Mikhail Bulgakov. The Fateful Eggs -
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went into his laboratory at the Zoological Institute in Herzen Street. The
Professor switched on the frosted ceiling light and looked around him.
This ill-fated evening must be regarded as marking the beginning of the
appalling catastrophe, just as Professor Vladimir Ipatievich Persikov must
be seen as the prime cause of the said catastrophe.
He was fifty-eight years old. With a splendid bald head, like a pestle,
and tufts of yellowish hair sticking out at the sides. His face was
clean-shaven, with a slightly protruding lower lip which gave it a slightly
cantankerous expression. Tall and round-shouldered, he had small bright eyes
and tiny old-fashioned spectacles in silver frames on a red nose. He spoke
in a grating, high, croaking voice and one of his many idiosyncrasies was to
crook the index finger of his right hand and screw up his eyes, whenever he
was saying something weighty and authoritative. And since he always spoke
authoritatively, because his knowledge in his field was quite phenomenal,
the crooked finger was frequently pointed at those with whom the Professor
was conversing. Outside his field, that is, zoology, embriology, anatomy,
botany and geography, however, Professor Persikov said almost nothing at
all.
Professor Persikov did not read the newspapers or go to the theatre.
His wife had run away with a tenor from the Zimin opera in 1913, leaving him
a note which read as follows:
"Your frogs make me shudder with intolerable loathing. I shall be
unhappy all my life because of them."
The Professor did not marry again and had no children. He was
short-tempered, but did not bear grudges, liked cloudberry tea and lived in
Prechistenka Street in a flat with five rooms, one of which was occupied by
the old housekeeper, Maria Stepanovna, who looked after the Professor like a
nanny.
In 1919 three of the Professor's five rooms were taken away. Whereupon