Heart of a Dog. Mikhail Bulgakov
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to completely only late in the evening, when the bell ceased ringing, and precisely at the moment when the door opened and let in a special group of visitors. There were four of them at once. All of them young men, and all very modestly dressed.
What do they want? the dog thought with astonishment. Philip Philippovich met his guests with even less cordiality. He stood near his desk and stared at them as a general would at the enemy. The nostrils of his hawklike nose flared out. The visitors shifted their feet on the rug.
“We’ve come to you, Professor,” began the one with a shock of thick curly hair standing up at least six inches above his face, “to talk about . . .”
“You should not go about without galoshes in such weather, gentlemen,” Philip Philippovich interrupted him didactically. “To begin with, you will catch colds. Secondly, you’ve tracked up my rugs, and all my rugs are Persian.”
The fellow with the shock of hair fell silent, and all four stared at Philip Philippovich with astonishment. The silence lasted several seconds, broken only by the tapping of Philip Philippovich’s fingers on the painted wooden platter on his desk.
“To begin with,” the youngest of the four, with a peachlike face, brought out finally, “we are not gentlemen.”
“And secondly,” Philip Philippovich interrupted him, “are you a man or a woman?”
The four lapsed into silence again, gaping with open mouths. This time the fellow with the hair recovered first.
“What is the difference, comrade?” he asked proudly.
“I am a woman,” confessed the peach-faced youth in the leather jacket, blushing violently. And for some unknown reason, another visitor—with blond hair and a cossack hat—also turned a vivid red.
“In that case, you may keep your cap on. As for you, dear sir, I must ask you to remove your headgear,” Philip Philippovich said weightily.
“I’m no dear sir to you,” the blond man answered sharply, removing his hat.
“We have come to you,” the dark one with the shock of hair began once more.
“First of all, who is ‘we’?”
“We are the new house management committee,” the dark one said with controlled rage. “I am Shvonder, she is Vyazemskaya, he is Comrade Pestrukhin, and this is Sharovkyan. And so, we . . .”
“Are you the people they’ve moved into Fyodor Pavlovich Sablin’s apartment?”
“We are,” confirmed Shvonder.
“Good God, the Kalabukhov house is finished!” Philip Philippovich exclaimed in despair, clapping his hands together.
“Are you joking, Professor?”
“Joking? I am in total despair,” Philip Philippovich cried. “What’s going to happen to the steam heat now?”
“You’re mocking us, Professor Preobrazhensky?”
“What business brought you to me? Make it short, I am just going to dinner.”
“We are the house management,” Shvonder spoke with hatred. “We’ve come to you after a general meeting of the tenants of this house which went into the question of consolidating the tenancy of the apartments. . . .”
“Who went into whom?” Philip Philippovich shouted. “Be kind enough to express yourself more clearly.”
“The question of consolidation.”
“That will do ! I understand ! Are you aware of the resolution of August 12 which exempted my apartment from any of your consolidations or tenant transfers?”
“We are,” answered Shvonder. “But the general meeting reviewed your case and came to the conclusion that, generally and on the whole, you occupy excessive space. Altogether excessive. You live alone in seven rooms.”
“I live and work in seven rooms,” replied Philip Philippovich, “and I would like to have an eighth one. I need it most urgently for a library.”
The four were stunned.
“An eighth one ! O-ho,” said the blond man who had been ordered to remove his headgear. “Really, that’s a good one!”
“It’s indescribable!” cried the youth who had turned out to be a woman.
“I have a waiting room which, please note, is also a library; a dining room; and my office. That makes three. The examination room makes four, the operating room, five. My bedroom, six, and my servant’s room, seven. And I haven’t enough space. . . . However, all this is beside the point. My apartment is exempt, and that’s the end of it. May I go to dinner now?”
“Excuse me,” said the fourth visitor, who looked like a firm, strong beetle.
“Excuse me,” Shvonder interrupted him, “this is precisely what we have come to talk to you about—the dining room and the examination room. The general meeting asks you voluntarily and by way of labor discipline to give up your dining room. Nobody has a dining room in Moscow.”
“Not even Isadora Duncan,” the woman cried in a ringing voice.
Something happened to Philip Philippovich, as a result of which his delicate face turned purple, and he did not utter a sound, waiting to see what happened next.
“And the examination room too,” continued Shvonder. “The examination room can perfectly well be combined with the office.”
“Uhum,” said Philip Philippovich in a strange voice. “And where am I to take my meals?”
“In the bedroom,” the four answered in chorus.
The purple of Philip Philippovich’s face assumed a grayish tinge.
“Eat in the bedroom,” he said in a slightly choked voice, “read in the examination room, dress in the waiting room, operate in the maid’s room, and examine patients in the dining room. It is very possible that Isadora Duncan does just this. Perhaps she dines in her office and dissects rabbits in the bathroom. Perhaps. But I am not Isadora Duncan ! . . .” he barked out suddenly, and the purple of his face turned yellow. “I shall dine in the dining room, and operate in the surgery! You may report this to the general meeting, and now I beg you to return to your respective business and allow me to take my meal where all normal people take theirs, that is, in the dining room, and not in the foyer or the nursery.”
“In that case, Professor, in view of your obstinate opposition,” said the excited Shvonder, “we shall lodge a complaint against you with the higher authorities.”
“Ah,” said Philip Philippovich, “so?” and his voice assumed a suspiciously polite tone. “I will ask you to wait just a moment.”
That’s a man for you, the dog thought with admiration. Just like me. Oh, but he’ll nip them in a second, oh, but he’ll nip them. I don’t know yet how he’ll do it, but he’ll do a job of it. . . . Get ‘em! That leggy one, he ought to be grabbed just above the boot, right at that tendon behind the knee . . . ur-r-r . . .
Philip Philippovich banged the receiver as he lifted it from the telephone and said into it:
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