So they must have run away. That means you must have left the door open and gone off somewhere. Get me those chickens!"
"Where could I have gone? I know my job." The guard took offence.
"Don't you go accusing me unfairly, Comrade Feight!"
"Then where are they?"
"How the blazes should I know!" the guard finally exploded. "I'm not supposed to guard them, am I? Why was I put on duty? To see that nobody pinched the chambers, and that's what I've done. Your chambers are safe and sound. But there's no law that says I must chase after your chickens.
Goodness only knows what they'll be like. Maybe you won't be able to catch them on a bicycle."
This somewhat deflated Alexander Semyonovich. He muttered something else, then relapsed into a state of perplexity. It was a strange business indeed. In the first chamber, which had been switched on before the others, the two eggs at the very base of the ray had broken open. One of them had even rolled to one side. The empty shell was lying on the asbestos floor in the ray.
"The devil only knows," muttered Alexander Semyonovich. "The windows are closed and they couldn't have flown away over the roof, could they?"
He threw back his head and looked at some big holes in the glass roof.
"Of course, they couldn't, Alexander Semyonovich!" exclaimed Dunya in surprise. "Chickens can't fly. They must be here somewhere. Chuck, chuck, chuck," she called, peering into the corners of the conservatory, which were cluttered with dusty flower pots, bits of boards and other rubbish. But no chicks answered her call.
The whole staff spent about two hours running round the farmyard, looking for the runaway chickens and found nothing. The day passed in great excitement. The duty guard on the chambers was reinforced by the watchman, who had strict orders to look through the chamber windows every quarter of an hour and call Alexander Semyonovich if anything happened. The guard sat huffily by the door, holding his rifle between his knees. What with all the worry Alexander Semyonovich did not have lunch until nearly two. After lunch he slept for an hour or so in the cool shade on the former She-remetev ottoman, had a refreshing drink of the farm's kvass and slipped into the conservatory to make sure everything was alright. The old watchman was lying on his stomach on some bast matting and staring through the observation window of the first chamber. The guard was keeping watch by the door.
But there was a piece of news: the eggs in the third chamber, which had been switched on last, were making a kind of gulping, hissing sound, as if something inside them were whimpering.
"They're hatching out alright," said Alexander Semyonovich. "That's for sure. See?" he said to the watchman.
"Aye, it's most extraordinary," the latter replied in a most ambiguous tone, shaking his head.
Alexander Semyonovich squatted by the chambers for a while, but nothing hatched out. So he got up, stretched and announced that he would not leave the grounds, but was going for a swim in the pond and must be called if there were any developments. He went into the palace to his bedroom with its two narrow iron bedsteads, rumpled bedclothes and piles of green apples and millet on the floor for the newly-hatched chickens, took a towel and, on reflection, his flute as well to play at leisure over the still waters. Then he ran quickly out of the palace, across the farmyard and down the willow-lined path to the pond. He walked briskly, swinging the towel, with the flute under his arm. The sky shimmered with heat through the willows, and his aching body begged to dive into the water. On the right of Feight began a dense patch of burdock, into which he spat en passant. All at once there was a rustling in the tangle of big leaves, as if someone was dragging a log. With a sudden sinking feeling in his stomach, Alexander Semyonovich turned his head towards the burdock in surprise. There had not been a sound from the pond for two days. The rustling stopped, and above the burdock the smooth surface of the pond flashed invitingly with the grey roof of the changing hut. Some dragon-flies darted to and fro in front of Alexander Semyonovich. He was about to turn off to the wooden platform, when there was another rustle in the burdock accompanied this time by a short hissing like steam coming out of an engine. Alexander Semyonovich tensed and stared at the dense thicket of weeds.
At that moment the voice of Feight's wife rang out, and her white blouse flashed in and out through the raspberry bushes. "Wait for me, Alexander Semyonovich. I'm coming for a swim too."
His wife was hurrying to the pond, but Alexander Se-myonovich's eyes were riveted on the burdock and he did not reply. A greyish olive-coloured log had begun to rise out of the thicket, growing ever bigger before his horrified gaze. The log seemed to be covered with wet yellowish spots. It began to straighten up, bending and swaying, and was so long that it reached above a short gnarled willow. Then the top of the log cracked, bent down slightly, and something about the height of a Moscow electric lamp-post loomed over Alexander Semyonovich. Only this something was about three times thicker that a lamp-post and far more beautiful because of its scaly tattooing. Completely mystified, but with shivers running down his spine, Alexander Semyonovich looked at the top of this terrifying lamp-post, and his heart almost stopped beating. He turned to ice on the warm August day, and everything went dark before his eyes as if he were looking at the sun through his summer trousers.
On the tip of the log was a head. A flattened, pointed head adorned with a round yellow spot on an olive background. In the roof of the head sat a pair of lidless icy narrow eyes, and these eyes glittered with indescribable malice. The head moved as if spitting air and the whole post slid back into the burdock, leaving only the eyes which glared at Alexander Semyonovich without blinking. Drenched with sweat, the latter uttered five incredible fear-crazed words. So piercing were the eyes between the leaves.
"What the devil's going on..."
Then he remembered about fakirs... Yes, yes, in India, a wicker basket and a picture. Snake-charming.
The head reared up again, and the body began to uncoil. Alexander Semyonovich raised his flute to his lips, gave a hoarse squeak and, gasping for breath, began to play the waltz from Eugene Onegin. The eyes in the burdock lit up at once with implacable hatred for the opera.
"Are you crazy, playing in this heat?" came Manya's cheerful voice, and out of the corner of his eye Alexander Semyonovich glimpsed a patch of white.
Then a terrible scream shattered the farm, swelling, rising, and the waltz began to limp painfully. The head shot out of the burdock, its eyes leaving Alexander Semyonovich's soul to repent of his sins. A snake about thirty feet long and as thick as a man uncoiled like a spring and shot out of the weeds. Clouds of dust sprayed up from the path, and the waltz ceased.
The snake raced past the state farm manager straight to the white blouse.
Feight saw everything clearly: Manya went a yellowish-white, and her long hair rose about a foot above her head like wire. Before Feight's eyes the snake opened its mouth, something fork-like darting out, then sank its teeth into the shoulder of Manya, who was sinking into the dust, and jerked her up about two feet above the ground. Manya gave another piercing death cry. The snake coiled itself into a twelve-yard screw, its tail sweeping up a tornado, and began to crush Manya. She did not make another sound. Feight could hear her bones crunching. High above the ground rose Manya's head pressed lovingly against the snake's cheek. Blood gushed out of her mouth, a broken arm dangled in the air and more blood spurted out from under the fingernails. Then the snake opened its mouth, put its gaping jaws over Manya's head and slid onto the rest of her like a glove slipping onto a finger. The snake's breath was so hot that Feight could feel it on his face, and the tail all but swept him off the path into the acrid dust. It was then that Feight went grey. First the left, then the right half of his jet-black head turned to silver. Nauseated to death, he eventually managed to drag himself away from the path, then turned and ran, seeing nothing and nobody, with a wild shriek that echoed for miles around.
CHAPTER IX.
A Writhing Mass
Shukin, the GPU agent
at Dugino Station, was a very brave man. He said thoughtfully to his companion, the ginger-headed Polaitis: "Well, let's go. Eh? Get the motorbike." Then he paused for a moment and added, turning to the man who was sitting on the bench: "Put the flute down."
But instead of putting down the flute, the trembling grey-haired man on the bench in the Dugino GPU office, began weeping and moaning. Shukin and Polaitis realised they would have to pull the flute away. His fingers seemed to be stuck to it. Shukin, who possessed enormous, almost circus-like strength, prised the fingers away one by one. Then they put the flute on the table.
It was early on the sunny morning of the day after Manya's death.
"You come too," Shukin said to Alexander Semyonovich, "and show us where everything is." But Feight shrank back from him in horror, putting up his hands as if to ward off some terrible vision.
"You must show us," Polaitis added sternly. "Leave him alone. You can see the state he's in."
"Send me to Moscow," begged Alexander Semyonovich, weeping.
"You really don't want to go back to the farm again?"
Instead of replying Feight shielded himself with his hands again, his eyes radiating horror.
"Alright then," decided Shukin. "You're really not in a fit state... I can see that. There's an express train leaving shortly, you can go on it."
While the station watchman helped Alexander Semyonovich, whose teeth were chattering on the battered blue mug, to have a drink of water, Shukin and Polaitis conferred together. Polaitis took the view that nothing had happened. But that Feight was mentally ill and it had all been a terrible, hallucination. Shukin, however, was inclined to believe that a boa constrictor had escaped from the circus on tour in the town of Grachevka.
The sound of their doubting whispers made Feight rise to his feet. He had recovered somewhat and said, raising his hands like an Old Testament prophet:
"Listen to me. Listen. Why don't you believe me? I saw it. Where is my wife?"
Shukin went silent and serious and immediately sent off a telegram to Grachevka. On Shukin's instructions, a third agent began to stick closely to Alexander Semyonovich and was to accompany him to Moscow. Shukin and Polaitis got ready for the journey. They only had one electric revolver, but it was good protection. A 1927 model, the pride of French technology for shooting at close range, could kill at a mere hundred paces, but had a range of two metres in diameter and within this range any living thing was exterminated outright. It was very hard to miss. Shukin put on this shiny electric toy, while Polaitis armed himself with an ordinary light machine-gun, then they took some ammunition and raced off on the motorbike along the main road through the early morning dew and chill to the state farm. The motorbike covered the twelve miles between the station and the farm in a quarter of an hour (Feight had walked all night, occasionally hiding in the grass by the wayside in spasms of mortal terror), and when the sun began to get hot, the sugar palace with columns appeared amid the trees on the hill overlooking the winding River Top. There was a deathly silence all around. At the beginning of the turning up to the state farm the agents overtook a peasant on a cart. He was riding along at a leisurely pace with a load of sacks, and was soon left far behind. The motorbike drove over the bridge, and Polaitis sounded the horn to announce their arrival. But this elicited no response whatsoever, except from some distant frenzied dogs in Kontsovka. The motorbike slowed down as it approached the gates with verdigris lions. Covered with dust, the agents in yellow gaiters dismounted, padlocked their motorbike to the iron railings and went into the yard. The silence was eery.
"Hey, anybody around?" shouted Shukin loudly.
But no one answered his deep voice. The agents walked round the yard, growing more and more mystified. Polaitis was scowling. Shukin began to search seriously, his fair eyebrows knit in a frown. They looked through an open window into the kitchen and saw that it was empty, but the floor was covered with broken bits of white china.
"Something really has happened to them, you know. I can see it now.
Some catastrophe," Polaitis said.
"Anybody there? Hey!" shouted Shukin, but the only reply was an echo from the kitchen vaults. "The devil only knows! It couldn't have gobbled them all up, could it? Perhaps they've run off somewhere. Let's go into the house."
The front door with the colonnaded veranda was wide open. The palace was completely empty inside. The agents even climbed up to the attic, knocking and opening all the doors, but they found nothing and went out again into the yard through the deserted porch.
"We'll walk round the outside to the conservatory," Shukin said. "We'll give that a good going over and we can phone from there too."
The agents set off along the brick path, past the flowerbeds and across the backyard, at which point the conservatory came into sight.
"Wait a minute," whispered Shukin, unbuckling his revolver. Polaitis tensed and took his machine-gun in both hands. A strange, very loud noise was coming from the conservatory and somewhere behind it. It was like the sound of a steam engine. "Zzzz-zzzz," the conservatory hissed.
"Careful now," whispered Shukin, and trying not to make a sound the agents stole up to the glass walls and peered into the conservatory.
Polaitis immediately recoiled, his face white as a sheet. Shukin froze, mouth open and revolver in hand.
The conservatory was a terrible writhing mass. Huge snakes slithered across the floor, twisting and intertwining, hissing and uncoiling, swinging and shaking their heads. The broken shells on the floor crunched under their bodies. Overhead a powerful electric lamp shone palely, casting an eery cinematographic light over the inside of the conservatory. On the floor lay three huge photographic-like chambers, two of which were dark and had been pushed aside, but a small deep-red patch of light glowed in the third.
Snakes of all sizes were crawling over the cables, coiling round the frames and climbing through the holes in the roof. From the electric lamp itself hung a jet-black spotted snake several yards long, its head swinging like a pendulum. There was an occasional rattle amid the hissing, and a strange putrid pond-like smell wafted out of the conservatory. The agents could just make out piles of white eggs in the dusty corners, an enormous long-legged bird lying motionless by the chambers and the body of a man in grey by the door, with a rifle next to him.
"Get back!" shouted Shukin and began to retreat, pushing Polaitis with his left hand and raising his revolver with his right. He managed to fire nine hissing shots which cast flashes of green lightning all round. The noise swelled terribly as in response to Shukin's shots the whole conservatory was galvanised into frantic motion, and flat heads appeared in all the holes. Peals of thunder began to roll over the farm and echo on the walls. "Rat-tat-tat-tat," Polaitis fired, retreating backwards. There was a strange four-footed shuffling behind him. Polaitis suddenly gave an awful cry and fell to the ground. A brownish-green creature on bandy legs, with a huge pointed head and a cristate tail, like an enormous lizard, had slithered out from behind the barn, given Polaitis a vicious bite in the leg, and knocked him over.
"Help!" shouted Polaitis. His left arm was immediately snapped up and crunched by a pair of jaws, while his right, which he tried in vain to lift, trailed the machine-gun over the ground. Shukin turned round in confusion.
He managed to fire once, but the shot went wide, because he was afraid of hitting his companion. The second time he fired in the direction of the conservatory, because amid the smaller snake-heads a huge olive one on an enormous body had reared up and was slithering straight towards him. The shot killed the giant snake, and Shukin hopped and skipped round Polaitis, already half-dead in the crocodile's jaws, trying to find the right spot to shoot the terrible monster without hitting the agent. In the end he succeeded. The electric revolver fired twice, lighting up everything around with a greenish flash, and the crocodile shuddered and stretched out rigid, letting go of Polaitis. Blood gushed out of his sleeve and mouth. He collapsed onto his sound right arm, dragging his broken lef
t leg. He was sinking fast.
"Get out... Shukin," he sobbed.
Shukin fired a few more shots in the direction of the conservatory, smashing several panes of glass. But behind him a huge olive-coloured coil sprang out of a cellar window, slithered over the yard, covering it entirely with its ten-yard-long body and wound itself round Shukin's legs in a flash.
It dashed him to the ground, and the shiny revolver bounced away. Shukin screamed with all his might, then choked, as the coils enfolded all of him except his head. Another coil swung round his head, ripping off the scalp, and the skull cracked. No more shots were heard in the farm. Everything was drowned by the all-pervading hissing. In reply to the hissing the wind wafted distant howls from Kontsovka, only now it was hard to say who was howling, dogs or people.
CHAPTER X.
Catastrophe
In the editorial office of Izvestia the lights were shining brightly, and the fat duty editor was laying out the second " column with telegrams "Around the Union Republics". One galley caught his eye. He looked at it through his pince-nez;
and laughed, then called the proof-readers and the maker-up and showed them it. On the narrow strip of damp paper they read: "Grachevka, Smolensk Province. A hen that is as big as a horse and kicks like a horse has appeared in the district. It has bourgeois lady's feathers instead of a tail."
The compositors laughed themselves silly.
"In my day," said the duty editor, chuckling richly, "when I was working for Vanya Sytin on The Russian Word they used to see elephants when they got sozzled. That's right. Now it's ostriches."
The compositors laughed.
"Yes, of course, it's an ostrich," said the maker-up. "Shall we put it in, Ivan Vonifatievich?"
"Are you crazy?" the editor replied. "I'm surprised the secretary let it through. It was written under the influence alright."