Mikhail Bulgakov. The Fateful Eggs -
26 >
receiver off, and in the evening as he was riding along Okhotny Row in a
tram, the Professor saw himself on the roof of an enormous building with
Workers' Paper in black letters. He, the Professor, was climbing into a
taxi, fuming, green around the gills, and blinking, followed by a rotund
figure in a blanket, who was clutching his sleeve. The Professor on the
roof, on the white screen, put his hands over his face to ward off the
violet ray. Then followed in letters of fire: "Professor Persikov in a car
explaining everything to our well-known reporter Captain Stepanov." And
there was the rickety old jalopy dashing along Volkhonka, past the Church of
Christ the Saviour, with the Professor bumping up and down inside it,
looking like a wolf at bay.
"They're devils, not human beings," the zoologist hissed through
clenched teeth as he rode past.
That evening, returning to his apartment in Prechistenka, the zoologist
received from the housekeeper, Maria Stepanovna, seventeen slips of paper
with the telephone numbers of people who had rung during his absence, plus
Maria Stepanovna's oral statement that she was worn out. The Professor was
about to tear the pieces of paper up, but stopped when he saw "People's
Commissariat of Health" scribbled next to one of the numbers.
"What's up?" the eccentric scientist was genuinely puzzled. "What's the
matter with them?"
At ten fifteen on the same evening the bell rang, and the Professor was
obliged to converse with a certain exquisitely attired citizen. The
Professor received him thanks to a visiting card which said (without
mentioning any names) "Authorised Head of Trading Sections for Foreign Firms
Represented in the Republic of Soviets."
"The devil take him," Persikov growled, putting his magnifying glass
and some diagrams down on the baize cloth.