Mikhail Bulgakov: Heart of a Dog

He disappeared, to be succeeded by a rustling lady with a hat planted gaily on one side of her head and with a glittering necklace on her slack, crumpled neck. There were black bags under her eyes and her cheeks were as red as a painted doll. She was extremely nervous.

‘How old are you, madam?’ enquired Philip Philipovich with great severity.

Frightened, the lady paled under her coating of rouge. ‘Professor, I swear that if you knew the agony I’ve been going through…!’

‘How old are you, madam?’ repeated Philip Philipovich even more sternly.

‘Honestly… well, forty-five…’

‘Madam,’ groaned Philip Philipovich, I am a busy man. Please don’t waste my time. You’re not my only patient, you know.’

The lady’s bosom heaved violently. ‘I’ve come to you, a great scientist… I swear to you — it’s terrible…’

‘How old are you?’ Philip Philipovich screeched in fury, his spectacles glittering.

‘Fifty-one!’ replied the lady, wincing with terror.

‘Take off your underwear, please,’ said Philip Philipovich with relief, and pointed to a high white examination table in the comer.

‘I swear, professor,’ murmured the lady as with trembling fingers she unbuttoned the fasteners on her belt, ‘this boy Moritz… I honestly admit to you…’

‘“From Granada to Seville…”’ Philip Philipovich hummed absentmindedly and pressed the foot-pedal of his marble washbasin. There was a sound of running water.

‘I swear to God,’ said the lady, patches of real colour showing through the rouge on her cheeks, ‘this will be my last affair. Oh, he’s such a brute! Oh, professor! All Moscow knows he’s a card-sharper and he can’t resist any little tart of a dressmaker who catches his eye. But he’s so deliciously young…’As she talked the lady pulled out a crumpled blob of lace from under her rustling skirts.

A mist came in front of the dog’s eyes and his brain turned a somersault. To hell with you, he thought vaguely, laying his head on his paws and closing his eyes with embarrassment. I’m not going to try and guess what all this is about -it’s beyond me, anyway.

He was wakened by a tinkling sound and saw that Philip Philipovich had tossed some little shining tubes into a basin.

The painted lady, her hands pressed to her bosom, was gazing hopefully at Philip Philipovich. Frowning impressively he had sat down at his desk and was writing something.

‘I am going to implant some monkey’s ovaries into you, madam,’ he announced with a stern look.

‘Oh, professor — not monkey’s ?’

‘Yes,’ replied Philip Philipovich inexorably.

‘When will you operate?’ asked the lady in a weak voice, turning pale.

‘“…from Granada to Seville…” H’m… on Monday. You must go into hospital on Monday morning. My assistant will prepare you.’

‘Oh, dear. I don’t want to go into hospital. Couldn’t you operate here, professor?’

‘I only operate here in extreme cases. It would be very expensive — 500 roubles.’

‘I’ll pay, professor!’

Again came the sound of running water, the feathered hat swayed out, to be replaced by a head as bald as a dinner-plate which embraced Philip Philipovich. As his nausea passed, the dog dozed off, luxuriating in the warmth and the sense of relief as his injury healed. He even snored a little and managed to enjoy a snatch of a pleasant dream — he dreamed he had torn a whole tuft of feathers out of the owl’s tail… until an agitated voice started yapping above his head.

‘I’m too well known in Moscow, professor. What am I to do?’

‘Really,’ cried Philip Philipovich indignantly, ‘you can’t behave like that. You must restrain yourself. How old is she?’

‘Fourteen, professor… The scandal would ruin me, you see. I’m due to go abroad on official business any day now.’

‘I’m afraid I’m not a lawyer… you’d better wait a couple of years and then marry her.’

‘I’m married already, professor.’

‘Oh, lord!’

The door opened, faces changed, instruments clattered and Philip Philipovich worked on unceasingly.

This place is indecent, thought the dog, but I like it! What the hell can he want me for, though? Is he just going to let me live here? Maybe he’s eccentric. After all, he could get a pedigree dog as easy as winking. Perhaps I’m good-looking! What luck. As for that stupid owl… cheeky brute.

The dog finally woke up late in the evening when the bells had stopped ringing and at the very moment when the door admitted some special visitors. There were four of them at once, all young people and all extremely modestly dressed.

What’s all this? thought the dog in astonishment. Philip Philipovich treated these visitors with considerable hostility. He stood at his desk, staring at them like a general confronting the enemy. The nostrils of his hawk-like nose were dilated. The party shuffled awkwardly across the carpet.

‘The reason why we’ve come to see you, professor…’ began one of them, who had a six-inch shock of hair sprouting straight out of his head.

‘You ought not to go out in this weather without wearing galoshes, gentlemen,’ Philip Philipovich interrupted in a schoolmasterish voice. ‘Firstly you’ll catch cold and secondly you’ve muddied my carpets and all my carpets are Persian.’

The young man with the shock of hair broke off, and all four stared at Philip Philipovich in consternation. The silence lasted several minutes and was only broken by the drumming of Philip Philipovich’s fingers on a painted wooden platter on his desk.

‘Firstly, we’re not gentlemen,’ the youngest of them, with a face like a peach, said finally.

‘Secondly,’ Philip Philipovich interrupted him, ‘are you a man or a woman?’

The four were silent again and their mouths dropped open. This time the shock-haired young man pulled himself together.

‘What difference does it make, comrade?’ he asked proudly.

‘I’m a woman,’ confessed the peach-like youth, who was wearing a leather jerkin, and blushed heavily. For some reason one of the others, a fair young man in a sheepskin hat, also turned bright red.

‘In that case you may leave your cap on, but I must ask you, my dear sir, to remove your headgear,’ said Philip Philipovich imposingly.

‘I am not your dear sir,’ said the fair youth sharply, pulling off his sheepskin hat.

‘We have come to see you,’ the dark shock-headed boy began again.

‘First of all — who are ‘we’?’

‘We are the new management committee of this block of flats,’ said the dark youth with suppressed fury. ‘I am Shvonder, her name is Vyazemskaya and these two are comrades Pestrukhin and Sharovkyan. So we…’

‘Are you the people who were moved in as extra tenants into Fyodor Pavlovich Sablin’s apartment?’ ‘Yes, we are,’ replied Shvonder.

‘God, what is this place coming to!’ exclaimed Philip Philipovich in despair and wrung his hands. ‘What are you laughing for, professor?’ ‘What do you mean — laughing? I’m in absolute despair,’ shouted Philip Philipovich. ‘What’s going to become of the central heating now?’

‘Are you making fun of us. Professor Preobrazhensky?’ ‘Why have you come to see me? Please be as quick as possible. I’m just going in to supper.’

‘We, the house management,’ said Shvonder with hatred, ‘have come to see you as a result of a general meeting of the tenants of this block, who are charged with the problem of increasing the occupancy of this house…’

‘What d’you mean — charged?’ cried Philip Philipovich. ‘Please try and express yourself more clearly.’

‘We are charged with increasing the occupancy.’