer was dressed in a double-breasted leather jacket, green trousers, foot bindings and army boots, with a big old-fashioned Mauser in the cracked yellow holster at his side. The newcomer's face made the same impression on Persikov as on everyone else, a highly unpleasant one. The small eyes looked out on the world with a surprised, yet confident expression, and there was something unduly familiar about the short legs with their flat feet. The face was bluish-shaven. Persikov frowned at once.
Creak' ing the screw mercilessly, he peered at the newcomer over his spectacles, then through them, and barked: "So you've got a warrant, have you? Where is it then?"
The newcomer was clearly taken aback by what he saw. In general he was not prone to confusion, but now he was confused. Judging by his eyes, the thing that impressed him most was the bookcase with twelve shelves stretching right up to the ceiling and packed full of books. Then, of course, the chambers which, hell-like, were flooded with the crimson ray swelling up in the lenses. And Persikov himself in the semi-darkness by sharp point of the ray falling from the reflector looked strange and majestic in his revolving chair. The newcomer stared at him with an expression in which sparks of respect flashed clearly through the self-assurance, did not hand over any warrant, but said: "I am Alexander Semyonovich Feight!"
"Well then? So what?"
"I have been put in charge of the Red Ray Model State Farm," the newcomer explained.
"So what?"
"And so I have come to see you on secret business, comrade."
"Well, I wonder what that can be. Put it briefly, if you don't mind."
The newcomer unbuttoned his jacket and pulled out some instructions typed on splendid thick paper. He handed the paper to Persikov, then sat down uninvited on a revolving stool.
"Don't push the table," said Persikov with hatred.
The newcomer looked round in alarm at the table, on the far edge of which a pair of eyes glittered lifelessly like diamonds in a damp dark opening. They sent shivers down your spine.
No sooner had Persikov read the warrant, than he jumped up and rushed to the telephone. A few seconds later he was already saying hastily in a state of extreme irritation:
"Forgive me... I just don't understand... How can it be? Without my consent
or advice... The devil only knows what he'll do!"
At that point the stranger, highly offended, spun round on the stool.
"Pardon me, but I'm in charge..." he began.
But Persikov shook a crooked finger at him and went on: "Excuse me, but I just don't understand. In fact, I object categorically. I refuse to sanction any experiments with the eggs... Until I have tried them myself..."
Something croaked and rattled in the receiver, and even at a distance it was clear that the indulgent voice on the phone was talking to a small child. In the end a purple-faced Persikov slammed down the receiver, shouting over it at the wall:
"I wash my hands of the whole business!"
Going back to the table, he picked up the warrant, read it once from top to bottom over his spectacles, then from bottom to top through them, and suddenly howled:
"Pankrat!"
Pankrat appeared in the doorway as if he had shot up through the trap-door in an opera. Persikov glared at him and barked: "Go away, Pankrat!" And Pankrat disappeared, his face not expressing the slightest surprise.
Then Persikov turned to the newcomer and said: "I beg your pardon. I will obey. It's none of my business.
And of no interest to me."
The newcomer was not so much offended as taken aback.
"Excuse me," he began, "but comrade..."
"Why do you keep saying comrade all the time," Persikov muttered, then fell silent.
"Well, I never," was written all over Feight's face.
"Pard..." "Alright then, here you are," Persikov interrupted him.
"See this arc lamp. From this you obtain by moving the eyepiece,"
Persikov clicked the lid of the chamber, like a camera, "a beam which you can collect by moving the lenses, number 1 here... and the mirror, number 2." Persikov put the ray out, then lit it again on the floor of the asbestos chamber. "And on the floor you can put anything you like and experiment with it. Extremely simple, is it not?"
Persikov intended to express irony and contempt, but the newcomer was peering hard at the chamber with shining eyes and did not notice them.
"Only I warn you," Persikov went on. "You must not put your hands in the ray, because from my observations it causes growths of the epithelium.
And whether they are malignant or not, I unfortunately have not yet had time to establish."
Hereupon the newcomer quickly put his hands behind his back, dropping his leather cap, and looked at the Professor's hands. They were stained with iodine, and the right hand was bandaged at the wrist.
"But what about you, Professor?"
"You can buy rubber gloves at Schwabe's on Kuznetsky," the Professor replied irritably. "I'm not obliged to worry about that"
At this point Persikov stared hard at the newcomer as if through a microscope.
"Where are you from? And why have you..."
Feight took offence at last.
"Pard..."
"But a person should know what he's doing! Why have you latched on to this ray?"
"Because it's a matter of the greatest importance..."
"Hm. The greatest importance? In that case... Pankrat!"
And when Pankrat appeared:
"Wait a minute, I must think." " Pankrat dutifully disappeared again.
"There's one thing I can't understand," said Persikov. "Why the need for all this speed and secrecy?"
"You've got me all muddled up. Professor," Feight replied. "You know there's not a single chicken left in the whole country."
"Well, what of it?" Persikov howled. "Surely you're not going to try and resurrect them all at the drop of a hat, are you? And why do you need this ray which hasn't been properly studied yet?"
"Comrade Professor," Feight replied, "you've got me all muddled, honest you have. I'm telling you that we must put poultry-keeping back on its feet again, because they're writing all sorts of rotten things about us abroad.
Yes."
"Well, let them..."
"Tut-tut," Feight replied enigmatically, shaking his head.
"Who on earth, I should like to know, would ever think of using the ray to hatch chickens..."
"Me," said Feight.
"Oh, I see. And why, if you don't mind my asking? How did you find out about the properties of the ray?"
"I was at your lecture, Professor."
"But I haven't done anything with the eggs yet! I'm only planning to!"
"It'll work alright, honest it will," said Feight suddenly with great conviction. "Your ray's so famous it could hatch elephants, not only chickens."
"Now listen here," Persikov said. "You're not a zoologist, are you?
That's a pity. You would make a very bold experimenter. Yes, only you risk ... failure ... and you're taking up my time."
"We'll give the chambers back to you. Don't you worry!"
"When?"
"After I've hatched out the first batch."
"How confidently you said that! Very well! Pankrat!"
"I've brought some people with me," said Feight. "And a guard..."
By evening Persikov's study was desolate. The tables were empty.
Feight's people took away the three big chambers, only leaving the Professor the first, the small one which he had used to begin the experiments.
The July dusk was falling. A greyness invaded the Institute, creeping along the corridors. Monotonous steps could be heard in the study. Persikov was pacing the large room from window to door, in the dark... And strange though it may seem all the inmates of the Institute, and the animals too, were prey to a curious melancholy that evening. For some reason the toads gave a very mournful concert, croaking in a most sinister, ominous fashion.
Pankrat had to chase a grass-snake that slipped out of its chamber, and when he caught it in the corridor the snake looked as if it would do anything just to get away from there.
Late that evening the bell from Persikov's study rang. Pankrat appeared on the threshold to be greeted by a strange sight. The scientist was standing alone in the middle of the study, staring at the tables. Pankrat coughed and froze to attention.
"There, Pankrat," said Persikov, pointing at the empty table. Pankrat took fright. It looked in the dark as if the Professor had been crying. That was unusual, terrifying.
"Yessir," Pankrat replied plaintively, thinking, "If only you'd bawl at me!"
"There," Persikov repeated, and his lips trembled like a little boy's whose favourite toy has suddenly been taken away from him.
"You know, my dear Pankrat," Persikov went on, turning away to face the window. "My wife who left me fifteen years ago and joined an operetta company has now apparently died... So there, Pankrat, dear chap... I got a letter..."
The toads croaked mournfully, and darkness slowly engulfed the Professor. Night was falling. Here and there white lamps went on in the windows. Pankrat stood to attention with fright, confused and miserable.
"You can go, Pankrat," the Professor said heavily, with a wave of the hand. "Go to bed, Pankrat, my dear fellow."
And so night fell. Pankrat left the study quickly on tiptoe for some reason, ran to his cubby-hole, rummaged among a pile of rags in the corner, pulled out an already opened bottle of vodka and gulped down a large glassful. Then he ate some bread and salt, and his eyes cheered up a bit.
Late that evening, just before midnight, Pankrat was sitting barefoot on a bench in the poorly lit vestibule, talking to the indefatigable bowler hat on duty and scratching his chest under a calico shirt.
"Honest, it would've been better if he'd done me in..."
"Was he really crying?" asked the bowler hat, inquisitively.
"Honest he was," Pankrat insisted.
"A great scientist," the bowler hat agreed. "A frog's no substitute for a wife, anyone knows that."
"It sure isn't," Pankrat agreed.
Then he paused and added:
"I'm thinking of bringing the wife up here... No sense her staying in the country. Only she couldn't stand them there reptiles
..."
"I'm not surprised, the filthy things," agreed the bowler hat.
Not a sound could be heard from the Professor's study. The light was not on either. There was no strip under the door.
CHAPTER VIII.
The Incident at the State Farm
There is no better time of the year than mid-August in Smolensk Province, say. The summer of 1928 was a splendid one, as we all know, with rains just at the right time in spring, a full hot sun, and a splendid harvest... The apples on the former Sheremetev family estate were ripening, the forests were a lush green and the fields were squares of rich yellow...
Man becomes nobler in the lap of nature. Alexander Se-myonovich too did not seem quite as unpleasant as in the town. And he wasn't wearing that revolting jacket. His face had a bronze tan, the unbuttoned calico shirt revealed a chest thickly covered with black hair. He had canvas trousers on.
And his eyes were calmer and kinder.
Alexander Semyonovich trotted excitedly down the colon-naded porch, which sported a notice with the words "Red Ray State Farm" under a star, and went straight to the truck that had just brought the three black chambers under escort.
All day Alexander Semyonovich worked hard with his assistants setting up the chambers in the former winter garden, the Sheremetevs' conservatory.
By evening all was ready. A white frosted arc lamp shone under the glass roof, the chambers were set up on bricks and, after much tapping and turning of shining knobs, the mechanic who had come with the chambers produced the mysterious red ray on the asbestos floor in the black crates.
Alexander Semyonovich bustled about, climbing up the ladder himself and checking the wiring.