"Mikhail Bulgakov. The Fateful Eggs ("Роковые яйца")" - читать интересную книгу автора

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
Surinam toad, is quite indescribable. For some reason he blamed them
entirely on the People's Commissar for Education.