ith them!"  cried Persikov wretchedly, pushing his way with
the ton weight out of the crowd. "Hey, taxi! Prechistenka Street!"
     A battered old jalopy, a 'twenty-four model, chugged to a stop, and the
Professor climbed in, trying to shake off the fat man.
     "Let go!" he hissed, shielding  his face with his hands to ward off the
violet light.
     "Have you read it? What they're  shouting? Professor  Persikov and  his
children've had  their throats cut in Malaya Bronnaya!" people were shouting
in the crowd.
     "I  don't  have  any children, blast you!"  yelled  Persikov,  suddenly
coming into the  focus of a  black camera which  snapped him in profile with
his mouth wide open and eyes glaring.
     "Chu... ug, chu... ug," revved the taxi and barged into the crowd.
     The fat man was  already sitting in  the  cab, warming the  Professor's
side.


        CHAPTER V. The Tale of the Chickens

     In  the  small   provincial  town  formerly  called  Trinity,  but  now
Glassworks, in Kostroma Province  (Glassworks District),  a  woman in a grey
dress with a kerchief tied round her head walked  onto the porch of a little
house in  what was formerly Church, but  now  Personal Street and burst into
tears.  This  woman, the widow of Drozdov,  the  former priest of the former
church,  sobbed  so loudly that  soon another woman's head in a fluffy scarf
popped out of a window in the house across the road and exclaimed:
     "What's the matter, Stepanovna? Another one?"
     "The seventeenth!" replied the former Drozdova, sobbing even louder.
     "Dearie me," tutted  the woman in the scarf, shaking her head, "did you
ever hear of such a thing? Tis the anger  of the Lord, and no mistake! Dead,
is she?"
     "Come and see, Matryona," said the priest's widow, amid loud and bitter
sobs. "Take a look at her!"
     Banging the rickety grey gate, the woman padded barefoot over the dusty
hummocks in the road to be taken by the priest's widow into the chicken run.
     It  must  be said  that  instead of losing  heart, the widow  of Father
Sawaty Drozdov, who had died  in twenty-six of anti-religious mortification,
set  up a  nice little poultry business. As soon as things began to go well,
the widow received such  an exorbitant tax  demand that the poultry business
would have closed down had it  not  been for certain good folk. They advised
the widow to inform the  local authorities that  she, the widow, was setting
up a poultry cooperative. The cooperative consisted of Drozdova herself, her
faithful servant Matryoshka and the widow's dear niece. The tax was reduced,
and the poultry-farm prospered so much that in twenty-eight the widow had as
many as  250  chickens, even including some Cochins. Each Sunday the widow's
eggs appeared at Glassworks market. They were sold in Tambov and  were  even
occasionally displayed  in the windows of the  former Chichkin's  Cheese and
Butter Shop in Moscow.
     And  now, the seventeenth brahmaputra  that  morning, their dear little
crested hen, was walking round the yard vomiting. The poor thing gurgled and
retched, rolling her  eyes sadly at  the sun as  if she  would  never see it
again. In front of her squatted co-operative-member Matryoshka with a cup of
water.
     "Come  on,  Cresty  dear...  chuck-chuck-chuck...  drink  some  water,"
Matryoshka begged, thrusting the cup under the hen's beak, but the hen would
not  drink. She opened her beak wide, threw back her head and began to vomit
blood.
     "Lord Jesus!" cried the guest, slapping her thighs. "Just look at that!
Clots of blood. I've never seen a hen bring up like  that before, so help me
God!"
     These words accompanied the poor hen on her  last journey. She suddenly
keeled  over, digging her beak helplessly into the dust, and  swivelled  her
eyes. Then  she  rolled  onto  her back with her legs  sticking  up  and lay
motionless. Matryoshka wept in her deep bass voice, spilling the  water, and
the  Chairman of the cooperative, the  priest's  widow,  wept too while  her
guest lent over and whispered in her ear:
     "Stepanovna, I'll eat my hat if someone hasn't put the evil eye on your
hens. Whoever heard of it! Chickens don't have diseases like this! Someone's
put a spell on them."
     "Tis devils' work!" the priest's  widow cried  to heaven. "They want to
see me good and done for!"
     Her words called forth a loud cock-a-doodle-doo, and  lurching sideways
out of the chicken-coop, like a restless drunk out of a tavern, came a tatty
scrawny rooster. Rolling his eyes at them ferociously, he staggered about on
the spot and spread his wings like an eagle,  but  instead of flying up,  he
began to run round the yard in circles, like a horse on a rope. On his third
time round  he  stopped,  vomited, then began  to cough and choke,  spitting
blood all over the place and finally fell down with  his legs pointing up at
the sun  like masts.  The  yard  was filled with women's  wails,  which were
answered  by  an   anxious  clucking,  clattering  and  fidgeting  from  the
chicken-coop.
     "What did I tell you? The evil eye," said the guest triumphantly.  "You
must get Father Sergius to sprinkle holy water."
     At six o'clock in the evening, when the sun's  fiery visage was sitting
low among the faces of  young sunflowers, Father  Sergius, the senior priest
at the church, finished the  rite and took  off his stole. Inquisitive heads
peeped  over the wooden fence and through the cracks. The  mournful priest's
widow kissed the crucifix and handed a torn yellow rouble note damp from her
tears to Father Sergius, in response to which the latter sighed and muttered
something about the  good Lord visiting his wrath upon us. Father  Sergius's
expression suggested that he knew perfectly well why the good Lord was doing
so, only he would not say.
     Whereupon the crowd in  the street dispersed, and since  chickens go to
sleep  early no  one knew  that in the chicken-coop  of Drozdova's neighbour
three  hens and a rooster had kicked  the bucket all  at once. They  vomited
like  Drozdova's  hens, only  their end came  inconspicuously  in the locked
chicken-coop. The rooster  toppled off the perch head-first and died in that
pose. As for the widow's hens, they gave  up the ghost immediately after the
service, and by  evening there  was  a deathly hush in her chicken-coop  and
piles of dead poultry.
     The next morning the town got up and was thunderstruck to hear that the
story had assumed strange,  monstrous proportions. By midday there were only
three chickens still alive in  Personal Street, in  the last house where the
provincial tax  inspector rented lodgings, but they, too, popped off by  one
p.  m. And come evening, the small  town  of Glassworks  was buzzing  like a
bee-hive  with  the terrible  word "plague"  passing  from mouth  to  mouth.
Drozdova's name got into The Red Warrior, the local newspaper, in an article
entitled  "Does  This Mean  a  Chicken  Plague?" and from there raced on  to
Moscow.
     Professor  Persikov's  life  took on  a  strange, uneasy and  worrisome
complexion.  In  short,  it was quite impossible for  him  to  work in  this
situation.  The  day after he  got rid  of Alfred Bronsky, he was  forced to
disconnect the telephone in  his laboratory  at the Institute  by taking the
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.
     "Send him in here, that authorised whatever  he  is," he said to  Maria
Stepanovna.
     "What  can I  do  for you?" Persikov  asked in  a  tone that  made  the
authorised  whatever  he  was  shudder  perceptibly.  Persikov  shifted  his
spectacles  from his  nose  to his forehead and  back  again, and looked his
visitor  up  and down.  The latter glistened with  hair  cream  and precious
stones, and  a  monocle sat in his right  eye.  "What a foul-looking  face,"
Persikov thought to himself for some reason.
     The guest began in circuitous  fashion by asking permission to smoke  a
cigar, as a result of which Persikov reluctantly invited him to take a seat.
Then  the guest began  apologising at length  for having come  so late. "But
it's  impossible  to  catch  ... oh,  tee-hee, pardon  me  ...  to find  the
Professor at  home in  the daytime." (The guest gave  a sobbing laugh like a
hyena.)
     "Yes,  I'm  very busy!"  Persikov  answered so curtly  that the visitor
shuddered visibly again.
     Nevertheless  he  had  taken  the  liberty  of  disturbing  the  famous
scientist. Time is money, as they say ... the Professor didn't object to his
cigar, did he?
     "Hrmph, hrmph, hrmph," Persikov replied. He'd given him permission."
     "You have discovered the ray of life, haven't you, Professor?"
     "Balderdash! What life? The newspapers invented that!"
     "Oh, no, tee-hee-hee..." He perfectly understood the modesty that is an
invariable  attribute of  all  true scholars...  of course... There had been
telegrams today... In the cities of Warsaw  and Riga they had  already heard
about the ray. Professor Persikov's name was on everyone's lips... The whole
world was following his work with bated breath... But everyone knew how hard
it was  for scholars in Soviet  Russia. Entre nous, soi-dis...  There wasn't
anyone else listening, was there? Alas, they didn't appreciate academic work
here, so he would like to have a little talk with the Professor... A certain
foreign  state  was  offering   Professor  Persikov  entirely  disinterested
assistance  with his laboratory research. Why cast your pearls here,  as the
Scriptures  say?  This state knew how hard it had been  for the Professor in
'nineteen  and 'twenty  during that  tee-hee ... revolution. Of  course,  it
would all be kept absolutely secret. The Professor would inform the state of
the  results  of his work, and  it  would finance  him  in return. Take that
chamber he had built, for  instance. It would be  interesting to have a peep
at the designs for it...
     At this point  the  guest took  a pristine wad of  banknotes out of his
inside jacket pocket...
     A mere  trifle, a deposit of 5,000 roubles,  say, could be given to the
Professor  this  very  moment...  no  receipt  was  required. The authorised
whatever he  was  would be most offended if the  Professor even mentioned  a
receipt.
     "Get out!" Persikov suddenly roared  so terrifyingly that the high keys
on the piano in the drawing-room vibrated.
     The guest vanished  so quickly that  after  a moment Persikov, who  was
shaking with rage, was not sure whether he had been a hallucination or not.
     "His galoshes?" Persikov yelled a moment later in the hall.
     "The gentleman forgot them, sir," replied a quaking Maria Stepanovna.
     "Throw them out!"
     "How can I? The gentleman's bound to come back for them."
     "Hand them over to the house committee. And get a receipt. Don't let me
ever set eyes  on them again! Take them to the committee! Let them have that
spy's galoshes!"
     Maria  Stepanovna  crossed  herself,  picked up  the  splendid  leather
galoshes and took them out of the back door.  She stood outside for a while,
then hid the galoshes in the pantry.
     "Handed them over?" growled Persikov.
     "Yes, sir."
     "Give me the receipt."
     "But the Chairman can't write, Vladimir Ipatych!"
     "Get. Me. A.  Receipt.  At. Once. Let  some literate rascal sign it for
him."
     Maria  Stepanovna just shook her head, went off and  returned a quarter
of an hour later with a note which said:
     "Rcvd for storage from Prof. Persikov I (one) pr. ga's. Kolesov."
     "And what might that be?"
     "It's a baggage check, sir."
     Persikov trampled on the check, but put the receipt under the  blotter.
Then a  sudden  thought made  his high forehead  darken.  He  rushed to  the
telephone, rang Pankrat  at the  Institute and asked him  if everything  was
alright  there.  Pankrat snarled something into the receiver, which could be
interpreted  as meaning that,  as far as he could  see, everything there was
fine. But Persikov did not calm down for long. A moment later he grabbed the
phone and boomed into the receiver:
     "Give me the, what's it called, Lubyanka. Merci... Which of  you should
I  report this  to  ...  there  are  some suspicious-looking  characters  in
galoshes round here, and... Professor Persikov of the Fourth University..."
     The  receiver  suddenly cut the conversation short, and Persikov walked
away, cursing under his breath.
     "Would you like some tea, Vladimir Ipatych?" Maria  Stepanovna enquired
timidly, peeping into the study.
     "No, I would not  ... and the devil take the lot of them...  What's got
into them!"
     Exactly ten minutes later  the Professor received  some new visitors in
his study. One of them was pleasant, rotund  and very polite, in an ordinary
khaki service jacket  and breeches. A  pince-nez perched on his nose, like a
crystal butterfly. In  fact he looked like a cherub in patent leather boots.
The second, short and extremely grim, wore civilian clothes, but they seemed
to  constrict him. The third  visitor behaved in a most peculiar fashion. He
did  not  enter  the  Professor's  study,  but stayed  outside in  the  dark
corridor. The brightly  lit  study wreathed in clouds  of tobacco smoke  was
entirely visible to  him.  The face  of this  third man,  also  in  civilian
clothes, was adorned by a tinted pince-nez.
     The two  inside the study wore  Persikov  out completely, examining the
visiting  card,  asking him about the five thousand and making  him describe
what the man looked like.
     "The  devil only knows," Persikov muttered. "Well, he had  a  loathsome
face. A degenerate."
     "Did he have a glass eye?" the small man croaked.
     "The devil only knows. But no, he didn't. His eyes darted about all the
time."
     "Rubinstein?" the cherub asked the small man quietly. But the small man
shook his head gloomily.
     "Rubinstein would never give cash without a receipt, that's  for sure,"
he muttered. "This isn't Rubinstein's work. It's someone bigger."
     The story about the  galoshes evoked the liveliest  interest  from  the
visitors.  The cherub rapped a few  words  down  the  receiver:  "The  State
Political  Board  orders  house  committee  secretary  Kolesov  to  come  to
Professor Persikov's  apartment I at once  with the  galoshes."  In a  flash
Kolesov  turned  up in  thes  study, pale-faced  and clutching the  pair  of
galoshes.
     "Vasenka!" the cherub called quietly  to  the man sitting  in the hall,
who  got up lethargically and slouched into the study. The tinted lenses had
swallowed up his eyes completely.
     "Yeh?" he asked briefly and sleepily.
     "The galoshes."
     The tinted lenses slid over the galoshes, and Persikov thought he saw a
pair of very sharp  eyes, not at all sleepy, flash out from under the lenses
for a second. But they disappeared almost at once.
     "Well, Vasenka?"
     The man called Vasenka replied in a flat voice:
     "Well what? They're Polenzhkovsky's galoshes."
     The house  committee was immediately deprived of  Professor  Persikov's
present. The  galoshes  disappeared in  a  newspaper. Highly  delighted, the
cherub  in the  service  jacket rose  to  his  feet and  began to  pump  the
Professor's hand,  even delivering  a small speech, the gist of which was as
follows: it did  the Professor  honour ... the Professor could  rest assured
... he would not be  disturbed any more,  either at the Institute or at home
... steps would be taken, his chambers were perfectly safe...
     "But couldn't you shoot  the  reporters?" asked  Persikov, looking over
his spectacles.
     His  question cheered the visitors up no end. Not only the small gloomy
one,  but  even  the tinted one in  the hall  gave a big smile.  Beaming and
sparkling, the cherub explained that that was impossible.
     "But who was that scoundrel who came here?"
     The  smiles disappeared at once, and the cherub replied  evasively that
it was just some petty speculator not  worth worrying about. All the same he
trusted that the  Professor  would  treat  the  events  of  this  evening in
complete confidence, and the visitors left.
     Persikov  returned  to  his  study  and  the  diagrams, but  he was not
destined  to study them. The  telephone's  red light went  on, and  a female
voice  suggested that the Professor  might like to  marry  an attractive and
amorous  widow  with  a  seven-roomed apartment. Persikov  howled  down  the
receiver:
     "I advise  you to  get treatment from Professor Rossolimo..."  and then
the phone rang again.
     This time  Persikov  softened somewhat,  because  the  person,  quite a
famous one, who  was ringing from the Kremlin enquired at length with  great
concern  about  Persikov's  work  and  expressed  the  desire  to visit  his
laboratory. Stepping  back  from the telephone, Persikov  wiped his forehead
and took off the receiver.  Then  trumpets began  blaring and the shrieks of
the Valkyrie rang in the apartment upstairs. The cloth mill director's radio
had tuned in to the Wagner concert at the  Bolshoi. To the accompaniment  of
howls and rumbles  descending from the ceiling, Persikov  declared  to Maria
Stepanovna that he would  take the  director to  court,  smash  his radio to
bits, and  get the blazes out of Moscow, because somebody was clearly trying
to drive  him out.  He  broke his magnifying glass, spent  the  night on the
divan in the study and was lulled to sleep by  the sweet trills of  a famous
pianist wafted from the Bolshoi Theatre.
     The following day was  also full of surprises. After taking the tram to
the Institute, Persikov found a stranger  in a  fashionable green bowler hat
standing  on the  porch.  He scrutinised  Persikov  carefully,  but  did not
address any questions to  him,  so Persikov  put up with  him.  But  in  the
Institute  hall, apart from the  dismayed Pankrat, a second bowler hat stood
up as Persikov came  in and greeted him  courteously: "Good morning, Citizen
Professor."
     "What do you want?" asked Persikov furiously, tearing off his coat with
Pankrat's help. But the  bowler hat quickly pacified  Persikov by whispering
in the gentlest of voices that there was no need at all for the Professor to
be upset. He, the bowler hat, was  there precisely in  order to protect  the
Professor from all sorts of  importunate  visitors. The Professor could rest
assured not only about the  laboratory doors, but also about the windows. So
saying the  stranger turned  back the lapel of his jacket  for a moment  and
showed the Professor a badge.
     "Hm  ...  you work  pretty efficiently,  I must say," Persikov growled,
adding naively: "What will you have to eat?"
     Whereupon the  bowler hat smiled and explained that someone  would come
to relieve him.
     The next three days  were splendid. The  Professor had two  visits from
the Kremlin and one from the  students whom he was  to examine. The students
all  failed to a man,  and you could see from their faces  that Persikov now
filled them with a superstitious dread.
     "Go and be bus  conductors! You're not fit to study zoology,"  came the
shouts from his laboratory.
     "Strict, is he?" the bowler hat asked Pankrat.
     "I should say so," Pankrat replied. "If any of 'em stick it to the end,
they come  staggerin'  out, sweatin' like  pigs, and make straight  for  the
boozer."
     With all  this going on the Professor did not notice the time pass, but
on the  fourth day he  was again brought back to reality, thanks to a  thin,
shrill voice from the street.
     "Vladimir  Ipatych!" the  voice shouted through  the open  window  from
Herzen Street. The  voice  was in luck. Persikov had driven himself too hard
in  the  last few days. And  at that moment he  was  sitting in  an armchair
having a  rest and a smoke, with  a vacant stare in his  red-rimmed eyes. He
was exhausted. So it was even with a certain curiosity that he looked out of
the window and saw Alfred Bronsky on the pavement. The Professor  recognised
the titled  owner  of the  visiting card  from his pointed hat and note-pad.
Bronsky gave a tender and courteous bow to the window.
     "Oh,  it's you, is  it?" asked  the  Professor. He  did  not  have  the
strength to be  angry and was even curious to  know what would  happen next.
Protected  by the window he felt safe from  Alfred. The ever-vigilant bowler
hat  outside  immediately turned  an  ear  to  Bronsky.  The  latter's  face
blossomed into the smarmiest of smiles.
     "Just a sec or two, dear Professor," said Bronsky, raising his voice to
make himself heard. "I have one question only and it concerns zoology. May I
put it to you?"
     "You  may," Persikov replied in a  laconic, ironical  tone, thinking to
himself: "There's something American about that rascal, you know."
     "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...
Hm, although some have  only one  in the middle  under the beak.  Now,  what
else. Their  wings are  short  and  rounded. The tail is  of medium  length,
somewhat stepped and even, I would say, roof-shaped. The middle feathers are
bent in the  form of a sickle... Pankrat... bring me model No.  705 from the
model room, the cross-section of the domestic cock. You don't need it? Don't
bring the model, Pankrat. I repeat, I am not a specialist. Go to Portugalov.
Now  let  me see, I  personally  know  of  six  types of  wild  fowl...  Hm,
Portugalov knows more...  In India  and  on the  Malaysian  archipelago. For
example, the Bankiva fowl, or Callus  bankiva. It is found in  the foothills
of the Himalayas, throughout India, in Assam and Burma... The  Java fowl, or
Gallus varius on Lombok, Sumbawa and Flores. And on the island of Java there
is the splendid Gallus eneus fowl. In  south-east India I  can recommend the
very beautiful Sonneratii.  I'll  show  you  a drawing of it  later.  As for
Ceylon, here we have the Stanley fowl, which is not found anywhere else."
     Bronsky sat there, eyes popping, and scribbled madly.
     "Anything else I can tell you?"
     "I'd like  to  hear  something about  fowl diseases," Alfred  whispered
quietly.
     "Hm,  it's not  my subject.  You should  ask Portugalov. But  anyway...
Well, there are tape-worms, leeches, the itchmite, bird-mite, chicken louse,
Eomenacanthus stramineus, fleas, chicken cholera, inflammation of the mucous
membrane,  Pneumonomicosis,  tuberculosis,  chicken  mange...  all  sorts of
things (Persikov's eyes flashed.) ... poisoning, tumours, rickets, jaundice,
rheumatism, Ahorion Schonlein's  fungus - that's a most interesting disease.
Small spots like mould appear on the crown..."
     Bronsky wiped the sweat off his brow with a coloured handkerchief.
     "And what in  your opinion,  Professor,  is the cause  of  the  present
catastrophe?"
     "What catastrophe?"
     "Haven't you read about it, Professor?" exclaimed  Bronsky in surprise,
pulling a crumpled page of Izvestia out of his briefcase.
     "I don't read newspapers," Persikov pouted.
     "But why not, Professor?" Alfred asked gently.
     "Because they write such rubbish," Persikov replied, without thinking.
     "But  surely  not,  Professor?" Bronsky whispered softly, unfolding the
page.
     "What's the matter?" asked Persikov, even rising to his feet. Bronsky's
eyes were flashing now. He pointed a sharp painted finger  at an  incredibly
large headline which ran right across the whole page: "Chicken plague in the
Republic".
     "What?" asked Persikov, pushing his spectacles onto his forehead...


        CHAPTER VI. Moscow. June 1928

     The city shone, the lights danced, going out and blazing on. In Theatre
Square  the  white lamps of  buses mingled with  the green  lights of trams;
above the former Muir  and Merilees, its  tenth floor added later, skipped a
multi-coloured  electrical   woman,  tossing  out   letter   by  letter  the
multicoloured words:
     "Workers'  Credit". A crowd thronged and  murmured in  the small garden
opposite  the Bolshoi  Theatre,  where  a  multicoloured  fountain played at
night.  And  over   the  Bolshoi  itself  a  huge  loudspeaker  kept  making
announcements.
     "Anti-fowl vaccinations at Lefortovo Veterinary Institute have produced
brilliant  results.  The  number of... fowl deaths for today has dropped  by
half..."
     Then the  loudspeaker changed  its tone, something growled inside it, a
spray of green blazed up over the theatre, then went out and the loudspeaker
complained in a deep bass:
     "An extraordinary commission has been set  up to fight the  fowl plague
consisting  of the People's Commissar of Health, the  People's Commissar  of
Agriculture,   the  head   of  animal  husbandry,  Comrade  Ptakha-Porosyuk,
Professors Persikov and Portugalov... and  Comrade Rabinovich!  New attempts
at intervention,"  the loudspeaker giggled and cried,  like  a  jackal,  "in
connection with the fowl plague!"
     Theatre Passage, Neglinnaya  and  Lubyanka blazed with white and violet
neon  strips  and flickering lights amid wailing  sirens and clouds of dust.
People  crowded round  the large  notices  on the walls,  lit by glaring red
reflectors.
     "All consumption of chickens and chicken  eggs is strictly forbidden on
pain  of  severe punishment. Any attempt by  private traders to sell them in
markets is punishable by law with confiscation of all property. All citizens
in possession of  eggs are  urgently requested to take them to local  police
stations."
     A screen on  the roof of the Workers' Paper showed chickens piled up to
the  sky  as  greenish firemen,  fragmenting and sparkling, hosed them  with
kerosene.  Red waves washed  over the screen, deathly smoke  belched  forth,
swirling in clouds, and drifted  up in a  column, then out  hopped the fiery
letters:
     "Dead chickens being burnt in Khodynka."
     Amid  the  madly  blazing  windows of shops open  until  three  in  the
morning,  with breaks  for lunch  and  supper, boarded-up windows with signs
saying  "Eggs  for  sale. Quality guaranteed"  stared  out  blindly. Hissing
ambulances with "Moscow  Health  Dept."  on  them raced  past  policemen and
overtook heavy buses, their sirens wailing.
     "Someone else poisoned himself with rotten eggs," the crowd murmured.
     The world-famous Empire Restaurant in Petrovsky Lines glowed with green
and orange lamps, and inside it by the portable telephones on the tables lay
liqueur-stained cardboard notices saying "No omelettes until further notice.
Try our fresh oysters."
     In the Hermitage Gardens, where  Chinese lanterns  shone like sad beads
in dead  choked foliage,  on a blindingly lit stage  the singers Shrams  and
Karmanchikov sang satirical songs composed by the poets Ardo and Arguyev,

     Oh, Mama, what shall I do
     Without my little eggies two?
     accompanied by a tap-dance.
     The theatre named after  the  deceased Vsevolod Meyer-hold who, it will
be remembered, met his end  in 1927  during  a production of Pushkin's Boris
Godunov, when the trapezes  with naked boyars  collapsed,  sported a running
coloured neon strip  announcing a new  play by the writer Erendors, entitled
"Fowl Farewell" directed by Kuchterman, a  pupil of Meyerhold. Next door, at
the Aquarium Gardens, ablaze with neon advertisements and shining half-naked
women, the revue "Son-of-a-Hen" by the writer Lenivtsev was playing  to loud
applause among  the  foliage  of  the  open-air  variety  stage.  And  along
Tverskaya trotted a line of circus donkeys, with lanterns under each ear and
gaudy posters. The Korsh Theatre was reviving Rostand's Chantecler.
     Newspaper boys bellowed and yelled among the motor wheels:
     "Horrific  find in underground cave! Poland preparing for horrific war!
Horrific experiments by Professor Persikov!"
     In  the circus of  the former Nikitin,  in a rich  brown arena smelling
sweetly  of dung,  the  deathly  white clown  Born was talking  to  Bim, all
swollen up with dropsy.
     "I know why you're so fed up!"
     "Why ith it?" squealed Bim.
     "You buried your eggs under a  gooseberry bush,  and the  15th District
police squad has found them."
     "Ha-ha-ha-ha,"  laughed  the  circus, so hard  that  the blood  curdled
happily and longingly in  their veins and the  trapezes and  cobwebs stirred
under the old dome.
     "Allez-oop!"  the clowns  shouted  loudly, and  a  well-fed white horse
trotted  out bearing a stunningly  beautiful  woman with shapely  legs in  a
crimson costume.
     Not looking  at or taking heed  of anyone and ignoring the prostitutes'
nudges  and soft, enticing invitations, the inspired and  solitary Professor
Persikov crowned with  unexpected fame  made his way along Mokhovaya  to the
neon  clock by the Manege. Here, engrossed in his  thoughts and not  looking
where he was going, he collided with a strange, old-fashioned man and banged
his  fingers  painfully against  the wooden holster  hanging from the  man's
belt.
     "What  the  devil!"  squealed  Persikov. "My  apologies!"  "Pardon me!"
replied  an unpleasant  voice in return,  and  they  managed  to disentangle
themselves  in the  mass of people.  The  Professor  continued on his way to
Prechistenka, putting the incident out of his head straightaway.


        CHAPTER VII. Feight

     Whether or  not the  Lefortovo veterinary vaccinations were  effective,
the Samara quarantine teams efficient, the strict measures taken with regard
to  buyers-up of eggs  in Kaluga and Voronezh adequate and the  work of  the
Special  Moscow Commission  successful, is not  known,  but what is known is
that a fortnight after Persikov's last  meeting with Alfred there was  not a
single chicken left in the Republic. Here and there in provincial back-yards
lay plaintive tufts of feathers, bringing tears  to the eyes of  the owners,
and  in  hospital  the last  gluttons recovered  from diarrhea and  vomiting
blood. The loss  in  human life for the whole country was  not  more than  a
thousand, fortunately. There were also no large-scale disturbances. True, in
Volokolamsk someone calling himself a prophet announced that the commissars,
no less, were to blame for the chicken plague,  but no one took much  notice
of him. A few policemen who were confiscating chickens from peasant women at
Volokolamsk market got beaten  up,  and some windows in  the local  post and
telegraph  office  were  smashed.  Fortunately,  the  efficient  Volokolamsk
authorities took measures as a result of which, firstly,  the prophet ceased
his activities and, secondly, the telegraph windows were replaced.
     After travelling  north as  far as Archangel and  Syumkin Vyselok,  the
plague stopped of its  own  accord for the simple reason that it could go no
further-there  are  no  chickens in  the White Sea, as we all know.  It also
stopped in  Vladivostok, because after that came the ocean. In the far south
it died  down and disappeared somewhere in the scorched expanses of Ordubat,
Djilfa and  Karabulak, and in the west it  stopped miraculously right at the
Polish and Rumanian frontiers. Perhaps the climate  there  was  different or
the  quarantine  cordon  measures taken by these neighbouring states helped.
But the  fact  remains  that the plague  went no further. The  foreign press
discussed  the  unprecedented  plague  loudly  and  avidly, and  the  Soviet
government,  without kicking up a racket, worked tirelessly round the clock.
The Extraordinary  Commission to combat  the  chicken plague was renamed the
Extraordinary  Commission to  encourage  and revive  poultry-keeping in  the
Republic  and  supplemented  by  a  new  extraordinary  troika consisting of
sixteen  comrades.  "Volunteer-Fowl"  was  founded, of  which  Persikov  and
Portugalov became  honorary deputy chairmen. The newspapers carried pictures
of them with the captions "Mass purchase of eggs from abroad" and "Mr Hughes
tries to  sabotage  egg  campaign".  A  venomous  article  by the journalist
Kolechkin,  ending with  the  words:  "Keep  your hands  off  our  eggs,  Mr
Hughes-you've got eggs of your own!", resounded all over Moscow.
     Professor Persikov had worked himself to a state of complete exhaustion
over the last  three weeks.  The fowl events had disturbed his usual routine
and placed an extra burden on him. He had  to spend whole evenings attending
fowl committee meetings  and from time to time endure long talks either with
Alfred  Bronsky  or the  fat  man with the artificial leg. And together with
Professor  Portugalov  and docents  Ivanov and  Borngart  he  anatomised and
microscopised fowls in  search  of  the  plague  bacillus and  even wrote  a
brochure in the  space of only three evenings,  entitled "On  Changes in the
Liver of Fowls Attacked by Plague".
     Persikov worked  without  great  enthusiasm  in  the  fowl  field,  and
understandably so since his head was full  of something quite different, the
main and most important thing, from which the fowl catastrophe  had diverted
him, i.e., the red ray. Undermining his already overtaxed health by stealing
time  from sleeping and  eating, sometimes not returning to Prechistenka but
dozing  on the  oilskin divan in  his room at the Institute, Persikov  spent
night after night working with the chamber and the microscope.
     By  the  end  of July the  commotion  had  abated  somewhat The renamed
commission  began  to work  along  normal lines,  .and Persikov  resumed his
interrupted  studies. The microscopes were  loaded  with  new specimens, and
fish-  and frog-spawn matured in the chamber  at incredible speed. Specially
ordered lenses were delivered from Konigsberg  by aeroplane, and in the last
few  days  of July, under Ivanov's supervision, mechanics installed two  big
new  chambers, in which  the  beam was as broad as a cigarette packet at its
base and  a whole  metre wide at the  other end. Persikov  rubbed  his hands
happily and began to prepare some mysterious and complex experiments.  First
of all, he  came to  some agreement with the People's Commissar of Education
by phone, and the receiver promised  him  the most willing assistance of all
kinds, then Persikov had  a word with Comrade  Ptakha-Porosyuk, head  of the
Supreme Commission's Animal Husbandry Department. Persikov met with the most
cordial attention form Ptakha-Porosyuk with respect  to  a large order  from
abroad  for Professor  Persikov. Ptakha-Porosyuk said on  the  phone that he
would cable Berlin and  New York rightaway. After that there was a call from
the   Kremlin   to   enquire  how   Persikov   was   getting  on,   and   an
important-sounding voice asked affectionately if he would like a motor-car.
     "No, thank you. I prefer to travel by tram," Persikov replied.
     "But why?" the mysterious voice asked, with an indulgent laugh.
     Actually  everyone spoke  to Persikov  either with respect  and awe, or
with  an  affectionate  laugh,  as  if  addressing a  silly,  although  very
important child.
     "It  goes faster," Persikov said, after which the resonant bass on  the
telephone said:
     "Well, as you like."
     Another week passed,  during  which Persikov withdrew increasingly from
the subsiding fowl problems  to immerse himself entirely in the study of the
ray.  His head  became light, somehow  transparent and weightless, from  the
sleepless nights  and  exhaustion. The red rims never left his eyes now, and
almost every  night  was spent  at  the  Institute.  Once  he abandoned  his
zoological refuge to read a paper on  his ray and its action on the ovule in
the huge hall  of the Central Commission for Improving the Living Conditions
of  Scientists in Prechistenka. This  was a great triumph for the  eccentric
zoologist. The applause in the hall made the plaster flake off the  ceiling,
while the hissing arc lamps lit up  the black dinner jackets of club-members
and the white dresses of their  ladies. On the stage, next to the rostrum, a
clammy grey frog the size  of a  cat sat  breathing  heavily in a dish on  a
glass table.  Notes were thrown  onto the  stage.  They  included seven love
letters,  which Persikov  tore up. The  club president had great  difficulty
persuading him onto the platform. Persikov bowed angrily. His hands were wet
with sweat  and his black  tie was somewhere behind his left ear, instead of
under his chin. Before him in a breathing haze were hundreds of yellow faces
and white  male chests, when suddenly the yellow holster of a pistol flashed
past and  vanished behind a  white column. Persikov  noticed  it vaguely and
then forgot about it.  But after the lecture, as he was walking down the red
carpet of the staircase, he suddenly felt unwell. For  a  second the  bright
chandelier in  the  vestibule  clouded  and  Persikov  came  over dizzy  and
slightly  queasy.  He seemed  to  smell burning and  feel  hot, sticky blood
running down his neck... With a  trembling hand  the Professor  clutched the
banisters.
     "Is anything the matter, Vladimir Ipatych?"  he was besieged by anxious
voices on all sides.
     "No, no," Persikov replied, pulling himself  togeth