The cats proved too much, and the dog gave such a bark that the individual jumped.
“Ai !”
“I’ll thrash you ! Don’t be afraid, he doesn’t bite.”
I don’t bite? the dog thought with astonishment.
A little envelope dropped out of the visitor’s trouser pocket, with a picture of a beauty with loose, flowing hair. He jumped up, bent down, picked it up and flushed darkly.
“Look out, though,” Philip Philippovich warned gloomily, shaking a finger at him. “After all, don’t overdo it!”
“I don’t over . . .” the visitor mumbled in confusion, continuing to undress. “It was only as a sort of experiment, my dear Professor.”
“And? How did it go?” Philip Philippovich asked sternly.
The odd visitor only raised his hands in ecstasy.
“I swear, nothing like it for twenty-five years, Professor. The last time was in 1899 in Paris, on Rue de la Paix.”
“And what made you turn green?”
The visitor’s face clouded over.
“That damned liquid! You can’t imagine, Professor, what those good-for-nothings stuck me with instead of dye. Just look at it,” he muttered, searching for a mirror with his eyes. “They ought to get their teeth bashed in!” he added, suddenly furious. “What am I to do now, Professor?” he asked tearfully.
“Hm, shave it off.”
“Professor,” the visitor exclaimed piteously, “but it’ll grow back gray again. Besides, I won’t be able to show my face at the office. I haven’t gone in for three days as it is. Ah, Professor, if you would only discover a method of rejuvenating the hair as well!”
“Not all at once, my friend, not all at once,” mumbled Philip Philippovich.
He bent down and examined the patient’s naked stomach with glittering eyes.
“Well—charming, everything is in perfect order. To tell the truth, I really didn’t expect such results. New blood, new songs. Get dressed, my friend!”
“My love is the most beautiful of all! . . .” the patient sang out in a voice that quavered like a frying pan struck with a fork, and began to dress, his face beaming. Then, bobbing up and down and spreading the odor of perfume, he counted out a bundle of large bills, handed them to Philip Philippovich, and tenderly pressed both his hands.
“You need not report for two weeks,” said Philip Philippovich, “but I must repeat, be careful.”
“Professor!” the man’s voice exclaimed ecstastically from behind the door, “you may be quite, quite sure,” and he vanished with a sugary giggle.
The tinkling of the bell spread throughout the apartment, the laquered door opened, the bitten one entered and gave Philip Philippovich another sheet of paper, saying:
“The age is entered incorrectly. Must be fifty or fifty-five. The heart tone is somewhat flat.”
He disappeared, to be replaced by a rustling lady in a hat set at a jaunty angle and with a gleaming necklace on her flabby, wrinkled neck. She had peculiar dark bags under her eyes, and her cheeks were as red as a doll’s. She was very nervous.
“My dear lady! How old are you?” Philip Philippovich asked very sternly.
The lady became frightened and even turned pale under the coat of rouge.
“I . . . Professor, I swear, if you only knew my tragedy!. . .”
“How old are you, madam?” Philip Philippovich repeated still more sternly.
“Honestly. . . Well, forty-five. . .”
“Madam,” roared Philip Philippovich, “people are waiting to see me. Don’t waste my time, please. You’re not the only one!”
The lady’s breast heaved stormily.
“I’ll tell it to you alone, as a luminary of science. But I swear, it is so dreadful.”
“How old are you?” Philip Philippovich squealed in fury and his eyeglasses glinted.
“Fifty-one,” the lady answered, shrinking with fear.
“Take off your pants, madam,” Philip Philippovich said with relief and pointed to a high white platform in the corner.
“I swear, Professor,” the lady mumbled, undoing some snaps on her belt with trembling fingers. “That Maurice . . . I tell this to you as at confessional . . . .”
“From Seville and to Granada,” Philip Philippovich sang absently and pressed the pedal of the marble washstand. The water rushed out.
“I swear by God,” the lady said, and spots of genuine red stood out under the artificial ones on her cheeks. “I know—this is my last passion. But he is such a scoundrel! Oh, Professor! He is a cardsharp, all of Moscow knows it. He’s ready to take up with every nasty little seamstress. He is so fiendishly young!” The lady muttered, kicking off a crumpled bit of lace from under her rustling skirts.
The dog was utterly bewildered, and everything turned upside down in his head.
The devil with you, he thought dimly, putting his head down on his paws and dozing off with shame. I wouldn’t even try to figure it out—I couldn’t make head or tail of it anyway.
He was awakened by a clinking sound and saw that Philip Philippovich had thrown some shiny tubes into a basin.
The spotty lady, her hands pressed to her chest, was looking at Philip Philippovich with anxious hope. The latter frowned importantly, then sat down at his desk and wrote something.
“We’ll do a transplant. A monkey’s ovaries,” he declared, looking at her sternly.
“Ah, Professor, a monkey’s?”
“Yes,” he replied implacably.
“And when is the operation?” she asked in a faint voice, turning pale.
“From Seville and to Granada. . . Uhm . . . on Monday. You’ll come to the hospital in the morning. My assistant will prepare you.”
“Ah, Professor, I’d rather not go to the hospital. Can’t it be done here, Professor?”
“Well, you see, I operate here only in special cases. And it will be very expensive—fifty chervontsy,”
“I am willing, Professor!”
The water clattered again, the hat with the feathers swayed, a head appeared, bare as a platter, and embraced Philip Philippovich. The dog dozed, his nausea gone. His side no longer troubled him, he luxuriated in the warmth, and even caught a quick nap and saw a fragment of a pleasant dream, in which he managed to pull a whole tuft of feathers out of the owl’s tail. . . . And then an agitated voice barked over his head:
“I am too well known in Moscow, Professor. What am I to do?”
“Gentlemen,” Philip Philippovich cried indignantly, “this is impossible. A man must control himself. How old is she?”
“Fourteen, Professor . . . You understand, the publicity will ruin me. I am slated to receive an assignment abroad in a day or two.”
“But I am not a lawyer, my friend . . . . Well, wait two years and marry her.”
“I am married, Professor.”
“Ah, gentlemen, gentlemen!”
The doors opened and closed, faces succeeded one another, the instruments in the cases clattered, and Philip Philippovich worked without a moment’s