The Fatal Eggs
Authors: Mikhail Bulgakov
The Fatal Eggs
Mikhail Bulgakov
1924
CONTENTS
Professor
Persikov's Curriculum Vitae
Mikhail
Bulgakov (1891-1940) was born in
wars and revolutions, starved, became a playwright for the country's finest
theatre, knew fame, persecution, public ovations and forced muteness. His best
works, including the famous The Master and Margarita, were not published until
after his death. His dramas were struck off the repertoire-The Days of the
Turbins at the Moscow Arts Theatre and his plays about Moliere and Pushkin.
During
his lifetime, not a single major anthology of his short stories was ever
published
Bulgakov's works have since been recognised as
classics; his books have been published in all the languages of the civilised
world, studies of him have reached the four-figure mark and the number is still
rising; editions of his books in the USSR have run into millions. He has won
the highest praise from Gabriel Garcia Marquez of Columbia and Kendzaburo Oe of
Japan.
Kirghiz
writer Chinghiz Aitmatov looks on Bulgakov as his teacher. Mikhail Bulgakov's
books have at last come into their own with their wild fantasy and their
prophetic ideas about man and humanity. Our collection includes one of his most
vivid stories, "The Fatal Eggs".
Professor
Persikov's Curriculum Vitae
On the evening of 16 April, 1928, the Zoology
Professor of the Fourth State University and Director of the Moscow Zoological
Institute, Persikov, went into his laboratory at the Zoological Institute in
Herzen Street. The Professor switched on the frosted ceiling light and looked
around him.
This ill-fated evening must be regarded as
marking the beginning of the appalling catastrophe, just as Professor Vladimir
Ipatievich Persikov must be seen as the prime cause of the said catastrophe.
He was fifty-eight years old.
With a splendid bald head, like a pestle, and tufts of yellowish
hair sticking out at the sides.
His face was clean-shaven, with a
slightly protruding lower lip which gave it a slightly cantankerous expression.
Tall and round-shouldered, he had small bright eyes and tiny old-fashioned
spectacles in silver frames on a red nose. He spoke in a grating, high,
croaking voice and one of his many idiosyncrasies was to crook the index finger
of his right hand and screw up his eyes, whenever he was saying something
weighty and authoritative. And since he always spoke authoritatively, because
his knowledge in his field was quite phenomenal, the crooked finger was
frequently pointed at those with whom the Professor was conversing. Outside his
field, that is, zoology, embriology, anatomy, botany and geography, however,
Professor Persikov said almost nothing at all.
Professor Persikov did not read the newspapers
or go to the theatre.
His wife had run away with a tenor
from the Zimin opera in 1913, leaving him a note which read as follows:
"Your frogs make me shudder with
intolerable loathing. I shall be unhappy all my life because of them."
The Professor did not marry again and had no
children. He was short-tempered, but did not bear grudges, liked cloudberry tea
and lived in Prechistenka Street in a flat with five rooms, one of which was
occupied by the old housekeeper, Maria Stepanovna, who looked after the
Professor like a nanny.
In 1919 three of the Professor's five rooms
were taken away. Whereupon he announced to Maria Stepanovna:
"If they don't stop this outrageous
behaviour, I shall leave the country, Maria Stepanovna."
Had the Professor carried out this plan, he
would have experienced no difficulty in obtaining a place in the zoology
department of any university in the world, for he was a really first-class
scholar, and in the particular field which deals with amphibians had no equal,
with the exception of professors William Weckle in Cambridge and Giacomo
Bartolomeo Beccari in Rome. The Professor could read four languages, as Mvell
as Russian, and spoke French and German like a native. Persikov did not carry
out his intention of going abroad, and 1920 was even worse than 1919. All sorts
of things happened, one after the other. Bolshaya Nikitskaya was renamed Herzen
Street. Then the clock on the wall of the corner building in Herzen Street and
Mokhovaya stopped at a quarter past eleven and, finally, unable to endure the
perturbations of this remarkable year, eight magnificent specimens of
tree-frogs died in the Institute's terrariums, followed by fifteen ordinary
toads and an exceptional specimen of the Surinam toad.
Immediately after the demise of the toads
which devastated that first order of amphibians rightly called tailless, old
Vlas, the Institute's caretaker of many years' standing, who did not belong to
any order of amphibians, also passed on to a better world. The cause of his
death, incidentally, was the same as that of the unfortunate amphibians, and
Persikov diagnosed it at once:
"Undernourishment!"
The scientist was perfectly right. Vlas should
have been fed with flour and the toads with flour weevils, but the
disappearance of the former determined that of the latter likewise, and
Persikov tried to shift the twenty surviving specimens of tree-frogs onto a
diet of cockroaches, but then the cockroaches disappeared too, thereby
demonstrating their hostile attitude to war communism. Consequently, these last
remaining specimens also had to be thrown into the rubbish pits in the
Institute yard.
The effect of these deaths on
Persikov, particularly that
of the
is quite indescribable. For some reason he blamed them entirely on the People's
Commissar for Education.
Standing in his fur cap and galoshes in the
corridor of the freezing Institute, Persikov said to his assistant Ivanov, an
elegant gentleman with a fair pointed beard:
"Hanging's too good for him, Pyotr
Stepanovich! What do they think they're doing! They'll ruin the whole
Institute! Eh? An exceptionally rare male specimen of Pipa americana, thirteen
centimetres long..."
Things went from bad to worse. When Vlas died
the Institute windows froze so hard that there were icy scrolls on the inside
of the panes. The rabbits, foxes, wolves and fish died, as well as every single
grass-snake.
Persikov brooded silently for days on
end, then caught pneumonia, but did not die. When he recovered, he started
coming to the Institute twice a week and in the round hall, where for some
reason it was always five degrees below freezing point irrespective of the
temperature outside, he delivered a cycle of lectures on "The Reptiles of
the Torrid Zone" in galoshes, a fur cap with ear-flaps and a scarf,
breathing out white steam, to an audience of eight. The rest of the time he lay
under a rug on the divan in Prechistenka, in a room with books piled up to the
ceiling, coughing, gazing into the jaws of the fiery stove which Maria
Stepanov-na stoked with gilt chairs, and remembering the Surinam toad.
But all things come to an end. So it was with
'twenty and 'twenty-one, and in 'twenty-two a kind of reverse process began.
Firstly, in place of the dear departed Vlas there appeared Pankrat, a young,
but most promising zoological caretaker, and the Institute began to be heated
again a little.
Then in the summer with Pankrat's
help Persikov caught fourteen common toads. The terrariums came to life
again... In 'twenty-three Persikov gave eight lectures a week, three at the
Institute and five at the University, in 'twenty-four thirteen a week, not
including the ones at workers' schools, and in the spring of 'twenty-five
distinguished himself by failing no less than seventy-six students, all on
amphibians.
"What, you don't know the difference
between amphibians and reptilia?"
Persikov asked. "That's quite ridiculous,
young man. Amphibia have no kidneys.
None at all.
So there.
You should be ashamed of yourself. I expect you're
a Marxist, aren't you?"
"Yes," replied the devastated
student, faintly.
"Well, kindly retake the exam in the
autumn," Persikov said politely and shouted cheerfully to Pankrat:
"Send in the next one!"
Just as amphibians come to life after a long
drought, with the first heavy shower of rain, so Professor Persikov revived in
1926 when a joint Americano-Russian company built fifteen fifteen-storey
apartment blocks in the centre of Moscow, beginning at the corner of Gazetny
Lane and Tverskaya, and 300 workers' cottages on the outskirts, each with eight
apartments, thereby putting an- end once and for all to the terrible and
ridiculous accommodation shortage which made life such a misery for Muscovites
from 1919 to 1925.
In fact, it was a marvellous summer in
Persikov's life, and occasionally he would rub his hands with' a quiet,
satisfied giggle, remembering how he and Maria Stepanovna had been cooped up in
two rooms. Now the Professor had received all five back, spread himself,
arranged his two-and-a-half thousand books, stuffed animals, diagrams and
specimens, and lit the green lamp on the desk in his study.
You would not have recognised the Institute
either. They painted it cream, equipped the amphibian room with a special water
supply system, replaced all the plate glass with mirrors and donated five new
microscopes, glass laboratory tables, some 2,000-amp.
arc
lights, reflectors and museum cases.
Persikov came to life again, and the whole
world suddenly learnt of this when a brochure appeared in December 1926
entitled "More
About
the Reproduction of
Polyplacophora or Chitons", 126 pp, Proceedings of the
And in the autumn of 1927 he published a
definitive work of 350 pages, subsequently translated into six languages,
including Japanese. It was entitled "The Embryology of Pipae, Spadefoots
and Frogs", price 3 roubles.
State Publishing
House.
But in the summer of 1928 something quite
appalling happened...
II.
A Coloured Tendril
So, the Professor switched on the light and
looked around. Then he turned on the reflector on the long experimental table, donned
his white coat, and fingered some instruments on the table...
Of the thirty thousand mechanical carriages
that raced" around Moscow in 'twenty-eight many whizzed down Herzen
Street, swishing over the smooth paving-stones, and every few minutes a 16,22,
48 or 53 tram would career round the corner from Herzen Street to Mokhovaya
with much grinding and clanging. A pale and misty crescent moon cast
reflections of coloured lights through the laboratory windows and was visible
far away and high up beside the dark and heavy dome of the Church of Christ the
Saviour.