The individual personality! From Seville to Granada…” Philip Philipovich cried out, his eyes flashing fiercely, “and not just general human traits. It is a miniature of the brain itself. And I have no use for it whatsoever, the devil take it. I was on the look-out for something absolutely different, for eugenics, for a way to improve human nature. And then I got on to rejuvenation. Surely you don’t think that I just do these operations for money? I am a scholar, after all.”
“You are a great scholar, and that’s the truth!” uttered Bormental, sipping at his cognac. His eyes were bloodshot.
“I wanted to make a small experiment after I first obtained the extraction of the sexual hormone from the hypophysis two years ago. And what happened instead of that? Oh, my God! These hormones in the hypophysis, oh Lord… Doctor, all I see before me is dull despair and, I must confess, I have lost my way.”
Bormental suddenly rolled up his sleeves and pronounced, squinting down his nose:
“Very well, then, dear teacher, if you don’t want to I will feed him arsenic myself at my own risk. I don’t care if Papa was a police investigator. After all, in the final analysis it is your own experimental creature.”
Philip Philipovich had lost his fire, softened up, fallen back in the armchair, and said:
“No, I can’t allow you to do that, dear boy. I am 60 years old and can give you some advice. Never commit a crime against anybody whatsoever. That’s how you’ll grow old with clean hands.”
“But Philip Philipovich, for goodness sake. If that Shvonder gets working on him again, what will become of him! My God, I’m only just beginning to realise the potential of that Sharikov!”
“Aha! So you’ve understood now, have you? I understood it ten days after the operation. Shvonder, of course, is the biggest fool of all. He doesn’t understand that Sharikov represents a greater threat to him than to me. At this stage he’ll make every effort to sick him onto me not realising that, if someone in their turn decides to sick Sharikov onto Shvonder, there’ll be nothing left of him but a few flying feathers.”
“Yes indeed. The cats alone are proof enough of that. A man with the heart of a dog.”
“Ah no, no,” Philip Philipovich said slowly in answer. “You, Doctor, are making a very great mistake, pray do not libel the dog. The cats are temporary… That is just a matter of discipline and two or three weeks. I assure you. In a month or two he will have stopped chasing them.”
“And why not now?”
“Elementary, Ivan Arnoldovich… How .can you ask? The hypophysis is not suspended in thin air. It is attached to the brain of a dog, after all. Give it time to adapt. At this stage Sharikov is exhibiting only residuary canine behavioural traits and, understand this, chasing cats is quite the best thing he does. You have to realise that the whole horror of the thing is that he already has not the heart of a dog but the heart of a man. And one of the most rotten in nature!”
Bormental, worked up to the last degree, clenched his strong thin hands into fists, twitched his shoulders and announced firmly:
“That’s it. I’ll kill him!”
“I forbid it!” categorically replied Philip Philipovich.
“But for heaven’s sake…”
Philip Philipovich suddenly raised his finger and listened tensely.
“Just a moment. I thought I heard footsteps.”
Both listened but all was silent in the corridor.
“Must have imagined it,” pronounced Philip Philipovich and went off into a tirade in German, punctuated by one Russian word ugolovshchina (criminal offence), pronounced more than once.
“Just a moment.” It was Bormental this time, who gave the alert and moved towards the door. This time the steps were clearly to be heard approaching the study. Apart from this, there was a voice, muttering something. Bormental flung open the door and sprang back in amazement. Thunderstruck, Philip Philipovich froze in his armchair.
In the lighted quadrangle of the corridor, Darya Petrovna stood before them clad only in her nightslip, her face flaming and militant. Both the doctor and the Professor were blinded by the abundance of her mighty and, as it seemed to them both from their first fright, totally naked body. In her powerful arms Darya Petrovna was dragging something, and that “something” was struggling and sitting on its rump and trying to dig its small legs covered with down into the parquet. The “something”, of course, turned out to be Sharikov, totally confused, still rather drunk, unkempt and dressed only in his night-shirt.
Darya Petrovna, grandiose and naked, shook Sharikov like a sack of potatoes and pronounced the following words:
“Take a good look at him, Professor, Sir, at our visitor — Telegraph Telegraphovich. I’m a married woman, but Zina is an innocent girl. It’s a good thing I was the one to wake up.”
Having concluded this speech, Darya Petrovna was overcome by confusion, squealed, covered her breasts with her arms and ran.
“Darya Petrovna, pardon us, for goodness sake,” the blushing Philip Philipovich called after her, coming to himself.
Bormental rolled up his shirt-sleeves and advanced on Sharikov. Philip Philipovich took one look at his eyes and was horrified by what he saw there.
“Doctor, what are you doing? I forbid…”
Bormental took Sharikov by the collar and shook him so violently that the shirt front split.
Philip Philipovich waded in to separate them and began to extract skinny little Sharikov from those strong surgeon’s hands.
“You have no right to hit me!” shouted the half-strangled Sharikov, sitting down and sobering up rapidly.
“Doctor!” thundered Philip Philipovich.
Bormental came to himself somewhat and let go of Sharikov.
“All right then,” hissed Bormental, “we’ll wait till morning. I’ll deal with him when he’s sober.”
He then tucked Sharikov under one arm and hauled him off to the consulting room to sleep.
Sharikov made some attempt to resist but his legs would not obey him.
Philip Philipovich stood legs astride so that his azure dressing gown fell open, raised hands and eyes to the ceiling light in the corridor and remarked:
“Well, well…”
Part IX
Doctor Bormental did not deal with Sharikov next morning as promised for the simple reason that Polygraph Polygraphovich had vanished from the house. Bormental was in a fury of despair, reproaching himself for having been ass enough not to hide the key of the front door, yelling that it was unforgivable, and concluding with the wish that Sharikov would run under a bus. Philip Philipovich sat in his study running his fingers through his hair and saying:
“I can well imagine what’s going on out there, I can well imagine. From Seville to Granada, oh my God.”
“He may still be with the house committee,” Bormental ran off like one possessed.
In the house committee he had a stand up row with the chairman Shvonder till the latter, enraged, sat down and wrote a notice to the people’s court of the Khamovniki district, shouting that he was not the keeper of Professor Preobrazhensky’s protege, all the more so as that protege Polygraph had only yesterday shown himself to be a real cad, having taken 7 roubles from the house committee supposedly in order to buy text-books from the cooperative.
Fyodor was paid three roubles to search the whole house from top to bottom, but nowhere was Sharikov to be found.
The only thing that did come to light was that Polygraph had made off at dawn in cap, scarf and coat, having supplied himself with a bottle of rowan-berry vodka from the sideboard, Doctor Bormental’s gloves and all his own documents. Darya Petrovna and Zina made no attempt to disguise their demonstrative delight and hope that Sharikov would never return. The day before Sharikov had borrowed three roubles and fifty kopecks from Darya Petrovna.
“Serve you all right!” growled Philip Philipovich, shaking his fists. The telephone rang all that day, and all the next. The doctors received a record number of patients and on the third day in the study they faced up to the question of the necessity of informing the militia about a missing person, whose duty it was to search out Sharikov in the deep waters of the Moscow underworld.
No sooner had the word “militia” been pronounced than the blessed quiet of Obukhov Alley was broken by the growl of a van and the windows of the house shook. After this there was a confident ring and in came Polygraph Polygraphovich with an air of exceptional dignity, quietly took off his cap, hung his coat on a peg and appeared in a new hypostasis. He was wearing a second-hand leather jacket, rubbed leather trousers and high English boots laced up to the knee. An incredibly powerful aroma of cats immediately billowed out to fill the whole hall.
Preobrazhensky and Bormental, as if on command, folded their arms on their chests, planted themselves in the doorways and waited for Polygraph Polygraphovich to explain himself. He smoothed down his wiry hair, gave a little cough and looked round in such a way that it became clear that he wished to hide a certain embarrassment beneath an air of jaunty insouciance.
“I, Philip Philipovich,” he began at last, “have taken up an official post.”
Both doctors uttered an indeterminate strangled sound in their throats and moved. Preobrazhensky, the first to come to himself, held out his hand and said:
“Give me the paper.”
On it was printed: “The presenter of this, Comrade Polygraph Polygraphovich Sharikov, is truly employed as head of the sub-department for the control of stray animals (cats, etc.)
