Mikhail Bulgakov. The Fateful Eggs -
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grass-snake.
A minute later it opened again, and a man appeared on the threshold.
Persikov creaked his chair and stared at the newcomer over the top of his
spectacles and over his shoulder. Persikov was very isolated from real life.
He was not interested in it. But even Persikov could not fail to notice the
main thing about the man who had just come in. He was dreadfully
old-fashioned. In 1919 this man would have looked perfectly at home in the
streets of the capital. He would have looked tolerable in 1924, at the
beginning. But in 1928 he looked positively strange. At a time when even the
most backward part of the proletariat, bakers, were wearing jackets and when
military tunics were a rarity, having been finally discarded at the end of
1924, the newcomer was dressed in a double-breasted leather jacket, green
trousers, foot bindings and army boots, with a big old-fashioned Mauser in
the cracked yellow holster at his side. The newcomer's face made the same
impression on Persikov as on everyone else, a highly unpleasant one. The
small eyes looked out on the world with a surprised, yet confident
expression, and there was something unduly familiar about the short legs
with their flat feet. The face was bluish-shaven. Persikov frowned at once.
Creak' ing the screw mercilessly, he peered at the newcomer over his
spectacles, then through them, and barked:
"So you've got a warrant, have you? Where is it then?"
The newcomer was clearly taken aback by what he saw. In general he was
not prone to confusion, but now he was confused. Judging by his eyes, the
thing that impressed him most was the bookcase with twelve shelves
stretching right up to the ceiling and packed full of books. Then, of
course, the chambers which, hell-like, were flooded with the crimson ray
swelling up in the lenses. And Persikov himself in the semi-darkness by