Heart of a Dog. Mikhail Bulgakov
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try and put on flannel panties, and he’ll yell: but how inelegant you are! I’m fed up with my Matrena, I’ve had enough of flannel pants, it’s my turn to have some fun in life. I’m chairman now, and whatever I filch, all of it goes for female flesh, for lobster tails, for Abrau-D’urso wine. Because I’ve been starved long enough in my youth, I’ve had it, and there’s no life after death.
I am sorry for her, so sorry! But I’m even sorrier for myself. I’m not saying this out of selfishness, but because our conditions really don’t compare. At least, she is warm at home, and I, I . . . Where can I go? Oo-oo-oo-ooh!
“Tsk, tsk, tsk ! Sharik, hey, Sharik . . . Why are you whimpering, poor beast? Who hurt you? Ah-h!”
The wind, that raging witch, rattled the gate and boxed the young lady on the ear with its broom. It blew up her skirt above her knees, baring the cream-colored stockings and a narrow strip of the poorly laundered lace panties. It drowned out her words and swept across the dog.
“Good God . . . What weather . . . Oh . . . And my stomach hurts. It’s that corned beef, that corned beef! When will it all end?”
Ducking her head, the young lady threw herself into attack, broke through the gates, and out into the street; the blizzard began to spin and spin her around, push her this way and that, till she became a column of swirling snow and disappeared.
And the dog remained in the gateway. Suffering from his mutilated side, he pressed himself to the cold wall, gasped for air, and firmly decided that he would not go anywhere from there, he’d die right there in the gateway. Despair overwhelmed him. He felt so bitter and sore at heart, so lonely and terrified, that tiny dog’s tears like little bubbles exuded from his eyes and dried at once. Frozen tufts of fur hung from his mangled side, and among them the bare scalded spots showed ominously red. How senseless, stupid, and cruel cooks are. “Sharik” she called him. . . . “Little Ball” . . . What kind of a “Sharik” is he, anyway? Sharik is somebody round, plump, silly, a son of aristocratic parents who gobbles oatmeal, and he is shaggy, lanky, tattered, skinny as a rail, a homeless mutt. But thanks for a kind word, anyway.
The door of the brightly lit store across the street swung open and a citizen came out of it. Yes, precisely, a citizen, not a comrade. Or even, to be more exact, a gentleman. The closer he came, the clearer it was.
A gentleman. Do you think I judge by the coat? Nonsense. Many proletarians are also wearing coats nowadays. True, their collars aren’t quite like this one, naturally. But from a distance it is easy to confuse them. No, it is the eyes I’m talking about. When you look at the eyes, you can’t mistake a man, from near or far. Oh, the eyes are an important thing. Like a barometer. You can see everything in them—the man whose soul is dry as dust, the man who’ll never kick you in the ribs with the tip of his boot, and the man who is afraid of everything himself. It’s the last kind, the lickspittle, whom it is sometimes a pleasure to grab by the ankle. Afraid? Get it, then. If you’re afraid, you must deserve it. . . . Rr-r-r . . . Rr-r-r! . . .
The gentleman confidently crossed the street wrapped in a column of swirling snow and stepped into the gateway. Oh, yes, you can tell everything about him. This one won’t gobble moldy corned beef, and if anybody serves it to him, he’ll raise hell, he’ll write to the newspapers: “I, Philip Philippovich, was fed such and such.”
He is coming closer and closer. This one eats well and does not steal. He won’t kick you, but he isn’t afraid of anything himself. And he is not afraid because he is never hungry. He is a gentleman engaged in mental work, with a sculptured, pointed goatee and a gray, fluffy, dashing mustache, like those worn by the old French knights. But the smell he spreads through the snow is rotten, a hospital smell. And cigars.
What devil, do you think, could have brought him to the Central Economic Administration cooperative? There he is, right by me . . . What is he waiting for? Oo-oo-oo-oo . . . What could he have bought in that shabby little store, isn’t Okhotny Ryad enough for him? What’s that? Sausage! Sir, if you could see what this sausage is made of, you’d never come near that store. Better give it to me.
The dog gathered his last remnant of strength and crawled in a frenzy from under the gateway to the sidewalk. The blizzard clattered over his head like gunshots, and swept up the huge letters on a canvas placard, IS REJUVENATION POSSIBLE?
Naturally, it’s possible. The smell rejuvenated me, lifted me from my belly, contracted my stomach, empty for the last two days, with fiery spasms. The smell that conquered the hospital smells, the heavenly smell of chopped horsemeat with garlic and pepper. I sense, I know—the sausage is in the right-hand pocket of his overcoat. He stands over me. Oh, my lord and master! Glance at me. I am dying. We have the souls of slaves, and a wretched fate!
The dog crawled on his belly like a snake, weeping bitter tears. Observe the cook’s work. But you’ll never give me anything. Oh, I know the rich very well! But actually, what do you need it for? What do you want with putrid horsemeat? You’ll never get such poison as they sell you at the Moscow Agricultural Industries stores anywhere else. And you have had your lunch today, you, a personage of world importance, thanks to male sex glands. Oo-oo-oo-oo . . . What’s happening in this world? But it seems too early to die, and despair is truly a sin. I must lick his hands, there’s nothing else left.
The mysterious gentleman bent over the dog, the gold rims of his glasses flashed, and he took a long, white package from his right pocket. Without removing his brown gloves, he unwrapped the paper, which was immediately snatched up by the blizzard, and broke off a piece of what is known as “special Cracow sausage.” And he held it out to the dog. Oh, generous soul! Oo-oo-oo!
“Whuit-whuit,” the gentleman whistled and added in the sternest tone: “Take it! Sharik, Sharik!”
Sharik again. They’d christened me. But call me what you will. For such an exceptional deed!
The dog instantly pulled off the skin, sank his teeth with a sob into the Cracow sausage, and gobbled it up in a wink. And almost choked to tears on the sausage and the snow, because in his greed he had almost swallowed the cord. I’ll lick your hand now, again, again. I kiss your trousers, my benefactor!
“Enough for now . . .” The gentleman spoke curtly, as though issuing commands. He bent down to Sharik, peered into his eyes, and suddenly passed his gloved hand intimately and caressingly over Sharik’s belly.
“Ah,” he said significantly. “No collar. That’s fine, you’re just what I need. Come on, follow me.” He snapped his fingers, “Whuit, whuit!”
Follow you? Why, to the end of the world. You may kick me with your fine suede shoes, I wouldn’t say a word.
The street lights gleamed all along the Prechistenka. His side ached intolerably, but Sharik forgot the pain from time to time, possessed by a single thought: he must not lose the wonderful vision in the overcoat in the crowd, he must do something to express his love and devotion. And he expressed it seven times along the stretch of Prechistenka up to Obukhov Lane. At Dead Man’s Alley he kissed the man’s overshoe. He cleared the way for him. Once he frightened a lady so badly with his wild howl that she plopped down on a fire pump. Twice he whimpered, to keep alive the man’s sympathy for him.
A mangy stray torn, pretending to be Siberian, dived out from behind a drainpipe; he had caught a whiff of the sausage despite the storm. Sharik went blind with rage at the thought that the rich eccentric who picked up wounded mutts in gateways might take it into his head to bring along that thief as well, and then he’d be obliged to share the product of the Moscow Agricultural Industries with him. He snapped his teeth at the torn so furiously that the torn shot up the drainpipe to the second story, hissing like a torn hose. Gr-r-r-r . . . Wow! Feed every ragged tramp hanging around the Prechistenka !
The gentleman appreciated his devotion: as they reached the firehouse, he stopped by the window from which the pleasant rumbling of a French horn could be heard and rewarded him with a second piece, a bit smaller, just a couple of ounces.
Ah, the silly man. He’s trying to tempt me on. Don’t worry, I won’t run off. I’ll follow you anywhere you say.
“Whuit-whuit-whuit!