“What are Yussems?” inquired Philip Philipovich suspiciously.
“Goodness knows. I’ve never met the word before.”
“In that case you’d better look through the Nikitins’. One must have things clear.”
“The Nikitins, the Nikitins … hm … have elephants and the ultimate in human dexterity.”
“Right. What have you to say to elephants, dear Sharikov?” Philip Philipovich asked Sharikov mistrustfully.
He took offence.
“You may think I don’t understand, but I do,” Sharikov replied. “Cats are different. Elephants are useful animals.”
“Well then, that’s settled. If they are useful, then go and take a look at them. Do as Ivan Arnoldovich tells you. And don’t get talking with strangers in the buffet. Ivan Arnoldovich, please do not treat Sharikov to beer.”
Ten minutes later Ivan Arnoldovich and Sharikov, dressed in a cap with a duck-bill peak and a cloth coat with raised collar, left for the circus. In the flat there was silence. Philip Philipovich was in his study. He lit the lamp under the heavy green shade, from which it immediately became very peaceful in the huge study, and began to pace the room. The end of his cigar glowed long and hot with a pale green fire.
The Professor’s hands were thrust deep into his trouser pockets and unhappy thoughts tormented his learned brow with the smoothly combed sparse hair. He made little chucking sounds, singing between his teeth: “To the sacred shores of the Nile…” and muttering something. Finally, he laid the cigar across the ash-tray, went to a cupboard entirely made of glass and lit the whole study with three extremely powerful projector lamps on the ceiling.
From the cupboard, from the third glass shelf, Philip Philipovich pulled out a narrow jar and began to examine it, frowning in the light of the lamps. In the transparent, viscose liquid swam suspended, not touching the bottom, a small white lump — extracted from the depth of Sharik’s brain. Shrugging his shoulders, his lips twisted in an ironic smile, Philip Philipovich devoured it with his eyes, as though he wanted to discover from the unsinkable white lump the mainspring of the startling events which had turned upside down the whole course of life in the Prechistenka flat.
It is quite possible that the great scholar did in fact make such a discovery. At least, having looked his fill at the brain appendage, he put the jar away in the cupboard, locked it with a key, slipped the key into his waistcoat pocket and flung himself, hunching his shoulders and thrusting his hands deep into the pockets of his jacket, onto the leather sofa. For a long time he puffed away at his second cigar, chewing the end quite to pieces and finally, in total solitude, glowing green like a silver-haired Faust, he exclaimed:
“As God is my witness, I believe I’ll take the risk.”
To that, no one made any reply. All sound ceased in the flat. In Obukhov Alley, as everyone knows, all traffic falls silent after 11 o’clock. Very occasionally came the sound of the distant footsteps of some belated passer-by, they pattered past somewhere behind the thick curtains and died away. In the study Philip Philipovich’s repeater watch chimed softly beneath his finger from the small pocket… The Professor impatiently awaited the return of Dr. Bormental and Sharikov.
Part VIII
There is no telling precisely what risk Philip Philipovich had decided to take. He took no further action for the rest of the week and, possibly as a result of this passivity, life in the flat became excessively eventful.
About six days after the business with the water and the cat, the young man who had turned out to be a woman from the house committee came to see Sharikov and presented him with his documents. Sharikov promptly pocketed them and immediately thereafter called Dr. Bormental: “Bormental!”
“Oh, no, you don’t. Please address me by my name and patronymic!” replied Bormental, his face changing.
It must be said that, in the course of the six days that had elapsed, the surgeon had quarrelled at least eight times with his protege. The atmosphere in the Obukhov rooms was tense.
“In that case you call me by my name and patronymic!” replied Sharikov with every justification.
“No!” roared Philip Philipovich from the doorway. “I cannot have you called by a name and patronymic like that in my flat. If you wish that we should address you with less familiarity and stop calling you Sharikov, we will call you ‘Mister Sharikov’.”
“I’m no mister, all the misters are in Paris!” Sharikov barked.
“Shvonder’s work!” cried Philip Philipovich. “All right then, I’ll get even with that villain. There will be no one but misters and masters in my flat for as long as I live here! If not — either I shall leave this place, or you will, and most probably it will be you. I shall put a notice in the newspaper today and I am sure we shall soon find a room for you.”
“I’m not such a fool as to leave this place,” Sharikov answered quite distinctly.
“What!” Philip Philipovich gasped and his face changed to such a degree that Bormental flew to his side and tenderly and anxiously took him by the sleeve.
“None of your cheek now, Monsieur Sharikov!” Bormental raised his voice threateningly. Sharikov stepped back and pulled from his pocket three papers: one green, one yellow and one white and, poking his fingers at them, said:
“There you are. I am a member of the accommodation cooperative and I have the indisputable right to 13 square yards of space in flat No. 5, the tenant responsible for which is Professor Preobrazhensky.” Sharikov thought for a moment and added a phrase which Bormental’s mind mechanically registered as new:
“With your kind permission.”
Philip Philipovich caught his lip in his teeth and uncautiously remarked through it:
“I swear I’ll shoot that Shvonder before I’ve finished with him.”
Sharikov was onto the words most attentively and it was clear from his eyes that they had made a sharp impact.
“Philip Philipovich, vorsichtig…” Bormental began warningly.
“Well, but you know… Such a dirty trick!” cried Philip Philipovich. “You bear in mind, Sharikov … mister, that I, if you permit yourself one more impertinence, I shall give you no more dinners or any other food in my house. 13 square yards — that is charming, but after all there is nothing in that frog-coloured paper that obliges me to feed you.”
Here Sharikov took fright and his mouth fell open.
“I can’t do without proper nourishment,” he mumbled. “Where’ll I get my grub?”
“In that case behave yourself!” chorused the two esculapians in one voice.
Sharikov became significantly quieter and on that particular day did no further harm to anyone other than himself: making full use of the short space of time Bormental had to leave the house, he got hold of his razor and cut open his own cheekbone so effectively that Philip Philipovich and Dr. Bormental had to sew him up, after which Sharikov continued to howl and weep for a long time.
The following night in the green semi-darkness of the study two men were sitting: Philip Philipovich and his faithful, devoted assistant Bormental. Everyone in the house was asleep. Philip Philipovich was in his azure dressing-gown and red slippers, Bormental in his shirt-sleeves and blue braces. On the round table between the doctors next to a plump album stood a bottle of cognac, a saucer with slices of lemon and a cigar-box. The scholars, having filled the room with smoke, were hotly discussing the latest event: that evening Sharikov had appropriated two ten-rouble notes that had been lying under a paper-weight, disappeared from the flat and returned late and stone-drunk.
But this was not all. With him had appeared two persons unknown who had made an unseemly din on the front stairs and declared their intention of spending the night as Sharikov’s guests. The aforesaid persons had only taken their departure after Fyodor, who had been present at the spectacle in a light autumn coat thrown over his underwear, had rung up the forty-fifth department of the militia.
The two persons took their departure instantly, as soon as Fyodor had put down the telephone. After they had gone it was discovered that the malachite ash-tray from the shelf beneath the mirror in the hall had vanished, no one knew where, and likewise Philip Philipovich’s beaver hat and his cane, on which was inscribed in flowing gold letters: “To dear and respected Philip Philipovich from his grateful graduates on the day…” and then, in Roman figures, the number XXV.
“Who are they?” Philip Philipovich advanced on Sharikov with clenched fists.
Swaying and shrinking back amongst the fur coats, Sharikov declared that the persons were unknown to him, that they were not just any old sons of bitches, but good people.
“The most extraordinary thing is that they were both drunk. How did they manage it?” asked Philip Philipovich in amazement, gazing at the place on the rack where the souvenir of the anniversary had once stood.
“Professionals,” explained Fyodor, heading back to bed with a rouble in his pocket.
Sharikov categorically denied taking the two ten-rouble notes and in doing so dropped dark hints as to the fact that he was not the only one in the flat.
“Aha, then possibly it was Doctor Bormental who pinched the notes?” inquired Philip Philipovich in a quiet voice tinged with menace.
Sharikov rocked on his feet, opened totally glazed eyes and suggested:
“Perhaps that slut Zina took them…”
“What’s that?” screamed Zina, materialising in the doorway like an apparition, and clasping her unbuttoned blouse to her breast with the palm of her hand. “How could he…”
Philip Philipovich’s neck was suffused with crimson.
“Calm yourself, Zina dear,” he pronounced, holding out his hand
