Heart of a Dog (11 page)

    'The day before yesterday,' added Bormenthal.

    'And now,' thundered Philip Philipovich, 'that you have nearly got your nose scratched off -

incidentally, why have you wiped the zinc ointment off it? - you can just shut up and listen to what you're told. You are going to leam to behave and try to become a marginally acceptable member of society. By the way, who was fool enough to lend you that book?'

    'There you go again - calling everybody fools,' replied Sharikov nervously, deafened by the attack on him from both sides.

    'Let me guess,' exclaimed Philip Philipovich, turning red with fury.

    'Well, Shvonder gave it to me ... so what? He's not a fool ... it was so I could get educated.'

    'I can see which way your education is going after reading Kautsky,' shouted Philip Philipovich, hoarse and turning faintly yellow. With this he gave the bell a furious jab. 'Today's incident shows it better than anything else. Zina!'

    'Zina!' shouted Bormenthal.

    'Zina!' cried the terrified Sharikov.

    Looking pale, Zina ran into the room.

    'Zina, there's a book in the waiting-room ... It is in the waiting-room, isn't it?'

    'Yes, it is,' said Sharikov obediently. 'Green, the colour of copper sulphate.'

    'A green book . . .'

    'Bum it if you like,' cried Sharikov in desperation. 'It's only a public library book.'

    'It's called Correspondence . . . between, er, Engels and that other man, what's his name . . . Anyway, throw it into the stove!'

    Zina flew out.

    'I'd like to hang that Shvonder, on my word of honour, on the first tree,' said Philip Philipovich, with a furious lunge at a turkey-wing. 'There's a gang of poisonous people in this house - it's just like an abscess. To say nothing of his idiotic newspapers . . .'

    Sharikov gave the professor a look of malicious sarcasm. Philip Philipovich in his turn shot him a sideways glance and said no more.

    'Oh, dear, it looks as if nothing's going to go right,' came Bormenthal's sudden and prophetic thought.

    Zina brought in a layer cake on a dish and a coffee pot.

    'I'm not eating any of that,' Sharikov growled threateningly.

    'No one has offered you any. Behave yourself. Please have some, doctor.'

    Dinner ended in silence.

    Sharikov pulled a crumpled cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. Having drunk his coffee, Philip Philipovich looked at the clock. He pressed his repeater and it gently struck a quarter past eight. As was his habit Philip Philipovich leaned against his gothic chairback and turned to the newspaper on a side-table.

    'Would you like to go to the circus with him tonight, doctor? Only do check the programme in advance and make sure there are no cats in it.'

    'I don't know how they let such filthy beasts into the circus at all,' said Sharikov sullenly, shaking his head.

    'Well never mind what filthy beasts they let into the circus for the moment,' said Philip Philipovich ambiguously. 'What's on tonight?'

    'At Solomon's,' Bormenthal began to read out, 'there's something called the Four. . . . the Four Yooshems and the Human Ball-Bearing.'

    'What are Yooshems?' enquired Philip Philipovich suspiciously.

    'God knows. First time I've ever come across the word.'

    'Well in that case you'd better look at Nikita's. We must be absolutely sure about what we're going to see.'

    'Nikita's . . . Nikita's . . . h'm . . . elephants and the Ultimate in Human Dexterity.'

    'I see. What is your attitude to elephants, my dear Sharikov?' enquired Philip Philipovich

mistrustfully. Sharikov was immediately offended.

    'Hell - I don't know. Cats are a special case. Elephants are useful animals,' replied Sharikov.

    'Excellent. As long as you think they're useful you can go and watch them. Do as Ivan

Arnoldovich tells you. And don't get talking to anyone in the bar! I beg you, Ivan Arnoldovich, not to offer Sharikov beer to drink.'

    Ten minutes later Ivan Arnoldovich and Sharikov, dressed in a peaked cap and a raglan overcoat with turned-up collar, set off for the circus. Silence descended on the flat. Philip Philipovich went into his study. He switched on the lamp under its heavy green shade, which gave the study a great sense of calm, and began to pace the room. The tip of his cigar glowed long and hard with its pale green fire. The professor put his hands into his pockets and deep thoughts racked his balding, learned brow. Now and again he smacked his lips, hummed 'to the banks of the sacred Nile . . .' and muttered something. Finally he put his cigar into the ashtray, went over to the glass cabinet and lit up the entire study with the three powerful lamps in the ceiling. From the third glass shelf Philip Philipovich took out a narrow jar and began, frowning, to examine it by the lamplight. Suspended in a transparent, viscous liquid there swam a little white blob that had been extracted from the depths of Sharik's brain. With a shrug of his shoulders, twisting his lips and murmuring to himself, Philip Philipovich devoured it with his eyes as though the floating white blob might unravel the secret of the curious events which had turned life upside down in that flat on Prechistenka.

    It could be that this most learned man did succeed in divining the secret. At any rate, having gazed his full at this cerebral appendage he returned the jar to the cabinet, locked it, put the key into his waistcoat pocket and collapsed, head pressed down between his shoulders and hands thrust deep into his jacket pockets, on to the leather-covered couch. He puffed long and hard at another cigar, chewing its end to fragments. Finally, looking like a greying Faust in the greentinged lamplight, he exclaimed aloud:

    'Yes, by God, I will.'

    There was no one to reply. Every sound in the flat was hushed. By eleven o'clock the traffic in Obukhov Street always died down. The rare footfall of a belated walker echoed in the distance, ringing out somewhere beyond the lowered blinds, then dying away. In Philip Philipovich's study his repeater chimed gently beneath his fingers in his waistcoat pocket . . . Impatiently the professor waited for Doctor Bormenthal and Sharikov to return from the circus.

Seven

    We do not know what Philip Philipovich had decided to do. He did nothing in particular during the subsequent week and perhaps as a result of this things began happening fast.

    About six days after the affair with the bath-water and the cat, the young person from the house committee who had turned out to be a woman came to Sharikov and handed him some papers. Sharikov put them into his pocket and immediately called Doctor Bormenthal.

    'Bormenthal!'

    'Kindly address me by my name and patronymic!' retorted Bormenthal, his expression

clouding. I should mention that in the past six days the great surgeon had managed to quarrel eight times with his ward Sharikov and the atmosphere in the flat was tense.

    'All right, then you can call me by my name and patronymic too!' replied Sharikov with complete justification.

    'No!' thundered Philip Philipovich from the doorway. 'I forbid you to utter such an idiotic name in my flat. If you want us to stop calling you Sharikov, Doctor Bormenthal and I will call you "Mister Sharikov".'

    'I'm not mister - all the "misters" are in Paris!' barked Sharikov.

    'I see Shvonder's been at work on you!' shouted Philip Philipovich. 'Well, I'll fix that rascal.

There will only be "misters" in my flat as long as I'm living in it! Otherwise either I or you will get out, and it's more likely to be you. I'm putting a "room wanted" advertisement in the papers today and believe me I intend to find you a room.'

    'You don't think I'm such a fool as to leave here, do you?' was Sharikov's crisp retort.

    'What?' cried Philip Philipovich. Such a change came over his expression that Bormenthal

rushed anxiously to his side and gently took him by the sleeve.

    'Don't you be so impertinent, Monsieur Sharikov!' said Bormenthal, raising his voice. Sharikov stepped back and pulled three pieces of paper out of his pocket - one green, one yellow and one white, and said as he tapped them with his fingers:

    'There. I'm now a member of this residential association and the tenant in charge of flat No. 5, Preobrazhensky, has got to give me my entitlement of thirty-seven square feet . . .' Sharikov thought for a moment and then added a word which Bormenthal's mind automatically recorded as new - 'please'.

    Philip Philipovich bit his lip and said rashly:

    'I swear I'll shoot that Shvonder one of these days.'

    It was obvious from the look in Sharikov's eyes that he had taken careful note of the remark.

    'Vorsicht, Philip Philipovich . . .' warned Bormenthal.

    'Well, what do you expect? The gall of it . . .!' shouted Philip Philipovich in Russian.

    'Look here, Sharikov ... Mister Sharikov ... If you commit one more piece of impudence I shall deprive you of your dinner, in fact of all your food. Thirty-seven square feet may be all very well, but there's nothing on that stinking little bit of paper which says that I have to feed you!'

    Frightened, Sharikov opened his mouth.

    'I can't go without food,' he mumbled. 'Where would I eat?'

    'Then behave yourself!' cried both doctors in chorus. Sharikov relapsed into meaningful silence and did no harm to anybody that day with the exception of himself - taking advantage of Bormenthal's brief absence he got hold of the doctor's razor and cut his cheek-bone so badly that Philip Philipovich and Doctor Bormenthal had to bandage the cut with much wailing and weeping on Sharikov's part.

    Next evening two men sat in the green twilight of the professor's study - Philip Philipovich and the faithful, devoted Bormenthal. The house was asleep. Philip Philipovich was wearing his sky-blue dressing gown and red slippers, while Bormenthal was in his shirt and blue braces. On the round table between the doctors, beside a thick album, stood a bottle of brandy, a plate of sliced lemon and a box of cigars. Through the smoke-laden air the two scientists were heatedly discussing the latest event: that evening Sharikov had stolen two 10-rouble notes which had been lying under a paperweight in Philip Philipovich's study, had disappeared from the flat and then returned later completely drunk. But that was not all. With him had come two unknown characters who had created a great deal of noise on the front staircase and expressed a desire to spend the night with Sharikov. The individuals in question were only removed after Fyodor, appearing on the scene with a coat thrown over his underwear, had telephoned the 45th Precinct police station. The individuals vanished instantly as soon as Fyodor had replaced the receiver. After they had gone it was found that a malachite ashtray had mysteriously vanished from a console in the hall, also Philip Philipovich's beaver hat and his walking-stick with a gold band inscribed: 'From the grateful hospital staff to Philip Philipovich in memory of "X"-day with affection and respect/

    'Who were they?' said Philip Philipovich aggressively, clenching his fists. Staggering and clutching the fur-coats, Sharikov muttered something about not knowing who they were, that they were a couple of bastards but good chaps.

    'The strangest thing of all was that they were both drunk . . . How did they manage to lay their hands on the stuff?' said Philip Philipovich in astonishment, glancing at the place where his presentation walking-stick had stood until recently.

    'They're experts,' explained Fyodor as he returned home to bed with a rouble in his pocket.

    Sharikov categorically denied having stolen the 20 roubles, mumbling something indistinct

about himself not being the only person in the flat.

    'Aha, I see - I suppose Doctor Bormenthal stole the money?' enquired Philip Philipovich in a voice that was quiet but terrifying in its intonation.

    Sharikov staggered, opened his bleary eyes and offered the suggestion:

    'Maybe Zina took it . . .*

    'What?' screamed Zina, appearing in the doorway like a spectre, clutching an unbuttoned

cardigan across her bosom.

    'How could he . . .'

    Philip Philipovich's neck flushed red.

    'Calm down, Zina,' he said, stretching out his arm to her, 'don't get upset, we'll fix this.'

    Zina immediately burst into tears, her mouth fell wide open and her hand dropped from her bosom.

    'Zina - aren't you ashamed? Who could imagine you taking it? What a disgraceful exhibition!' said Bormenthal in deep embarrassment.

    'You silly girl, Zina, God forgive you . . .' began Philip Philipovich.

    But at that moment Zina stopped crying and the others froze in horror - Sharikov was feeling unwell. Banging his head against the wall, he was emitting a moan that was pitched somewhere between the vowels 'i' and 'o' - a sort of 'eeuuhh'. His face turned pale and his jaw twitched convulsively.

    'Look out - get the swine that bucket from the consulting-room!'

    Everybody rushed to help the ailing Sharikov. As he staggered off to bed supported by

Bormenthal he swore gently and melodiously, despite a certain difficulty in enunciation.

    The whole affair had occurred around 1 am and now it was Sam, but the two men in the study talked on, fortified by brandy and lemon. The tobacco smoke in the room was so dense that it moved about in slow, flat, unruffled swathes.

    Doctor Bormenthal, pale but determined, raised his thin-stemmed glass.

    'Philip Philipovich,' he exclaimed with great feeling, 'I shall never forget how as a half-starved student I came to you and you took me under your wing. Believe me, Philip Philipovich, you are much more to me than a professor, a teacher . . . My respect for you is boundless . . . Allow me to embrace you, dear Philip Philipovich . . .'

    'Yes, yes, my dear fellow . . .' grunted Philip Philipovich in embarrassment and rose to meet him. Bormenthal embraced him and kissed him on his bushy, nicotine-stained moustaches.