Mikhail Bulgakov. The Fateful Eggs -
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"What have you to say re the fowls, Professor?" shouted Bronsky,
cupping his hands round his mouth.
Persikov was taken aback. He sat on the window-sill, then got down,
pressed a knob and shouted, pointing at the window: "Let that fellow on the
pavement in, Pankrat!"
When Bronsky walked into the room, Persikov extended his bonhomie to
the point of barking "Sit down!" to him.
Smiling ecstatically, Bronsky sat down on the revolving stool
"Kindly explain something to me," Persikov began. "You write for those
newspapers of yours, don't you?"
"That is so," Alfred replied respectfully.
"Well, what I can't understand is how you can write if you can't even
speak Russian properly. What do you mean by 'a sec or two' and 're the
fowls'?"
Bronsky gave a thin, respectful laugh.
"Valentin Petrovich corrects it."
"And who might Valentin Petrovich be?"
"The head of the literary section."
"Oh, well. I'm not a philologist anyway. Now, leaving aside that
Petrovich of yours, what exactly do you wish to know about fowls?"
"Everything you can tell me, Professor."
At this point Bronsky armed himself with a pencil. Sparks of triumph
flashed in Persikov's eyes.
"You shouldn't have come to me, I don't specialise in our feathered
friends. You should have gone to Yemelian Ivano-vich Portugalov, at the
First University. I personally know very little..."
Bronsky smiled ecstatically to indicate that he had got the Professor's
joke. "Joke-very little!" he scribbled in his pad.
"But if it interests you, of course. Hens, or cristates are a variety
of bird from the fowl species. From the pheasant family," Persikov began in
a loud voice, looking not at Bronsky, but into the far distance where he
could see an audience of thousands. "From the pheasant family ...phasianus.
They are birds with a fleshy skin crown and two gills under the lower jaw...