Whoo-oo-oo-oo-hooh-hoo-oo! Oh, look at me, I am perishing in this gateway. The blizzard roars a prayer for the dying, and I howl with it. I am finished, finished. That bastard, in the dirty cap—the cook of the Normal Diet Cafeteria for employees of the People’s Central Economic Soviet—threw boiling water at me and scalded my left side. The scum, and he calls himself a proletarian! Lord, oh lord, how it hurts! My side is cooked to the bone. And now I howl and howl, but what’s the good of howling?
What harm did I do him? Would the People’s Economic Soviet get any poorer if I rooted in the garbage heap? The greedy brute!
Cooks can be of all sorts. For example, the late Vlas from Prechistenka.
How many he saved! Because the main thing is to get a bite to eat when you’re sick. All the old dogs still talk of how Vlas would throw them a bone, and with a solid chunk of meat on it. May he be blessed for it in the Heavenly Kingdom—a real personality he was, the gentry’s cook for the Counts Tolstoy, not one of those nobodies from the Soviet of Normal Diet. The things they do in that Normal Diet, it’s more than a dog’s brain can comprehend. Those scoundrels make soup of stinking corned beef, and the poor wretches don’t know what they’re eating. They come running, gobbling it down, lapping it up.
“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.
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.
“How did you manage to get such a nervous dog to follow you?” asked a pleasant masculine voice, and the trouser leg was rolled down. There was a smell of tobacco, and the glass jars tinkled in one of the cases.
“By kindness. The only method possible in dealing with living creatures. By terror you cannot get anywhere with an animal, no matter what its stage of development. I’ve always asserted this, I assert it today, and I shall go on asserting it. They are wrong thinking that terror will help them. No—no, it won’t, whatever its color: white, red, or even brown! Terror completely paralyzes the nervous system.”
What an obscene place, the dog thought, but how pleasant! And what the devil did he need me for? Will he really let me stay here? Such an eccentric! Why, he need only blink an eye and he could have the finest dog in town! But maybe I am handsome? I guess I’m lucky!
“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.”
“You are a hater of the proletariat!” the woman declared proudly.
“You are right, I do not like the proletariat,” Philip Philippovich agreed sadly and pressed a button. A bell rang somewhere within, and the door into the corridor swung open.
“If you care about your digestion, my good advice is—do not talk about Bolshevism or medicine at dinner. And—heaven preserve!—don’t read any Soviet newspapers before dinner.”
“Hm … But there are no others.”
“That’s just it, don’t read any. You know, I carried out thirty tests at my hospital. And what do you think? Patients who read no newspapers feel excellent. But those whom I deliberately compelled to read Pravda lost weight.”
“One fine day in March of 1917, all the galoshes disappeared, including two pair of mine. Also three canes, a coat, and the porter’s samovar. And from that day on the stand for galoshes ceased to exist. […] I ask you why, when this whole business started, did everyone begin to go up the marble staircase in muddy galoshes and felt boots? […] Why was the rug removed from the front stairway? Does Karl Marx forbid rugs on the stairs? Does he say anywhere in his writings that the second entrance of the Kalabukhov house on Prechistenka must be boarded up, and people must go around the house and enter through the backyard? Who needs this? Why can’t the proletarian leave his galoshes downstairs instead of tracking up the marble?”
“It’s the general rack and ruin, Philip Philippovich. Economic collapse.”
“No,” Philip Philippovich argued with utmost assurance. “No. You ought to be the first, Ivan Arnoldovich, to refrain from using these terms. They are a mirage, a puff of smoke, a fiction.” Philip Philippovich spread out his short fingers, and two shadows like turtles stirred on the tablecloth. “What is this general ruin of yours? An old crone with a crutch? A witch who has knocked out all the windows and extinguished all the lights? Why, there’s no such thing! It doesn’t exist. What do you mean by these words?”
But suddenly his angry thoughts broke off. For some reason, a vivid fragment of his earliest youth rose in his memory: a vast, sunny courtyard near the Preobrazhensky Turnpike, splinters of sun in bottles, cracked bricks, free, stray dogs.
Oh, no, why lie to yourself, you’ll never leave here, you’ll never go back to freedom, the dog spoke to himself in anguish, sniffing. I am a gentleman’s dog, an intellectual creature, I’ve tasted a better life. And what is freedom, anyway? Nothing, a puff of smoke, a mirage, a fiction… A sick dream of those wretched democrats…
Philip Philippovich threw him a vicious glance, mumbled something, and cut still deeper. Bormenthal cracked a glass ampule, sucked out the contents with a syringe and treacherously stuck the needle somewhere near Sharik’s heart.
“The devil take it. He didn’t die. Oh, well, he’ll die anyway. Ah, Doctor Bormenthal, I’m sorry for the mutt. He was sly, but affectionate.”
January 6. (Partly in pencil, partly in violet ink)
Today, after his tail dropped off, he enunciated with utmost clarity the word “saloon.” The recording machine is working. The devil knows what is going on.
I am totally bewildered.
January 8. Diagnosis established late in the evening. Philip Philippovich, like a true scientist, acknowledged his mistake: a change of hypophysis produces, not rejuvenation, but complete humanization (underlined three times). This does not detract in the slightest from the staggering importance of his amazing discovery.
Prof. Preobrazhensky’s amazing experiment has revealed one of the secrets of the human brain. From now on, the mysterious function of the hypophysis—the brain appendage—is explained. The hypophysis determines human characteristics. Its hormones may be described as the most important ones in the organism—they are the hormones of the human shape. A new realm is opening in science: a homunculus was created without any of Faust’s retorts. The surgeon’s scalpel has brought into being a new human entity. Professor Preobrazhensky, you are a creator. (Blot)
There is no doubt whatsoever that this is his illegitimate son (as they used to say in the corrupt bourgeois society). This is how our pseudo-scientific bourgeoisie amuses itself. Anyone can occupy seven rooms—until the gleaming sword of justice flashes its scarlet ray over his head.
Shv…r.
“Why are you nagging all the time? … Don’t spit. Don’t smoke. Don’t go here. Don’t go there … What sort of business is it anyway? Just like in the streetcar. Why’nt you let me live? And as for ‘dad,’ you’ve no call to … Did I ask you for the operation?” The man barked indignantly. “A fine thing! Grabbed an animal beast, slashed up his head with a knife, and now they’re squeamish. Maybe I never gave you no permission to operate? And likewise (the man rolled up his eyes to the ceiling, as though trying to remember a certain formula), and likewise my relatives. I have the right to sue you, maybe.”
“And what do you wish to call yourself?”
The man adjusted his tie and answered:
“Polygraph Polygraphovich.”
“Excuse me, Professor, but citizen Sharikov is entirely right. It is certainly his right to participate in the discussion of his own fate, especially insofar as it has to do with documents. A document is the most important thing in the world.”
“And what is your opinion of it, if I may ask?”
Sharikov shrugged.
“I don’t agree.”
“With whom? With Engels, or with Kautsky?”
“With neither,” answered Sharikov.
“That’s marvelous, I swear. Everyone who says the other … And what would you propose yourself?”
“What’s there to propose? … They write and write … congress, Germans … who knows them … makes your head spin. Just take everything and divide it up…”
“I thought so,” exclaimed Philip Philippovich, slamming his hand on the tablecloth. “Exactly what I thought.”
“Do you know how to do it, too?” asked Bormenthal with curiosity.
“How, how,” Sharikov began, growing voluble after the vodka. “It’s plain enough. What do you think? One man spreads himself out in seven rooms and has forty pair of pants, and another hangs around garbage dumps, looking for something to eat.”
“You are on the lowest rung of development,” Philip Philippovich shouted still more loudly. “You are a creature just in the process of formation, with a feeble intellect. All your actions are the actions of an animal. Yet you permit yourself to speak with utterly insufferable impudence in the presence of two people with a university education—to offer advice on a cosmic scale and of equally cosmic stupidity on how to divide everything … And right after gobbling up a boxful of toothpowder too…”
“Doctor, would you please take him to the circus? But, for God’s sake, take a look at the program first—make sure they have no cats.”
“How do they let such trash into the circus?” Sharikov wondered morosely, shaking his head.
Dr. Bormenthal, pale, with resolute eyes, raised a glass with a stem as slender as a dragonfly.
“Philip Philippovich,” he exclaimed in a voice full of emotion, “I shall never forget how I came to you as a half-starved student, and you gave me a place in the department. Believe me, Philip Philippovich, you are much more to me than a professor, a teacher … My immense regard for you … Permit me to kiss you, my dear Philip Philippovich.”
“Surely, my dear friend…” Philip Philippovich mumbled with embarrassment and rose toward him. Bormenthal embraced him and planted a kiss on his fluffy, smoke-browned mustache.
“Philip Philippovich, I say to you…” Bormenthal exclaimed passionately. He rushed to the door leading into the hallway, closed it more firmly, and returned, continuing in a whisper, “it is the only solution. Of course, I would not presume to advise you, but, Philip Philippovich, look at yourself, you are utterly worn out, it is impossible to go on working under such conditions!”
“Absolutely impossible,” Philip Philippovich agreed, sighing.
“Philip Philippovich, but what if it were Spinoza’s brain?”
“Yes!” barked Philip Philippovich. […] “Certainly, it might be possible to graft the hypophysis of Spinoza or some such devil, and turn a dog into a highly advanced human. But what in hell for? Tell me, please, why is it necessary to manufacture Spinozas artificially when any peasant woman can produce them at any time? […] Doctor, the human race takes care of this by itself, and every year, in the course of its evolution, it creates dozens of outstanding geniuses who adorn the earth, stubbornly selecting them out of the mass of scum.”
“Look at that business with the cats! A man with the heart of a dog.”
“Oh, no, no,” Philip Philippovich sang out. “You are mistaken, Doctor. In heaven’s name, don’t malign the dog. […] The whole horror, you see, is that his heart is no longer a dog’s heart but a human one. And the vilest you could find!”
The document read: “This will certify that the bearer of same, Comrade Polygraph Polygraphovich Sharikov, is the director of the sub-section for purging the city of Moscow of stray animals (cats, etc.) of the Moscow Communal Property Administration.”
Philip Philippovich saddled his nose with pince-nez over his glasses and began to read. He muttered to himself for a long time, changing color every second. “… and also threatening to kill the house committee chairman, from which it can be seen that he owns firearms. And he makes counterrevolutionary speeches, and even ordered his social servant Zinaida Prokofievna Bunina to throw Engels into the stove, as an open Menshevik with his assistant Bormenthal, Ivan Arnoldovich, who secretly lives in his apartment without registration. Signed, Director of the purge sub-section P. P. Sharikov—attested to by Chairman of the House Committee, Shvonder, and Secretary Pestrukhin.”
Sharikov invited his own death. He raised his left arm toward Philip Philippovich and made an obscene gesture with his scratched fist which reeked intolerably of cats. Then with his right hand, he took a revolver from his pocket and aimed it at the dangerous Bormenthal. Bormenthal’s cigarette dropped like a falling star, and a few seconds later Philip Philippovich was rushing beck and forth in mortal terror from instrument case to sofa, jumping over broken glass. On the sofa, the director of the purge section lay supine and gurgling, with the surgeon Bormenthal astride his chest and choking him with a small white pillow.
“I don’t understand anything,” answered Philip Philippovich, raising his shoulders with a royal air. “What Sharikov? Ah, sorry, you mean my dog … on whom I operated? […] Sharik is still alive, and no one has killed him.”
Philip Philippovich shrugged his shoulders.
“Science has not yet discovered methods of transforming animals into humans. I tried, but unsuccessfully, as you can see. He spoke for a while, and then began to revert to his original state. Atavism.”
“No indecent language here!” the dog barked suddenly from his chair and stood up.
The superior being, the dignified benefactor of dogs, sat in his armchair, and the dog Sharik lay sprawled on the rug near the leather sofa. […]
I’ve been so lucky, so lucky, he thought, dozing off. Just incredibly lucky. I’m set for life in this apartment. I am absolutely convinced that there was something shady in my ancestry. There must have been a Newfoundland. She was a whore, my grandmother, may she rest in the Heavenly Kingdom, the old lady. True, they’ve slashed up my whole head for some strange reason, but it’ll heal before my wedding. It’s not worth mentioning.
“Toward the sacred banks of the Nile…”
