“I swear to God!” the lady said, and live spots of colour broke through the artificial ones on her cheeks, “I know that this is my last passion. He’s such a scoundrel! Oh, Professor! He’s a card shark, all of Moscow knows it. He can’t let a single lousy model get by. He’s so devilishly young!” The lady mumbled and pulled out a crumpled lacy clump from beneath her rustling skirts.
The dog was completely confused and everything went belly up in his head.
“The hell with you,” he thought dimly, resting his head on his paws and falling asleep from the shame, “I won’t even try to understand what this is, since I won’t get it anyway.”
He was awaked by a ringing sound and saw that Filipp Filippovich had tossed some glowing tubes into a basin.
The spotted lady, pressing her hands to her breast, gazed hopefully at Filipp Filippovich. He frowned importantly and, sitting at his desk, made a notation.
“Madame, I will transplant ape ovaries in you,” he announced and looked severe.
“Ah, Professor, must it be an ape?”
“Yes,” Filipp Filippovich replied inexorably.
“When will the operation take place?” the lady asked in a weak voice, turning pale.
“‘From Seville to Granada’… hm… Monday. You will check into the clinic in the morning and my assistant will prepare you.”
“Ah, I don’t want to be in the clinic. Can’t you do it here, Professor?”
“You see, I do surgery here only in extreme situations. It will be very expensive, five thousand.”
“I’m willing, Professor!”
The water thundered again, the feathered hat billowed, and then a head as bald as a plate appeared and embraced Filipp Filippovich. The dog dozed, the nausea had passed, and the dog enjoyed the calmed side and warmth, even snored a little and had time for a bit of a pleasant dream: he had torn a whole bunch of feathers from the owl’s tail. Then an agitated voice bleated overhead:
“I am a well-known figure, Professor! What do I do now?”
“Gentlemen!” Filipp Filippovich shouted in outrage. “You can’t behave this way! You have to control yourself! How old is she?”
“Fourteen, Professor… You realize that the publicity will destroy me. I’m supposed to be sent to London on business any day now.”
“I’m not a lawyer, dear fellow. So, wait two years and marry her.”
“I’m married, Professor!”
“Ah, gentlemen, gentlemen!”
Doors opened, faces changed, instruments clattered in the cupboard, and Filipp Filippovich worked without stop.
“A vile apartment,” the dog thought, “but how good it is here! What the hell did he need me for? Is he really going to let me live? What a weirdo! A single wink from him and he’d get such a fine dog it would take your breath away! Maybe I’m handsome too. It’s my good luck! But the owl is garbage. Arrogant.”
The dog woke up at last late in the evening, when the bells stopped and just at the instant when the door let in special visitors. There were four at once. All young people, and all dressed very modestly.
“What do these want?” the dog thought with surprise. Filipp Filippovich greeted them with much greater hostility. He stood at his desk and regarded them like a general looking at the enemy. The nostrils of his aquiline nose flared. The arrivals shuffled their feet on the carpet.
“We are here, Professor,” said the one with a topknot of about a half foot of thick, curly black hair, “on this matter-”
“Gentlemen, you shouldn’t go around without galoshes in this weather,” Filipp Filippovich interrupted edifyingly. “First, you will catch cold, and second, you’ve left tracks on my carpets, and all my carpets are Persian.”
The one with the topknot shut up and all four stared in astonishment at Filipp Filippovich. The silence extended to several seconds and it was broken by Filipp Filippovich’s fingers drumming on the painted wooden plate on his desk.
“First of all, we’re not gentlemen,” said the youngest of the four, who had a peachy look.
“First of all,” interrupting him as well, Filipp Filippovich asked, “are you a man or a woman?”
The four shut up and gaped once again. This time the first one, with the hair, responded. “What difference does it make, Comrade?” he asked haughtily.
“I’m a woman,” admitted the peachy youth in the leather jacket and blushed mightily. After him, one of the other arrivals, a blond man in a tall fur hat, blushed dark red for some reason.
“In that case, you may keep your cap on; but you, gracious sir, I ask to remove your headgear,” Filipp Filippovich said imposingly.
“I’m not your ‘gracious sir’,” the blond youth muttered in embarrassment, removing his hat.
“We have come to you-” the dark-haired one began again.
“First of all, who is this ‘we’?”
“We are the new managing board of our building,” the dark one said with contained fury. “I am Shvonder, she is Vyazemskaya, he is Comrade Pestrukhin, and Sharovkin. And so we-”
“You’re the ones who have been moved into the apartment of Fyodor Pavlovich Sablin?”
“We are,” Shvonder replied.
“God! The Kalabukhov house is doomed!” Filipp Filippovich exclaimed in despair and threw his hands up in the air.
“What are you laughing about, Professor?”
“I’m not laughing! I’m in complete despair!” shouted Filipp Filippovich. “What will happen to the central heating now?”
“You are mocking us, Professor Preobrazhensky!”
“What business brings you here? Make it fast, I’m on my way to dinner.”
“We, the Building Committee,” Shvonder said with hatred, “have come to you after the general meeting of the residents of our building, on the agenda of which was the question of consolidating the apartments.”
“Where was this agenda?” screamed Filipp Filippovich. “Make an effort to express your ideas more clearly.”
“The question of consolidating-”
“Enough! I understand! You know that by the resolution of 12th August of this year my apartment is exempt from all and any consolidation and resettlement?”
“We know,” Shvonder replied, “but the general meeting examined your case and came to the conclusion that in particular and on the whole you occupy an excessive space. Completely excessive. You live alone in seven rooms.”
“I live and work alone in seven rooms,” replied Filipp Filippovich, “and I would like to have an eighth. I need it as a library.”
The foursome froze.
“An eighth! Ho-ho-ho,” said the blond man deprived of his headgear, “that’s really something!”
“It’s indescribable!” explained the youth who turned out to be a girl.
“I have a reception – note that it is also the library – a dining room and my study – that’s three. Examining room, four. Operating room, five. My bedroom makes six, and the maids’ room is seven. Basically, it’s not enough… But that’s not important. My apartment is exempt and that’s the end of the conversation. May I go to dinner?”
“Sorry,” said the fourth, who looked like a sturdy beetle.
“Sorry,” Shvonder interrupted, “it is precisely the dining room and examining room that we came to discuss. The general meeting asks you voluntarily,