“You’ve gotten silly, Alexander Semionovich,” replied his wife. “Imagine, such gold. Do you think I’ve never seen eggs before? … Oy! What big ones!”
“Europe,” said Alexander Semionovich. “Did you expect our crummy little Russian peasant eggs? … They must all be Brahmaputras, the devil take ’em! German …”
“Sure they are,” confirmed the guard, admiring the eggs.
“Only I don’t understand why they’re dirty,” Alexander Semionovich said reflectively … “Manya, you look after things. Have them go on with the unloading, and I’m going to make a telephone call.”
And Alexander Semionovich set off for the telephone in the sovkhoz office across the yard.
That evening the telephone cracked in the office of the Zoological Institute. Professor Persikov ruffled his hair and went to the phone.
“Well?” he asked.
“The provinces calling, just a minute,” the receiver replied with a soft hiss in a woman’s voice.
“Well, I’m listening,” Persikov said fastidiously into the black mouth of the phone.
Something clicked in it, and then a distant masculine voice anxiously spoke in his ear. “Should the eggs be washed, professor?”
“What? What is it? What are you asking?” Persikov got irritated.
“Where are you calling from?”
“From Nikolsky, Smolensk province,” the receiver answered.
“I don’t understand any of this. I don’t know any Nikolsky. Who is this?”
“Feit,” said the receiver sternly.
“What Feit? Oh, yes … it’s you … so what is it you’re asking?”
“Should they be washed? … I was sent a batch of chicken eggs from abroad …”
“Well?”
“They seem slimy somehow …”
“You’re mixing something up … How can they be ‘slimy’ as you put it? Well, of course, there can be a little … perhaps some droppings stuck on … or something else …”
“So they shouldn’t be washed?”
“Of course not … What are you doing—are you all ready to load the chambers with the eggs?”
“I am. Yes,” replied the receiver.
“Harumph,” Persikov snorted.
“So long,” the receiver clicked and went silent.
“So long, Persikov repeated with hatred to Assistant Professor Ivanov. “How do you like that character, Peter Stepanovich?”
Ivanov laughed. “Was that him? I can imagine what he’ll cook up with those eggs out there.”
“The id … id … idiot,” Persikov stuttered furiously. “Just imagine, Peter Stepanovich. Fine, it is quite possible that the ray will have the same effect on the deutoplasm of the chicken egg that it did on the plasm of the amphibians. It is quite possible that the hens will hatch. But neither you nor I can say what sort of hens they will be … Maybe they won’t be good for a damned thing. Maybe they’ll die in a day or two. Maybe they’ll be inedible! Can I guarantee that they’ll be able to stand on their feet? Maybe their bones will be brittle.” Persikov got all excited and waved his hands, crooking his index fingers.
“Absolutely right,” agreed Ivanov.
“Can you guarantee, Peter Stepanovich, that they’ll produce another generation? Maybe this character will breed sterile hens. He’ll drive them up to the size of a dog, and then you can wait until the second coming before they’ll have any progeny.”
“No one can guarantee it,” agreed Ivanov.
“And what bumptiousness!” Persikov got himself even more distraught. “What indolence! And note this, I have been ordered to instruct this scoundrel.” Persikov pointed to the paper delivered by Feit (it lay on the experiment table). “How am I to instruct this ignoramus, when I myself cannot say anything on the problem?”
“But was it impossible to refuse?” asked Ivanov.
Persikov turned crimson, picked up the paper, and showed it to Ivanov. The latter read it and smiled ironically.
“Um, yes,” he said very significantly.
“And then, note this … I’ve been waiting for my order for two months—and there’s neither hide nor hair of it. While that one is sent the eggs instantly, and generally gets all kinds of cooperation.”
“He won’t get a damned thing out of it, Vladimir Ipatich. And it will just end by their returning the chambers to you.”
“If only they don’t take too long doing it, otherwise they’re holding up my experiments.”
“That’s what’s really rotten. I have everything ready”
“Did you get the diving suits?”
“Yes, today.”
Persikov calmed down somewhat, and livened up. “Hhmmm … I think we’ll do it this way. We can seal the doors of the operating room tight and open the window …”
“Of course,” agreed Ivanov.
“Three helmets?”
“Three. Yes.”
“Well, so … That means you, I, and possibly one of the students. We’ll give him the third helmet.”
“Greenmut’s possible.”
“The one who’s working on the salamanders with you now? Hmmm, he’s not bad … although, wait, last spring he couldn’t describe the structure of the air bladder of the Gymnodontes,” Persikov added rancorously.
“No, he’s not bad … He’s a good student,” interceded Ivanov.
“We will have to go without sleep for one night,” Persikov went on.
“And one more thing, Peter Stepanovich, you check the gas—otherwise the devil only knows about these so-called Goodchems—they’ll send some sort of trash.”
“No, no,” Ivanov waved his hands. “I already tested it yesterday. We must give them their due, Vladimir Ipatich, it’s excellent gas.”
“On whom did you try it’?”
“On ordinary toads. You let out a little stream and they die instantly. Oh, yes, Vladimir Ipatich, we’ll also do this—you write a request to the GPU, asking them to send an electric revolver.”
“But I don’t know how to use it.”
“I’ll take that on myself,” answered Ivanov. “We used to practice with one on the Kliazma, just for fun … there was a GPU man living next door to me. A remarkable thing. Quite extraordinary. Noiseless, kills outright from a hundred paces. We used to shoot crows … I don’t think we even need the gas.”
“Hmmm, that’s a clever idea … Very.” Persikov went to the corner of the room, picked up the receiver, and croaked, “Let me have that, oh, what d’you call it … Lubianka …”
The days got unbearably hot. One could clearly see the dense transparent heat shimmering over the fields. But the nights were marvelous, deceptive, green. The moon shone brightly, casting such beauty on the former Sheremetiev estate that it is impossible to express it in words. The sovkhoz palace gleamed as though made of sugar, the shadows trembled in the park, and the ponds were cleft into two colors—a slanting shaft of moonlight across it, and the rest, bottomless darkness. In the patches of moonlight you could easily read Izvestia, except for the chess column, which is printed in tiny nonpareil. But, naturally, nobody read Izvestia on nights like these … Dunia, the cleaning woman, turned up in the copse behind the sovkhoz, and as a result of some coincidence, the red-moustachioed driver of a battered sovkhoz pickup turned up there too. What they did there—remains unknown. They took shelter in the melting shadow of an elm, right on the driver’s outspread leather jacket. A lamp burned in the kitchen where two gardeners were having their supper, and Madame Feit, wearing a white robe, was sitting on the becolumned veranda and dreaming as she gazed at the beautiful moon.
At ten in the evening when all of the sounds had subsided in the village of Kontsovka, situated behind the sovkhoz, the idyllic landscape was filled with the charming, delicate sounds of a flute. It is unthinkable to try to express how this suited the copses and former columns of the Sheremetiev palace. Fragile Liza from The Queen of Spades mingled her voice in a duet with the voice of the passionate Polina, and the melod
y swept up into the moonlit heights like the ghost of an old regime—old, but infinitely lovely, enchanting to the point of tears.
“Waning … waning …,” the flute sang, warbling and sighing.
The copses fell silent, and Dunia, fatal as a wood nymph, listened, her cheek pressed to the prickly, reddish masculine cheek of the driver.
“He blows good, the son of a bitch,” said the driver, encircling Dunia’s waist with his manly arm.
Playing the flute was none other than the sovkhoz director himself, Alexander Semionovich Feit, and we must give him his due, he played extremely well. The fact is that at one time the flute had been Alexander Semionovich’s specialty. Right up until 1917 he had been a member of Maestro Petukhov’s well-known concert ensemble, whose harmonic sounds rang out every night in the lobby of the cozy Magic Dreams Cinema in the city of Yekaterinoslav. The great year of l917, which had broken the careers of many people, had turned Alexander Semionovich onto new roads too. He abandoned the Magic Dreams and the dusty star-spangled satin in the lobby and dove into the open sea of war and revolution, exchanging his flute for a deadly Mauser. For a long time he was tossed on the waves, which cast him up now in the Crimea, now in Moscow, now in Turkestan, and even in Vladivostok. It took a revolution to bring Alexander Semionovich fully into his own. The man’s true greatness was revealed, and naturally he was not meant to sit around the lobby of the Dreams. Without getting into great detail, let us say that late 1927 and early l928 found Alexander Semionovich in Turkestan where he had, first, edited a huge newspaper and, next, as the local member of the Supreme Agricultural Commission, covered himself with glory through his remarkable work in irrigating the Turkestan territory. In l928 Feit arrived in Moscow and got a well-deserved rest. The highest committee of the organization whose card the provincial-looking, old-fashioned man carried in his pocket with honor showed its appreciation and appointed him to a quiet and honorable post. Alas! Alas! To the misfortune of the Republic, the seething brain of Alexander Semionovich had not cooled off; in Moscow Feit ran across Persikov’s discovery, and in his room at the Red Paris Hotel on Tverskaia, Alexander Semionovich conceived the idea of using Persikov’s ray to replenish the chicken population of the Republic in one month. Feit’s plan was heard out by the Commission on Animal Husbandry, they agreed with him, and Feit went with the thick sheet of paper to the eccentric zoologist.
The concert over the glassy waters and copses and park was already drawing to a close when suddenly something happened that interrupted it ahead of time. Namely, the dogs in Kontsovka, who should have been asleep at that hour, suddenly burst out into an incredible fit of barking which gradually turned into a general and very anguished howling. The howling, increasing in volume, flew across the fields, and this howling was suddenly answered by a chattering, million-voiced concert of frogs in all the ponds. All of this was so uncanny that for a minute it even seemed that the mysterious, witching night had grown dim.
Alexander Semionovich laid down his flute and went out onto the veranda, “Manya! Do you hear that? Those damned dogs … What do you think is making them so wild?”
“How should l know?” replied Manya, staring at the moon.
“You know what, Manechka, let’s go and take a look at the eggs,” suggested Alexander Semionovich.
“By God, Alexander Semionovich, you’ve gone completely nuts with your eggs and chickens. Take a little rest!”
“No, Manechka, let’s go.”
A bright bulb was burning in the greenhouse. Dunia also came in, face flushed and eyes flashing. Alexander Semionovich gently opened the observation panes, and everyone started peering inside the chambers. On the white asbestos floor the spotted bright-red eggs lay in even rows; the chambers were silent, and the 15,000 watt bulb overhead was hissing quietly.
“Oh, what chicks I’ll hatch out of here!” Alexander Semionovich said enthusiastically, looking now into the observation slits in the side walls of the chambers, now into the wide air vents above. “You’ll see. What? Won’t I?”
“You know, Alexander Semionovich,” said Dunia, smiling, “the peasants in Kontsovka are saying you’re the Anti-Christ. Them are devilish eggs, they say. It’s a sin to hatch eggs by machine. They wanted to murder you.”
Alexander Semionovich shuddered and turned to his wife. His face had turned yellow. “Well, how do you like that? Such people! What can you do with people like that? Eh? Manechka, we’ll have to arrange a meeting for them. Tomorrow I’ll call some Party workers from the district. I’ll make a speech myself. In general we’ll have to do some work here … It’s some sort of wild country …”
“Dark minds,” said the guard, reposing on his coat at the greenhouse
The next day was marked by the strangest and most inexplicable events. In the morning, at the first flash of the sun, the copses, which usually greeted the luminary with a mighty and ceaseless twittering of birds, met it in total silence. This was noticed by absolutely everyone. As though before a storm. But there was not the slightest hint of a storm. Conversations in the sovkhoz assumed a strange, ambiguous tone, very disturbing to Alexander Semyonovich, especially because from the words of the old Kontsovka peasant nicknamed Goat’s Goiter, a notorious troublemaker and smart aleck, it got spread around that, supposedly, all the birds had gathered into flocks and cleared out of Sheremetievka at dawn, heading north—which was all simply stupid. Alexander Semionovich was very upset and wasted the whole day telephoning the town of Grachevka. From there he was promised two speakers would be sent to the sovkhoz in a day or two with two topics—the international situation and the question of the “Goodpoul” Trust.
Neither was the evening without its surprises. Whether or not in the morning the woods had gone silent, demonstrating with utmost clarity how unpleasant an ominous absence of sound is in a forest, and whether or not all of the sparrows had cleared out of the sovkhoz yards by midday, heading somewhere else—by evening the pond in Sheremetievka had gone silent. This was truly astounding, since the famous croaking of the Sheremetievka frogs was quite well known to everyone for forty versts around. But now all the frogs seemed to have died out. Not a single voice came from the pond, and the sedge was soundless. It must be admitted that Alexander Semionovich completely lost his composure. All of these events began to cause talk, and talk of a very unpleasant kind, i.e., it was behind Alexander Semionovich’s back.
“It’s really strange,” Alexander Semionovich said to his wife at lunch. “I can’t understand why those birds had to fly away.”
“How should l know’?” answered Manya. “Maybe from your ray!”
“Manya, you’re just a plain fool,” said Alexander Semionovich, throwing down his spoon. “You’re like the peasants. What has the ray got to do with it?”
“Well, I don’t know. Leave me alone.”
That evening the third surprise happened—the dogs at Kontsovka again started howling—and how they howled! The moonlit fields were filled with ceaseless wailing, and anguished, angry moans.
To some extent Alexander Semionovich felt rewarded by yet another surprise—a pleasant one in the greenhouse. An uninterrupted tapping began to come from the red eggs in the chambers. “Tap … tap … tap … tap” … came tapping from first one egg, then another, then yet another.
The tapping in the eggs was a triumphant tapping for Alexander Semionovich. The strange events in the woods and the pond were instantly forgotten. Everyone gathered in the greenhouse: Manya, Dunia, the watchman, and the guard, who left his rifle at the door.
“Well? What do you have to say about that?” Alexander Semionovich asked victoriously. They all pressed their ears curiously to the doors of the first chamber. “It’s the chicks—tapping, with their beaks,” Alexander Semionovich continued, beaming. “You say I won’t hatch any chicks! Not so, my friends.” And in an excess of emotion he slapped the guard on the back. “I’ll hatch out such chicks you’ll ooh and ah. Now I have to look sharp,” he added sternly. “As soon as they
begin to break through, let me know immediately.”
“Right,” the watchman, Dunia, and the guard answered in chorus. “Tap … tap … tap.” The tapping started again, now in one, now in another egg in the first chamber. Indeed, the picture of new life being born before your eyes within the thin, translucent casings was so interesting that this whole group sat on for a long while on the empty overturned crates, watching the raspberry-colored eggs ripen in the mysterious flickering light. They broke up to go to bed rather late, after the greenish night had poured light over the sovkhoz and the surrounding countryside. It was an eerie night, one might even say terrifying, perhaps because its utter silence was broken now and then by outbursts of causeless, plaintive, and heart-rending howling from the dogs in Kontsovka. What made those damned dogs go mad was absolutely unknown.
In the morning a new unpleasantness awaited Alexander Semionovich. The guard was extremely embarrassed, put his hand over his heart, swore and made God his witness that he had not fallen asleep, but that he had noticed nothing. “It’s a queer thing,” the guard insisted. “I’m not to blame, Comrade Feit.”
“Thank you, my heartfelt thanks,” Alexander Semionovich began the roasting, “What are you thinking about, comrade’? Why were you put here? To watch! So you tell me where they’ve disappeared to! They’ve hatched, haven’t they? That means they’ve escaped. That means you left the door open and went away to your room. I want those chicks back here—or else!”
“There’s nowhere for me to go. Don’t I know my job?” The warrior finally took offense. “You’re blaming me for nothing, Comrade Feit!”
“Where’ve they gone to?”
“Well, how should I know?” the warrior got infuriated at last. “Am I supposed to be guarding them? Why am I posted here? To see that nobody filches the chambers, and I’m doing my job. Here are your chambers. But I’m not obliged by the law to go chasing after your chickens. Who knows what kind of chicks you’ll hatch out of there; you probably couldn’t catch them on a bicycle, maybe!”
Alexander Semionovich was somewhat taken aback, grumbled a bit more, then fell into a state of astonishment. It was indeed a strange thing. In the first chamber, which had been loaded before the others, the two eggs lying closest to the base of the ray turned out to be broken. The shell was scattered on the asbestos floor under the ray.
Worlds Apart Page 71
