“But, Professor,” said Shvonder, now flushing, now turning pale, “you twisted our words.”
“I must ask you not to use such expressions.”
At a loss, Shvonder took the receiver and said: “Hullo. Yes… Chairman of the house committee. We were acting in accordance with the rules. The Professor has quite exceptional privileges anyway… We know about his work … we intended to leave him no less than five rooms… Well, all right … if that’s the case … all right…”
Red-faced, he hung up and turned round.
Ran rings round them! What a fellow! thought the dog with the utmost enthusiasm. Is it some special word he knows, I wonder? Now you can beat me black and blue if you like but I’m not leaving this place.
The three, mouths open, gaped at the humiliated Shvonder.
“Shameful, that’s what it is!” he said uncertainly.
“If there were a discussion now,” said the woman, flushing hotly, “I would prove to Pyotr Alexandrovich…”
“I beg your pardon, but do you wish to open the discussion this minute?” inquired Philip Philipovich politely.
The woman’s eyes sparkled.
“I understand your irony, Professor, we will go now… Only I, as the chairman of cultural department of our house…”
“Chairwoman,” Philip Philipovich corrected her.
“Would like to ask you,” at this point the woman pulled out of her coat-front a few brightly coloured journals, still damp from the snow, “to take a few journals sold for the benefit of German children. 50 kopecks each.”
“No, thank you,” replied Philip Philipovich briefly, glancing at the journals.
The four indicated total amazement and the woman went the colour of cranberry juice.
“Why do you refuse?”
“I don’t want them.”
“You have no sympathy for the children of Germany?”
“On the contrary.”
“You grudge fifty copecks?”
“No.”
“Why then?”
“I don’t want them.”
There was a short silence.
“Do you know what, Professor?” said the girl, heaving a deep sigh. “If you were not a luminary known to all Europe and if you had not been interceded for in the most disgraceful manner by… (the fair man tugged at the end of her jacket but she shook him off) by people who, I am quite sure, we will eventually get to the bottom of, you should be arrested.”
“And what for?” inquired Philip Philipovich with some curiosity.
“You are a proletariat-hater!” said the woman proudly.
“Yes, I do dislike the proletariat,” Philip Philipovich agreed sadly and pressed a knob. A bell sounded. A door opened somewhere in the corridor.
“Zina,” called Philip Philipovich, “you may serve dinner. You will permit me, gentlemen?”
The four filed silently out of the study, silently traversed the reception room and the hall, then you could hear the front door closing heavily and resonantly behind them.
The dog stood up on its hind legs and made an act of prayerful obeisance to Philip Philipovich.
Part III
On black-bordered plates patterned with flowers of paradise lay slivers of thinly cut smoked salmon and pickled eels. On a heavy board there was a lump of very fresh cheese and, in a little silver dish surrounded by ice, caviar. Amongst the plates stood a selection of small, slim glasses and three cut glass decanters with different coloured vodkas. All these objects were arrayed on a small marble table, neatly joined to a huge sideboard of carved oak all agleam with glass and silver. In the middle of the room was the table, heavy as a tombstone, spread with a white cloth, and on it were set two places, napkins starched and folded into the shape of papal tiaras, and three dark bottles.
Zina brought in a covered silver dish in which something was sizzling. The aroma arising from the dish was such that the dog’s mouth promptly filled with watery saliva. The Gardens of Semiramis, he thought and thudded his tail on the floor like a stick.
“Bring them here,” commanded Philip Philipovich in a resonant voice. “Doctor Bormental, I beg you to be circumspect with the caviar. And if you want good advice, pour yourself not the English but the plain Russian vodka.”
The handsome young man he had bitten (now without his smock and dressed in a decent, black suit) shrugged his broad shoulders, permitted himself a polite grin and helped himself to the transparent vodka.
“With the blessing of the state?” he inquired. “How could you, my dear Sir,” his host replied. “It’s spirit. Darya Petrovna makes excellent vodka herself.”
“Don’t say so, Philip Philipovich. It’s the general opinion that the new state brew is excellent vodka. 30° proof.” “Vodka ought to be 40° not 30° that’s in the first place,” interrupted Philip Philipovich, laying down the law. “And, in the second, one can never tell what they put in it. Can you tell me what might come into their heads?”
“Anything,” said the bitten young man with conviction.
“And I am of the same opinion exactly,” added Philip Philipovich and emptied the contents of his glass down his throat in one go. “Mm … Doctor Bormental, I implore you, pass me that thing there immediately, and if you are going to tell me what it is … I shall be your sworn enemy for the rest of your life. From Seville to Granada…”
With these words he himself speared something resembling a small, dark square of bread with a clawed silver fork. The bitten man followed his example. Philip Philipovich’s eyes gleamed.
“Is that bad?” demanded Philip Philipovich, chewing. “Is that bad? Answer me, my dear doctor.”
“Superb,” replied the bitten man sincerely.
“I should rather say so… Note, Ivan Arnoldovich, that only country squires who have survived the Bolsheviks take cold hors-d’oeuvre and soup with their vodka. Any person with the least self-respect operates with hot hors-d’oeuvre. And of all hot Moscow hors-d’oeuvres, this is the best. They used to prepare them quite splendidly at the Slavyansky Bazar Restaurant. Take it, good dog.”
“If you’re going to feed that dog in the dining room,” a woman’s voice sounded, “you’ll never get him out again not for love nor money.”
“Never mind. The poor fellow’s hungry,” Philip Philipovich offered the dog one of the savouries on the end of a fork. It was received with the dexterity of a conjuring trick, after which the fork was thrown with a clatter into the fingerbowl.
After this a crayfish-scented steam rose from the dishes; the dog sat in the shadow of the table-cloth with the air of a sentry mounting guard over a store of gunpowder. Philip Philipovich, however, tucking the tail of a starched napkin into his shirt collar, held forth:
“It is not a simple problem, Ivan Arnoldovich. One has to know about food, and — can you imagine? — the majority of people do not. You don’t just have to know what to eat, but when and how.” Philip Philipovich wagged his spoon pontifically. “And what to talk about. Yes indeed. If you have a care for your digestion, my advice is: avoid the subjects of Bolshevism and medicine at the dinner-table. And whatever you do, don’t read the Soviet newspapers before dinner.”
“Hm … but there aren’t any other papers.”
“That’s what I mean, don’t read newspapers. You know that I set up thirty experiments in the clinic. And what do you think? The patients who read no newspapers felt fine. The ones whom I especially ordered to read Pravda lost weight.”
“Hm…” the bitten man responded with interest, his face flushed from the hot soup and wine.
“And not only that. Weaker reflexes, poor appetite, depression.”
“Hell! You don’t say!”
“Yes, indeed. But what am I thinking of? Here am I being the first to bring up medicine.”
Philip Philipovich, leaning back, rang the bell and from behind the cherry-coloured door-curtain appeared Zina. The dog received a thick, pale piece of sturgeon which he did not like and immediately after that a slice of juicy rare roast beef. Having downed this, the dog suddenly felt that he wanted to sleep and could not bear the sight of any more food. What a queer feeling, he thought, blinking heavy lids, I don’t mind if I never set eyes on food again and to smoke after dinner is a stupid thing to do.
The dining room filled up with unpleasant blue smoke. The dog dozed, its head on its front paws.
“Saint-Julien is a decent wine,” the dog heard through his sleep. “Only you can’t get it any more.”
From somewhere above and to the side came the sound of choral singing, softened by ceilings and carpets.
Philip Philipovich rang the bell and Zina came.
“Zina, what does that mean?”
“They’ve called another general meeting, Philip Philipovich,” answered Zina.
“Another one!” Philip Philipovich exclaimed. “Well, I suppose now it’s really got under way and the house of Kalabukhov is lost indeed. I’ll have to go, but the question is: where to? Everything will go now. At first there’ll be a singsong every evening, then the pipes will freeze in the lavatories, then the central heating boiler will burst, etc. And that will be the end of Kalabukhov.”
“Philip Philipovich is upset,” Zina remarked smiling as she bore off a pile of plates.
“How can I help not being upset?” exploded Philip Philipovich. “What a house it used to be — you must understand!”
“You are too pessimistic, Philip Philipovich,” the handsome bitten man replied. “They are very different now, you know.”
“My dear Sir, you know me? Do you not? I am a man of fact, a man of observation. I am the enemy of
